Writing
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National Poetry Month: Online Poetry Resources
Celebrate National Poetry Month! April is National Poetry Month and most classrooms will spend some time exploring poetic expression in one form or another. Children enjoy the rhymes and humor from poets like Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein, but don’t be afraid to branch out to poets like Robert Frost or Louisa May Alcott. There are so many beautiful words to share and poetry makes great bedtime material. April 30th is Poem In Your Pocket Day. Help your child write their favorite poem on a piece of paper and let them carry it with them that day. Encourage them to share their poem with their friends, family,…
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The Importance of Celebrating National Reading Month
Start a routine that inspires them for life: This month is National Reading Month and schools and parents across the country are getting involved in promoting a love of reading in children. I love reading to my daughter and continue to do so even though she can read early chapter books. It is more than reading to her, we enjoy this downtime and pick out books to read together. Young children who read 20 minutes per day scored above the 90th percentile on standardized reading tests.* Take the challenge to read to your child each day, and create a love of reading to last a lifetime. (Source: Cunningham, A.E., &…
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PBS Kids presents Free WordWorld “Appisodes”
PBS KIDS has announced its first “appisodes” app: WordWorld Tales! PBS KIDS’ Emmy Award-winning television series WordWorld presents WordWorld Tales: your destination for exclusive WordWorld Appisodes. WordWorld Tales includes a library of exclusive, touchable story tales that focus on early literacy skills. As children explore, discover, collect and create different parts of each appisode, they create their own learning adventures. This library of exclusive touchable story tales focuses on early literacy skills as children watch words in each story come to life! As children explore, discover, collect and create different parts of each appisode, they create their own learning adventures. I really like that it is so…
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Tech :: The National PTA and LifeLock #ShareAwesome Campaign
Image courtesy of Flickr Sometimes I think about how much the world has changed in just the past five years. My daughter was about two years old when the first iPhone came out and boy did that open up our world! I mean we now had at our fingertips a computer that allowed us to check our emails, Twitter and Facebook pages at any time of the day and Google just about anything we might want to know, Yelp where to eat, etc., etc.! Whereas before I had to wait to come home and check my laptop. I do sometimes think that life has sped up a bit because of this ability to…
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Come Celebrate Penelope’s 3rd Birthday with Us!
It seems like yesterday when I received the email from Lynette Mattke of PicPocket Books and said that they were interested in my children’s picture book, Penelope the Purple Pirate, and would like to make it into an app available on their platform. I was so excited because my dream of creating a children’s picture book and storybook app was finally coming true! You can read more about my journey of becoming a children’s picture book writer in a post I wrote for Moms With Apps. It has been three years since the storybook app became available as an iPad, iPhone and iPod app in iTunes and we wanted to have a little celebration. But at this…
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The Balancing Act of A Work At Home Mom
I am a Work-At-Home-Mom (WAHM). Just being a Stay-At-Home-Mom is a tremendous job, but now that I’ve thrown “Work” into the mix, it’s become an even more tangled web of tightropes to navigate. Some days the chores don’t get done, and sometimes the kids watch a little more television than I’d like, but I know that eventually, we will reap rewards from my work that will enable us to have a fuller, more adventurous life. I started working from home shortly after the birth of my son. I was laid off from my job at a publishing company while I was on maternity, which was really a blessing, as I…
