One of the most critical vocabulary elements to “nail down” when learning American English (or any culture’s language) is the use of idioms. An idiom, as defined by dictionary.com, is a group of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from
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
Forces of Nature
Inspired by 200+ Active Learning Strategies by James A. Bellanca Play some nature-based music (we recommend trying some of George Winston’s Seasons based piano solos from the early 1980s on YouTube). Have your child pretend to be either the forces
Musical Musings
Listen to a piece of music from a ballet, then have your child draw a picture or make a model of the scene they believe is occurring at that point in the ballet. Have your child describe the picture (or
Tongue Twisters
Adapted from a childrens-choice.org activity recommendation (used with permission) Depending on your child’s language level, place varying words on post-its on a twister board, then place the word types on the different spinner sections (e.g. short vowel/long vowel, verb tense,
Dance Party!
Choreograph a routine to the chorus of a favorite piece of music and teach the whole family the dance. It’ll be like your own personal macarena! Anytime you hear it on the radio, family members listening have to do the
How Playing Angry Birds Could Make Your Child Smarter
Have you noticed that kids nowadays are always glued to their phones or playing video games instead of going outside and hanging out with the neighborhood children? It seems that good ol’ fashioned games like duck, duck, goose are a
Shape Poetry
A shape poem is one that describes an object and is written in the shape of the object. To get your child’s creative juices flowing, you can look at examples of shape poetry here. Next, have your child pick an object
Sensory Sensitivities
Visit different outdoor environments—e.g. the playground, a field, the woods, school, your backyard, a community garden, the zoo, the beach—or even just the same one at different times of day with your child and tune into your senses. What does
Timing Is Everything
Take advantage of your intrapersonally intelligent child's goal-oriented nature and take a look at what was expected of your child in the math realm during their last quarter of school and what lies ahead in the first quarter of the