The cover scene is so alluring with its soft, dreamlike greens, grays, whites and peaches. A little girl with wide, bright eyes sails head-first through the night-time sky, arms outstretched, palms open. Continue reading

Early in my teaching career, my beloved colleague and I tackled a full-scale gingerbread project. In the years following I reverted to simpler projects, and the little tricks and ideas I learned along the way may be of interest to you. Continue reading

Born in the same year as Piaget, Lev Vygotsky had a stellar, if tragically short, career. Continue reading

Mr. Popsnorkel investigates the dashboard and finds one new button after another, transforming the car into a big blue dinosaur, a galloping blue elephant, and a gigantic blue turtle... Continue reading

This is a beautiful rainbow letter-tracing activity that can be used for teaching letter recognition, color recognition, and writing. Continue reading

Spirited Away is an award-winning animated film filled with delightful surprises. Continue reading

When I was a kid, every piece of playground equipment offered endless opportunities for imaginative play. Nothing about them needed to be fancy. Yet in today’s world, the kinds of equipment I played on have been labeled far too dangerous for kids. Continue reading

Playdough has got to be one of the most versatile play items. Its attractiveness to kids really stimulates the use of imagination and related vocabulary. Continue reading

Contrary to what some may think, a teacher's summer isn’t all fun and games. There are workshops and trainings, loads of preparation and planning. But in between all that work, it's true that we can often choose how to structure our time, and summer provided a special opportunity for me.... Continue reading

Thump! The last car door closes. You’re all piled into the family car, and ready to head off into the distant horizon, set for adventure. Suddenly, you have a daunting realization! Any kids with you are now enclosed in a very small world. You’ll need a good plan, or the excitement of the trip can quickly disintegrate into unhappy kids, which seems to lead inevitably to irritable parents. Continue reading

Kids love ice cream and are excited to make their own so the activity is very engaging. Kids who have never thought about how ice cream is made are often surprised. Said another way, the ice cream is rich but so is the experience. Continue reading

My mother told me that Bo was so different from other children that he couldn’t go to school. "Kids like Bo can’t learn,” she said, “so they are just kept at home. They don't usually go out in public.” That’s how it was when I was a kid – children with obvious disabilities were hidden away from view. Continue reading

Robert Munsch’s book, Love You Forever, tells the story of a mother’s relationship with her growing son from childhood to adulthood. Even after so many years of reading this book around Mother's Day, I still weep when I read it. Continue reading

This activity yields a simple yet elegant result. During the activity, children have a meaningful opportunity to write (or dictate) their own message to mom for Mother’s Day. Continue reading

According to Pamela Druckerman, French children are not loud and messy. They refrain from throwing food and temper tantrums. They aren't picky eaters, and they’re able to engage in pleasant and sustained interaction with adults. Continue reading

There’ s no substitute for good planning when it comes to setting up classroom art projects. If you are trying to meet learning goals and have deadlines to meet, a disorganized environment can quadruple your stress level. Continue reading

Becker describes two different studies, each implying that “hard-wiring [of] our brains for success or failure” is established very early in a child’s life. The first study is a very famous one from the 1950’s and 1960‘s. Continue reading

Start by displaying a finished egg and describing the designs on it. Show how the egg is traced, cut out and then how their name should be written on the back. Talk about controlling the flow of the goop-paint by varying how hard you squeeze.If you squeeze too hard too much liquid comes out, too soft not enough will flow onto the paper. Continue reading

I was, however, shocked to discover the extreme form of spanking they used regularly as a way of disciplining their children. Throughout each day, and these were long days since the mom was home-schooling her kids, the parents kept a kind of tally of misbehaviors. Each time that one of the children didn’t mind right away or did something unacceptable, they put a mark on a chart. Then, to make matters worse, they did the spankings all at once. Continue reading

The first three episodes are mainly back-story. Because Superman is such a well-known character, revisiting his origins may seem redundant, but not so in this series. Two features make this old story pop out as fresh and original. First, there are some plot additions. The focus is on Superman’s dad, Jor-El, and his disagreement with the governing council of Krypton. It turns out most leading Kryptonians are under the influence of Brainiac, a character reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. These high Kryptonians are too attached to their technological status quo, unable to see the wisdom in Jor-El's warnings. Sad, because Krypton is about to be destroyed. Continue reading

It is so gratifying to see children engaged with a book that they created and that they love sharing. They were always excited to take their version of “My Kite Flies” home and read it to family members. The more I taught, the more ways I saw of integrating this book into a science unit on weather. I like that it can be modified to meet a variety of age ranges and skill levels. This book-making activity gets high marks for flexibility and drawing children into their love for books. Continue reading

As I sat waiting, I began to reflect on my youth when there used to be two February holidays—one for Lincoln’s birthday and one for Washington’s. That’s how it was when I was growing up in the 1950‘s, and those holidays were so important that we paid a lot of attention to them in school. After all, George Washington was instrumental in creating The Union, and Lincoln is the one who kept it from falling apart. Continue reading

Posted by Karen O'Hanlon Title: The Chocolate Touch Author: Patrick Skene Catling ISBN: 0-553-15639-X Grade: A+ When does pleasure turn into obsession? And obsession turn into gluttony? When does too much of a good thing become the bane of your existence? If you could ask a character in a book,... Continue reading

Posted by Karen O'Hanlon Age group: 5-7 year olds Skills taught: Comparing and contrasting numbers, observing, estimating, recording and graphing. Prerequisite skills: Experience playing with teddy bear figurines. Previous exposure to graphing materials. Counting to 20. Number sequencing. One-to-one correspondence. Color recognition for red, blue, yellow and green. Ability to... Continue reading

Posted by Karen O'Hanlon Make no mistake. We have a testing addiction, and it's doing more harm than good. The shame is even greater when you realize that we have much better tools, like assessment. In education, assessment is the observation of children in order to determine their level of... Continue reading