How would 4 year olds experience a wordless book (an illustrated story, no words) vs. a pictureless book (all sounds, no pictures to look at)? One day I went in to a preschool classroom to debut a draft of my book: Buffalo Joe’s Sound Rodeo. I haven’t illustrated it yet since it’s still in draft mode; so the kids sat […]

As I taught my kids their ABC’s, I taught the basic letter sounds at the same time. And I made a common mistake parents make when teaching their kids the alphabet. Have you ever sung: “B says ____. B says ____. Every letter makes a sound and B says ____.”? What did you fill in the blank with? What would […]

Skylanders and Moshis aren’t complete nonsense though. In fact, I’ve found that the attention span for my kids looking at books, sticking stickers and playing with figurines is downright amazing! (Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure that Skylanders and Moshis have videogame/online components which we don’t use. We have stuck (no pun intended) with stickers, books and some figurines. Except for that […]

“Some children might not be ready for as big a jump from letter sounds to reading words and sentences and would benefit from making it a few little hops instead of a bigger jump.” –  Jordan K., Elementary School Librarian The Creek Is Wide Have you ever taken a walk through the woods with your small children and come to […]

International Literacy Day 2013 Today, Sunday, September 8th is International Literacy Day! (Also observed by the International Reading Association on Monday, September 9th.) I was going to write, “To celebrate, I’m doing 2 things.” But as I read over UNESCO’s Literacy Day page, 9 countries picture on facebook and UNESCO’s Literacy Infographic (definitely check out the Infographic) which lists THE […]

Trying to Climb Up the Down Escalator In their excellent book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard (highly recommend!), Chip & Dan Heath describe the power of identity in hindering or facilitating change.  They state that “[a]ny change effort that violates someone’s identity is likely doomed to failure.” When deciding what to do or not to do, we […]