Guest Posts

One of the many wonderful things about spring is the abundance of spring holidays! As a Hindu I celebrate Holi,but as an American-born, um, Indian-American, I have a somewhat pluralistic approach to celebrating holidays. 🙂 …

This is a delightful and delightfully sing-songy story about a witch who welcomes all who ask for a ride on her broom, and in the end she is repaid for her kindness.

Ah, the lazy, hazy days of summer! So I read a whole slew of summer-themed books to write this post and bizarrely, I ended up most drawn to the older ones (as in published in the late nineties or early two thousands) instead of current ones. But after rereading and evaluating them I realized that theyall depict the valuable theme of being resourceful and using the gifts of the natural world to play and learn. None of the characters enjoy any screen time and barely even play with toys; instead they use their imaginations and what they find outside to make the most of their summer vacations. Wouldn’t we all love to say this about our own kids? 

Or more appropriately, pass on the sugar please!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have always been a sugar fiend. As a child, I was often on the look out for chocolate, be it at school birthdays (where I grew up, kids brought chocolate to class on their birthdays), rummaging through my mum’s purse for a little treat, or just plain old begging for it. The quest for my next sugar high lasted well into my 20s.

And then it happened…

   Summer is here, which is lovely (well, actually it’s a little hot), and as we know most of our kids relish their long-awaited break from school. Of course many of us parents worry that our kids are going to fall behind in their academic progress, forgetting much of what they learned and practiced the year before. Well, I can’t really speak about academic enrichment centers or camps or summer tutoring, but I can give you some good suggestions for helping your kids practice their reading and critical thinking skills. One of the main reasons I loved teaching English Literature was how readily the subject lends itself to teaching critical thinking. Now, through my reading experiences with my preschooler, I’m learning that many of the exercises I used with my high school students work just as well (scaled down, of course) with younger students. Here’s a sample:

Let’s face it ladies, once you have kids you have to sacrifice a lot to raise them right. When they’re newborns, we sacrifice our sleep, our showers, and don’t often…

These are five of my all-time favorite children’s books that are appropriate for older toddlers through preschoolers: The Pout-Pout Fish – by Deborah Diesen, illustrated by Dan Hanna I love The Pout-Pout…