language Archives — Thrifty Mommas Tips

My Winter Parts of Speech Book for Kids

Paula — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 16:00:00 +0000

This Winter themed Parts of Speech Booklet is a great tool to help nurture a love of reading and writing. Post may contain affiliate links as a service to readers. I receive a small commission when someone purchases via one of these links. Grammar and spelling are quite simply two of my favourite things. Words are my currency and my happy place. They are forever building stories, erecting houses and crafting characters in my head. Sometimes they trickle out onto the page and here on the blog. Parts of speech and words are the building blocks of communication, no matter what age you are and what occupation you have. Understanding communication – words and the power of combinations of words – can create kindness, empathy and joy, or alternatively it can generate hostility, anger and divisiveness. How we speak and communicate in person and on the page speaks volumes about us. Parts of Speech As a child, I lived for storytelling and language arts at school. Those early lessons on nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs sung to me. Maybe a little bit literally, actually. Remember that Schoolhouse Rocks conjunction junction ad they used to run on TV? LOL. Easy Tools to Build Language Anyways, I know you and your kids are both looking for more activities to fill spare time and also to supplement at home remote learning. So, hopefully, this cute Winter Parts of Speech Book fits the ticket. If you are also looking for something to get them inspired to write, then here’s my Magician inspired writing prompt. Here’s how to get this cute educational printable for your kids. Don’t forget to stock up on pencils and other items needed. Don’t Miss These Free Activities Too Remember to visit my free printables board if you need help looking for free activities for your kids to do. For a high quality print out of the life cycle content do not miss this downloadable Bee Life Cycle activity and the Alligator Life Cycle Kit is extremely popular over on Pinterest. Winter Activity Book I also have a Winter Activity Book here for you! Print this Winter Parts of Speech Booklet Out Just click and collect below. LOL. Happy Winter! Stay Warm and Get Outside to Explore!

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What’s in a Word? You May Not Call Me Mommy Blogger

Paula — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 18:13:39 +0000

I apologize in advance for this small rant of mine. It is a little thing. An issue that is just nagging at the back of my brain like a itch begging for a scratch and so I clearly have to scratch it today, right now. This itch is a bit about me, but more so about business and professionalism and the spaces in which we use words to define us and label us. See right now, this itchy thing is threatening to become a full blown rash and I swear I know full well that is TMI and way more than you needed to know dear reader, but I can’t. I cannot. I really can’t ignore a moment longer. The itch started when I saw the word Mommy Bloggers this week written on a brand campaign many have seen by now and it’s distracting me from my job today. What’s in a phrase? Or a word? Or a term? Well, a lot actually. Words can build us up or tear us down. There are many words I cringe at and will not use. There are some I reframe and use as little springboards to launch into a learning moment. The R word contains some history and cruelty and I reject it. It demeans people with disabilities and differences. I wish that word had never existed. My kids know my feelings on the R word and they have a unique insight into why I don’t use that word here. In this safe space, everyone has abilities and differences and nobody should be put down or made to feel less than someone else. Together, when we hear someone use the R word as slang and we are out in public, we sometimes rephrase – “do you mean to say X?” Or we remind each other afterwards why we don’t use that word. It is mean and hurtful. There are other racially charged words we each know never to use in this house. What does any of that have to do with Mommy Bloggers as a term? Well, I think we can all agree words have meaning. They are our basic units of communication. They are also how I build stories and make a living. Words are how we tell someone No or Stop. Words can be weapons. They can be powerful or weak, meaningful, or insignificant, small bridges between other words. They are hopeful balloons in our chest radiating feelings. Alternatively sometimes words are our anchors. They are beautiful and sad, heavy and light. They are flowery sometimes when we are painting a romance and tender, we hope, when we recognize love. They are abusive too often, misused at times and even clumsy. Words are hopeful, helpful, wise and unwise. They convey accents, sometimes ancestry and sometimes social status and education. I am not judging anyone who doesn’t care about labels or words. I do. I care a lot about words. I have deep respect for bloggers. I am a blogger. But when I hear the term Mommy Blogger lately I get irritated and itchy. I tried it on a few times today and wondered why it bothers me so suddenly. I never used to really pay attention to it or care. And yet today I find myself holding the term up and turning it over in my hand like a book. If you as a blogger identify yourself as that and own the label as something you are comfortable with that is your business. But this is my take: To me, the term Mommy Bloggers is patronizing. It is used by a public relations professional or a marketing person or business person to keep women bloggers in a tidy little box. It is cutesy, a bit overly familiar and unprofessional in tone. Mommy is what I am to my kids and I fought hard to become that and they can call me Mom, Mommy, Mama, or Momma. It is their word and in their context I become that word. Mommy belongs to them. But in the context of what is a professional relationship as a writer, a marketing consultant, an editor, photographer, reviewer, influencer, chef, stylist, publisher and business person, I am not a Mommy anything. And in fact today this is my litmus test of whether this is an okay term: when was the last time you heard someone refer to Daddy bloggers? It’s Dad bloggers, or bloggers when men are concerned. I bring to writing and all things job related my experience as a Mom, but I am a writer, a marketer, a consultant, editor. You can call me Paula, you can call me journalist, writer, blogger, business person or perhaps even friend. You may address me by name. YOU may not call me mommy blogger. What are your thoughts? Is this just semantics or does the phrase mommy bloggers matter?

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Giving Your Child The Gift of a Second Language: Guest Post

Paula — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:53:00 +0000

In the evolving and sometimes depressed current economy it’s hard for parents not to worry about their child’s future. What will jobs look like 10, 20, even 30 years from now? What are the best ways to nurture creativity and resilience? How do you give your child a competitive edge? One of the greatest tools for children is language. Acquiring a second language early on makes a lot of sense. It is unlikely that the economy will stay terrible forever – but if current trends continue, children are likely to enter a cut-throat workforce. A good education is crucial in preparing children for survival in that economic jungle of the future. The existence of a diverse, global society seems to be a trend that is going to stick. This is clear in both the U.S. and Canada. The “melting pot” has been an interesting theory, but has not happened in practice. On the contrary, most major population centers in both countries have become more of an ethnic and linguistic checkerboard; Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese and Chinese speakers represent some of the fastest-growing segments of the immigrant U.S. population. French is the official second language of Canada and, while enrollment is on a steady decline at home schools throughout Ontario, French immersion has experienced constant growth. Wisdom, traditionally, has been to start teaching a second language in middle school, or even high school. However, numerous studies clearly demonstrate that the optimal period in a child’s life for multilingual education is during the preschool years – at exactly the same time they are learning their first language. Yes, it is possible to learn a second and third language later in life, but it is more difficult, because that neurological “window of opportunity” – when the brain is most malleable – has passed. Dr. Fred Genessee, Professor of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal believes it’s as easy for young children to learn two or three languages as it is for them to learn one. He’s not alone; educators throughout the world (in countries that often have two or even three official languages) have understood this for decades. The optimum way for a child to learn a second language is by actually speaking it in a total immersion environment. You may recall an episode of the animated series The Simpsons in which young Bart gets trapped on a farm in France – and by the end of the episode, finds he’s actually speaking the language. While this was a fictional scenario, the phenomenon is real; anyone who has taken young children abroad to stay with relatives in a foreign country for any length of time has observed this happening. Enrollment in a preschool program that offers immersion in other languages is the best way to get your child started. This investment will make him/her much more competitive in the job market later on. Co-written by Emily Patterson and Kathleen Thomas Emily and Kathleen are Communications Coordinators for the Atlanta day care facility, a member of the AdvancED® accredited family of Primrose Schools (located in 16 states throughout the U.S.) and part of the network of day care preschools delivering progressive, early childhood, Balanced Learning® curriculum.

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Why Parts Language is Not Okay

Paula — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:20:00 +0000

(This is the second installment of my NACAC inspired blog series running this week) It was easily two years ago when I first brought this issue up in a parent’s meeting at a school one of my daughters attended. Back then it was common parenting practice to say to a child: “I love you, but I don’t like your behaviour right now.” They call it ‘parts language’ now, but there was no term for it back then when it was standard practice. I had been guilty of using this phrase more than a few times and yet what I had observed after several months of this was that it simply reinforced black and white thinking in my child’s mind. Good, bad, black, white all or nothing. Harder for children to see there are often shades of grey. Worse than that, it seemed to make my child feel badly about herself and so on my own I stopped using this. Self esteem can be an issue for any child. But for those who are adopted or in foster care, their earliest experiences are often traumatic and lifelong struggles with self image, self esteem, identity, grief and loss are already present. These children and youth are frankly just more sensitive to further insult. I asked an expert, a well known psychology professor, lecturing one evening to our group of parents. I noted then that I did not feel either of my children could separate the “bad behaviour” from “I am bad.” Furthermore my children, both adopted as infants, coming from a background where trauma and abandonment was one of their earliest preverbal experiences, always took it to mean: “I knew it all along I am a bad kid.” The psychology professor was dismissive and assured me that all children could in fact separate these two ideas. And yet I had seen this in action making children feel worse than they needed to feel. Don’t Take My Word for It Last week at the NACAC conference Deena McMahon, a renowned trauma therapist, and remarkable speaker of McMahon Counselling Services and Consultation Services in Minnesota, confirmed my experience and discussed why parts language is not okay for children. It is essentially they same thing as saying to an adult: “I really like your outfit, but what happened to your hair?” McMahon noted the only piece of that phrase anyone is likely to hear is the negative bit about the hair. So What Do You Say Instead? Much better choices are aimed at building capacity together. Instead choosing phrases like: “We are going to figure out what to do about that nasty language problem. That language problem, it is getting us in trouble. Let’s work on that together.” So Dear adoptive parents and others who read this blog: Let’s work on this together. Finger pointing and direct confrontation. You statements. Time outs and grounding. These things are getting us in trouble. These things are making our children feel bad about themselves. They are diminishing them, causing them to question their self esteeem and in turn diminishing our relationships with them, so what are we going to do about this together?

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