This photo popped up on my Facebook page this morning. A friend of a friend created this for her toddler, but I think we should all make them for toddler rooms. It looks simple enough. Go through the house, find old phones, locks, small mirrors, and a calculator and you’ve got yourself a really […]

Frequently, I see elaborate systems set up in classrooms to help children and teachers measure time. When my kids were little we told time in “Arthurs”. For us, that meant that 1 Arthur= 15 minutes, so if Louie asked when we were going to eat dinner, I would say, “In 2 Arthurs” or “in 3 […]

Last week I told you that I was going to be attending a statewide meeting of Gateways for Opportunity Statewide Higher Education Forum. So here I am. It is 8 AM in Bloomington – Normal, and I am sitting with some of the big movers and shakers in the ECE world looking at the data […]

You know who I am most envious of? People who learned to speak 2 languages from birth, in their homes, with their families. Man, if I could have given any gift to my children, it would have been the gift of being bilingual. Children who live in homes whose language is other than English may […]

Can you guess why I chose “Weather” as our theme for April? If you have ever lived in Chicago in April, you know from experience, that you might encounter every single kind of weather known to humanity. It will snow, rain, hail, and sleet. It will be freezing, mild, hot, or scorching. It will be […]

This article is just a wonderful way to consider how children think about measurement and what that means for us. I hope it makes you smile as much as I did.

We have not finished exploring the new Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards even though it feels like we have been looking at them for a long time. It gives you a sense of how complex these kinds of documents are and how difficult it is for most practitioners to remember all of the minute […]

Paul Tough explores the notion of SLANT in his book How Children Succeed– a technique that teachers at the KIPP (Knowledge in Power Programs) schools use to teach code-switching behaviors that indicate professional and education engagement. As an adult educator, I too, look for these behaviors to indicate that my students are interested in the […]

When you are married to a landscaper (or contractor, or builder) there are always tape measures lying around. My boys loved playing with tape measures, but I could never take my eyes off of them for a second, because a real tape measure releases really quickly and can snap back on small hands, fingers, or […]

This Monday is April Fool’s Day- the day when playing practical jokes is not only acceptable but expected. There are several accepted origins to this day-from references to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to the Roman holiday of Hilaria. In Europe, a traditional practical joke that is played amongst school children, families and colleagues in the workplace […]