Make a Thanksgiving Care Package With Your Tween

We are big fans of Daily Candy, and today they posted a terrific video about to make a Thanksgiving care package to send to a homeless shelter near you. What we particularly love about this project is that it involves your kid.
'Hope your Thanksgiving is full of laughter and love.



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Tween Reads Book Festival - October 19th!

Our tweens LOVE seeing their favorite authors, and we've covered our fair share of book talks and book signings here in D.C. (In fact, this past Friday night found our tween at Wilson High School listening to an amazing talk by Rick Riordan - and she came back with a Camp Jupiter tee to boot! But I digress . . .)
If you are lucky enough to find yourself in Houston, Texas this Saturday, October 19th, check out the Tweens Read Book Festival. The line-up of authors looks incredible and includes Shannon Hale, D.J. Machale, Lisa Greenwald, Lisi Harrison, Jude Watson, and T.A. Barron!

Last year's festival drew 750 kids; this year it's being held at South Houston High School.
 If you go, please send us your post, and we'll share it with all of our followers!
Happy reading!

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Update from the Discovery Girls Tween Summit

Check out this terrific interview of two tween sisters from Kansas City as they talk about their experience at the Discovery Girls Tween Summit:



The sisters talk bullying, technology, and giving tweens a voice.

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Tween's Review of Disney "Teen Beach Movie"

Did you know that you can watch the new Disney "Teen Beach Movie" before it premieres on Disney Channel tomorrow night? The WATCH Disney Channel app allows you to watch exclusive content in advance. Our tween downloaded the app (with mom's permission) onto her iTouch. It prompted us to login our Xfinity credentials, and then she was off and running! 

She watches all of her favorite Disney Channel shows like Austin & Ally, A.N.T. Farm, Jessie, and Good Luck Charlie  This week she saw the promo to watch the new "Teen Beach Movie" BEFORE the premiere on Friday, July 19th - she jumped on the link! 

Here is her review:

I think that "Teen Beach Movie" was a movie that I'll watch over and over again because it was so fun to listen and dance to the 1962 musical numbers. I also loved the amazing choreography and synchronization. Teen Beach Movie is mainly about being young and enjoying life and not to be to anxious to grow up. The one thing I didn't like was that Lescamanbear and the mad scientist were defeated so easily. 

New Video Game Trains Girl Superheroes

This bit caught our eye: PBS has developed a new video game in which tween and teen girls build avatars and get trained as superheroes. The game is called "Wonder City" and is a follow-up to the film, "Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroine".
Instead of dressing up, getting a makeover, or climbing the social ladder, girls earn points for leadership skills, improving the reputation of women in the media, and the like. Three cheers for that!

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Emma Watson Warns That Social Media Is Shortening Childhood

The actress who earned fame as a tween stars in a new film in which social media looms large. While at Cannes promoting her new film, The Bling Ring by Sofia Coppola, Ms. Watson said, " I think it’s amazing how self-aware people are becoming as a result of constantly posting images on Facebook and Instagram. They’re blissfully unaware their childhoods are being shortened. That period of time when you’re not self-conscious is sped up."

During an interview,  she added, "I think technology is playing a really big part in a sense that everything has started moving so much quicker. We are becoming saturated with images. They can embody whatever they [fans] project onto that image. It’s very different; it has very little to do with reality."

Ms. Coppola added, "The idea of no privacy has become the norm."

Managing social media for tweens has been a challenge of modern parenting. Our tips for managing the digital footprint of your tween and creating a family technology policy can be found here - please add your tips! 

Original article at the U.K. Daily Mail here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325875/Emma-Watson-blames-social-media-shortening-childhood.html

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A Family Technology Policy For You and Your Tween

In 2011, we sat down to discuss the topic of digital literacy and tween girls. Our interview was selected by the Alliance for Women in Media for their "Special Report on Digital Literacy for Women and Girls".

The full article and more tips on how to craft a technology policy for your family is available below:
Kids should be taught to go online in stages appropriate to their age, and parents need to monitor their children’s activity online. Here are some tips for parents:

• Create a family technology policy. Articulate clearly what your expectations are with respect to how mobile phones, television viewing, Internet browsing, YouTube watching, texting, etc., are acceptable for your family. You should share and discuss this policy with your kids so that they are clear on the behavior expectations and the reasons why. The ethics you enforce in real life absolutely extend to your kids' digital lives.
• Trust but verify: There are settings on every major browser that enable “safe search” — which is essentially search result listings of questionable sites or sites with adult content being blocked from display. Clearly this is a form of censorship, and it’s not too different from the settings on one’s cable box that block out channels based on a parent’s preference. Parents should check the browsing history on all computers in the home regularly. Not only is this a list of where your kids have gone online, but it provides insight into the kind of information they are looking for and what they really use the Internet for (so you can tell if “online research” includes Facebook or not). Parents should “Google” their kid’s names a few times a year to keep tabs on what information strangers can find about your child. With mobile phones, most major carriers offer text plans that not only help you to budget text usage but also monitor the texts. Some carriers charge a fee while others do not — it varies a great deal. You can also look for a plan option that backs-up the information on a phone (very helpful for the address book feature) and monitor photos taken with the phone. Just like with their Facebook account (see below), we require the passwords to their phones.
• One rule in our household is that all browsing MUST happen at the dining table or living room; computers are not allowed in bedrooms. Publicly viewed screens have a “fresh air” effect on browsing.
• If your kids are under the age of 13 and want to join Facebook, consider setting up a Facebook account for the entire family instead of each member of the family. Check your privacy settings frequently on Facebook (the default settings change often). For our kids over the age 13 with their own Facebook accounts, we don't require that they "Friend" us as parents - rather, we require their Facebook passwords (yes, this is a quid pro quo for having their own account).
• Another household rule with mobile phones that you might find helpful: store all phones in a central place (i.e., NOT in the child’s room). Not only does it help to mitigate the morning scramble and ensure sleep, but it prevents the late-night, unmonitored text sessions. 
• An ostrich strategy won’t work when it comes to technology. If you don’t know how to text, learn; if you don’t know what Facebook or Twitter are, spend some time poking around on those sites; and if you don’t know what you don’t know, ask other parents what they’re monitoring online. Apps on both mobile phones and Facebook change all the time (witness Ask is the new Formspring, and SnapChat is the new Chat Roulette) - knowing what apps your tween has downloaded and opted to plug-in-to, is critical. 
• Some of the best ways to parent include modeling the behaviors we want to see in our children. While we often think of that in the context of manners, speech, and ethics, the same applies to online behaviors.Focus on the positives of technology and what it offers to your kids; girls especially need to be comfortable with technology in today’s world. 
• Tips for teaching kids to go online safely: Kids need to know that just because they read something online, it is not necessarily true. They should learn which sites are trusted for research information and to check the footnotes, bibliography and sources for any online research. Kids should keep a running list of online bookmarks for any research project. Sites such as Delicious make this easy to both save and organize, and it’s incredibly helpful to have a list of their sources available with a single click. Avoid using both their first and last name together for any login, username, or screename. NEVER enter their address online – this should ONLY be done by a parent.
• Sit down together in front of the computer to research something. This summer we were looking for a new tank filter for our turtle, and this exercise was really helpful for our girls to see how we searched for information, the kinds of terms and phrases we used, and which sites we chose to visit and which ones we chose not to and why. The parent should narrate what they’re doing and thinking at each step in the process. We do exactly this kind of task-based testing in the development world when developing applications, and it is extremely valuable. This same exercise can also be done when going onto the family Facebook account and reading through Wall posts, viewing photos, finding friends, etc. 
• Kids should understand that information posted online has a very long “half-life.” This means not only that anyone can find that goofy photo they took with their friends junior year, but that photo will come up when someone searches for them 5 or 10 years from now — and folks they care about (such as college admission officers, job interviewers, scholarship committees, coaches) will most assuredly search for them online. This is a tough reality to confront as it means that all of the trials and tribulations of growing up and the mistakes that come with it are on public display. We can’t stuff that genie back in the bottle, but being cognizant of it is vital.
• Be picky. Kids should be very selective in which sites they chose to use for research and which communities they choose to join. Discuss with them the merits of one social network over another, why one source for research is better than another, etc. With such vastness of information, it's important to learn to filter it well. They should be selective with their time and what information they share online — VERY selective.
  
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2013 Kids' Choice Award Winners!

Here's who won at last night's 26th Annual Kids’ Choice Awards on Nickelodeon:

Favorite TV Show:
“Victorious”

Favorite Reality Show:
“Wipeout”

Favorite Cartoon:
“SpongeBob SquarePants”

Favorite TV Actor:
Ross Lynch (“Austin & Ally”)

Favorite TV Actress:
Selena Gomez (“Wizards of Waverly Place”)

Favorite Movie:
“The Hunger Games”

Favorite Movie Actor:
Johnny Depp (“Dark Shadows”)

Favorite Movie Actress:
Kristen Stewart (“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2″)

Favorite Animated Movie:
“Wreck-It Ralph”

Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie:
Adam Sandler (“Hotel Transylvania”)

Favorite Male Buttkicker:
Dwayne Johnson (“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”)

Favorite Female Buttkicker:
Kristen Stewart (“Snow White and the Huntsman”)

Favorite Music Group:
One Direction

Favorite Male Singer:
Justin Bieber

Favorite Female Singer:
Katy Perry

Favorite Song:
“What Makes You Beautiful” (One Direction)

Favorite Male Athlete:
LeBron James

Favorite Female Athlete:
Danica Patrick

Favorite Villain:
Simon Cowell (“The X Factor”)

Favorite Book:
“The Hunger Games” series

Favorite Videogame:
Just Dance 4

Favorite App:
Temple Run

How Fashion Designers Would Dress the First Tweens for the Inauguration

WWD invited fourteen designers to sketch a gown for the First Lady to wear to the Inaugration, and most designers included designs for First Tweens Malia and Sasha Obama. Check out the stylish sketches here.

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