Thursday, May 27, 2010

13 year old Jordan Romero Becomes Youngest to Summit Mount Everest


I heard this story on NPR this morning and REALLY wish our tweens were in the car to listen too: 13 year old Jordan Romero became the youngest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest earlier this week. During his press conference after returning to base camp, he said "I definitely encourage young people to 'Go Big!'"

Fans of this remarkable young man followed his ascent on his blog where they could view his location via a GPS tracker. He achieved the summit on May 22, 2010, and called his mother from 29,035 feet saying “Hello mom, it’s your son calling from the top of the world, everything’s ok. I did it.”

He was accompanied by his father, an EMT (and an amazing job/resource/skill to have on such an expedition), his father's girl friend, and three Nepalese sherpas. His father, Paul Romero, took a page from First Lady Michelle Obama's playbook saying that he hoped Jordan's achievement would encourage other parents to exercise with their children: "We live a life in the US where childhood obesity is at epidemic level. It's from people who are patting their kids and sticking the remote control in their hands and completely overfeeding them."


Jordan's climb was not without controversy - there are many who claim his father pressured him into the journey. Even the Nepalese government objected and refused to give the family permission to climb Everest from Nepal on account of Jordan's age. The Romero family then decided to approach the mountain from the Chinese side which made the ascent more difficult. For his part, Jordan says he saw a mural in his school about the 7 summit of the world and set his goal then to climb all 7 of them. Thus far, he's climbed 6 of the 7 - he plans to climb one in Antarctica this December.

Amazing.

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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Happy Birthday to Pac-Man!

The little guy is 30th today, and in his honor, Google released its first "playable" Google Doodle - check it out for the next 48 hours only on Google.com

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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Tween Celebs in D.C. With First Lady Michelle Obama

We just posted an article about Disney Channel's tween stars who were in D.C. this weekend and Monday filming a healthy lifestyle program as part of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign. Check out the details here.

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Thursday, May 13, 2010

Greyson Michael Chance: the New Tween Heart-throb?

He killed it on The Ellen Show today! Way to go Greyson!!



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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

AMAZING Video of Tween Boy Singing Lady Gaga's Paparazzi

No words - simply awesome - check it out for yourself. Justin Bieber, move over!



Also on our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/MsTwixt

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Friday, May 7, 2010

Rick Riordan Speaks With Tweens in D.C. About His Newest Book, "The Red Pyramid"

We wrote about Rick Riordan's book talk and signing in Washington here. The author graciously signed more than 1400 books for more than four hours last night at Politics and Prose and answered tweens' questions about his characters, the Percy Jackson movie, and more.

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Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Mother-Daughter Tween Journaling: A How-To

We had the opportunity to meet mother-daughter author team Meredith and Sophie Jacobs, authors of "Just Between Us: A No-Stress, No-Rules Journal For Girls and Their Moms" at their book signing last night. Check out our coverage here. Their new book is a great how-to for journaling in a unique way.

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Monday, May 3, 2010

Tween Celebs at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Check out our coverage of all the tween celebrities (including Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato and all three Jonas Brothers) who were in Washington, D.C. this weekend for the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner - every word of it is on our Examiner DC Tweens column.

You can also follow our minute-by-minute coverage via our Twitter feed using the #WHCD hashtag.

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Sunday, May 2, 2010

Today Was National Lemonade Stand Day! Did You Support a Kid Biz?

We just learned about a cool movement to promote entrepreneurship in tweens called  Lemonade Day. The idea is to promote business skills and financial learning among kids through the classic summertime activity: hosting a lemonade stand.

Our tweens were thrilled with an excuse to break out the juicer before Memorial Day, and the weather in D.C. was definitely summer-like - I think it hit 80+ degrees today. We decided to do the lemonade stand, but this time, the kids took charge: they had to figure out how much to charge, how much to make, the amount of groceries to buy, make the posters - everything - by themselves (mom had to supervise only).

So, they got out their pencils and calculators and figured out their initial investment for lemons, sugar, and paper cups. From there, they determined their price and made their store "signage"/marketing materials:

Then they got down to squeezing and mixing (Note: a key ingredient missing from posted lemonade recipes: elbow grease):

THEN, finally, they got to set up their lemonade stand:


Phew! That was a lot of hard work!
But they had a great time and learned A LOT: they learned about the cost of goods sold (packaging - i.e. cups - counts as a real cost), inventory management (when they ran out of cups midway and had to make a run to the corner market), customer service (good service yields tips), pricing (bundling brownies with lemonade results in more of both items sold), etc.

They're still figuring out how much was profit (due to an error in counting the starting change), but they did make a profit - no small feat in this lingering recession. Donald Trump, watch out - our tweens got a taste of business and want to franchise!
(Now if you'll excuse me, mom has to go remove the gazillion lemon seeds spackled to the kitchen counter.)

Did your family host a lemonade stand this weekend? Please share your stories - we'd love to hear how your tweens enjoyed the process!

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