Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in vancouver, CN

School Supply Advice

September 01, 2009

I am an elementary school teacher and this time of year makes me a little bit antsy with anticipation even though I am not teaching in a classroom right now. I love the back to school shopping and I will admit to a little bit of a school supply fetish. I also have a lot of experience with kids coming to school with the good, the bad, and the ugly supplies. Here are a few tips to make the school supply list a little easier to take as well as easier for your kids to actually use.

Pencils. Pencils are so important especially in the early grades. A bad pencil will make learning to write so much harder on your child. It is worth is to make sure that the pencils you get are easy to sharpen and once sharpened easy to write with. This is really easy to check. Sharpen one of the pencils you got and press really hard down on the paper. (All kids either press to hard or barely at all.) make sure that the pencil lead doesn't break easily, that it sharpens easily without splintering and is easy to see whether pressed hard or soft on the paper. As an aside, most pencil that have names on them or pretty pictures are not good and will just frustrate everyone. A name sticker is a much better idea.

Erasers. This is another place not to scrimp. Make sure that you get a good white eraser. Again this is easy to test by erasing some marks on paper. If the eraser just smudges it will make correcting mistakes that much harder.

Scissors. Go for the Fiskars. I don't usually tell people to buy brand names, but the Fiskars cut easily and are ambidextrous. It doesn't matter which hand your child uses, which is fantastic because it takes some kids longer to choose their handedness. Cutting is also one of those difficult tasks to do well and bad scissors just make things worse. Also they are now using recycled plastic for the handles, how cool is that?

There are other things that make a little bit of difference, but these are the top three things that can really make everyone happier.

October Recap

by Gwendolyn Floyd

October 30, 2008

This month has been full of posts about imagination, fall fun and lots of Halloween. It has been fun delving into where to find costumes, best paces to trick-or-treat, and such. My favourite post from the month of October are a little varied. First is Halloween Poems  Read more...

Halloween Trick or Treat Bucket

by Gwendolyn Floyd

October 20, 2008

Last year my son and I made a few things for Halloween. I love Halloween and I keep up the decorations for a while. I really wanted my son to be as excited about Halloween as I was. Since he was a little apprehensive we decorated a small sand bucket to put his treats in. It was  Read more...

Beyond Old Navy: Where to get Costumes for Halloween in Vancouver

by Gwendolyn Floyd

October 07, 2008

Don't get me wrong I love the Old Navy costumes and my son is going to be one of their elephants this year. We still have the dragon and monkey costumes saved for his sibling and they are just about the cutes costumes ever. The only problem with these costumes is trying to find them after the  Read more...

Extra Classes for the Preschooler: Art

by Gwendolyn Floyd

September 18, 2008

In this series I am highlighting a few of the classes you can find around the city, especially at community centres. There are so many Community Centres that I will only highlight some. To find a community centre closer to you check out the Vancouver Park Board's web site for more information. West Point Grey Community Centre has a number of preschool art classes including Eco  Read more...