Category: department of good parenting

18 Tabletop games that are great for kids

Our family has a lot of board games. Gaming has always been a huge part of how we entertain ourselves and also an important part of our kids’ education. But typical “educational games” are almost uniformly awful. And unnecessary — all games can be educational in one way or another, whether they use math or… Continue reading 18 Tabletop games that are great for kids

Last weekend, we found out that two friends of ours — mothers of our kids’ classmates — were involved in a domestic dispute that left the two of them in the hospital in critical condition from multiple gunshot wounds. Full news reports here and here.

What happened was horrid and devastating and both women not only had families but were teachers and educators; Jai was the librarian at the Open Classroom school and I worked closely with her to develop the Book Review Library plugin for the Open Classroom library. I can’t begin to imagine the repercussions of this experience, physical, emotional and financial. There are a pair of YouCaring pages up for both of them and it would be amazing if you were able to find it in your heart to help these fantastic women and their families out as they work on healing.

Updates are coming

We haven’t posted anything recently partially because I had a couple computer meltdowns (first my processor fan died, next my hard drive died). Now that my computer is back up and running, we’ll be uploading pics from the summer. It’s almost the new school year, after all, with Gavin heading into first grade (!!!) and […]

Role Playing Games for kids

Our son loves reading.  He’s recently gotten way into The Magic Treehouse series and we’ve since completed the full series (all 45 books!).  It occurred to me, since he’s so interested in storytelling, that he might be into those Choose-Your-Own Adventure books that I wasted my youth reading and re-reading until every possible scenario had… Continue reading Role Playing Games for kids

last day of kindergarten

All four of us got to be at school today for Gavin’s last day of Kindergarten.  Lilah was so excited to go that she had to wear her backpack!  Gavin gave her a big hug and told her, “I’m so glad you’re coming to school with me.”  I was a bit sad that our time […]

bugs

We got a new bug “house” a few days ago.  It’s a clear plastic box with a lid shaped like a roof that lets air in.  It has a handle for easy transport of newly made insect friends.  Both Gavin and Lilah were very excited and immediately wanted to catch something in the new bug […]

Five plus three

    Gavin is weeks away from the end of Kindergarten!  He has made incredible progress this year, keeping up with his class and gaining his voice.  He is reading!  Before this year I wondered how far away reading was for him, and one day in winter I realized he was already there.    The […]