High School Teachers
Teachers of Psychology, Sociology and Family and Consumer Science may be interested in a variety of resources that we have created for working with families, child care providers and children.
Working Families Newsletter
A quarterly publication with articles covering a wide range of topics that impact the lives of families. The site contains an archive that goes back to 2007.
Nibbles
Ideas for coping with the challenges of parenting and preparing your children for success covering the following topics:
- Kids & Food
- Help Your Child Succeed
- Your Child’s Health
- Challenges of Parenting
- Learning to Get Along
- Playtime in Fun Time
- The Day Care Routine
Parenting Again
A newsletter focused on grandparents raising their grandchildren.
The number of grandparents who are raising their grandchildren continues to rise. For many grandparents, it is more difficult to parent the second time around. They may be faced with raising their grandchildren at a time when their age, poor health, and limited finances compound their problems. In spite of these challenges, grandparents do their best to help themselves and their grandchildren succeed. Parenting Again provides helpful information for those second-time parents.
child care
The Illinois Department of Aging has a task force for "Grandparents Raising Grandchildren in Illinois" to assist older adult caregivers in their efforts to provide quality care for their family's children. Starting Points for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren is a resource guide with information and services for Grandparent Caregivers.
What Every Parent Should know about facebook
Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have opened up exciting new ways for teenagers (and adults) to interact with their peers and express themselves. But, parents need to take a pro-active approach to guiding their children’s participation in the social networking universe.
Family Works
Topics such as: respect, gangs, anger, school & discipline.
Family Life Team
Profiles of each member of the Extension Professional Staff at the University of Illinois.
Family Quiz
Take a quick quiz testing your knowledge of issues faced by Illinois families.
A Guide to the Business of Babysitting
The purpose of this guide is to prepare potential babysitters with the knowledge & skills necessary to care for children. This website is specifically designed to be used by young people, ages 14-19 who are interested in learning more about the business of babysitting. This is not developed for youth under the age of 14 or for childcare professionals who generally need a more concentrated, in-depth learning experience.
Helping Children Succeed in School
All parents want their children to become successful, caring adults. Similarly, many parents want to be involved with the formal education of their children. Sometimes, however, they don't know where to start, when to find the time, or how to go about making positive connections with the school. At the most basic level, parents can begin encouraging the education of their children by showing that they truly value education themselves.
Your New Baby
Three useful resources about colic, finding infant childcare, and sleeping through the night.
Toddlers
A website dedicated to issues parents often encounter when dealing with toddlers. Topics include:
- Toddlers Exploring the World
- What Will We Eat Today
- When All You Hear Is “No!”
- Learning to Say Goodbye
- Toilet Teaching
Character Development
Character education is about teaching people to make sound moral judgements. At its best, character education is integrated into every aspect of a person’s life – home, school, work and community. Author and professor, Dr. Thomas Lickona, describes character education’s goal as teaching people to "know the good, love the good (develop a conscience) and do the good." In many character education efforts, community members come to consensus about the virtues ("the good") they would like people in the community to possess. The Character Counts!sm Coalition, for instance, focuses on trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. What is most important, especially when teaching children, is that a community uses a common language. What Character Education Is Not Character education is not an add-on program nor a once a month lesson that works like a vaccination needing only a booster shot now and then. And it's not simply about obedience or fostering one person's or group of people’s definition of ethics or character.
Walk in My Shoes, Molly Hofer, Extension Educator.
Walk in My Shoes will help school-age children learn how to understand older people better by getting to know an older adult and becoming more aware of the aging process. This project will give children an opportunity to understand their attitudes about growing older, to develop new communication skills that can be used all through your life, and finally, to form new or enrich current friendships with older family or community members. Walk in My Shoes has many activities that bring children together with older friends or family members. These activities can be completed in a group setting or they may be done at home The helper you choose will learn with you as you complete Walk in My Shoes. Your helper should be at least 65 years old, and should be someone you like to be with and can talk with easily. Find a helper and ask the person you choose if he or she will: 1. participate with you in the activities that call for the help of an older person; 2. talk with you about what happened in each activity after you complete it; and 3. share some personal insights with you about growing older.
Intentional Harmony
Intentional Harmony: Managing Work and Life is a set of resources to help people manage their work and their personal lives. Intentional Harmony is based on family theory and interdisciplinary research, and it addresses the needs of working individuals in several critical areas.
parenting 24/7
A site about raising children and managing family life with four sections focusing on:
- Infants
- Preschoolers
- School-aged children
- Teens
jitp (Just In Time Parenting)
Free parenting eNewsletters written by parenting experts (who are parents themselves!). They are designed so that information that's relevant to your child is automatically delivered to you just in time!
parenting
eXtension is an interactive learning environment delivering the best, most researched knowledge from the smartest land-grant university minds across America.
Various publications about children and families
Listing of publications (for purchase) that address a range of issues related to family life and relationships.
Terrific Teachable Moments
Everyone who works with children knows the value of a teachable moment. With Terrific Teachable Moments: Pre-K through Grade 2 and Terrific Teachable Moments: Grades 3 through 6 at your fingertips, you can respond to character and behavior issues with a range of ages at a moment's notice. And our CD-ROM version puts the resources of both books in electronic form (Acrobat PDF files) for easy full-text searching. The Terrific Teachable Moments books were developed by the family life and youth development specialists of University of Illinois Extension. Each book has 75 hands-on, minds-on mini-lessons (about 10 minutes each) that equip you to help children make positive character choices at school and beyond. The activities are categorized using the Six Pillars of Character--Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship--identified by the Josephson Institute of Ethics and used in CHARACTER COUNTS!SM programming. The Terrific Teachable Moments CD-ROM works on both Windows and Macintosh operating systems and includes Adobe's free Reader software for viewing the PDF files. If you prefer a printed version of either book, check out Terrific Teachable Moments: Pre-K through Grade 2 and Terrific Teachable Moments: Grades 3 through 6.