Books for children

This clever picture book shows younger readers the charming friendship between Cyril, a squirrel and Pat, who isn’t. Their friendship is powerful and shows children that it’s worth sticking up for those you care about. With vivid illustrations of life, leaves and flowers, an unexpected world is brought to life, and it’s the one that younger readers will delight in exploring every time they visit a park.

Following a series of forest animal friends through their everyday lives, these stories examine why we do the things we do and how we feel about our actions. The brevity, clarity and high quality of these short stories also make them useful texts to study in literacy lessons, particularly in terms of viewpoint and writing styles.

Panther feels out of place and takes an adventure in the jungle to overcome challenges, conquer his insecurities and find out where he belongs. The Midnight Panther is an outstandingly illustrated and magical fable picture book. The atmospheric storytelling makes this book a joy to read aloud to a class and the breathtaking imagination lends itself to inspiring children’s creative writing.

Fiona is the fruit bat who is afraid of the dark, afraid of the unknown and afraid to try flight. But calming and confidence-building words from her mother show her way. A good book to help children deal with new and unfamiliar situations. Reading this will not only teach them about overcoming fear, but also the science behind echolocation and lives of fruit bats.

My son Joshua was nine and we were living a hard life. Before Christmas I still hadn’t managed to buy him the gifts.

One snowy day, while walking downtown, I saw a large poster of a fat Santa with a bag of toys before a fireplace, welcoming children to visit Santa at the department store before Christmas.

An idea hit me. Rather than seeking financial support and donations at the church, I’d make Christmas for Joshua using my imagination. Santa was coming to town, but what about Mrs. Claus? I headed toward the manager’s office of the store and applied for a job as Mrs. Claus to accompany Mr. Claus. The manager thought about the idea and hired me on the spot. The next morning, I carefully packed my homemade costume. After ducking into a changing room, I emerged dressed as Mrs. Claus. Taking a deep breath I stepped into the manager’s office. “Good morning, I’m Mrs. Claus.” “Good morning, Stella.” Though taken by surprise, she didn’t show it.

I loved the job. As the month wore on, my best friend Liz brought Joshua and her daughter Katie downtown to visit Santa on the last Saturday before Christmas. The two kids were excited about seeing Santa and getting a treat. Later I saw Joshua pass his wish list to Santa, while he pointed to Mrs. Claus who was talking with the waiting children. Then old Santa tucked it in his pocket.

At the end of the last day, and after an endless line-up of children, the store manager gave me a substantial paycheque including a generous bonus. I was overjoyed. Now I could make Christmas for Joshua without having to resort to donations.

Late on Christmas Eve, there was a knock on my apartment door. As I stood speechless at the door, Santa dropped a bag of presents on the floor and disappeared into the darkness. When I opened the bag, I found four beautifully wrapped presents ready to place under the tree. Tears welled in my eyes as I read the tags: Things for Stella, Love Santa.

Remember Malcolm Gladwell’s famous “10,000-hour rule” from his bestselling book Outliers? It proposes that achieving mastery in any field requires roughly 10,000 hours of practice, emphasizing the importance of early professionalization and intensive practice for becoming an elite in a particular field.

This approach, known as “deliberate practice”, encourages setting goals from a young age, investing time and specializing in a specific field. On paper, it sounds like a good path to success, but when we look at the lives of elite athletes, musicians and scholars, we find a different story. In reality, many individuals who have risen to the top of their respective fields took a more diverse and winding route. They often explored a wide range of activities, gained a broad skill set, and only specialized at a later stage in life. In other words, the idea that one must know one’s specialization from a young age is fundamentally wrong.

Studies have shown that an approach called the “sampling period” is often more effective for achieving success. During this phase, individuals try various activities, gain diverse skills, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and only choose a field to specialize in once they have a clearer understanding of their passions and abilities.

Elite athletes, for example, rarely specialize in a single sport at a very young age. Instead, they engage in a variety of sports during their formative years, which allows them to acquire broad physical skills and discover their interests and talents. These early diversification experiences provide valuable lessons that can be applied to their chosen sports.

Consider the journey of Roger Federer, one of the greatest tennis players of all time. At the age of 6, he dabbled in rugby, skiing and wrestling, only returning to tennis later. The trial period benefited him not just because he found his true passion but also because his experiences in various sports enriched his tennis game with a unique set of skills.

Writing out the same word again and again may bring back bad memories for some, but handwriting can boost connectivity across brain regions, some of which are involved in learning and memory, a new study shows.

In the study, psychologists Audrey and Ruud, both at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, stuck electrodes (电极) on the participants’ heads. They asked the participants to type out or hand write with a digital pen words that appeared on a computer screen. Sensors in a cap recorded electrical brain activity. Then the psychologists looked for when two brain areas are active with the same frequency of electrical waves at the same time. This result can reveal the connectivity among different regions across the brain.

With handwriting, the researchers saw increased activity, specifically in low frequency bands, not only in the expected motor areas but also in others associated with learning. These low frequency bands have previously been shown to support memory processes. When the team compared the two tasks, they realized that handwriting —but not typing —increased the connectivity across parietal (顶叶) brain regions, which are involved in sensory and motor processing, and central regions, many of which are involved in memory.

“Even when the movements are very similar, the activation seems much, much higher in handwriting,” Audrey says. “It shows that there’s more involvement of these brain regions when you’re handwriting, which might give you some specific advantages.”

These findings suggest that there are distinct processes of brain activation happening while a person types or writes. This boost of stimulation of handwriting facilitates learning because these particular waves between these areas are involved in memory formation and encoding (编码) .

And although handwriting may help with learning processes, typing is often easier, faster and more practical. “Students and teachers alike should therefore consider the task at hand to decide to hand write or type,” Audrey says. Despite the need for more studies to determine the best learning strategy, experts say that handwriting shouldn’t be left behind in the digital age. “Schools need to bring in more writing into curriculum design,” Ruud says.

Helping Your Kids to Be Interested in Sports

Being active and moving is something that is so important for us all, especially for children.     1     However, some parents can feel shocked when they see that their child isn’t interested in sports. So how can you encourage them to have ago?

It is such a good idea to lead by example when you are a parent. This is true for a variety of aspects, but especially forgetting children involved in sport.     2     So you need to be someone who is interested and active, if you want any hope of them doing so too. If you lay on the couch all day then they will just learn to do that too.

    3     Although they can choose who they want to support, seeing your enthusiasm for a particular player or team can be just what is needed to start their journey. You could look for a team uniform store to get them a sports shirt with their name on for example, as well as see the team play at one of their games.     4    

If something is dull, it will be hard for children to be enthusiastic about it. This will make them resent(讨厌) it, which is not a good thing for later in life. If they show particular skill and learn to play sport, then more practice and training can come in.     5     When they can enjoy what they do, they will only see it as something fun to do, rather than what we as adults might see it as, such as a chore to burn calories.

Whatever sport your child chooses to play, encourage them and make it fun, and then it will be something that they will want to carry on doing as they go about the rest of their lives.