Learn-May2014

SUMMER STUDY SKILLS

– maintain children’s academic skills over the holiday.

Yes, those lazy days of summer are coming.

Summer vacation focuses your children’s mind on sun, sand and all of those endless days of play and relaxation . . . oh wait, that’s us! But for many children, the summer holidays are too long of a hiatus from schoolwork to successfully maintain learning from the year before. September comes quickly, and the hard won academic success earned by June becomes lost to summer vacation.

Parents can bridge children’s June success to September by taking some time out to plan for summer skill maintenance.

• Review your child’s final report card and highlight the areas of success in one colour and the areas to be improved in another. Discuss with your child’s teacher ways to maintain the academic success over the summer, and what can be done to continue development in the areas highlighted for improved.

• Brainstorm with your child. Have your child think about any types of school work that can have an element of fun. Which subjects do they enjoy? Determine what type of learner your child is: Visual? Auditory? Tactile? Find activities and short exercises that appeal to your child’s style of learning.

• E-books are great for auditory learners. They also squeeze in learning during those long car drives to cottage.

• Educational computer games can be slipped into the family laptop during an extended train ride.

• Word searches, crossword puzzles, and brainteasers are all fun ways to encourage reading, writing and problem solving skills. Try to replace some handheld video game time with a book full of word games. An half hour of word games earns a half hour of extra game time? Just a though 

• Make summer academic maintenance a positive experience. Try to pair your child’s learning with freedom. Let your child decide which subjects to pursue. Allow them to use colourful exercise books or gel pens where pencils and gray exercise books are normally used.

• Take time out to read together. Make reading time special. Books are everywhere, encourage your child to realize just how fun reading can be. Summer investigations is a great theme for summer reading: who were the Romans, how do river systems work, airplanes from paper to super-sonic engines. Help your child create a summer journal or scrapbook of things they do all summer. If all your child does is label the vacation photos with a short sentence about the memory the photo evokes, great! The journal will be treasured in years to come.

• Create a homework box that your child can use over the summer. Fill the box with creative materials: coloured and lined paper, crayons, pencils, a ruler, a hole punch, scissors etc., and exercise books that will only be used when doing summer academics. Borrow a series of special reading books from the library. Try to get through a special reading series over the summer.

• Set the expectation that learning success will continue over the summer. Choose one or two days for academic maintenance and try to stick to them. Use a variety of methods and activities. Create a list of what to take to overnight camp, have your child develop a budget for summer purchases, or have your child write down what is happening at 3:00 o’clock every day for a week. Provide a camera to create photo journal.

It is important for children to maintain their academic success over the summer. Two months may seem short, but for children who have hard won academic learning throughout the year, the distance between June and September can be vast. Do a little bit every day. The results will set your child up for a great start to September.

By Tricia Kassotis, Early Childhood Education, CCOL.

Talented Employees

My name is Carol Ann Steeves and I work in Media Design and I am so lucky to work with such talented and creative people every day!

Some of my friends call me” Martha Stewart of the North”! I don’t remember not crafting, as I’ve been creating so many years. My early passion was sewing, which led to my other mediums to explore.

8 years ago, I went to a Stampin UP! Workshop to make cards and was hooked instantly. I bought a Stamp Set/ Ink and made 25 Christmas cards that first year. I have not bought purchased a card since.

With some redecorating I have created a large craft-sewing room. It’s like having my very own crafting store at my fingertips. This is my Oasis which is decorated in Wizard of Oz memorabilia. It’s like being in OZ, with the famous blue & white gingham for curtains, a handmade quilt and my very own Tin Man! I am such a WOZ fanatic, that my family threw me a WOZ costume party for my 50th Birthday.

As a Stampin UP! Demonstrator I have been hosting workshops and monthly stamp clubs for several years. It is wonderful to create one of a kind cards and Scrapbooks for family and friends! This year I will host our 5^th Annual Media & Design Pajama Crop for United Way. To date we have raised over $7,000.00 for Plants Some Bursaries. The date is Friday October 24, 2014 from 4pm until 12 midnight. The best part were in our pajama’s Scrapbooking and making cards. Hope you can join us.

My motto “There is nothing that can’t be Stamped, Scrapped or Sewn!

Staycation in Ottawa

by Catherine Lee

Have you ever had a staycation? My husband and I like to travel, and have our favourite places to get away to. But as good as it always is to go away, we love it even more coming home again.

That’s why we love a staycation – a vacation you enjoy right in your own home, in your own part of the world. Instead of piling everything in the car and driving hours to a friend’s cottage or home, or sitting at the border sweating the crossing guard questions and beady eye, you stay home and invite visitors to you, so that it is their turn to pack the trunk, sweat the drive and sleep on the sofabed.

This kind of downtime has its own distinct advantages, some of which are sustainable and support ‘buy local’. You save on not filling the tank and paying the crazy gas prices, you save time on travel, you lower your stress because there is no arguing about directions or about when and where to stop on the road. There is no checking for bed bugs in the hotel, and you save money that you would have spent on hotels and useless souvenirs. You save the stress of deciding what to bring with you, as all your stuff is right where you need it, in your house. But best of all, you have a great night’s sleep in your own bed.

So, how do you plan a staycation? Well, there are some rules — some obvious ones, and some that you can designate ‘house rules’ that you can make up yourself. The temptations and risks of vacationing near where you work and near your chores list are obvious, so that is where the rules need to be strict.

No checking work email.

No going in to the office.
No telling coworkers that you have not left home (too tempting to call you).
No TV. Talk to each other instead.
No setting the alarm clock, unless for a good reason, like a golf tee time, or being first in line at the water park.
Make your own rules– it’s your staycation.

The first step is to invite your friends and their kids, or your nearest and dearest relatives. But invite only the fun ones, not the grumpy couch potatoes.

Then have a planning meeting. At our house, planning and budget meetings have 2 rules —

Wine is served at the meeting. It makes the budget look better.
Everyone gets to say one thing that they really want to do on the vacation. That way the activities are balanced, and everyone is happier about doing a brewery tour if the shoe factory tour is coming up, if you know what I mean.

On to the activities — there is SO much to do in the Ottawa area, many of which we never think to experience unless we have out-of-towners to entertain.

Go to Chelsea, Quebec for a pub lunch, and sit outside to soak up the country air and people-watch the sporty types cycling and running by. And reward yourself with decadent ice cream at La Cigale to complete it.
Take a boat cruise down the Rideau Canal, or on the Ottawa River. When you are on the water, it seems like you have left the city behind.
Head to Mooney’s Bay beach for a cool dip and a picnic, and watch the rowers go by.
Watch the changing of the guard at Parliament Hill, go on the tour of the portrait halls and the impressive Library of Parliament, take the elevator up through the giant bells to view the city from the heights, then come back for the sound and light show Mosaic at night.
Drive up to historic Meech Lake, and swim out into the clear, clean lake with a noodle tied to your ankle for safety. As you swim, snoop at the large houses, and come back to the public beach for a picnic and something reviving in a glass.
Calypso Water Park is a great place for a scorching hot day. There are endless wet rides for the young ones, and a man-made beach for parents to relax on with a beverage. Perfect.
Pick one of the many lively music festivals happening in Ottawa this summer. There are so many incredible artists coming, so go and dance on the grass to your favourite artists.
Hold a block party in your path or street. Get your neighbours to push BBQs and lawn chairs together, turn up the music, and dance and laugh under the stars. Your neighbours may surprize you.
Create a mini-golf tournament. Our favourite place in Ottawa is Mini Golf Gardens on Merivale, as it has 2 full serious 18-hole courses, is laid out like a real course, and is tough. We call the tournament Puttarama, and it is full of trash talk and verbal bets, and is always a hoot for young and old.
Spend the day in Wakefield, Quebec, where there are lots of shops, bakeries, restaurants, a waterfront with picnic tables, and more. Our favourite hidden gem is the restaurant on top of the General Store, Chamberlin’s Lookout, which has great food and a deck looking out back at the water. Café Pot-au-Feu and the Village Restaurant are other winners.
Pull out the comfiest chaise on your patio, curl up with the book that has been waiting on your nightstand, and dive in. If the kids are at the neighbourhood pool, you might actually read a whole book. Calm, peace, bliss.
So many more wonderful things to do in Ottawa, like the Midway for kids of all ages, Experimental Farm barn and garden tour, Dow’s Lake boat rentals, Museum of Science, Merrickville for the day, the Royal Mint tour, the amazing War Museum, and on and on.

I don’t think it would be possible to ever run out of interesting, fun and amazing things to do on an Ottawa staycation. You would never see or experience all of it. But it does make you wonder why you would think of leaving town in search of the perfect vacation, when there is so much going on in our own back yards.

So forget the crazy gas prices, the lineups at the airport and the border. Forget about the long commute to sleep on someone’s lumpy sofabed. Send out an invite and host your own staycation, wow your visitors with the dazzling array of entertaining choices, then when the staycation is finished and your guests pile into the packed car for their long drive home, wave them off, shut your door, and put your feet up. You are already home.