With the news continually filled with stories of children being abducted and harmed by strangers, for parents the thought of letting your child out of your site is very frightening. From the smallest toddlers to even pre-teens and teens it seems that no age is immune to becoming lost where they can be easily abducted. In every case a quick recovery increases the likelihood that the parents will be reunited happily with their child.

There are several personal tracking devices available on the market for parents who are concerned with being able to locate their children should they wander off or go missing. Each has its own positive attributes as well as drawbacks so parents need to evaluate each carefully to make sure they get the exact model that fits their needs.

Due to the commercials ran on national television the Brickhouse child locator is probably the best-known model for most parents. While this locator is very affordable it also has the most limitations. This particular model is ideal for small toddlers who have a tendency to wander off or whose parents just want to have the peace of mind of finding their child within a small area.

The Brickhouse is not a GPS enabled device the receiver which parent’s carry works by looking for the signal sent from the bracelet worn by the child. With the ability to locate the child from 250 feet indoors to 600 feet outdoors this is a handy device to use at parks and shopping malls. But beyond those distances the device will not effectively locate the child so it is essential to find them quickly.

The Amber Alert GPS child locator while being more expensive than the Brickhouse has much broader capabilities and parents will find it useful for not only smaller children but older ones as well. Just as the name implies this unit is GPS enabled which will require a web enabled cell phone to operate as well as a very affordable subscription to the Amber Alert system.

The Amber Alert personal tracking device will work no matter how far the parents are away from their children. For working parents this means being able to track your child from the office to know they are safe. With features such as zone control parents can customize the device to watch their child and receive alerts when a child leaves a specific area. There are many other features as well such as speed monitoring to keep an eye on teen drivers and a panic button for a child to use in case of emergency.

While both child locators are effective at finding children the range of effectiveness and price will be big deciding factors for parents when choosing which model is just the right one for them.

As parents we worry about how our children are doing in school and if they will have the skills needed to one day take care of themselves. But while they are still small it is up to us to keep them safe from harm even when they are not with us. We hear so many scary stories on the news of child abductions that we always worry in the back of our minds when our child is not with us. One great resource parents have today is the ability to track their children with GPS technology in order to help keep them safe. A child locator device from Amber Alert GPS works with the GPS system and a web enabled cell phone to help you know where your child is at all times. The piece of mind alone is worth the cost and as parents we hope we will never have to depend on it for far worse.

If you are looking for fun and educational science kits for your young scientist The Kids Toy Store has plenty of cool kits to choose from.
These science kits are more than just educational toys for kids, they are fun science projects that can be done over and over again by your children and their friends.
Some of the science kits include circuit labs, crystals, magnets, solar power, and my kids favorite dinosaur models.
Of course this toy store has more childrens educational toys other than science kits. They feature toys from the top brands such as Jump Start, KidCraft, Baby Einstein, and so much more.

Science With Me has moved our kids science blog to our website Science For Kids. Please update your blogrolls and visit us for more great kids science experiments, science worksheets for kids and other fun educational science materials!
We will occasionally post here about cool science stuff and educational toys for kids.

Well –that’s what the L’s asked me last weekend so I decided to ask them right back. Loghlen answered ‘gravity’ which I thought was pretty cool. Lukie said it’s very very hot in there and Leah said ‘apple’.  Apple! –what a great idea to help us talk more about our planet. So:

1. Mommy, Lukie and Leah cut an apple in half.

2. Then Loghlen measured the diameter of the apple. It was 2.5 inches.  This is just like the equator –an imaginary line running through the center of the earth equidistant from the North Pole and the South Pole. It divides the Earth into a top half and a bottom half known as the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere.

3. Then we all colored the core of the apple. Just like the apple our earth has a core too. In fact the earth has an outer core and an inner core. Look at the great coloring job we did.

4. Next we measured the apple’s flesh –the distance from the outer core to the skin of the apple. This is just like the earth’s mantle.

5. Finally we measured the skin of the apple as accurately was we could (it was about one tenth of an inch). This is just like the earth’s crust.

When we finished the 3 L’s all colored the Science With Me! What’s inside the Earth? coloring sheet. You can find it here if you’d like to have your kids do it: http://www.sciencewithme.com/worksheets.php?cid=10

See Loghlen’s above. He did a nice job–especially those lovely blue oceans.

Enjoy!

It finally happened –the day before yesterday on July 31 st at age 7 and a quarter–Loghlen lost his first tooth.

There was great excitement and of course lots of questions. Is the tooth dead or alive? What’s a tooth made of anyway? And not to mention–how much is a tooth valued by the tooth fairy these days?
Seizing the moment for science I whipped out our sciencewithme What’s inside my tooth? coloring sheet and Loghlen, Luke and Leah all colored it and we had a chat about it.
Older kids can do the Color and Label one. Both worksheets can be found here: http://www.sciencewithme.com/worksheets.php?cid=1
Enjoy!
elva

p.s. Here’s the one Luke age 5 did. It’s very nice I think.

OK just came back from Charlotte’s Web with the 3 L’s. They loved it. As did Mom and Dad. Another super super job by Disney.  Of course there was great conversation/questions after the movie, and we got to thinking and talking about science (again). Well actually I didn’t start it. Charlotte did.
“I’m nocturnal” she told Wilbur. “That means I work at night”. What other animals are nocturnal (animals that are more active during the night) I asked the 3 L’s?  A dog, a swan maybe not….
How about these guys?
An owl –we know they say “Hoo hoo” in the night and when Luke stays up late we call him ‘a night owl’, so an owl  must be nocturnal.
A fox for sure. We have one in our neighborhood that comes in the middle of the night to rummage through the trash.
A bat –yes– but how can they see in the dark? (They must be blind because Mom often says Dad’s as blind as a bat). Well.. Bats send out sound waves that bounce off nearby objects so they can tell where and how far away the object is. Cool! We call this skill echolocation.
A butterfly–no perhaps not. We’ve seen lots of them during the day. But how about a moth? Yes, they come out more during the night so they  must be nocturnal.
A hedgehog comes out at night so they must be nocturnal.
How about that animal that used to make the worst smell at night when we lived in Princeton? The skunk. Yes another nocturnal creature.
That cute cuddly creature that climbs trees and lives in Australia. The Koala. Yep. Nocturnal.
A mouse? Yes many mice are noctural. Well done. Now Mom’s made us a coloring sheet so we can colour the nocturnal animals we listed.
Oh one last thing…Are we nocturnal? Hmmm. Maybe Dad is. But not the rest of us. What’s the opposite of  nocturnal? Well scientists call  that diurnal.

From Dominion Post…MONSTROUS CATCH: A colossal squid, weighing about 450kg,was caught by a longliner in Antarctica. It was barely alive when it reached the surface.

Here’s how I teach my kids about the bones in their body. Then they color the Skeleton Worksheet (front and back) and I point out the names of the bones to them.  It’s fun!

Hello everybody! I finally found some time to start this blog. It’s late on Friday night and tomorrow we are having a big party (35 kids–help!!) for Luke and Leah who celebrate their 5th and 4th birthdays respectively. Of course Loghlen will invite some friends too…

Well the idea behind this blog is to keep me talking and doing science with the kids and to give other parents and teachers ideas too.

So I managed to figure out (with Scott’s help of course) how to start a VodPod and add my animations to the side bar. Cool technology I think.

Good afternoon, good evening and good night!

elva