More and more people are advocating for STEAM instruction instead of just STEM because they understand that creativity leads to inspiration and spurs innovation. Art helps students learn how to analyze and interpret, describe and communicate. It requires a person to work steadily and value the results. All these skills must be nurtured and developed through exposure to the arts.

Kids are born with great imaginations. That’s because they don’t understand the concepts of what is possible and what is impossible. The line between reality and fantasy is blurred, and it is hard for them to understand this. Over time, they begin to learn rules and boundaries, which limits their imagination. So to nurture creativity and help our kids think “outside of the box,” it’s important for us to expose them to the arts, so they can understand and be open to inspiration.

By exploring the arts, students learn there is more than one way to achieve the same -or similar – results. Let’s imagine that little Miguel wants to make a picture. He’s out of crayons, but while digging in the art cabinet at home he finds paint, colored pencils, markers and even chalk. He decides to use watercolor paints to color in his picture, then he remembers a picture he saw during his last class field trip to the art museum and decides, just for kicks, to use his markers to emphasize certain lines and shapes. In the end, he gets his picture drawn and although it is not the way he imagined it, he is thrilled with the result and likes it even better.

Or take 7-year-old Maura, who is quietly playing in her room, making a bridge out of LEGOs. When she finishes, she looks at it with approval… but then she remembers one of the modern statues in the city park that used everyday items to create a castle. Maura grabs a paper towel tube she was using as a telescope earlier that day, an old cone-shaped party hat, a blue bath towel, an alarm clock off her dresser, and her brother’s jack-in-the-box. Now her bridge has water under it, and there are some buildings on one side of the river and a bank that tells the time on the other.

If these kids continue to be exposed to the arts throughout their childhood, then perhaps by the time they graduate from college, they will be finding solutions to world problems, or inventing new technologies, or contributing innovative ideas to city planning.

How to supplement your child’s art education

Many schools have cut back on art education because of budget cuts or curriculum “improvements.” Some students don’t get any instruction in the arts at all. So how can parents help their kids experience the arts?  Here are five tips for making art a part of your child’s life.

Go on field trips. Visit art museums, cultural centers, the theater, poetry readings, and the symphony. Expose your kids to new experiences and types of art.

Sign up! Most museums offer homeschool, after-school, or summer classes. This is a great opportunity to provide your child with the chance to learn from a professional art educator who is trained in the terminology and techniques. But be sure to look to craft stores, theaters, and culture centers for educational events, too.

Watch the tube. Keep an eye out for educational programming on your local PBS station, or invest in DVDs and series that highlight the arts.

Buy books. There are tons of great books available that explore art, or that offer ideas for art projects. Quilting teaches measurement and design. Drawing develops fine-motor skills and sense of proportion. Learning a musical instrument helps children identify patterns and sequence. The benefits are endless.

Give them supplies. Become a regular at your local craft store and buy art supplies. You can have specific projects in mind, but it’s important to just let them use their imagination and create their own art work. Encourage them to create new things each week to help develop their problem-solving skills.

Monica Olivera Hazelton is an NBC Latino contributor and the founder and publisher of MommyMaestra.com, a site for Latino families that homeschool, as well as families with children in a traditional school setting who want to take a more active role in their children’s education. She is the 2011 winner of the “Best Latina Education Blogger” award by LATISM.

Aguilera took to the stage with Pitbull, singing “Feel this Moment” to an eager audience who nearly drowned out the two chart-topping artists with their screams and cheers. And while a smiling Shakira looked on, the tune was clearly a passing of the torch, as Shakira will be departing the show and Aguilera will return as judge for Season 5.

Aguilera’s outfit choice guaranteed that her voice wasn’t the only topic of admiration during the night: dressed in a curve-hugging black skirt, pink bra and sheer silver cropped top that showed off a trim tummy, the 32-year-old simply stunned, looking every inch the glam superstar – and an outfit that’s sure to fuel speculation how the singer lost a reported 20 pounds from her petite 5’2″ frame.

RELATED: Slimmer, trimmer Christina Aguilera wows at Billboard Music Awards

It was a night of memorable performances as Cher also performed during the finale, which ultimately crowned Danielle Bradberry of Team Blake as the winner. Shakira – who didn’t have any team members represented in the finale — was nonetheless a prominent part of the show, especially with the news that her departure is only temporary: she will indeed be back to judge Season 6.

RELATED: Danielle Bradbery is youngest-ever ‘Voice’ winner

Shakira and her son Milan during their last day on “The Voice” set.

“Mommy thanks for bringing me to@nbcthevoice, so fun!!” wrote Shakira on Instragram as a caption to an adorable series of photos of baby Milan on set. “Though your fellow coaches are a doubtful influence on me, I’m ready for season 6!!”

.@NickSwisher & I would like you all to meet our little angel pic.twitter.com/AjGkruNGPH

— JoAnna Garcia (@JoAnnaLGarcia) June 18, 2013

Garcia and baseball player hubby Nick Swisher shared an adorable photo of babyEmerson, who looked quite like the little fashionista with her accessorized purple blanket and flower headband, posed in a basket against a backdrop of flowers.

“Who’s ready to see Emerson Jay Swisher?” tweeted Garcia, sharing the professional snapshot. “Nick and I would like you all to meet our little angel.”

Swisher also teased his 1 million followers about the big reveal, tweeting “Who’s ready to see Emerson Jay Swisher?!”

Garcia – who wed Swisher in December 2010 – has kept her fans in the know throughout her entire pregnancy, first sharing the news of the imminent arrival in November on Facebook. And just last month – seemingly just days after the Cubana delivered her first daughter in Ohio – Garcia thanked her fans for their support on the social media platform.

“Finally getting the chance to check back in twitter and I’m totally overhwlemed by the outpouring of love,” tweeted Garcia. “U tweeps r the best! Thank you!!”

Alfredo was the likely target.

That was the fourth death threat Mr. Corchado had received since he returned to his native Mexico in 1994 as national correspondent for the Dallas Morning News. His reporting on corruption, the Juarez murders, and drug violence had won him recognition as one of the best journalists of his generation, as well as the Maria Moors Cabot Prize and other prestigious awards. It also triggered the ire of many drug lords and corrupt politicians entangled with them. The threat, of course, didn’t materialize, but Mr. Corchado—who continues to work in Mexico—still lives in fear.

Since 2006 there have been around 70,000 people killed, and another 20,000 to 25,000 have disappeared as a result of the country’s drug wars, according to Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior. The total figure is roughly equivalent to the deaths produced by the Iraq war (2003-2009).  As in Iraq, the death toll continues to mount every day.

Corchado writes that after the demise of the Colombians cartels in the 1990s, a significant part of the multi-billion drug business was taken over by the Mexican dealers who controlled the border states to the main consumer market—the United States. For years, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) had a live-and-let-live agreement with those groups—a de-facto license to operate peacefully in exchange for part of the profits. In 2000, the triumph for the first time in decades of an opposition party, the PAN (National Action Party, in Spanish), overturned that agreement. The drug cartels started to fight each other, and in 2006, another PAN President, Felipe Calderón, declared war on all of them to stop the bloodshed. Violence rocketed.

With PRI’s return to power last year, many thought that the old agreement would return too. Corchado does not believe it will be easy.

“President Enrique Peña Nieto faces a very different situation than the one that existed 15 years ago,” says the journalist. “Back then, there were only two cartels; now there are several. It is much more difficult to break a deal with all of them.”

This is one of the reasons the Mexican-American journalist decided to write “Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent Into Darkness,” a memoir that intertwines his two decades as a correspondent with the history of his own family, who migrated North in the mid-1960s when Mr. Corchado was a child. His family first went to California, where they participated in Cesar Chavez’s farm workers movement, and then settled in Texas.

“When I was younger, I hated my parents for uprooting me, and I promised that one day I would go back to Mexico. Well, I did go back—only to validate my parent’s decision to migrate,” says Corchado.

That understanding has not diminished his love for Mexico one bit, nor his sense of responsibility for the nation’s well-being.

“Mexico is still living through a transition between the old state of affairs—corruption, violence, injustice—and a new democratic order based on the rule of law and justice for all,” says Corchado. “I hope this book can help foster that process.”

Claudio Iván Remeseira is a New York-based award-winning journalist, writer, and critic. Translator of the Spanish-language on-line section of The Nation and editor of Hispanic New York, an online portal and blog on current events and culture. Editor of Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook (Columbia University Press, 2010), an anthology of essays on the city’s Latino, Latin American & Iberian cultural heritage, and winner of the Latino International Book Award in the category of Best Reference Book in English (2011).

The CBO report finds that if the Senate bill were to become law, the U.S. population would increase by over 10 million due to the influx of new foreign workers.  The report also estimates about eight million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. would gain citizenship. The earnings and taxes paid by these millions of newly-legalized immigrants would add about $459 billion dollars to the federal coffers, concludes the CBO.

In all, the deficit would be decreased by almost $200 billion in the first 10 years after an immigration law is passed and it would decrease by $700 billion by 2033, according to the report.

The question is whether this will be enough to sway Republicans who have been opposing immigration reform.

Democratic proponents of the bill, such as New York Democratic Senator and Gang of 8 Chuck Schumer, say this robs the bill’s opponents of some powerful ammunition. “This debunks the idea that immigration reform is anything other than a boon to our economy, and robs the bill’s opponents of one of their last remaining arguments,” said Schumer in a statement.

Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, one of the bill’s fiercest critics, was not convinced by the report — though he was one of the legislators who asked for it.  Sessions said “the score effectively conceals some of the biggest long-term costs to taxpayers contained in this legislation, including providing illegal immigrants with Medicaid, food stamps, and cash welfare.”

The report disputes this by saying that the $259 billion in spending and tax credit following an immigration law would be offset by the more than $450 billion in additional revenues.

Democrats are not the only ones trying to convince the GOP the CBO report is another reason to support the immigration bill.

A former CBO director and adviser to Republican Arizona Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign said “With Washington broke and America stuck in a jobless recovery, the CBO report proves that immigration reform would be an unambiguous policy trifecta: higher growth, significantly reduced deficits, and a rational labor policy. This should put to rest any legitimate debate about the economic and fiscal implications of responsible immigration reform.”

Whether this will sway Senate and House members when it is time to vote on an immigration bill remains to be seen.

You know what’s awkward? Being at a nice dinner with respectable people and having your toddler yell, “Look! It’s mommy juice!” when a bottle of wine appears at the table.

I drink in front of Adi. In moderation. I always have a “designated child caregiver,” of course, when I plan on getting drunk. I want to unwind and have a good time, not give my daughter material for when she writes her memoir and blames me for everything. It’s usually my husband — but when I’m at a big family event I know there’s always some cousin who’s sober enough to get someone to the emergency room if the need arises.

I’ve never gotten plastered in front of my daughter (come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I got completely wasted) but she has seen me drunk. Silly drunk. A couple of drinks at brunch drunk. A few mojitos at my parents drunk. Some wine after a particularly long day when my husband came home late and the cat puked on the bed again drunk.

I go to a local bar trivia night every Wednesday and sometimes I bring Adi with me. Ties are broken with a beer chug-off. You chug and then you put the glass upside down on your head to prove you drank it all. Adi may or may not yell “Hooray beer” and then put her sippy cup on her head.

You know what else is awkward? Having your toddler yell, “Hooray beer” at “Mommy and me” art class.

I might be giving her material for her memoir after all.

Certain things are off limits for Adi in our house. Electrical outlets, power tools, knives… Adi knows that she can’t touch them. The boundaries are easy to set. “This is a specific thing and “you can’t touch it” is a pretty easy concept to teach. For now, Adi accepts that she can’t drink Mommy Juice — but at some point she’s going to question the rule. At some point, Adi will know what Mommy Juice is and want to drink alcohol too. I come from a family of drinkers so I imagine that Adi’s first drink will come from one of us way before she’s 21. Mine certainly did.

I feel like the best example I can set for Adi is by drinking in moderation and not acting like a fool. I’m sure she’ll try alcohol as a teenager. All teenagers try alcohol. I need to teach her how to do it responsibly.

Or I can pour a ton of salt into a beer when she’s not looking and have her try that so she thinks it tastes disgusting. Responsibility is probably better though.

Rachel Figueroa-Levin is a soapmaker, cofounder and educator at Urban Babywearing, a hyperlocal Inwood blogger and organizer, a political/life/religion/parenting satirist, and all around trouble maker.  She is also the creator of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Spanish-speaking alter ego @elbloombito.  You can reach her via twitter @Jewyorican.

Explain your blog name: “El Fogoncito” literally means “the little rustic stove.” In traditional Dominican cookery, rustic stoves – sometimes little more than three or four rocks on top of which you would place a pot – were very common. They were usually fueled by wood, which added to the “countryside style food” flavor. We also blog in English over at DominicanHeat.com, and that title also refers to the welcoming character of Dominican food.

Blogging since: November 2010

Blogging from: The capital city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic

Married couple Arturo Féliz-Camilo and Zobeira Y. Gil Ramos – pictured here with their three children – cook and blog together at ElFogoncito.net

Most popular post: Our all-time most popular post is a recipe for traditional Dominican-style stewed beans. It’s one of the three main components of our “flag dish” (“La bandera”), which are white rice, stewed red kidney beans and stewed meat (usually chicken). This year, our most popular post has been the a traditional cashew dessert (known in Spanish as dulce de cajuil). It’s really an amazing recipe made from fresh cashews.

What you’ve learned about food while blogging: It might sound like a cliché but we have learned that more is not necessarily better. Some of our traditional dishes are extraordinarily complex, but some of our best are very simple. Dominican white rice is among the best you’ll ever try and it’s only rice, water, salt and vegetable oil. It’s all about the order and the technique.

Where do you get inspiration for your posts? Dominican traditional cooking is all about family. Last year we published “Las recetas de Mamá Pura”  - named after Arturo’s grandmother – which was translated and published this year.  This book celebrates the women in our lives and is the first in our series of cookbooks we’re planning. So, in short, we get inspiration from our moms and ancestors.

What have you learned from blogging? That you really do get more than you give. We have learned as much if not more from our readers than they have from us.

Where else can we find you online?  Besides our Spanish and English blogs, we share food and recipes on Twitter and on our Facebook page.

What are your favorite food blogs? If I had to choose three, they would be our friend Cocco’s Aprendo y Cocino”, our friend Mary’s Mariscakes and of course Las delicias del buen vivir.

“Did you know that in America, there are more than one million people living with HIV?” Juanes asks in a new public service announcement. “There are more than a thousand new HIV cases a month among youth 13 to 24 years of age. Be sure to get tested. In just 20 minutes, you can find out the results,” Juanes says in the video.

The PSA, sponsored by the non-profit HIV/AIDS organization Lifebeat in partnership with the CDC and MTV, places Juanes squarely at what is quickly becoming a not-so-silent issue among a growing number of Latino families.

“It’s shocking to think that an estimated 1,000 people get infected with HIV every single month in the United States,” says Guillermo Chacon, president of The Latino Commission on AIDS.

RELATED: Juanes speaks out about his past – and the inspiration for his music

Chacon – whose organization aims to raise awareness surrounding AIDS among Hispanics – explains that celebrities like Juanes are key to breaking down stigmas surrounding HIV testing among Latinos.

“Celebrities like Juanes are crucial to raising awareness, which is one of the most important ways for people to understand that HIV infection can be prevented,” says Chacon. “HIV is something that’s not talked about in schools and health campaigns, so Juanes is making a really important statement by lending his voice to this cause.”

While Juanes – who filmed the thirty-second YouTube video in conjunction with National HIV Testing Day on June 27 – is well known for his philanthropy and charity work, LGBT activist Monica Trasandes says she welcomes Latino celebrities weighing in on issues across HIV/AIDS and LGBT awareness.

“It’s important for Latinos to hear a compelling message about issues that can be difficult, especially someone that’s as respected and admired as Juanes,” notes Trasandes, GLAAD’s Director of Spanish-Language Media. “And this is an important issue to relay not only to Latinos, but to Anglos, African-Americans, men and women – when you get tested, you are taking care of yourself and the people around you.”

That’s a message Chacon says can’t be underestimated.

“National HIV Testing Day helps bring awareness to this issue,” says Chacon. “But the only way we can begin to think of a world without AIDS if we increase awareness, promote testing and connect people to care 365 days a year.”

The much-anticipated report indicates that enacting the legislation would create new federal outlays of about $262 billion in the first decade but would increase revenues – largely from new income and payroll taxes – by $459 billion.

It also estimates that about 8 million undocumented immigrants would initially gain legal status under the bill’s provisions.

To read more, go to NBCNews.com

“You mentioned governor, look, I believe in public service, I want to run for governor. In fact, I fully expect that I will,” Villaraigosa told KPCC.

RELATED: LA unlikley to elect another Latino mayor as ethnic lines become less visible

Villaraigosa started  his mayorship  in 2005 and was Los Angeles’ first Hispanic mayor since 1872.

In the interview, Villaraigosa addressed the criticism of his constant travel and attendance of high-profile events such as the Democratic Party Convention; Villaraigosa was DNCC chair. According to Larry Mantle, many claimed that his focus was on grandstanding.

“I don’t worry about the criticism; if people don’t have the facts they are going to make criticisms that are baseless,” the Mexican-American mayor said in the interview.

Villaraigosa also says that he has no regrets about his mayoral tenure and that he will always be an Angeleno and will fight for Los Angeles.

RELATED: LA Mayor Villaraigosa on charting the path from poverty to prosperity

The mayor says that looking forward he wants to do anything that his mayoral successor, Eric Garcetti or Governor Jerry Brown, asks him to do.

“If I can promote the town that I was born and raised in, that my grandpa came to 100 years ago, I’m going to do it,” says Villaraigosa.