To encourage better behavior, focus on the solution not the problem.

Hello Parents! We just finished reading two books this past month that talk about the importance of offering praise for your kids to encourage better behavior. The books are Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us by Daniel Pink and Switch: How to change things when change is hard by the Heath Brothers.

Situation: Your kid comes home from school with his report card for the month. She got one A, for B’s and one F. Where do will you spend your time as a parent?

Problem: The first thing you notice is ‘the bad’ grades and immediately focus on the problem as you want to immediately fix it and come up with all sorts of ideas how to do so, like ‘if then’ punishment.

Solution: Focus on the good grade tell your child he did a great job on that particular subject and ask: How can we be build on that for the other subjects?

Sounds simple right? But ask yourself, is this truly the behavior you adopt in this particular situation?

And it isn’t just for grades, it’s for any situation where you want to encourage another behavior not just from your kid but from yourself. So remember, focus on the things your child does good and encourage that same behavior to other things which you would like him to change.

We highly recommend you read both books and if you haven’t we invite you to come back for more insights from both of these books as we’ll be posting some more posts.

What do you think?

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Hey Jumpiteerz! Here’s a vide we wanted to share with you of child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids’ big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups’ willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

It’s well worth the 8 minutes!

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Hola Hola Jumpiteerz! Do you remember our song The world in Books? It’s one of our favorites because it’s our attempt to speak of the importance of learning new things about the world around and that is something that we want to instill to kids. We found a great resource of free audiobooks for children where you can find some of the all time favorites such as Pinocchio, Tom Sawyer, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland and Polyanna just to name a few.

So Jumpiteerz let us know what you think, alright?

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Hola Hola Jumpiteerz! As you know we’re all about learning and we want to introduce you to the Kids Knowit Learning Network for children. There are a lot of sites out there that are a repository of information but don’t have much interactivity, this website in particular contains educational content for kids in not just video format but also text and does so by connecting to other networks.

Kids Knowit was created by an educator so the content in here is of real value to parents who their children to learn new stuff. The only thing we don’t like is that the videos can’t be embedded like YouTube but we’ve cropped some screenshots below of a Pirates Movie educational video so you can get an idea of what this is about.

Go over to Kids Knowit and see for yourself, we recommend it!

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Hola hola Jumpiteerz! Meet Quasi the Robot. A fast speaking witty robot built by students at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center in Pittsburgh. Quasi can talk and create human-like expressions and body movements, with some human help.

The picture above is from the recent International Toy Fair a few days ago and the video below is from a few years back.

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Hi mom or dad, we know that as a parent you probably get asked a LOT of questions by your young and curious child about the world and everyday things such as ‘Why do we blink?’ that probably leaves you scratching your head. The web is a vast repository of information where you can find out things about pretty much anything and so we found a really cool article about Answers to Common Questions Parents Can’t Answer Their Kids that you’ll get a kick out of!

If your kid wants to know why we blink, here’s the answer:

The very front of your eye is made of an extremely sensitive see-through screen rather like the windscreen on your parents’ car.

It’s very important that it stays clean and moist so that you can see as well as possible.

So every ten or 20 seconds, your eyelids close, spreading a thin layer of tears over your eye which washes off any bits of dust or anything else that may have got into it, like a car’s windscreen wiper with squirty screen wash.

If we didn’t blink so much, we wouldn’t be able to see properly, so it’s lucky we do!

Dr Rob Hogan, president of the College of Optometrists

Check out the article as there are more questions with answers to get you prepared for when those questions come you’ll be ready!

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Hola hola Jumpiteerz! Do you remember Disney’s the Jungle Book? Do you remember Mowgli and his bear friend Baloo? In school we’re told that Bears are dangerous and we should stay away from me if ever get to encounter them in the wild (and you should! )but we’re curios to know if humans can be around them and maybe find out if Mowgli and Baloo aren’t just make believe.

You know we love to learn and one of our favorite things to learn about are animals so there’s no better place to look than National Geographic. Yipee! As we were looking at the new videos section and found a really cool video about bears in the wild and how people (highly trained) actually do get close to them. Yup those cute furry animals are actually rather friendly and according to the scientist they are more afraid of us humans.

Hope you enjoy the video and you should know there’s a really funny scene where the Bear is scratching his back against a tree a-la Baloo that really made us lauhg!

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Hola hola Jumpiteerz! Hey so we found a really cool application from one of our favorite places in the whole world: Lego. You know those colorful pieces you can use to build stuff? It’s called Lego Digital Designer and it let’s you build lego bricks on your computer, we downloaded it to see what we could create with it.

At first we didn’t know where to start but after tinkering with it for a while we thought we create the Jumpitz House and here’s where we are so far:

It’s not finished but we’ll be working on it for the next couple of days. In the meantime you should definitely give Lego Digital Designer a try and see what you can create with it!

P.S. How do you think the Jumpitz House looks from the outside? What would you like it to have?

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Here at the Jumpitz we’re all about learning about the world so we where delighted to hear about a new service that aims to inspire kids to learn about the world and other cultures. Little Passports has two main characters who go out and travel to a new country each month and share the experience with your kid through a package they get in the mail which includes a letter, souvenirs and other goodies.

If you want your kid to learn about the world in a fun and interactive way every month you should check out Little Passports. This is a fun service and another great thing they do is that a portion of the proceeds from your subscription is donated to select charities that they believe impact children’s lives around the world.

Follow them on Twitter where they’re always chatting!

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Hey jumpiteerz today is Martin Luther King Jr Day and here is a coloring page you can print out and show your teacher and share with your classmates. Just click on the picture to print!

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