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I love Little Debbie! Her brownies are pretty low in calories. You know what there is now? Cream filled mini cakes from the Brownie Bites people in a portion controlled little bag. Delish!!</p>
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True, but in very poor schools, I think it’s important to be careful and respectful. We only have one pro team in our borough and it’s a minor league team that plays mostly in the summer, and transportation elsewhere can be difficult and expensive. I think this is a great idea, though, for the right place. I totally support the baked goods meeting nutritional standards. There’s nothing wrong with that. Personally, my favorite fundraisers have always been when the parents get a box of chocolate bars to sell. I work in an office where people would pay large premiums for chocolate in the afternoon. My husband, too. We made very big money selling those bars.</p>
<p>Some schools earn so much parent-raised money that they hire actual staff members and do all sorts of things. There are some parents (I know several) who choose public schools, although they can afford NYC privates, and donate five figures to the PTA every year as a way of giving back. I admire that. I can’t do it, but I admire it!</p>
<p>I liked Hostess Ding Dongs in the foil wrapper the best. My mom used to freeze them and we would eat them as a snack after school. Yum… sadly the version of Ding Dongs sold now really isn’t all that good. So much for progress. </p>
<p>I don’t mind bake sales. At Ds high school the kids were the ones doing the baking and the selling.
I do agree that we don’t need pop machines in the schools but that should also go for the administrative building.</p>
<p>I feel like the generation that many of us here on CC were raised with " organized play "…gone are the days when kids just went outside to play, ride bikes, get a neighborhood game of hide and seek, etc. Between the two income households and the general fear of what could go wrong , from stranger danger to falling off a bike, we have now a nation of kids who are sort of weak IMO.
There is very little spontaneous play anymore…kids spend more time playing electronic games, going on line than climbing trees and catching fireflies.
I look at the home we live in now, the neighborhood and can’t help but think about how awesome it would’ve been to grow up here. We have a pool, there are woods out in the back and a nice area for bike riding…plenty of places to hide and just be a kid.
We moved to the house we live in now because our youngest was about to become the only child home , and the neighborhood had a lot of kids her age. I will not regret that decision as her sisters were transitioning to college, she was busy and not as lonely as she would’ve been, had we stayed in the other house.
But now, there are still a fair amount of younger kids, but rarely do you see them outside doing stuff that kids do….it’s sad and I think that contributes to childhood obesity rather than a plate of brownies shared in a classroom</p>
<p>There is a family who lives on our street…the mother home schools her three children. She is also a fitness fanatic and is touting an exercise class for kids…to me it is just another organized play activity and one hour a week can’t take the place of simple spontaneous activity that is falling by the wayside</p>
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In today’s world - pool=huge liability, woods out back=tics (Lyme Disease) and also a place to be abducted, plenty of places to hide=places to be abducted or abused. </p>
<p>I also miss the world of greater freedom that many of us grew up in.</p>
<p>Re post #64 – Props to the homeschool mom who organizes a fun and healthy activity for kids. Good for her! </p>
<p>Just some thoughts. Per capita $75K, if that includes kids, makes a $800K home very affordable for an “average” 2-parent, 2-kid family with its annual $300K income, even if the family puts very little money down. Also, median is not mean. It could be that half of the houses minus one house are worth $100K, and that the rest are all worth $800. 
it tells almost nothing about how diverse the sample is. </p>
<p>@ DeborahT ,Yes, well the homeschool mother ( I suspect I struck a nerve by the adjectives I used to describe the mother) really isn’t any different than any other mother who organizes and hour a week for karate , soccer , dance or gymnastics…Actually , she spends much more time touting her own weight loss sales pitches to others on social media . Her neighbors on either side are rather sick of her children walking into their garages and stealing their things. That might be fun too , but not so healthy ;)</p>
<p>Lje62, I was trying to present how different your original post looks from a homeschool mom’s perspective. Homeschooling families typically have a lot of flexibility in how they structure their days. Kids may well have plenty of unstructured play time and be happy to do a weekly fitness activity with kids in the neighborhood. They also may be doing other exercise related activities which you don’t know about. The world is your oyster. Of course, depending where you live and what’s offered where, activities can carve a hole in your wallet, which is part of why I said props to the mom who organizes an activity. It may be a welcome opportunity for someone else. Some people spend more money, others less. Some moms are organizers, some aren’t. Sometimes the kids are involved in a lot of homeschool group activities. Others may go more through other organizations. There are a lot of options out there. <a href=“What can a home schooler do for extracurricular activities? - #27 by Deborah_T - Home Schooling and College - College Confidential Forums”>What can a home schooler do for extracurricular activities? - #27 by Deborah_T - Home Schooling and College - College Confidential Forums;
<p>You’re only seeing a piece of who someone is when you read their posts online. People generally aren’t flat pieces of cardboard. They’re multidimensional.</p>
<p>Our principal got so mad at the district for forcing her to have a junk food machine in the cafeteria she put a sign on it saying it was broken. Eventually the PTA got involved and it was removed. I’ve got mixed feelings - I remember getting an ice cream sandwich every single day in junior high and I was a scrawny kid.</p>
<p>Our kids didn’t have a separate recess, but were supposed to get out to play at lunch time. Sometimes the lunch monitors would decide it was too cold and the kids would stay inside and watch movies. Then they’d be so antsy my older son’s first grade teacher would take them out on the playground herself.</p>
<p>Science Friday recently did a piece on the importance of taking breaks for learning: <a href=“http://www.sciencefriday.com/topics/body-brain/segment/09/05/2014/to-master-test-material-give-your-brain-a-break.html”>http://www.sciencefriday.com/topics/body-brain/segment/09/05/2014/to-master-test-material-give-your-brain-a-break.html</a></p>
<p>off track, but I’m with PG here. we came from a family of TastyCake eaters.</p>
<p>kids had recess daily here, and ate lunch outside, for most part. My son and his friends all brought food from home, as the lines were too long.</p>
<p>@DeborahT, my post was in now way meant as a slur boards homeschoolers. There may have been a time when I felt that homeschooling was cheating the children, but I have gained a broader perspective and understanding of why parents choose this over public schools…especially in the last few years. The truth is, all of those activities you listed on the thread you shared are things we also did with our children, and some others as well. This particular neighbor seems to not pay close enough attention to what her children are doing outside of the home , namely stealing things from neighbors and not grasping the concept of boundaries and respecting certain limits</p>
<p>Tastykakes. Hadn’t even heard of that brand before. Learn something new every day. 
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<p>Trading is forbidden in many schools now because of food allergies. </p>
<p>As for recess after lunch, some school nurses don’t like it because the kids tend to barf if they run around right after eating. Recess before lunch is just as effective at increasing physical activity, but without the barfing.</p>