Category Archives: Reading

Origami Boat Race

Posted on May 16, 2013 | 5 comments

My family has long been fans of making and sailing paper boats, an idea we got from our beloved book, H.A. Rey’s Curious George Rides a Bike. In the book, George secures a paper route, which leads him to make and sail a whole flotilla of folded-newspaper boats. Over the years, we’ve taken our origami boats down to a local creek, where they indeed sailed along once released, on the gently flowing spring stream. We were thrilled to learn that our local Mill Valley Public Library was teaching kids how to make their own origami boats (which they cleverly dipped in wax), before holding a boat race in the local creek.

What better way to celebrate Children’s Book Week than by making a version of Curious George’s paper boat and joining local children in releasing the boats into a creek for a race?

Follow these directions to make your own paper boat.

This activity was adapted from Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World, which contains 300+ fun family activities.

You might also like:

How To: Make a Paper Boat
Celebrating 100 Years of the Mill Valley Libary
Rich in Kindness, Poor in Money: All-of-a-Kind Family Children’s Book

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

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Posted in Community, Crafts, Nature, Reading, The Great Outdoors

Tagged Children's Book Week, Children's Books, Craft Tutuorial, Curious Goerge Rides a Bike, Kids Activities, Kids Crafts, Mill Valley, Mill Valley Library, Mill Valley Public Library, Newspaper Boat, Old Mill Creek, Origami Boat, Paper Boat, Paper Boat Tutuorial, Tutorial

Small Wonders: Early Childhood Activities for a Greener Earth

Posted on May 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m so pleased that Patty Born Selly, educational expert and consultant at Small Wonders, parent, Small Wonders blogger, and long-time advocate for early childhood nature play, has written a beautiful, inspiring and very thorough book, Early Childhood Activities for a Greener Earth.

After making the case for nature fun and offering tips for overcoming common obstacles to getting kids outside for exploration and play (“the kids are too wild”, “this is a logistical nightmare”, “we don’t have a nature area”), Selly dives into instructions for countless fun activities that inspire children’s exploration and care of nature and help them learn about weather, air, water, food, health and reuse. Each activity lists a recommended minimum age and offers detailed descriptions, as well as tips for further exploration. Many are very simple to do, such as a Sound Walk, a Color Search, a Seed Sort, or a Puddle Hunt, while offering windows to deep exploration and fun.

A few other wonderful projects include a Water Cycle Garden, in which kids create a greenhouse to observe the movement of water through plants and soil. Wind Ribbons, Kites, Rocket Balloons, and Paper Pinwheels are among the activities that help children explore air. Sunshine Sculptures, Shadow Tracing, and Raindrop Rainbows help children explore sun and rain. I love the Scent Chase, in which children experience their senses of smell with scent jars. I also love the Soap Making activity, which utilizes the melt-and-pour method and is part of a group of activities designed to help children think about healthy choices in cleaning and personal products.

Each activity includes the national science education standards that that activity meets. Each chapter includes information about the theme (such as “Weather, Climate and Energy”) suggestions for teaching and discussion of the impact of (weather) on people and of people on (weather), so that readers and the children in their lives can get a very clear understanding of the Earth’s ecosystem and their place within it. This is a very thorough, inspiring and fun book that will help parents, teachers, youth leaders and others spark children’s curiosity about and knowledge of the natural world.

Redleaf Press is offering a 30% discount on Early Childhood Activities for a Greener Earth from now through June 30, 2013. To take advantage of this deal, follow this link and enter the coupon code GREENEARTH.

Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book Makes You Want to Go Out and Play

Posted on April 8, 2013 | 2 comments

“Nature is a destination,” write Stacy Tornio and Ken Keffer, the authors of The Kids Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up. “But you don’t have to travel anywhere to find it. Just open the door and step outside.” That idea of fun and adventure in “nearby nature” infuses their entire delightful new book. This is an especially important concept at a time when kids are spending much more time with electronics than they are in the natural world. The Kids Outdoor Adventure Book offers a perfect counter-balance to indoor time, with activities that are easy for even the busiest families to enjoy.

The book is wonderfully, and helpfully, arranged by seasons (each of which is declared “the best season”.) Each season features an array of fun outdoor activities, so that a reader might be inspired to tap a maple tree or find a turtle in spring, catch a firefly or find fossils in summer, go owling or conquer a corn maze in fall, or go ice fishing or whittle a branch in winter. In addition to all the activities, which are presented in a fun check-list fashion and have guidelines as to the “adventure scale” of each one, there are plenty of larger-scale projects, outdoor games, destinations, and foods to make, so that families and others can be kept very busy doing the book’s activities over many years.

The Kids Outdoor Adventure Book is very rich. It features a range of activities, from those that are simple to do, but might have escaped notice, such as “Roll down a hill like a log” (something my daughter loved to do) to more exotic ideas like “Go spelunking” in a cave. Rachel Riordan’s extremely cute illustrations complement the breadth of ideas in this jam-packed, fun-filled book. Tornio and Keffer, who are judges in the 3rd annual ClifKID Backyard Game of the Year Contest, have captured the joy of being alive and the rhythm of the seasons and the natural world. Readers of this book will surely be inspired to open the door to their own outdoor adventures.

Want to get your own autographed copy of the Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book? Enter to win the CLIFKid ZBar and book giveaway.

New Book Helps Families Slow Down

Posted on March 5, 2013 | 2 comments

Many of us want more joy and connection in our family and daily lives. We often don’t quite know how to achieve those things, and the process of even beginning to do so can seem daunting. Enter Slow Family Living: 75 Simple Ways to Slow Down, Connect, and Create More Joy, the beautiful new book from Slow Family Living co-founder Bernadette Noll.

Just reading Bernadette’s book makes me feel calm and confident that I can make the small changes necessary to have a more fulfilling family life. Her voice is reasoned and experienced, and her suggestions are each presented in short chapters that describe an activity or practice that can result in greater family closeness. The first step, according to Bernadette? Ask yourself and your family:

Is this working for us?

So often, in family life, we do things because they’ve been declared a “tradition” (Bernadette offers a funny tale about this), or because we feel obligated to take on an activity or do something the standard way. Once you’ve determined whether something is working or not, you can set about changing what needs to be changed.

The activities in the book range from practices like pausing, expressing appreciation, active listening, and letting weekends be half-full, to ideas for keeping family life fun like spontaneous game nights, family journals and billboards, lemonade stands, and making stuff together, which is the title and topic of Bernadette’s fantastic first book about art as a means of expression, fun and family and community bonding.

Community bonds also figure in this book, and I love the ideas for slowing as a community by having dinners together and playing sports together, as alternatives to every-family-for-themselves, on one hand, and over-organized league sports, on the other. In both cases, Bernadette illustrates how her community came together to provide something richer, and more fun, than the traditional offerings did. The community dinners involved various children and families in a novel way. The family “sports league” alleviated excess driving to various sports events for different members of the family and provided space for everyone to play together, adults included.

You will get a lot of ideas from Slow Family Living, both big-picture and everyday, that will make you pause and reflect, and will help you lead a more connected and joyful family life.

Why Finland’s Education System is the Best in the World

Posted on February 26, 2013 | 7 comments

No Child Left Behind, with its accelerated education practices and emphasis on standardized testing, seems to be leaving many American children behind much of the industrialized world, according to a new global table of education, produced for the Intelligence Unit of The Economist. The U.S. is ranked 17th in education, far below first-place Finland and many other countries. Read why Finland has the best education system in the world.

What are their secrets?

For one, Finnish children don’t start school until age 7. (Waldorf education advocates that children not read until 7.) Phenomenally, Finnish students only take one standardized test, and that is at the age of 16. By that age, a typical American child will have taken dozens of standardized tests, and will have spent much educational time preparing for them, at the expense of other learning and discovery. Finnish elementary school students receive 75 minutes of recess per day, as opposed to an average of 27 minutes in the U.S. There is very little homework.

Education in Finland is 100% state subsidized, as is teacher training. The results of all this attention to teacher support and developmentally appropriate learning, free time and play? 93 percent of Finns graduate from high school, a figure that is 17.5 percent higher than that in the U.S.

Some might point to Finland’s smaller size or relative homogeneity as possible reasons for their success, but their success is notably higher than other Scandinavian countries, which have similar demographics and diversity. 30 U.S. states have populations equal to or less than Finland’s, at 5.5 million.

This article from The Atlantic notes that Finland’s acclaimed education system owes much to the idea of economic equity.

So how does the U.S. educational system stack up against that of other countries? According to a 2011 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), American 15-year-olds scored at the international average of industrialized nations in science and reading, and below the international average in math.

The above article goes on to note that high-performing countries recruit and retain talented teachers. It noted some interesting cultural differences, as well. For instance, Japanese students are encouraged to struggle through problems more than American students are. According to UCLA psychology professor James Stigler, who studied the Japanese educational system:

American students “aren’t socialized to struggle hard. They’re socialized to put their hands up and say, ‘I don’t know.’ ” While Japanese parents would be inclined to tell a child’s teacher, “Thank you for helping my kid struggle,” American parents are more inclined to say, “Why are you torturing my kid?”

That’s a very interesting point that speaks to many parents’ well-meaning, but sometimes misguided, attempts to rush in and fix perceived problems, a habit that ultimately robs their children of essential problem-solving skills and the mastery and confidence that come with them.

The original Economist report quoted above makes some of the same key recommendations about economic success in its Five lessons for education policymakers:

There are no magic bullets
Respect teachers
Culture can be changed
Parents are neither impediments to nor saviors of education
Educate for the future, not just the present

And this comes from NYU Research Professor of Education and Former U.S. Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, in her review of Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? in the New York Review of Books:

U.S. policymakers have turned to market-based solutions such as “tougher competition, more data, abolishing teacher unions, opening more charter schools, or employing corporate-world management models.” By contrast, Finland has spent the past forty years developing a different education system, one that is focused on improving the teaching force, limiting student testing to a necessary minimum, placing responsibility and trust before accountability, and handing over school- and district-level leadership to education professionals.

The last word about our (relatively unsuccessful) competition-driven, test-obsessed educational model will have to go to Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years of teaching experience:

If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human aspect.

These are Top 20 Countries in the World, in Education, as ranked by the global table of education:

Finland
South Korea
Hong Kong
Japan
Singapore
UK
Netherlands
New Zealand
Switzerland
Canada
Ireland
Denmark
Australia
Poland
Germany
Belgium
USA
Hungary
Slovakia
Russia

More reading (some of these are referenced above):

Why Finland’s Unorthodox Education System is the Best in the World, Business Insider

The Pearson Report for the Economist

What Americans Keep Ignoring about Finland’s School Success, The Atlantic

Schools We Can Envy, New York Review of Books

From Finland, An Intriguing School Model, New York Times

Why are Finland’s Schools Successful, Smithsonian

UK Education Sixth in Global Ranking, BBC News

Great Ideas from Finnish Schools, Two in the Middle

American Academy of Pediatrics Advocates Recess for Kids, Slow Family Online and Christian Science Monitor

How to Prepare Kids for Kindergarten? Let the Play, Slow Family Online

Pre-school and Kindergarten Graduations: Too Much Too Fast, Slow Family Online and Christian Science Monitor

Photos: wstryder, edushyster

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Posted in Play, Reading, Slow News

Tagged Education, Finland, Finland Education, Finland School, Finnish Schools, Free Play, Global Education, Global Education Comparisons, Global Education Rankings, Homework, Play, Recess, School, School Testing, Top 20 Countries Education, US Education

Use Pinterest Savvy to Grow Your Business

Posted on February 25, 2013 | 2 comments

Pinterest is the fastest growing social media network, with 23 million users worldwide. Pinterest’s referral traffic beats Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn — combined. In addition, it’s full of beautiful and inspiring graphics and it’s fun to use. If you’re not using Pinterest for your business, you should be.

Don’t know where to start? Melissa Taylor’s extremely thorough Pinterest Savvy: How I Got 1 Million+ Followers (Strategies, Plans, and Tips to Grow Your Business with Pinterest) will help.

Taylor, who blogs at Imagination Soup, has a whopping 1 million-plus Pinterest followers. She enjoys the platform immensely and shares her wisdom and tips throughout her book, which is aimed at all levels of Pinterest users, from complete novices to the more advanced.

Did I mention that Pinterest Savvy is exceedingly thorough? Pinterest Savvy covers everything, from the basics of pinning and organizing boards, to etiquette and suggested sources. Pinterest Savvy really gets juicy where Melissa shares some of the practices that have earned her over 1 million followers, like tips for timing pins, vetting pins and writing descriptions. And she outlines an all-important aspect that many people neglect, on all social media platforms — how to form community. She also lists lots of great pinners who you will want to follow immediately, too.

While Pinterest Savvy is complete, the information is presented in sections that are easy to digest and understand. The layout and graphics are as visual and pleasing as the best Pinterest boards. Anyone intent on using Pinterest to grow a following will benefit from Pinterest Savvy.

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Posted in Design, Reading

Tagged Branding with Pinterest, How to Use Pinterest, Imagination Soup, Marketing with Pinterest, Melissa Taylor, Pinterest, Pinterest for Brands, Pinterest for Business, Pinterest Tips, Social Media

How to: Make a Paper Boat

Posted on February 5, 2013 | 10 comments

My family first got the idea to make a paper boat from our beloved book, H.A. Rey’s Curious George Rides a Bike, in which sweet and loveable George secures a paper route, which leads him to make and sail a whole flotilla of folded-newspaper boats. Wondering if a newspaper boat could really float, we got out some old newspaper, folded it into boats using the directions in Curious George, and took our boats down to a local creek, where they indeed sailed along once released, on a gently flowing spring stream. You can make your own boat, using any kind of paper.

You’ll need:

A sheet of any type of paper, roughly the same scale as an 8 ½” by 11” sheet
Adhesive tape, optional

Place the paper on a surface the long way, and fold it in half, top to bottom.

Fold the paper in half again.

Unfold the fold you just made.

With the creased side on top, fold both top corners in towards the center crease. This leaves a triangle shape, with a rectangular bar along the bottom.

Fold the bottom rectangles up on each side, creasing at the bottom of the triangle shape.

Place a thumb and forefinger on the inside of the shape, at the center of each triangle, and carefully, completely open out the shape from the middle.

Keep opening the shape until it flattens again into a perfect square. (Your two fingers should now be on opposite sides of the square.)

Lay the square like a diamond. The side pointing up should be the one that doesn’t have any other folds over it.

Fold each side in half, width-wise, bringing each bottom triangle up to the point at the top.

Place a thumb and forefinger into the center of each triangle, as before. This time, as you pull the bottom opening apart, use the other hand to stretch out the two top triangles from the other side of the figure, so that they become the bow and stern (back and front) of the boat.

Flatten the inner triangle slightly to create a sail.

If you like, you can line the bottom of the boat with adhesive tape, which may make it more waterproof and help it float longer.

Float your boat in a bathtub, creek or other body of water!

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman and Michael Lipman

Illustration by Margaret and H.A. Rey

Join me for more activities at the Family Book Festival at Jump Into a Book

See boats in action in an Origami Boat Race!

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Posted in Crafts, Reading

Tagged Children's Books, Craft Tutuorial, Curious George Rides a Bike, Kids Activities, Kids Crafts, Newspaper Boat, Origami Boat, Paper Boat, Paper Boat Tutuorial, Tutorial

New Bookboard App Helps Inspire a Lifelong Love of Reading

Posted on January 30, 2013 | 4 comments

Our whole family adores books. Especially children’s books. And with that comes delightful, but groaning, shelves (and piles and boxes and an attic full) of books.

What if there were a way to cut down on the volume but still enjoy current and classic children’s books that were available as easily as streamed movies, that challenged our children to grow and discover new titles, and that made books as accessible, interactive and fun to use as the latest game app? There is. Bookboard brings you all of the above and more in a well-designed new system that lets kids read books and participate in fun online progress metrics that they unlock through their reading achievements. Book titles are based on personalized suggestions and are immediately available for download, the same way Netflix movies are available for screening.

Parents can also follow their children’s progress and help them find new titles. Bookboard encourages many of the traits that help create lifelong readers, even among those who are reluctant. These include variety and choice of materials, social interaction, and both new and familiar experiences.

On a test-run, we found Bookboard’s books and graphics attractive and its interface appealing and easy to use.

As a book-loving mom in a family of lifelong readers (hence the groaning bookshelves), I’m thrilled that there are new opportunities for new generations to enjoy reading and books in a way that is comfortable, natural and appealing. Neither Michael nor I would give back any of the hours that we spent with Anna, reading her multiple bedtime stories night after night. The time we spent reading together helped create an intense bond that lasts to this day, a bond due both to our physical closeness and to the wonderful books we all discovered together and still talk about.

Bookboard is free for a limited time. A subscription service is planned.

Sign up and read a book from Bookboard between now and February 11, 2013, and you’ll be entered in a giveaway for an iPad Mini. When you sign up, you’ll have access to Bookboard (and their current slate of titles) free of charge for one month. See Bookboard for rules and details.

This post is sponsored by Bookboard. The opinions expressed are my own.

Images: Paper Tigers, Bookboard

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Posted in Giveaway, Reading, To Market

Tagged Book Apps, Bookboard, Children's Books, Early Childhood, ipad books, Lifelong Readers, Literacy, Netflix, Reluctant Readers, Startups, Tablet Books, Technology

‘Fed Up with Frenzy’ Blog Tour Coming to a Screen Near You

Posted on July 30, 2012 | 9 comments

As many of you know, my book, Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World, will be out August 1.

I am very eager for you to learn about all the fun ideas and projects I’ve collected to help your family slow down and reconnect. To do that, I’ve assembled an all-star team of bloggers to join the Fed Up with Frenzy Blog Tour to share their thoughts about the book and some of the ideas and projects inside.

Here is a partial list of bloggers and dates on the Fed Up with Frenzy Blog Tour. Please visit their sites for reviews, activities, tips and book giveaways! (And also, because they’re all wonderful sites with great information about kids, crafts, gardening, nature, free play, education, slowing down, creativity and family fun!)

August 1 Power of Slow Review

August 2 Grass Stain Guru Guest post

August 4 Exploring Portland’s Natural Areas Review

August 7 Red, White & Grew Guest post

August 9 Slow Family Living Review/Activity

August 15 Fun Orange County Parks Review

August 17 Let Children Play Guest post

August 22 Jen Spends Review

August 24 Becentsable Review

August 27 Real Moms Love to Eat Recipe

August 28 A Place Like This Review

September 5 Rhythm of the Home Guest post

September 5 Mummy’s Product Reviews Review

September 6 Jump into a Book Review

September 6 Modern Day Moms Review

September 7 7 on a Shoestring Review

September 8 Dad of Divas Review

September 10 Go Explore Nature Interview

September 12 Active Kids Club Podcast!

September 13 Love, Life, Family and Then Some Review

September 14 Go Explore Nature Activity

September 14 Adventures of the Alpha Mom Review

September 15 What Mama Wants Review

September 18 Traveling Mel Review/Activity

September 19 Allison Abramson Review

September 20 Imagination Soup Review

September 21 Chi-Town Cheapskate Review

September 21 Frugal Mama Review

September 24 Go Gingham Review

September 24 Adventures of the Alpha Wife Review

September 25 Play Equals Peace Interview

September 26 A Little Yumminess Review/Recipe

September 27 Bright Copper Kettles Review/Craft

September 28 Parent Palace Review

October 1 Noble Mother Review

October 2 Frugal Mama Guest post

October 3 A Little Bite of Life Review

October 4-18 The WELL Inkwell Online Discussion

October 8 Love, Live, Grow Review

October 12 Skinny Mom Review

October 15-24 Erin Goodman 10-day Family Recharge

October 17 Erin Goodman Review

October 20 I’m a Teacher, Get me Outside Here Review

November 14 Mama Scout Review

November 15 Frog Mom Blog Review and Activity

November 27 Salt and Nectar Web chat

December 4 Bliss Beyond Naptime Audio, Frenzy-Free Holiday
Plus Video, Simplicity Parenting with Rhythm

December 7 Polliwog on Safari Review

January 3 Non-Toxic Kids Review

July 27 Hill Babies Review

Dates To Be Announced (this site will update):

Life as Mom

Nature Moms

Ask a Nanny

The Movement Academy Project

Connecting Family and Seoul

Would you like to join the blog tour? Please give me a shout. I’d be thrilled to have you join.

Blog tour badge by my talented husband, and the book’s illustrator, Lippy.

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Posted in Community, Crafts, Deck Garden, Giveaway, Holidays, Home Ec., Lost Arts, Nature, Play, Reading, Recipes, Seasons, Slow News, Sustainability, The Great Outdoors, To Market

Tagged Fed Up With Frenzy, Food Blogs, Frenzied Famiies, Frenzy Book, Garden Blogs, Helicopter Parents, Mom Blogs, Overscheduled Children, Overscheduled Kids, Slow Family Living, Slow Family Movement, Slow Family Online, Susan Sachs Lipman, Suz Lipman

New Book: Playborhood: Turn Your Neighborhood into a Place for Play

Posted on May 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

Parent and play advocate Mike Lanza is not one to move into a new neighborhood and hope for the best for his kids. The author of the new book Playborhood describes in great detail his philosophy and the elbow-grease steps he undertook to create a life for his kids, and those who live in proximity, that more closely mirrors the kind of playful, neighborhood-based childhood kids had 30-40 years ago than the sedentary, living-room-based one that many have today.

Lanza accomplishes this with great humor and plenty of vivid examples of people reclaiming their community spaces for play and gathering, from inner city Bronx, to an apartment-complex courtyard in CA, to a formerly faceless intersection in Portland, OR. As such, his can-do spirit is not only infectious, but is backed up with specific how-tos, so a reader could turn a driveway into a giant game board, or a yard into a nature or other playscape where kids will want to come play. A self-proclaimed neighborhood play evangelist, Lanza and his wife and three sons are walking the walk (and playing the play), and clearly influencing others to come along and have fun.

Playborhood also explores the larger issues of what makes a community work, from home and neighborhood design (think front porches and calm streets, for starters) to human behavior, such as having block parties and community dinners, and giving kids a little room to roam.

Lanza has created a terrific and heartfelt blueprint that should result in safer neighborhoods, more joyous and cohesive families and communities and, ultimately, more kids getting out to play.

Photos: Playborhood

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Category Archives: Reading

Origami Boat Race

Small Wonders: Early Childhood Activities for a Greener Earth

Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book Makes You Want to Go Out and Play

New Book Helps Families Slow Down

Why Finland’s Education System is the Best in the World

How to: Make a Paper Boat

New Bookboard App Helps Inspire a Lifelong Love of Reading

‘Fed Up with Frenzy’ Blog Tour Coming to a Screen Near You

New Book: Playborhood: Turn Your Neighborhood into a Place for Play

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Subscribe to My Blog via Email

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