First of the partnership schools opening this year...

Bridlewood, Cranston, Royal Oak - Just three of the schools opening under the new P3 model of community partnership in Alberta - click here for more information.

Personality set for life by 1st grade, study suggests

From LiveScience.com

Our personalities stay pretty much the same throughout our lives, from our early childhood years to after we're over the hill, according to a new study.

The results show personality traits observed in children as young as first graders are a strong predictor of adult behavior.

"We remain recognizably the same person," said study author Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside. "This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts."

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Read the full article here.

Wireless schools blamed for illness

By SHARON LEM, QMI Agency

TORONTO - Parents in Simcoe County believe their children are getting sick from WiFi transmitters set up in schools across the region.

Rodney Palmer says his two children at Mountain View Elementary School in Collingwood became ill last year.

"Six months ago, parents started noticing their kids had chronic headaches, dizziness, insomnia, rashes and other neurological and cardiac symptoms, when they came home from school," Palmer, 44, said. "But somehow on the weekends, when they were at home, it would disappear."

After further investigation, parents began to suspect it was caused by the exposure to electromagnetic fields from the wireless Internet transmitters in school classrooms.

Read the full story here.

Handwriting skills waning, mother laments

In the age of laptops and text messaging, students in Alberta schools are no longer learning to master the fundamental skill of handwriting, according to an Airdrie mother.

Cursive writing — while still taught — seems to have become mostly an afterthought in the classroom, said Carmen Maidstone.

She recently realized her teenaged son is barely able to connect his letters, preferring instead to print.

Read more here.

When siblings fight over everything

By Roger Collier, Postmedia News

On a humid Saturday afternoon, inside the neutral-coloured walls of a home in suburban Ottawa, two children, ages four and six, engaged in a debate that has bedevilled mankind since 40,000 B.C., when Homo sapiens adopted spoken language as the primary means of human communication, replacing calligraphy.

Read the full story here.

Daycare centres are not harmful to children's development

Eight years after telling mothers that going out to work and leaving their children in substitute care was harmful to children's development, academics combing through the same research material said this week that mothers should not worry after all.

This newest study was published last week by the U.S. Society for Research and Child Development. It was based -- like the 2002 study -- on data collected over several years on more than 1,300 children.

Click here to read the full article.

Calgary drivers, take note: School zones begin a half-hour sooner

Speed restrictions through Calgary school zones will now begin at 7:30 a.m. -- 30 minutes earlier than before.

The rollback was ordered by city council and is designed to protect students who show up early for extracurricular activities. The 30 km/h restriction on school days remains in place until 5 p.m.

Patrick Quinn is vice-principal at Father Scollen School, one of 36 in the city that runs year-round.

The change will be in effect immediately near the northeast school, where students return to classes today after an abbreviated summer break between terms.

Quinn says the extension will provide "a nice cushion" for kids who arrive early for sports or music practice, particularly on a cold, dark winter morning.

"It just makes it a lot safer," he said.

Read more here.