My son and I watched dozens of videos from The Kid Should See This to find our four favorites: Watch how plants explode their seeds. If you play soccer or basketball, you’ll love this video on backspin called the Magnus Effect. I want a tree like this: a tree with forty kinds of fruit! It’s…
7 Great Diverse Easy Readers
I’m thrilled to be judging first-round Easy Readers and Early Chapter books for the Cybils! I’m joined by Katie Fitzgerald of Story Time Secrets, Jennifer Wharton of Library Thing, and Jean Little Library, Juliana Lee of Juliana Lee: Crafting Stories, Susan Murray of From Tots to Teens. The Easy Reader genre was my biggest challenge to find diverse,…
11 Diverse Picture Books for 8th Grade
PickyKidPix is now in 8th grade but only less than halfway through. She tells me that her curriculum covers Colonial America, the Industrial Revolution in science, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the French and Indian War, the Constitution, and Racism. I’m creating multicultural picture book lists for middle school in hopes of helping teachers…
Winter Holiday Picture Books Giveaway & Kid Lit Blog Hop
The Kid Lit Blog Hop is now monthly! To celebrate the holidays in December, I’ve picked out five new picture books to share and I’m giving them away to five different winners. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg Can you believe that it’s been thirty years since The Polar Express was published?! This story about…
10 Diverse Picture Books for 7th Grade
Our 7th grade curriculum includes the rise of civilizations, early humans, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt. The science curriculum is focused on biology. What multicultural picture books should I add to this list? Thanks for sharing! p.s. Here are all the books in this series: Diversity Picture Books for 4th Grade Diversity…
11 Diverse Picture Books for 6th Grade
I consulted my 8th grader, PickyKidPix, about her middle school curriculum. She pays attention to everything going on so she remembers what she studied and notices what other grades are doing. She said that her teachers have generally covered the same curriculum they have always done which seemed to naturally follow Common Core but that…
STEM Engineering Toy Car to Build
My son tried out the Meccano Mountain Rally 25 Model Set. He likes to assemble things but hasn’t really had a lot of opportunity to use tools so I thought that would be fun for him. It’s a kit with a lot mechanical pieces and a detailed instruction manual on how to assemble it. My son…







