Storybook Quilts Rocks! » Raising children

Watermelon!

Nancy — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:04:45 +0000

In the Northeast, at least, this has been a very hot summer so far. What could be more appealing than a nice, cold slice of watermelon? And more nutritious? AND low in calories?

No wonder July is National Watermelon Month!

What do you know about this delicious treat?

Where they came from
Watermelons are thought to have come from the Kalahari Desert in Africa (down near the southern tip; mostly in Botswana).

This is an old favorite!
Watermelon seeds were found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. The Chinese were cultivating watermelons as early as the 9th century AD. The Moors, from northern Africa, introduced them to Europe (Spain) in the 13th century. The word “watermelon” was in English dictionaries as early as 1615.

When did watermelons arrive in the US?
Ah, there’s a debate about that. Some say the Spaniards brought them in the 1500s; others say watermelons arrived in the early 1600s, in New England.

Hey! What happened to the seeds?!
Good question! The full explanation is pretty technical, but the advantages include watermelons that are sweeter and have firmer flesh than the seeded varieties. We have Warren Barham to thank for this treat; he began working on a seedless variety in 1949.

Our big, long-loved seeded watermelons are becoming increasingly difficult to find: about 85% of watermelons grown now in the US are seedless. For a number of reasons, they are more profitable.

Watermelon seeds themselves still have a following. Spitting contests continue. And, roasted, they are a favorite snack in the Middle East. In the US, watermelon seed oil is used in baby formulations, creams, lotions, soaps, and eye creams.

How much watermelon do Americans eat?
Per capita fresh watermelon consumption in 2008 was 15.4 pounds. A round, seedless watermelon weights between 10 and 15 pounds – so, it’s really just a big one of those. Not enough, I’d say!

How are watermelons good for your health?
It’s amazing how healthy watermelons are. And how low in calories. A two- cup serving of diced watermelon (10 oz) only has about 80 calories, according to the National Watermelon Promotion Board. Watermelon is full of nutrition. Those same two cups have 20% of daily requirements for Vitamin A, 25% for Vitamin C and 7% for potassium. No fat, of course, but 8% of daily fiber requirements and even some calcium and iron!

Watermelon ranks first among fresh fruits and vegetables (beating out tomatoes) in lycopene content, a cancer fighting antioxidant.

Luna the Turtle’s watermelon
It’s no surprise that watermelon is full of water – 92% water – which is why Aunt Jen took some to the beach with Adia. And it was one thing Adia was very happy to see after Luna and Stitch rescued her from the pirates. Eating watermelon is a great way to stay hydrated on a hot day!

How Did You Learn to Bike?

Nancy — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:12:43 +0000

Do you remember your first bike? Was it a trike or a bike with training wheels? What color was it? Who taught you to ride on just two wheels? Did you teach your own children the same way? Where did you ride? Do you still ride?

Learning to ride a bike has to be one of the most thrilling experiences of childhood – well, after the falls are over. I remember my father holding the back of the seat to steady my blue two-wheeler as I wobbled down a dirt driveway. (I trusted him to keep me from falling – perhaps that trust is the serious lesson from learning to ride.) Then, suddenly, I could DO IT! And a whole new world opened up.

This is one experience that hasn’t changed much. Now we make sure our children are wearing helmets (a very good idea), but biking is pretty much the same. It still takes balance and two in-line wheels.

These websites include some great tips on teaching a child — or an adult! — to ride.
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/teachride.html
http://www.ibike.org/education/teaching-kids.htm#Mistakes
http://www.biketas.org.au/bikeed.php

Family biking can be a great way to share fun time together and to stay fit. Get really good at it and compete in mountain biking competitions, like my nephew and his family!

Tell us your experiences. It’s American Bike Month!

Rainy Days and Mondays

Nancy — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:09:06 +0000

It IS Monday — and rainy and grey and very, very green. It’s really quite beautiful to an adult, but not so much for a young child. Despite the myriad of electronic gadgets, children still experience that feeling of being trapped and being trapped often turns in to being whiny or cranky. Haven’t we all recited this chant to try to charm the rain away? (I used to think it was mean to wish rain on the children in Spain, which I thought was just a few miles down the road from our house in NYS.)

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY
Mother Goose

Rain, rain, go away,
Come again some other day,
Little Johnny wants to play.

Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never show your face again.

What can children do inside on such a day? Or what can Mom do with them? Here are a few suggestions.

• put on a show — sing, dance, or create a play (American Idol!)

• make up a story — each person adds a sentence

• make up a poem about the rain — or anything else

• draw pictures, or cut them from magazines, maybe to illustrate the story or poem

• take a walk in the rain!

• find pictures of flowers that will bloom after the rain

• bake cookies

• build a tent with blankets

• exercise, pretending to be in the Cirque de Soleil!

• get out paper and crayons and watch the magic appear

• play pet store with stuffed animals or grocery store with canned goods

• have a picnic on the floor and pretend it’s the beach — wear bathing suits!

• make paper airplanes

• read a book together

• cuddle up under a Storybook Quilt, read the adventure, and make up a new one!

Do you have a special way of passing a rainy day? We’d love to hear it.

6 Steps to Creating the Winning Story

Nancy — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:50:37 +0000

Time is speeding by! The April 21st deadline for the Tell a Story Contest is closing in. Have you started making up your story yet?

Below are the six steps that we use to write our stories. Maybe they will help you, too.

1. Give a name to the character you pick. It’s easier to make up a story about something that has a name.

2. Look at the pictures of the fabrics. Imagine your character talking to or having an adventure with what’s in the fabric. For example, let’s say the frog wins the jumping contest but ends up on the train by mistake and the train starts to move!

3. Pick more of the fabrics and do the same thing. For example, say the fairy grants the frog three wishes – what three fabrics would make a great story about that? (Now you’re up to five fabrics – you need at least seven, so only two more to go!)

4. Cut out the pictures of the fabrics you have chosen and arrange them in a line. Try to tell the story. Rearrange the pictures until you get a story you like.

5. Think of a fun ending – a surprise always is good or an ending that makes the listener wonder. At the end of our frog story, the listener has to decide whether Winnie the Frog was a really a frog — or a boy.

6. Stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself the story. Or tell someone else. Or have someone make a video. This is a great way to find out if you would like to change anything.

Then it’s up to you whether you want to enter the contest with a video or a written story.

Remember: Nothing has to be perfect; the idea is to use your imagination and have fun doing it!

The Grand Prize is a personalized Storybook Quilt or a $300 cash gift card; First Prize is a Storybook Quilt. We expect an adult to help with the story a bit and an adult must be the official contest entrant. Please see full contest information here.

Storytelling with Children and Chickens

Nancy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:10:15 +0000

This video won the Storytelling with Children Award for 2009. Show it to the child in your life — be spellbound by this silly, energetic, wonderfully told story that involves the audience.

Find more videos like this on Storytelling with Children

The Thrill of Storytelling

Nancy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:58:36 +0000

Have you ever listened to a really good storyteller – someone whose choice of words, twist of thought, lilt of voice and turn of body had you totally captivated? Perhaps the storyteller you remember was a grandparent or parent, or your pastor, or a teacher, or maybe your physician. Few of us realize how critical storytelling is to passing on information in a way that makes the information relevant and ensures that it sticks with us. It also can be just plain entertaining.

For children, storytelling can be critical for development. Think of little girls playing with dolls or boys with cars and trucks, for example. They tell stories to their playmates — or just to themselves — one after the other in endless variety. These stories help figure out how to deal with the world.

Storytelling has been a fascination for me since childhood. My father and uncles (one complete with pipe for the perfect pause effect) could turn an everyday event into a story that was totally enthralling, even to a young child. They delighted in this art and everyone who heard them did, too. The enjoyment of that was one motivation for creating Storybook Quilts.

Our new Storybook Quilts contest, set to begin on March 21st, is all about storytelling. More details appear below in our March 4th blog post and additional information will appear as we near the start date.

We also will be posting a series of blog articles here about storytelling – the renaissance of the art that has taken place, how children can become involved, and the value to us all.

So, come back here to visit us often! And start thinking now about which theme you might pick for your storytelling entry.

Read Across America Day: March 2nd

Nancy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:00:50 +0000

Reading. As adults, we take for granted the ability to read and what we learn from reading. Those of us who love books know that nothing is a better escape than a good one — reality flies away and we inhabit an entirely different world.

Reading, and literacy in general, is an essential component of everyday life. Anyone who’s traveled to a country where the language is unfamiliar is suddenly struck by the importance of reading.

Passing this skill and love of reading on to children is not just a good idea, it’s essential to their development. Brain cells are turned on when a toddler is read to; reading aloud to children is essential to the development of literacy; and learning to read English, a recent study showed, requires “a rich home literacy environment” and that reading “lots of books to children. . . is absolutely necessary.”

Reading the Luna the Turtle Storybook Quilt

So, just how much time should you spend reading to your child? The National Children’s Reading Foundation recommends 20 minutes a day.

A Storybook Quilt is a great way to achieve at least half the daily goal! Each story takes about 10-15 minutes to read; each also provides an additional opportunity for building language and visual skills by matching the events in the story to the fabrics in the quilt.

Oh — one last thing. Do you know why Read Across American is celebrated in March 2nd? Why, it’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday, of course!

Read, read, read!

As the World Turns – Too Fast!

Nancy — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:21:13 +0000

Has your 2010 begun like mine – full speed ahead? For many of us, it’s been a jolt back into days in which every minute is consumed by an obligation. This isn’t good, for adults or for children.

Our minds need to get off the Merry Go Round. We all need to make a point of scheduling in quiet time. This can be any number of things. For an adult, it might be reading, sewing or needlework, playing the piano, listening to soothing music, waxing the car, praying or meditating, light gardening, walking – just about any activity that requires focus and/or slow and methodical action.

Schedule quiet time

For children, quiet time is even more important than it is for adults. The whirl of activity in which they are engaged is more extensive than ever, with organized activities of one kind or another taking a huge chunk of a child’s day. Quiet time can easily get lost. Unstructured time alone — daily, not just once in a while — helps children learn self-reliance, enhances their abilities to make decisions, encourages independent thought, and fosters their imaginations. (Quiet time does not include outside stimulation, such as electronic games, DVDs or television.) Some parents say that quiet time makes their children both more thoughtful and more adaptive.

Adia and Luna the Turtle

Quiet time doesn’t necessarily mean idle time. Play is an important part of a child’s quiet time. Parents and grandparents can help by ensuring children have ready access to the right “tools” – a Storybook Quilt, for example. Making up a new story based on a Storybook Quilt would be a great way to spend quiet time – the fabrics in the quilt enhance an appreciation of color and making up a new story builds imagination. It’s also something the child can share, if he or she choses, when quiet time is over.

To see all our themes, visit our website at www.storybookquilts.biz

Childhood Gifts: Treasures for a Lifetime

Nancy — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:32:42 +0000

Unless some disaster has befallen them, I suspect all of us have one or two gift treasures from childhood – an old toy train, maybe, or part of one; a doll, which may have “features” that were added purposely or by mistake; a teddy bear or other stuffed animal that is hug-worn; maybe even a surviving blanky.

What’s your childhood gift treasure?

My favorite gift treasure is a doll I received for my second birthday from my Great-Aunt Brownie and which I named, appropriately enough, “Happy Birthday.” She has been with me through thick and thin, for more decades than I care to admit, and never has lost her ability to comfort.

Happy got a little tattered after three or four years. My grandmother, a seamstress, took her away to make her a new body. I was bereft! When she came back, though, she was even more precious because she had been “remade” by Grandma. She also returned in a fancy new dress, which she wears now.

This lifelong connection is the idea behind Storybook Quilts. These are special gifts, each one as individual and customized as the buyer cares to make it. Most customers order an
embroidered square with a message from them to the child for whom it is intended. And most also opt for a special message and a photograph, printed in the book.

Combining the quilt with a matching adventure story ensures that the child who loves this quilt will have strong ties to those with whom it was shared. Imagine looking at that quilt when times are tough – at any age! – and remembering sitting on the lap of a parent or grandparent covered with the quilt and listening to the story being read. What a wonderful lifelong comfort that can be!

Amos the Bear quilt with storybook

The Storybook Quilts are available in eight themes, with more in development. For details, visit us at www.storybookquilts.biz

How would you customize your Storybook Quilt?

A-maze-ing Facts

Nancy — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:40:06 +0000

Here in the Northeast the hummingbirds are fattening up for their long flight south, (did you know they fly alone all the way to Central America and across the Gulf of Mexico in one go?!), the mums are coming into bloom, baseball is reaching its peak, and the corn fields are disappearing into winter storage silos. But not all the corn fields — some are becoming corn mazes, at least for a little while.

One of our Storybook Quilts features a corn maze: Lost in a Maze: Zach and Max the Dog Visit the Farm. When we designed that quilt, we got interested in them and did some research. Here are a few things we learned.

Where did corn mazes originate?

Well, there might be a battle about this, but the first corn mazes probably were in England. This is not a surprise, really, since mazes of other kinds have been common there for centuries. Kings, queens and other royalty loved the challenge of finding the path through the maze.

The British call theirs “maize mazes,” maze being the British word for corn and corn being what they call wheat. Confusing!

Where was the first corn maze in the US?

The first “modern” corn maze in America was created in 1993 for Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, and won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Where is the largest corn maze?

It’s in Dixon, California, and is 43 acres. Click here for the Cool Patch Pumpkins website. Sure looks like fun!

How many corn mazes are there in the US each year?

Keeping an exact count is difficult, but estimates are 800 or more. This is up from maybe 50-100 a decade ago.

Who designs the corn mazes?

Depends. Some farmers design their own. Several companies now design corn mazes professionally. The advent of the GPS has made it much easier to follow a pattern when cutting the maze. In our Storybook Quilt story, Zach’s uncle designed the maze himself.

How long does it take to go through a maze?

Anywhere from 20 minutes to over 2 hours, depending on the size and complexity of the maze. In our story, Zach and his dog are in there, really lost, for hours while his aunt and uncle search for him.

Is there more to a maze than just paths?

Oh, yes! Mazes often include puzzles and games, even food stations in case it takes a really long time to solve the maze. The one in Dixon has a Starbuck’s!

Farmers often also offer hayrides at the site, sell pumpkins and may have a petting zoo.

I’m excited! Where can I find the nearest maze?

Every State has mazes. Local newspapers usually publish a list this time of year. The websites we found that may be helpful include: The Corn Maze Directory, Corn Maze American, the Corn Mazing Directory, and The MAiZE. Some of these sites have wonderful pictures of the mazes from the air.

What’s the number one rule for a visit to a corn maze?

Always come out with as many kids as you had when you went in!

Number 2 is never, never follow your Dalmation puppy as he chases a wily old barn cat into a corn maze — as Zach finds out in our story!