Page 6 Thursday, December 25, 2014 The Chronicle-News Trinidad, Colorado

EDUCATION

Local popular musicians the Walton brothers, at right (L-R), Bob, Josh and Bruce sang and played for a packed house when they presented the seventh annual Christmas Concert ‘Back Home for Christmas’ at the First Christian Church in Trinidad on Sun-day evening. The event is one of the yearly fundraising efforts of the Grace Christian School. Along with the Walton brothers were Michelle Nelson, below left at far left, on the keyboard and Micheli Walton, below, Bob Walton’s daughter, on the drums.All proceeds from the concert go to the support of the school and its students.

GRACE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL

Walton’s ‘Back Home for Christmas’ Concert plays to packed house and happy audience

INCREASE PARENTING SKILLS

How to provide social, emotional development to young childrenBy Tiffany RaifordEveryday Life

By fostering appropriate social and emo-tional development when your children are little, you’ll increase your chances of rais-ing healthy, happy and well-adjusted young people. If you are a loving, involved and in-terested parent, it isn’t difficult to provide social and emotional development skills to young children.

Step 1Show affection as often as possible. Ac-

cording to Kristin Reinsberg, a licensed marriage and family therapist, your chil-dren will develop both socially and emo-tionally when you regularly show them that they are loved and wanted. Show in-terest in your childrens’ emotions by ask-ing them how they feels about events or circumstances. That will help them develop

their emotions in a healthy manner.

Step 2Encourage them to show their emotions,

advises PBS. Children who are able to ex-press a range of emotions are more emotion-ally developed that children who are not, ac-cording to the network. You can help them develop those emotions by teaching them to appropriately express their feelings. For example, when they are angry and throw-

ing toys across the room, you can tell them that it’s OK to be angry, but that they cannot throw objects. Teach them a better way of handling their anger, such as taking deep breaths or walk-ing away from the cause of the anger.

Step 3Nurture your own emotional and

social needs. According to Kristin Reinsberg, you have to set a good ex-ample for your children if you want to foster their social and emotional development. When you take the time to take care of your own emotional and social needs, you are better able to provide your children with their own social and emotional needs.

Step 4Play with your children. According

to PBS, kids learn social development by exploring, and this includes doing simple acts such as playing peek-a-boo or hide and seek with you or others they love. When children are encour-aged to play games with their loved ones, they becomes aware of others,

how they interact and that even when they cannot see them, they are still there. Do not be alarmed if your child becomes physical when playing with others -- that’s part of the social development plan. For example, if your child pushes another child down when that child takes a toy from him, you can help him develop his social skills by teaching him the appropriate way to handle the problem.

Carefully cultivate your child’s social and emotional growth.

Special to The Chronicle-News

Recently students at Trinidad Middle School took cultures of shoe bottoms, dirt, desks and used gum. The interest-ing and sometimes furry results were viewed using microscopes from Trini-

dad State in Lisa Glorioso’s 6th grade class. Trinidad State Professor Gillian Hart, STEM Coach Jenn Swanson and Trinidad State student Jessika Santiste-van used the visit to promote careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engi-neering and math).

Photo by Greg Boyce, Trinidad State Junior CollegeL-R) Victoria Phyllis, Trinidad State student Jessika Santistevan, Lance Peters, Marcos Villa, Jor-dan Cooley, Claudia Viera-Flores and Professor Gillian Hart study cultures viewed through a mi-croscope at Trinidad Middle School.

Trinidad Middle Schoolers get cultured, scientifically, at TSJC

RESEARCH & INVESTIGATION

Colorado woman selected as Rhodes scholar Associated Press

DENVER (AP) — A woman from Green-wood Village has been selected to be a 2015 Rhodes scholar.

Emily Witt is now a senior at Stanford University where she majors in human bi-ology and is working on a minor in psychol-ogy.

The scholarships announced recently provide all expenses for two or three years of study at Oxford University in England.

Witt did research in Guatemala on chronic nutrition and is president of the Stanford Chapter of Amnesty International.

Witt is one of 32 men and women from the United States picked by the Rhodes Trust who will enter the university next October.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY