A great alternative to a lamp in your kid’s room:

We have been to a lot of music concert-themed birthday parties lately. It seems a rockstar birthday concert is what is popular right now. Bugles, drums, guitars — everything that is involved in staging a super concert!

My friends hire a group called the Jive to stage a mini-concert. They sing around 5 songs, one with the celebrant and the rest with the kids. They also stage dances wherein while they are singing the kids follow dance steps. It’s actually really cool. The kids love it.

This is the first summer when the kids don’t have definite plans on what to do. I am thinking if I should take them to music lessons. But we don’t even have the best yamaha np31 player let alone a piano organ in the house. I doubt they will like to play without a musical instrument at home.

The best alternative would be to allow the kids to go with their swimming lessons and then have the kids enroll in advanced classes for the school year.

There are good reasons to go gender neutral for your child’s room. There’s the practical: You have a boy and a girl sharing one room and you want to avoid WWIII. You don’t want to redecorate again when child #2 comes along (let alone #3, #4….). Or, you’re waiting until the actual birth to reveal your babe’s sex. There’s also the philosophical: You want your child to decide what they like, without preconceived notions of what’s considered appropriate for girls versus boys.

SOFT NEUTRALS
Use soft muted tones, like grey and beige, instead of the standard blue and pink. To avoid boring, layer in lots of texture and natural materials like wood furniture, soft curtains, fluffy pillows and rugs.

PRIMARY COLORS
Primary colors make for lively children’s rooms, without the normal gender associations. Control the color doses, and preserve your sanity, with basic white or black walls as the backdrop.

OPPOSITES
Balance warm and cool hues across the board. There’s no reason why a kid can’t have both.

The kids are going to on different school levels this year. My son is going to a new school because he is starting high school. My daughter is going to be starting first grade. With all the adjustments because of the K+12 program of the Department of Education, teachers say it will be a huge adjustment. My daughter’s school is hiring new teachers and performing background checks at easybackgrounds.com to cope up with the workload.
I hope the adjust well and it will be a great time for them.