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At dinner table one evening, my husband came up with the idea of growing a family garden… Well, my kids and I were shell-shocked, as he does not have a green thumb, while my kids and I occasionally indulge in gardening and tending to our plants in our back yard.

He said that it was just an excuse for the whole family to do something to gather outside. Seeing his enthusiasm, we decided to go ahead. We chose a medium sized patch for cultivating our “family garden”. In a family garden, you could be grow vegetables, flowers, arrange or decorate potted plants, water, trim, or even mow the lawn. We chose to grow flowers.

Some points to remember while growing a family garden -

Select the type of garden that everyone in the family would like to grow, flowers, fruits or vegetables. What to plant also depends on the season, type of soil, amount of sunlight, etc? If in doubt, ask the staff at your local garden store for planting advice.

Make it a point to have a plant for each member of the family. If your kid’s plant is not growing well, find out the reason and make necessary changes so that the plant can grow. If possible, you can also replace the dying plant with a new one.

Gardening tasks should be delegated according to age. Kids can water the plants with hose or water can; teenagers can trim the hedges or help in digging the soil. If your small kid wants to help in digging the soil, bring out plastic gardening kit that a spade shovel, water can, bucket, etc.

Dress up while working on growing a garden. Dads / Mom can don gardener’s overalls, wear a sun hat, etc. Kids can wear rain boots, plastic construction hats, etc. Dressing up is fun.

To make your garden look more beautiful, decorate it with painted stones or create designs with broken flowerpot pieces. Paint wooden roods or make a boundary with bricks of different shapes, size and patterns.

Growing a family garden means spending time together. Make it a point to tend to it every day or two. Lastly do not make gardening a chore for kids. Let them enjoy what they do best.

It’s been two months since we started growing our family garden. We can see our plants growing daily and the excitement is unmatched.

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Take spoon full of spells, add a pinch of adventure, a cup full of excitement, blend in some jinxes, a sprinkling of witches, wizards, gnomes and elves and here you are! A fun-filled magical adventure, that’s Harry Potter for you! Having grown up on a steady diet of children’s classics such as Aesop’s fables and graduating to Enid Blyton, children’s reading has evolved into newer realms today. J.K Rowling’s magical fantasy, Harry Potter has revolutionized children’s reading. Let’s take a peek into the magical world of witches and wizards. A figment of brilliant imagination, the Harry Potter series is genuinely a splendid piece of writing. For the uninitiated, here is the explanation of some important magical terminology -

Hogwarts - The only Magical School of Witchcraft and wizardry in the UK

Albus Dumbledore - The Principal of Hogwarts, an able and great wizard.

Gryffindor - Symbolized by the Lion, and the house to which Harry and his best friends Ronald Weasley and Hermonie belong.

Hufflepuff - House symbolized by a black badger.

Ravenclaw - House symbolized by a bronze eagle.

Slytherin - Symbolized by a silver serpent, Slytherin that has the dubious distinction of having produced the maximum number of wizards practicing dark arts.

Quidditch - A game played on broomsticks, where in catching of the snitch renders the win to a team.

The Forbidden Forest - A big forest that has many magical creatures in it and all students are barred entry into the forbidden forests.

Muggles - Non-magical people or ordinary people who are unaware of the magical world.

Knight bus - A three-tiered magical bus for the transport of stranded witches and wizards. Invisible to the muggle-eye the Knight bus can pass through muggle traffic.

Hogwarts Express - The train that takes students to Hogwarts and leaves from the 9-3/4th platform on London Station.

Lord Voldermort - The Dark lord who are not even named by the witches and wizards. The only person to have survived his wrath is Harry Potter.

Azkaban - The prison for punishing witches and wizards who are involved in bad magic that causes harm to others.

Dementors - Dementors are spirits who guard Azkaban. They are terrible, live on happy feelings. They can suck out happiness from inside you leaving you cold and scared.

Ministry of Magic - The Central body with different departments that regulates and controls all magical activities in the UK.

Divination - A subject taught at Hogwarts, which involves predicting the future.

Transfiguration - Also taught at Hogwarts, transforming one creature into another.

Potions - Taught by Professor Snape, potions include study and making magical potions, poisons and their antidotes.

Care of Magical Creatures - Taught by Professor Hagrid, it involves study and care of magical creatures.

Defence against the Dark Arts - A subject whereby the young witches and wizards are taught to defend themselves against the dark arts.

Herbology - Taught by Professor Sprout, Herbology involves the study of magical plants.

House-elves - Akin to slaves, house-elves do all the housekeeping work. The only difference being they like doing the work. To free them is their punishment.

O.W.Ls - Ordinary Wizarding Levels, an examination that the students need to take to go to the higher levels.

Hedwig - Harry’s owl, owls are used to deliver messages and even parcels to other witches and wizards staying far away.

Hogsmeade - The only all-magical village in UK, where Hogwarts students are allowed to spend time intermittently.

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I love playing games online. I frequently visit games section of MSN and Yahoo to play board and word games especially.

I recently introduced my 10 year old to the online gaming world. Though she loves playing outdoors with her friends, she enjoys playing games online too. Since she is a pro at computers thanks to her homework, which requires online research, it was easy for her to get the hang of playing games. She is allowed just 3 hours a week to play games online.

Since I frequent Yahoo for games, I put her on to kid’s game section on yahoo. Yahoo Games have all genres of games for kids ranging from card, board and tiles games, and sports games to arcade games with pool and blocks, ET. Al. She loves playing tic-tac toe, blocks, connecting dots, and flower frenzy, ET. Al. She enjoys playing games from kid’s bops section.

Now that my daughter is enjoying playing games online, I will have to start searching for more sites, which offer games of all kids. She likes to play games, which I play on yahoo.com.

Though I rarely leave my girl alone on the PC, last fortnight I found her surfing a new site for kids called theKidzpage.com. She told me that one of her friends had recommended this site for free online games for kids.

Next day I sat and surfed thekidzpage.com and found it to be a really good site for kids that offers free kids online games, coloring pages, jigsaw puzzles, educational games and activities, clipart that keep kids busy and entertained for hours together. With over tons of pages of fun, learning and activities with new games daily, kids love this site. I know my daughter is hooked on playing educational games, holiday themed games and much more on this site.

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