My children aren’t perfect, by any means. But I will say that in raising them I have tried to instill life skills before age 5 that reinforce responsibility, dependability, and helpfulness. Basically before they start kindergarten, every child I believe should be equipped with basic life skills. So many skills are fairly easy to teach…
How to make quick and easy play dough by cooking it in your instant pot or electric pressure cooker.
Other parents are always asking me how to teach sharing and almost always it’s a mother of a child under the age of two wanting to make sure their child knows how to share. Why? Because as adults we want to be helpful and to be aware of both the needs and the desires of…
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Radio Flyer. The opinions and text are all mine. As a child, I remember roaming around my parents’ wooded backyard, enjoying nature and exploring what it had to offer. And then one day as I was digging in the dirt, I found an arrowhead….
Jenn was wearing underwear before her second birthday. Emma was so strong-willed she refused to accept help in getting dressed from a time before she could even say a simple sentence. And Rhett was putting on his own shoes by 9 months. And while some of this is self-guided, we believe in empowering our kids…
It is easy for babies and toddlers to learn. Every single day is new and all that happens is an educational experience. Show a baby a zipper and they learn. Put their hand under running water and they learn. Teach them a new word, and they learn. But learning isn’t necessarily thriving when the world is…
After a long winter, sometimes getting the kids re-engaged into the outdoors can be difficult. Or maybe even nature-loving kids don’t want to get out into the heat. Regardless of how old or why a child doesn’t like going outside, there are always fun ways to get kids to spend time in fresh air and…
The joke growing up was that my brother didn’t know how to climb a tree until we moved into a house with a mulberry tree. And there we found him, 15 feet off the ground munching on plump, delicious mulberries. I remember every summer our sidewalks, our cars, and our windshields would be stained a…
When Jenn was 14 months old, we started “tot school” where I introduced her to colors, shapes, numbers, and fascinating learning experiences. It deepened her understanding of how the world around her worked and fueled her ever-frowing curiosity. With wide eyes and a few squeals of fear, she learned about suction from a vacuum cleaner….
Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore the fact that playdough offers so many wonderful learning opportunities for young children and is probably one of my favorite tools in helping promote their development. We have the playdough out nearly every day here and I love to come up with fun new playdough set ups…
The leaves are wistfully flying by, a faint smell of campfires looms in the distance, and everyone is drinking a pumpkin spice something-or-another. And that’s when you know fall is here and Halloween is just around the corner. It’s such a magical time in its own right without adding in the supernatural stories, magnificent costumes……
The big bad boogie man that is the internet is something that many families with young kids shy away from. However, knowing which sites are best for learning and how to keep them safe on them in the process is part of equipping our children for life. In fact, if they can’t get online, they…