comprehension

best of teach mama countdown: #6 -- learning with recyclables
January 7, 2012 No Comment

best of teach mama countdown: #6 — learning with recyclables

One of these days I’m going to share where and how we store the recyclables that we manage to save from the big blue bin over here. But until then, ...

best of teach mama countdown: #9 -- building words, names
January 4, 2012 No Comment

best of teach mama countdown: #9 — building words, names

This post, which rolls in at #9, continues to surprise me with the amount of hits it gets. Maybe it’s the title: word building, name building (and crossing the line). ...

family playing cards: take 'em, make 'em, then play!
December 28, 2011 19 comments

family playing cards: take ‘em, make ‘em, then play!

A few years ago, I burned the midnight oil way too close to the finish line, in an attempt to create Family Playing Cards for Maddy, Owen, and Cora. And ...

learning during read-alouds: non-fiction that WORKS
December 12, 2011 9 comments

learning during read-alouds: non-fiction that WORKS

The first few times Owen had media at school this year, he came home with the most random books. His first book was an Arthur book that we already have ...

magazine activities: creative, crafty, sneaky-learning fun
December 4, 2011 29 comments

magazine activities: creative, crafty, sneaky-learning fun

We are huge magazine fans over here. We love finding them in the mailbox, reading them, playing detective with them, crafting with them, and learning with them.  When they arrive ...

learning during read-alouds: improving fluency
November 16, 2011 10 comments

learning during read-alouds: improving fluency

Fluency is a tricky–but totally important–element of reading comprehension. No. Question. About it. And though research is funny about fluency’s roll in reading comprehension, I’m a firm believer in the ...

candy experiments: playing with color
November 6, 2011 1 comment

candy experiments: playing with color

It’s been a busy few weeks for us, between school, sports, Blogalicious, Halloween, and my parents coming down to spend time with the kids while I attended the NAEYC conference ...

mom's homeroom: ideas, advice, videos, crazy-cool blogs
September 21, 2011 5 comments

mom’s homeroom: ideas, advice, videos, crazy-cool blogs

I am over the moon to share some exciting news: I’ve been working with MSN and Frosted Mini-Wheats for the last few months, writing as a Featured Blogger and doing ...

new for us friday: newmark learning early reading resources (and FOUR giveaways!)
September 9, 2011 90 comments

new for us friday: newmark learning early reading resources (and FOUR giveaways!)

Nearly every parent I know wants to do what he or she can to support early learning for their children. We all want to see our kids grow to enjoy ...

learning during read-alouds: making back-to-school connections
August 29, 2011 9 comments

learning during read-alouds: making back-to-school connections

Today I sent the big O-man off to Kindergarten and Maddy off to second grade, and I absolutely cannot believe it. If I think about it too much, I seriously ...

learning during read-alouds: making predictions
August 8, 2011 4 comments

learning during read-alouds: making predictions

When my family visited our local butterfly garden a few weeks ago, none of us could have predicted that one of the beautiful creatures would have landed on our Owen ...