My CHEX Daily Debut: Keep Kids Learning Over the Summer

Thursday night I made my debut as an education guest on the CHEX Daily Show!

I was super nervous, but once we got started it was great, and Teresa Kaszuba and Mike Judson were very easy to talk to. The time went so fast, and I was WAY overprepared in terms of content (a lesson for next time), but I was happy with how my outfit, hair and makeup looked on camera, which is much more important anyway. (Just kidding. Sort of.)

Here’s the video, if you missed it (I come on a few seconds after the cougar. By which I mean the animal at the zoo.)

A point I really wanted to make and of course forgot:

Modeling reading for your kids is so important too, and that might fit in very nicely with your summer plans. Just think: when you curl up with a good book or magazine and tell the kids that no one can bug mommy during her special reading time, that’s actually GOOD parenting. Remember that.

Also: when incorporating real-life Math into activities with your kids, don’t forget that they’re learning everything in metric. We are so used to talking about measurements like heights and weights the “old fashioned” way (because of previous generations, but also due to American influence) but kids need to talk about how many metres and centimetres tall people are, and how many grams and kilograms things weigh. I have trouble with that myself! Even with temperature, I have caught myself telling the girls the outside temp in degrees Celsius, then five minutes later reporting the heat of the pool in Fahrenheit. No wonder kids get confused!

Main point of the segment: summer is for fun and relaxation, not “WORK”, but there are a lot of natural, easy-to-incorporate activities for kids that will keep their brains sharp over the summer!

Let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas for future segments you’d like to see. I’ll also be enlisting an email group of fellow teachers to give input on topics every couple of weeks (so I’m representing a range of educators). Please give me a shout if you’d like to be part of that! (katewinn77 at yahoo dot ca)

Thanks to everyone for all of your support for this venture through email, texts, Twitter, Facebook…I am so lucky to have such wonderful people in my life.