Daddy Mojo used to teach. Being an ex educator he’s interested in many things about education, such as teaching policies, best practices and bureaucracy.
Go to any children’s museum and they’re likely to have some sort of steel plate on the wall with magnetic running boards for balls or marbles. Tumble Trax from Learning Resources is essentially the same version of those, just scaled down slightly for players at home. This is an activity that can keep kids engaged for hours, watching the marbles fall prey to gravity before being captured by magnetic boards.
Continue reading Tumble Trax, from Learning Resources, magnetic marble review
I dread the day when our children’s homework gets too difficult for me to assist with. That was my fear with STEM Robot Mouse Coding Activity Set by Learning Resource. I do not know how to code and here we have a children’s coding activity set. Do not obsess over the term ‘coding’ in this case. On the first page of the directions it states that all coding does is transforms information into a form that a computer can understand. After a few minutes with Colby, the programmable Robot Mouse adults will understand how to make it work and so will your children.
Yes, after showing our 4 year old how to program Colby to find the mouse he could do it on his own. It’s not because the activity set is simple by any means, it’s as complex as you want to make it as you create mazes of all sorts of turns, cubby holes and more for the cheese to hide in.
Continue reading STEM Robot Mouse Coding Activity Set review
STEM is the buzzword that parents hear in regards to their child’s education. It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. These are the building blocks for the jobs that will be in demand when they’re entering the job force in 15+ years. STEM Simple Machines is a learning activity set from Learning Resources with 10 various STEM things to get their young minds thinking about these things.
Continue reading Learning Resources STEM Simple Machines review
Somewhere between the written version of National Treasure, The Game, Goonies and Sherlock lies Secrets of the Seven: The Eureka Key. This book is intended for middle school, each chapter is about 12 pages long and it’s the best ‘children’s’ book we’ve read this year. It manages to take the nuggets that we loved in similar books and combines them into a full-fledged multi arc story that will run through seven books.
Continue reading Secrets of the Seven: The Eureka Key review
Is Beard In A Box the story of a boy who wants a beard or a dad who has a beard? In a tangential way it could be about classic television advertising, but more on that in a moment. Beard in a Box starts with a young boy talking about how cool his dad is. We see images of the dad being active and cool while his son realizes the source of his coolness-his beard!
Continue reading Beard in a Box grows on you from the get go
He Named Me Malala is the story of Malala, the young girl that was shot by the Taliban for speaking out about the rights of girls to go to school. That is the story that the public knows-and every bit of that is true. In the documentary He Named Me Malala, airing commercial free on National Geographic Channel, Monday, February 29 at 8PM ET we learn the details about her life prior to the attack, her recovery, home life and her desire to get every girl (in the world) into the class room.
This documentary is can’t-turn-away gripping. Part of that is accomplished by the content of the story, in addition to the way that the film was created.
Continue reading He Named Me Malala, well crafted film with details you think you know
We were compensated for this post. All thoughts are our own and education rocks. Fractals are not something that Jim Henson created in the 80’s. Our 6 year old just started learning about fractals. I’ve been calling a fractal a Rorschach Test for ages, so his kindergarten teacher just taught me something too. Summer camp has come a long way since I was a kid also. Now summer camps teach real skills that kids can apply to subjects they’re curious about or things that they want to become; a great example of these are the Summer Academy Camps at UGA.
Continue reading The Summer Academy Camps at UGA, real fun for middle and high students
Jules Archer is apparently quite the force in non-fiction books for young people. During his lifetime he published over 70 books. We read Jungle Fighters recently and loved it. The way that Archer presented the story of defending New Guinea was approachable and one that young readers could latch onto. With They Had A Dream he writes about four influential leaders of the civil rights movement. Frederick Douglas, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X are written about in this engaging and accessible book.
Continue reading They Had A Dream, black American history for YA
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