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Thank you to all of the families that entered our giveaway for the San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum! The winner will receive 4 tickets valid anytime the museum is open from Monday-Sunday 9:30-4:30. And the winner is Jodi! Please e-mail us at nicole (at) socalsavvymom.com and give us your address and we will mail the tickets to you. If we do not hear back from the winner within the next two days another person will be chosen.
Up next we have a giveaway for 2 – 45 minute massages!
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The holidays are upon us! There are only 42 shopping days left until Christmas this year! Have you started your shopping yet? In years past I was way ahead of the game this year however not so much. I wanted to share with everyone an amazing local company Think Eco 2. Think Eco 2 was started locally in San Diego by Jules Lavallee and Brian Behncke. One of the reasons they founded the company in San Diego was because they want to build jobs locally.
Take a look at the unique handmade eco-friendly gifts. I of course being the wine lover that I am couldn’t believe all the great wine racks they offer. The handmade wine racks are made from 100% recycled cedar….wait they had me at wine racks! There are also liquor gift boxes, and garden planters and more. All of the products are made from 100% recycled cedar. They are everything we love modern, trendy, rustic, vintage and of course made in the USA.
We love the planter boxes and you may plant with anything, we especially love them filled with succulents, perfect for indoor or outdoor. It truly is the perfect for a gift for anyone! For more information on this great local company or to purchase some of these amazing products see the full line of Think Eco 2 here.
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The San Diego Discovery Museum provides a fun hands-on approach to education for children. There are experiential workshops for children in Pre-K through the 4th grade for Science, Art and Social Science. As well as many hands-on exhibits and programs, a discovery camp, and you may even hosts birthday parties or events on site as well! San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum offers field trip programs or group free-play visits for a school class, camp, homeschool or youth group. Field trip programs are a one-hour, hands-on workshop that align to state and national learning standards. The museum is open Monday-Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and is located at 320 North Broadway, in Escondido, California.
SoCal Savvy Mom is excited to offer a family 4-pack of tickets to the San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum for one of our lucky readers. To enter simply leave a comment with who you plan to bring with you! Good Luck!
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Saturday, November 9
Christmas on the Farm @ Bates Nut Farm – Visit Bates Nut Farm either Saturday or Sunday to start your holiday shopping early at the Bates Nut Farm “Christmas on the Farm” Arts ‘n Crafts Fair. Over 80 artisans will be selling a variety of handmade crafts and fine art. Enjoy live entertainment, Kids’ Zone and food while you shop, this is an all day event. There will also be the all-you-can-eat Pancake Breakfast provided by the Valley Center Lions Club. $6 adults/$5 children. Enjoy pancakes, eggs, bacon, coffee and orange juice. Proceeds benefit local charities.
Taste of Seaside Market in Cardiff – Don’t miss the incredible holiday inspired food samples from over 20 different vendors at this delicious event! There will be special offers and great give aways. Stop by for your favorite Seaside Market items, and get great ideas for the 2013 holiday season! This event starts at 1:00 and will run until 4:00 pm, more information may be found at Seaside Market’s website here.
Sunday, November 10
San Diego Children’s Museum – (FREE) The New Children’s Museum grants free admission on the second Sunday of each month. Sponsored by Target, the free day allows all children and families in the community to enjoy the Museum, and ensure that cost is not a barrier. Every Target Free Second Sunday also includes a variety of activities for children. Open from 12-4 pm on 11/10/13.
***Don’t forget to enter our GIVEAWAY for the San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum here. SoCal Savvy Mom is giving away a family 4-pack of tickets to one lucky reader!
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The all-inclusive resort is a not a new resort model it has actually been around for over 60 years. What the resort includes are three meals a day, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and other resort type of activities, such as evening entertainment, non-motorized watersports, and kids clubs. Below is the review of the most recent stay at an all-inclusive resort located in San Jose’ Del Cabo in Mexico.
The drinks… all of the non-alcoholic drinks were perfectly acceptable at this all-inclusive resort. The alcoholic drinks however are watered down, of very poor quality liquor, and the wine was undrinkable. The wine is so bad it makes two buck chuck from Traders seem like a $200 bottle of wine. After day three or four of our trip I just refrained from drinking all together because I couldn’t find anything worth the calories. I suppose it isn’t of grave importance to drink daily on vacation, but it is the only time drinking during the day is somewhat acceptable. Fail on the drinks.
The food…breakfast is hard to get wrong, pancakes, pastries, breakfast meats, and cereal, we had no problems with the spread for breakfast. Lunch was generally pretty standard as well, nothing fancy, nothing too exciting, but not horrible. Dinner is where I was really let down, there were two fine dinning restaurants at our resort one was French the other Italian. If you did not call first thing in the morning to make a reservation at either of these restaurants you had to go to the buffet which I am really not a fan of. If you are able to get a reservation be aware it may be at 5 in the evening or 9 at night, this happened to us on two different evenings. The main issue was you are only given a handful of entrée’s to choose from. Therefore if you stay at this resort for a week you will have tried every single item on the fine dinning menu. Neither pass nor fail on food.
The pool…the resort we visited hosted 3 different pools, we hoped at least one would be for adults only but at this resort it was not offered. There are so many people, so many children, and way too many people in the pools, it was not relaxing. Something else to note if you are not up at the crack of dawn forget about reserving a place to lay out next to the pool. There is drink service at the pool which was nice, however, the drinks are so horrible you won’t really use the service much. Fail on the pool.
The kids club…kids club is a must have for any family going on vacation where the parents want some time to relax by the pool. Kids clubs are usually free of charge and hosts tons of different activities for the children to do. My son loves kids club and never wants to leave, more likely than not this has to do with the video games available at kids clubs. The kids club, was one of the best parts of this resort, it was huge and hosted its own pool for small children. Pass on the kids club.
The entertainment…evening entertainment was really fun at the all-inclusive and very family friendly. One night was a play, another was a family movie night on a huge screen, and a fun-filled game night. We had fun on the few evenings we attended the evening entertainment, I would recommend this to any guest. Pass on evening entertainment.
The spa…I am somewhat of a spa snob, I previously worked at one of the world’s best spas so I have to admit I’m spoiled when it comes to spas. The resort we stayed at had a spa on-site, which was very nice to not have to leave the resort to have a massage. Even better I dropped my son off at the kids club and went and had a massage, I knew he was having a great time and it made my massage even more enjoyable. The massage was wonderful, I actually went back for another massage the next day, the cost was very reasonable. Pass on the spa.
My personal review of the all-inclusive resort is fair, while our family enjoyed the kids, club, evening entertainment and the on-site spa, we did not enjoy the food & drinks and the pool was over crowded. This is one of the reviews of the most recent all-inclusive resort we stayed at in San Jose’ Del Cabo in Mexico.
About the author: Nicole Hughes is a travel writer, writing mainly about family travel. The places the Hughes family visit are generally at a beach resort during the summer, ski/snowboard resort in the winter, and all over America in the spring and fall. The next family vacation will be on a Disney Cruise this spring, and next fall Nicole will be traveling to London.
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It is completely my fault my son is attending the first grade for a second time.
It was not his fault he was not better prepared for the second grade, it was mine and the school my husband and I chose for him. In kindergarten my son went to a half day school down the street from us, the class size was around 30 children. He enjoyed kindergarten, it was only 3 and a half hours and half of that time was recess and lunch. What’s not to like? My son was not at the top of the class, but he wasn’t at the bottom either, he was like most kids right in the middle.
Around April my husband discovered a charter school which had amazing reviews online and from some of our friends. For those who are not familiar a charter school is a public school which operates privately and is considered generally as an alternative type of school. The reason my husband and I considered this as an option for our son was the class size, it was only 12 children. Our son has ADHD and we believed the smaller class size would be less distracting for him. The next step was him actually being accepted to the charter school.
Charter schools are public schools however because of the smaller class sizes it is much more difficult to enroll. We attended the open house for the charter school in May, and put our son on the wait list. The school was completely up front about the wait list, there were 2 spots open for the first grade and 60 children on the list. Once this was revealed to us we wrote it off, assuming there was no way he would get in. To our surprise he did, and we were overjoyed!
The start of the new school went well, he loved his teacher, and really seemed to enjoy going to school. Because our son was starting full-day school my husband and I thought it wouldn’t hurt for me to get a part-time job, a few days a week. The new job unfortunately meant I was unable to help in his class a few times a week like I had done while he was in kindergarten. My mom volunteered a few times in his class and would tell me it was a zoo. The children would run around the class room, no one had an actual desk and she never saw any work being done.
What we later found out is the school was more of a Montessori based school. The Montessori method is where children are given a choice of activities from a range of options. My explanation of this is simple, ask a child if he/she would like to sit and read or if they would rather do a puzzle? My child will choose doing a puzzle over any other type of school work every time, which we found out was exactly what he had done for almost half a year.
We had no idea how behind he was until my aunt who is a special education teacher came to visit. I had asked her to sit and work with him for a little while to see if there were any areas he needed extra help it. What she told us was he was more like a kindergartener than a child half way through first grade. To confirm this we took him to an educational therapy specialist at a rate of about $200 per hour, only thanks to my mother in law who was gracious enough to pay for it.
The findings were so astonishing we almost fell over! Not only was he not at a first grade level, he had actually digressed from things he learned in kindergarten! We pulled him out of the charter school we were so excited he was once accepted to. Our experience with the charter school was miserable at best. However not all charter schools are the same nor are schools that teach the Montessori method. What I am very aware of is neither was a match for my child.
The beautiful part of this story is he is doing amazing in the first grade this year and he absolutely loves going to school. His test scores are all 90-100% and his reading has improved. We are very delighted on how well he is doing, and believe we made the correct decision for our child.
Retention is a very hard decision. There are so many different factors that must be looked at in a retention decision. If this is something your child may benefit from ask their teacher or special education department if needed. A great study I found on Early Grade Retention and Student Success was very helpful to us, to read it or for more information click here.
This is a sensitive subject to me, I failed my son, it is my job to be there for him and I wasn’t. I’ve since quit my job to help my son and believe it is part of the reason he is thriving in school. It was a tough decision for me to share this, but not enough people talk about issues that face us everyday. This is what happened and we can only learn and move forward from it. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ― Nelson Mandela
