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2009/05/15
With the life expectancy of the elderly increasing, the number of senior citizens unable to care for themselves, or families not being able to provide the essential care at home, nursing homes and assisted living facilities are rapidly popping up all over. Hospitals and doctors offices are seeing an increase of patients due to the new studies, infections, and diseases being discovered every day. Nursing is one of the most demanded positions in the 21st century. Nurses will always be needed.
Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)
LPNs work in all areas of the healthcare field: nursing homes, sub acute rehabilitations, hospitals and doctor’s offices. In long and short term nursing facilities LPNs pass medications, evaluate residents upon admission. During routine follow-ups, LPNs determine the patient’s needs and develop care plans. They also oversee nurse’s aides. LPNs in a doctor’s office duties include making appointments, taking vital signs when a patient arrives for an appointment, being responsible for keeping medical records up to date, and additional office duties. Some LPNs work as visiting nurses for those families who chose to keep their family member at home but cannot provide necessary care that a trained medical professional can. They visit patients at their home to take vital signs and look for any changes that would need to be reported to a doctor. LPNs also teach family members how to administer medicines, prepare foods if there is a specialty diet required, and perform care on the patient when there is not a caregiver a the home.
Education for an LPN would include a one-year program with a state approved training program. This would include classroom study and clinical education from one of the thousand of nursing schools worldwide. After finishing the program, students would be required to pass a licensing exam known as the NCLEX-PN.
LPN Salary Ranges from $28,000 to $50,000 and are determined by factors such as setting, region, and experience. LPN salaries prior experience as a Certified Nurse’s Assistant (CNA) or patient care associate in a hospital and/or skilled nursing facility can increase the starting salary and provide experience in the field giving that extra foot in the door when when searching for an LPN position.
Job Outlook for LPNs is high as in all phases of nursing. Over the next ten years it is predicted that job opportunities will increase by at least 15%. The majority of these will be in home healthcare settings and skilled nursing facilities. Due to the growing elderly population and hospitals discharging patients before they can thrive at home, the population of people entering a skilled nursing facility, whether for short term or long term care, continues to grow. This requires the need for more licensed professionals to care for them.an
2009/03/27
I recently shared with you the reaction my daughter’s nursery school students had when they watched Rock N Learn’s Alphabet Exercise video. It kept the kids active and their attention for the entire video! The other teachers thought the kids’ exercise video was great, too. Now I have more to tell you about!
With Emily just 3 years old and a new baby brother soon to be arriving, I also gave them Rock N Learn’s Nursery Rhymes DVD. I watched it with my granddaughters last Saturday in the car while doing some shopping for my son’s fiance’s bridal shower. It is adorable! There are many nursery rhymes, all animated and presented in song. I enjoyed singing along with Mother Goose, too. The Rock N Learn Nursery Rhymes brought back memories of when my children were small.
Here’s another great review from my daughter on Rock N Learn’s animated educational videos: Nursery Rhymes.
Text Message #1:
“Just so you know, K and Em have been watching nursery rhymes DVD non stop. They love it! And they sing them when not watching too lol. K said please get solar system one asap because that’s what they are doing in school and she wants it before the test lol”
Text Message #2:
“Also beginning fractions and decimals DVD too. That’s what she just started in math.”
If you are looking for something entertaining and educational for your grandchildren of all learning stages, check out Rock N Learn’s video samples and order one. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!
2009/03/07
I gave Emily, my 3-year-old granddaughter, a DVD by Rock N Learn that teaches the ABCs while doing fun exercises to song. She loved moving around, following the exercises with Alphabet Al. It’s just right for young children to get them up and moving during days they can’t go out and play.
Her mom, Lori, teaches 3 1/2 – 4 year olds. On Tuesday, she took the ABC Exercise video to school to play it for her pre-school class since they couldn’t go out to play – they had over 10 inches of snow the day before!
As you can see from the picture of Lori’s class, the Rock N Learn ABC Exercise video got the whole class up and moving by “picking cherries” and more fun movements while learning the alphabet, beginning sounds, and new vocabulary.
Lori and the other teachers liked it because they didn’t need anything but the Rock N Learn video for the kids to have a good time during their exercise time indoors.
Here’s a picture of the kids watching the video. My daughter sent this picture and texted my cell phone with this message when they were finished:
Awesome
Awesome
Awesome
They loved it! At the end, it still had 90% of the kids’ attention. They wanted more!
That’s saying a lot for children of that young age, not able to go out and play because of the many, many inches of snow that fell last Monday.
One of the other teachers told Lori that she has a few of the Rock N Learn videos for her class and the kids love them!
I also gave Emily the ABC Circus video by Rock N Learn. The colorful, animated video uses the circus to teach the ABC’s with acrobats, clowns, elephants, and more and instead of a teacher, their attention is kept by the ring master, Alphabet Al, dressed in a purple suit and hat – Emily’s favorite color! We had been to the circus last summer so she was very excited when she recognized things she had seen under the Big Top!
I gave Kaitlin 3 videos by Rock N Learn ( math, time, and money skills) which I’ll post about after she’s watched them all.
Lori and Emily recommend Rock N Learn videos for fun learning. They also have videos for learning languages, reading and phonics, social studies, test taking strategies, math, and also Nursery Rhymes which I’ll be giving to Lori at her baby shower for our soon-to-be grandson.
2009/02/05
Isn’t it exciting to first watch your grandchildren learn to read? First, they’re singing their ABCs to you and then, before you know it, they’re reading to you! Emily is learning to recognize her ABCs and Kaitlin is reading books, signs, math word problems, and toy sale fliers!
Fun reading activities are always a great way to bond with grandchildren. When we visit on Saturdays, we make a game of reading activities that show off what they’ve both learned over the past week. The girls take turns being the teacher. They think it’s great teaching Nana, the teacher, to read. Of course, I love being their student. I get to be the silly student and they get to teach me how to be a good student. Our reading fun also gives us a great opportunity to read books to each other. Emily pretends she’s reading by telling us a story to go with the pictures and Kaitlin plays her best role of “big sister” while reading one of Emily’s books to her. Activities such as these are great to bond with grandchildren while helping them learn.
I found an activity book Bonding While Learning by Gary Lee Kosman and Grace May Chiu. — Grandparents Raising Grandchildren (Summer 2007) that I thought you might be interested in. Read the review below… |
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iParenting Media Awards Review
Bonding While Learning does a fabulous job of giving parents and grandparents a wide range of ideas to incorporate reading into everyday fun and games which in turn helps them bond. It is broken down into easy chapters, gives wonderful hints on keeping things fun and engaging, is very positive and overall very motivating for both parent and child. I appreciated that all materials were included for each activity. The advice given is very specific and age appropriate and gives ideas for different stages of a child’s development. It would be a very valuable tool for anyone who was wanting to teach preschool children at home. Also, the tips on teaching children who are learning English as a second language were very helpful. And the tips at the bottom of the pages incorporating reading into every day life were very helpful. Really made me as a parent think about how to make reading not only fun, but a daily practice. It was all around a wonderful tool! — iParenting Media Awards Reviewer (May 2007)
Learning should be fun to hook the young ones into the enjoyment of life-long learning. Keep it light, keep it fun. If you find frustration is creeping into the activity, switch to some other form of play. Don’t over do it…come back to the learning activity some other time. Keep it fresh and alive!
2009/02/04
Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day will occur again on February 19. It will be the 8th year for this event that introduces young girls to a career in engineering. I recently received the following email from The Office of Vocational-Technical, Career and Adult Programs (OVTCAP) of the NJ Dept of Ed promoting the focus on girls and engineering. Be sure to visit the links listed at the bottom for activities to share with your daughters and granddaughters!
Women are severely underrepresented in the engineering profession. Research shows that girls and young women lose interest in subjects and the fields of study leading to engineering careers long before they enter college. (Perhaps it is because they haven’t been told they can use them to become successful engineers, same as their male counterparts. Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day may be all they need to find the motivation.)
K-12 girls need to be exposed to positive messages about math and science education and engineering careers. Additionally engineering societies and other organizations need to incorporate their own focus on women engineers with a hope that these various entities can continue to collaborate in the future. (Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day will help to improve girls’ self-concept of their capabilities.)
Currently only 20 percent of engineering undergraduates are women. Only ten percent of the engineering workforce are women. For years, false notions of girls’ innate inability in math, lack of science preparation in high school, and assumptions about the effects of historical and institutional discrimination, have been offered as causes for the startling disproportion. Recent surveys, however, refute most of those theories, including the ones that question girls’ academic readiness to study engineering when they leave high school. Girls and boys take requisite courses at approximately the same rate, with girls’ enrollment often exceeding that of boys. Instead, experts contend that the major culprit is one of perception among girls and the people who influence them, including teachers, parents, peers, and the media. (Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day will help to change that perception.)
In short, girls have to perceive they can be engineers before they can be engineers. According to the National Engineers Week Foundation, nothing conveys that message as effectively as mentors and role models and no program more effectively brings girls and role models together than Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, now in its 8th year.
Agilent Technologies, Inc. and the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation are lead sponsors for Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, with additional funding from the Motorola Foundation.
Some suggested reading material for girls are:
Girls Think of Everything:
Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Think-Everything-Ingenious-Inventions/dp/0618195637/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203435718&sr=8-2
Resources for Girls, Teachers, Parents http://www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/girlsday_resources.shtml
Día para Presentar una Niña a la Ingeniería http://www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/girlsday_sp.shtml
Brownie try-it experiments for young girls http://www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/girlsday_tryit_projects.shtml
Three Cheers for Engineers! student pamphlet
http://www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/3Cheers.pdf
Girl Day Event Archives http://www.eweek.org/site/News/Eweek/nationalpledgeroster_archive.shtml
Girls just wanna have fun in engineering:
Techbridge can help you Introduce a Girl to Engineering http://www.eweek.org/../EngineersWeek/IntroduceAGirl.aspx?ContentID=99&Version=2
For volunteer information about Introduce A Girl to Engineering, visit:
Introduce A Girl: Resources for Volunteers http://www.eweek.org/../EngineersWeek/IntroduceAGirl.aspx?ContentID=100&Version=1
*Personal note: In my high school days, I was told I could be a nurse, a teacher, or a secretary…even though my aptitude test showed I had the abilities to be an electrician, carpenter, or other hands-on professional. Opportunities were very limited to young women in my day. I didn’t want to be a nurse, nor a secretary, nor a teacher (LOL). But here I am, 4 certifications and 30 graduate credits later! I am glad my path led me to where I am today, but I wish I had been given the opportunity to explore. I often wonder what profession I would have pursued…
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