New Years' Resolutions Can Be Habit Forming

A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them. ~Frank A. Clark

It's late January. Did you make a 2012 New Years’ resolution to start a new habit, Middle Schoolers? Good move. According to The New York Times, almost half the people who make a resolution keep it. What are their secrets? 

• Make one small resolution at a time. How about one of these? 
• Keep a short, specific To-Do List to get yourself organized. 
• Go to bed a little bit earlier every night. 
• Use a timer to do homework for short periods with no interruptions.

• Move temptations out of sight. Too distracted by TV, video games, or other gadgets? Do your homework in a gadget-free room. 

•  Tell the world what your new habit is. Ask friends and family members to help you stay on track.

• Give yourself gold stars! Use a calendar to keep track of how well you’re doing. 

• If you slip-up, restart your engines. Tomorrow's another new year.

Mizz C. started one good habit in 2012: blabbing and blogging. She can't stop!

What a Pain!

Okay, middle schoolers. Guess which kind of pain 9-13 year olds are most likely to suffer in a month? "Blisters?" "Sore knuckles?" "Fear of flying saucers landing on my school?” None of the above. It's headaches.  

Mizz C. doesn’t want you to miss school or "you time" because of headaches. Some mini habits can help you prevent many of them. Ready?

• Drink several glasses of plain old water every day, especially before, during, and after sports. Dehydration, aka cells screaming: "water, we need water," can cause headaches.
• Get the right amount of regular sleep—9 to 11 hours a night for middle schoolers. Overtiredness causes many headaches.
• Eat healthy meals and snacks around the same times every day. Skipped meals can trigger headaches.
• Give your eyeballs a rest from too much screen time.
• Avoid caffeinated drinks. They can cause rebound headaches when you suddenly stop them. 
• If you get that tight, nervous feeling called stress, go for a walk or a run. Or stop to breathe slowly and deeply until you feel calmer. Or close your eyes and let your stressful thoughts float right out of your head. 

“Okay, okay, Mizz C. we get it. But I'm getting a headache right NOW! Make it go away. I have to finish my homework.”

Mizz C's Headache Begone Plan:

• Stick a wet washcloth in the freezer to make a Headache Washcloth Popsicle.
• Drink a big, cold glass of water.
• Eat a small snack.
• Set a timer for about twenty minutes. You remember timers from Mizz C’s posting on how to love, love, love timers as much as she does.
• Go get your Headache Washcloth Popsicle. Lie down. Put the cool cloth on your forehead. 
• Close your eyes and take a short nap until the timer goes off.
• If you still have the headache when you wake up, ask a parent for an ibuprofen if that’s what your family uses for headaches.*

Feel better now? Go play with your dog or your little sister then go back to your homework, headache-free.

* Mizz C. isn't a doctor even though she sometimes acts like one. She does know that headaches can be a sign of illness. So watch for other symptoms such as fever, aches and pains, or stomach ache. There might be a bug going around.

Locker Shocker

Mizz C, poor old thing from the Jurassic Era, thought she had a hot study tip. In her A+ Guide to Great Grades she recommended that all you middle grade students keep a plain old shoe box of extra school supplies in your lockers in case you run out of pens or paper before class. 

An old shoe box, Mizz C??????????? Didn't she ever hear about locker decor? Well, now she has, and it almost made her faint face down into her beloved New York Times. She just discovered that 

some middle graders decorate their lockers with chandeliers!

The article made Mizz C. feel as if she should just give up writing about study skills. She was certainly too late to add locker chandeliers to the school supplies list in her book. 

Mizz C's book describes how students' lockers are like “a home away from home” and explains how to organize them. She just didn't know students were out there turning their lockers into real homes with chandeliers and shag rugs. Perhaps she needs to get with the program. Well, maybe next century.  

P.S. Mizz C. knows very well that lots of boys and girls are not out shopping for locker chandeliers and such. So she has a useful decorating idea for any student who wants to hang something nice and practical in a locker—a little flashlight in case things get dark and messy in there. (Of course. Mizz C's A+ followers won’t have messy lockers once they read the A+ Guide to Great Grades.)

Mizz C's idea of locker decor.

Sleep . . . the Super Study Skill

You wont' fall asleep here if you . . .  

. . . get more sleep here. 

BULLETIN! BULLETIN!

MIDDLE GRADERS NEED AT LEAST 9-11 HOURS OF SLEEP A NIGHT TO BECOME THEIR HAPPIEST, HEALTHIEST, STRONGEST, AND SMARTEST SELVES! 

You can stop reading now if you're late for school. But if you're just hangin' and want to know what happens while you're asleep, read on. 

Mizz C. used to worry about why some of her students fell asleep in her class. Was she boring? Impossible! The truth was that many of her students had not been getting enough sleep. She learned this distressing news when she wrote a classroom and library health book.

What Mizz C. found out after researching her book shocked her so much, she added a whole sleep section in her new and improved A+ Guide to Great Grades. If you don't want to buy the book, check out this sleep expert for free:

Like many humans from the Jurassic Era, Mizz C. once thought that when the body went to sleep, it was done for the day. WRONG! Mizz C. discovered that during sleep brains are like night crews that come into a building after hours to clean up. They work when it's quiet. During sleep, brains do housekeeping chores that keep the body in tip top shape. That's why it's so important to get in all those hours of sleep every night. These chores include sending out messages to different organs in the body:

“Hey you, pituitary gland. Release growth hormones to make this sleeper tall and strong. While you're at it, fix those worn-out cells! And you over there, white adipose tissue. Release appetite control hormones. Otherwise that person’s body is going to think it’s hungry tomorrow, even if it’s full. Pay attention reproductive organs. Someday that sleeping kid may become a parent. His body needs to get ready now while it's sleeping. So release some of those reproductive hormones tonight! Hey you, memory cells. Organize that information you learned today. You’ve only got nine hours, ten hours tops. Get going!”

Now that you know why your body needs so much sleep, go get some zzzs. Tune in again when you’re all rested. Mizz C. will soon be blabbing about how to make sure your tech toys--computer, phones, video games, and television--get enough sleep, so that you do, too. And she has another blab post on the back burner about how to improve your memory by sleeping at least 9-10 hours right before test day! Prepare to be amazed. In the meantime, nighty night.

To Do or Not To Do, That Is the Question

All you middle graders out there are probably waaaay too busy doing things than reading articles about To Do lists, right? That's why Mizz C. read a great Wall Street Journal article for you and squeezed it down to this: 

• Have a To Do list. 

• Keep your To Do list short and specific. (Example: "Clean top of desk," not "Be neater.")

• Only list small tasks you can finish soon. (Example: "Practice guitar chords 5 minutes before dinner," not "Become rock star when I grow up.") 

• Write down how long you think your task will take.

That’s the nut of To Do lists according to the Wall Street Journal. You may stop reading now. Or go on and see how long Mizz C. can blab some more about To Do lists, a subject she loves almost as much as accordion folders. 


It doesn’t matter if you write your To Do list on the palm of your hand, the back of an envelope, or on a fogged-up bathroom mirror. Just have one. 

Mizz C. uses the nice yellow digital Sticky widget on her computer for her To Do list. (Who invented thee, Sticky widget for the Mac and Windows? I love thee and want to send thee brownies.) Mizz C. also carries around a small note pad in case she gets one of her  blog ideas while she's in the middle of the woods. When she gets home, she adds it to her Sticky To Do list.

Now Mizz C. is about to do one of her fav, fav, favorite things. She’s going to go to her Stickies To Do list and zap: “Write blog about To Do lists, 1hr.” Done!  

Tame Your Paper Monsters

Mizz C. found this mashed-up test on the ground while walking near a local school. "How sad," Mizz C. thought as she picked up the corrected test in a failed attempt to save its life. 

Perhaps the student who dropped it had never had a chance to read Mizz C’s A+ Guide to Great Grades. Or maybe the wet, muddy ground was this student's filing system instead of a beautiful accordion folder like this.

XO Beautiful accordion folder

MIZZ C. LOVES, LOVES, LOVES  accordion folders. She wants to marry one, but she’s already married. She wants to live in a stationery store but already lives in a house. She’s all about filing recipes, bills, letters, receipts, and clippings.

Why just last month Mizz C. needed to find the receipt for her food processor, which shouldn’t have broken in the middle of grating three kinds of cheeses. But she had the store receipt in her “Household Appliances” accordion folder, of course! So when she called the company and read the receipt information to them, guess what? They sent her a new food processor for free!

                                                    Here it is: 

(The heirloom tomato is a hand-painted birthday card from her dear cousin Elizabeth, who suggested that Mizz C. was once a hot tomato but is now an heirloom tomato. So true.) 

"So what's your point, Mizz C?" you middle schoolers are probably wondering? "Are you about to share a tomato recipe? We thought this was a study skills blog, not a food blog." Mizz C's roundabout point is this great study tip: save and file away your school work until the end of the school year. After that, on the last day of school, you have Mizz C's permission to create a fleet of paper airplanes from all your work, after which you'll put them in the closest recycling bin sorted by subject like the organized A+ students Mizz C. knows you are. 


Your old corrected homework, tests, and teacher handouts are like Mizz C’s receipts. Keep them in a file or accordion folder at home even if they have ketchup on them, jam prints,  or a grade you'd rather forget. They’re the best study tools ever for future tests. Handouts clue you in to what your teacher will probably put on a test. Corrected tests and homework show what you're strong in and what needs work. So give your handouts, old tests, and homework a good home:

Oh! Oh! One more thing before the blogger authorities shut down Mizz C. for blabbing too much. Write your name and the date on all your handouts, tests, and homework assignments in case they lose you. That way if Mizz C. finds one of your important class papers on her daily walks, she can track you down.

Time Flies When You're Hooked on the Internet

What’s this chicken doing on Mizz C’s brand-new blog? The chicken is Mizz C’s kitchen timer. She uses it to keep cupcakes, turkeys, brownies--and her work time--from burning up.

Now Mizz C. has a horrible, embarrassing confession to make. Not so long ago, she could sometimes be an A+ Time Waster. She surfed the Internet and checked her e-mails a million times a day for no good reason.

This had to stop.

So Mizz C. started setting her chicken timer for chunks of work time. When the timer dinged, she would take a a short break to read e-mails and check out silly animal YouTube videos.

Lo and behold! The chicken timer helped Mizz C. get more work done. So she began to let her chicken timer boss her around instead of the Internet.

“Hey, maybe middle graders should use kitchen timers to get their homework done,” Mizz C. thought. And that’s how she came up with the A+ 20/10 Study Method. It’s all explained in Mizz C’s A+ Guide to Great Grades.  

In the meantime, go to the kitchen. See if you can find a timer.

Or ask one of your parents to get you one instead of a new bike, video game, or trip to Disneyland. 




From now on, you can keep those plug-in, screen-faced time thieves--computers television, video games, and the telephone from taking over your life. 

The A+ 20/10 Study Method really works. Mizz C. used it to write today’s blog post. When the chicken timer goes off, she’ll reset it for just a few minutes to watch her favorite penguin YouTube video. It cracks her up every time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pK8dplyTHM&feature=related

Mizz C. and the A+ Guides Get a Makeover

  

“Mizz C! Mizz C! An eighth grader made a paper airplane out of the vocabulary handout, and it’s flying over Columbus Avenue. Do I still have to take the test?"

"Mizz C! Mizz C! I forgot my locker combination, and my math handout was inside. Can I skip the test?"

Mizz C. often heard questions like these when dinosaurs roamed the halls of the middle school where she once taught. That was back in the last century when Mizz C. and her students were all middle grade newbies. 

Mizz C. wanted to help her students survive and enjoy the middle grades. So she became an expert in getting lockers unstuck and tracking down runaway textbooks.

In those good old olden days, Mizz C. often thought: “There should be study skills books on getting organized for school, taking tests, writing papers, and giving speeches.” So she wrote a series of books called the A+ Guides.


Mizz C’s middle-graders moved up to high school. Her A+ Guides moved up to the attic where they got a little yellow and faded. A whole century passed. Soon it was 2011. Mizz C. heard rumors. Many middle grade kids still couldn’t find missing handouts or get their lockers opened. Mizz C. got to thinking. “Why not publish some new A+ Guides just like the old ones?”


“Well, that won’t work,” Mizz C. soon realized. “A lot of new fangled things have been invented. Students aren’t writing with quill pens anymore. 

Some of them write on typing machines called computers.” 

Mizz C. had to face the truth. She and her A+ Guides needed makeovers.


So Mizz C. threw out pages from her faded, yellowed A+Guides. She researched the latest organizing, note taking, test taking, and writing tips. She even added health tips she had learned about while writing many other books besides the A+ Guides. She gave her books bright new covers. Then she took the scariest step of all.


MIZZ C. WENT DIGITAL!!!!

Mizz C. could now send her new books, just like that, into outer space to something called the Internet. 


Mizz C. also learned something else: there was a new way of writing for complete strangers. It was called blogging, which sounded a little bit like blabbing. Mizz C. decided to begin blabbing—blogging that is—whenever she had an opinion. Which was a lot.


After blogging came Facebook, and Twitter.


Now Mizz C. is officially in the 21st Century. She’s inviting all middle graders to come on in. No need to buy an A+ Guide to read Mizz C’s blog post, though she won’t stop you if you’d like to. Mizz C. likes nothing better than giving advice--even when people don’t ask for it. Stop by anytime.

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