School Tips: How to Stay Organized

How well do you keep yourself organized?  Can you find every asasignment or are you turning things in late because you forgot to bring it with you to school?  What does your locker look like?  Are you afraid opening it might make books fall on your head or is everythin lined up?  Wherever you are with your organization, you’ll love these tips to help you stay organized at school.

1. Check out our latest Girls With Dreams on Staying Organized.  
2. Ask yourself, where are you most organized?  Is is your room?  Your clothes?  Your assignments?   How have you been able to make that work?
3. Get a planner or calendar and write in it!  Seriously, you need to use it.  Make sure you jot down any activities but also assignments.  If you have a long term project, you might want to write down what tasks you plan to complete each week.
4. Put everything away in the same place.  Find a place for your books, backpack, keys, etc.. that is always the same.  Then, it’s impossible to lose!
5. If you are on the more messy side, pick one day a week to re-organize and clean up!
6. Do you have a really organized friend?  Ask her for tips too!

Quickie Quiz to Take Your School Year from Good to Great

 Wherever you are in your school year when you read this, it’s never too late to turn it from Good to Great!  It’s helpful to look at your whole life in relationship to school, not just pick it apart by what subjects you are studying. 

  Here’s a little quiz you can give yourself.  Take a look at the following headings and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on how well you are doing in each area.  Celebrate your highest score!  Ask yourself how you have been able to have success in that area.  Now, pick one area you want to improve.  Let’s say you scored a 6 on School.  Ask yourself what it would take to move that 6 to a 7.  Remember you don’t have to do this alone.  You might need to talk to your parents, guidance counselor, teacher, or other mentor to make the best plan for you!

Self:  Are you getting enough sleep?  Are you exercising?  Are you generally happy?  Do you eat healthy?

School:  How pleased are you with your grades?  Are you working too hard?  Are you slacking off?

Friends: How well do you get along with your friends?  Do they pick you up or put you down?  How do you handle peer pressure?

Boys: Do you have any guys who are just friends? How do you feel about dating?  Do you feel awkward around boys or comfortable?

Family: Are you getting along with your parents?  What about your brothers and sisters?  Do you wish you had more family time or less?

Activities:  How busy are you?  Do you like all the activities you participate in?  Is it too much?  Or, are there  new activities you want to try?

Give Big! September Charity of the Month is ICA

We hope you’ll join Girls With Dreams in supporting our September Charity of the Month, International Crisis Aid.   We are so excited about the work this organization is doing, Girls With Dreams is participating in their 5K Walk for Freedom on Saturday September 19th from 7AM-10AM.  Will you join us?

One of the programs of International Crisis Aid is to rescue children from sex trafficking around the world.  ICA currently has 6 rescue homes.  Proceeds from this event will be used to open a home in St. Louis for American children victims of sex trafficking.   This is a huge problem many people don’t know about.  Currently over 300,000 American children are at risk of trafficking into the sex industry (US Dept of Justice)!

Even if you can’t join us for the walk, please consider giving a donation of any amount here.   Please feel free to join our Girls With Dreams team if you do register for the event!  Registrations for the walk are at www.crisisaid.org.

Saving Tips for Fashionable Teens

What girl doesn’t want to find great clothes and save a bunch of money! This video from Girls With Dreams teens shares tips on how to shop for cool clothes on a budget.

Here are a few more ideas:

1. Have a clothing swap party! Invite your friends over and have everyone bring 5 things that they don’t wear anymore. Let the swap begin!
2. Do you love that shirt in your favorite teen magazine? Look for knock-offs of the same cool style at less expensive stores such a Old Navy, Target, and Walmart.
3. Look for coupons. Sometimes you can find these online or even in the mail.  You might try googling coupon with whatever brand you are looking for.
4. Share money-saving ideas with your friends!

Will You Be a Slumber Party Captain?

Girls With Dreams is hosting the World’s Largest Slumber Party on Saturday November 14th, uniting teens virtually all over the world.  Grab your girlfriends and join us from the comfort of your own home!  Streaming live from Slumber Party headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, and with teen slumber party captains in each state, the party will include celebrity interviews, DIY spas, a dance party, movie marathon, teen room makeover contest, and much more!  Participants will also donate NEW pajamas to The Pajama Program, an organization that provides new, warm PJ’s to children worldwide.

We’re looking for Slumber Party Captains in every state!  Will you join us?

What it Means to Be a Captain:
-You gather a few of your friends and host your own party and join us via the live stream.  You will be able to watch Slumber Party headquarters and connect with us via the internet, live chatting, Facebook, and Twitter.  Also, a few slumber parties might be able to be featured on the livestream by Skyping in. 
-Once you’re signed up as a captain on Facebook you will be eligible for fun prizes, and you will also get a slumber party kit in October to help you plan the best girls night.

 
What You Need to Do to Become a Captain:
-It’s so EASY!  Just join our Slumber Party Captain Group on Facebook!

-Be willing to host a party at your home and have parent permission to do so on Saturday Nov 14, starting about 8PM CST
-You’re willing to help facilitate pajama donations to the pajama program
 (We will be sending out more detailed directions about this, but basically, we’re asking each girl who comes to a party to bring a NEW pair of pajamas to donate.  As captain, we will need you to send those to your local chapter of the Pajama Program)
-Make sure you have internet access at your home or location of your party

We’re so excited you are joining us!

10 Rules Kids Wished Their Parents Lived By

We love these radical parenting principles Vanessa Van Petten and her Teen Team has put together!  Vanessa runs RadicalParenting.com a parenting blog written from the kid’s perspective with 80 teen writers. Their goal is to give teens a voice.

Radical Parenting Principles by Vanessa Van Petten

1) There are no ‘perfect parents’, formulas, easy answers or a ‘right’ way to parent.  There is a right way for your family, you have to constantly strive to find it.

2) Live the You-Them-You Perspective. Learning to see how the other side feels is one of the most difficult ideas to master.  Adopting this yourself and teaching your kids to think about their needs and then other’s needs is a wonderful way to teach children gratitude and perspective.  We hope to give you tools to do this.

3) Constantly challenge what we think we know.  ‘Radical’ means to question the status quo and what isn’t working.  This is how we grow as a family and as human beings.  Find your mirror, whether it is our blog, a radical parenting friend, or your spouse to examine patterns and habits that are not working.

4) Stay open-minded. We never know what another person is really thinking. 

Read the rest of the Radical Parenting Principles here.

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