As the editor of Cobblestone, It is rare for me to know nothing about a theme before I begin working on it, but that’s what happened with the October 2015 issue on Spiro. My colleague, Rosalie Baker, invited me to do a companion issue on the subject with Dig Into History, Cricket Media’s magazine about […]
Kids have an inherent drive to explore the world around them. At different stages and ages, this manifests in different ways. Sometimes it’s a hard thing to encourage (especially when the desire to explore the world expresses itself in the “must put everything I can find into my mouth and discover how it tastes” stage). […]
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 […]
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 […]
If I made a list of my top ten parenting worries, close to the top would be bullying. I looked out for it when my daughter was a toddler making her first friends and now kind of obsess about it as we head into her tween years. Judging by how often this topic comes up […]
October 1st marks International Music Day, which made me think of all the goodness that music brings into our lives. Is there anything else you can think of that has the ability to bring people of all ages, sizes, and cultural backgrounds together in harmony? Well, maybe chocolate, but besides that? Whether you make […]
We’re all familiar with the traditions that Fall brings, including the end of white shoes, the disappearance of productive work days due to fantasy football, and the first Christmas trees in the mall. Autumn always makes me think of Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” where the lazy grasshopper plays all summer, while […]
Labor Day snuck up on us, school has started, and the peak travel season is over. What does that mean? To me, it means road trip! As soon as the summer crowds start to dwindle and the temperatures moderate, I’m ready to hit some of the best tourist spots in my local area. Whether your […]
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. If that were actually true, we would have a much easier time with universal health care! But we shouldn’t let that untruth diminish the benefits of juicy, delicious apples. The motivation for this post was a super-cute story called “Apple Day” by Kimberly Long Cockroft in […]
As the mom of a tween who is already on the cusp of sass, attitude, and near-constant hysteria, I found the “Disaster Drill” in a recent issue of Cicada to be immensely helpful. Obviously, disaster has many different interpretations, depending on the context or the person for whom it is occurring. For most people, a […]