Archive for June, 2014
Learning doesn’t need to screech to a halt during the summer, given the educational opportunities available to kick around. Take the World Cup, for example. You can’t look at a newspaper, watch television or scroll through your Facebook feed without catching some reference to this international soccer event. The World Cup is a great jumping […]
If you are one of those people – like me, I confess – who live by the motto, “Tomorrow’s another day,” this column is for you. Growing up, I was told that putting things off was simply laziness. As I grew older and became enmeshed in the work-a-day world, putting things off, or procrastination, was […]
We feel compelled at this time of year to offer sage advice to high school seniors. Graduation is a significant milestone, a time of major transition. As parents, we want to say something profound that will stick in their minds as they venture off to career, college or the military. We think about the movie […]
When you hear of parents and children reading together, you almost always picture a mom or dad with a toddler on their lap enjoying a book with pictures or rhymes, à la Dr. Seuss. We know early reading helps young children master the language, improve concentration, and strengthen speech and logical thinking skills – all […]
More than 100 years after the Second Continental Congress adopted our nation’s flag on June 14, 1777, a young schoolteacher in Waubeka, Wisconsin, assigned his students an essay on what the flag meant to them. It was the first Flag Day. We celebrate Flag Day this week, as communities stage parades and schools hold ceremonies […]
The statistics are frightening: 77 percent of young adults are very or somewhat confident they can safely text while driving 55 percent of young adult drivers say it is easy to text while driving. 13 percent of drivers age 18-20 involved in a crash admitted to texting or talking on the phone just prior to […]
The seed starter kit at the everything-under-$5 store caught my son’s eye. “Mom, we could grow watermelons,” he said excitedly as he grabbed a kit from the shelf. I thought about the sandy soil around our house. “Maybe tomatoes,” I said. We had some success last year with grape tomatoes planted in containers on the […]