Children's interest in reading declines by the age of nine according to the Scholastic 2019 Kids and Family Reading Report.So having children and tweens/teens along with adults included in this year's One Book Westchester is a boost for county families. The committee decided to offer three reading selections in order to target three different age groups, thus widening the ...

In October, a family at Green Homes, an affordable housing community in Bridgeport, went without water several days through a weekend after a burst pipe flooded their unit and others. When Mayor Joe Ganim got the news from his staff, he wanted to "find out the correct story" then work on a plan to improve the lives of city housing residents."There's no reason a mother and two ...

Remember the existential dread of gym class? Children good at sports love gym class, but just the thought of going could be en energy drain for non-athletes.Nearly every youngster can learn to ride a pogo stick or spin a plate. They are just a few of the fitness activities that enlivened physical education classes recently at a school in Westchester.Third- to fifth-grade students and ...

Deviled eggs are a popular Thanksgiving starter but peeling hard-boiled eggs is a loathsome task.Just ask grandmother Bonnie Tyler of Southport who got "frustrated" every time she peeled eggs for her favorite recipe.The dreary task led Tyler and Sheila Torgan, also of Southport and both entrepreneurs, to invent a device that makes peeling eggs a cinch.The idea came to Tyler in 2015 the ...

The latchkey kids of the '80s are raising over-parented children involved in sports, music lessons, scouts, religious classes and plenty of extras. But not every working family can provide these programs for their tweens.What adolescents do in the downtime between school dismissal and 8 p.m.—and often later—is a focus of the White Plains Youth Bureau (WPYB), which runs the Eastview ...

What are parents to do when the school day ends before they can leave their jobs? White Plains has a plan for that: The White Plains Youth Bureau (WPYB) and city's schools now work in tandem to keep children after school while parents are at work."White Plains saw the need to develop after-school programming and teen centers nearly 50 years ago,” said Frank Williams, Jr., executive ...

They come in sweet and sugary fruit flavors, cinnamon, vanilla, mango—even chocolate. Vaping flavors seem hard to resist for anyone with a sweet tooth, and teenagers are no exception.E-cigarettes and other vaping devices are battery-operated devices that heat a liquid into an inhalable vapor, which typically contains nicotine (though not always), flavorings and other ...

Students recently were alerted to decades-old fake news images thanks to the keen eye of a media specialist at a Ridgefield school. Scotts Ridge Middle School seventh-graders were learning about energy transfer in ecosystems, in their science class when it happened.The widespread burning of the Amazon rainforest was the "phenomenon that we used to kick off this unit," ...

Would a 10-hour school day fly in Westchester? Unlikely. A robust menu of after-school programs already exists across the county's cities, towns and villages -- either at the schools or sponsored by non-profit organizations and municipalities.Daily Voice Plus examined its impact on the White Plains School District, -- the fifth largest in the county serving more than 7,000 students in ...

To date, 31 groups of adults in Connecticut have taken the time to complete a two-hour drug prevention program to keep their children safe from drugs.The program is the Courage to Speak Foundation's Courageous Parenting 101 - "Parenting Through the Opioid Crisis and Beyond" and will be offered here online for busy parents starting in December. The next live Courage to Speak Courageous ...