by Vered @ The Baby Bunch on July 21, 2010
Do you like giving gifts? What do you enjoy more – giving gifts or receiving them? A surprisingly large number of people report that they actually prefer giving gifts to receiving them. There’s nothing like seeing the recipient’s face light up as they see your thoughtful gift.
Of course, we often find ourselves giving unthoughtful gifts. I once gave a coworker a generous Starbucks gift card. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside about giving such a nice gift, until I remembered that he once told me that he hates coffee and can’t even stand the smell of coffee! So much for a thoughtful gift.
What I had forgotten when I gave that gift card was that giving gifts is not really about the monetary value of the gift. It is more about finding an item that would fit the recipient, that would bring a smile to their faces and be useful to them. If you know the recipient well, you should be listening to them throughout the year, taking notes – and I mean that literally. You should actually write down gift ideas for the important people in your life throughout the year.
If you don’t know the person very well, it’s more difficult to find a truly thoughtful gift, but you should still try to avoid falling back on some kind of a default present. Try to find something that unites usefulness with style – those are the gifts that are most fun to receive. For example, if you’re going to a baby shower and need to find a unique baby gift, try to come up with a gift that is nicely presented yet contains items that the expectant parents can actually use.
by Vered @ The Baby Bunch on July 7, 2010
Do your kids read? Kids today don’t read as much as we used to, and as much as I hate how old this makes me sound, I really do believe that reading is incredibly important – and also very enjoyable.
I suspect that the more technology kids are surrounded with, the less they are able to slow down, sit down and read a book. I know that when I started blogging, something definitely happened to my attention span – when you get used to reading and writing 300-word blog posts, reading a 300-page book seems almost incomprehensible.
But we don’t want our kids to miss out on the magic of sitting down to read a good book, do we? It really is a magical experience – one of the best ways to escape into a different world, to relax, to forget your daily stresses. Of course, reading is also beneficial and educational becuase it helps children learn how to express themselves, develops their imagination and their vocabulary and of course their writing skills. All of these are very important even in a world that focuses more and more on technology.
This is not a list-type post with 10 great tips for getting your kids to read. There are tons of those all over the Internet – just google and you will find them. I do want to make a few points that I feel are important:
1. If you want your kids to read, you should be reading too. When it comes to reading, just like with anything else you want your kids to do, modeling is way more important than verbal instructions.
2. Although your ultimate goal is to get your kids to enjoy classics and quality literature, remember that reading online is reading too, and reading lower-quality chapter books still counts as reading and may just be the step your child needs to take before she proceeds to read higher-quality material.
3. A weekly visit to the library, where the kids get to choose their own books, you pick one classic for them and also a book for yourself, is crucial – and lots of fun in the summer. If your local library offers a weekly story hour, you can turn it into a fun outing, complete with maybe a stop at the ice cream parlor on your way back home.
Image by ThomasLife
