Cool Christmas Morning PJs for Tweens

Tweens have almost outgrown the tradition of Christmas morning PJs - but not yet. Treat her to a comfy, fun and hip pair of PJs by beePosh. We love the Becky print - talk about visions of sugarplums!

Now if we could just find the perfect pair of bunny slippers . . .

PJs are $35 at beePosh.com

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Best Places to Be a Kid on Christmas

Did you see this? The University of Toronto has compiled a list of the top cities in the U.S. to be a kid on Christmas morning. The listing is based on four criteria:

1. the number of children under age 14
2. toy and game stores per capita
3. candy stores per capita
4. the probability of having snow on Christmas Day

Our tweens agree that these are great criteria. Did your town make the list?

Top 20 Best Places to be a Kid on Christmas
1. Logan, Utah
2. Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
3. Fairbanks, Alaska
4. Billings, Montana
5. Ogden-Clearfield, Utah
6. Niles-Benton Harbor, Michigan
7. St. George, Utah
8. Pocatello, Idaho
9. Denver, Aurora-Broomfield, Colorado
10. Anchorage, Alaska
11. Colorado Springs, Colorado
12. Rapid City, South Dakota
13. Salt Lake City, Utah
14. Appleton, Wisconsin
15. Flagstaff, Arizona
16. Reno-Sparks, Nevada
17. Provo-Orem, Utah
18. Bend, Oregon
19. Joplin, Montana
20. Spokane, Washington

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Protecting Tweens on Facebook: Prevent Photo Tagging

While school is out for the holidays, tweens will spend a lot of time online catching up and staying in touch with their crowd via Facebook. Here's a new Facebook change that's coming out soon and how to keep your tween's privacy protected online - the new feature has to do with photos and tagging other Facebook users via photos.

Facebook's newest feature will use existing facial recognition software to scan uploaded photos and suggest other Facebook users to tag. This means that even if your tween doesn't upload photos or if your family has a policy against Friends tagging her in photos (as our family does), she can still be tagged by others in photos and found by those tags. The new feature will likely result in a lot more tags than before because it will be automated - before, tags had to be assigned person-by-person, photo-by-photo.

Here's how to prevent automatic tagging:

• Go to "Privacy Settings" under "Account" (the upper right corner of the page)
• Click on "Customize Settings"
• Un-select "Suggest photos of me to friends" (this won't stop a Friend from tagging you on purpose, but it can prevent a rash of automatic tags)

To "un-tag" a photo that your tween has been tagged in, just click on the name in the photo tag.

Finally, to prevent others from seeing that your tween has been tagged in a photo:

• Go to "Privacy Settings" under "Account" (the upper right corner of the page)
  
• Click on "Customize Settings"
• Click on "Things others share"
• Select "Edit settings" next to "Photos and videos I'm tagged in"
• Select "Customize" on the drop-down menu
• On the "Custom Privacy" screen under the "These people" drop-down menu, you can select "Only me" or add individual Friends

Check out our report on tweens and online safety here. Stay safe!

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

A Twist on Candy Rings - Perfect Stocking Stuffer for Tweens

From one of our favorite confectioners, PapaBubble in NYC, gorgeous candy rings for her stocking.

Too late for Christmas? Our tweens will be sporting theirs on New Years' Eve.

$20/each from PapaBubble

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Smart Cookies: Young Tweens' Study of Bees Published in Scientific Journal!

This is so cool!

From Wired Magazine:  "A group of British schoolchildren may be the youngest scientists ever to have their work published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a new paper in Biology Letters, 25 8- to 10-year-old children from Blackawton Primary School report that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn to recognize nourishing flowers based on colors and patterns.

'We discovered that bumblebees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from,” the students wrote in the paper’s abstract. “We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before.'"

The study took two months to complete and was a collaboration between a neuroscientist at University College London, Beau Lotto, and Blackawton Primary School teacher Dave Strudwick (Professor Lotto's son, Misha, is a student at Blackawton).

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Great Books for Tweens this Holiday Season

Here are some great books to put under the tree for your tweens this Christmas:

• The "Hunger Games" series by Suzanne Collins features tough-as-nails tween heroine Katniss Everdeen (the trilogy is rumored to be made into a movie soon) 
• "Monster High", a brand new series by "The Clique" and "The Alphas" author Lisi Harrison that sets the trials and tribulations of high school social dynamics in a school populated by famous monster offspring (think daughter of Frankenstein)
• "Boys, Girls and Other Hazardous Materials" by Rosalind Wiseman (whose book "Queenbees and Wannabes" was turned into the movie Mean Girls) is her first young adult (YA) novel and knocks it out of the park
• "The Lost Hero" by blockbuster author Rick Riordan (the next book in the Percy Jackson series) - 'nough said
• "Do Something: A Handbook for Young Activists" by Nancy Lublin, Chief Old Person at Do Something.org - a guide to helping kids change the world

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Stocking Stuffer Ideas for Music-Loving Tweens - Selena Gomez, Silly Bandz, and Justin Bieber

As we count the days to Christmas, the parents in the Ms.Twixt household are stalking the stores for the coolest stocking stuffers for our tweens. Here's one idea that we had to share for the Selena Gomez fan in your life: Selena Gomez Silly Bands. They're just $4 on the star's official website.

Or, there's the Justin Bieber Silly Bandz and his line of nail polishes from OPI that just came out that we blogged about earlier.

The biggest hit in our tween's Christmas stockings last year? Easy, that was the candy-themed earphones and along with iTunes gift cards.

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Tweens and Ugly Dolls - Cool Holiday Gift Ideas

Ugly Dolls are, with the possible exception of BeePosh critters, one of the only plush that are still cool with tweens. We stumbled upon this great "Tween Talk" gift set from Ugly Dolls (this one is pink, so perfect for the girly-girl tween in your life): a 2011 calendar, a pink Flatwoodsey doll, and a REALLY cute knit skull cap all in a sweet tote bag. $65 from Ugly Dolls.

Or for a great stocking stuffer, check out the IceBat figurines from Ugly Dolls for $8. Like the popular MiniSweets from Japan, these critters come in a blind box (so you don't know which figure you'll get) and are collectible. We like the glow in the dark ones.

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Tweens and Texting: Key Findings from the FCC Forum with Glee's Jane Lynch Today

Today we had the opportunity to attend the FCC's forum, "Generation Mobile", on tweens and texting at McKinley Tech High School in Washington, DC. This event was headline by Glee star Jane Lynch who is also the spokesperson for LG's new Text Ed campaign to educate parents and kids about texting responsibly. We tweeted extensively during the day - you can view our entire transcript on our Twitter page here (look for our tweets with the #genmobile hashtag).

We met some old friends (Rosalind Wiseman) and some new ones (SafetyWeb's Michael Clark (they offer a kind of reputation monitor for kids) and Marsali Hancock from the Internet Keep Safe Coalition (an international non-profit)).

Some tidbits from the forum on tweens and texting:

• "The future of security online has to start with the individual. Safety means reputation, privacy, and identity." - Michael Clark of SafetyWeb
• Teaching "digital literacy" is shared responsibility among parents, schools and kids (they have things to teach us too!) - Dane Snowden of CTIA-The Wireless Association
• "It's important for parents to teach kids that no digital communication is private - it is all public because regardless of your own privacy settings, others can save and forward anything online." - Marsali Hancock of the Internet Keep Safe Coalition
• "When you delete something on Facebook, it is deleted from your profile (but photo tags are NOT), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful with what you post." - Tim Sparapani of Facebook
• 42% of parents opt not to use parental controls on mobile phones - is it because they don't want to or don't know how?
• "Make sure you know what apps are on your kid's phones - that way you know what information is being shared." - Michael Clark of SafetyWeb

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt

Fun Holiday For Tweens - National Cocoa Day!

We just learned about National Cocoa Day, and given the blanket of snow on the ground here (it rarely snows before Christmas in Washington), we couldn't help but celebrate with our tweens.

We think that the best cocoa in D.C. is at Kafe Leopolds here in Georgetown (conveniently across the courtyard from our old store location). It's not too rich and topped with a suitably large dollop of whipped cream.

Do you have a recipe for the best cocoa? Do you top it with marshmallows or whipped cream?

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here. Please also follow our updates or Re-Tweet our posts on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MsTwixt and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MsTwixt