Why have a home-based business?

Much has been written about stay-at-home-moms. They had to make the tough choice after child birth between going back to work or putting a career on hold. Some, in fact, forgo huge salaries for the chance of a lifetime: to watch their baby crawl, sit up, walk, talk, put together a puzzle, attend school ... all for the very first time. But, this doesn't mean you have to only speak in parentese, and cease all interactions with other adults. Even the best mom, with multiple kids, who finds herself busier than she ever imagined possible, should be entitled to a little time for herself each day and a girls' night out once every lunar cycle.

Having a home-based business [like Discovery Toys, wink, wink!] enables you to toss one more glass ball into your juggling act, but it's incredibly worthwhile. Besides being available to your child, you learn skills you never dreamed possible, like getting a child to play quietly while you're on a business call, or making prioritized "to-do" lists. My list includes much more than "defrost the chicken," and "vacuuming" takes a place low on the list (sorry, Hoover). (I love this quote from former First Lady Barbara Bush, "The darn trouble with cleaning the house is it gets dirty the next day anyway, so skip a week if you have to. The children are the most important thing." She had her priorities straight.)

Starting a business in order to stay home with your children not only enables you to go on many class trips when your children are young, but it provides your children with a window into what the business world is like. They see you talk on the phone with customers, arrange events, ship packages, manage your finances, wear a wide variety of "hats." The entrepreneurial bug might even bite a child who sees it played out everyday before his eyes, and in our case, happily, it has! With the current economic situation forcing many into unemployment, it's comforting to know you won't be fired. That would certainly be an unpleasant situation for a child to witness, wouldn't it?

If this concept appeals to you, and you would consider a Discovery Toys business, August is a perfect time to start. We're offering our $125 starter kit for $99 (+ shipping & tax). We're moving into Back-to-School season followed by Holiday season, two of our busiest times of the year when people are particularly focused on children and gift-giving. This business is as recession-proof as it gets.
Babies are, after all, being born everyday, and kids are still having birthday parties. There is a constant demand for rattles and teethers, stacking toys, puzzles and other toys and games that help children reach their full potential. Grandmas always seem to have a few extra dollars to spend when the grandchildren are coming to visit. We are there for you to train, coach and help you get your business off the ground, so you're not left on your own to struggle or fail. What could be more fun or more important than playing with toys, and helping other parents help their kids get a great start in life???

Nobel Prize winner on Early Childhood Education

This Fall, Congress will be debating a range of proposals designed to bolster early childhood learning. A current hot topic is how critically important learning is, even before children get to the classroom. One of the nation's leading proponents of early childhood education is Nobel Prize winner James Heckman, the Henri Schultz distinguished service professor of economics at the University of Chicago. He's an expert in the economics of human development and has written extensively about the benefits of early childhood development. Heckman believes that investing in children from birth through five years of age is essential and pays enormous dividends.

In a recent National Public Radio interview, Professor Heckman talks with Michel Martin about some of his studies on poverty, race, education disparities and their cost to society. Here are some excerpts from that interview:

"If you start looking at how human beings develop and diverge and you start realizing how poverty really gets created and you start tracing the origins of poverty back, it's hard not to go back, back, back to the earliest years in the lives of people. And as a result of a series of studies over my whole lifetime, actually, I found that the effectiveness of early intervention is much, much higher than many of the interventions that American society has traditionally adopted to try to remediate, to patch up, to fix the problems that arise from disadvantaged environments.

... the family plays a fundamental role, we know, in shaping the lives of children. But in addition, we know that even before the children are born, the conditions, the way the mother takes care of herself has strong dramatic impact on the well-being of the child. And we know that the family in support of the child, whether it's in preschool or in school, plays a critical role. And I think anybody who looks at the statistics of American family life has to recognize that it's in trouble. We've had serious decline in the quality of many, many American families over the years. And we know that that creates situations of risk and disadvantage for the children born into those families....

... it isn't just a matter of income and it isn't just a matter of the education of the mother. But it's a matter of parenting and motivating the child. And so you see here in Chicago, in some of the worst projects, over the years, we've studied some very successful people who emerged from those environments, simply because their parents or in some cases just the mother have been so effective."

When asked about the inequality in educational resources due to race, he had this to say:

"I think partly because the resources of the larger society are strapped, partly because in the past, we've committed so many resources to other activities, not recognizing the value of education. I think it's not just a matter of race. I think race is very important. I think generally speaking, we've [got] to face the general problem, which is that we are seeing more children coming out of families which simply don't give them adequate resources for their development. So we have really two Americas, you know, you can think of two Americas going side by side, living next to each other, even driving on the same roads.

But on the one hand, we see a group of people who are essentially doing better than ever before, in the sense we have more people graduating from college, more people who are going into situations of advantage, going into the larger society, never mind the current economic downturn. At the same time, properly measured, the U.S. high school dropout rate is increasing. And it's not just for African-Americans, it's true for Americans of all ethnic background. And we have to understand that what's happening then is we're creating two different cultures, two different societies. The level of inequality is actually increasing at a fundamental level.

And it's this inequality in early conditions which perpetuates inequality into the next generation and the generation after that. So I think that American society - I think the current emphasis in the Obama administration towards the long run, which I dearly hope President Obama continues to emphasize, is a very important one. Because in the long run, when we really understand how to solve the problem of poverty, we're going to understand that disadvantage in the early years and disadvantage through childhood is increasingly playing a role in producing the two societies that America is becoming."

Teaching Kids about Money

More and more, money seems to be in the news: government deficits, Wall Street swindlers, mortgage foreclosures. Business schools are starting to require graduates to take an oath of ethics, much like MDs have to take the Hippocratic Oath. Teaching children about money can seem daunting in light of all that, but it needn't be. Learning about money can be fun.

From the very earliest years children see us handling paper money and coins. The coins are different sizes and colors with detailed bas-reliefs of people, date of minting, symbols and more. Copper pennies (you can visit the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia where they are made) can be oxidized and showing a green patina like the Statue of Liberty, or they can be shiny and new. This alone can be fascinating. Pennies are the smallest unit of our currency. Five of them have the same value as a nickel. But two of those "large" nickels are equivalent to that "tiny" dime. And 100 cents = $1. We can also say each cent has the value of 1-one-hundredth of a dollar. That's like slicing a pizza pie into 100 skinny slices and giving your child one thin slice. There's a lot to learn right there: fractions, decimals, word representations of mathematical values.

You can even mix in a little science experiment: Soak a penny in vinegar until it is bright and shiny. Then just let it air dry on a towel. Soon it will oxidize, leaving that green patina. What makes that happen? What happens if you soak a nickel? dime?

Mix in some history, too. Did you know that starting this year, the reverse of the penny will have 4 different designs, chronicling the career of Abraham Lincoln? Did you know that 1.5 million pennies were minted in aluminum in the 1970s because the value of the copper in the coin had exceeded 1 cent? Which famous Philadelphian said, "A penny saved is a penny earned"? (Hint, he's the only person famous enough to be pictured on our paper currency who was never a U.S. president!)

There's much more to learn about pennies. But there's a slew of other coins, as well.


Quarters: Just when you thought you were done collecting a different quarter for each state, Congress passed legislation to create an 11-year program introducing at least 56 of America's beautiful National Parks. This campaign is in an effort to increase awareness and interest in our rich parks system.







Did you know that there used to be real gold coins that circulated?







$500 bills that circulated? What about a $100,000 bill?

Look forward to future articles about what your children should know about saving and spending.

List of Hot Topics

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES
How to Host a DT Baby Shower
The Importance of Touch
Toddler's 2nd Year
Language Development: Banana-fana-fofana


PLAY/ TOYS
Why is Play Important?
Toy Play in Early Childhood
Healthy Play Diet pyramid
Made in China
Toy Safety
Books in the Home
Measure Up Cups video
25 Uses for Boomerings
Pentominoes
Electronic Toys instead of Parents?
Recipe for Modeling Dough


EDUCATION
Nobel Prize Winner on Early Childhood
When to learn a Second Language
Obama's Early Learning Challenge Fund


PARENTING
Sleep Begets Sleep
Healthy Happy Zzzzz
No Parent Left Behind
Journal of Economic Perspectives:Parental time
Teaching Kids about Money
Why have a home-based Business?
Raising decent, happy solid-citizens
Character Education
Tips from Real Parents
Single Mom
Single Mom, part 2

DISCOVERY TOYS
Meet Discovery Toys
Why Start a Discovery Toys business?
How to start a DT business?
How to order Discovery Toys

PiTTi, the pied piper of Jam

On July 16 at the Discovery Toys toy fair/Denver convention, a new musical toy set called 'Jam Session' was launched. It includes easy-to-grasp castanets, hand drum with mallet, tambourine, and a guiro with mallet. There to take us through the range of sounds and methods of using each instrument was this "wild and crazy" German, PiTTi, seen in the video. It may be a toy, but you can really make percussion like the big boys. This product will be available to order in September.

teach.play.inspire.

Introducing the new tagline of Discovery Toys and what it means to you, the consumer.

Teach
•How to Learn
DT products teach children “how to learn” and not just “what to learn”, preparing children
for success in school.
•Engage the Senses
Studies show that children engage more fully in the learning process through the use of
multiple senses.
•Parent Interaction
DT products encourage parents to interact with their children and instill in them
the love of learning.

Play
•Never‐ending Play!
Children want to play with our toys over and over again.
•Parent PLAY
We build in FUN for parents to play with their children everyday.
•Open‐Ended Play
Imaginative, creative play teaches children to “think”.
•High Quality & Safe Play
Our toys meet or exceed all industry quality & safety standards.

Inspire
•Levels of Learning
DT products are designed to grow with your child, to stretch their thinking and imagination.
•Love of Learning
Playing with our products inspires confidence and passion for learning!
•Parents Learn Too
Our products not only inspire children to learn, they inspire parents to teach and learn along
with them.

200th birthday of Alfred, Lord Tennyson

For all my literary readers in NYC, check out this performance, Thurs. Aug. 6. Details at http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/home.asp

ENOCH ARDEN; A CELEBRATION OF THE 200TH BIRTHDAY OF ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Audrey St. Gil, pianist ; Paul Hecht, actor
Enoch Arden with text by Tennyson and score for piano by Richard Strauss.

We have reason to believe this is the only celebration on this side of the pond of Alfred Lord Tennyson's 200th birthday.

"Enoch Arden" is a poem published in 1864 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, during his tenure as England's Poet Laureate.

The hero of the poem, fisherman turned merchant sailor Enoch Arden, leaves his wife Annie and three children to go to sea with his old captain, who is offering him work.

He finds upon his return from the sea that, after his long absence, his wife, who believed him dead, is married happily to another man, his childhood friend Philip, and has a child by him.

The story could be considered a variation on and antithesis to the Classical myth of Odysseus, who after an absence of twenty years at sea found a faithful wife who had been loyally waiting for him.

The Discovery Toys opportunity

If you've ever had an interest in making money while staying home with your children, this is the ultimate time to consider selling Discovery Toys. I will help you start your own business selling award-winning educational toys that make a difference in the lives of children. Our compensation plan is changing in a few days to become the richest in the industry. New consultants can earn 45% on their sales while in their Success Start period (first 3 months), and our party hostesses get approximately 17% on top of that. There are bonuses galore under the new plan. I will help you set goals and strategize about how to earn the most you can in your own home-based business. If there's a certain amount of money you want to earn, $5oo/mo., $1,ooo or $2,ooo per month, let me show you what you'll need to do to make that a reality. Email me at billietoy@gmail.com

Learning Styles

When shopping for toys, it helps to know your child's learning style. Does he learn through what he hears (auditory learner)? Through touch and movement (kinesthetic learner)? Or through his eyes (visual learner)? Once you identify that, you can match your child's toys to his particular style, or complement his style by choosing toys that help develop his areas of weakness. The Discovery Toys catalog indicates A,K or V for the style(s) a particular product addresses to help you choose the "just right" toy for your special someone.

Examples of toys for various learning styles:
Auditory
Toy instruments (coming to Discovery Toys in September!)
Squeaky ball (Tangiball)
Music CD's (Sounds Like Fun, I'm Going Green, Bilingual Songs CD)
Rattles (Twisty Bug, Rainfall Rattle)

Kinesthetic
Hammering toy (Hammer Away)
Shape Sorter (Sunshine Market)
Construction toys (Bright Builders, Marbleworks)

Visual
Books
Puzzles (Place & Trace, Progressive Puzzles)
Matching games (AB SeasNumber Hunt, Zingo)

"Einstein Never Used Flashcards"

Although I am in the business of selling educational toys, I am proud to say that the toys I sell are DISCOVERY TOYS. If you don't know us, because we're not as big or famous as Fisher-Price or Playskool, we exemplify much of what Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and her co-author, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff talk about in their book, Einstein Never Used Flashcards: parental involvement and low-tech play leads to learning rather than memorizing. (Note: The New York Public library owns 16 copies. To put this is perspective, they have 20 copies of Albert Einstein's book Relativity).

Lane Nemeth, the founder of Discovery Toys, Inc., was also an educator, well-versed in early childhood development. In 1978, when Lane started Discovery Toys out of her garage, she complained of not being able to find in stores the kinds of toys she wanted her own child to play with: toys that were safe, non-violent, engaging, fun, able to stimulate a multitude of senses and learning styles, non-gender specific. She brought in various consultants like Dr. Mike Meyerhoff (Harvard Preschool Project) and Jim Trelease (Read-Aloud Handbook) to make sure that her sales field understood what set us apart from other toy companies. When I read about Dr. Hirsh-Pasek's research, I could almost hear Lane preaching to the Discovery Toys field years ago about what makes a good toy.

Several years ago Hirsh-Pasek visited CBS' The Early Show and talked about four simple things you can do to help develop your child's creativity and further their learning. Read more about that interview at www.cbsnews.com.

Won't you join me in helping parents and educators to get toys that will help children thrive? We need people all across America to carry these award-winning toys into the homes of others through our party plan because these toys are not sold in stores. It's a big job, with money to be made, even during a recession!

Sounds Like Fun

Here's Barbara Milne, the creator of Discovery Toys classic product Sounds Like Fun, singing to a small group of us before our convention began last week in Denver. (over 1 million sold). Her CD is great for naptime and bedtime, with over 60 minutes of soothing voice and guitar music that will calm your child. Use it in the car or at bath time, too; an invaluable tool for auditory learners. The tempo is slow and non-frustrating, allowing children to hear and learn more easily. There is plenty of repetition, which may bore adults, but provides comfort and security to children. Follow along on the ABC chart when playing "Alphabet Sounds," and see the letters in lower case. This product promotes pre-reading skills, math skills, and auditory and language development.

"Give a man a fish...."

Empowering a child to find his own way through life is a critical key to his development. You know the expression, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you've fed him for a lifetime?" Read as, "A child whose hand is held forever won't be able to cross the street by himself."

Since a child's environment plays a key role in his development at every stage of his young life, we as parents have a responsibility. We need to make sure their environment is pleasant, including the space they're living in, the behaviors of the people around them, and the toys that they have access to. What they are exposed to, inside and outside the home, molds who they will become. Further, it shapes the kind of parent they will grow up to be.

Visits to the park, playground, museums, concerts, exposure to books, games and music...all of these can be beneficial, and need not cost a lot. Many museums have some hours each week where admission is free. Your local library is another spot for free programming and free loans on children's books. Look for outdoor summertime concerts in your local park. Please write in your comments on things you do that other parents may wish to share.

When is a child too old to play with sand toys?

Many people think that playing in the sand is child's play, but the truth is, we're never too old to enjoy a day at the beach. The older the child (or the adult), the more interesting their sand creations can be. It took a Discovery Toys product called Measure Up Cups (see video demo) to teach me that. It's made of 12 graduated cups, the largest being 8 ounces (don't mix your beach set with your kitchen set, though!) and is easily transported to the beach in your beach bag. When my son was pre-teen, he and I were using them to build a sandcastle so complex that the lifeguard on the beach asked us if we had a building permit!

Sandy Feet's book, "Sandcastles Made Simple" offers invaluable tips for making extraordinary sand sculptures. For example, the sand must be very wet, requiring you to dig down deep. Just remember to fill in the hole so no one falls in.

Q: How can I get two 2-year old boys to play together nicely?

A: There are some age appropriate toys that have multiple sets of things, which they can both play with at the same time without fighting. Or a project that they both contribute to assembling...something big enough that they can work on it without getting in each other's space. May I suggest Place & Trace by Discovery Toys...a set of three separate puzzles geared to their age? Give each boy one puzzle with its 4 pieces. They can complete their individual puzzle, use the puzzle pieces to cut out Play Doh, or even cut out cookie dough and bake cookies in fun dinosaur shapes or transportation or house pets (each puzzle has a different theme). Often, an open-ended toy will be played with in different ways by different kids. That's what you need to look for.

Asperger's conference in NY set for 10/19/2009

The YAI/NIPD Network will be holding a full-day conference in October featuring Dr. Tony Atwood, entitled, “The Complete Guide to High Functioning Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome: Making Friends and Managing Feelings”

Attendees will have the rare opportunity to hear one of the top minds on Asperger’s Syndrome and High Functioning Autism.

This conference will be on Monday, October 19, 2009 from 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m at the McGraw Hill Auditorium located at 1221 Avenue of the Americas in New York City (entrance on 49th Street, close to 6th Ave.)

Visit the Conference Website to register on-line. Please note: There will be no on-site registration and seating is limited.