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I’m always on the hunt for new games we can play as a family.
This tabletop balancing game from Melissa & Doug would make a great holiday gift for my kids. This game is designed for one to four players, so your kids (or even you) can play alone.
Like Jenga, each player takes turns adding pieces until the sculpture comes tumbling down. Kids will work on their hand-eye coordination and logic as they carefully add new wires to the base.
Melissa & Doug’s Suspend is available at Amazon.
Sales of note for 9.10.24
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase
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- J.Crew Factory – 40-60% off everything; extra 60% off clearance
- Lands’ End – 30% off full-price styles
- Loft – Extra 40% off sale styles
- Talbots – BOGO 50% everything, includes markdowns
- Zappos – 26,000+ women’s sale items! (check out these reader-favorite workwear brands on sale, and some of our favorite kids’ shoe brands on sale)
Kid/Family Sales
- Carter’s – Birthday sale, 40-50% off & extra 20% off select styles
- Hanna Andersson – Up to 50% off all baby; up to 40% off all Halloween
- J.Crew Crewcuts – Extra 30% off sale styles
- Old Navy – 40% off everything
- Target – BOGO 25% off select haircare, up to 25% off floor care items; up to 30% off indoor furniture up to 20% off TVs
Anonymous says
A Friday lesson in when it’s OK to be “that parent”–because I’m clearly still learning!
My 10 year old is signed up for town basketball. Her league is 3/4th grade and there are “evaluations” where they watch the girls play and try and make the teams fair (ie no team full of all beginners, no team full of 5′ tall kids, etc) and then they create 6 teams of girls that play all winter.
My kid is sporty and knows a ton of kids in town from school and other sports/activities over the years. She went to 4th grade evaluations and knew nearly every girl there, at least by name if not friendlier than that- she said there were only 1-2 girls out of the 20 or so that she didn’t recognize. She knows a good handful of 3rd grade girls from her elementary school and other activities.
I happened to log in and see the team rosters yesterday (one of my other kids is also playing and got her team). Of the 9 girls on the roster, I didn’t recognize a single name. I texted a few friends and it turns out that the team has 7 3rd graders that go to other elementary schools in town and 2 4th graders- my daughter and a girl that goes to private school.
We’ve done easily 5 years of town sports and gotten placed on all kinds of teams- but no matter what, we knew at least ONE other kid/family. Maybe not a friend, maybe not even someone she liked, but just like, a friendly face.
So I did the thing I hate. I emailed the organizer and asked if they could make a change. I said it didn’t matter who, but could they either move someone from her school (3rd or 4th grade!) to her team, or put her on a team with any of the 12 girls we know playing from other elementary schools, or consider swapping her to be on a team with one of those kids. They IMMEDIATELY emailed back and said they could.
Her new team is 2 of her good friends, 2 other 4th graders from her school, and 4 3rd graders from her school–all of whom she knows, and two of the 3rd graders are her friends from the bus. Both coaches are parents we know- they have kids that are friendly with my other two kids. There is a second team (of the 6) that is 80% her elementary school, and has her best friend on it. And the other 3 teams are all filled with kids she knows- both 3rd and 4th graders.
Anyway, I thanked the organizer (probably too much) and spent the night feeling guilty about being *that* parent, and for potentially creating a team with a bit of an upper hand (this team she got switched to seems to be loaded with tall 4th graders, but who knows- maybe the first team is loaded with tall 3rd graders!) but honestly, I’m so grateful. She went from a team where she’d be really unhappy to a team she is buzzing around excited to be on.
Last year, she was placed on a basketball team where she knew from around town– 2-3 of the other 3rd graders and the 4th graders were not kids she knew but they went to her school. That was fine– and she had a great season and became buddies with some of the kids she didn’t know very well. But this year– I was shocked given how many kids we know that she could even be placed on a team of 10 where she didn’t know at least one kid!
Boston Legal Eagle says
Oh man, I hear you on the politics of youth sports! We also have combined 3rd/4th grade teams for a lot of town sports, which is coming up next year for us. But I don’t see this as you getting an advantage – they’re not in a competitive league at this point, are they? At least for us, there are travel leagues and there are IM leagues, which consist of the combined grades. If you were emailing to get her on a super high up travel league, that would be one thing, but this will make her enjoy the team and game more, so seems fine. Odd that they put mostly 3rd graders on that first team, but oh well.
Don’t worry, I’ll be writing in if/when my kid doesn’t make travel soccer next year because the board of trustees plays favorites (allegedly)! Our town is big into sports.
Anonymous says
Our town is too. There is a travel league- my friend’s husband is coaching and she could have gotten a spot in that team, but it’s too much commitment. We ski in the winter ;).
Anonymous says
In our town it’s not so much “plays favorites” as it is that a lot of the parents that volunteer and coach are friends. So if you have 3 parents that step up to coach travel, those kids are pretty much going to make the team. And then if they are good friends with a couple girls, they are also likely going to make the team all things otherwise being pretty equal compared to another kid.
We saw this a bit in soccer, except fortunately/unfortunately every grade starting in 3rd is travel- it’s just a matter of which level you are in. You want your kid on a specific team? Make friends with the coordinator or offer to do it yourself. Or step up to coach. One of my kids may not make the competitive travel softball team next summer so guess who is stepping up as a parent volunteer? It may mean they do two teams- A and B, but if I have to coach a B team so she can play, I will.
Boston Legal Eagle says
Yes, exactly this is the case in our town. Parent coaches making the decisions and picking kids they know. Which is not the end of the world, obviously, just a minor annoyance. And the parents here have to try out to coach travel, as it’s more competitive than IM, so it’s the parents who are already in the coaching game.
Anonymous says
Good job! The fact that you didn’t demand only one specific perfect solution but asked for a range of different good options likely helped.
Anonymous says
I do think this is over the top. One of the benefits of extracurricular activities is that they allow kids to make new friends who don’t go to their school. When there is social drama in the school group, those outside friendships can serve as insulation.
Anonymous says
That’s true! I’m the OP. I didn’t push back in previous years when she’s been on teams without friends.
This one is weird because she knows so many of the kids and landed on a team where she knew nobody and had nobody from her school-either grade. There are 60 girls playing. She knows 40 of them- or more!, if only “hey we played lacrosse together once” or “your twin sister was on my summer softball team once” or “you look familiar.”
Anon says
I think this particular situation is kind of neutral (it was one ask, it was handled, fine). But I agree with you on the point of expanding friend groups. We are new to our town and apparently there are two “little leagues” for baseball – everyone at my son’s school goes for one, but we picked the other, so my son didn’t know a single person in the league. It ended up being great! I’m so glad we’ve expanded our social circle, especially because kids can be mean and it’s always good to have different sets of friends. Similar in soccer…both my kids were completely with strangers, but had fun and made friends. Rec sports isn’t a hill to die on either way, but there is something to be said about it being a low-stakes way to push your comfort zone.
Cb says
My son has had a tough year friends-wise – subject to some aggressive behavior on the playground and his girl bestie seems to be gravitating towards the other girls – and I was so hoping Scouts would offer him an outlet for new pals, but of course, it’s other kids in his class…
Anon says
Aw poor little Cb. Maybe it will provide a new connection with some of the classmates though? There’s a girl in my daughter’s Girl Scout troop that does aftercare with her. They never really talked before but now that they do Scouts they’ve become besties.
Anon says
I do too. Especially since you don’t even know if the kid will be unhappy about it.
I’m also amazed it took until age 10 to have a team without existing friends! I live in a small city (the whole metro area has a population around 200k) and my kid knows a ton of people, and we often see people she knows at activities but she’s done plenty of activities where she knew no one. I would imagine in bigger cities kids are even less likely to have a friend on their team.
Anonymous says
OP here. We are a town of <20k with 4 elementary schools. Across all 4 elem schools there are only 11 classes of 4th grade. So figure maybe 100 or so girls her grade in town? And we know a ton of them; I have a bunch of kids that have friends with siblings; and we’ve lived here forever. I’ve coached three different sports.
Anon says
11 classes would be at least 200 kids, unless you have incredibly tiny class sizes. But I take your point.
Anon says
Nevermind I just realized half of them are boys. Carry on :)
Anonymous says
I truly think you’re stressing too much about this! One request is fine, they were able to do it, there’s nothing to be dramatic about here.
Anonymous says
This whole discussion is wild to me. I grew up in an enormous city attending schools where everyone was bussed in from all over the place, and where housing and business districts were very separate. The result was that you never, ever ran into anyone you knew outside of the one context in which you knew them. The only extracurricular where some of the kids went to my school was Girl Scouts, and that was because the troop was school-based. Dance friends and school friends and sports friends were completely separate. Now we live in a smaller metro area with neighborhood-based schools and I still think it’s weird that the same people and families pop up in different contexts and everything is intertwined. Like I can walk into an evening meeting and have someone tell me something about my kid’s day at school that I haven’t even heard about from my kid because I haven’t seen her yet.
Anon says
Yeah, honestly I thought we were really lucky that more than half the time we do a parks & rec-type thing we run into someone my kid knows from daycare, school or aftercare. My friends in big metros report basically never seeing school friends outside of school and activities held at school. But apparently many people have more tightly knit communities.
Anonymous says
Me too, I grew up in a big sprawling suburban metro area and had church friends, music friends, softball friends, YMCA friends, and school/neighborhood friends with very little overlap in those circles, and I kind of liked it that way. (Though there was a boy I saw 7 days a week because he was in my class at school including my pull-out gifted class, and went to my church, and was in my swim lesson.)
I do see the appeal in having at least one friendly face on a team, though, especially if you know lots of people in the league. Our county Little League lets you sign up for a particular coach’s team, so my kids have been together with a core group of teammates for a couple years, and it’s been a nice little community. We also requested kid+friend be together on a hockey team for carpool purposes. Usually organizers are pretty helpful for reasonable & small-change requests.
Anon says
Yeah this is very odd to me growing up and living in a large metro area. Now there’s definitely overlap – like we’ll see a family or two from the kids’ preschool or aftercare at our Y – because my major city is a city of neighborhoods/suburbs. But because of the school lottery, no zoning, income inequity, and private schools, people come/go all over the place.
DH grew up in a smaller town and has told me about stuff like this which I always found wild!
Boston Legal Eagle says
My town for middle school and high school was a suburb in CA, but there were 200,000+ people. Around here (MA), towns tend to be on the smaller size, 20,000 – 40,000, with some of the bigger ones getting to 70,000 or 80,000. Both considered suburbs but wildly different environments! I imagine CA and TX are similar in that sense, vs. a New England or Midwest.
Anon says
There’s no mixing between the smaller towns? I’m in the Midwest and my town is only ~40k but the adjacent town is 70k and everything for sports and activities is pretty mixed, and then there are also people from neighboring rural areas who come here for activities (because to them we’re the ‘big city’…haha) so it ends up being quite a large population even though I’m not in what most people would consider a real city.
Anon says
LOL – Mixing towns?! This sounds so wild to me! Again, in a metro city of 7M people – even mixing suburbs would be bonkers here. Super interesting.
Boston Legal Eagle says
Super fascinating discussion! Our ~40K town is considered big or at least medium big, and there is no mixing at the rec/IM level, or the public school level. They do several towns for club sports. Some towns share a high school but their populations are 4-5K (thinking Dover-Sherborn).
Anon says
Oh yeah I wouldn’t expect a huge suburb to mix with another huge suburb! I was just responding to BLE saying some towns in her area only have 20,000 people and it seems to me that a town that small would combine with a neighboring town for rec sports – at least in my area it seems to be the expectation that the whole metro area of ~200k is basically combined for a lot of things. Obviously it would be in a different story if the metro area had 7M people.
Anonymous says
Nope. Wayland MA (pop 14k) Sudbury MA (20k), Weston MA (12k), a ton (23k), Hopkinton (17k) all have separate in town teams. Concord Ma (18k) combines with Carlisle (4500). Sudbury shared a high school with Lincoln (6k).
GCA says
Yeah, all of this. The whole town sports parent volunteer coaching ecosystem is wild to me, too. Grew up in Asia. Sports teams were mostly through school, & sports teams outside school for lower elementary students weren’t a thing. Totally get that it’s the norm in some places – just trying to wrap my head around it!
Anonymous says
I don’t think this is a big deal. My kid and her group of daycare BFFs go to different schools during the year but we specifically signed them up for summer camp where they can be together. Camp lets you list 2 kids you want to be placed with — we had a whole coordinated list of who was listing whom so they would be together. In the end, one girl ended up in a different group and we asked for the switch and got it. Turns out that girl would have been the only girl in the group who was not part of this circle of BFFs — not necessarily a great situation for that one girl either! Everyone else in their group turned out to be a group of boys who all know each other from a sport, so it was an interesting summer.
If you were doing stuff like this for every single thing, then maybe it would be a big deal, but once? Nah.
For the anon yesterday who had questions about pregnancy over 40 and drs appts says
I posted before realizing it was yesterday’s thread, but figured you may still be looking for responses:
Context: I delivered my first child at age 40, and my second at age 42 (a month shy of being 43). Both were conceived via IVF due to factors unrelated to my age.
I saw the OB monthly in my until I was 28 weeks, then every other week until 36 weeks, then weekly until I delivered (and a NST at each of those weekly appointments starting at 36 weeks). I saw a MFM monthly starting at 10 or 12 weeks, frequency never increased.
B/c of combo of my age and IVF, my practice’s policy was that I would be induced at 40+1. I had uncomplicated pregnancies and no factors that would have suggested c-section. For my first, I was induced at 40+1 and had an uncomplicated, unmedicated (except for pitocin) v-delivery. For my second, I went into labor at 39+6 and baby was born 6 hours after my first contraction, uncomplicated and entirely unmedicated.
I saw the midwife at my OB practices a few times towards the end (I was not allowed to have her as my primary because my age plus IVF made me “high risk”) and she said I was lucky that they were letting me get to 40+1 because they often try to induce by 39 for patients with my profile. She was also the one who laughed when they started making noises about inducing me early because they thought my second baby was big, and told me to hold up my hand and tell her my shoe size. She held her hand up to mind and then said “Well, I’ve just measured your hand, I know your shoe size, and I’ve just been in your pelvis – your body can handle a big baby”. Loved the laid back approach. He was 8lbs 5oz full term, so not even big.
anon says
Thanks, I’m the OP and this is super helpful – I basically have the exact same age spread (had my first right before my 40th birthday and I’ll be just turned 43 when I have my second). I’m also going to be have NSTs weekly starting at 36, but yeah – they are having me see MFM weekly at that point as well. I don’t have any risk factors other than age (I do have recurrent pregnancy loss, but all in the first trimester and they attribute all of that to my age + diminished ovarian reserve, so they don’t view that as a risk factor now.)
Anonymous says
A silly Friday thread: If your kid (this year or in years past) has had to do the “disguise the turkey” project in school, how did s/he/you all disguise the turkey?
Kid 1, who plays tennis: Colored as a tennis player, used cupcake liner as tennis skirt and I think made some kind of net with pipe cleaners
Kid 2, who dances: A ballerina- colored it, used fabric for the shoes.
Kid 3 (my kindergartener this year): colored the turkey in a NASA space suit and colored planets around him. “We gotta get him off Earth if he’s going to survive.”
Mary Moo Cow says
Fun and timely! We’ve done box of popcorn, Santa, cow, Skye from Paw Patrol…I can’t think of the others. 2 kids times 3 years. I usually let Kid do it so it was far from star quality.
Anon says
I have some THOUGHTS about this assignment. I remember DS #1 getting it at age 3-4 and he and I worked on it “together” – I made it a dinosaur and he colored it in. I think we spent max 10 minutes on it.
DS #2 got it this year, just a few weeks ago – he’s almost 3. I made it what he’s interested in (a tree), he spent 3 seconds coloring it, okay done. HOWEVER his classmates’ families clearly took this way more seriously than me, and the parents’ chat was rife with “OMG Sally cut the whole thing, hahaha”, “OMG Jack wanted his to be a ladybug so we HAD to do that.” (Why, yes, I’m the Anon who posted about being annoyed about the group chat a few weeks ago :))
OP – your kids did a wonderful job (and age appropriate). Kid 3 is spot-on.
Boston Legal Eagle says
This sounds like that parent who posted here about her young infant having homework! Like, why do homework at this age that requires so much parental involvement? I’m grateful our elementary school doesn’t require involved homework until at least 3rd or 4th grade, or maybe even later (right now in 2nd, it’s just 20 min of reading and some math).
Anon says
My K-er is starting very small amounts of homework and it’s been fine. I like that she’s getting practice with it and it’s low stress enough and only due once a week, so it’s not something we have to do nightly and hasn’t turned into a battle. I’ve heard it ramps up in first, so we’ll see how that goes.
I would have noped out of daycare “homework” immediately though. Daycare is not school.
Anonymous says
OP here. and it is funny. I actually had the time and interest to help this year (it was sent home billed as a family project) but my daughter, the most 3rd child of all 3rd children, was like nope, I got this, I have a vision and I’m getting my crayons. I did offer to help make a space helmet out of a yogurt lid which she considered and ultimately riffed on.
Anon says
This group chat sounds AWFULl!!
Is it normal to have a group chat for an entire daycare or school class? My kid is 6 and I’ve never been added to one, except small groups with moms I’ve met and socialized with outside of school. And those threads pretty much consist exclusively of “going to the park at 2 pm on Saturday if anyone wants to join.”
Bean74 says
Ugh, I joined the class chat this year when my son switched schools. It’s basically one mom complaining about the teacher, car pool line, and passing on information from the school’s weekly newsletter that we all get. One other mom chimes in to soothe this mom and the rest of us mostly stay quiet.
HSAL says
One twin chose an old man, refused any help and colored it as a man sitting in a chair. The other twin chose a witch, colored part of it green, threw a fit when he went out of the lines, and then fell asleep, so I ended up taking the “family project” instruction seriously and stapled on black stringy hair from rainbow loom loops, a black hat and cloak, and a broom (stick with a leaf a the bottom).
Bean74 says
BB-8. We looked for a coloring sheet of BB-8 online to print that was a similar size to the turkey. My son colored it, cut it out, and glued the BB-8 pieces over the turkey. He figured out how to put the head on so the turkey’s eyes could still be seen.
Anonymous says
My kid put red and green glitter all over his turkey and called him a Christmas tree. Done. We were all down with the stomach bug all weekend, and this was one of THREE major projects my kid was given this week. He did it himself and he was satisfied.
SC says
I vaguely remember this coming home from daycare or preschool once. If we did the project at all, I do not remember. I checked with DH, and he doesn’t remember either. This was pre-Covid, so some combination of the passage of time and a global pandemic has wiped this from our brains.
Anonymous says
I have never heard of disguise the turkey – it’s a coloring project?
Anonymous says
Same. This is school?
Anon says
Arts and crafts more generally, not just coloring. You decorate a turkey to look like something else.
It’s a big thing in the last 10 years or so.
Spirograph says
I had never heard of it either! I’ve never gotten anything fancier than traced-hand turkeys, maybe with some construction paper tail feathers.
Mary Moo Cow says
I think there may be a tie-in to a book. Maybe something about Farmer Brown? I vaguely remember my kids talking about a book where turkeys escaped.
For my craft-loving kid, it was a lot of fun; for my non-crafter, she didn’t like the project but loved seeing the results in the hallway. Honestly, same.
Anon says
We’ve done turkey and pumpkin in elementary school (in NY). For the pumpkin my kid disguised it as a football. I don’t remember the turkey details…
Anonymous says
I’m the OP. It’s a kindergarten “family project” for our school. Kids come home with a paper turkey and an assignment to “decorate it to blend in.” You can do anything from just coloring it to doing a more arts and craft-y type approach.
https://www.pinterest.com/mlvz/disguise-a-turkey/
Anon. says
My K’r did Optimus Prime from transformers. Coloring and pipe cleaners and construction paper. I Googled some inspiration pictures for him and help draw the Autobots logo, he did the rest. I was actually pretty impressed with how it turned out.