And we got tons of compliments on our shrimp dumplings – we bought frozen dumpling wrappers at the Asian supermarket, and they were easier to assemble than we expected; the recipe we used is also posted on Epicurious….

The kids (ages 5 and 7) enjoyed it. My daughter initially thought it looked babyish, and said she would sit next to us and read her own book while I read to the 5-year old. But she got sucked in pretty quickly – it was a very cute story. The main character is a boy who rescues a baby dragon from a wild island where he was held captive by all the other animals. They used the dragon like a ferry to get back and forth across a river. During the rescue, the boy found all kinds of creative ways to avoid the animals on the island. For example, he used several sticks of chewing gum to distract a bunch of tigers. It was relatively short, so we read the whole book in just a few days.

But we’re reading the second book now, and it is not nearly as interesting – we’re almost done, and I think we’ll probably skip the third one. I bought two L. Frank Baum books – the Wizard of Oz and a sequel, so I’m ready to move on to those. I think for reading aloud, you really can’t beat the old stuff… classics, I mean. A 7-year old reading 30+ Magic Tree House books silently is fine, but reading them aloud is just drudgery.

So I’m going to let go of the idea that I have to read everything that they read, and go back to the strategy of reading books that are at their “comprehension” levels, which for all kids are generally higher than their “reading” levels.

She has given them all rave reviews, so I bought them for us to read together at home. She thinks they are hilarious, and I remember loving them when I was a kid, so we both thought that reading them aloud with my pre-k son was a good idea.

We read a few chapters, and then decided to drop them for now. She still thinks they are great, but she’s enjoying reading them to herself. My son, who is 5 years old, liked them okay, but I think the humor and writing were just a little bit above him. The chapters were a bit long, and the social interaction among the elementary age kids were kinda boring to him. And I agreed – reading them again, I remember why I liked them, but I think these are the kinds of books that are very age specific.

I’m glad we bought them – my daughter enjoyed reading them to herself, and I know my son will really like them at some point as well, but for now, they will stay on the shelf.

We moved on from Judy Blume and recently read My Father’s Dragon, and it was definitely more his speed (although my daughter was not quite as interested). I’ll talk about that one next time. It’s interesting to me that when they were younger and two years apart seemed like a lot, they both enjoyed the same picture books. Now that they are getting older, they look like they are almost the same age, and ability-wise they are very closely matched, but their reading interests are starting to diverge, and it’s actually getting harder to find books that appeal to both of them.

Here are a couple that worked really well for us. The Biscuit books by Alyssa Capucilli in the “I Can Read – Shared – My first reading” series were the best that I found for the kids’ very first efforts. The reason they work so well is that the vocabulary used in the book is very small, and the phrases repeat on every page (for example: Biscuit wants to play, Biscuit wants a drink, Biscuit wants a hug, etc.). There are only one or two sentences on each page, and the pictures are very clear and simple, so you can use the pictures to decipher the words in context.

The Dr. Seuss Beginner Books “I can read it all by myself” are a really good second step – they are rhythmical, they also use a limited vocabulary and lots of repeating words, and they are really fun. They’ve been around for a long time, but they still work beautifully. Some titles include Go Dog Go, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Hop on Pop. These have a lot more words and more pages than the “I can read” series (60+ pages vs. 24 pages), so you may want to alternate pages – parent reads one, kid reads one – or have the child read the first few pages and let the parent finish.

As the child learns some sight words, the “I can read” series has some good longer books as well. I found that some of the other early reader series’, particularly the DK Readers, were not good at all for early reading. It was really misleading – I bought a few, like Spiderman, Ironman, Star Wars, etc., thinking that my son would really like them. And he does, if I read them. The DK Reader level 2 is probably equivalent to the “I can read” series level 4 or even higher. The pictures are great, and my son loves to look at them, but the text is so full of jargon and complicated acronyms (Hobgoblin, Scorpion, C3PO, Millenium Falcon, etc., are really not words that early readers can sound out successfully) that there’s no way a 5-year old could decode it on his/her 3rd, 4th, 5th try at reading. Further, there are rarely repeating words, and the pictures only give clues as to the characters, not the action. The only thing these books are good for is for a pre-reader to have a good time flipping through the color pictures. Once they are good enough to actually decode the words, they’ll be ready for a more sophisticated story. I found the Random House Step-into-reading series  to be very similar to the DK readers, although perhaps marginally better as far as repeating vocabulary throughout the text.

On the other hand, DK has a great selection of non-fiction kids books – science and history-related – including a few that are early readers. They also have a big selection of abridged classics that come with CDs, and those have been a big hit with my son. So I’m not complaining about all of the DK books, just the ones that they market as early readers but really aren’t.

The last series I want to mention is the Nick Jr. Ready to Read series that features Dora the explorer and Diego. They also have some My Little Pony titles, and probably others as well. This series was recommended to me by another mom whose kids were really into these characters, and they loved these books. These books use pictures in the text to depict specific words such as characters or objects. The goal is presumably to give kids practice with the short words, and to make the longer words easier by letting them “read the picture.” They didn’t really work with my daughter. I think the pictures throughout the text were distracting, and again, they didn’t have enough repeating vocabulary.

One thing to keep in mind is that the usefulness of early reader books is really limited. It is not worth the money to acquire a large library of early readers, except for the Dr. Seuss beginner books, which you can read to your kids from the time they are babies. When you are reading to your kids, the goal is to read great fairy tales and stories that use a rich vocabulary, beautiful picture books to spark their imagination, and rhythmical, musical, fun sing-along books.

Early readers are specifically a jumping-off point for recognizing sight words and first decoding efforts. Buy a few, and get the rest from the library!

It worked out great. Unlike me, who usually feels like the book is spoiled if I’ve seen the movie first, the kids really were engaged in the story. They liked the fact that they could anticipate what happened next, and really enjoyed the book. They also seemed pretty interested in the fact that the book was a little bit different than the movie, and we spent some time talking about the differences. They also liked the fact that I still haven’t seen the movie, so they felt like they were teaching me something, too.

I thought the book worked pretty well for reading aloud – it was mostly plot-driven, and it was a little bit suspenseful. My daughter liked the subject matter more than my son, but I couldn’t tell whether it was more interesting to my daughter because she’s older, or maybe because the main character was a girl.

The author, Kate DiCamillo, also wrote Tale of Despereaux, Tiger Rising, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

My daughter is reading chapter books independently now, so since we finished Because of Winn Dixie, she has started re-reading it on her own. My son is just on the cusp of wanting to read himself, so we haven’t started any long read alouds this week. I’ve been letting my daughter read to herself while I help my son read some “easy readers.” I’ll talk about a couple of those next time.

To me, it seemed a little confusing for young kids to follow, although both of my kids seemed to be keeping up pretty well with the plot, and they each made some good connections between different parts of the story.

Some great books are not really conducive to reading aloud, though, and I think that this is one of them. It was distracting to me that the author kept interjecting questions to the reader. Really great read alouds tend to be more plot-driven as opposed to being focused on character development, and I felt like Despereaux was a thoughtful book; there wasn’t much action.

In the end, we missed the movie because we weren’t finished with the book before the movie was gone from the theater. It is just as well, though, because I heard through the grapevine that the rats in the movie were monstrous, and that it was really too intense for young kids – I wouldn’t want the kids to be too scared, although I have to admit they’ve seen Spiderman, Indiana Jones, and many other completely inappropriate movies

I polled the kids after we were finished – which book did you like best, Stuart Little or Tale of Despereaux? They both picked Stuart Little over Despereaux, although my daughter’s favorite so far has been Because of Winn Dixie, another Kate DiCamillo book. I’ll talk about that one next time.

It’s a great read aloud for younger kids because it’s all about plot/adventures.

We’re reading the Tale of Despereaux now – I’ll review that one next.

Last night, though, we had a golden opportunity to mete out some badly-needed humble pie, with no sacrifice on our part for a change. We were getting ready to eat dinner – a meal that they themselves requested, pork szechuan. They are usually pretty well behaved at the dinner table – they both like to eat and are accustomed to eating at restaurants, so they generally have decent manners. They were sitting at the counter and Patrick was just getting ready to put food on their plates when he saw our son spit right at his sister. Patrick immediately sent my son to his room, and he went, crying. After a couple of minutes, Patrick asked my daughter what she did – we have learned in recent times that very often whoever is getting caught doing something they shouldn’t, the other child very likely started it with the exact same behavior. Very hesitantly she admitted that she spit at him first. Before he had a chance to yell at her, I suggested that the kids should both stay in their rooms during dinner, and that they could eat peanut butter sandwiches later. My daughter ran to her room crying while my son was protesting from his room. It worked! Of course, it is not always a sure bet – we have plenty of meals where they would be just as happy to eat PB&J.

They were devastated that they missed out, as well they should have been – Patrick’s dinner was really yummy, and we enjoyed a nice, calm, quiet dinner.

They came out very quietly a short time later for their PB&J sandwiches, and there was no fighting for a change. They got themselves ready for bed without a peep, they read books, and went to bed without a fuss.

Hopefully we’ll have a couple of well mannered little diners for a while

When my daughter started kindergarten, she didn’t have much computer experience, and I was somewhat reluctant to let her have too much computer time. I’m not big on commercial web sites, etc., and mostly thought it took time away from “real reading.” But we were introduced to a web site by her teacher that I really like. Starfall is a web site where they can practice their computer skills and also work on alphabet and reading-related skills. The kids absolutely love it because of the interactivity and music, and they feel like they are playing computer games.

I like it because I really saw my daughter’s reading improve throughout her kindergarten year, and I can see that my son who is 4 1/2 is progressing in his reading pretty quickly. It allows kids to click on particular words to hear how they sound, or you can listen along to a whole page. In the alphabet section, there are catchy little songs and activities that go along with the sounds for each letter. There are also many “read-along” stories and activities.

The kindergarten teacher kept them in the “alphabet” section of the web site for 2-3 months as they got comfortable navigating through each letter’s activities, and then in the winter she moved them to the second “Learn to read” section with Zac the Rat. She provided the class with the accompanying educational products – print books that the kids cut out and assemble, and their are other products available for purchase, but the web content is free AND advertisement-free, so I can let them sit at the computer by themselves, and can monitor them from across the room – I can see and hear that they are staying within the parameters of this particular web site.

If you’re interested, check it out:  http://www.starfall.com

Also, I just got an email about a new educational web site – http://www.learntoreadfree.com

It is sponsored by Montessori, so I thought maybe the Montessori experts out there might be using it already or would be interested in reviewing it

For two years, I have shared driving-to-pre-school duties with our babysitter while I worked part-time. When my daughter started kindergarten last year, we also participated in a parent carpool two days a week, which made scheduling even more complicated. However, neither of my kids had ever been forgotten at school, until now.

My daughter started first grade this year, and it was more chaotic than normal because Tropical Storm Fay was threatening Florida. Our county decided on Monday afternoon to cancel the first day of classes which had been scheduled for Tuesday. I talked to my babysitter on Monday evening to tell her school was cancelled Tuesday, but that she could pick up the kids the rest of the week as long as school was in. So we had an unscheduled vacation day on Tuesday, didn’t get any bad weather to speak of, and then I took everyone to school/preschool on Wednesday morning. But I didn’t think to call and remind our babysitter. I just assumed that she would call me if she wasn’t sure.

I got home from work around 4:30, and no one was home. This wasn’t a cause for panic, as our babysitter sometimes took the kids for ice cream or to the park. I called her cell phone, and got the news – she was having boyfriend issues, and she was having a bad day in general, and completely forgot to pick up the kids, and the elementary school called her at 3:55 (more than an hour after school ended at 2:40), and she had gone and picked my daughter up immediately. She was now headed to the preschool to pick up my son. The preschool wasn’t a problem because they were open until 5:30, and kids left at varying times, so my son probably didn’t even notice that she was late. My daughter, on the other hand, came in the house with an angry look on her face, and even though she didn’t cry while she was sitting in the office at school, she had a meltdown over a “seemingly unrelated” minor issue within about a half hour of arriving home. My poor dear!!

I was aggravated that our babysitter forgot, but she has worked for us for several years and always has been very reliable about her responsibilities for picking the kids up, etc. I felt guilty too for not calling to remind her – I’m the mom, it’s really my fault no matter what.

My question was why didn’t the school call me? And why did they wait so long to make the calls? The next morning I stopped by the office and amid the chaos, I learned that they made a mistake too. Apparently, there were a number of kids waiting, and because it was the first day, and parents hadn’t turned in new contact forms, etc., the office really was scrambling to locate old contact info, etc. That doesn’t explain why they didn’t call me at any of my three contact phone numbers, but at least we had correct information on file. Thank goodness my daughter wasn’t in kindergarten – there wouldn’t have been any emergency contact info to be had. On the other hand, I’m very glad to hear that she was safe and supervised after being stranded at school for more than an hour.

Not the best start to the school year, but I’m happy to report that my daughter has been dropped off and picked up on schedule since then, and the school year is going well.

It is a 500+ page novel, but the cool thing about it is that more than half the pages are illustrations, and these, along with interspersed pages of text, drive the story. I’m in the middle of reading it with my 6 1/2 year old daughter, and I read a couple of pages of text, and then she “reads” the pages with illustrations. It is awesome to see how observant she is – she notices the details of the pictures and really adds to the story.

According to Amazon.com, the age range for reading it independently is 9-12, but for reading aloud I think it would hold the interest of a younger child.

The book description according to the dust jacket is:

Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric, bookish girl and a bitter old man who runs a toy booth in the station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo’s dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery.

One idea struck me in particular. Early readers/elementary age children can listen and understand books two or more reading levels higher than what they might be able to read on their own, and that the vocabulary they learn during read-aloud sessions directly affects how quickly they can increase their independent reading skills.

Another point the author made is that with novels, not all of them are suitable for reading aloud even with older kids, some because of sensitive subject matter and others because of long descriptive passages for which younger children might not have developed the requisite attention span. He suggested that in lots of cases, it is helpful to pre-read the selection, and skip some of the longer, descriptive passages that aren’t as compelling when they are read aloud. The below list is excerpted from Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook¹:

Jim’s Favorite Kindergarten Novels (in order of difficulty)

• Two Times the Fun by Beverly Cleary
• Chibi: A True Story from Japan by B. Brenner and J. Takaya
• Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park
• The Chalk Box Kid by Clyde Robert Bulla
• My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
• Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith
• Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne
• The Reluctant Dragon adapted by Inga Moore
• The Stories Julian Tells by Ann Cameron
• The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith
• Wolf Story by William McCleery
• James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

I haven’t read any of these with my kids yet, although James and the Giant Peach (and anything by Roald Dahl) is a personal favorite of mine. Judy Blume isn’t mentioned here, but Punkalicious might enjoy the book Superfudge because it deals with how an older brother is continually aggravated with his younger, toddler-age brother. Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants’ series was also recommended to me by a local children’s librarian. Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White are also highly recommended. And they are nice because you can read them together, then watch the movies – it can be a good opportunity to discuss similarities and differences between books and movies. My children are ages 4 ½ and 6 ½ and some of their current favorites to read with me (aside from all the early readers books that we are reading these days) include:

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
I have an abridged version, but it is still broken up into chapters and takes several nights to read through. I think they are willing to sit through it partly because they have seen the movie and are somewhat familiar with the story. I found that to be counterintuitive, but my daughter is also totally into the true story of Pocahontas after seeing the Disney version (She notices that in the book, Pocahontas wears her hair differently!)

A Treasury of Children’s Literature edited by Armand Eisen
They love the fairy tales, and there are also some “American Tales” like Paul Bunyan, a selection of Aesop’s Fables, some poetry. And my daughter particularly loves it because it feels like a grown-up book. There are beautiful illustrations as well. I think Punkalicious will like this one a lot.

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
We also have the audio of this and when I’m sick of listening to kid music in the car, I play this and they listen happily and have memorized most of the poems.

The Frog Wore Red Suspenders by Jack Prelutsky
He has many books of children’s poetry, and they are all really fun to read. My daughter turned a corner in her reading when she started singing the poems rather than reading them aloud. I think the rhymes/singing really helped her confidence. And her first independent effort at reading a book to her brother came when she picked up a Barbie as Island Princess book that had a little lullaby in it. She was really motivated to sing it, so she read it in spite of the fact that she didn’t know many of the words.

The Trelease book also mentions that BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) offers seven hours a day of drama and readings on the radio, including chapters from children’s novels, and these selections are posted on their web site as they appear on the air.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/kids/

Many public libraries and schools also post summer reading lists on their web sites. American Library Association posts a list of recommendations for early elementary readers. I browsed through it, and recognized many titles that my daughter has read with her teacher in kindergarten as well as some that we’ve read at home.

http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/alscresources/booklists/greatearlyelemreads.cfm

A more general list for children’s literature is the National Education Association’s top 100 children’s books chosen by teachers, and a companion list of 100 books chosen by kids.

http://www.nea.org/readacross/resources/catalist.html

http://www.nea.org/readacross/resources/kidsbooks.html

Reference:
¹Trelease, Jim. 2006. The Read-Aloud Handbook: London, Penguin Books.

As it turns out, the public schools (in Florida, anyway) don’t seem terribly worried about it anymore. I remember when I was in elementary school, my public school had a “no nits” policy. Every so often, every student was checked, and those that had lice were sent home until it was gone. I remember lots of kids coming back to school with shorter hair a couple of days later.

Twice this year, my daughter brought notes home from school saying that at least one classmate has lice. However, when I asked her about it, she said that the girls who had it were back at school the next day. I didn’t think too much about it – I assumed that a one-time treatment did the trick.

Not so. She came home from school one Tuesday afternoon, and in the evening, as I was helping her out of the shower and drying her hair, I noticed little tiny crawling bugs in her hair – it could only be lice. When I exclaimed, “You have lice,” she responded by listing at least three of her friends from school who had it also. When I asked her if they have missed any school, she said no. I hadn’t received a note home in months. So what gives – does everyone go to school with lice, or is it that easy to get rid of?

Well, it definitely wasn’t that easy to treat. After she got her pajamas on, we barely made it through dinner (all of us feeling very itchy all of a sudden) before PB (my husband) went off to the drugstore for the medicated shampoo. It was a fairly simple process to shampoo her head, and then comb the lice out. But what about the eggs, which are called nits? She had a lot of them, and the first night I spent at least an hour combing through and picking them out. We washed all the bedding and her clothing, and put her pillows and stuffed animals in the garage in plastic garbage bags. But that wasn’t the end of it.

We spent four hours the next day picking out nits (I kept her home from school), probably two hours the following day, and the third day, I let her go back to school because I was scheduled to be there as well to volunteer. I went with misgivings because it was three days after my initial discovery and was still finding one or two live lice each time I combed through her hair. It was then that I found out that our school doesn’t do regular screenings for lice, and don’t send children home if they have lice.

After two treatments and twelve days of spending at least 30-45 minutes picking out nits, as well as spraying the furniture and carseats, washing bedding two or three times, washing clothes, etc., I feel pretty confident that she is lice/nit-free. It was pretty rough, though, because I got it too, and while PB has lots of great qualities, I’m not as confident in his ability to locate and remove nits from my long, thick hair. He combed through my hair three times and found nits only once, but three days later, I had live lice that I treated with the shampoo and removed.  As of this writing, I’ve had two treatments and hopefully am nit-free, but I’m feeling a little itchy!

The information I referenced in my battle against lice came from the following web sites:

• National Pediculosis Association: http://www.headlice.org/
• Harvard School of Public Health: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/headlice.html
• Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/head-lice/DS00953
• American Academy of Pediatrics: http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/pediatrics;110/3/638.pdf

The most aggravating thing about my experience is how unconcerned everyone else seems to be about the whole thing. All of the above web sites talk about how lice is really not a big problem because lice do not transmit any disease, although lice does cause “a high level of anxiety among parents of school-age children.”¹ (I guess they are talking about me!) The American Academy of Pediatrics does NOT advocate a no-nit policy because nits alone do not necessarily guarantee an infestation and because in the past, no-nit policies have resulted in students missing too much school. While I understand that lice is not a serious public health threat, I feel very strongly that after I’ve gone through so much hassle and effort and expense (one package of shampoo, gel and spray is about $19), I do not want her immediately reinfested. So what to do?

Most of the suggestions I’ve gotten for avoiding lice is to put gel/hairspray in her hair because lice don’t like it. Another suggestion was to keep it braided. And she’s been sternly lectured about not laying on someone else’s towel at rest time, not sharing brushes, etc. But the minute she was back in class, I could see that those kinds of comments are totally futile – my kindergartener is just too friendly for her own good

I did not use any of the “smothering” home remedies that I read about because the above sites didn’t really endorse any of them, although I know people who have tried the mayonnaise shampoo. Now that we’ve done the two treatments with the medicated (read: pesticide) shampoo, though, if we are reinfested in the near future, we may try one of the home remedies as an alternative. The shampoo recommendations say to see a doctor after two treatments if there are still live lice found. Some media reports say that lice are becoming more resistant to pesticides, but most of the authoritative web sites say that if you still have lice after two treatments, you’ve more likely been reinfested from another source.

References:

But Google can help too – Google has a number of built-in tools that can really make a difference. “Ten tips for smarter Google searches” is a great article posted on InformIT that lists the following tips: 

• Use the correct methodology
• Conduct an either/or search
• Include or exclude words in your search
• Search for similar words
• Search for an exact phrase
• List similar pages
• Fine-tune your search with other operators
• Search for specific facts
• Search the Google directory
• Use Googles [sic] other specialized searches

The tip I want to talk about is the last one, using Google’s other specialized searches. One of the most intractable issues that faces the library community, and librarians in general, is the idea that with the advent of the Internet, all information is available free online. But the fact is that not all information is available free online, particularly business, scientific, scholarly journals, etc. Publishers in these areas charge high fees for electronic subscriptions to company reports, business news, scholarly journals in many disciplines, and citation databases that provide multiple ways of indexing articles in journals across many fields of research.

Google Scholar is a tool that helps to solve this problem by including only scholarly literature in their results lists. Results lists include journal articles, theses, conference papers, books, pre-prints, abstracts, etc. Access to the full text of every article is not guaranteed; if a subscription is required by the publisher, the searcher will be asked to pay an article fee or told to ask their local librarian to borrow the article. However, it can be valuable to see the citations and abstracts of material that is being published in a particular field.

Google also provides ways to narrow your search by type/format of material as follows:

• Google books searches the full text of hundreds of thousands of books; if copyright restrictions have expired (usually 50+ years), the full text might be available free. Google itself has digitized hundreds of thousands of books from a number of large academic and public libraries across the country. For more recent books, often a few pages are available to preview. Just recently, Google made an agreement to exchange data with Worldcat, a major database containing library catalog records from thousands of libraries across the world. Ultimately, Google intends for searchers to link to local libraries who own the books.
• Google image searches a variety of graphic file types, including .jpg, .gif, .bmp, etc. The advanced search feature allows the searcher to limit to a particular file type or to search all image files. When searching for images, the original Google search engine works great too if you add the term “images” to the end of your search string.
• Google video provides customized searching for most blogged videos, most shared videos, videos hosted by Google, etc.
• Google blogs searches blogs generally as well as by dates posted, author, etc.
• Google answers is a paid service that forwards questions to professional researchers.
• Google maps, Google groups, Google news, Google shopping, Google finance, Google U.S. Government, Google Linux search, Froogle, Google university, and many other targeted search tools are also available.

Reference:

Miller, M. 2006. Ten tips for smarter Google searches. InformIT: Que Publishing. http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=675274&seqNum=1

Far too many people flock to Google and type in extremely vague queries, only to be frustrated and uninformed after hours of searching. On the other hand, the 50+ year-old man at the joint use public/college library on Saturday was using much more specific queries – Alyssa Milano nude – and was apparently successful, until a fellow patron ratted him out to me (the reference librarian) and I had to go over and reiterate for the second time that day, “You can’t look at porn in the library.” The ironic thing was that the person who alerted me to the porn was a man, probably early twenties, and he was pretty aggravated at the idea that anyone would come into the library and use the computers for leisure activities like porn viewing, online poker, looking at matches on dating sites, etc. He had the idea that people should be (gasp) productive in the library – what a concept!

 But I digress.

A 2006 article in the journal Searcher stated “the number of Americans going online [in 2005] only increased 3 percent.” The article then went on to discuss the number of online searches conducted, which had jumped 55 percent from the previous year, and translates to “an increase from a per-searcher average of around 16 searches a month to some 25 searches a month.”

The original source of these statistics is Nielsen/NetRatings, whose senior director of analytics Ken Cassar commented, “The double-digit increase in online search activity marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Internet consumer behavior. Online search is the primary tool most people rely on to do everyday research.”

The point of the article, though, was that the large increase in number of searches translates into a large increase in the number of bad searches – the worst kind being a search result that leads the searcher to think they’ve solved their problem when they’ve really just located some misleading or false information.

My question is – which is it? Since I’ve been using the Internet for research in the early 1990s, the amount of information out there has exploded from just a few university web sites/library catalogs to pretty much anything you can think of. Are people just using the Internet to answer different kinds of questions – not “research” exactly, but movie times, store hours/locations, directions to the nearest Outback restaurant, etc.? That kind of searching definitely accounts for the jump in usage in my house. Or do most people have to search twice in any given situation to find an appropriate answer?

When I’m looking for a specific piece of information, I usually use Google first – so I would always recommend that as a first step. Even if the initial results list is unsuccessful, it usually provides some additional keywords that I can use to clarify my search. Browsing through an initial results list also gives me a better idea of what I DON’T want to see. Depending on what I find, I would then move on to the next step in my research – beyond Google.

Reference:

Quint, Barbara. 2006. Think like a searcher (Searcher’s Voice). Searcher Magazine 14(5).

http://www.eric.ed.gov/
http://www.nagc.org/
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/
http://giftedkids.about.com/
http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/pages/ed.gifted.html

After scanning numerous articles and book chapters with a variety of perspectives, I realized that many public school systems begin testing children for gifted programs in second or third grade, in spite of the fact that much of the professional literature advocates testing as early as ages five and six. Anecdotal evidence from teachers also seems to advocate early testing, particularly for girls. So I was pleased to learn that our elementary school takes a proactive approach by referring kindergartners for testing.

Another issue that is widely discussed by parents and the educational community is the purpose of gifted education. Is it to accommodate the profoundly gifted child who is obsessed with learning in one or two areas and is suffering in the regular classroom, as evidenced by behavior issues, poor grades in some areas, an inability to adjust to repetitive activities, etc.? Or is it to reward/enrich the education of the achieving/moderately gifted child who behaves well, gets straight A’s, and functions successfully in a regular classroom? Regardless of the goals of a particular program, it seems like most public school districts rely heavily on IQ and other achievement-type tests to identify gifted kids, and rely less so on subjective indicators such as teacher/parent input. As a result, the majority of kids who participate are the achieving/moderately gifted ones who behave well, etc.

Gifted programs in public school systems vary widely from one district to another. Even within a particular district, they seem heavily dependent on the particular teacher. In the past, I understand that some “gifted programs” used to be comprised solely of assigning an extra hour of homework a night of the same type of work that is given in the regular classroom. Just an extra hour of drudgery? Ugh – doesn’t sound like enrichment to me. These days, it seems that most gifted teachers are careful to not duplicate any work done in the regular classroom. However, parents who are evaluating the benefits of a specific gifted program should go and see the classroom in action.

After my scant few hours of reading, I didn’t find any substantive research that assesses the benefits of gifted programs on a large scale. However, my inclination at this point is that if my 6-year old daughter is accepted into her elementary gifted program for 1st grade, we’ll probably encourage her to participate.

I’ll post an update after we get the next set of results, which won’t be until the summer.
In the meantime, we’re enjoying my daughter’s latest developmental milestone – she lost her first tooth

She passed, and we’re expecting to hear from her teacher about the next step in the evaluation process. According to the school district web site, she will be referred to “the school psychologist for an individual psychological evaluation using the Stanford-Binet V, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fourth Edition, the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales, the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test, or similar test.”

The web site goes on to say, “According to the State of Florida criteria for gifted, students must score at least two standard deviations above the mean on the individually administered standardized test of intelligence. In addition, a student must demonstrate a majority of the characteristics of a gifted student according to a standard checklist and show a need for programming beyond the regular classroom.”

So what does all that mean?? What are the characteristics of a gifted student, what checklist do they go by, and how do they determine whether my daughter shows a “need for programming beyond the regular classroom?”

The school district website was not helpful at all. The gifted program falls within the Exceptional Student Education, which devotes the lion’s share of resources to students with disabilities. This makes sense because in our county, there are about 5,500 gifted students and more than 16,000 students with a wide range of disabilities and needs. However, it was a bit disheartening that the above quoted paragraph and links to a few teacher websites was the sum total of information available about the county’s gifted program.

I kept my attitude extremely low-key for the first assessment. I didn’t want to spook my daughter – even at her age, she has strong opinions about what is cool & I also didn’t want to give her performance anxiety. When she first started learning to write her name at age three, her teachers told me to have her begin her name with an uppercase letter and use lowercase letters for the rest of her name. While she was practicing one day, she printed a lower-case ‘e’ upside-down one time. I corrected her briefly in a matter-of-fact way, and tried to move on, but she boycotted little ‘e’ on the spot. She wrote her name with two capital letters and two lowercase letters for two months, until she started pre-kindergarten. The following summer, just before she started kindergarten, I bought several “I can read” books on a friend’s recommendation. I got her to try reading them exactly twice; as soon as she got the idea that I wanted her to read, instead of me reading to her (which I continued offer as well), she refused to sit and read with me for about three weeks, until school started. And although I am strict about my kids behaving, I don’t put pressure on my kids to perform academically, athletically, artistically, etc., and neither does my husband. We encourage them when they are working hard at something, we cheer them on if they do well, and we try to instill the idea that it is okay to make mistakes.

However, I’m starting to feel a bit anxious at the idea of an IQ test. What if she is gifted? Maybe all this sensitivity is the glaring sign of giftedness that we’ve been attributing to the fact that she’s a first-born girl. As parents, will we have to change our parenting approach to accommodate her needs? If so, how will it affect the rest of the family? What if she isn’t? Will she be disappointed? Is this a big deal or what?

When I was in school, I was evaluated for the gifted program, and passed. However, I was already in 7^th grade, and so I was only in a single gifted class for one year before I reached the end of the gifted offerings. It was an advanced economics class, and I didn’t do well. My mom asked me if I was interested in the academically-talented high school, but I was adamant that I wanted to go to the regular high school with my friends and not stand out in any way. I did pretty well in high school, but never developed solid study habits, and I mostly limited myself to subjects where I excelled without much effort. My husband (her dad) attended both middle school and high school at a county-wide school for academically talented students. He was evaluated prior to admission, and accepted, but his performance was pretty average throughout – he was part of the cool crowd in a school of geeks. And neither of us turned out to be rocket scientists.

As a result of our experiences, my goal as a parent is not to focus on my kids’ academic talent, but to focus more on the work ethic that she is developing. To that end, I’m trying desperately to keep my job to a maximum of about 30 hours a week so that I can pick the kids up from school every day (or most days) so that I can help with homework, get them involved in activities if they are interested, etc., through elementary school and possibly middle school. So far, both of my kids are happy to sit and do some schoolwork every day – at ages 6 and 4, they enjoy learning.

The only thing I know about the gifted program thus far is that gifted students are taken out of their regular classrooms one day a week for enrichment activities. So will the disruption be worth it? How can I evaluate such a program? How can I encourage my daughter to challenge herself without becoming one of those parents everyone loves to hate – the ones that are trying to re-live their own lives more successfully through their kids?

On the one hand, I am a librarian, and my tendency when an issue like this arises is to research it to death, then follow the directions of whatever source I decide is most authoritative. On the other hand, with parenting issues, it is often detrimental to read too much – I know from past experience that I will certainly find multiple sources of information that completely contradict one another, and then unless I find one strategy that seems to make sense to me, I’ll be left more torn than when I began. And in any case, six years of parenting have worn the sharp, anal corners of my personality down a little bit – just enough to be able to scan the latest parenting book, The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child: With No Pills, No Therapy, No Contest of Wills, note that they advocate a very specific, scientifically proven behavior modification strategy that includes me doing a lot of upfront work like making reward charts and buying little junky toys and candy (stuff I hate to buy!), and think, hmmmm, maybe my kids aren’t that defiant!!

I had planned to write a column that was informative, answering questions for potential readers. Instead, I’m ending with questions. However, the first step to finding information is to determine the appropriate questions. Far too many people flock to Google and type in extremely vague queries, only to be frustrated and uninformed after hours of searching. Initial Internet searches for information on gifted programs yielded mostly for-fee private psychology firms who provide a limited amount of teaser information, often in the form of Frequently Asked Questions. There is no good way to assess the reliability of this information aside from comparing it to lots of other sources of the same type of information. The next step for me will be to go back to my school district’s web site and find the state association of gifted programs. From there, I should be able to locate one or more subject portals with resource lists. Although portals are limited in scope, they are often vetted by people with at least a passing knowledge of the topic. I saw in passing an Exceptional Education glossary – that might help me to locate some keywords that I can use to search Google more effectively. Duke University has a substantial series of articles related to gifted children that I plan to review – large research universities are often a valuable source of reliable, free information. At this point, I’m not ready to commit $20 to the latest popular book on parenting the gifted child, scientific or not.

Of course, I’ll hopefully get additional information from her school as she goes through the process. Either way, I’ll get some answers