Thanksgiving & Winter Breaks

Just a reminder that we will be closed, Thursday and Friday, November 27th & 28th, for Thanksgiving.

(UPDATED!) Looking ahead, we are also closed December 24th through 31st for Winter Break, and January 1st and 2nd for New Year's Day.

The Ann Arbor Public Schools are closed Dec. 22nd-January 2nd. If your school-aged child needs care on the days the schools are closed but we are open (i.e., Dec. 22nd & 23rd, Dec. 29th & 30th), please contact your center ASAP to reserve a spot.

Address Change

Our Administrative Center has moved! We're now at 4531 Concourse Drive, south of Ellsworth of State Street across from the Ann Arbor airport. Our admin phone number has also been updated: 734.761.2576. The fax number's the same. All this info is on our website but we wanted to call attention to it.

Michigan Theater Family Events

This Saturday, November 22, Ann Arbor gem the Michigan Theater is showing the beautifully restored Wizard of Oz at 1:30 p.m.

Next weekend, November 28th, they're showing the classic version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, also at 1:30 p.m. Admission is free for kids twelve and under! What's more, for every $5 you spend at neighboring shop and movie sponsor Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, you will receive one free adult ticket to Willy Wonka!

The Michigan Theater is a beautiful local landmark that offers a genuine, old-time movies experience. For more family-friendly events, please click here.

-- Admin

Courtesy

We are revamping the Gretchens's House website to make resource sections for staff and parents. Fun project! Please e-mail us any requests or suggestions for things/info/links that you'd find useful.

During the information-gathering process, I came across one of our newer Purple Pages*, the one on Courtesy. The subject of courtesy is particularly relevant as we head into the holiday season--a time filled with family meals, parties, and gift exchanges...and stressful situations. Courtesy is a wide range of civilized bevahiors that children learn over time as they observe us interact with friends, families, and strangers every single day. Remember: our kids mind our manners even when we don't! Check the newsletter out and let us know what you think.

-- H.V.

*Purple Pages* are coffee-break-sized newsletters on developmental topics, family living issues, and group care concerns. We have a large library of topics available in hard copies at our centers. Parents of currently enrolled children have online access to printable versions of the entire collection. Visitors can preview a few of the subjects here (the highlighted titles on that page are links to actual Purple Pages).

NAEYC Handouts

If you attended a presentation given by Gretchen's House Staff at the 2008 NAEYC conference in Dallas, you can find the handouts by clicking this link.

Thanks for attending our sessions. We hope you found them useful!

-- Admin

Strategy: Halloween Candy

There are two basic approaches for dealing with the piles of Halloween candy that trick-or-treaters collect: disciplined and undisciplined.

"Disciplined" folks believe that setting limits is the best way to ensure kids don't go overboard. These parents may set a daily limit of two or three pieces, may surreptitiously make much of the candy disappear, or might say flat-out: " "x" number of pieces is enough. The rest goes in the garbage." The benefit to this approach is that kids don't eat too much; the danger is that by imposing external limits, parents may make the forbidden candy seem more enticing and may not help kids learn to set reasonable limits for themselves.

"Undisciplined" folks take the opposite approach and impose no limits. They let kids eat what they will and experience the consequences. The children might eat ten or twelve pieces before they hit their limit, but once they do, biology kicks in and they'll almost always be sickened (hopefully just to the point of mild stomach upset). Subsequent snacks, if any, will be increasingly smaller. Of course, some kids will eat a horrifying amount of candy before they get sick of it. It's not the end of the world. At the same time, for kids who are already struggling with food issues, it doesn't make sense to give them a pile of it and say, Dig in.

And then there are people who find a happy medium between the two extremes. Reduce the pile of available candy so that potential binges are smaller, for example. Or give kids an allowance for the week and let them decide how many pieces they'll eat at once. (Sidebar: did you know that the ability to delay gratification is often an important factor when measuring success in endeavors from schoolwork to budgeting to sports?!) Whenever you're adding calories to your daily intake, it's always a good idea to increase activity. Take a walk. Play tag. Dance. Just get up and move. Try pairing healthy foods with treats: an apple and a bite-sized candy bar is a perfectly reasonable snack, and more satisfying than several pieces of candy. Always remember that out-of-sight is out-of-mind for kids and adult, so storing the candy somewhere that you're not likely to lay eyes on it frequently will help limit overindulgences, too.

And now there's this tip from dentists: eating several pieces at once is better for your teeth than doling it out several times during the day. In fact, candy may not be any worse for a child's teeth than potato chips, for example. What matters is what dentists describe as the stickiness of food -- how long the food particles maintain contact with the tooth's enamel. The longer it sticks, the more time the accompanying acid will work on the enamel. So a chocolate bar that melts off teeth is better for them than a starburst or potato chip which may stick around for a long while.

Happy haunting!

--Admin

A Bumper (Sticker) Crop

With the election drawing near, your kids are bound to be aware that something big is going on. Maybe you have a candidate or proposition sign on your lawn. Maybe you're having earnest conversations around the dinner table. And maybe you have the TV or radio turned on more than usual, tuned to election coverage. There's a bumper crop of presidential picture books that will help kids of all ages start making sense of all the election buzz.



Grace For President, by Kelly DiPucchio and LeYuen Pham, tells the story of a young girl who notices there are no women on the poster of presidents hanging at her school, which inspires her to run for class president. This book has a great explanation of the Electoral College built right into the text, plus an author's note to clarify. Suitable for kids 5 years old and up.

My Teacher for President, by Kay Winters and Denise Brunkus, heralds a different candidate. Second grader Oliver is inspired by all the campaign ads he sees to nominate his teacher as a candidate, and lays out all the reasons he thinks she'd be a good one. (This book will have parents wishing a teacher really would run for president!) Suitable for kids 5 and up.

So You Want To Be President? is by Judith St. George and David Small. Maybe your child (or your spouse!) finds all the campaigning so inspiring, he or she wants to be president. The job is not as easy as it looks, and presidents through the ages have coped with the challenges in all kinds of interesting ways. This Caldecott winning classic is a must-read for school-age kids.

Lives of the Presidents (Fame, Shame, and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt is a collection of brief biographies of all the presidents. Pithy, interesting, and packed with lesser-known facts, this book is a great way to put presidents in perspective with their historical eras. Suitable for kids in grades 3 and up.



Kenneth C. Davis' Don't Know Much books are a staple for history buffs of all ages. His Don't Know Much About the Presidents is another fantastic installment in this classic series. Suitable for kids in 3rd grade and up.

Happy reading! And don't forget to vote!

--H.V.

PS: For adult reading recommendations, local bookseller Nicola's Books has started a blog.