It’s the summer time when the temperatures soar people look for relief in the form of water play but it’s important to remember that every year hundreds of people die from preventable drowning or are hospitalized because of a near drowning.
If you think that you are safe because you don’t own a backyard pool or frequent the summer cottage, you’re mistaken. Drowning can occur anywhere including bathtubs and playgrounds with water features.
Drowning doesn’t look like what we believe drowning to look like. Please take a minute to review these key drowning facts and some basic prevention tips.
I love everything about back-to-school time, except for packing school lunches. I hate packing school lunches. This is due, in large part, to the fact that my boys don’t like easy lunch box items or are allergic to them (nut butters, yogurt, muffins, granola bars, meat, fish, most forms of cheese, any fruit that will go soft during the day). You begin to see how my options get limited.
Help!
This week, 4 mothers will be sharing quick and easy lunch box and dinner ideas. Please join in and leave us your go-to recipes in the comments.
This one was a surprise life-saver last year: spinach dip. It’s bright, bright green, a fact that I was sure would turn my boys off, but a mother at playschool made it for the kids’ snack, and my son loved it, so it became a staple in his lunch box.
In a blender, whiz a cup of fresh baby spinach, a clove of garlic (cooked if you want to take the bite off), a tablespoon of cream cheese and half a cup of cottage cheese. Blend until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with veggie sticks and a mini-croissant or mini-bagel.
It’s summer. We’ve got mosquito bites and, in spite of my best efforts with sunblock, tan lines. We’re eating fresh local strawberries and raspberries. The windows are propped open to allow in what breeze will grace us.
And did I spend the day making popsicles and seeking shade? No, I was washing hockey equipment and making sure that the boys have matching skates, shin pads, and elbow pads for each side of the body; I was in a snit because of a missing neck guard; I was gearing up for the great gear haul.
It’s the first week of summer holidays, and the big boys are spending it at hockey camp. Griffin only just finished his spring league games, which took up both weekend mornings, and now we are into daily ice time. I’ve pretty much gotten over the shock of becoming a hockey mom. I grew up in tropical and desert countries, I am still learning to skate, and I think I finally understand the offside rule. But nothing is quite so disorienting as going from the humid haze of a summer day into the frigid gloom of an ice rink. Part of me rejoices at the boys’ love of hockey, something still so exotically foreign to me. But another part of me resists. To everything there is a season, and surely, there must be an end somewhere to hockey season.
Summer is winding down, and with it the longer days and extra time in which to squeeze extra chapters of whatever book I’m reading with the boys (The Wind in the Willows this week with Rowan). Griffin and I were reading A Wrinkle in Time over the holidays, but our pace and interest have slackened. (He has been away all week at camp, and I’m not sure that book will survive the gap…. And that’s fine. It is one of Daniel Pennac’s rights of the reader to abandon a book. Life is short. Read only great books, books that are great to you.)
I picked up The Phantom Tollbooth the other day–another attempt at a children’s fantasy classic– so I was thrilled to see this video at Educating Alice about the author, Norton Juster, visiting a camp for child authors in New York. The young man with writer’s block quite stole my heart.
And here is an excerpt from the entry on The Phantom Tollbooth from Anita Silvey’s 100 Best Books for Children, about which I wrote here. If you are looking for some suggestions for books to round out the summer reading with your kids, I cannot recommend her book highly enough, and the kind of information in this entry on Juster demonstrates why.
An architect who wrote for relaxation from arduous planning projects, Norton Juster had received a grant from the Ford Foundation to create a book for children about how people experience cities. In 1959, to avoid writing this book, he began working on a short story–one that took on a life of its own. Juster viewed The Phantom Tollbooth as a way to procrastinate from his real responsibilities. He wrote without an outline and in no particular sequence, although he revised the book again and again to achieve the right pacing and word choice.
Juster and Jules Feiffer, the cartoonist, had been friends since the mid-1950s, when they lived in the same apartment building in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Although not intending to illustrate a children’s book, Feiffer started to read what Juster had written and made drawings. As they worked together, Juster took great delight in describing things Feiffer might have difficulty drawing. The project continued with this lighthearted banter, and Feiffer modeled the Whether Man, on page 18, after Juster. (100)
And if you are a fan of Oliver Jeffers and would like to treat yourself to your own book camp, click on the link below and watch his presentation about his career as an artist and children’s book writer and illustrator. I was in awe, but then I think that education is wasted on the young and would happily spend the rest of my days in lecture halls. (It is 45 minutes long; plan accordingly.) Thanks to 123 o’leary for the link.
