Improve Your Communication Skills
A YouTube History Lesson for Kids – The Berlin Wall
What was the Berlin Wall, and why was the fall of the wall so exciting – not only for Germans but for people around the world?
To understand the importance of this event, we take a good look at the news archives, in a YouTube Kids’ History Lesson – The Berlin Wall.
Good Relationships – Healthy Relationships – Tips for Kids
Relationships are hard at any age. Remember that we don’t just talk about relationships when we mean a boyfriend or a girlfriend – it’s about how you get on with your parents, your friends and other people important to you.
There are certain basic ideas that are important to developing good relationships; you master these and life suddenly becomes a lot less stressful! Alice Hoyle has some ideas that may help you have better relationships with the people in your life.
Communication
Image by Robert Collins on Unsplash
Communication is the most important aspect of any relationship. Sharing things with people in your life is important. We do this mostly by speaking and listening. It is important to share how you feel about things and to listen and try to understand how others feel about things (this is called empathy).
How good are you at both talking AND listening? If you favour doing only one of them in a relationship then this isn’t as balanced as it could be- you probably need to work on doing both and so should the other person.
Also sometimes people might say something but their body language (how someone uses their body or their facial expression) maybe saying something different. Take some time to consider what is your body language saying when you talk? What is their body language saying? Do you make eye contact when you talk?
A key to successful communication is to use “I” statements instead of “you” statements- eg. “I feel sad when you call me silly” is better than “You calling me silly makes me sad” because the second one can put the person on the defensive straight away and the conversation can go badly after that.
Video Games for the Family – For Everyone To Enjoy
My name is Andy Robertson and I write about video games for a living and have three children (10, 8 and 6 years old). Video-games are a tricky part of life to get right in a family, too much and they take over every waking hour, too little and they become consigned to kid’s bedrooms and dad’s bathroom breaks.
I’ve been working with families for the last few years to help them get more out of the games they play. Playing games together, usually downstairs in the shared family spaces, along with introducing a wider range of gaming experiences can transform their place in the home.
A Short Story – The White Dove
Dad walks over to me. He’s carrying several slices of bread.
‘Hi, Grace.’
‘Hi,’ I say, giving him a look which I hope he understands means, I am so not impressed with this new pre-birthday arrangement.
Dad doesn’t seem to have noticed my look. I wonder what he’s doing with the bread.
‘For the ducks,’ he says when he catches me staring at it.
I nod and decide not to mention that I am no longer five years old and that feeding the ducks in the park doesn’t exactly excite me anymore.
‘Right,’ I say, as we head over to the pond.
‘So, Grace, how have you been?’
We sit down on the bench next to the willow tree.
The Ultimate Guide for Kids to Pack Your Own Suitcase
Welcome to our ultimate guide for kids to pack your own suitcase!
When I was a kid, my parents were Scout leaders and one of their rules was that kids should pack their own suitcases. My mum always said that if the kids packed themselves, they knew what they had in their bag or rucksack and how to find things. And they were able to pack to go home.
Now I have my own kids, I can see exactly what she meant. My kids have been packing their own suitcases since they were little. In the beginning, I’d check to ensure that they didn’t have 12 t-shirts and one pair of trousers for a week-long holiday but now I just remind them to take their toothbrush and any vital pieces of kit.