Archive for December, 2009
Healthy Eating for the Kids—Easy Tips
It all starts with some planning. It’s best to create a menu for the week with healthy recipes that take thirty minutes or less to prepare, unless you know you’ll have more time available for cooking. There are many easy, healthy recipes available online which you can prepare in a snap.
Homemade cooking is the best way to ensure the family will be eating right. Even healthier TV dinners can be packed with sodium. When you prepare your own food, you are in control of it. You can add powerful nutrients by throwing in some wheat germ oil, rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, low-fat instead of regular cheese, or whatever you’ d like.
When you go grocery shopping, I recommend that you leave the kids at home. If you do have to take the kids along with you while you go shop, make sure everybody eats a big, filling meal first. One of the most important steps in improving your kids’ diets is keeping the house full of healthy foods instead; remember, your kids can’t binge on junk food at home if you don’t have any.
Prepare snacks ahead of time for the week, keeping them in high-quality storage containers. Your kids can grab from these ready-made snacks, such as celery and almond butter, when they start to get hungry. Eventually, you’ll be sure to find tons of good-for-them goodies that you’ll both approve of.
Finally, get the kids involved in healthy cooking. Studies show that children who participate in household chores, such as cooking and making their own lunches, grow up with a better sense of self and end up more successful than less helpful or involved children. Kids of all ages will be able to find some way to help with the cooking, and they will love to be included.
Literacy Statistics Need To Be Confronted by Parents
First, the most important thing you can do to ensure the literacy of your own child is being involved. Research on the effects of parental involvement shows a consistent, positive relationship between parents’ participation in their children’s education and their children’s academic performance.
Reading to children and also homeschooling are a couple of ways for parents to increase their involvement and improve their children’s ability to read. Reading to children should be done as early as six months of age, as soon as babies develop an interest in the pictures and illustrations in books. Keep in mind that every child has a different attention span.
You can volunteer at libraries and schools, in already-established programs or programs of your own, by reading to children the books they cherish and by helping them to read these books on their own. Even just an hour or two a week of your time can go a long way in helping improve the literacy of children in your own community.
In the end, there should be a long-term solution to the literacy problem implemented in our schools, but there’s no sense in waiting on the sidelines and expecting your local schools to take care of the problem. In the meantime, be proactive and raise awareness. With your efforts and the efforts of those around you, the literacy situation will be confronted. However, without your help, this victory over illiteracy is not guaranteed.
Speaking Out about Parental Involvement
Parents often ask me how to make their own family more like Jimmy’s in Danny Meets Jimmy. One answer is being actively involved in their children’s education and lives. Research on the effects of parental involvement shows a consistent, positive relationship between parents’ participation in their children’s education and their children’s academic performance. Studies show also that parental involvement is associated with lower dropout and truancy rates. There is no question anymore that parental involvement positively impacts the education of children.
Parents often ask my how they can increase their involvement. If their children attend school outside the home, they should make sure to meet their children’s teachers and stay actively connected to them with notes to and from school. A lot of teachers use e-mail these days to stay in touch with parents as well. There are a number of creative ideas for being involved with children, for example cooking with one’s children. These are just a couple of examples of the many ways parents can become more involved in their children’s lives.
Illustrating Your Children’s Book
As a children’s author, I’m often pleased to find that I’ve inspired children and adults to write children’s stories of their own. One of the most important components of an illustrated book is, of course, its illustrations. Most children’s books offer several delightful illustrations. I spent an entire year searching for the perfect illustrator for Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy. I had an exact vision of what I was looking for, and chances are so do you. Don’t compromise your vision, but continue to search for the right illustrations and pictures for your kids story. I recommend communicating as exactly as possible what you’re looking for. I also recommend bold colors and shapes, which children tend to adore in their favorite illustrated kids books.
Library Visits with the Kids—Some Helpful Tips
There’s nothing like good, old-fashioned visits to the library to get your kids interested in reading and encouraging them to become avid readers themselves.
You can start bringing your children to the library as early as infancy—around six months of age, or when they start to become interested in looking at the pictures in books. Make sure your baby is well-fed and well-rested before your trip so he’ll be able to enjoy himself and you’ll find it easy to keep his attention on the books you’ll show him. For infants and toddlers who are still interested in putting any and all objects in their mouths, board books are thick and strong enough to sustain the chewing and saliva of your baby’s mouth. Spend some time reading to your baby in the library and walk your baby around to look at all the books.
Libraries these days tend to allow you to check out a very large number of books. Our local library lets us check out fifty books at a time! Bring a colorful, fun bag to carry the books home with that you check out. Since many other babies have touched and put their mouths on the board books you’ve checked out, when you get home, take some organic, baby-friendly sanitizing wipes and wipe the books down. Then, read often to your baby from the selection of books you’ve bought.
As for older children, take them to the library when they’re also well-fed and well-rested so that they don’t get cranky. Show them your own favorite children’s books and let them pick out books that they’re interested in, too. You can take turns reading to them and having them read to you. Have them check out a pre-determined number of books and enjoy them with your child during story time before bed or any other time you want to read with them at home.
Each child has a different attention span. Never force a child to read or listen when they don’t want to. Oftentimes you’ll find that they’re tired or hungry, and you yourself don’t like doing things when you’re tired or hungry either, do you? Letting a child read and be read to on his own determinism helps him to have a positive association with reading.
Make sure to check out a book or two yourself, and read it between library trips and finishing it before you return it. This will set a positive example for your children to follow.
With the above tips, you’ll be on your way to raising children who are avid, proficient readers with a bright future ahead of them, while establishing a family tradition everyone will be talking about for years to come!
What Makes Good Children’s Literature—Some Helpful Tips
As a children’s author, I’m often pleased to find that I’ve inspired children and adults to write children’s stories of their own. A question they wonder is what exactly makes a good children’s book. Whether you’re a children’s author, illustrator, parent who reads to your child, or someone who is shopping for a children’s book to give to a cherished child, it’s important to know the components of a good children’s literature. This question perhaps can’t be easily answered, as delightful children’s books come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties, but it’s worth taking a look at it.
Even before I became the mother of three children, I had a profound interest in children’s books and at the age of sixteen began writing kids books of my own. There was something that drew me to the magical storybooks which I grew to love as a child but never grew to forget as I got older. Finally, after my children were grown, I decided to turn a lifelong dream into reality as I decided to write a story that I would publish. It was a story about a dragon named Danny and his adventures with his little companion, Skipper, and it was called Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy, the first book of an entire series, which even includes a soon-to-be-released Danny the Dragon Cookbook. As I wrote the story, I grew to understand what makes a children’s story truly enchanting for its readers—the young and young at heart alike.
In the end, enduring children’s literature can’t be replicated according to any formula, although points such as a charming protagonist, unique, rhythmic language, and bold, colorful illustrations, will always remain important. Whether a children’s story truly captivates the imaginations of children and adults alike, ultimately depends upon a quality that is perhaps as elusive and magical as the imagination itself.
Danny the Dragon Reaches Out To 2,500 Book Stores Nationwide!
Thank you SIBA for an outstanding job in helping Danny the Dragon reach out to so many book store owners!
Company: Imagination Publishing Group
Category: Children’s picture book – fiction
Offered: Free Promotional Materials
Danny the Dragon- BEST Children’s Picture Book of 2009- nominee
The first book in the HIT children’s series Danny the Dragon by multi award-winning author Tina Turbin has become an international sensation!
Filled with vivid illustrations and a captivating storyline, this delightful tale, chronicling the adventures of a traveling dragon named Danny, leaves all readers with a smile, while ever so subtly highlighting manners, positive social interactions and sharing, in a fun, creative, kid-friendly way.
Hailed by the “Midwest Book Review” Children’s Bookwatch as having “…definite attraction and value for children ages 4-8, all of whom will undoubtedly beg for the sequel and more tales of Danny the Dragon; by authors, including such notables as Judy Blume, school principals, teachers, mothers, Celebrities and literature specialists as being “a gentle story” and “such a delight”; “a wonderful book to read to children”; and a book that is “…accompanied by really beautiful drawings which will sparkle the imagination.”
BOOST Holiday Sales AND be prepared for “Dragon Appreciation Day” on Jan 16th
FIRST 100 booksellers to reply will receive:
1. FREE publicity and promotion of your bookstore via the Imagination Publishing Group network of websites, with a targeted audience of more than 100,000. 2. FREE promotional materials to provide to your customers and to decorate your store: Danny the Dragon themed pencils, bookmarks, door hangers and stickers.
Reply to info@DannyTheDragon.com to take advantage of the above LIMITED TIME offer!
Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy
AVAILABLE THROUGH BAKER AND TAYLOR: http://is.gd/4N7ts
Paperback: 978-0-9800-721-0-5 – retail $8.95
Hardcover: 978-0-9800-721-1-2 - retail $18.95
This page can be seen on SIBA website at- scroll down to see Danny the Dragon http://www.sibaweb.com/creative.html
Tina Turbin
Danny The Dragon- 2nd Place Winner
The news is in! Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy took 2nd place in Children’s Literature in the Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest of 2009. We are absolutely delighted with the results and are looking forward to yet even more awards and accolades for Danny.
I am thrilled to have been in this contest, become a nominee and now a winner. To receive 2nd place in the category of Children’s Literature is my honor as a children’s author.
Thank you Everyone! Tina Turbin
Danny the Dragon Supports Education for the Deaf
As an active literacy advocate, I do as much as I can to get kids reading to revert the literacy statistic of this country. However, it wasn’t until recently that I became aware of another alarming statistic—the literacy rate among deaf children.
The average deaf child is diagnosed at two or three years of age for hearing loss. This means that there is a good chance that his language development has been severely affected, as the child may have been missing large portions of spoken language, if not all auditory experience, that hearing children get from birth. What’s worse, the demand for academic achievement among deaf children is lower than for other children, resulting in learning and home environments which aren’t as focused on reading. With an upbringing that doesn’t emphasize language and literature, it is difficult to expect deaf children to perform at the same analytic and linguistic levels as other children.
That’s why I have created the signed reading of Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy DVD, all the profits for which are going to supporting the amazing school I visited, Blossom Montessori. Its Montessori education encourages imagination and allows for real-life applications of subjects learned in the classroom. By supporting schools such as Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf, I know I am truly contributing toward reverting the deaf literacy statistic and enriching the lives of many bright children.
Florida Association of Partners in Education – MEMBER
Author Tina Turbin
FAPE member Tina Turbin is an award-winning children’s author, writer, researcher, humanitarian and mother. Working for many years with children in the entertainment business, Tina advocates for children, families and women’s issues with research into children’s literacy, children’s allergies, celiac disease, gluten-free foods and nutrition as a way to improve the quality of lives and health for others.
Her approach in garnering awareness on these important topics comes from her position as a humanitarian, and a professional, and one who lives a gluten-free lifestyle, while utilizing her educational videos, books and storybook characters to share the educational aspect with children
Tina is a recipient of 2 prestigious literary awards for her book Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy: 2nd place winner for Children’s Literature in the Arizona Literary Contest and Book Awards of 2009 and Award-winning finalist in the National Best Books Awards of 2009 to be announced at BookExpo America (BEA) 2010.
Tina resides in St.Petersburg Florida as well as Los Angeles, California and is available for volunteer activities in the surrounding districts. (http://TinaTurbin.com)
