A Literary Thanksgiving Feast for your Family

Happy Turkey Day everyone!   While you are waiting for the turkey to get perfectly browned, the potatoes to get soft, the drinks to get cold, and the football game to begin, why not settle down with your favorite kids and enjoy this smorgasbord of Thanksgiving treats from Cricket, including a poem appetizer, a non-fiction […]

Thankfulness, A Family Value

When I was a kid, I remember having a penpal (or two) and I would wait eagerly for the letters and small packages that would occasionally arrive from faraway places. I guess that’s why I love the idea of those subscription boxes that seem to be everywhere these days. Scheduling something to come every month […]

Living History

If your child isn’t particularly enthused by history, it’s not their fault. History, while potentially a super exciting subject, has traditionally been treated as an after-thought in elementary school curriculums that are super-focused on math and reading. Often children are given only a glimpse into a historical subject and sometimes that glimpse doesn’t even do […]

Touring that Place Like it was 1999

The title of this blog comes from a line in a story my 9-year-old daughter wrote recently. It’s funny, right? My daughter is not so good with capital letters or commas or periods (not yet, at least), but she does have a way with language that gives me great hope that she will be a […]

Plaaaay Ball!

I’m a born and raised New Yorker and I grew up chanting “Let go Mets!” at ballgames at the now defunct Shea Stadium. So even though I’m not a huge fan of baseball in general, I have to admit to being pretty excited to see “my team” making it to the World Series. Judging from […]

Enter the Folklorist Challenge

Cricket Media and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage are pleased to cosponsor the 2nd Annual Global Folklorist Challenge. This contest, aimed at kids from 8 to 18, is designed to connect kids with the local tradition bearers in in their communities, giving the tradition bearers an outlet to tell their own personal […]

5 Mars Facts That Will Wow Your Kids

Unless you’ve been avoiding the news lately, you’ve probably been hearing a lot of info about the planet Mars. Between the new movie, The Martian and the surprising announcement that water was found on the planet, both the scientific community and us regular folks have a lot of reasons to be excited about the red […]