New Plans to Graduate Kids in 10th Grade

The last two years of high school are generally spent preparing for college and enjoying the last hurrahs of senior year, but what if it were the first two years of high school, grades nine and ten where this took place, instead of grades 11 and 12? An announcement made by education officials of one state may speed up graduation from high school from senior year to sophomore year, with graduation at tenth grade instead of 12th. On October 30th, education officials in New Hampshire announced that they will be giving students a rigorous new series of state board exams … Continue reading

Sex Education in the News

Sex education is a controversial subject for families. Some parents support it, others do not, and still others believe it has its place depending on the age of the students. Like it or not, sex education has been in the news lately, including compulsory lessons on sex education for children as young as five years old. Let’s get to the first piece of news. An initiative was announced in England that millions of children from the age of five to 16, who attend state-funded schools, will be given compulsory lessons about sex education and drugs. It is important to note … Continue reading

Should You Hold Your Child Back a Year?

One controversial idea that seems to be gaining in popularity is the practice of intentionally holding a child back or delaying the start of school by a year. Thus, students who are qualified to enter kindergarten at the age of five stay home or in preschool that extra year, only entering formal school at the age of six. Why is this happening and what should you do? There are a few reasons that parents are choosing to delay the start of a child’s formal schooling. One reason is to ensure that the child will be at the top of the … Continue reading

More Ways to Use Medication Safely

When it comes to your child and medication, I really believe that you just can’t be too careful. Witness the young deaths as a result of using children’s cold medication. With some safety precautions, you can ensure that you child’s medication is safe and effective. If you missed the first post on this subject, click here: How to Use Medication Safely. Now, I’ll share some more tips. Never give medication to a child (or really anyone) that was prescribed for someone else. I always cringe when I hear about how someone gave their child leftover antibiotics when their child was … Continue reading

Celebrity Drops Outs

Being a celebrity is hard, especially if you are a child star. Many are so focused on their careers that they forgo something many of us take for granted – a high school education. And while many of them will make more as high school drop outs that most of us with diplomas, there is a certain pride in finishing school. Christian Slater was one of those that realized that. The new star of NBC’s “My Own Worst Enemy” told Parade Magazine that he had to “swallow his pride” and go back to school with students much younger than himself … Continue reading

The Danger of MegaSchools

There is a dangerous trend recently toward megaschools, schools that contain a large number of students at one school, anywhere from 500 to 2,000 students in one building. My own school district is considering doing this with our elementary school, and it scares me to no end. Megaschools can be convenient for school districts for a few reasons. A flux of incoming students can lead to overcrowding, and creating a new megaschool would address the problem, leaving room for further expansion. It is also usually more coast effective to create and maintain one megaschool than it is to renovate and … Continue reading

Kids Virtual Field Trips

Whether you home school, summer school, preschool or just like to have educational fun with your kids, you should be very interested in this blog post. Virtual field trips for kids (and in some cases by kids) are a great way to introduce children to places that are not feasible to physically visit. You can also encourage kids to chronicle their own real-life field trips and share them with others, whether through their own website, a YouTube video or through a website such as MeetMeAtTheCorner.org. Let’s start with MeetMeAtTheCorner.org. It is focused on the New York City area, but it … Continue reading

Teens who Choose Adoption More Likely to Succeed–So Why Don’t More Teens Choose It?

We’ve been talking about educating youth about adoption, caring for babies, and life in general. In the middle of the twentieth century, the majority of girls and young women who gave birth while unmarried placed their babies for adoption. Now, the figure is less than two percent in most areas. The director of our agency’s adoption program told us that most of the birth mothers in their program were college-age. He said almost all of the high school students decided to parent their babies. Yet, most social service workers agree that children of single teenage mothers are at higher risk … Continue reading

IQ Test

Schools are typically all about comparing students’ intelligence with numbers. When a child enters school, he or she will be given all different types of tests to determine where he or she falls in the percentage compared to other students. In most cases schools never actually put an IQ number to match an average student’s intelligence. However, when it is needed to get a better understanding of exactly how smart or intelligent someone is, an IQ test is often administered. An IQ test may be used when it is thought that a person is over or under intelligent. The test … Continue reading

More Ideas for Developing Logical Thinking

I have discussed how many educators are now turning to the reasoning behind problems more than just simply asking for the answers. The ability for children to solve problems comes from two basic concepts. Those concepts are memory and reasoning. I had offered some ideas for parents to help their children enhance these skills at the ages of two and three. In this article those tips will continue for other ages. By the age of four most children can recall events in the form of memories. Children can remember places that they have been and people that they have seen. … Continue reading