All About Your Child

Was browsing the net and saw this report provided by Business Week.

Here’s the highlights:-

We then narrowed the list of towns using the following weighted criteria: school performance; number of schools; household expenditures; crime rates; air quality; job growth; family income; museums, parks, theaters, and other amenities; and diversity.

We weighted school performance and safety most heavily, but also gave strong weight to amenities and affordability.

Bear in mind with this list, the organizing principle was affordability.

While the median household income varies by state, we purposely weighted the results to prevent pricing out most readers.

That’s why, for example, Greenwich, Conn., with its good private schools, low crime, and abundance of cultural amenities, was left out. It simply costs too much to live there….

…..So, read on to find out which are the best places to raise your kids in every state.

Who knows? You might already live there.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California,  Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa.

Want to know why the above are the Selected Ones? Go read the breakdown for each country here… For me, I would LOVE to stay in Hawaii!

Today was a treat for my eyes. Friends in Facebook would know that I had been having a swollen left eye for the past 3 days with pus and all.

It recovered today, in time to enjoy this movie treat from my sister.

Today’s post is not about my kids, its about my sis and I ‘re-living’ our younger days again. Sing to the Dawn was a book which my sis and I read for our literature lessons when we were in our teens.

The movie was based on the award-winning novel by Minfong Ho in 1975. It won the first prize in the Council of Interracial Books for Children.

This was the cover of the book which my sis and I had. If I’m not wrong, its still standing on my shelf leaning against my storeroom wall.

Dawan was a young village girl in Thailand, who won a scholarship to study in a school in the city. Her brother, Kai,was initially jealous, causing a rift between the two previously-close siblings. To make things worse, Dawan’s father, who feels that the city is no place for a girl, refused to allow Dawan to accept the scholarship. Dawan faces many obstacles, but eventually through many events, she proved that she is worthy of the scholarship.

I remembered crying at the end of the book. But it was so different when the story was put on the big screen. It was funny! I was practically laughing most of the time. But then again, I guess I’m a kid in an adult’s body, cos’ all the other adults in the ‘dark-room‘ didn’t react the way which I did *embarrassed*. The story was not funny (of cos’), but the ‘additional characters’ in the animated movie was! The main storyline is still intact.

Allan was the nanny for that 1plus hour, allowing the kids to roam around Toys R Us and the open-air playground in Vivo City, while waiting for the show to end and fetch all of us home. So my sis and I had great fun, because its been a ‘hundred‘ years since we last went for a movie together; and the kids had tremendous fun too! So it was YEAH for 4 and not so yeah for the man *laugh*….