My blog covers education and children’s books. When I cover parenting issues, it usually contains book recommendations. Parenting topics include academic subjects, summer learning, bullying, special needs, fitness and more.
This is the first year that PickyKidPix hasn’t see her closest friends since Kindergarten on a daily basis. She’s in middle school now and she and her friends are on different teams, on different school buses, and doing different activities. They had no common activity, so I suggested boxing. PickyKidPix started boxing with me during…
Dear 16 year old me, Just a few quick things as I pop back in time. 1) Swimming is not your sport I know that you love this swim team. Your coach and teammates are amazingly supportive, kind, and smart. They celebrate your personal best as enthusiastically as you do their blue ribbons. It’s just…
I mentioned many times how my 11-year-old daughter, PickyKidPix, wants to learn to be a hairstylist in order to earn money in high school. What I didn’t realize was how sneaky and persistent she has been to learn. In the beginning, she would invite her friends over for a playdate and let them watch TV…
Today I am on the front page of The Boston Globe for the past week of posts that I wrote on my microblog, I Love Newton, about the anti-Asian racism in the local high school musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie. School play’s stereotypes bring outcry and apology. “Millie” touches a nerve in Newton by Ellen Ishkanian,…
Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations. It’s created by MIT. I had heard of it years ago from the founder of the company who created my first PragmaticMom blog template. His young son was using it to create games. My son was…
My son and his third grade buddies have been taking tennis lessons since school started. Now that it’s too cold to play outdoors, they decided to switch to fencing. There is something about little boys and swordplay — my son has been wielding a stick as a sword since he was old enough to toddle….
It was a long winter break and I didn’t plan anything special to entertain the kids. After a week of being mostly housebound, out of sheer laziness I took my kids to check out the crafts store, hoping that a few key purchases would keep them entertained and off screens. My son only wanted two…