Oh! The Places You’ll Go!--by the incomparable Dr. Seuss

Sometimes we forget to give our children a ton of inspiration enough to have them endure each day's negatives. We try hard at school but there are many challenges so its important for parents to fill them up with words of encouragement....enough to get them thru the day until they can get home and have you refill their confidence gas tank!!!
A great read for all, see the link to the side of this web page! We gave this book to my son as he graduated. Sound words regardless of their age, but let go we must!

"Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!"

Read the whole book at link provided.

Fall Theme Game Stations- 13 in all!

Young kids trust adults despite evidence to the contrary

USA Today

A Study: By Robert Preidt, HealthDay

Very young children are extraordinarily trusting of
what adults tell them, even if there is repeated
evidence to the contrary, finds a new study.

In what may be little surprise to many parents, Unive-
rsity of Virginia researchers found that 3-year-olds
placed more trust in information they are told than
information conveyed to them without words.

In this study, an adult showed children a red and a
yellow cup and then hid a sticker under the red cup.
Some children were told (incorrectly) that the sticker
was under the yellow cup, while other children saw
the adult place an arrow on the yellow cup without
saying anything. The children were told they could
look under one cup and keep the sticker if they
found it. The experiment was repeated eight times
with pairs of different colored cups.

The children who saw the adult place the arrow on
the incorrect cup quickly learned not to trust this
sign. But those who heard the adult say the sticker
was under a certain cup continued to believe that's
where they would find the sticker. Of those 16
children, nine never once found the sticker in eight
tries. (At the end of the game, all the children were
given stickers, whether they found them or not.)

The study appears in the journal Psychological
Science.

"Children have developed a specific bias to believe
what they're told. It's sort of a shortcut to keep them
from having to evaluate what people say. It's useful
because most of the time parents and caregivers tell
children things that they believe to be true," study
author Vikram K. Jaswal said in a journal news
release.

Let's talk about kids health

Last year was the first year of BMI testing done for the 1st grade at the Baker School and at all DY schools.

The results give us a snap shot of the health status of our children at one point in time last year. I personally feel that the testing gives us valuable data in which we should commence discussions about our communities health, our attitudes and what if anything can we do to affect change if we beleive change needs to occur.

Please email this site with your thoughts in an effort to open up some dialog about this important discussion.

Within MA the rate of overweight and obese children is approx. 30% to 33%!

Chocolate Milk Debate Rages On

Can chocolate milk really be healthy? An ad campaign promoting flavored milk in school lunch programs has some parents mooing in discontent.

Read the attached link and perhaps it isn't as bad as we think!

30% of overweight Americans think they're in normal range

See link to get full article. Recognizing obesity seems to be an important first step!

"Dr. Mitchell Roslin, chief of obesity surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, noted that "when (Dr. Everett Coop, surgeon general in the 1980s) wrote 'Shape Up America,' he said the biggest health problem facing America was not AIDS, not cancer, it's obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. Since then ... we've seen nothing but a rise in obesity despite all of these efforts that have gone on now since the 1980s."

"The American public knows this but it's hard and it's something that they're not quite ready to do," Corso added. "This wake-up call still isn't ringing as loudly as it could."

Over one-third of MA students overweight/obese

WBZ News
9/8/2010
6:05 pm


State public health officials say that more than one-third of the students in 80 Massachusetts school districts are overweight or obese.


The Massachusetts Department of Public Health released a study Wednesday of more than 100,000 students which found that 17.3 percent were obese and 16.9 percent were overweight.

The percentage of students overweight or obese ranged from a low of 9.6 percent in Arlington to a high of 46.6 percent in Lawrence.

The study measured students in the first, fourth, seventh and 10th grades. In all four grade levels measured, more boys were overweight or obese than girls.

The study was part of the state’s Mass in Motion initiative which tries to promote wellness and prevent obesity in Massachusetts.