Play Ball

President: Marilynne Eichinger - Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

“Movement is a medicine for creating change
in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states.”
Carolyn Welch, American Figure Skater

As long ago as 400BC, people knew of the benefits of exercise. As Plato declared, when taking a break from discussing philosophy and mathematics, “Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.” All of us have heard of the increase in obesity and the decline in physical activity in the younger generation. As parents and community members, we often wonder how we can encourage more physical activity.

The varied benefits of exercise in children were summarized in the February 2000 volume of The Physician and Sports Medicine Journal. Increased physical activity has been shown to help with weight control, which is associated with a host of physical benefits, such as lowering the risk of diabetes and respiratory problems. Exercise during the growing years helps increase bone density, which decreases the risk of osteoporosis in later years. Childhood and adolescent exercise also benefit the cardiovascular system by lowering cholesterol and the risk of hypertension. Exercise also has proven mental health benefits, including decreased anxiety and depression, and increased self-esteem and social skills in children.

More recently, researchers at the University of Minnesota found active kids had better eating habits and ate more nutritionally than non-active kids. "Sport-involved youth generally ate breakfast more frequently and had higher mean protein, calcium, iron and zinc intakes than their non-sport involved peers." (May 2006 Journal of the American Dietetic Association) Current research has shown big educational advantages to youth sports, as well. According to the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport (Feb. 2007), participation in high school sports at grade ten is associated with a higher high school grade point average, an increased likelihood of graduating from high school, higher rates of college attendance and graduation, better occupational outcomes at age 25, and a reduced likelihood of using drugs or smoking cigarettes both in high school and in adulthood. There are so many benefits that physical activity almost sounds like a panacea!

Most kids start life full of physical activity and don’t need to be encouraged to move their bodies. In fact, we can’t keep kids still even when we want to as any parent at a fancy restaurant knows! Somewhere along the way this changes, though, resulting in 80% of kids dropping out of youth sports by age 12 (Indiana University, Why Kids Ditch Youth Sports, Nov. 1, 2009). The primary reason, according to the kids themselves, is that sports are no longer fun. There are many known ways to make sports more fun, such as de-emphasizing competition, helping each child find a way to succeed, focusing on skill-building rather than winning, and encouraging variety rather than specialization. Many of these methods can be aided by providing coaches with training rather than taking what David Gallahue, dean of Indiana University's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation calls the “warm-body” approach to youth sport coaching (i.e. we often fill an open coaching spot with any warm body).

One example of a highly successful coach training program is the Positive Coaching Alliance, which was started within the Stanford University Athletic Department in 1998 and now boasts over 1,100 affiliated youth sports programs. The Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) has a mission to “Replace the "win-at-all-cost" model of coaching with the Double-Goal Coach®, who wants to win but has a second, more important, goal of using sports to teach life lessons.” They have observed that, while only some of our children grow up to be professional athletes who need to know the nuances of athleticism, all of our children grow up to be adult citizens who need to have interpersonal and intra-personal skills. They teach coaches to give positive feedback and constructive criticism, model good sportsmanship, encourage teamwork, and develop the characters, not just the sports abilities, of their players. This environment keeps kids having fun and keeps them involved in youth sports.

The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports has also found that there are many actions communities can take that will encourage increased physical activity in individuals. One of the most effective, according to their recommendations, is increasing the amount of time in plain old school-based physical education. Others included community-wide information campaigns, actively teaching healthy behavioral skills, creating social networking support systems such as exercise buddies, and building physical environments that encourage exercise such as walking and biking trails. (PCPFS Research Digest, Dec. 2003, Series 4, No. 4)

What can you as a parent do to encourage your child to be physically active? A quick web search will unleash an avalanche of ideas, most of which have to do with setting a good example, participating in physical activity with your child, and making activities available to your child. As a mother of three, I would add a couple of things I found useful. My husband and I severely limited screen-time, which left our kids with lots of time on their hands. (My husband has always thought boredom was one of our greatest parenting allies in encouraging our kids to be enthusiastic readers, artists, athletes and volunteers.) We also tried to listen to our son and daughters and follow their interests, rather than encouraging them to stick with a particular sport because they were good at it or it was convenient. We learned not to panic during periods of low activity, but simply to listen, suggest and support them while keeping the attitude that everyone likes physical activity if they can find the right venue. My husband and I were always focused on the long-term goal of finding ways to enjoy being physically active rather than the short-term objective of having them get exercise in the current day or week. After all, as Edward Stanley remarked, “Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.” I’d rather help my kids stay healthy, wouldn’t you?

Feeling inspired to step into the swing of spring? Here are some items to help with hand-eye coordination, balance and exercise. Power Pitcher Pitching Machine to help improve your child's baseball skills. For children 8 and up, the Orbitwheels are challenging and improve balance and coordination. Have you ever tried a unicycle? Items 6205 and 6203, for both children and adults -- a great way to improve dexterity and enjoy the outdoors pogo sticks. These contemporary versions are precision-made for safety. Or, put a healthy spring in your step indoors or out with Kickaroos - for both children and adults.

Generation Tech
Written By Janna Bowman, College Student

“Movement is a medicine for creating change
in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states.”
Carolyn Welch, American Figure Skater

Technology evolves so quickly it can be overwhelming, even daunting, among age groups. In contemporary society, technology is a huge part of business and social life, yet there appears to be a division between the usage and comprehension among age groups, particularly Generation X and Generation Y. These generations are using technology very differently and on different frequencies.

Generation X is comprised of anyone born between 1961-1981 (after the baby boom ended). The most recent group is Generation Y, also known as the Net Generation or Millennial Generation, with their increased use of communication technologies. According to a Universal McCann study, American “adults” who form Gen X use 35% less social technology than the younger Gen Y group who are more technologically in tune.

Generation Y has grown up using technology primarily for entertainment and social networking purposes. They text, “tweet”, instant message, Facebook, BBM (Blackberry Messaging), Skype (video conferencing), listen to iPods, play Xbox and use Wi Fi. Gen Y children can figure out new technologies easily and are constantly connected to friends and family through their phones and computers.

As a group, Gen X is highly educated but did not grow up using communication technologies the same way as their children do and they are less enthusiastic about enjoying technologies in the same manner as Y. The Gen X group is geared more towards computers for word processing and emailing capabilities. Marketers target Gen X-ers with advertising tools for Blackberrys and Wi Fis but they also recognize that this generation uses less technology than the one that is following. Though Gen X is buying into a technological world they are not as adept at knowing how to use these technologies as resourcefully as Gen Y.

These differences make me wonder if there is a social and economic cost to their separate approaches. The job market has become reflective of this division in that fear is often exhibited by older people who are not using up-to-date communication techniques.

Educator, Ian J. McCoog, reports in a study on 21st century learning that “technology is a medium through which Gen Y can productively learn in settings because they are assimilated to networking and interacting through digital means in informal settings.” Technology not only serves as a learning tool for this up and coming generation, but it is a tool that captures their imagination and enthusiasm. They are excited by using technology and find staying digitally connected is a comfort as well as a necessity.

In 1995, The U.S. Department of Education conducted a forum during which panelists discussed the importance and advantages of using advanced computing and telecommunications technology to foster learning. It was agreed that technology advances education and should be utilized effectively in as many situations as possible, by people of different age groups. The hope is that there will be a gradual lessening of technological differences between generational usages.

Is there really a need to melt these differences? Society’s generations are not separated from each other. People of all ages are required to interact, work together and communicate effectively. The better generations understand each other, the more productivity increases. Technologically speaking, the generation gap appears less between X and Y than between Gen X and the Baby Boomers before them. But technology changes so rapidly that a wedge has been created between X and Y.

Parents grow annoyed with teens who text at the dinner table and teens do not understand parents who throw a Tom-Tom (GPS System) away in favor of an AAA road map. Rather than being annoyed or dismayed, perhaps it is time for families to discuss their understanding of technology, differences in uses, pros and cons, and emotional factors that create a climate of distrust.

Your sons and daughters might be surprised to discover that the first computer took up an entire room and was used to create the hydrogen bomb. Similarly, you and your friends might be open to having a younger person show you how to receive “tweets” straight from your cell phone from Twitter. If you do not know how, why not learn to text, BBM, Skype, or how to download a video from an iPod or get Internet on a cell phone?

The Baby Boomers, along with Gen X, could teach younger people to appreciate forms of communication that rely less on shortened sentences and abbreviated words. They could help them learn to be alone without needing to have constant contact through a cell phone.

A teenager might be encouraged to do something as simple as Google for historical information about early computers. Middle aged workers could bring their knowledge of Skype into their workplace to keep up with changing times. Inter-generational conversations and teaching sessions can take away the fear that older people feel and help make room in their organizations for youth who are so adept at using technology.

A personal example comes to mind. While home for the holidays, my family divided into teams to tackle a game of Trivial Pursuit. Gen X (the older group) served as Team 1 and Gen Y (school aged) served as Team 2. Team 1 answered history and geography questions left and right and it seemed like nothing would stop them from winning. Finally the questions “what new feature do fifth generation iPods have?” surfaced, and Team 1 expressed their disbelief that iPods come in generations. Team 2, however, shouted “video cameras!” and wasted no time in moving on to the next question.

For the tween, teenaged and twenty-somethings of Team 2, technology questions posed no threat. The situation created an opportunity for each team to learn something from the other. The question ended up leading to a fun, informative, and surprising conversation about technology and just how drastically it has changed during the last two generations. My teenage brother pulled out his 5th generation iPod and taught my grandparents how to use it, and they, in turn, explained to my brother what an 8-track was.

Early in 2009, comedian Louis CK poked fun at technology on the Late Show with Conan O’Brien, “Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy. Like, in my lifetime, the changes in the world have been incredible. When I was a kid we had a rotary phone. We had a phone you had to stand next to, and you had to DIAL it.”

Tell the closest tween, teenager, or twenty-something that!

Feeling inspired to discover some new tech products? Here are a few things to stretch your childrens’ imaginations. Electronic Dictionary, Text Messengers, Talking Digital camera, iTalk Clock, Camera Binoculars, Language Translator.

See the U.S.A.

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

If you live in America, or even if you don’t, it’s likely that you’ve had the urge to see for yourself some of this huge, varied, spectacular land of ours. Everything is available here: a rich history, awe-inspiring natural environments, incredible man-made wonders, varied peoples and cultures, and spiritual inspiration. Part of loving our country is seeing our country, and so my brother and I were inspired when we were in college to take our turn making a trip across our great land.

Our particular trip had the dual purpose of moving my brother from an internship in Silicon Valley back to his college in Michigan so we had our start and end points. We plotted a southerly route through Los Angeles, Arizona, Texas and Missouri in order to avoid snow in the mountains, seeing as we were too cheap to buy chains. We had plenty of time though, to meander and stop to see great sights along the way.

I arrived on an airplane at 2am and awoke the next morning to a torrential downpour that was equaled in its fury only by its rarity, or so I was told. My brother had not finished his errands before moving, so I climbed into the passenger seat, which was gathering water from a large drip where the windshield met the frame, and I spent my Northern California sightseeing time slogging through the rain doing errands. Oh well, there was much more to see ahead of us.

Unfortunately, due to the rain and the schedule of someone we were driving to LA, we decided not to take Highway 1 along the coast, one of the most scenic highways in the world. We made it to Disneyland (and swiftly spent our budget for several days), but misestimated the distance from there to the house of some relatives we were visiting, so we had to skeedaddle in order to spend the day driving across LA (or so it felt). We got slightly lost in those pre-cell phone, pre-internet days, so we pulled up in Laguna Beach several hours late but thankfully in time to sleep. Years later, I found out that our relatives saw our old station wagon with the 2x4 bumper pull away from the curb in the morning and were certain we were never going to make it home.

So, the next day, we were really setting off. We were very focused on reaching the Grand Canyon and spending a couple of days there so we blew some money on a hotel for efficiency, even though our plan was to camp. When we were fifteen miles from the lip of the canyon, our car suddenly came down with an illness. We sputtered to the side of the road at a little metropolis boasting a motel with an attached ‘fine dining establishment’, a gift shop, and a gas station/auto repair shop. We were told the car had a small problem and needed a part which could be ordered for delivery in four short days. My brother and I bonded over cribbage, HBO and anticipating the daily restaurant special while we bided our time. Once the car was repaired, we drove to the edge of the Grand Canyon, took a good long look, and headed back to the highway in order to make up for lost time. About twenty miles down the road, the car quit completely. Some nice Canadians stopped (“you never pass a car on the side of the road in wintertime in Canada”), removed the new thermostat, which hadn’t been the problem, diagnosed the problem, and sent us to the nearest repair shop. Two days later, we were on the road again to Texas.

It’s just possible that our current image of Texas might be slightly influenced by the fact that we spent our time there on the floor in the hallway of a Holiday Inn with several hundred other people after the highways were closed due to ‘the worst ice-storm we can remember’. Another great meal in a hotel restaurant and we were rolling again.

About this time, we pulled into a gas station and two men came running up to helpfully inform us that our tires were about to blow but they could sell us new ones at a good price. Wanting to be savvy travelers, but being completely naïve about cars, my brother and I decided our tires probably weren’t about to blow but we’d better not drive at night just in case – especially since our wooden bumper wouldn’t hold a jack.

This is when my brother decided it would be a good time to get sick. We called our grandparents to check in and must have sounded pathetic because, frugal as they were, they immediately offered us money to fly home. Abandoning the car wouldn’t have been an obstacle but, unfortunately, my brother had agreed to drop a friend’s TV set at his house in Indiana so we were saddled with our good deed and had to turn down the offer.

We drove through Missouri and did get to see the arch, so that was a highlight. By the time we got to Indiana (after making a three hour round-trip TV detour that seemed like nothing when we were looking at the map back in California), it was December 31st. We stopped in a small town motel, having given up on our plans to camp several states ago due to feeling sorry for ourselves, and were looking forward to seeing the only entertainment in town: a disco band at the Holiday Inn. Unfortunately, my index finger took the rare lull in the action as an opportunity to swell up and turn green. Thinking it was just an infection, I was going to see how it was in the morning but we made the mistake of calling our mother to wish her a Happy New Year. After diagnosing my malady over the phone, she pronounced that I had blood poisoning so we were off to find an emergency room. We drove around for some time before we came upon a sign marked “Indian Hospital”. We walked around the darkened exterior and found a kindly nurse who gave me a tube of ointment for my infection – no charge – and sent us on our way. Being too tired and in too much pain to party down, we hit the sack at 11pm.

Another 300 miles (at 55 miles per hour, thanks to President Carter), and we were home. After calculating the number of sights we’d seen on our great adventure, we arrived at the number two: a few minutes staring at the Grand Canyon and a photo of the St. Louis arch taken from the car window while we were moving.

So what did we learn by seeing America up close and personal? By all means, go out and experience what our wonderful land has to offer. Just remember to take a lot of money and a very good traveling partner. And to call your mother once you’ve arrived safely home.

Feeling inspired to discover our magnificent country for yourself? Maybe you’d be better off staying home and exploring these products from the Museum Tour catalog. You can start by reading Great States with your kids to learn about the history and geography of each state. With little ones, you can read Follow That Map, which teaches map skills as Sally searches for a mischievous dog and cat on the lam. Experience our national pastime from the comfort of home with Old Century Baseball, a handcrafted pinball-style game. You can even build a Native American Village with our creative diorama kit.

The Environmental Movement: Where Are We Now?

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

“Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil,
Then you can breathe,
Long as you don’t inhale.”
From Pollution by Tom Lehrer

When I was a girl in the 1960’s, I remember taking the trash outside, dumping it in the big can, and wondering where it went. One lucky day, I got to accompany my father to the county dump. I remember being flabbergasted at the scale and the smell, but especially by the concept. I clearly remember thinking, “This is it? This the great plan the grown-ups have for all of the trash we make? They dump it in the ground and cover it up?” Even at age six, I sensed that this was not a good, or sustainable, idea.

The environmental movement burst into the national consciousness in the 1962 with the publication of "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. "Silent Spring" galvanized public opinion in the same way Uncle Tom’s Cabin had done a century before with slavery. "Silent Spring" spent 31 weeks on the best-seller list, and the public had a collective shift in understanding our interdependent relationship with nature. Prior to this time, the environmental movement was focused on preserving individual habitats from development, such as our National Parks, and solving specific problems, such as oil spills. It wasn’t thought that humans could impact the environment on such a large scale that our very lifestyle could poison us and make our communities, and the earth itself, uninhabitable. Before "Silent Spring", we were operating under the western expansion beliefs that nature was so vast it could heal itself and that there would always be more.

The idea of limitless resources ran smack into reality in the early 1960’s when people began naming what they saw around them and demanding action. In the eleven years following the publication of "Silent Spring", Congress passed the Wilderness Act, the Clean Air Act, the Water Pollution Control Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and established the Environmental Protection Agency. As Dr. Suess so eloquently put it in his 1971 book The Lorax, “"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” In the 1970’s, we were all speaking for the trees.

We’ve now had a couple of generations come of age since the birth of the modern environmental movement. With Generation X (born about 1964-1979) and Generation Y (born about 1980-2000) growing up in an era of heightened environmental awareness and higher stakes, we take it on faith that the younger generation is even more motivated than their elders to clean up the legacy we have left them. This turns out not to be true, however.

Environmental Defense released poll findings comparing environmental attitudes of young adults (18-25 year-olds), with those of the Baby Boom generation who came of age around the first Earth Day in 1970 (45-55 year-olds). "We undertook this effort expecting to find significant differences between the generations," said Fred Krupp, Executive Director of Environmental Defense. "And while those exist, we were struck more by the similarities. Baby Boomers and the Internet Generation (a subset of Gen Y) share the same concerns about the environment and agree that individual actions can make the difference when it comes to protecting the planet." (San Diego Earth Times)

Awareness of environmental problems is one thing, but taking action is another. As Marshall McLuhan exclaimed, “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” When we look at acting, rather than awareness, the difference between the generations grows. People who came of age when the environmental movement was bursting into our collective consciousness are more likely to take personal responsibility for being part of the solution. Analysis of a longitudinal study found that, except for a slight uptick in the early 1990’s, there has been a three-decade long decline in the number of youth 1) taking personal responsibility for the environment, 2) participating in conservation behaviors, and 3) agreeing with the concept that resources are scarce. “Findings reveal that youth tend to assign responsibility for the environment to the government and consumers rather than accepting personal responsibility.” (Environment and Behavior, Examining Trends in Adolescent Environmental Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors Across Three Decades, May 5, 2009) So it turns out that the latest generation is no more environmentally aware than Baby Boomers, and is less likely to take personal action on environmental issues. As a recent article put it, “Young people, in the popular imagination, are more environmentally conscious than the rest of us. But a new analysis of 30 years worth of data suggests that if we're waiting for a child to lead us out of the wilderness of environmental degradation, we may be waiting a long time.” (Tom Jacobs, Generation ‘Green’ Environmentally Oblivious, Miller-McCune, May 25, 2009)

How can we help motivate the younger generation? How can we share the reality of the situation without imparting a sense of hopelessness that can be paralyzing? We can help them follow the path of E.B. White who said, “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” We can help our children become respectful of nature by encouraging a personal relationship with nature from an early age. Rather than starting with the boring and tedious solutions, such as composting, we can begin by instilling a sense of awe and wonder about what we are trying to save. Spend time outdoors camping, fishing, hiking, and picnicking. Plant a garden. Identify birds. Collect rocks. Paint the landscape. Do whatever catches their interest and generates enthusiasm for nature.

We can also help our children learn about the interconnections in nature, which will help them think as environmentalists. As John Muir put it, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” Read to them about environmental issues in order to educate them about the problems we face. Talk to them about your thoughts. I think it’s best not to be heavy-handed but to find where their heart lies and encourage whichever piece of environmentalism speaks to them. In my mind, the goal is not so much to create all of the specific behaviors you would like to see (such as awareness of wasting electricity or recycling), but to help grow a passion for thinking environmentally.

If you can plant the seeds, you can eventually stand back and watch them sprout and grow. I had this experience when my four year old son went on a field trip with his preschool class to a lumberyard. The manager was proudly showing the class around when he recklessly asked the group of tots whether there were any questions. “Yes,” answered my son. “Why are you trying to kill us?” After much sputtering on the part of the manager, my son explained, “Trees make air we breathe and you are cutting down trees, so you are killing us.” While his execution left a little to be desired in terms of finesse, his logic was ironclad and I was very proud that day of the little environmentalist I was growing.

Museum Tour offers many ways to encourage the budding environmentalist in your family. Celebrate their love of living nature with the Butterfly Pavillion, an AntWorks, Planet Frog, or the Carnivorous Creations terrarium. Go outside into nature with your younger child with Science on a Nature Walk. Or delve into exploring problems and solutions with your older child with the Global Warming Kit. Museum Tour has products for environmentalists of every age and interest.

Fun with Statistics

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.” Rita Mae Brown

The longer you live, the longer your life expectancy is. Sounds wrong, doesn’t it? Think about it a minute. If you’re a 50 years old male, your life expectancy is 78.5 years. If you make it to 60, you’re life expectancy is now 80.4 years. It increased because the 78.5 figure included those people who passed away over the last ten years. If you can hold out until 100, you will live to 102, on average. (To find your life expectancy based on your gender and current age, check out the Social Security Administration’s Actuarial Tables).

Very few of us have a good sense for statistics unless we work with them. As a culture, we are fascinated with statistics, though, from trivia games to airline ontime arrivals, to political polls, to every kind of sports statistics humans can think of. Here are a few of the figures someone has taken the time to calculate. The average human produces 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools. Fashion models’ measurements are 33-23-33 on average, while American women are 38-32-41. If it can be counted or measured, you can rest assured that someone will count it or measure it.

I had a funny experience years ago when I worked for a bank and we were scouting locations for new bank branches. We were looking for certain age and income characteristics by census tract when we came across a tract that looked different from the rest. Tract #1191 was typical, with 48% of the population male, 26% under age 18, and 75% of the houses owner-occupied. The next tract we looked at, #1220, showed males comprising 98% of the population, 2% of whom were under age 18, and 98% of the houses were rented. We were sure the data was wrong and were about to contact the publisher when we thought to take a look at a map. It turned out that the tract we were considering for a new bank branch contained 54 houses plus San Quentin Prison. I’ve always used this as a reminder not to turn my brain off when looking at numbers but to ask myself what they mean. (If you’d like to play with the government’s census data, take a look here. It’s a lot of fun and you paid for it so you might as well enjoy it!)

Context means everything when it comes to numbers because our brains are constantly trying to impute meaning. I’ll give you an example: What do you think when you hear that 1,000 hectares of old growth-forest are clear-cut each year in Tazmania? You may have been outraged or saddened to hear that because your brain is trying to figure out how to categorize it and decided to group it with ‘destruction of the environment’ thoughts. What if you then learned that there are 1.5 million hectares of old-growth forest in Tazmania, most of which is protected from cutting in National Parks or protected reserves? Does this context change the way you view the first statement? One habit we can get into in order to protect ourselves from faulty assumptions is to ask ourselves what the facts are and separate them from our judgments.

How numbers are gathered often impacts the results. The very wording of a question can elicit very different responses. Much has been written on this subject, but I will share a simple example as an illustration. In 2003, people were asked whether they would, “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's rule, “ 68% favored taking action. When people were asked whether they would, “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's rule even if it meant that U.S. forces might suffer thousands of casualties,” the number favoring intervention dropped to 43%. Partisan organizations often purposely use questions designed to elicit the response they want, although reputable polling firms try hard not to do this.

Finally, there is the math itself. Anyone who has had an elementary Probability and Statistics course might remember that random sampling only produces a confidence that 95 or 98 percent of the time, the real number (ie. the number if every member of the population was measured) would be close to the number derived from the sample. This means that if you read a hundred statistics, several will be off significantly. And that’s given a well-designed random sample. The classic case of a bad sample resulted in a photo of President-elect Truman holding up a newspaper with the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman”. The newspaper had conducted a poll by telephone at a time when only wealthier households had telephones. Since these families were more likely to vote for Dewey, the sample wasn’t random and the results were just slightly off, shall we say.

So, the next time you read some numbers, caveat emptor, or, as Lewis Carroll put it, “If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics. It does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, as long as there are enough of them.” But that’s a cynical note to end on, so maybe we should end with the king of pollsters, George Gallup, who said, “Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted.” You can count on that.

Museum Tour has many fun and engaging ways to help the children in your life with their math literacy. A Balance Kit is a hands-on way for preschoolers to gain number sense. When they’re a little older, get them Building Thinking Skills software for computer-lovers or 101 Math and Science Activities which they can do alone or with help. The book, Nibbling on Einstein's brain, helps you sort good from misleading information in science. My family loves Shut the Box, which is a fun game of probability for kids and adults. Have fun!

Pay Attention, Please
Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

"I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention." Diane Sawyer

I’m not much of a natural when it comes to learning languages, but one phrase that’s seared into my brain is Fermez vos Bouches (shut your mouths) as spoken, not unkindly, by my high school French teacher. She wanted us to close our mouths because she knew that getting us to pay attention was the only chance she had of putting something into our brains and helping up pass the AP Exam (as well as find a restroom if we ever wandered into France). It turns out that she was right. There is no substitute for paying attention when it comes to learning.

What is paying attention? In short, it is learning to weed out extraneous information, both with perceptual selectivity and with cognitive selectivity. Imaging studies suggest that there isn’t one ‘paying attention’ part of our brain, but the act of focusing happens in different areas. The prefrontal cortex is involved in task-related activity and planning, the parietal cortex helps with bodily and environmental awareness, and the anterior cingulated with motivation. When a learner pays attention to something, using all of these parts of the brain, the part of the brain processing the information also becomes more active, making the information more likely to stick with us. In other words, “Construction of individual meaning (ie. learning) improves when students pay attention.” (Dialog on Learning, Tomkins Courtland Community College, 09/09/09)

Fortunately, we can train our brains to focus more effectively and, therefore, become more proficient learners. One method of increasing our powers of attention is meditation. (Jones, Rachel (2007) Learning to Pay Attention, Public Library of Science Biology) Researcher Richard Davidson and his colleagues tested subjects’ powers of attention with an attentional test. For example, subjects were asked to pick out numbers in a stream of numbers and letters shown to them on a screen. Subjects were then given three months of intensive training in a form of meditation that trains the mind to shut out distractions and focus on stimuli in a non-judgmental manner. When the subjects were asked to repeat the test, there was significant improvement compared to the control group. These subjects were not meditating during the test, but had actually changed their brains in a way that allowed them to improve their performance on the test.

Another method of paying attention is, ironically, to take deliberate breaks from paying attention. Researchers at Melbourne University found that people who surfed the internet at work for personal reasons were actually 9% more productive than those who were blocked from doing so. (This statistic excludes the 14% of workers who are prone to internet addiction, meaning they do not stop surfing even when they want to.) The attraction of internet surfing, according to Dr Coker, can be attributed to people’s imperfect concentration. “People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days work, and as a result, increased productivity.” (The University of Melbourne Media Release, Thursday 2 April 2009) Of course, breaks do not have to be for online shopping but this study sure helps remove some of the guilt!

While I’ve never particularly prided myself on my surfing, internet or live, I’ve long considered myself an excellent multi-tasker and took satisfaction in being able to keep many balls in the air at the same time. I recently discovered that, like the rest of the mortals on the planet, I am actually only working on one thing at a time and I’m not so much a great multi-tasker as I am a great serial-tasker. We are actually switching back and forth between subjects, without needing much start-up time. We’re kind of like jugglers who actually only have one ball in the air at a time but keep changing balls so rapidly that it looks like we’ve got several flying at once. Okay, I could live with that. But imagine my surprise to find that I’m probably not very good at juggling at all.

According to researchers at Stanford, “the people who multi-task the most are the worst at it.” (Study Find People Who Multi-task Often Bad At It, Randolph Schmid, San Jose Mercury News, 08/24/09) People in the high multi-tasking group were worse at taking in information, organizing information, ignoring irrelevant information, and took longer to switch from one task to another. High multi-taskers tend to love more information but aren’t able to process it effectively. On the other hand, the fewer tasks someone undertook at one time, the more they were able to think effectively about the information in front of them. Whether the tendency to multi-task caused the lower attention, or lower attention people tended to multi-task, was not determined in the study. It is clear from this study, however, that paying attention to one thing at a time will increase our effectiveness. I guess my French teacher had it right so I think I’ll fermez ma bouche and concentré.

You can teach your children how to focus in fun, entertaining ways. Here are some items to capture and hold their attention. Ball of Whacks, Simplexity, Building Thinking Skills, Sand Pictures.

Food for Thought, or Thought for Food

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

I used to know someone in college who was far skinnier than he wanted to be and would lose weight if he didn’t make an effort to keep it on. We would go out for lunch sometimes and he would say, “I don’t really want one, but I guess I should have a milkshake, too.” Sigh. Like most of us, I’ve never had that problem and have struggled with maintaining a healthy weight my whole adult life. This is not to make light of the problems of underweight people but, given the statistics on overweight Americans, I’m guessing most of us relate better to my situation than my friend’s.

Two of the largest selling book genres are cookbooks and diet books, which, taken together, attest to our enormous interest in food. There are currently thousands of food books in print so it’s hard to imagine anyone having anything new to say on the subject of eating. The End of Overeating by David Kessler, M.D. manages to approach an issue that’s dear to our hearts, not to mention our stomachs, with a fresh perspective. The book’s genesis was in a simple question that Dr. Kessler had: Why do we eat what we don’t want to eat? Dr. Kessler was the former FDA Commissioner who oversaw the redesigned food label (the food pyramid) and took on the tobacco industry so he was well-connected in many fields when he decided to go in search of an answer to his query.

The reward center of our brain lights up when we encounter food with a high reinforcing value. Sugar, fat and salt are reinforcing foods, meaning an animal will work harder to get them than foods without those ingredients. We then produce dopamine, which motivates us to seek these foods out next time in anticipation of the reward. As David Foster Wallace colloquially put it, "But then, so how come I can’t stop, if I want to stop, is the thing."

One reason we have trouble stopping is that the food industry uses its knowledge of our biology to give us a more pleasurable experience, which usually means eating things we can't resist. For example, Chili’s popular Boneless Shanghai Wings are made of deboned chicken (quick to eat), which is injected with a water and salt solution (the water makes it easy to chew), battered, breaded (the breading contains salt and sugar), deep-fried, and covered with ginger-citrus sauce (mostly sugar along with more salt). Accompanying the chicken is a creamy wasabi ranch dressing, which is made from mayonnaise and contains additional salt, fat and sugar. And this is only an appetizer. As a food consultant said, "(This dish) is the quintessential example of how to cram as much hedonics as you can into one dish."

The food industry also knows that the allure of the basic building blocks of sugar, fat and salt can be strengthened by adding factors such as variety (multiple flavors like chocolate with a caramel swirl), multiple sensory stimuli (such as smooth and crunchy together or hot fudge on cold ice cream), and emotional connections (such as the 'fun' atmosphere in restaurant ads). Dr. Kessler concludes that, "Rewarding foods are rewiring our brains. As they do, we become more sensitive to the cues that lead us to anticipate rewarding foods." This makes it harder and harder over time to resist foods when we’re walking by a bakery, sitting in a meeting with muffins, or even possessing the knowledge that there are cookies in the house. Overcoming our resistance is why our ice cream, which used to be offered in vanilla, chocolate or strawberry fifty years ago, have now exploded into flavors like Ben and Jerry’s Everything But The… which contains chocolate and vanilla ice creams, Heath® bar chunks, white chocolate chunks, peanut butter cups, and chocolate-covered almonds.

After some sleuthing in the food industry, Dr. Kessler states, "I began to develop an overarching theory about eating for reward: Chronic exposure to highly palatable foods changes our brains, conditioning us to seek continued stimulation." This sounds a lot like addiction (in fact, dopamine is the same chemical released when using cocaine). Dr. Kessler continues, “Conditioned hypereating works the same way as other 'stimulus-response' disorders in which reward is involved, such as compulsive gambling and substance abuse. Such disorders are characterized by a high degree of sensitivity to sensory stimuli, and they typically lead to a perceived loss of control, an inability to feel satisfied, and obsessive thinking.” Dr. Kessler found that most overweight people and many normal weight people had obsessive thoughts of food. This rings true for at least some people because Overeaters Anonymous is an organization based on the twelve-step recovery model of addiction that helps members with what they term 'compulsive eating'.

So now that we understand the problem, what is the solution? The End of Overeating outlines several steps we can take to reprogram our brains to have a healthy relationship with food. The first is to change our emotional connections with food. We have developed simplistic associations of certain foods with comfort and pleasure, which leads us to overeat (eg. cherry pie tastes good). By using more complex thoughts, we can push ourselves away from something so it no longer seems desirable and other things seem desirable instead (eg. cherry pie is full of fat and sugar and I'm going to feel good if I skip it and bad if I eat it). This conscious thought will help make it easier over time to change your habitual thoughts. Another change we can make is planning our eating. Replacing the impulsive act of eating with a thoughtful act will help us behave in accordance with our true values and give us structure that will help support us. Understanding our triggers gives us more control as well. One of my favorite take-aways from the book is the realistic assessment of my own behavior. If I know that every time I think I'm going to have just a few crackers I really end up eating more than I want, I can stop myself from taking the first bite because I will no longer believe my thought that I'm just going to have a few. This technique can be coupled with avoiding traps, such as sitting far from the muffins in a meeting. Another technique is to make rules, such as not allowing yourself to eat between meals (behavior the svelte French consider bizarre).

After thinking I would have no interest in another book about food, I found myself fascinated with learning about how food influences my brain and how my brain influences my food choices. You can help pass on what you know to the young people in your life with several Museum Tour products. Teach the children in your life healthy attitudes about eating while playing with the International Dinner Play Set or the Playful Chef Kit. Learn more about what you eat with the Kitchen Chemistry Set or teach young children to make nutritious meals with The Playful Chef Cookbook.