New School Year Resolutions: 5 Smart Ways to Start the School Year

September is the time to make New Year’s resolutions, new year of school resolutions that is. You’re starting with a clean slate, literally, so jump on the chance to start the semester off right with our 5 tips to a more productive year.

1. Routine Rules – Kids thrive on routine--- knowing when to get up, what time to do homework, when dinner is-- helps them build a schedule that gets them through their day with ease. Be sure to include reading with your children (including looking at pictures and talking about them) as part of your routine. Children learn more vocabulary and do better in school when their parents read with them regularly (US Department of Education).
2. Resolve to Learn a Foreign Language – It’s never too early to start teaching children a second language. Not only is it easier for babies and preschoolers to master accents and absorb foreign languages, but later in life, multilingual adults “are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas” (Time Magazine).
3. Choose to win – With as many activities as there are Legos in a bin, the choice of how to spend after-school time can become overwhelming – when you’re stuck, childhood experts say choose quality over quantity: Limit young children to one or two after school classes a week, and choose what will make the most impact down the line and give your child the best start in life, such as a language they’ll be able to use for the rest of their lives.
4. Get More Zzzzzs – The National Sleep Foundation recommends a minimum of 10 hours of sleep every night for grade schoolers, 11 hours for preschoolers, and 12 hours for 1 to 3 year olds. Plus, studies show that children who have consistent bed times scored better on cognitive tests throughout grade school. The old adage about “early to bed” making you “wise” really was right!
5. Accentuate the positive – When you talk about school, make sure to make it sound like a treat --- a special place where kids get to make new friends, have fun new experiences, and learn amazing new things – and they’ll think of it that way, too!

Dance Party: Little Pim + Baby Loves Disco

Attention New York families! If lazy Sundays aren't your thing, come down to (le) poisson rouge in Greenwich Village this Sunday (9/15) from noon to 3pm! Little Pim will be joining Baby Loves Disco at for an all-out, baby-centric dance party. With classic tunes from the 70s and 80s that mom and dad may remember, plus a chill-out room full of books, puzzles, and other surprises, this will definitely be a party the whole family can enjoy. For more information about ticketing and the location, click here. We'll be waiting for you in the chill-out room.

Panda News: It’s a Girl!

We’re very fond of pandas here at Little Pim and always keep an eye out for news about our favorite bear. So it was especially exciting to hear about the new panda cub born at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, in August. And now, after a two week wait, we’ve just found out is a bouncing baby girl. Congrats to new parents Mei Xiang and Tian Tian! (In case you were wondering, their names mean “beautiful fragrance” and “more and more.”)

As far as the name of the baby panda, we’ll have to wait for now; the National Zoo folks haven’t found the perfect moniker quite yet.

Read more about the National Zoo’s baby girl panda, here: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/default.cfm#update

Little Pim at the Babies R Us Learning Center - Saturday 9/7

It's Grand Opening weekend at the Babies R Us Learning Center, and Little Pim will be there with bells on! Swing by the Union Square Babies R Us sometime tomorrow, Saturday, September 7, between noon and 3:00pm to visit the Little Pim table and discover some other amazing educational toys for your little ones.

Don't forget to say hi – you could win a French Deluxe Gift Set!

Little Pim Coming To Toys"R"Us

Little Pim is proud to announce that we will be featured in the new education expansion at Toys"R"Us stores nationwide and online at Toysrus.com. For more information read here: Toys"R"Us® Expands Year-Round Education Product Selection, Debuts All-New Imaginarium® Learning Line

Brazilian Fun and My Boys' Lemonade Stand MBA

Emmett (8 yrs old): Mom, I want to go to Brazil for the World Cup next year.

Me: Well, that's not going to happen. But here's an idea... why don't we save up for a bigger screen TV so we can watch it here and invite all your friends over?

Emmett: Great idea!

Me: Let's also give part of the money to charity. We can send it to kids in Brazil via Save the Children.

Emmett: Awesome! When do we start?

Thus began my kids' first lesson in entrepreneurship. Emmett and his little brother Adrian (5 1/2) ran their first lemonade stand outside our apartment for two weekends. And it also became a valuable lesson in geography, focusing on Brazil (the largest country in South American and the only one there that speaks Portuguese), and on charity, researching and donating to Save the Children.

We set a goal of earning $100 --- they squeezed over 50 lemons and it took three lemonade stand outings to get there. We sold chocolate chip cookies, too, because when Emmett did the math, he realized he'd have to sell 100 cups of lemonade (or limonada as it’s called in Portuguese) at $1 to hit $100, but if only 40 of the customers bought cookies at the same time, we'd get to our goal twice as fast.

5 Business Take-Aways from the Lemonade Stand

1. Starting with Why. Engage potential customers with your mission statement. People were more likely to buy when told that part of the proceeds were going to help kids in Brazil via Save the Children. Emmett and Adrian compared notes on their favorite Brazilian soccer players with their customers.
2. The Human Factor. To run a business, you need to beef up your management skills. On the second day of the lemonade stand, Emmett's little brother Adrian got upset because he was fired from his “loudspeaker” position (Emmett said Adrian’s constant "Lemonade! lemonade! lemonade!" was irritating). Adrian pouted and refused to participate for the rest of the day, so Emmett was down half his operation.
3. Opportunity Cost. Save money if you can, but not at any cost. The boys created an estimated budget (cookie dough was estimated at a whopping $10!). But the day before the first lemonade stand, Emmett chose not to buy cups for $3 at Lot Less because he wanted to keep looking for cheaper. He was pleased with his thrifty decision until he was running out of time. In order to open on schedule, he had to buy cups from Gristedes for $5.
4. Re-Branding. Know how to reel in your customers. After three days of gathering customer feedback, Emmett added farm-to-table flare to his "Lemonade" sign, changing it to "Fresh Squeezed Lemonade and Homemade Cookies." His successful rebrand doubled the number of people who stopped by.
5. Delivering Happiness. When you say, "Thank you for coming over" to your customers before they even buy anything, they are apt to buy more. And sometimes they give you $5 for a $1 cup of lemonade and say "keep the change!" Now THAT is sweet.

I don’t know if my boys will become entrepreneurs like their mom, but learning how to start a project, see it through, tweak it along the way for success, and the power of please and thank you (por favor and obrigado) are great lessons for kids at any age and for any career. Plus, the chance to explore other cultures and customs is always welcome in our home. And an added bonus: soon I’ll be able to watch the new season of GIRLS on a bigger screen TV.

-JP

Who’s the Smartest Person in the Room? The Answer May Surprise You.

See those babies cooing in the corner? According to a recent Time Magazine article, they’re the best linguists in the room. Babies are born, Time’s Jeffrey Kluger says, with the inherent ability to speak and understand the world’s 6,800 languages, and that babies, and then children, are able to continue to easily learn multiple languages up into early grammar school. Kluger goes on to say that later in life, having gained these language abilities as babies and children, multilingual adults “are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas. They work faster and expend less energy doing so, and as they age, they retain their cognitive faculties longer, delaying the onset of dementia and even full-blown Alzheimer's disease.”

Read the full, fascinating story, here.

National Teacher Day Memoirs

Guest blogger Thea Hogarth currently works in product development in Little Pim, and today shares some of her experiences as an English teacher in France.  She taught in France during the 2011-2012 academic year. Today is National Teacher Day, and it’s hard to imagine that almost exactly a year ago today, I was preparing to leave behind a year of teaching English in France.  This time last year, I was attempting to pack an entire bedroom’s worth of stuff into a suitcase.  I had spent the previous eight months assistant teaching English in three primary schools in the French city of Angers with the French Éducation Nationale’s TAPIF program… and I was exhausted.  Mind you, I had no reasonable excuse: I worked 12 hours a week and got two weeks of vacation for six weeks of school (totaling a whopping two full months!).  Plus I was living smack in the middle of a wine region in the Loire Valley; I was living, by definition, the good life.

But many of my students weren’t.  Two out of my three schools were officially classified as being in the ZEP (Zone d'Education Prioritaire), the French classification for high poverty schools - the kind of environment that can really wear a teacher down.  I entered the school year expecting my students to be little French angels, enchanted by the idea of meeting an American straight from New York.  And, indeed, my first few classes were peppered with adorable questions along the lines of, “Do you have to take an airplane home after school everyday?” but my novelty quickly wore off.  Many of my students were born outside of France and were already familiar enough with the experience of the foreigner.  Class time with me quickly became an opportunity to throw paper at the back of my head, imitate me to my face, and kick me in the shins (who knew how easily Simon Says could become a contact sport!).  By the beginning of my second week, I was taking breaks to secretly cry between classes.

Yes, I was basically living the first half of “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit,” but with 8-year-olds… and in France.  And, yes, my story also has a reasonably happy ending.  By the end of the year, we had grown accustomed to each other; we had learned each other’s boundaries, but more importantly, we had learned to laugh together.  Teachers in the ZEP and in schools around the world work hard to create safe, supportive classroom environments – becoming masters of the alchemy of turning aggression and frustration into laughter and trust.

As I said goodbye to the kids who made me cry, one boy came up to me on the playground and pulled this note out of his sleeve (transcribed exactly as written): “Dear Théa, We miss you already, you are fantastic.  We were happy end when you were in our class room.  We wish you good holidays.  Hello Théa good bay thea!”  Undoubtedly, he and his classmates had put their heads together to compose this masterpiece (with outside help, I’m sure), and I was grateful.  Of course I was thrilled by this somewhat unexpected display of affection, but more than that, I was gratified that they had created something for me in English even though they knew I understood French.  They had reached across a gulf much larger than that between teacher and student.

Today, of all days, I’m thinking back not only on my year in France, but also on all the amazing teachers who made my experience in France possible.  My engaging, imaginative French teachers ultimately enabled me to apply (and be accepted) to this teaching program, and inspired me to smile through the tears.  Today, let’s all think about the amazing educators in this country and around the world who practice patience and compassion to create a classroom environment that is both supportive and inspiring.

Raising Kids in a High-Tech World

If we parents are conflicted about how our young kids interact with technology – from Tablets and DVDs to iPhones, iPads, iPods and iDon'tKnowWhatElse – who can blame us? Not Hanna Rosin, who writes compellingly in The Atlantic this month about the plugged-in push-pull parents face.

Back in 2006, notes Rosin, 90 percent of parents said their children under 2 used some kind of electronic media. With over 118 million tablets sold in 2012, imagine how high much higher that number must be today.

The reality is our kids are exposed to technology every day. Rosin dubs them "the touchscreen generation," and explores the theory that banishing technology outright may be a simple, if dramatic, response, but perhaps not the most appropriate one. Maybe, she posits, technology – especially today's interactive technology - can be beneficial to our children.

“People say we are experimenting with our children,” Sandra Calvert, director of the Children’s Media Center at Georgetown University, told Rosin. “But from my perspective, it’s already happened, and there’s no way to turn it back. Children’s lives are filled with media at younger and younger ages, and we need to take advantage of what these technologies have to offer."

If we adults use technology not just to entertain, but also to enrich and educate ourselves, as you are doing right now, how can we help our children do that as well?

Rosin cites guidelines laid out by Lisa Guernsey in the book "Screen Time." Guernsey proposes what she terms the Three C's:

1. Content: "Think about the content of what your children see on screen." Programming or technology that is age-appropriate – designed for and directed to children -- and encourages the children to interact with what they see onscreen – by asking open-ended questions, for instance – may engage children more.

2. Context: "Think about the context -- who is with them, how are they talking about what they see, how much the DVD or online game dominates their day." Studies show that when parents sit with their young children as they watch and talk to their children about something that they are watching or experiencing together, they are enhancing their children's language-development readiness. One study showed that verbal media interactions between parent and child with educational programming significantly enhanced children's language skills eight months later. Researchers compare watching a video to reading a book, in that the experience is profoundly enriched when parents ask their children questions about what is on the page and what their children think might happen next.

3. Child: "Think about what makes sense for your individual child, whose needs and interests will be unique to him or her alone." What works for the neighbor's child may not work for yours, and vice versa.

The technological landscape our children have been born into is not likely to go away. Both Guernsey and Rosin contend that we parents ought not to try to run from it, but rather to find ways to help our children explore it so that media can enrich their lives, and maybe even teach them something useful, like a second language!

Basketball Around the World

During March Madness, as we carefully fill in our NCAA tournament brackets, we tend to think about basketball as a quintessentially American pastime. But the United States hardly has a monopoly on a love of hoops. The sport has thriving leagues and devoted fans across the globe -- in Europe, Asia and South America -- as well.

Here are a few countries where basketball's big:

Israel: Basketball has been bouncing around in Israel for decades. The Israeli Basketball Super League, known in Hebrew as Ligat HaAl, was founded way back in 1954 and has, over the years, exported players to the NBA and pitted its star players against NBA teams in exhibition games. In October 2005, the Maccabi Tel Aviv got a lot of attention when it defeated the Toronto Raptors in an exhibition game in Toronto. It was the first victory for any European or Israeli team over an NBA team on an NBA home court.

China: Hoops is one of China's most popular sports, with hundreds of millions of people both playing and watching the game. (It actually embraced the sport shortly after it was invented in 1891.) The country's most prestigious professional basketball league (yes, there's more than one) is the Chinese Basketball Association, founded in 1995, which has produced NBA players including Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian and Sun Yue. The CBA has imported talent as well, with NBA players like Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis and Gilbert Arenas traveling to play with teams like Beijing Ducks and Shanghai Sharks. Beijing even recently erected a life-size bronze statue of Marbury, who led the Ducks to their first-ever CBA championship win last year.

Spain: Yes, they're mad for soccer in Spain, but they're also big into basketball – or "baloncesto," as it's called in Spanish. Spain's Liga ACB is not only the top-tier professional basketball league in Spain, it's among the best in the world and has turned out NBA superstars like Barcelona-born L.A. Laker Pau Gasol. Last year, Spanish B-ball fans got something new to brag about, when their national team gave Team USA – a new dream team that included NBA superstars like Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryan and LeBron James – a serious run for the gold at the 2012 Olympics before ultimately settling for silver.

With basketball mania raging and rebounding through countries from Argentina to Australia, as well as Italy, Macedonia, Greece, the Philippines and France, basketball has become a big-time global sport, crossing cultures and languages. Turns out the whole world's mad for hoops – and not only in March.