I'm just trying to walk myself home.
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For a road trip, I need a lot of snacks. Maybe it is because I have a little problem with control when it comes to food. There are many scary things out there masquerading as food that I do not want to have to eat. Or to feed to my children. I am trying to …
the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. from a report by the commission on reading, as quoted by jim trelease in the read-aloud handbook i think i have talked before about how much i love to read aloud to my kids, how …
One of the many great joys of reading The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket is the cleverly disguised vocabulary lessons throughout the entire series. The oft repeated phrase, a word which here means, followed by a definition of the word just used, introduces a word or phrase that might be unfamiliar to the …
I promise you I did not stage this picture. We have finally reached the end of The Series of Unfortunate Events, a collection of books that we have loved together as a family this season. When I came down the stairs yesterday morning, very sleepy still at 6:30am, I found sweet Mary Polly on the …
Back to school after Christmas break this morning. I got up at 5:30 because I so wanted our first morning back to school to be a smooth one. It’s just so brutal if we end our break with a rushed morning and everyone yelling. So, I made raspberry bran muffins, a new recipe from my …
A Story about Reading Children’s Christmas Books Thursday night after yoga I went to a bookstore and sat in the children’s section for a long time with a pile of newly published Christmas books for children. I do this every year. Well, every year since I worked in a bookstore in Deerfield, Illinois while Taido …
A Story About Teaching A Child Not To Throw Food My youngest son, Simon, and I spent an hour today learning not to throw our food. Of course I already know how to not throw food, except for maybe the occasional flinging from vigorous stirring. But Simon. He throws food at every meal. So we …
Last night Taido warned us all that he would be waking us up very early for the final adventure of our Crested Butte vacation: Climbing Mt. Crested Butte. He and the kids made a list of everything we would need to take for our climb. The big kids (ages 6, 8 and 10) picked out …
I’m wading into dangerous ground today. I spent this morning re-reading the first chapter of Good and Angry by Scott Turansky. I started this book last fall but i didn’t get very far. I was in a bad place as far as parenting goes, and I was struggling with anger, especially with one particular child…not …
We went to the Memphis Zoo on for the day on Monday. I am telling you. This zoo is worth the drive from Little Rock. We belonged to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle when we lived there and what I loved about joining was that once I joined, the zoo became a completely free …
Middle schoolers. Pre-adolescents. Jr. highers. Whatever you want to call them. They are a rare breed. The crazy thing about middle schoolers (well, of course we all know there is more than one crazy thing) is that the range of heights and developmental stages is so wide among them. The group Taido works with ranges …
We had such a classic summer in Arkansas weekend. I have been kind of dazed and sleepy for the last day or so, just soaking it all in. My kids went to the lake last week for the blue moon. I love for them to camp on an island at the lake in the summertime, …