Toddler + Ball = An Adorable Learning Opportunity

What’s cuter than a toddler with a ball? The answer: Not much. Watching little kids interact with this particular toy is one of my favorite things to do. I love the looks on their little faces when they mistakenly kick the ball again just before they reach it, and the joy in their eyes as […]

How to Talk about Sharks with Your Child

With all the focus on sharks in the media – from Shark Week on Discovery to shark attacks in the Carolinas – your young ones may be asking a lot of questions about the fascinating and sometimes frightening fish. They might even be afraid of them. As a blogging mom once wrote, sharing childhood memories […]

A Stripey Look at First Concepts

My daughter is really good at identifying the similarities in the stories she reads. I remember once when she was 3 or 4, she informed my husband and myself that “Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are really the same story because they are both about people who are ugly on […]

Pondering Pluto

My daughter and I heard a news story on NPR the other day about NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft’s nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to Pluto. The story caught our attention because it focused on whether Pluto was actually a full-fledged planet or just a dwarf planet as it had previously been labeled in 2006. The scientist interviewed […]

Teacher Testimonials Example

Teacher Testimonials   “The ideas in the lessons such as figurative language and writing ideas were useful. My students were very engaged!”   “I liked that there were so many articles about the same topic because that is exactly the type of thing my students need to know how to do: read multiple sources of […]

The Poetry of Life

We are all poets. Each one of us sees the world in our own special way. Whenever we look up at the passing clouds and see long tail dragons and sailing ships we are poets. When we share our visions and dreams we are poets. We are poets whenever we tell the world who we […]

A Story for Kids Who Feel Too Small

My daughter has never cracked the pediatrician’s growth chart. In first grade, she was sometimes called a baby by the other kids, and in truth her height was not all that much more than an average-sized 3 year old. Then she got into trouble for having her classmates lug her books, homework, and lunchbox around […]