This is a great idea for an interactive bulletin board to showcase for your open house night. It will really get students talking about books they are reading or have read over the summer that they enjoyed. Just photocopy (on tagboard if you prefer) these book recommendation tags and offer to students. They fill in the book and author, a few ...

As it turns out, I can only do ten things well, not eleven. Guess I don’t go to eleven. Oh well. Anyway – I haven’t been posting on this blog frequently for two simple reasons: first, haven’t wanted to use any of the time in my contractual day with personal technological communications and missives, and second, by the time I ...

Which literacy products are truly worth your time and money?  Here are the products I love most: To create a print-rich home, the basics are all you really need. Books, paper, pencils, crayons... Pencils:  For young writers, short golf-style pencils are best for learning proper pencil grasp.  Erasers are optional, because my kids prefer to use ...

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately. The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that [...]

I've been not-so-patiently waiting to get my hands on The Write Start, by Jennifer Hallissy.  I finally did, and after gobbling it up in one sitting, I'm officially adding it to my all-time favorites list. It deserves a spot on every parent's bookshelf!  Here's why: (image source) The Write Start gets write to the point with an overview of the ...

These books make me happy.  Just look at those cheerful covers! Anthropologie is selling lovely clothbound Penguin Classics. The Adventures of Huck Finn, Anne of Green Gables, Peter Pan, The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. I would love to decorate a shelf with these, and of course, I'd read them aloud to ...

We expect schools to teach children to read; however, it has been repeatedly shown by numerous studies that the home is extremely important to developing proficient readers. All parents should want their child to be a good reader because reading level generally correlates to level of success in life. . . . → Read More: Young Adult High ...

It seems robots are trendy these days.  I know this because my very fashionable sister just hung a cool huge robot picture in her dining room.  Trendy or not, for kids, robots are a classic favorite.  They're easy to draw and build, robot characters often have endearing personalities, and they're just plain space-agey cool. Here are my favorite ...

Suddenly, I have an early emergent reader at my house.  He reads wordless picture books to his brother and I can see that little reading spark starting to grow more and more each day.  It's time for an early reader shelf, (or book basket in our case), so he can easily locate books that are just right for him. This post from Booklights, provides ...

If you've got a little one getting ready to start school, and you would like a quick and easy way to document your child's school years, something like this is just the ticket: (image source) School Years: A Family Keepsake of School Memories, is a handy book with a fill-in-the-blank format to record important memories and mementos from each ...