Quick interlude as we all get ready for graduations, first communions, confirmations, bar mitzvahs, and other kid-centric occasions where we might want to present a gift.

I have two really cool suggestions, each is at a different end of the budget spectrum and each is a pretty cool present - gifts kids are sure to enjoy. I decided to write about these because I tested them, they’re way cool and how much easier could it be than to go to the big box store and pick one up.

1. Read my review. Here’s a gift idea for 8-year-old-and-up kids in your life. Music is important to growing minds. The Shaker mp3 player from SanDisk is available in hot pink for girls, deep blue for boys and is a perfect alternative to pricey media players even the youngest of kids lust after.
2. Read my review. Nano isn’t dead. Apple’s newest iPod is powerful, multi-media, slick as Olympic ice. Pack music, video, TV, and photos on this player, and slip it in your coin pocket.

Challenging your children, keeping them interested and keeping yourself engaged are ways to make home schooling more effective and enjoyable. A company called, Best Practise Network released a set of workbooks, study guides and CD-Roms starring everyone’s favorite cat, Garfield. Garfield, the familiar, rotund, grinning feline who loves lasgna, now loves learning and will help your home schooled child keep at the books with joy.

BPN describes themselves:

Best Practice Networks believes in continuous learning and that everyone is a lifelong student. While we emphasize our solutions for improving student achievement, we recognize the importance of giving everyone, regardless of life stage, an opportunity to grow.

Their Garfield It’s All About… series fits that image. There’s quality here - good paper stock, glossy soft covers, crisp printing and colorful illustrations. The CDs contain animations, interactive games and support material to enhance the workbook lessons.

There’s a Website with additional worksheets. Teaching materials can often be a big expense, but these appear to be very affordable, especially considering that they’ll be purchased over a period of time, as they are needed.

Titles ($9.95 each, includes CD) in the series include:

• Age 3-5 Letters and Words
• Age 3-5 Numbers and Counting
• Age 4-6 Math Readiness
• Age 4-6 Thinking Skills
• Age 6-7 Spelling and Vocabulary
• Age 6-7 Math
• Age 6-7 Reading and Phonics

There are titles for 7-8 and 8-9 age groups, too, with lessons in math, grammar, writing, spelling and science. Parents or significant others can work right in the books with young learners. As each book is completed, the next one picks up with the skills just learned and enhances them. The books are easily understood, have a short parent guide in the back and each has its own CD. The CD-Roms are reliable, not giving any trouble on loading or playing.

The fact that they can save activities to be resumed at a later time is a convenience parents can put to good use when home school time needs to be flexible.

It was difficult to find a negative about this product. The volumes are more affordable than many comparable series, and the quality is certainly competitive. Since the producer is a company steeped in educational tradition and activities, the lessons themselves are age-appropriate and very useable.

Features:

• “log in”- for each family member - kids can work at their own pace

(photo by Gregory E. Lang)

Ask a family relations expert for Fathers Day gift suggestions and get some winners! Gregory E. Lang, NY Times best selling author, told me he loves to celebrate Father’s Day without cliches of neckties, boxes of socks

Marriage is the topic of a main article at LiveScience.com today. The writer, Jeanna Bryner, talks about how small irritations between marriage partners, regardless of gender, I might add, escalate and become more annoying as time and the marriage go on. Evidently, the same is true of most relationships - whether between parents and children, men and women, friends or co-workers.

It’s an article worth reading - exploring a study that asked respondents to reflect on these two statements:

• “My (spouse/partner, child, friend) gets on my nerves.”
• “My (spouse/partner, child, friend) makes too many demands on me.”

I’ve found the opposite in my relationship - we began with some very negative feelings - often bubbling those up into major bruhahas. But as we discovered that the issues we fought about were actually past baggage from both of our previous marriages, and not about us together at all, we became more comfortable with each other, developing more positive approaches and finding new ways to relate and bond to each other.

We’re pretty old - approaching the end of our fifties and have become sort of like old shoes together. Our rough spots fit together. It’s kind of nice.

Check this out. I really like it as a resource for us. Called Women’s E News, it’s a central place to see top stories about and of interest to women.

Today, there’s a piece about breast feeding - the gist is, while more of us are trying breast feeding out, still, few women continue the process for 6 months, the target minimum time. Food for thought…pun intended.

Women’s E News has “cheers and jeers of the month,” “journalist of the month,” a commentary cartoon, a podcast and a number of timely categories. I enjoyed spending some time there.

On mothers’ day– Jane Sellman observed that the phrase “working mother” is redundant. I wasn’t able to find out who exactly she is, but she nailed it, didn’t she?Is this your first mothers’ day? Try this idea on: The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Controversial Indian Guru Rajneesh

From Gola Meir, prime minister of Israel in the 1960s-70s - “Women’s Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s the men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no one’s likely to do anything about that.”

“A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all.” –Washington Irving, American author early 19th centuryHonore’ de Balzac (1799-1850, smaid to be the greatest of French novelists) had this to say: “The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.”And me? (Maryan Pelland, writer, blogger, mother, grandmother) I have this to say: My grandmother was the warmest, most centered, and gentlest person I ever met. She was the rock and the joy of my childhood, though my own mother, Grandma’s daughter, remembered a childhood filled with coldness, criticism and yelling. One woman’s heroine is another woman’s bane. As for being a mother, I have never done anything as difficult or as satisfying, and I have done a lot.

Mother’s Day may have originated, at least in the United States, as a call to women to present a united front against war. If that’s the actual origination, happily excluding Mother’s Day from the ubiquitous list of holidays created by greeting card companies, then Julia Ward Howe is credited with bringing the idea here.

It’s said she modeled it on a British custom that stemmed from an antiquated