admin, Author at 3 Kids and Us

Three Types of Music Teaching You May Want to Pursue

January 30, 2018 by admin

If you love music, or play in a band at home or just with your friends and want to take your talents one step further, why not get into music teaching? If you are passionate about music, teaching it will pass on your passion to the next generation of music lovers and help them get the best out of music they can. Below are three different types of music teaching you may want to sink your teeth into, depending what you play and what your musical interests and experience are like.

Instrumental Music Teacher

If you play an instrument, you may want to help others with learning and perfecting their chosen instrument too. If you’ve played any instrument for a long time, you will know the ins and outs, and you’ll be getting paid to do something you love. You need a certain amount of patience with this job as new students can take time to learn; remember how hard it was for you and you will find empathy with them. All students need are encouragement and lessons, and scores to take home to practice every week. You can do this in schools such as Kent State, privately at your own home or travelling to learners homes, therefore it is a very flexible career you could even enjoy alongside your regular job.

General Music Teacher

If you are passionate about all kinds of performers and styles of music, you could inspire the same to your students. You can teach any age range depending on what suits you best and what age you’d like to work with. Not only will you help students create their own and learn to appreciate music more, but the appreciation you have for music will also deepen. Kent State University offers an online master’s in music education to get you started and understand how to teach music; all you need is the passion.

Choral Director

If you have an ear for vocal talent and you know what singer should be harmonizing with whom and what song suits an individual best, becoming a choral director could be your calling. If you know about tone, pitch and breath control whilst singing and can teach it to your choir, you can pass on your talents and skills and make something amazing. Whether you are teaching an individual or a whole choir how to be their best, you will be inspiring and helping singers achieve their goals and perform at their greatest. You can also see how your hard work has paid off during school concerts, and watch the proud parents marvel at their talented children and the confidence you have given them.

However you wish to pursue your teaching career in music, remember if you have the love for music, playing an instrument or singing, the rest will come naturally. Who knows, you could inspire and teach the next Adele or Ed Sheeran! The best part, you will be getting paid for doing something you love and teaching it to others.

Awesome Reasons to Study Gerontology

January 29, 2018 by admin

Although no longer the largest segment of society, having been overtaken by Millennials, Boomers began reaching retirement age in 2011. When you consider that 26% of the total population of the United States is comprised of people born between 1946 and 1964, a total of 76 million people, you are looking at a huge segment of the population requiring senior services in every aspect of life. Gerontology, the study of all aspects of aging, offers a wide range of career opportunities. If you are considering pursuing an advanced degree, here are five awesome reasons to study gerontology.

1) Amazing Career Opportunities

Recognized as the leaders who are setting the standard in gerontology education, the University of Southern California is preparing graduate students to specialize in the study of aging in all aspects of life. From mental health counseling, nursing, and senior assisted living administrators, and even advisors on senior legislation, the number of career opportunities is almost limitless.

2) A Growing Demand for Experts on Aging

Consider for a moment the fact that there were 76 million people born in a 19-year time span. Simple statistics show that more than 10,000 people a day, each and every day of the year will reach retirement age. How many fields of study necessitate experts who can serve more than four million new consumers each year? You can continue working in your field while pursuing a master’s degree in gerontology at the University of Southern California online and be a part of the solution to such a great need.

3) Better than Average Growth Potential

Since there is such a great need and so few experts in the field to date, the growth potential is tremendous. You can look forward to a career with better than average growth potential which can see you working in administration to service the growing needs of an aging population. Again, from administrating a senior assisted living facility to overseeing a staff of geriatric home healthcare nurses to serving as advisors on aging to government bodies, this field will experience tremendous growth in the coming decades.

4) Seniors Deserve Specialized Care

As the second largest generation alive on earth today, you are looking at mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers who raised successive generations. They helped to build America into the superpower it is today and have cared for us through some of the darkest moments in modern history. Now, they deserve specialized care to serve their needs, don’t they? A master’s degree in gerontology will put you in a position to give back to a generation that gave so much to us.

5) You Can Make an Impact on Quality of Life for Seniors

Finally, and most importantly, as a graduate with a master’s degree in gerontology, you can make a difference in the quality of life seniors live. Not only will many need specialized healthcare but they will need emotional counseling, therapy, better living conditions and even economic support. As an expert in the field, you can help our seniors live a better quality of life.

Give our seniors back the dignity they deserve by learning advanced techniques in gerontology. These are only five of the awesome reasons to study for gerontology, but if you needed yet another, perhaps you should look at your own family.

Developing a Happy, Healthy Home Life for Parents with Kids

January 26, 2018 by admin

Source

Creating a happy, healthy environment for your children to grow up in matters enormously for their emotional, mental, and personal development. Kids need to feel secure in their environment and have a greater degree of predictability because most things are new to them. This is why when going on a trip, kids need to know when they’ll arrive and make plans after their arrival to return a sense of control when out of their limited comfort zone.

Here are a few ways to create a home environment that’s conducive to a happy life for children.

Children Need Their Own Autonomy

While they depend very much on their parents for help, support, and advice, they also must learn to think for themselves, solve problems and not require parental assistance at every turn. Just like with using stabilizers on a bicycle, it’s good to help them avoid injury, but sometimes they have to take a few knocks to learn important life lessons you cannot get from reading a book.

It’s always better to learn from the mistakes of others, but that’s not always useful with practical challenges. Parents will do well to note the different types of things that their kids will need to learn and when practical lessons override book smarts.

Rewards for Participation Isn’t Setting Them Up for Long-term Success

One of the issues currently evident with the millennial generation is a lack of desire to win. It’s been found that millennials as children were given awards just for participating in an event or a challenge, regardless of whether they won or not. Doing so creates several new problems long-term.

Firstly, it makes it clear that winning is not necessary; just doing the minimum is good enough, which is a lousy ethic to bring into a competitive workplace environment later.

Secondly, not striving for continual improvement because average performance is rewarded makes it difficult for young adults to keep up with a rapidly-changing marketplace that we’re currently all facing.

For the next generation, it’s important to expect higher performance as children get older. Whilst parents should recognize that each child has their own innate abilities and limitations, doing the best that they can do is the mark to attain. Teaching children to finish what they start and to be heavily goal-oriented are both vital disciplines that lead to better performance throughout life.

Healing Emotional Abuse with Foster Kids

For foster parents, the challenges can often be even greater than for biological parents. Many children that go into foster care were poorly treated, previously suffering one or more kinds of abuse. A sense of betrayal and abandonment leads to a lack of trust in authority figures, which if not handled the right way continues through to adult life, leading to potential difficulties in the workplace and elsewhere.

Taking an emotional abuse test is a good way to confirm whether there are any major difficulties in this area, which can then be addressed in a positive way. Rebuilding trust in authority and learning to accept sensible guidance takes time in children who are preschoolers, tweens, or of school age. But it’s a critically important component of a child’s developmental path.

Creating a safe environment for children allows them to focus on their lives, accelerate learning and leave plenty of time to play. In chaotic homes, it’s been shown time and again that this leads to erratic children who grow up to be detrimental members of society. By doing your part as a parent, your children can grow up to be leaders and inspire others.

Make Your Own Bacon in Three Easy Steps

January 22, 2018 by admin

Bacon is one of the best food items to have at home, especially when you have kids. Bacon is easy to mix with other food items and work well in various recipes. You can serve bacon for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and still have the kids really excited about meals.

Even better, you can now make your own bacon at home, especially with electric smokers and the ingredients you need all very easy to find. We’re going to take a look at how you can make your own bacon in this article.

The Preparations

The only thing you need to make your own bacon is a good smoker. There are a lot of options on the market, from the more traditional charcoal smokers to electric smokers with advanced features. If you’re looking for a good one for home use and you are relatively new to smoking meat, read Brinkmann electric smoker reviews and pick one that suits your specific needs best.

You also need a few ingredients. Pork belly – with the skin removed – and some ingredients for the cure. The main ingredients are salt and sugar, but you can add pepper and curing salt too if you like. You can then add maple sugar, ground black pepper flakes, and even berries to add different flavors to your bacon.

Step 1: Curing

Mix the curing ingredients and apply the cure to your sliced pork belly. Use a rimmed baking sheet to make it easier. You want to cure the pork belly for five days to get the best flavor, but make sure you turn each slice once a day to get a more even flavor with every slice.

After five days, rinse and clean the pork belly. It now contains all the right flavors you want from a slice of bacon, so be extra careful when rinsing. You only want to remove excess cure or salt, not do a deep rinse.

Step 2: Smoking

Smoking cured pork belly is easier than you think. First, you need to choose the right type of wood chips to compliment the flavors of your bacon. I personally love apple or cherry wood chips for their sweet, smoky flavor.

Set the smoker to 175 degrees and smoke the pork belly slices for around 2 to 3 hours. Once you’re done, you have your homemade bacon ready for use.

Step 3: Cooking

Make sure you let the smoked pork belly rest for a while, and then refrigerate it for 4 hours before you cook the bacon. Slice thinner slices and fry the homemade bacon to a crisp. You will be surprised by the softness of it and how it is filled with flavors.

Homemade bacon also tastes fresher than frozen bacon. Since you can cure a set of pork belly slices for a whole week – bacon can be stored for five days without freezing it, and even longer when frozen – you can also make larger batches and have more than enough for different meals throughout the week. Once you make your own bacon, you’ll never want to buy frozen again.

4 Ways to Make Your Kids Feel at Home at the Doctor’s

January 19, 2018 by admin

No matter what age your children are, going to the doctor’s office can be a stressful and nervy experience for many youngsters. Even if it’s just a routine check up, the next time you have to take one of your kids to the pediatrician’s could prove to be a tough day on the parenting docket. Fortunately, here are four steps you can take to mitigate against a stress-inducing day out to the doctor’s –– and help both you and your little one relax!

Bring Entertainment

The most excruciating aspect of any visit to the doctor’s isn’t the check up itself, the reflex tests, or even the dreaded shots –– rather, it’s the anticipation that can unsettle even the most fearless child. Plan for having to wait in the lobby for some time while at the pediatrician and make sure to bring along something for your child to play with. A book, iPad, tablet, or small toy are all good suggestions. Anything that holds their attention, without causing too much of a ruckus will serve to relax them, and allow you to fill out paperwork without distraction.

Consistency is Key

The last thing your child needs on an already stressful day are unplanned shocks to the system. So if possible, schedule each trip to the doctor to be as similar as possible. Find a pediatrician you like and trust at a location that’s convenient for you and continue with them. Your child will appreciate the consistency and will learn to trust a doctor the more they see them.

Be Transparent

If your kid is especially freaked out by going to the doctor’s, one way to help calm their nerves is to explain the different processes to them. Tell them what to expect at the doctor’s, why certain exams and shots are necessary, and how long everything is going to take. You can even show them images of different lab equipment like needles, pediatric blood tubes, and stethoscopes to help destigmatize any fears they might harbor. Remember, your child is perceptive; misleading them, or downright lying will cause more trouble than it’s worth.

Reward Good Behavior

Let your little one know up front that after you go to the doctor’s, there will be a treat in store for them. Whether you take them out for a classic like ice cream, or candy, or a trip to the movie theater or zoo is up to you. Just let them know you appreciate their cooperation and reinforce their positive behavior.