What better way to learn about courage than from a character in a book! Our Earlybird Winter Literature and Writing and Discovery Guide features Brave Irene by William Steig. Irene demonstrates love and courage by helping her sick mother in…

For an interdisciplinary approach to literature, dive into our Winter Earlybird Literature Discovery Guide that features an eclectic mix of wonderfully told stories. It begins with Snowballs by Lois Ehlert, where your child will discover the wonders of the water cycle…

Sparkle! And while you are at it sparkle and spin. Add capital letters to that phrase and you've got one bling-of-a-book!  Sparkle and Spin: A Book About Words by Ann Rand and Paul Rand is a mid-century treasure that I…

Ready or not… Here come the holidays! Give the gift of bones. Not real bones. Put together a kit containing Qtips, a bottle of white glue, a stack of assorted handcrafted pre-cut imaginary dinosaur skulls, and a stack of black…

I've never understood apple pie and cheddar cheese. For me it's apple pie and books. One day, after a long walk, John sat under a tree to rest—an apple tree, of course. What better way to begin pie making than…

I love fall. I love the sights. I love the scents. I love the texture of leaves crunching beneath my feet. I love the snap of ripe apples being twisted from branches. And I love the stories of fall. With…

I say, "Dissection." And they say, "Yuk."   There are many reasonable reasons to object.  But there are also many reasonable reasons to overcome.    We should first stop to consider that dissection of a frog, for example, provides a…

For the past 30 days we've had bones on our minds. I don't know about your neighborhood, but mine is sporting bones on every lawn! And bones make me think of art. And when I think of art, I think…

Introducing F is for easy. F is for foil! But it's so much more… F is of course for fox, fish, frog. But it's also for feather and fur, a forest on fire, a flock of flamingos. F is a…

“If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost too.”                                                …