Attend a trade show or conference with some of your fellow advocates and/or a parent that is in alignment with your mission. (Maybe one of your new email pen pals will also be attending and you can meet!) Walk the
Recommended Summer Reading for the “People Smart” Child
All ages Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse. By Marilyn Singer. Read the poem in one direction and it tells the folktale from one point of view. Read it in the opposite direction and the point of view is
Touchy Touchy
Watch a well-acted movie scene or play with lots of interaction. Write all of the character names down one column, then make one column for touching and one column for being touched. Have your child make a tally mark by
Animal Antics
Watch a short documentary or TV show about animals (e.g. Meerkat Manor or Wild Kingdom) with the sound off. After it’s over, talk about what your child thought was happening during the episode and the “characters” each animal played. Replay
10 Ideas to Help Kids Understand That Honesty is the Best Policy
(Adapted from a piece on fulltimenanny.com. Used with permission.) One of the greatest challenges that both parents and teachers face is helping kids to learn the value and importance of honesty. Children learn to fudge the truth at a shockingly
Limerick Epitaphs
Talk to your child about what an epitaph is (a brief poem or other writing in praise of a someone who has passed away so that others could get a sense of who the person was). Then read some limericks
Enlightening Film Fest
Watch a movie together, paying close attention to set design, camera angle and lighting. How do the changes in lighting or openness/closed feel of the set change the way your child interprets the emotional state of the actors? Extra Credit: Are
Now You’re Cooking!
It most likely won't take much convincing to get your linguistic child to read or verbally practice language arts over the summer. But you can stretch both your child's verbal and math skills by trying “worldly” recipes together. Whether you
References We Used As We Developed Kidzmet
Genesis of Kidzmet While we started building the current version of Kidzmet in late 2010, the inspiration for the idea actually came from Jen Lilienstein’s undergraduate senior thesis in 1994. Under the direction of Dr. Francesca Cancian at UCI, Jen
Autobiographical Cube
Inspired by an activity in Multiple Intelligences in the Elementary Classroom: A Teachers Toolkit by Susan Baum, Julie Viens and Barbara Slatin. Take a square box (or die) and put 4 of your child’s FAVORITE multiple intelligences on the sides