CONFIDENCE
Feeling Able To Do It

The FREE MegaSkills activities in this website collection are drawn from hundreds in the book: MegaSkills®: Building Children's Achievement for the Information Age. Two activities are provided for each MegaSkill ... one for younger students (approximate ages 4-6), one for older students (approximate ages 7-9). For many more activities, purchase the MegaSkills book from your local bookstores or from The Home and School Institute. Check the drop down menu above soon for more MegaSkills Activities.

CONFIDENCE
Feeling Able To Do It

Our TV Diet - Younger

*Reading
*Analyzing Data
*Developing Discussion Skills

This activity gets the whole family involved in making choices about TV watching. You need thinking minds, a television schedule, and a marker.

As a family, decide how many hours you will each watch TV. Read the TV schedule aloud with your children. Ask what programs everyone wants to watch. Share your opinions about the shows you like. Circle the show you pick. Children need to hear your judgments. This helps them build their own critical viewing skills.

Together go on a TV diet. If your children are watching four hours a day now, cut back to three hours a day the first week, two hours a day the second week, and so on.

Set young children to thinking about scheduling their own TV-watching time. Every family works out its own plan.

Here's an example of how one family does it. Parents set the maximum daily watching time: one to two hours a day. (Educational specials, which the parents encourage children to watch, may be exempt). Children choose any shows - equaling that time period - up to eight P.M.

If this diet doesn't work all the way, at least it does part of the job. It raises the awareness of how much time the family is spending in front of the set. Just learning that number, which is usually higher than we think, is enough to change some TV-watching habits.

Keep TV Watching Under Control - Older

*Writing
*Discussing Ideas
*Creating a Plan

This activity helps families continue their efforts to manage TV watching. You need a TV schedule and markers.

Talk about different family members' interests and hobbies: Skating? Stamps? Cooking? At the beginning of the week, check the TV schedule for any programs that might be related to these. Together circle the programs the family decides to watch. Children circle their programs with one color marker. Adults circle programs with another color.

If someone becomes interested in a new subject after watching a television program, try to find more information on that topic. Example: If the program is about computers, check newspapers or magazines for articles on computers.

Television need not be an ogre to be afraid of or to avoid. Activities like these use TV as the resource it really is.