“Grandpa, this is much more fun than playing on the tablet!” My 6-year old granddaughter’s observation seemed so obvious and true. We had spent the afternoon together, building a ladder for her new treehouse. We used a tape measure and her budding...
Storytelling, as we saw a couple weeks back, can fire the imagination and open up new worlds to children. It does this whether you make up stories on the fly, as you might with a guided relaxation, or simply read to children from books. It’s the exchange between...
When I was a young teacher, I was given some good advice by a mentor: Start off the year firm. You can always loosen up. But if you start too loose, you will have a hard time getting the classroom under control later. It took some practice to become very precise and...
Hear that Americans tend to be physically inactive, and you wouldn’t bat an eye. Yet hearing just how much we’re not moving can be a bit of a shock. Consider the study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. Measuring...
You’ve probably seen more than one of those social media posts that compares childhood in the 1970s to childhood today – listicles like this one. And this. Most seem to focus on the apparent lack of concern for safety – why kids of the 70s “should all be dead,” as the...
“Five…four…three…” …swipe, tap, tap, swipe, swipe, tap… “…two…one!” The countdown – that old parental standby to garner compliance – was no longer working with our granddaughter Anna, smitten with our iPad and the wonders it can produce. We had set a strict time limit...
