Every adult should know everything on foodsafety.gov, but a lot of us don’t–it’s a one-stop site for information on food shelf-life, tips on checking for cooking doneness, news about food recalls, as well as basic food handling rules (i.e., separating cooked and raw foods, how to safely pack a school lunch, etc.).
Mark your calendars–this Labor Day, Monday, 9/7, our friends at PBS KIDS and the Jim Henson Company are launching a brand new show!
Dinosaur Train is about an orphaned toddler T-Rex named Buddy who is taken in by a family of Pteranodons. Buddy and his newfound family ride the Dinosaur Train to different prehistoric eras where they learn about their dinosaur heritage. This great new show will center on themes of family, tolerance, history, and of course, plenty of dinosaurs and trains!
If you’ve been to Speakaboos.com this week you’ve seen all the new dinosaur-related activities we’re rolling out to celebrate, including:
- A sneak preview of Dinosaur Train
- “What Dinosaur Are You?” interactive game widget
- Dinosaur “Memory Match” game
- Dinosaur “Quiz Whiz” trivia game
- Make your own dinosaur mask print-out (pdf download)
Fox News is running a “no, duh” photo essay of ways to avoid swine flu that is so obvious, it almost feels exploitative. Still, it’s definitely important to remember these basic health tenets that, swine flu or no swine flu, will help you avoid illness:
- Wash hands often for at least 20 seconds
- Cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing
- Avoid touching your face or eyes unless your hands have been washed
- Clean household and office surfaces often
- Eat a balanced diet and foods with vitamin C
- Stay home and contact your doctor if you are feeling ill
- Remind your children to maintain healthy habits
Simple, right? If you still feel compelled to see the photo essay click here.
Kolcraft is recalling their Travelin’ Tot play yard series, as well as yards sold under the brands Carter’s, Sesame Beginnings, Jeep, Care Bear, Contours and Eric Carle. The play yard’s side rail can fail to latch properly, causing the yard to collapse unexpectedly. See the recall notice here to check if your model is affected, and contact Kolcraft at www.kolcraft.com for a free repair kit.
A new student loan repayment plan for federal student loans called Income Based Repayment (IBR) went into effect this month. To sum up, the plan, instituted by the federal government, will help some borrowers by reducing their required monthly payments to under 15% of their income.
So if you currently have a student loan payment that is higher than you can afford to pay with your income, this plan will help you. However, IBR doesn’t reduce the amount of interest you owe, so the longer you take to repay your loan, the more interest you will accrue. If you are already comfortably able to make your loan payments, it is probably a good idea to continue paying as much as you can–the faster you pay off your loan, the less interest you will be charged.
One interesting part about IBR is if you make IBR payments for 25 years, your remaining debt (most of which would be due to interest at this point) will be forgiven. And if you work in a public service or non-profit job, you only have to pay for 10 years. However, this plan only applies to federal loans and you’ll have to do extra paperwork, not to mention it’s still a LONG time to be making payments.
For more details and information see this website, and contact your lender to sign up for the plan.
This is one of the weirder product recalls we’ve seen, but you can never be too safe! Macy’s is voluntarily recalling 33,000 boys’ and girls’ hooded sweatshirts, in small and medium sizes, from the brands Epic Threads and Greendog, sold between July 2008 and March 2009.
Apparently the drawstring poses a strangulation risk, though no injuries have been reported. Customers are advised to remove the drawstring, or return the product to Macy’s for a full refund. For more information, call Macy’s at (888) 257-5949
Most parents will quickly attest to the way TV’s captivating glow draws their kids in. While much has been made over the possible negative effects of too much TV time, especially for kids under 2, perhaps many are overlooking the more tangible physical dangers of TV–a new study in the medical journal Clinical Pediatrics suggests that too many parents are underestimating their kids’ strength and ability to pull a TV off its shelf.
The study concludes that the amount of injuries from furniture tip-over is on the rise, and TV, with all of its powerful allure, is the number one culprit. Download a pdf of the study here, but not before making sure all of your tip-able furniture is securely tied or bolted in place!
Misinformation about swine flu is rampant, as evidenced by the widespread, unjustified bans on pork products.
CNN.com has a great FAQ that answers the most common questions about swine flu, where it comes from, and how it is transmitted (hint: not from eating pork).
Here’s a great video of the President reading the popular Maurice Sendak book to a group of kids at a White House Easter celebration. Could there be a better commercial for the upcoming film adaptation?
Occasionally at Speakaboos we get a few complaints from people who object to the “violent” or “scary” content of some of our stories (the trials and tribulations of “Little Red Riding Hood” are well-known and well-documented). And yes, I would agree that a story like our original “Billy and the Witch” (it features a witch and a very, very mean cat) is probably not for every 3-5 year old.
But an article by Liza Featherstone on Babble.com this week questioned whether or not modern kids’ media tries too hard to protect young children from violent, scary or sad stories.
The article argues that parents (and children’s media) today are far more concerned than parents of yesteryear about “messing up” their kids, and this concern has led to the proliferation of more nice, safe, uncontroversial books and stories, and also the re-envisioning of many well-known stories.
I tend to agree with Featherstone’s well-researched argument that a little bit of violence or negative emotion is not going to ruin a child. After all, just because many of us can remember the scene where Bambi’s mother dies as a traumatic experience does not mean that we are any worse off because of it.
Of course, the majority of stories on Speakaboos.com are nice, fun, happy, and pretty much very safe and sanitary. And we love the fact that Arthur has become so popular simply by featuring stories that relate to everyday life.
However, we are dedicated to featuring a wide variety of stories, both old and new, happy and sad, for caretakers to choose from.
At Speakaboos we believe that kids should learn that a story is just a story, and hopefully learn to appreciate it as such.
Featherstone writes about how she told her 3-year old son Ivan a version of “The Three Little Pigs” where nobody dies, but he prefers the 1988 Golden Books version with a body count of three. What’s great about this isn’t that kids enjoy violence or scariness, but rather, that now Ivan knows that there is more than one way to tell a story.
So the moral of the story is, a little bit of scariness or violence isn’t going to mess up your child, especially if it helps your child understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
With that in mind, if you think your child can handle a little bit of unpleasantness, feel free to enjoy Tim Daly’s reading of “Little Red Riding Hood,” where the big bad wolf gets cut open with a pair of scissors, or Mark Thompson’s version of Oscar Wilde’s heartbreaking story “The Nightingale and the Rose” (spoiler alert: the nightingale dies at the end), or our upcoming release of Judy Tenuta’s retelling of “The Three Little Pigs” (spoilers: pigs die, and it’s hilarious!).
