Benjamin is blessed with a plethora of talents. He considers himself an intellectual genius, kung-fu master and jack-of-all trades, but Benjamin occasionally finds himself upstaged by his two-year-old brother.
The adventure begins when a mechanical robot steals the helium that powers the pirate airship Benjamin’s family calls home. That’s right, the setting grabs the middle-grade audience before the story starts. Benjamin promises to find the culprit. Along the way, each page presents new obstacles.
This book contains more than three hundred pages, divided into fairly short chapters that are introduced with a black and white drawing. Parents and teachers will be happy to hear there is no swearing or violence, just a sprinkling of potty humor and age-appropriate euphemisms.
The book reminded me of the Hardy Boys series popular when I was growing up; it could be likened to a modern-day Harry Potter series. As a bonus, readers are introduced to stem concepts in engineering and physics rolled into the adventure.
Recommended for ages ten and older, but a fun read for any age.
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I Feel Anxious: (Children’s picture book about anger management for kids 3-5)
Written by Aleks Harrison
Illustrated byFerlina Gunawan
This book is a short, rhyming read for preschoolers who often have difficulty identifying and dealing with their emotions.
The protagonist is a little boy who is playing in the park with his father. When it comes time to leave, the boy is angry and resentful. In another situation, the boy is angry and frustrated when he cannot tie his shoes. Then he becomes impatient and angry when he must wait his turn in nursery school class.
The parent and teacher give the boy three techniques to calm down and control his feelings. They include breathing deeply, counting backwards, and relaxing with art materials or a book.
Its illustrations are huge and the colors enticing to keep the interest and focus of young readers. Recommended as a classroom read-aloud or bedtime story for toddlers and preschoolers.
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Gigi is over the moon. She loves to dance and has been doing so since age three. This year her little sister will be joining her at the yearly ballet recital. They practice everyday.
One day, Gigi’s teacher informs her she will not be in the front row this year because she is too tall. Gigi is distraught. How will anyone see her? She begins to lose interest in her dancing.
When the big night arrives, Gigi’s sister, Birdie, freezes on stage. Can Gigi figure out a way to help her. Will Gigi learn to love ballet again? Read this picture book with beautiful illustrations to find out what happens to the dancing divas.
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Best Practices for Designing a User-Friendly Website Navigation and Layout
Make your site easy to navigate and you’ll see more conversions, improved SEO, and stronger relationships with your audience. Here are some best practices you can implement today to create a website with user-friendly navigation and layout.
Keep It Simple
Prioritize and organize site elements by relevance
Minimize clutter and unnecessary design elements
Consistent Design
Maintain design consistency across all pages
Ensure uniformity in navigation elements
A Clear Hierarchy
Establish clear visual hierarchy for content and navigation
Use visual indicators and drop-down menus for primary options
Breadcrumb Navigation
Use breadcrumb navigation for user location tracking
Represents categories, subcategories, filters, tags, user path
PB&J is a fifth-grader who has a strange super power. Since first grade, he can hurl peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with uncanny accuracy. This strange ability gets him into trouble more often than not.
PB&J meets his nemesis when an evil villain begins attacking with green goo. Dr. Vile changes children and adults into tasty treats like lemon cream pie and stale bread. PB & J valiantly tries to use his super power to defeat the evil scientist.
This book is filled with superhero tips, and funny illustrations. The dialogue is simple and typical of the book’s audience. I suspect fifth-grade boys will love the crazy antics and humor.
I would highly recommend this book and the series for reluctant readers. It has appeal for beginning chapter book readers as well.
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Positivity is My Superpower: A Kid’s Book about Managing Negative Feelings and Feelings(My Superpowers Books 10)
Written by Alicia Ortego
This book is part of a series that focuses on dealing with children’s emotions and turning them into superpowers.
In this book, Lucas is the protagonist. He is facing a move to a different city. That releases a flood of emotions, most of them negative. Lucas is dealing with anxiety, uncertainty, and fear of the unknown. He does not want to leave the house he grew up or the friends he cherishes.
Lucas’s mom comes to the rescue She reassures him with gentle words and simple actions like blowing bubbles that turn his negative feelings into positive ones like hopefulness, confidence, and a sense of adventure.
This rhyming picture book serves as a good teaching tool for elementary age students to enhance social-emotional skills.
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Have you experienced decision fatigue? I’m sure you have, you may just not have had a word for it. It’s that feeling when you get toward the end of a busy and even stressful day, and you simply can’t make another decision. You can’t figure out what you should cook for dinner, and even the idea of picking something to watch on Netflix seems like a chore. Those are the days you’ve been suffering from decision fatigue.
We all experience them, and the more taxing your job is, and the more you’re required to make decisions throughout the day, the more you find yourself suffering from decision fatigue. That shouldn’t come as a big surprise. When we spend all day walking or running around, we feel tired in the evening and our muscles fatigue. If you’ve ever participated in any endurance sports event (or gone for a long run after a period of inactivity), you’ve experienced muscle fatigue. Why shouldn’t we experience the same when we tax our mind with lots of decision making?
Not only does decision fatigue impair our ability to make decisions altogether, but it also affects the quality of our decision making and our willpower. In short, after a long day of making good choice after good choice, we tend to start making bad ones. There’s a reason we see a lot of “Made for TV” products and infomercials on TV late at night and it isn’t just because of the cheaper advertising rates. It’s because that’s the time of day we’re most prone to making impulse purchases. It’s also when we give up on our diets and healthy eating intentions.
Keep this idea of decision fatigue in mind when you try to get a few last minute tasks done at the end of a long day. That may not be the best time for important choices or tasks that require well thought out responses or clear decision making.
Similarly, you should expect your team members, coworkers, bosses, and loved ones to experience the same. Asking your boss for a raise right before quitting time on Friday may not be a good idea. Your chances of getting a yes significantly increase if you wait until first thing Monday morning. Don’t expect your family to make healthy dinner and snack choices in the evening. Instead, plan your meals early on in the day and have them figured out well before lunchtime.
Important Lesson #1 – Don’t tackle important or difficult decisions late in the day, particularly if you’ve made a lot of decisions in the hours leading up to it already.
Now that we’ve established that there is such a thing as decision fatigue, we’ll investigate some things we can do to void it. The answer is simple. We need to find a way to reduce the number of decisions we make on a daily basis. Here are some simple ideas for cutting some of them from our lives.
Use Habits and Routines To Your Advantage
Let’s start with something you already know how to do. You may just not realize it. That’s creating routines and habits to cut back on the decisions you have to make. You don’t have to decide to brush your teeth every morning or talk yourself into deciding to go to work today. Instead, it’s a habit and something you do without having to think about, and more importantly without having to waste one of your precious and limited decisions.
As you go about your day and make decisions, particularly if they are decisions that you make on a regular basis, stop yourself and see if there’s a way you can turn that decision into a habit or routine.
Instead of spending the first minutes of your day figuring out what you should wear, create a simple uniform for yourself. Find a few pairs of similar pants and a couple of mix-and-match tops. Rotate through those outfits, so you always know what to wear on a given morning.
If there is a recurring task at work, you should schedule to do it first thing in the morning or right before you head to lunch. That gets it out of the way without having to decide when to take care of it.
Plan Ahead
Another great solution is to batch your decisions and plan ahead. Let’s use your food choices as an example. We all eat, and we make quite a few daily decisions about what to eat. You can cut those out of your daily routine by creating a weekly or monthly meal plan. Start with dinner. Sit down and come up with your dinner ideas for the week. Write them down and post them on the fridge door. When you go grocery shopping be sure to pick up everything you need. That way you don’t have to agonize about what to fix for dinner when you get home after a long day at the office. From there, expand and include breakfast and lunch plans as well. You can even choose a daily snack for yourself. For bonus points, create a couple of these menus and start rotating through them week after week. Once you’ve made your original meal plans, there’s no more decision making involved.
You can easily adapt this principle to other areas of your life and work. Sit down and make out a to-do list first thing in the morning or before you head home in the afternoon. You can batch a whole bunch of decisions together and have a game plan for your workday. Think about other ways to incorporate this into your life and cut back on the decisions you make.
Delegate And Cut Down Choices
Last but not least, start reducing the choices you have to make altogether. Not every decision has to be made by you. If you’re working in a team or have people under you, don’t be afraid to delegate. Yes, in the beginning, it’s a little extra work to explain what needs to happen and what’s involved. But as you start to delegate and give these people more and more responsibility, your decision making tasks will be considerably cut back. That allows you to focus on the critical stuff.
Another great strategy is to simply cut down on the number of choices you give yourself (and others). Get in the habit of trimming the list before you even attempt to choose.
These tips may seem like little things, but they will quickly add up. It doesn’t take a lot of decision cutting back to notice a big difference in when and how hard decision fatigue hits. Give it a try.
I thought we should end on a high note. The good news is that your decision-making abilities replenish and they do so regularly. In the last section of this short report, we’re going to go over the various ways we can encourage that replenishment and when and how it happens naturally.
In general, your decision-making ability replenishes with rest and with relaxation. Since we’re getting less and less of that in these busy times, it’s no wonder decision fatigue is becoming a big issue.
Decision-Making Ability Replenishes Overnight
Don’t panic when you find yourself unable to make another decision at the end of a long day. Sleeping replenishes your ability to make smart choices overnight. You’ll be back to a clear head and able to make important decisions in the morning. Use this to your advantage. If you feel decision fatigue is setting in you should rein things in for the rest of the day. Don’t schedule important meetings in the evening and use your mornings wisely.
Sometimes It Pays To Take A Mental Health Day
We all get busy, and we all get stressed out from time to time. When a good nights sleep doesn’t seem quite enough to bring your decision making batteries back to full strength, it may be a good idea to take the day off.
Do something fun, relax, destress, and most importantly make as few decisions as possible and certainly no important decisions. You’ll come back refreshed and ready to go.
Go Outside And Get Some Air
Sometimes taking the day off or waiting for the following morning isn’t an option. An important decision is expected from you before you leave the office, or within the next hour or so. If you’re feeling decision fatigue is setting in when a decision is needed there are two things I want you to remember. The first is that all other decisions can wait. Focus on making just the one more that can’t wait.
Go outside, get some air, and clear your head before you make your choice. While this won’t work as well as sleep or a day off, it may be just enough to give you that little boost of energy and willpower you need to make the right decision.
It May Be Time For A Vacation
Last but not least, let’s talk about taking a few days off and going on vacation. You know from experience how invigorating and restful a trip can be. Take advantage of this and come back ready to make those important decisions about the future of your company, your family, or what projects you want to tackle during the next quarter.
Above all remember to use your decision-making skills wisely and learn to recognize decision fatigue before it leads you to make a bad choice.
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How to Grow a Marshmallow Tree (Book 1 Amelia and Paco Series)
Written by Stefanie Gamarra
Illustrated by Mark Bertran
Amelia and her imaginary polar bear friend, Paco both have a sweet tooth.
One day, they are eating marshmallows, one of their favorite snacks. Suddenly, they run out. Amelia decides it would be wonderful to have a marshmallow tree for an unlimited supply. So the pair set out to plant one.
Amelia and Paco are unsuccessful at first, but Amelia refuses to give up. Read the picture book to find out the surprise ending to this fantasy adventure for young children.
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A Videogame Stole My Sister: An Early Reader LitRPGMetaverse Legends Book 1
Written by Justin M. Stone
This book is targeted for an eight to twelve-year-old audience. Classified as a beginning reader, it would be an excellent choice for reluctant readers. I believe the plot especially appeals to tween boys, particularly those who have sibling rivalry with a sister.
Lucas is a tween boy who has a sister, Madison, who is one year older than he. Like many boys his age, Lucas loves video games. One day he is playing his favorite, when he gets distracted for a minute. Next thing he knows, his sister Madison is missing. You guessed it, she has been taken by the game.
The short chapters of the book alternate point of view with story being told by Lucas and Madison. The adventure is funny and humorous. One note of caution for parents and teachers. The book includes language like “piss” and mentions “running like hell.”
I think the book will appeal especially to the younger middle-grade audience and reluctant readers who prefer shorter chapters with less challenging vocabulary.
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June 23, 2024
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