Category: All

I love fall!  The crispness, the colors, all of it!  Most of all, I love that it is traditionally a time of celebration and a time to gather as families.  It is a perfect time for building memorable scenes for our children.  Whether is coming together to bake a special treat or to decorate for… continue reading

I’ve mentioned before, and I’ll mention many times again:  I love fall!  The sight, the sound, the smell, and yes, the taste! To kick off this season of cinnamon-spice and celebration, I’ve gathered a collection of pumpkin recipes.  Some I’ve tried (and devoured), some are on my fall bucket list.  I thought I’d share with… continue reading

If you haven’t already surmised from my paucity of posts, things have been a little busy around here.  First we were adjusting to the new normal with our newest bouncing bundle of boy, then the adjustment of back to school routines, add on my online course and other teaching engagements, as well as a litany… continue reading

I’m a believer in teaching social skills.  If you’ve checked out my ebook or ecourse, you already know that.  I’m also a big fan of learning through play.  No surprise, right? Today I have two social skill lessons you can teach using one of the most treasured treats of childhood — bubbles! Lesson One:  Self… continue reading

My boys and I came home from a beautiful fall hike to find the perfect surprise on our doorstep!  Friends had dropped by a kit for making simple (and delicious) pumpkin cookies! This treat was so easy to make, so delicious to eat, and so much fun to find, that I thought I’d share the… continue reading

As I’ve been putting together my series on The Myth of Perfect Parenting, I realized this piece from a year ago fits right in with the message, so I wanted to repost it here.  (I now have four boys instead of three, so you can just imagine the chaos of our next family picture!) I… continue reading

Color mixing can be magical!  No, better than magic, it’s science! The process of observing, hypothesizing, and testing repeats itself over and over again the moment you present children with a little colored water and a few eye droppers. I wrote about this simple approach to color mixing almost four years ago here.  That four… continue reading

I’m sharing some ideas at two different spots this week.  First, I’m over at Simple Kids, talking about what we learn about child development from the silly things kids say.  Here’s a little taste: I love listening to my three year-old talk.  He has a way of making the most common words sound delectably darling. … continue reading

My husband is a natural when it comes to principle-based parenting.  (That should be a whole post in itself.)  Rather than laying down all the rules, he’ll state the principle and ask our boys how they propose we should go about implementing it.  Here’s how that went down recently. Dad:  I need you to listen… continue reading

Alphabet Awareness is a critical component of emergent literacy.  Children often master the capital letters first, quickly discerning between those large strokes.  But once the focus turns to the lowercase letters things can get a bit dicey. Those pesky d’s and b’s, not to mention the p’s and q’s can get awfully confusing for emergent… continue reading