Back to School Resolution #2

Part two of series, Top Ten Back to School Resolutions for tweens and their parents:

Back to School Resolution #2: Be organized.

Tweens are just learning how to manage their own school work, and some are better at organizing themselves and their materials than others. Entice your student to be organized by appealing to the universal tween girl obsession: color-coding. School supplies are thankfully available in more colors and options than when I was a tween, and your local office supply depot is bursting at the seams with folders, pens, notebooks, index cards, highlights and stickers in a rainbow of colors. She can assign a color to each subject or day of the week and use pens, index cards, notebooks, highlighters and labels to organize her notes and materials. She can even use colored wrapping paper or stretch book covers to color-code her text books. Color coding can work for any gender, but if color isn’t their thing, try assigning a sport (e.g. basketball-themed materials for math, football for English, hockey for science) or an animal (e.g. dogs for math, cats for English, birds for science) to their materials – you can print stickers or labels with these motifs to apply to binders, folders and the like to reinforce their system. Giving your tween control over her system is what will make the system work.

As parents of tweens we want to set our sons and daughters up for success. Setting up a regular space to do homework is key. For some families, this means a desk in a child’s room, and in others’ it means the kitchen table. I’m a fan of the kitchen table as it allows me to monitor the chatter that accompanies the schoolwork. It can be helpful to keep a box of school supplies on hand (erasers, pencils, a ruler, and a calculator) next to the homework space to minimize trips to and from their backpacks.

A tip that helps both you and your tween to be organized is to have them empty their book bag every night. That way, you get any school notices/permission slips sent home, and they don’t develop scoliosis by lugging everything for every subject on their back.

I’d love to hear your Back to School tips for tweens – send me a tweet at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt.


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School Year's Eve: Resolution #1

School Year’s Eve is almost bigger in our house that New Year’s Eve - with four kids, three of them tween girls, school rules the family calendar. In Washington, Fall weather is still a few weeks away, but September evokes all things new: new classes, new teachers, new friends, new uniforms, and new opportunities. While the adult work world doesn’t follow the school year cadence (I’m still yearning for summers off), the chance to start the season afresh has universal appeal. As a result, one of our family traditions is making Back to School Resolutions.

As culled from years of working with tweens and their parents, what follows is a Top Ten Back to School Resolutions list for both tweens and parents – one resolution a day for the next ten days. I’d love to hear your back to school resolution suggestions as well – please send me tweet at: www.twitter.com/MsTwixt or post a comment below.

Back to School Resolution #1: Don’t procrastinate.

This one tops the list by far for both students and adults. For tweens, many of whom are just entering middle school, managing their school work load independently is struggle. I most often hear variations on this resolution such as “Don’t wait until the night before to study for a test” or “Start projects early; don’t leave them for the last minute.” It’s a learning process to figure out how to organize their work and their time, and schools are just beginning to give them greater responsibility in doing so. Any adult knows that one of the keys to success in life is time management, so the sooner one masters this skill, the better. Talk with your tween about their long-term assignments and pose some thought-starter questions such as: When is it due? Will you have time in class to work on it? Is it a group project? (And if so, you can point out that scheduling meetings/work sessions will impact the project work schedule given kids’ after school activities.) Have you thought about how to break down this big assignment into smaller pieces of work? The tendency for many tweens is to become overwhelmed by a large project because it’s a change from the smaller, discrete assignments from elementary school. You can help by talking it through with them and coaching them on how to make it more manageable. Teachers are well aware of this challenge and many offer afterschool or before school “office hours” to help students learn to plan their work.

For the parents in our house, procrastination begins the minute those long lists of “Important School Dates” arrive in the mail. The task of copying down each date into our Blackberries or journal for each different school can take the better part of an afternoon. Inevitably there is a mad scramble the day of a forgotten event to find a sitter/buy the class snack/change our work schedule to attend an assembly. This year I’m trying something new: copying down one month at a time. It’s still four lists’ worth of dates, but at least I can get this done within an hour instead of an afternoon. If you are the type that likes online tools or to receive reminders via email, you may want to check out a free online service that recently launched called Cozi. It’s a website designed to help parents manage the family calendar and allows for email reminders, separate calendar views by kid, and even can send you text messages of your grocery list (no more forgetting to buy toothpaste – again).

Next post: Back to School Resolution #2 – Be organized.

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Selena Gomez Does Good in Ghana

The Disney star of Wizards of Waverly Place was just appointed as the YOUNGEST Ambassador for UNICEF and is on her way to Ghana right now on her first official field mission. Ms. Gomez served as last year's Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF spokesperson and did such a great job that she was asked to follow in the late, great Audrey Hepburn's footsteps. What a wonderful role model for other girls looking to make a difference!

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Demi Lovato Stomps Out Bullying

The star of Camp Rock and Sonny With a Chance has created a public service announcement in support of the National Bullying Prevention week (Oct. 4 to 10th) saying that the best way to prevent bullying is to stop if from starting in the first place. In Ms. Lovato's video she urges kids to go to www.StompOutBullying.org to get tips on how to stand up to bully.

DID YOU KNOW?:
* 1 out of 4 kids is bullied
* 42% of kids are bullied online (cyberbullying)
* Bullying and cyberbullying is at an all-time high right now

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Supergirl Jam This Weekend: Checkout These Amazing Girl Athletes!

Surfing, snowboarding and inline skating are not widely practiced sports in Washington, but in California, these reign supreme amongst boys AND girls. This weekend, the WB is showing the third annual Supergirl Jam on September 6th. Here's what the WB blog said about the competition: "You know the saying, 'Anything a boy can do, a girl can do better…and with way more style?'" - we couldn't have said it better ourselves. Supergirl has attracted girls from all kinds of action sports for the past three years, and this year the purse is the largest ever. Definitely worth checking out.

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You're Never Too Old to Play Games With Your Dad

How cute is Sasha Obama sneaking up on her father, the leader of the free world, in his office?

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Indi's Blog: My Review of the Wizards of Waverly Place Movie

Did you know that the Wizards movie was the year’s most-watched telecast on cable television? According to Variety, Disney Channel’s original movie pulled in about 11.4 million viewers!

We regularly review movies on this blog. The following post is the debut of Indi's Blog and is a movie review by a ten year old tween girl:

The Wizards of Waverly Place Movie was nothing like I expected although it was good. One of my favorite parts was when Alex and Justin battled to be full wizards. I thought the idea of only getting to use spells involving earth, air, fire and water was great. I was confused when they were using a family wizard wand because they had never used it in any episode before. I thought Alex Russo was a strong character after having her parents forget her and losing a brother. I was amazed how focused she was and how much she put into making it better after all that. Overall, I thought the Wizards of Waverly Place Movie was terrific.

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Raising Confident Girls - The Curse of the Good Girl

A new book by Rachel Simmons came out last week - The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls With Courage And Confidence. Ms Twixt is still working her way through this book, but the premise is that there are some discrete things parents can do to raise girls with strong self-esteem. Ms. Simmons gave an interview on the Today Show this morning listing 5 tips for parents - check it out here

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New Tween Line of Yoga Wear From Lululemon

One of our favorite companies, LuluLemon, is launching a new line of yoga and athletic wear for tween girls. Finally! MsTwixt remembers contacting the company in 2007 asking if they made such sizes. The line will be called "ivivva" and is right now available only in Canada - stay tuned here for when the line will be available Stateside!

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Go Bowling - It's National Bowling Week!

August 29 to September 5th is National Bowling Week and a great time to fit in one more family outing before summer ends. There's even a coupon for a free game at www.gobowling.com - GoBowling wants to set a new world record for most games bowled in a day on September 5, 2009. MsTwixt and family went bowling this past weekend at the Naval Center here in Bethesda, MD - if you go, say Hi to Jake the fish!

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