National Reading Month

March is National Reading Month. To recognize this special month, read a book with your children every evening. Read to your younger children. Encourage older children and teens to read at least one chapter per night. It is important for the adults to read nightly as well. Children appreciate role models and your modeling reinforces the values you teach.

Do you have books that you can share with others? The local YMCA, after school child care centers, shelters, school libraries, and medical clinics may appreciate your donation of gently-used books in good condition.

Challenge your family to read every night in March. At the month’s end plan a special dinner celebration and discuss the wonderful books you read. Did you books take you on an exciting adventure? Did you travel to a far away place? What did you learn? What interesting characters did you meet? This March help your children develop a love for reading.

Feinstein Foundation Challenge Begins in March

Double the Benefits – Time for the Feinstein Foundation Challenge

Two of our local food banks are participating in the Feinstein Foundation Challenge. They are eligible for significant matching funds for all food donated by our community during March and April. We asked each of our Allied Agency food banks to provide a brief overview of their operations. We encourage you to hold a food drive in March or April to allow these organizations to double the benefits to the hungry in our community! You may be feeling stressed due to the state of our economy. However, we never feel richer than when we are sharing with our neighbors. You too will be richly rewarded by the act of giving.

Help the Children - Santa Clarita (formerly Hunger Defense Fund) is a local non-profit food bank providing groceries to low-income families living in the Santa Clarita Valley since 2002. Our organization does not receive any government funding and relies solely on donations from the community. Over 1,300 local families received food in 2008 and the needs are increasing. Our food bank is set up like a grocery store so that families may shop and choose their own groceries. We are open evening and weekend hours to accommodate working families and we allow families to receive food once a week. We would gratefully accept food drive donations from any of the schools and will provide a Certificate of Appreciation to each participating school. Food drive donations received during March and April are particularly important as they help us qualify for matching funds from the Feinstein Foundation. We have transportation available and are happy to pick up food drive donations from the schools.

The Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry has provided supplemental food, at no cost, to needy families in our valley since 1986. Our mission is to alleviate hunger throughout the Santa Clarita Valley. We accomplish this with a dynamic group of volunteers who source food and cash donations, package nutritious food to stretch a family's food supply and distribute that food to qualifying residents of the Santa Clarita Valley.

The SCV Food Pantry is located at 24133 Railroad Avenue in Newhall (between 4th and 5th Streets) and is open Monday-Thursdays from 9:00am-12:00noon and the first Saturday of each month from 10:00an-12:00noon. We are open the third Friday of each month from 9:00am-12:00noon for our senior citizen clients only. Since many of the senior citizens in our community are on fixed incomes they are forced each month to choose between the food or medications they need. The Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry distributes supplemental food to low-income senior citizens through our Senior Outreach Mobile Distribution at six sites in the Santa Clarita Valley each month. We also partner with the Senior Center to supply homebound seniors with food each month.

The Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry, neighbors helping neighbors for the past 23 years. Because "No child in the Santa Clarita Valley should go to bed hungry."

The SCV Food Pantry will again be taking part in the Feinstein Challenge and is asking local schools to compete in the 2009 Students Against Hunger in the SCV by conducting a food drive in their school to help benefit the Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry and those less fortunate in the SCV.

City of Santa Clarita's "Meet Mayor Dude"

Parents, would you like your children to learn more about our city government? If so, check out this new site, www.MayorDude.com.

Homework Strategies for Busy Families

Homework Strategies for Busy Families
From National PTA’s “Our Children” Magazine, 2008

by: Sharon Marshall Lockett

Today’s families are busier than ever. Meal preparation and clean-up; music lessons; sports practices; and games, chores, and more often squeeze “quality time” for relationship building to a couple of hours or less each evening. Helping your children with their homework may seem like another task that takes up too much time. Fortunately, homework is something that can be managed creatively, reducing the amount of time spent on it while increasing its effectiveness and the sense of connection you have with your children.

Make homework a shared activityPeople often describe the same experience very differently. The same is true of learning. One child will read and remember story details. Another child may not focus on the story’s names, dates, and places, but will see relationships and themes instead. Others will see possibilities, practical applications, or outcomes. When these children study together, they can see their assignments from different viewpoints. It encourages them to seek understanding rather than just get through the assignment. It empowers them to ask questions in class if they know other children are confused, too.

Studying with others sends a message that learning is important—that individually, our children want to succeed and that collectively, we support one another.
Friends as study partners. Invite your child’s friends over so they can do homework together. Don’t be afraid to join in these study sessions from time to time. When you do, ask the students to explain their answers—encouraging them to explore their reasoning helps them learn their assignments more thoroughly. It’s all right to let them digress periodically, as long as they get their work done. It makes learning more enjoyable.

Family members as study partners. Two-parent households can optimize their total “together” time by sharing responsibilities for homework, evening chores, and child care. Older brothers and sisters can tutor younger children. The sooner homework and chores are done, the more time the entire family can spend together in conversation or recreational activities.
Networking with other families. Single-parent households can join forces; while one parent helps the children with homework, another can take care of meals, chores, and child care for younger children. These arrangements can provide all parents with a little more time to spend getting involved in their children’s education, and a lot more moral support.

Use alternative sitesSchool. Some schools have realized they need to provide homework and tutoring centers. If your school does not provide after-school study halls and tutoring, let them know you need help during the gap between the end of school and the end of your work day. Programs exist to help schools provide trained helpers to students on campus.
Day care centers. Day care providers also should be approached about setting aside time for children to do their homework. Request that they have staff available to help.
Tutoring in the community. Community centers, libraries, and places of worship are among the community-based groups that have begun to offer tutoring. Often, college students who are interested in the helping professions volunteer their time at these locations. Contact your town government to find out whether these programs are offered and how to sign up.

Make the most of homework time. The time your children spend on homework can be reduced drastically by applying the following proven principles of learning:
Use senses to increase learning. Research confirms that using all the senses can enhance learning. As psychologist Rosemary Boon puts it, “Sensations may be thought of as ‘food for the brain,’ and when they flow in an integrated manner, the brain can use those sensations to form perceptions, behaviors, and learning.” Reading aloud, drawing pictures, and using mental imagery can help students learn and retain lessons more quickly and thoroughly.

Break lessons into manageable chunks. Children can grow frustrated by studying too much material at one time. Limit new material (spelling words, vocabulary, dates, names) to between 15 and 25 items. Review 20 items and add five new ones during a study session.
Study the unknown. Students often spend hours studying from a textbook, but most of their time is spent reviewing what they already know rather than studying what they don’t know. Divide material to be learned into two stacks: that which they already know, and that which they need to learn. Have them study only what they don’t know for 5–15 minutes. Wait 2–24 hours; mix the material up, and divide it again.

Ask questions. Have your child create a question and/or read the questions at the end of a chapter before he or she begins to read a textbook assignment. Tell your child to say the answer out loud when he or she comes across it while reading. This exercise will help your child understand and retain the information.

Associate. Alphabetizing, sequencing, and categorizing make learning easier. Singing information to the tune of a familiar song can also enhance learning and retention.
Personalize. Substitute your child’s name for characters in a story. Relate a math problem to a child’s allowance. Transfer something learned to an everyday event.

Know your child. How do you help your child tackle the homework in a way that makes sense to him or her? Every child is different, so it’s important to begin by learning what works best for each one. Pay special attention to the following items:

Food. A child experiencing either low or high blood sugar levels will have short-term memory impairment. Never insist that homework be completed before dinner. Provide healthy snacks during study sessions.

Energy level. Is your child a morning person or an evening person? Evening people need to stay up late to finish homework; morning people will be more productive if they get a good night’s sleep and get up early to do homework.

Personality. Is your child quiet and reflective or outgoing and always in motion? A quiet child will sit at a table to read or complete assignments; a child in motion might need to talk through an assignment with you or discuss homework over a game of catch before writing.

Strengths. At what activities does your child excel? Use his or her strengths to help compensate for weaknesses. An artistic child will benefit from drawing a picture about an essay topic before writing. A mathematically inclined child may become more engaged in an art project by drawing and coloring numbers.

Patterns. Observe and record your child’s study patterns. Include times of the day and various reactions to food or stimuli. These observations may help your school and healthcare professionals find solutions to learning difficulties.

Busy families often feel overwhelmed by the demands of modern life. Homework may seem like just another obstacle to quality family time. The best strategy for tackling homework is to use study time efficiently and, most importantly, get help from available resources. There is a whole world out there waiting to support us in educating our children.
Sharon Marshall Lockett is director of Educational Innovations/SCORE, a national cocurricular support program based in Laguna Niguel, California, and author of Home Sweet Homework: A Parent’s Guide to Stress-Free Homework & Studying Strategies that Work. She can be reached at sharon@homesweethomework.com.

Reflections Update

The Finalists~Awards of Excellence Recipients were forwarded to the 34th District in December. Additionally we held and selected Merit Winners and Honorable Mentions in each category that will be displayed at our March Association Meeting and Gala. Students whose art is held will receive a letter of invite to the March Gala. A complete list will be sent to all Unit Reflection Chairmen and will appear in the February Council Newsletter. We are also planning a "Wrap-up" meeting with all of the Unit Reflections Chairmen the first week of February. All student participates whose art was forwarded to Council will receive a thank you and certificate of participation with their returned art. Portfolios will be available for pick-up at the February "Wrap-Up" and /or the Association Meeting. Heidi GierardSCV Council PTA Reflections 2008-2009 SCV Council PTA Reflections Finalists (forwarded to the 34th District )

District winners are then forwarded to the State PTA Reflections competition. Council will celebrate it's Finalists/ Award of Excellence, Merit Winners and Honorable Mentions at the March 2009 Annual Reflections Gala and Association meeting.