A new report from the Census Bureau confirms a long standing cliché – that kids growing up in single parent families generally do not perform as well in school as kids who grow up in a traditional two-parent family environment. But the gap isn’t substantial, at least as far as divorced families are concerned. In fact, the challenge of keeping teenagers on track in school is by far greater.

A new study published today highlights an increasing concern that our children are watching too much TV. And if Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute is correct, children in home daycare may in fact be exposed to more than twice the TV time than those who visit daycare centers.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued half a dozen critical safety recalls relating to children since the beginning of this month. Here is our current update which includes Adventure playsets, Century 21 sweatshirts, Three Sisters baby hammocks, Easton Sports bicycles, McLaren strollers and MacPherson’s art easels.

Just recently I was reminded how engaged my children are with all the news about space and especially all those rather amazing projects NASA does. In fact, there is a huge amount of material on NASA’s website that your children may find entertaining – and I am not just talking about videos that, for example, showed the most recent launch of the space shuttle Atlantis on Monday this week.

A new website just published enlists Earthlings to contribute to the mapping of Mars in a playful way. Of course, the site caters to the interests of children and there is a wealth of information your kids might enjoy.

In a time where divorces are more and more considered a part of life it does not really come as a surprise that there is, in addition to a wedding fair, also a divorce fair. The first divorce fair we know of was held in Paris last weekend and reportedly attracted more than 4000 visitors.

I have always been fascinated by the research being done in various fields around the world. If you look in the right places on the Internet you can discover a wealth of current information released by scientists on virtually any topic from medicine, space, business, physics, technology, behavior and even archeology.

Easy to understand science for kids is a fairly new approach, but there is an amazing pool of information out there that will address the thirst of knowledge in your children and may even entertain yourself. Here are a few sites you should visit once in a while.

Ok, so we know that a decent day at a major museum can exactly do what we are trying to avoid here. I recently discussed with a spokesperson for the Field Museum in Chicago the ridiculous ticket price of more than $20 per person, in addition to $15 for parking, and was told that the museum felt its prices were “very competitive”.

Fine. But there are plenty of places out there that promise fun and education for much less money, sometimes even for free.

There is an obvious answer, of course, to that question. But really: Who are the heroes of today’s teenagers and who would be on those wall posters if they could choose any person? Here’s a hint: Oprah didn’t make the top spot. Take a good guess before you open the article.

There is a fascinating new portable device out today that I believe is worth mentioning on Single Parent Gossip. It is about the size of a compact navigation system, fits in the palm of your hand and includes the entire content of the English-language Wikipedia dictionary (about 3.5 million articles according to the manufacturer.)

Called the WikiReader, the device is controlled via a touchscreen as well as four physical buttons. The on/off button, a “search”, “history” and a “random” button. Typically you will start your search with the search button, which shows an onscreen keyboard to input search terms. The history button stores all visited Wikipedia pages and serves as a “back” button.

Single Parent Gossip is giving away three WikiReaders. Read the article for details.

Let’s face it. There isn’t much time for single parents to go back to school let alone the financial resources to enable your dream to go to Yale or Harvard to become a nanotech engineer or high-powered lawyer at a Fortune 500 company, if you aren’t part of the elite yet. Your live is filled with the joy and challenges of raising your children.

But your dream of higher education remains alive, if you want to. There are ways to find the financial help that may let you go back to school and either satisfy your hunger for knowledge or your chances of scoring a better job. Or both.