With 4th of July quickly approaching, Canada Day just past and Bastille Day next week, it seems that people the world over are celebrating citizenship. Play some national anthems with your child and read the english versions of the lyrics
Secret Hideout
Go to a nearby “wild” space with a few of your child’s friends and help the kids create a “secret hideout” solely from the trees, rocks, branches, etc. Show the kids how they can not only use the hideout for
Be Playful
Have your child become a playwright. Take his/her natural gift for language and storytelling and apply it to playwriting. Creating dialogue, imagining character motivations and developing story arcs will help your child strengthen interpersonal smarts in a way that’s comfortable for
The Way You Make Me Feel
Play different classical music pieces by different composers. How does the music make your child feel? What about each piece makes him/her feel that way? Instruments used? Chord progressions? Tempo? Melody? Harmonies? Extra Credit: Look up what the composer intended the piece
“Uno Más” Game Repurposing Post
For those of you who have enjoyed playing our repurposed Candy Land and Twister games, here’s one for another game you probably have in your home that may or may not be collecting dust. UNO! Take the subjects in which
Senza Voce Video
Watch a short film or movie scene that your child hasn’t seen before with the sound off. Can s/he tell what was happening with Character X in the scene? How did they feel? How about Character Y? What about their faces,
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
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
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
Forgoing Fear of Failure
In an era of teaching to the test in school and avoiding mistakes at all costs, one of the most important things we need to teach our children these days is that failure in-and-of-itself is not a negative thing. It’s