Dr. Toy’s Recommendations for Vacation Play

Posted on June 26, 2012 at 3:56 pm

Dr. Toy’s Best Vacation Children’s Products for 2012 report is now available to parents, teachers, caregivers, grandparents, and others responsible for children. As children enjoy the summer, these toys will help them play safely with toys that stretch their imaginations and curiousityat home, when traveling, and while on vacation.

Dr. Toy’s Best Vacation Children’s Products Awards were developed by noted child development authority, Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D. (a.k.a. Dr. Toy) to help consumers purchase safe, affordable, educationally-oriented, stimulating toys and play products for children for vacation time for use at home or on the road.

Dr. Toy says, “The Best Vacation Products 2012 are an excellent selection from large, small, new and established, companies across the U.S.A., Canada, and around the world and will provide children with exciting new learning tools that will help them not only do better in school, but also will provide more constructive activities while at home, traveling or at vacation destinations. Parents need more help to get a head start locating new, quality, diversified products that children will enjoy as they increase learning skills and expand creativity.” The products range from low to high tech for “hours of constructive, educational, and stimulating fun. Children learn best through play,” says Dr. Auerbach, “and these Best Vacation Products encourage children to maximize their potential and make the most of Smart Play. By making a renewed focus on Summertime as a special time for choosing new products for children, parents help to improve their children’s development. This is a perfect time for parents to ‘take stock, ‘ do an inventory of what their children are playing with, what is not being used, and what they need next in their development.”

I especially enjoyed reading about Chef Cuckoo!, a board game that is fun to play as it helps kids learn about healthy food choices while they compete for the tastiest — or yuckiest — meals.

The toys in the report are reviewed for: safety, age-appropriateness, design, durability, lasting play value, cultural and ethnic diversity, good transition from home to school, educational value, learning skills, creativity, improvement in the understanding of the community and the world, good value for price, and, naturally, fun. There are products suitable for babies to older children, products from hand-crafted to hi-tech, ranging in price on the average from $10 to $50. The winning vacation products are affordable, well designed, and reflect the wide range of children’s interests. And she has an iPhone app to help shoppers, too.

Summer Activity for Kids: Memorize Poems

Posted on June 18, 2012 at 9:00 am

“Whose woods these are, I think I know….” You know how I know? My mother told me that would be a good poem to memorize when I was eight. I still know it by heart.

One of the best things you can do for your children this summer is encourage them to memorize poetry. Children’s minds are naturally open to memorization as any parent of a kid who loves dinosaurs or who can repeat verbatim some promise you made months ago knows only too well. These days, many kids (and their parents) are so used to having all the information they could ever want immediately accessible via Google have given up on the mental exercise of memorizing. But it is an excellent way to challenge their imaginations and a great family project. Jean Kerr’s classic essay about her efforts to get her children to memorize poems is one of my very favorites. And Salon has a marvelous piece by Laura Miller on a proposal by Britain’s education secretary Michael Gove to go back to some of the classic school assignments like memorizing poems.

“People associate it with fusty, old-fashioned teaching styles,” Kauffman told me. “Memorizing anything is associated with rote learning, the mindless parroting of information under an authoritarian teaching style.” Perhaps that’s what Gove has in mind, but it doesn’t have to be that way. “If you want your child to appreciate beautiful writing,” she said, “then memorizing poetry is one way to do that. It’s not just exposing them to it, but actually getting them to take ownership of it.”

It stretches the brain, it expands the spirit, it connects the family, and for the rest of their lives, as they remember what they have learned, it gives your children something to do while waiting in line that is, unlike Angry Birds, soul-enriching.

Have you memorized a poem? Which one?

Related Tags:

Parenting

Parental Alert: Pornography and Abuse on Teen Websites

Posted on June 15, 2012 at 12:53 pm

Habbo Hotel, a popular social media website for teenagers, is reopening after suspending its interactive functions following an investigative journalist’s reports of abuse.

Following Tuesday’s announcement that mobile app Skout temporarily closed its under-18 community amidst rape allegations, Finnish virtual world Habbo Hotel has shut down its chat functions after “reports of abusive behaviors.”

Marketed as “the world’s largest social game and online community for teenagers,” the game boasts 10 million visitors per month to the virtual hotel, where children as young as 13 years old create avatars, chat publicly or privately with other users, and buy credits to furnish animated hotel rooms.

But the service made headlines this week after Rachel Seifert, a producer with the U.K.’s Channel 4 News, said she encountered pornographic chat, avatars engaged in cyber sex, and more. Seifert spent two months investigating the goings-on of the seemingly innocent game. While posing as a young girl, Seifert was asked to strip fully naked, “and asked what would I do on a webcam,” she said.

Seifert had similar sexually charged and inappropriate experiences all 50 times she played the game.

I looked into this after receiving a spam email “accepting” a registration at Habbo I had never signed up for. The recent announcement that Facebook plans to expand to include middle schoolers adds to the concern about the combination of poor judgment, increased independence, and anonymity in social media. Parents should be on the alert and make sure they have meaningful conversations and oversight of their children’s online activities and relationships.

Children Now Calls on the FCC to Limit Hidden Ads in Children’s Programming

Posted on June 13, 2012 at 3:55 pm

Industry publication Broadcasting & Cable reports that representatives of the advocacy group Children Now met with a top aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and other FCC staffers last week “to press the commission to take a stand against imbedded advertising and product placement in children’s programming.”

In addition to asking them to explicitly ban interactive kids advertising, they also said the FCC should “carefully review whether broadcast licensees and cable operators are complying with the requirements of the Children’s Television Act (CTA)” in terms of commercial limits (cable) and educational programming (broadcast TV).

The FCC tentatively concluded back in 2004 that children’s TV shows should not have interactive links to advertising unless parents have opted into such interactivity.

At the time, the commission said it would be premature to make that tentative conclusion into a rule because there was not much direct connectivity between TV and the ‘net.

Children Now argues that with programming being offered on multiple platforms, it is time for the FCC to get ahead of the curve — the group concedes that it is “not aware” of any commercial interactivity in any kids programming. But they argue it is just a matter of time given burgeoning interactivity elsewhere. “In the absence of clear and enforceable restrictions, children’s programmers are likely to start using many of the interactive marketing techniques now being used in programs intended for teen or general audiences,” they told the commission.

They point out, for instance, that Nickelodeon has a Dora the Explorer Facebook page, even though Facebook users have to be over 12. Facebook is currently exploring ways to open the site officially to kids, with their parents’ permission.

Children Now also wants the commission to clarify that FCC ad policies apply to video on demand and prohibit product placement in kids shows.

You can support this initiative by emailing the FCC chairman at: Julius.Genachowski@fcc.gov

Related Tags:

Marketing to Kids Parenting

Kids’ Toys and Costumes for the PG-13 “The Avengers”

Posted on April 30, 2012 at 3:46 pm

“The Avengers” is a PG-13 superhero movie with “intense sequences of action violence throughout and a drug reference,” according to the MPAA. So why is it marketing the film via action figures and costumes for children? Alert reader Andreas U. kindly brought to my attention that once again the MPAA insists that toys and costumes are not a part of movie advertising and thus not subject to the restrictions they impose on other outreach to underage audiences like commercials during programs directed at kids. “Gamma Strike Hulk,” “Ultra Strike Captain America,” “Mighty Strike Thor” and the others, not to mention the ever-popular Hulk hands, are quite clearly intended to get children under age 13 excited about the movie. The movie’s trailer appears on the site for ordering the toys. This is further proof of the need for an overhaul of the MPAA ratings board.