I'm over at Tweetspeak Poetry today, sharing 10 Surprises you can use to help children create a wonderful reading life all their own.... 

In 1999, when my sons were in kindergarten and first grade, their principal dared his students to read one thousand books. Maybe it was ten thousand. I don’t remember anymore, but it was an astronomical number. In return, if they succeeded, he vowed to jump out of an airplane.

Read the rest here: 10 Surprising Things You Can Do to Help a Child Learn to Read. 

Teasing. It happens, but how do we help young children cope with the complex emotions around being teased... and being the one who teases. I'm over on Tweetspeak Poetry today, sharing a story about a doll named Bobbie, some Buzz Lightyear sneakers, and teasing. Come and meet the children, and Bobbie, and learn what a doll can do to help.

Emotional Literacy in the Preschool Classroom

Photo by 55Laney69, Creative Commons license via Flickr.

Block play with any materials that can safely be stacked, layered, lined up, built up, and built outward can foster rich mathematical language as well as dramatic storytelling abilities. 

Children are naturals at identifying unexpected building toys, and if you’ve ever noticed a little one in a restaurant busily arranging salt shakers, sugar packets, and silverware into buildings, barnyards, and busy highway systems, you’ll know what I mean.....

Head on over to Tweetspeak Poetry to read the whole piece! Building Minds: Block Play as a Writing, Thinking, and Math Tool, originally published there on December 18, 2015.