The ABZzzzs: Set child’s routine for healthy sleep

Photo by Luiz Farias

HIGGINSVILLE, Mo. - Sleep is as important to a child’s growth and development as nutritious food and exercise.

A set routine for bedtime and wake-up time will help children set their circadian rhythm, or their sleep/wake cycle. Kathy Bondy, University of Missouri Extension 4-H youth specialist, said routine helps children prepare for sleep.

Are you a skip-breakfast sinner?

Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert

If hitting the snooze button three times is more appealing than having a bowl of cereal, you might be a skip-breakfast sinner.

While 93 percent of Americans know that breakfast is important, only 44 percent regularly eat something before walking out the door in the morning, according to a 2009 survey by the International Food Information Council Foundation.

Success in School is a Family Affair

Photo by Tiffany Szerpicki

Teachers have children in the classroom for about seven hours a day, but what happens during the other 17 hours can make or break your child’s success in school.

Attitude can make all the difference, says a University of Missouri Extension human development specialist.

Fun Ideas for After-School Snacks

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Learning is hungry work.

Schoolchildren typically eat lunch around 11:30 and then have classes all afternoon. Add an after-school activity or two and by the time they get home they’re running on empty. It’s small wonder that many kids head straight to the kitchen to devour whatever they can get their hands on.

How can you make sure that they’re choosing snacks that are good for them? Just think “inside the box.”

Plant now for a successful fall garden

Roger Meissen/MU Cooperative Media Group

I know it's not spring, but now is the time to prepare your garden. Fall gardens offer a healthy outlet for the body and mind without the grueling heat that gardeners endure during the summer months. The right type of plants need to be selected to endure the colder fall temperatures and possible early frost.

MU Extension Horticulturalist David Trinklein explains how to prepare a fall garden that will put produce on your table well into fall.

Story by Roger Meissen.

Soybean podworms threaten yields

Wayne Bailey/University of Missouri Plant Sciences

With insects, you are what you eat.

That's no more apparent than with soybean podworm, a.k.a. corn earworm. Farmers battle the pest in July and August when it chews away at the tips of corn ears, but in late August and early September it moves to a more green, lush meal of soybeans.

This crawling menace can eat away all the profit in a soybean field. It loves to chew holes in soybean pods, eating the bean then clipping the pod off the plant. In the worst cases, a field can lose 100 percent of its yield.

MU Extension Entomologist Wayne Bailey encourages farmers to scout their fields now to stop soybean podworms from devastating your field.

Print story by Roger Meissen. Listen to a related audio story by Debbie Johnson.

Dry weather can lead to a lethal lunch

Victor Iglesias

When it comes to pastures and hay, most farmers know that fescue can give cattle problems due to endophyte buildup. What many don't realize is that very hot, dry weather like Missouri had in July and the beginning of August can lead other harmful substances to build to toxic levels in warm-season annuals like johnsongrass and sorghum-sudan hybrids.

Find out more about the way prussic acid and nitrates in forages can poison your cattle.

Story by Roger Meissen.