10 Best Apps for Paranoid Parents

Are you a hover mom who needs to know where your child is at all times? We've found the apps (including ones with GPS tracking) that will give any parent more peace of mind.

Here are 10 apps that will help parents feel better about letting their children be more independent.

Reading and Parent Involvement are Critical to Stu...

Reading and Parent Involvement are Critical to Stu...: Here is an interesting excerpt from an article I read recently. While I don't agree with all of the article, I do agree that reading to...

Helping Kids Deal with Embarrassment

If your child gets embarrassed easily, you can help him deal with his awkward feelings.

While feeling embarrassed can be a positive sign (it indicates the development of personal standards), a kid needs to learn how to cope. 

Here is a guide to get your red-cheeked child back into the comfort zone.

Is Your Child An Innovator?

You can encourage innovative thinking by letting your child take the lead.

Check out this article on how to help your child become a trailblazer by inspiring creativity.

Whine? NOT! Four Ways to Put an End to Whining.

Whining is totally normal. Virtually all kids become pros at the shrill mewling that serves as a desperate plea for something (usually an item they know they can't have) and yet also expresses a feeling of powerlessness that crying or talking doesn't. Three- and 4-year- olds whine frequently because they have big expectations and desires, but don't always get their way or have the ability to do the task at hand.


Click here for some expert advice on how to silence the whiner.

Pin of the Week

Check out these excellent ideas for developing fine motor skills!

Follow our Parenting Young Children Pinterest board for learning and behavior activities designed especially for children 5 and under.

Building Block #1 for Early Reading

Reading is one of the most important foundational building blocks of learning. Set your kid up for success in and out of the classroom with these helpful printables.

A new building block will be featured each week.

Sync Up with C-FB ISD!

We provide many ways to get information about the district.  Follow us and get connected with all the GREAT things happening in C-FB ISD!

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www.cfbisd.edu/connected
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Pin of the Week

Ever wonder if your child is on track?  Find out here.

Tips For Building a Balanced Brain

source:  brainy-child.com

Left brain exercises are some of the best tools available to balance brain functions and boost dual brain lobe working. The left brain side indicates that the child is endowed with an ability that improves analytical abilities and enhances memory retention and recall. To enhance left brain activities, you may need to do the following:

• Boost logical reasoning
• Step by step problem processing

To help refine these abilities, there are several exercises and tools available for parents. All of them involve two approaches both of which mandatory to ensure proper results. These two approaches are as follows:

• Conditioning and
• Action

Before learning more about these two approaches, parents may need to learn some more information about left brain lobe enhancement. Left brain activities are very critical for academic success and achievements. Academics need better memory, deductive reasoning and learning through problem solving. The left brain lobe also uses logical power, is detail- inclined, memorizes facts, words and details, performs well in science and social science areas and hones the skills of perception. Follow these procedures to activate left brain cells:

Play cross word puzzles with children

Playing board games that include crossword puzzles can be a big learning booster for left brained children. Use puzzles that belong to different themes and the one that focus on verbs, nouns, technical words and science. Playing these games will help improve learning, enhance mood, put mind into deep relaxation and learn logical thinking. It will also help learn real world problems and help stabilize emotional side of the life.

Enhance word fluency

Word fluency is perhaps a great booster to enhance left brain learning. Play word games with children. Pose challenge to children to create and recite as many new words as possible with a given set of letters. Set time challenge so that they will start processing very quickly. Keep track for the count and help them improve their count in the next challenge. Give them treat upon one instance of success. This is a sure fire way to balance brain power.

Play strategy board games

Playing strategy board games are time tested techniques to enhance left lobe of the brain. Some of the most famous strategy games are Business and Monopoly. Playing such games will help children improve the skills of creating strategy and reasoning. In addition, they will also help children planning and taking action.

Creating a chart of facts and figures

This approach has been recommended by child education experts because it helps children streamline their memory power and reasoning. In addition, it can also help enhance immediate retrieval of long term memory. It will also help in organizing and prioritizing.

Learn symbols and words

Symbols and thematic words are very powerful tools to promote memory and retention. Symbols that represent words and syllables can enhance reasoning as well as pattern making. As they are visual in nature, learning also becomes very easier especially in terms of representation of words in a pictorial form.

Use mnemonics to boost memory

Mnemonics is a group of memory techniques designed to enhance long term and short term memory. This technique uses the power of imagination along with all critical senses like sound, touch, smell and sight. This will make learning very exciting and easy especially those that are involved with memory retention.

What is Brain Balancing?

To ensure optimum and productive learning, both brain lobes should work in combination and in a seamless manner. When two lobes of brain work together, children will get many benefits like:

• Better digestion and immune functions
• Enhanced intellectual abilities
• Better motor skills
• Superior digestive and hormone systems

Before balancing brain, parents may need to identify in which lobe they are stronger. Those children who are weaker in their left brain tend to be very poor in linguistic skills while those are weak in their right side tend to be poor in motor skills. Balancing brain functions also means introducing activities that help both sides and to complement one skill with the other. Balancing brain function also means replacing weaker functions of the brain with stronger ones that eventually helps in boosting acquisition of important skills.

read more on brainy-child.com

3 Easy Ways to Organize School Years Photos and Artwork

The start of a new school year is always so exciting and as parents, we take our job of chronicling our child’s year through photos and mementos seriously. But sometimes life gets in the way and it’s easier to say we’re going to do something about the many digital photos, the stacks of artwork, certificates, and precious pieces of academic work than to actually do it. Here are three easy ways you can organize school year photos and mementos with ease as you go so those many precious moments and keepsakes can be cherished for years to come.

Tapsbook for iPad is a free app just launched with rave reviews and as a busy parent of two elementary aged children, I can see why. Tapsbook is a all-in-one app that handles photo viewing, photo management and storytelling that automates the laborious task of sifting through photos from many different sources and pulls them together in one place. Simple gestures can be used to quickly rate my photos and create a yearbook with favorites that can be instantly shared and accessed even offline. Tapsbook is free to download through the iTunes store and users can store up to 500 photos for free. An additional 4GB of storage can be purchased for $2.99/month. In addition to digital photo organization, Tapsbook looks to add a printed photobook service in the next couple months.

School Years by MomAgenda is an easy and effective solution for families that provides single place to keep mementos from your child’s K-12 school career. The spiral bound book features a separate folder for each year in school, has a place to store each year’s report cards, class pictures, art samples, writing samples, and more. Kids enjoy recording special information about their teacher, friends, and favorite after school activities to create a treasured keepsake. Parents love how easy this is to use and what a pleasure it is to open up and read year after year as children grow older.

PicStitch app for iPhone is a simple way to take your many photos from a single event and create beautiful collages. PicStitch features a variety of different layouts, ability to add photos with just a tap and edit them right from the app before publishing to your social networks or saving them to your phone’s album. Parents can quickly share moments with friends and family through their Facebook wall or save them to be printed or incorporated into a Tapsbook album. The free version features 70 different layouts to choose from but the paid version ($1.99) is ad-free and provides 232 layouts, 13 different photo aspect ratios, high resolution export, and more for an investment of less than $2.