Tag Archives: Education

A Tale of two Musks

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One of these kids, is not like the other…

Elon Musk is an impressive visionary and an agent for positive change. Founder of PayPal, co-founder of Tesla Motors and founder of Space X, he is a true renaissance man.

What Elon is doing to up-end the automobile industry and force the big three to do what they should have done 30 years ago is amazing. His ambition to bring humans to space and lap around Mars is equally impressive. Whether you agree ot not that this is an effective use of funds, you have to agree he is a visionary and will leave a lasting legacy on society.

While most recently Elon has had his and all of our eyes pointed at the sky, spending $90m to send a Tesla Roadster to Mars, his little brother’s passion is a little more down to earth. Kimbal Musk been busy with an entirely different mission here on planet earth. Quite literally, his eyes are looking down and his hands are in the dirt educating under privileged kids all across the United States about the benefits of growing your own healthy, wholesome and nutritious food in the heart of urban centres like Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.

Kimbal-Musk-at-the-learning-garden-in-Los-AngelesKimbal Musk at the learning garden in Los Angeles’ Camino Nuevo Charter Academy High School. (Photo credit: The Kitchen Community)

Kimbal and his team have built what he calls “learning gardens” in six American cities. Immediate plans are in the works for a $25 million expansion into 5 more cities — Detroit, Colorado Springs, Louisville, Long Beach and San Antonio, Texas — with at least 100 schools in each city. By the end of 2020, his goal is to install 1,000 learning gardens in those cities. If he can make his dream come true, he’ll eventually introduce every child in America to healthy food and environmental awareness.

Sending a few rich white people to space or teaching underserved kids about food, resiliency and self reliance? Which Musk is going to have a bigger impact on the future of children and adults living right here on planet earth?

Fingerplay for the five and under set: Five Little Leaves

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Leaf coloouring activities for Kids

Colouring activities for Kids

Hello Parents and caregivers of children under five…

Here is a fun fingerplay that you can enjoy again and again with your child and children as you adjust to the cooler weather, spend more time inside and celebrate the fall season together!

Fingerplays support your child’s development in so many ways. They encourage your child to listen and to speak, to co-ordinate hand and finger movements that accompany the words, to use their imagination, to practice counting and to hear the musical quality of spoken words. They play an important part of your children’s fine motor skills development which is the precurser to learning to draw, write and work with their hands.

You don’t need props to do this fingerplay, but the rhyme can easily be extended into a fun and simple craft activity, if you like. All you need are construction paper, tape, pictures of leaves (many can be found in Google Images, or here at 321coloringpages) and crayons or markers or pastels or paints…

When you have found leaf images you like, encourage your child to colour them, then help with cutting them out. Set the leaves aside, then cut out five strips of construction paper, just long enough to wrap around your fingers, like rings. Tape the ends together.

Cut strips of paper long enough to wrap around each finger

Now you can attach the leaves to the rings using paper clips. Put the leaf rings on your fingers and then you are ready to recite this simple rhyme that the little ones adore. With each repetition you can easily remove one leaf at a time by sliding off the paper clip. The leaf cut outs can be used to help your child understand number concepts such as counting and subtracting in a creative way.

Leaf finger Puppets

Leaf finger Puppets

 

Be prepared to say this rhyme over, and over and over again:

Five little leaves went out to play (hold up five fingers)

They danced upon a tree one day (wave hand back and forth)
The wind came blowing through the town
Wooooooooo!
And one little leaf came blowing down (wave one finger back and forth in a downward direction)

Repeat this rhyme, subtracting one leaf each time until no little leaves remain.

For more information on the importance of art in children’s education, or for educators, parents and care providers who are looking for creative ideas to share with young children, please feel welcome to participate in helping to create a community of teachers and learners who enrich the lives of young children through the arts at the Early Childhood Arts Connection.

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The Registered Education Savings Plan – A primer

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The Registered Education Savings Plan, or RESP, is likely the best opportunity that a parent (or other relative) can establish to contribute to a child’s future education, and to help with the parents’ financial planning into the future.  Here are some things that you should know:

  • Almost anyone can deposit money into an RESP, as long as the parents agree
  • The money deposited into the plan grows tax free
  • The money deposited into the plan gets a government grant
  • You can invest it how you choose, or with the help of a qualified investment professional
  • The funds in the plan can be used for a wide range of post-secondary education, such as university, college, trade school or other programs that may qualify
  • If unused, the a portion of the balance of the RESP may be transferrable back to the parents later in life

So – sounds like a good deal?  It is.  The government established this program to encourage parents to save for their children’s future, and the government grant program (the Children’s Education Savings Grant, or CESG) creates a powerful incentive.  Here are the rules:

  • You can deposit up to $2,500 each year to get the “current year” grant, or 20 cents per dollar, per child.
  • You can deposit a lifetime maximum of $50,000 into the plan, per child.
  • You can receive a maximum of $7,200 of grant, per child, by the year in which they turn 17.
  • Note that there are special rules for beneficiaries (i.e. the kids) on the plan who are 16 or 17 years old, so consult a professional to discuss if your older child qualifies
  • There are added benefits for families with family incomes as described below:
    • incomes of less than approx. $77,000 there is an additional GESG incentive of $50 for the first $500 deposited
    • family incomes less than approx. $38,000 there is an total additional GESG incentive of $100 for the first $500 deposited in addition to qualifying for the Canada Learning Bond, which is $500 in the first year your family qualifies, plus $100 each year after

The math is fairly good for in favour of starting this plan.  If you look at the grant as free money (which is it), you are getting an automatic 20% return on the first $2,500 you put into the plan each year, and that grows tax-free.  In the current market, that seems a fairly strong argument to use this structure to plan for the future!