I like cleaning up messes – said no mom ever, most especially me. But, making a mess is important to children’s brain development. It is not making the mess, really, but playing with the different textures, scents, and sounds that makes those important neural connections. But it often does makes a mess. We can be…
This is cool, ya’ll. A Montessori store opened up not too far away. It is called Natural Acorn. They have such gorgeous wooden puzzles and manipulatives. But the thing that really caught my eye were the soft learning mats. They are neatly embroidered. Dozens are available to choose from. They reinforce basic concepts like colors, shapes,…
Don’t you just love Christmas traditions? My favorites involve reading my favorite stories from The Norman Rockwell Christmas Treasury and The Candle in the Forest: And Other Christmas Stories Children Love – eBook By Compiled & edited by Joe L. Wheeler / Howard Books (affiliate link). The kids love when we scoop them up in…
Happy Thanksgiving! I am sending out this post early this week, so you have time to do this Thanksgiving art project. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. I never do art projects for their cuteness. It is part of my efficiency rule. Projects have to have some educational value or brain…
Would you do me the honor of reading a Jane Austen novel with me? I promise you will enjoy it. Emma is entertaining, simple to follow, and teaches lessons that you did not know you learned until the last page turns and you shut the book, feeling satisfied. Read Jane Austen’s Emma with me! Why read Jane…
First things first: freebie! Have you ever had one of those rooms that gets piled up and you end up just shutting the door on it for a while? You know, organizing it is more than you can take, and the rest of the family just keeps piling things in there? Time for a school…
Next in our reading series, let’s pick up an old dystopian classic, Animal Farm. This is not a children’s story, despite its moderately short length. Do not bother reading it to students without the background historical context. It is the perfect read directly after a study of communism! In the novel, a group of Farmer Jones’s…
I have been enjoying the DVD series “Teaching the Classics” by Adam and Missy Andrews. It is training for parent teachers, or anyone who is interested, to use the Socratic method to facilitate literary analysis of any story, by any student. Most of the material is familiar to me, but Andrew’s presentation is so concise…
Since my 15 year old is working her way through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I have had the pleasure to watch these movies with her in the order that they were released, without months or years in between. As I watched Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War back to back, I was struck with…
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