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  • Read WITH Your Baby!

    While reading with little ones may not be exactly as you had expected, with an awareness of common baby reading behavior and some tips from the trenches, you can create a fertile soil for the love of reading and watch it grow.

  • Wiring a Child's Brain: Key Parenting Points

    As we now know, we can no longer separate the mind from the body, or nature from nurture. Even more important, our new knowledge will change the way we parent and teach the young.

  • Building Baby's Brain: What Parents Can Do

    Until recently we believed that there wasn't much we could do to help the brain develop. Most people believed that a child's genes determined a basic level of intelligence, and little could be done to change it after birth. Now we know that the brain does a lot of developing after birth.

  • Building Baby's Brain: Prime Times for Learning

    New research in brain development shows that we learn certain skills most easily during particular "windows of opportunity." These are times -- a few weeks or months -- when a part of the brain absorbs new information more easily than at any other time in life.

  • Reasons to Homeschool

    A list called, "Reasons to Homeschool" is on my wall. It grows every day. I am going to share some of my list with you as the week's progress, and describe what each item means to me. I hope they can be of some inspiration to you, if you are homeschooling or still trying to make your choice.

  • Kid's Activity: Golden Rectangles

    In our activity we're going to construct a rectangle with unique dimensions -- the Golden Ratio. This ratio turns up in some unexpected places, even on your hand!

  • Kid's Activity: Create Your Own Fossil!

    Fossils offer us clues about life in the past -- even years and years ago! Normally when a plant or animal dies, its remains either decay or perhaps are consumed by another animal. Sometimes though before that happens the conditions can be just right and the remains become buried and preserved.

  • Kid's Activity: Let's Go -- International!

    Have you always wanted to take a trip to a foreign land? Perhaps you want to visit Egypt, Ireland, India, China, or Italy! While you wait for that dream vacation you can experience the next best thing. Go international -- at home!

  • Kid's Activity: Understanding Tsunamis

    Several people wanted to know why this earthquake produced a tsunami when most earthquakes do not. To understand that, we need to know about faults. Before you start listing all my faults, such as forgetting to include parts of the experiment, I am talking about geologic faults.

  • Kid's Activity: Learn About Earthquakes!

    Anytime there is an earthquake, the news media makes a big point of talking about the Richter Scale, using it to indicate how bad the earthquake was. As we will see, the Richter Scale does not tell us nearly as much about surface effects as people think it does.

  • Building Baby's Brain: What Parents Can Do

    Until recently we believed that there wasn't much we could do to help the brain develop. Most people believed that a child's genes determined a basic level of intelligence, and little could be done to change it after birth. Now we know that the brain does a lot of developing after birth.

  • Kid's Activity: Log Cabin Crafts

    Today we're drifting back in time -- back to the days of the early pioneer settlers in the early days of the United States. Most of the homes then, such as the one Abraham Lincoln grew up in, were simple one room cabins. They were made of rough hewn logs. Ours will be made with more readily available materials...

  • Kids' Activity: Sock Basketball!

    We've often pondered where all those sock mates run off to. While you are waiting patiently for them to return here is something fun to do with those left behind! This game is perfect for all ages and can be adjusted by skill level to allow for several to play together at the same time (a must in our homes)! Young children are thrilled at their ability to "score!"

  • Kid's Activity: Create Your Own Fossil!

    Fossils offer us clues about life in the past -- even years and years ago! Normally when a plant or animal dies, its remains either decay or perhaps are consumed by another animal. Sometimes though before that happens the conditions can be just right and the remains become buried and preserved.

  • Kid's Activity: Galileo Thermometer

    An inventor is someone that uses his or her imagination and creative thinking to create something useful for the first time. These people pay attention to all that is around them. They also ask questions and keep on doing so until they can find their answer!

  • Wiring a Child's Brain: Key Parenting Points

    As we now know, we can no longer separate the mind from the body, or nature from nurture. Even more important, our new knowledge will change the way we parent and teach the young.

  • Kid's Activity: Let's Go -- International!

    Have you always wanted to take a trip to a foreign land? Perhaps you want to visit Egypt, Ireland, India, China, or Italy! While you wait for that dream vacation you can experience the next best thing. Go international -- at home!

  • Kid's Activity: Make a Clay Map!

    Early peoples used various local materials in their mapmaking. Some maps were painted on rocks; others were woven in reeds; sometimes sea shells marked the spot. Eskimos carved wooden maps from driftwood. Chinese pained maps on silk cloth. Babylonians scratched maps in soft clay.

  • Kid's Activity: Non-Newtonian Fluids -- Liquid or Solid?

    Generally we classify things as liquid or solid or gaseous but there are some substances that don't behave like expected. Have you ever played with Silly Putty®, Ooze or Slime? (Or rather played along with the kids...surely parents don't "play.")

  • Kid's Activity: A Lesson in Civil Rights for Children

    The topic is discrimination and civil rights. To discriminate means to treat differently, a showing of favoritism for some over another. When we talk about civil rights we are referring to the basic rights of all people to be treated the same or "equal".