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.
My oldest child is now starting 6th grade which is Middle School where I live. She’s a voracious reader now but it wasn’t always so. I guess there are many, many reasons why kids don’t like to read and for her, it wasn’t the decoding or sitting still; it was the act of performing. She hates any kind of attention. A root canal is preferable to her over performing and reading out loud was a performance to her.
I was the co-chair for my elementary school Fundraising Committee last year and also served on my preschool’s fundraising committee a few years ago. For both schools, the auction is the single biggest fundraising event and must bring in a princely sum in order for the PTO budgets to function. This is what I learned to make an school auction successful:
Halloween ghosting is a tradition that we do in our neighborhood. My kids love it and it teaches a great lesson about giving versus receiving.
We were fortunate to have Middle Grade Author Karen Day as a guest at our 6th Grade girls’ book club where they discussed changes, Middle School, A Million Miles from Boston, and wrote short stories inspired by her talk.
This is an old recipe from my first preschool. My middle daughter used to LOVE to play with playdough but she didn’t like the stinky smell of purchased playdough. Mix a batch and store in an air-tight container for hours of fun.
I’m not an expert but I did breastfeed all three of my kids until they were nearly two-years-old and had a terrible time (each child successively worse) weaning them! But I did love nursing them! I leave you in hands of an expert.
With standardized tests looming large and budget cutbacks, can we really expect our education system to teach our children tolerance and understanding? Probably not. Perhaps it is best brought up at home, with these books and references to help build a bridge of understanding. This list of excellent materials is courtesy School Library Journal. The article is intended for teachers and you can read it in its entirety here.