This week brought my very good friend Stephanie and her two boys, Jack and Will, out to Chicago for a spring break visit. Her oldest is starting to look at colleges, and so they planned this trip to the Windy City to take a look around. Do you have people in your life who are […]

Not only do children like to make music (think drums and rhythm sticks) they also like to listen to music. They like it performed live or recorded. They like to listen to the same songs over and over and they like to hear new and novel music. For my family, the car was always the […]

A colleague of mine just sent me this document the Comparison of the IELS and the IELDS. Here you can see the old Illinois Early Learning Standards side-by-side with the new Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards. It is really interesting to look at how they’ve changed. Can you imagine the conversations that were required […]

Do you think some people are good at solving puzzles and others are not? Is puzzle-solving a skill you are born with or can everyone eventually learn how to solve puzzles? Are you a puzzle solver? Howard Gardner of Harvard University argues that we all have various intelligences that manifest themselves in varying amounts and […]

Tempo is the speed of music. Here, it is really easy to see the mathematical connections. Fastness and slowness are mathematical ideas that we can explore fully with children through music. Consider the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”. First we sing it slowly.. Head, shoulders, knees and toes Knees and toes. Head, shoulders, knees […]

This morning, my husband Larry told me the back story of how his father came up with his “one cuts, one chooses” system of justice. He said that he has vivid memories of his father cutting paper plates in half, one after the other, trying to explain to his sister Caren, the notion that there […]

I found this website when I was reading about the new Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards. It is from George Washington University in Washington D.C. and it has a really nice and concise description of why we have early learning standards for children, birth through age 8. If you scroll down you will find […]

I thought we should double-up this week since both of these Learning Standards are relatively brief and easy-to-understsand. Both of these can be found under State Goal 6 -Demonstrate beginning understanding of numbers, including names and numerals. Learning Standard C – Begin to make reasonable estimates of numbers. There is only one Benchmark for Learning […]

Last night I began reading How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough. I am only about halfway through it but I am finding it incredibly interesting. The general premise is that children need more than “smarts” to be successful in school and in life. There are a variety […]

When I teach about Lev Vygotsky and his renowned theory of the “Zone of Proximal Development” I use puzzles as means of illustrating the principles in an understandable way. Remember this… As adults or more competent peers support a child’s learning, the child moves from one level in which he can complete tasks independently to […]