How will your grandkids pay for college?

 By Veronica Majerol, grandparents.com

With higher-education costs far outpacing inflation, it's becoming harder for many families to see an answer. Scholarships — free money that can help defray the expense — can make the difference for some teens. But competition for that money can be fierce, especially in a deflated economy. Your college-bound grandchildren must capitalize on every resource available to them during their scholarship hunt. That's where you come in.

How You Can Help
"I'm a huge proponent of working with grandparents to get scholarships," says Kimberly Stezala, author of Scholarships 101: The Real-World Guide to Getting Cash for College (AMACOM). Who you are, what you've done, and where you've been can make a difference for your grandchildren in the race for college cash. Many universities, for example, offer scholarships to grandchildren of alumni. Ancestry-based organizations set aside scholarship funds for kids who share their ethnicity. The Order of Sons of Italy in America, for example, offers scholarships to candidates who have at least one Italian or Italian-American grandparent. And if you’ve served in the military, your grandchildren may be eligible for scholarships from groups like The American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, or others.

Update Your Résumé
A good first step is to brief your grandchildren on the extent of your associations by creating a grandparent résumé. Stezala advises making a list of all your past and present memberships and affiliations, as well as hobbies and interests, and specifics about your race and ethnicity going back several generations. Once you share this information with your grandchildren and their parents, you can all begin researching scholarship possibilities. Start with the major online databases, like fastweb.com and scholarships.com, and start early, Stezala says, preferably when your grandchildren are freshmen in high school.

Cast a Wide Net
Thousands of dollars in scholarships go unclaimed each year because people don't know about them. That's why researching, and keeping your eyes and ears open, are so important. Carol Cunningham, 83, of Rochester Hills, Mich., helped her grandson land a $2,000 college award last year through her employer, Avon. Cunningham made her first doorstep pitch for the cosmetic line nearly 37 years ago as a single mother, and she still sells its products. Though the Avon scholarship put only a modest dent in her grandson’s $27,000-a-year tuition at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., he won other scholarships for his singing talent, and the family believes every dollar helps. “I thought for all of the years I sold Avon products that the scholarship was a great payback,” Cunningham says.
Harry Culler, 74, and Georgia Culler, 72, grandparents of eight in Swanton, Ohio, have been members of the Elks National Foundation for 38 years and so they were well-positioned to help two of their grandchildren win Elks "legacy" scholarships of $1,000 each. (The foundation has since increased the award to $4,000.) But their connection was only one factor — the foundation also asks candidates to demonstrate four core values: knowledge, charity, community, and integrity. One of the couple's grandsons, for example, took a bus to Louisiana with his church youth group to hang drywall in homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and his brother volunteered with burn victims at a local hospital. "Their grade-point averages were good, they play sports, and then there were the humanitarian things," Georgia says. "It all adds up."

Hands-on Help
Community service is a requirement for many scholarships, so volunteering alongside your grandchildren, starting when they're young, is a great way to position them for the competition — and to model strong values while spending time together. Scholarship applicants often have trouble distinguishing themselves from their peers because their experiences are nearly identical, Stezala says. "They've all played soccer for eight years, and they've all participated in a food drive at school.” But if your grandchildren have also volunteered with you for five years at a veterans' hospital, for example, their applications are more likely to stand out.

Realistic Expectations
Scholarships are great, but winning a prize that covers a student's entire tuition bill is unusual. In all, about one in 15 applicants wins a private-sector scholarship, averaging about $2,000 each, says Mark Kantrowitz, director of Advanced Projects for FastWeb. He advises families to plan for college expenses using the one-third rule: One third from savings, one third from loans, and one third from current income and student aid. In this formula, Stezala says, scholarships are "the wild card. You should not count on private scholarships to fully finance their education, although you sure can try.”

Your own high-school years may be long behind you but grandparents can win scholarships, too. Larry Meredith, 69, of Gunnison, Colo., has already started planning for the higher education of his grandchildren, ages 7 and 10. In addition to setting up 529 accounts for them, Meredith was a 2006 winner of the CollegeInvest Grandparent Scholarship Contest, administered by the Colorado Department of Higher Education, which invites grandparents to write essays describing their hopes and dreams for their grandchildren. CollegeInvest placed the $5,000 winnings in a savings plan, which Meredith divided equally between accounts for both of his grandkids. In his winning essay, he wrote, "May [they] live in a country that so values education that every qualified student will be able to attend the college of his or her choice without worrying about the cost."

New Family Board Games

WHAT'S It? for team of 2-6 players, ages 8+  - Flip the doodle card, flip the timer, then guess what the pre-printed doodle looks like.

Boom Boom Balloon for 2 or more players, ages 7+ - Players take turns carefully pushing sticks into the slots around the balloon until they click into place, watching as the balloon squishes and squeezes. The first player to pop the balloon is out.

Snake Oil for team of 3-10 players, ages 10+ -  And in this modern card game, players must convince a "customer" to buy the fake product they make up from combining word cards. Laughter erupts as each player attempts to persuade the other that their item is the best! The Customer picks his or her favorite item and that player is awarded the Customer Card. The player with the most Customer Cards wins.

Draw Something Party for team of 4 or more, ages 10+ - Based on the popular Draw Something app, this game is played on a double-sided, glowing drawing screen. Players draw clues, while their teammates shout out guesses -- correct guesses earn coins. If time runs out, the other team gets to guess.

Pass the Popcorn for team of 2 to 8, ages 12+ - Movie-guessing game featuring 250 of the biggest box office hits, award-winners, fan favorites, and film classics. Players are given a movie detail, and each player competes to turn over his or her tiles and name the movie before any other player. Bonus: The unique tile format eliminates the need for a gameboard, so the game can be played anywhere.

Never Have I Ever for team of 2 or more, ages 6+ -  To play, pick a card and read the Never Have I Ever statement aloud. Everyone answers with “I Have” or “Nope, Not Me.”  Players can keep track of who has done what, but most people just have fun talking and learning new things about each other.

Twisterz Story Starter for team of 2 or more, ages 2+ -  The curious child...made a discovery...and peeked inside...That's just one of 10,000 creative story introductions inspired by Twisterz Story Starter. Designed for shared use with young children and their caregivers, the tube consists of four twistable rings of story components -- simply line them up, and your story is off and running! Story Starter engages creativity and imagination, strengthens language skills, and builds better readers and writers!

grandparents.com

The Best "Smart Toys"

In the past, grandparents may have chosen toys based on their function or durability, but today many decide which toys to purchase based on their perceived educational value. After all, everyone wants to help make their grandchildren smarter, or at the very least, boost their cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Unfortunately, we often go about this in the worst possible ways. We seek out educational toys and so-called "edutainment" — media that purport to teach as they entertain — but much of it is sold under a misleading premise. Companies eager to capitalize on our hopes, fears, and worries dress up products in smart-sounding packages, with brand-names like "Brainy Baby," "IQ Baby," and "Baby Genius." Subtle, they're not. But while it may seem counterintuitive, grandparents can actually avoid electronic toys labeled with buzzwords like "interactive" when shopping for young children, because electronics on their own don't necessarily make a toy smarter or more interactive.

So-called "smart toys" are, for the most part, traditional toys souped up with computer chips that are supposed to "stimulate" kids. But here's the catch: Babies and young children don’t need that much stimulation. In fact, one could argue that in our attention-deficit-era, our grandchildren are already overstimulated into distraction. The truth is that the best kind of stimulation still comes from human beings, not electronics. Conversing, singing, touching, holding, and exploring beat a "Play-and-Learn Activity Table" any day. Many children today are squeezed into overstructured days even as toddlers. The best gift a grandparent can give them is unstructured playtime, preferably outdoors or around the child's neighborhood.
When you're toy shopping for your grandchildren, here’s a good rule of thumb: The best toys are 90 percent child and ten percent toy. It’s all about what a child does with a toy, not what the toy can do on its own. If a child stacks two plain wooden blocks, he is interacting with them, learning something about the physical properties of objects, and developing fine motor skills. No electronic, musical block can improve on that lesson. In other words, good toys don’t shout — there’s no need for them to make music, chime, buzz, ring, or burst into Mozart.

So you can pass on the Baby Einstein line without guilt — it has no proven pedagogical benefit. You can eject the Beethoven CD if you like; classical music is no better for a child's intellectual development than rock and roll is. And you can skip the infant computer software, too — the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time, PC or TV, for kids younger than 2 years old. In fact, that plain old plastic truck will do just fine. Add a grandchild and an afternoon of free time, and you’ll be amazed at everything a child can do with it
.
Source: Make Your Grandchild Brilliant, grandparents.com

Homework!

Who among us is not a wee bit humbled by the questions on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? So you may not know the homeland of walruses, but the good news is that you don’t have to be all-knowing to lend a helping homework hand to your grandkid. What you do need to be is clever enough to make it fun. If you can keep a sense of humor and a very thick skin (great protection against cranky students), you’ll soon be the go-to person when she’s stuck with math problems, an English essay or a paragraph to translate into Spanish.

“If it is something they have to memorize, make a TV show out of it,” suggests Sharla Feldscher, the Philadelphia-based author of the KIDFUN Activity Book. “Tell them, ‘Here’s your next question.’ Ring a bell when time’s up. Give a little reward, maybe a whole peanut, for every answer they get right.”
Consider turning social studies or English into a Jeopardy! game. Your grandchild has to give the right answer in the form of a question. When she gets a certain number right, she wins a small prize.
While reviewing for a test, kids tend to waste precious time going over what they already know. Increase productivity by making up flash cards with the material and dividing them into two stacks: those with facts the child knows and those with facts the child does not. Spend some time reviewing what she doesn’t know. Mix up the cards and divide the material into “knows” and “don’t knows.” Gradually, your grandchild will start to learn the new material, and the old material will be reinforced as well.
Even if math was never your strong suit in school, you can still help younger kids. For little ones who struggle with counting, make a game with something familiar. Count Cheerios, Goldfish crackers or grapes. Do math problems just for fun even when they’re not part of the assignment. For instance, talk about something the child loves, like ice cream. You might say, Mary has $5 and wants to buy an ice cream cone, which costs $1. How much change will she get back? What if she adds sprinkles, which cost an additional 50 cents?
Sometimes the best way to get a youngster to learn something is to have him explain it back to you after you’ve explained it first. Let him play teacher: Ask him to tell what he just learned to his dog, his student.
For many grandparents, the biggest challenge is understanding how the current mode of teaching has changed, says Amy Goyer, national coordinator for the AARP’s Grandparenting program. Then remind yourself that your role is to assist, not to teach your version. (And try not to grumble about your grandchild’s teachers!)
“Take a step back and realize that your job isn’t to do the homework, but to help your grandchild learn how to do it,” Goyer says. “The best thing to do is be positive, be patient and point out the child’s successes.”

Source: The Ultimate Grandparents Guide to Back to School, grandparents.com

When Reading Is a Struggle

Learning disability (LD) is an umbrella term for a variety of neurological disorders that affect the brain's ability to receive, process, store, and respond to information. Although the term has been around for decades, it remains confusing and controversial.

"The bottom line is that these kids may have trouble reading, listening, writing, spelling, and doing math, as well as recalling and organizing information," says Sally Shaywitz, M.D., co-director of the National Institute for Child and Human Development-Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention.

Shaywitz's team is one of several across the country that are honing in on the precise reasons for learning problems. "The field of neuroscience is exploding," says Dr. Shaywitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Science-Based Program for Overcoming Reading Problems at Any Level. Cutting-edge imaging techniques allow researchers to peer into the brain as a child tries to read. These scans indicate that reading deficiencies are directly linked to faulty wiring in the way the brain decodes written symbols.

"In order to learn to read, a child must develop an awareness that the spoken word is made up of smaller units of sounds, and that letters represent these sounds," she notes. "In children with reading disabilities, the brain circuitry needed to do that isn't functioning normally."

One in five public school children — some 10 million — struggle to read, according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) in New York City. Learning disabilities can range from mild to severe and, although they affect each person differently, most fall into two broad areas:

1. Reading and language problems, including dyslexia (difficulty decoding language) and dysgraphia (difficulties relating to handwriting, spelling, and composition).
2. Information processing disorders, including auditory or visual processing disorders. Despite normal vision and hearing, kids with these disorders have trouble with language development, reading, writing and mathematical ability.
   What's more, some children may have more than one learning difficulty.

About one-third of those with LD also have attention deficit disorder (ADD), with or without hyperactivity (ADHD), which makes it difficult for them to concentrate and focus on specific tasks. The common denominator: Each child shows a discrepancy between his overall intelligence and his ability to learn in one or more of the traditional ways.

"A learning disability as an island of weakness in a sea of strengths," says Sheldon Horowitz, Ed.D, president of the NCLD. "They can't be 'cured' and they're not outgrown. They can learn — they just have to follow a different path."

What's more, just because a child is slow to read doesn't mean he has a learning disability. "Every child progresses at a different pace and developmental lags are perfectly normal," says Sue Korn, M.S., a reading specialist in New York City. Still, early identification and intervention can be critical. "The earlier a problem is diagnosed, the faster a child can learn the specialized strategies and skills he needs to compensate for his difficulties," Korn adds.

 http://www.grandparents.com/grandkids/education-and-school/reading-roadblocks

Your Grandchild Doesn't Like to Read

Amy Mascott, founder of TeachMama, shares a few ideas on how to encourage reluctant readers in her article “What to Do When Your Child Hates Reading” on PBS Parents.  Among her ideas are these: start small and share reading.
Start small. Just because your grandchild likes to ride horses doesn’t mean she needs to start by reading The A-Z History of Horseback Riding; that may be intimidating—especially for a reluctant reader. Instead, consider watching a horse race with your grandchild. Talk about the jockeys, the scores, the owners and the trainers. The next day, read the box scores in the newspaper or watch a movie about horses, like Seabiscuit.  If the topic of interest doesn’t lend itself to watching a related program or movie, start small by finding a magazine or graphic novel at the library that relates to the subject. Reading doesn’t need to begin with a chapter book; many other texts and various genres can be worthwhile for these readers.
Practice shared reading. Shared reading or reading as a collective experience could entail taking turns reading pages, sections or chapters, or you and your grandchild silently reading the same book. Shared reading can vary depending on your grandchild’s age and needs. For the ideal shared reading experience, choose texts that are rich, engaging and sure to lead to discussion. Part of the “sharing” in shared reading involves talking about the book.

Source: "Your Grandchild Doesn't Like to Read," grandparents.com

Is Your Grandchild Gifted?

Verbal ability is often the most obvious sign of a gifted child, says Jill Adrian, director of family services at the Davidson Institute for Talent Development in Reno, Nev., but other indicators include:

• insatiable curiosity
• an ability to learn and process information rapidly
• an unusually good memory
• quick wit and an advanced sense of humor
• longer attention span
• increased intensity or sensitivity
• a high concern for morality and justice

Source, "Is Your Grandchild Gifted?", grandparents.com