Tag: 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

With low expectations, you create your own dismal reality

I’m reading an article in December’s WIRED (look at that, 2017 Goals ? ) about the three days in a row last summer where there were 3 fatal shootings in a span of 72 hours, each of them livestreamed via social media. During the protests following the first two, police approached the protesters in riot gear.… Continue reading With low expectations, you create your own dismal reality

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.

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

muscle memory

it’s interesting how muscle memory works. or, if not muscle memory (a term i just grabbed because it seemed appropriate without knowing anything about the actual scientific usage of said phrase) then the way your body remembers things that, intellectually, you probably couldn’t possibly keep straight. very close to nightly i quietly enter and exit… Continue reading muscle memory

the not-so-hidden value of netflix

i’m pretty much completely in love with netflix. it started with some casual experimentation through a friend during college.  he had a netflix subscription and we’d often get triple features of obscure asian action flicks (digging deep in the early career of jet li with the once upon a time in china series — which i highly recommend,… Continue reading the not-so-hidden value of netflix

scientific link to autism found; get your tinfoil hats because us loonies were right

in a completely, totally, ridiculously different direction that what the medical establishment has been lambasting at us for years, a think tank has uncovered a probable cause for autism.  you know all those people you think are insane for not getting their kids vaccinated?  well guess what…they’re right. from the article: If it hadn’t been… Continue reading scientific link to autism found; get your tinfoil hats because us loonies were right