Making Crowns from Autumn Leaves
I love this tutorial from Twig and Toadstool on making crowns from Autumn leaves!! We love making crowns!
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Top Ten Playdough Recipes…
I can’t wait to try these playdough recipes! Lavendar Playdough! Blueberry Sparkle! Herb Playdough! Great activities for the upcoming chilly days!
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Making Math Fun
I am not a fan of math worksheets, but show me math in the world around me and I’m hooked! I am constantly on the lookout for ways to make learning math more fun for children. I think math is best learned in an interdisciplinary method: the physical body, the natural world, in art, music…
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Napping
When I taught preschool, naptime was an essential part of our daily rhythm. After lunch, the children would pull out their mats and get their stuffiess and snuggle in for storytime. Throughout the year I told different fairytales: Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Three Bears… The children loved this time…
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Top Ten Ways to Motivate Children to Achieve Academically
This article called the “Effort Effect” by Stanford Alumnus Marina Krakovsky really resonated with me and my work with children. I studied Learned Helplessness at Harvard as a response to trauma, but it was really interesting to think about it as an ongoing response to learning. I am often asked how to motivate older children–teens–to…
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An Excellent Fusion of Science and Art
Music is an excellent and effective way to teach any subject and to learn any subject. Check out this brilliant piece by 23-year old Physics student, Timothy Blais. He sings about Physics and String Theory to Bohemian Rhapsody–an excellent fusion of science and art, because physics and art are different sides of the same coin.(And…
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How Schools Kill Creativity by Ken Robinson
My all-time favorite TED talk– a classic. You may have already seen it (it has nearly 18 million hits!) but if not, it’s worth watching. Ken Robinson is a funny speaker with deeply profound things to say about educating our children. If you have a few minutes to watch, click here.
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The Letting Go…
This article by Michael Gerson was so beautifully written it made me cry! He writes about the heartbreak of dropping his child off at college. I have felt this heartbreak so many times with my own children–and they’re only 7 and 9! I call it the “cruel dialectic of parenting.” Creating and raising these little…
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Cultivating Compassion while Keeping the Spunk
This blog post is a combination of one I wrote in 2007 and I finished in 2013. It’s kind of awesome to have 6 years between starting and finishing… My three-year-old daughter just took a parasol out of her baby brother’s hand. I say, “Miss Annabelle, you can not take toys from Henry.” She glares…
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Mystery: The Case of the Chocolate Footprints
Today there was a mystery in my house, and we love a good mystery around here. If we can’t find one, we create one. For example: The Case of the Missing Car Keys, The Case of Mama’s Missing Cell Phone, The Case of the Little Lizard in the Paintbrush Drawer… On this particular day, I…