The answer is surprisingly simple. The two most important activities for developing literacy skills are reading for pleasure and keeping a journal. Reading widely and reflecting on experiences in a journal are habits that lead to better literacy and lifelong learning.  And the long Christmas break is the perfect opportunity to start developing these habits.

Forming Good Reading Habits

Even 4 year olds can Read for Pleasure

Most parents foster the habit of reading from a young age by reading to their children at bed time, and encouraging them with their home readers. There is a point however where children are expected to read independently and this is often when the habits die off.

If you have a Primary aged child, support all their reading and reward them for functional reading (lists, instructions, recipes etc)  as well as reading for pleasure.  Keep them excited about reading by going to the library regularly but also give books as presents, read the weekend papers and let them buy and trade magazines and comics.

If your pre-teen or older student has become a reluctant reader then reinforcing the joys of summer reading – long lazy days spent with a book or any other reading material – can help to put them back on track Enjoying reading is the key and if they are used to reading in the holidays this will make it easier for them to tackle the large quantities of reading required for the HSC. And the good news is that seeing you read is the best model they can have – so enjoy your holiday reading without guilt!

Holiday Journals

It is one thing to model good reading habits however few parents feel competent to help their children to write. A holiday journal or diary is a great place to start and encourages students to record not only their experiences but also their reading. Reflecting on what they read and making judgements on what they like and don’t like helps develop analytical and essay writing skills – so definitely a worthy activity for primary and middle school students. HSC students can also get a lot of benefit from journal keeping and many subjects require this skill.

As well as journal writing, again encourage young students with lots of functional and personal writing – such as cards, lists, menus and letters and emails to relatives for Christmas.  Using the PC there is no end to the writing they can do they can keep a photo-memoir complete with captions – another good literacy skill.  But the pen is still the best and easiest way to record thoughts ( and still necessary for exams ) so keep your child interested in handwriting by giving them  a nice new journal and Smiggles pen for Christmas and watch them go!

So to keep your child on track for the New Year just keep them reading and writing and enjoying it. It really is that simple. (But you may want to lose the Wii remote and use the iPad for reading only!)

Written by Christina Greenlees

Images minor editing by Sharleen Newcombe- Advanced Education Solutions Like us on Facebook

Christina is a former teacher of English and Drama and a freelance writer.

She is one of our English tutors specialising in the HSC and creative writing.

What can children do in the Holidays? is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

We don’t have a dedicated raw restaurant or cafe’ here in Sydney so I had to travel to Maleny and Burleigh Heads.

Delicious and Healthy!

I visited 3 raw food cafe’s and 2 Eco villages to see how people in a community manage to get along together.   Both places were in beautiful locations but both places had one thing in common…….  people!  No matter where we go, it comes down to how we get along in groups to make things work.

See you all at the next monthly IBN!

Road Trip Raw food tour is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

Green Smoothies

Blend all raw living fresh ingredients together with some filtered water and enjoy!  The sweet fruit taste dominates and the nutrients are easily absorbed by the body.

www.fruvenu.com.au

Cheers! Here’s to good health! is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

Sue Blake is a Professional Organiser who seeks to give ideas and inspiration to help others become better organised. for more information go to www.organisedfashion.com.au

Use Special Stuff Everyday and Save is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

The packages usually include as a minimum airfares and accommodation and then there are the additional items that may or may not be included.  These are: transfers, meals (1-3 per day), drinks, resort facilities and activities or special shows etc.  It is important if you have quotes from a few different travel providers or websites that you clarify that they all include
the same items so you know you are comparing apples with apples.

Start your own research by getting prices on the basics of airfares and accommodation options and see how that compares to the package price.  It is always worth checking with the resorts direct as well as websites and agencies that specialise in your destination. Then look at the cost for adding on any meals that may have been included and see if there is a significant price difference to the package price.

I have had a personal experience recently where to just add breakfast for a family of 2 adults and 2 children under 10 was going to add $600 for 7 days.  This was for a resort in Vanuatu and the four of us actually ate out with large cooked breakfasts for $40-$50 per day (so only spending around $300 for the 7 days) and we could try out different restaurants/cafes each day or prepare our own in our room (warm chocolate croissants and local Tanna coffee - yum!).

The same goes for lunch or dinner options that can be included in the all inclusive packages.  You have to way up if you want to be committed to always eating in your resort or want the flexibility to try other places.  Also, do you want 3 large meals every day or perhaps you prefer just 2.  These all need to be considered before you book & pay for something you may not actually need.

It is also worth looking at the transfer options as well.  You can often save quite a lot on these if arranged independently.  The hotel you book with can offer options and costs and you can easily find out on-line the cost of taxis, shuttles, busses etc available at your destination.

These costs all add up and the more you can save on getting there and staying, the more you have to spend doing fun things when you get there (or on some retail therapy).

Sometimes the package deal on offer is truly a bargain and you should snap them upquickly – but just do a bit of checking before you do to make sure!

If this research sounds all to hard and time consuming – Contact Us Now for assistance: www.juliewarnertravelplans.com

Package Holiday or Independent – What is the best deal? is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

Vibrant Fresh Fruits

Spring is almost here!  Warmer weather encourages us to eat more juicy, energising fresh fruits.   Our bodies are ready to let go of heavy winter foods and start moving again, creeping out of hibernation and greeting the sun.

Fresh raw living fruits are full of life giving minerals & vitamins to hydrate, feed  and heal cells helping us spring into the day!

www.fruvenu.com.au

Fresh Raw Living Fruits! is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

2. Know your borrowing capacity and research various states rather than staying in your own area or postcode.

3. Surround yourself with ‘like minded’ people when building your property portfolio

Tips for Property Investors is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

With that said though, the cost of travel insurance does seem to have sky rocketed in the past years which means shopping around to find an affordable policy that covers your needs has become more of a challenge.

We personally have a very comprehensive policy through our ANZ Platinum Visa card that only requires us to spend $250 on any part of our holiday before we travel, so airfares, hotels, car hire – whatever to do with our holiday and the policy is activated to cover all 4 of us.

So, check if you have any insurance cover with your existing credit cards or it could be worth joining up with a card that has a travel insurance policy to save some money when you next travel.  Please check that the cover these cards come with is comprehensive enough for all your requirements.

Other places to research for good value is with any other companies you already have car, home, contents and health insurance policies with as you get discounts for having multiple policies with many companies.

There are a number of comparison websites that allow you to put in the areas you will be travelling to, for what period you require cover and all the inclusions you require and they do all the hard work for you searching the most suitable policies available.  As always, you need to ensure you read any policy carefully before signing up so you have complete coverage for your requirements.

Let me know your travel insurance tips or experiences?

For more information contact us now at www.juliewarnertravelplans.com or Phone: 02 8850 4908

Travel Insurance – What is the best Policy? is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

PPC, or pay-per-click ads, although popular, are expensive. Used incorrectly, these can result in a tremendous loss of money and the traffic can dry up as soon as the investment capital does.

Enter article marketing – a free way to reach thousands of people very quickly, bringing long-term traffic to your website on a daily basis.

So what is article marketing? Put simply, article marketing is the writing of free articles that point back to your website or product. These articles are submitted to article directories across the internet, and from there they can be used by other people for content on their websites, with the condition that your author bio box remains in tact. This is the true beauty of article marketing – a few minutes of your time can yield months of results!

I personally recommend you write your own articles if you want to provide your visitors with the highest quality level of information about your business. I’ve included a couple of the tools I personally use to create my own content at the end of this article.

Let’s look at the basics. An article is approximately one page of text, using Microsoft Word. Articles generally contain between 400 and 700 words, and are informative and helpful to the target audience. You can find word count programs on the internet. My favorite is: http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/countwords.shtml – you paste your article into the box, click “Calculate Words”, and it immediately tells you how many words are in your article. You can even take the code from this site and put it onto your own website. It’s completely free.

When writing articles, stick to topics you know well. Or find an article similar to the one you want to write, read it a couple of times, and then rewrite it entirely using your own words. You can also get some ideas from several articles, and then combine them into a totally new article. You can even purchase PLR (private label rights) articles and use them on your site as-is, or alter them and submit them to article sites (be careful with this one – you must change them enough to be unrecognizable from the original, or you will be flagged for duplicate content).

To get your articles circulating on the internet, these are the most important sites available: http://ezinearticles.com, http://goarticles.com, and http://articledashboard.com. These three, in my experience, have the most users and the most clout with Google. They are all free to register with and submit articles to. Just be sure to follow their rules (especially EzineArticles), to keep from having your account suspended or your articles rejected.

Finally, make sure you create a bio box that will draw readers to your site. Your author bio should give a little info about you and give the reader incentive to come to your site. This is where the traffic comes from, and the amount of traffic good articles can generate will blow you away! Write useful articles, and you will find ezines and websites beginning to publish your articles, bringing in more traffic from their readers/visitors.

So what are you waiting for? Go write your first article, and get that traffic flowing!

Article Writing Tools And Resources

Need help writing your own blog or website content? Here are some of the most powerful and time-saving article writing tools available on the market today:

Article Assistant -  This free software allows you to create content on any topic for your site in just a few minutes. I use this powerful tool when I need to come up with new ideas for content quickly, or when I have an idea for a topic I want to write about and want to gather useful content I can edit into an article very quickly without spending lots of time doing research.

For more details about this free tool go here: Article Assistant

Content Composer – This powerful content writing software is made by the same developers who created Article Assistant, but it takes things to a whole new level. It is a serious content writing tool that allows you to create many unique variations of the same article for posting content on many different sites without getting penalized by search engines as being “duplicate” content. It also comes with a host of built-in features, such as allowing you to set up permissions for giving ghostwriters access to the tool to create articles for you, checking to see if your content is being used on other web sites without your permission, integration with the Article Announcer software (see below) and a whole lot more.

For more details go here: Content Composer.

Also, if you are interested in discovering the cash-pulling copywriting secrets that can turn your sales letters into explosive cash machines, then check out Power Copy Club – an online membership site where members learn how to master the art of sales copywriting and ad creation, how to create short copy, long copy and how to do video sales letters the right way. As a special for our valued readers and site visitors, we have secured a complimentary FREE Lifetime Silver Membership Pass to Power Copy Club. This membership is normally valued at $47, but you can access it for FREE today by clicking here: Power Copy Club Free Lifetime Silver Membership Pass.

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Using Article Marketing To Grow Your Business is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com

During the past few years many methods have been developed to try and solve this predicament. While many of them work for a while, there are those that do not make even a small impact.

One of the methods that have spawned many success stories in driving traffic to websites is viral marketing. Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something they find informative, entertaining or amazing with others.

Many companies try to capitalize on this behavior to spread their products and increase the popularity of their company or their website. Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behavior. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an addicting flash game, an amusing video, or other forms of media or communications that try to catch a person’s attention and then motivate that person to forward on the message to others in an ever-growing exponential manner.

For example, you could create a valuable, information-packed viral pdf report that you send out to customers, or, if your company allows people to become affiliate resellers of your product or service, then even make your report "brandable", so that your affiliates can then add their affiliate links to your report and send it on to their prospect lists.

This ingenious form of marketing is typically low cost and is a wonderful tool for any company to utilize. The benefits of a successful viral marketing campaign greatly overshadow the initial cost of developing and implementing this marketing scheme. Any website can benefit greatly from using viral marketing strategies.

The problem, is that it is quite difficult to intentionally come up with a viral marketing campaign that is guaranteed to succeed. There are, however, tools that you can implement on your site which will give your business the possibility of going viral, should your product or service provide users with such positive results and an exciting customer experience that they will feel naturally compelled, motivated or incentivized to tell others about you.

Tell A Friend Script

One of the easiest methods to apply viral marketing to your site is by using a tell a friend script. This is a simple program or script that you can add to your website. Generally, tell a friend scripts are installed in pages where a person can easily send the viral media or link to the page to their friends, family members, work associates, or even their own customers.

The basic concept of a tell a friend script is that a person inputs their name, e-mail address, the recipient’s e-mail address and then sends the media or page link to the intended recipient much like an e-mail with an attachment. As the recipient receives the e-mail he wouldn’t think of the mail a spam mail because he would see the sender’s name as someone that he or she knows and trusts.

Tell a friend scripts eliminate greatly the chances of being blocked because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for a wider spreading of this marketing method. It can sometimes be quite sneaky in its use, but it is also very effective.

With the e-mail sent and opened, the sent media will either be read, viewed or played. Also along with the mail would be a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. Using a "tell a friend" script like Viral Friend Generator allows you to reward your referrers with a gift (e.g. a downloadable report, or free access to a product of value to the referrer).

Once the recipient has received your message, then the process begins all over again. As more people use the tell a friend script, more and more people will know of the existence of the sponsoring company or site. People who read the ads inside the mail who liked what they see can go and click on the link and visit the site. This drives traffic into the site resulting in greater numbers of potential customers.

Tell A Friend Script Implementation

A tell a friend script is very simple and does not require any complicated programming. In fact, you can copy paste a script and simply put it on an intended page. Finding one is even simpler. All you have to do is go to a search engine and type in the search box “tell a friend script” then press enter or click go.

In the search results page you will see many links that will direct you to a site where you can get a tell a friend script. It is then just be a simple matter of looking and searching for the script that best fits with your plan, then downloading it and installing it on your intended web page.

With a tell a friend script viral marketing strategy you can drive traffic to your site and potentially increase your profits significantly, but also be prepared for the fact that your campaign may not get the mileage that you have expected of it, and it may take some time before it gets spread or shared around. The good thing, however, is that this strategy can be set up once and then be left to run as an automated system, so that, over time, your exposure online increases as more and more people see your ads, then forward your promotional message to others.

Viral Toolbars

Another viral marketing strategy is to use a viral toolbar. This can either be a downloadable toolbar for your browser that allows the owner of the toolbar to incorporate some form of promotional message while providing the toolbar user with useful functionalities, or a service like the Viral URL Shortener that allows you to earn affiliate commissions from shortening your URLs (e.g. for sending messages on Twitter).

If you find a successful viral marketing strategy, then not only will traffic to your sites explode, but the sky will be the limit as far as your potential to make money online goes. Study the successful viral marketing strategies of other companies, experiment with a few viral tools and strategies yourself and you will soon discover what works best for your business.

If you are interested in learning different ways of making money online, then check out Web Profits Club – an online membership site where members learn about the best money-making strategies available today and shave years off their online business learning curve. As a special for our valued readers and site visitors, we have secured a complimentary FREE Lifetime Silver Membership Pass to Web Profits. This membership is normally valued at $47, but you can access it for FREE today by clicking here: Web Profits Club Free Lifetime Silver Membership Pass.

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Using A Tell A Friend Script To Drive More Web Traffic is a post from: independentbusinessnetworkinc.com