Celebrate reading and Dr. Seuss’ birthday March 2 with Target and the National Education Association for Read Across America Day. On Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012 from 9 to 11 a.m. Target is partying early for Read Across America Day. Visit Target Saturday morning and you’ll receive a reusable Target bag filled with activities for children,... [read more ]

Kids in upper elementary, ages 8 – 12, read middle grade books. I’ve been reading some great ones and have finally gotten a chance to review the best of the newly published middle grade books. (Look at these piles! And these are just my favorites, not everything I’ve read . . .) The Grave Robber’s Apprentice by Allan Stratton Our... [read more ]

How was your week!? Mine was a whirlwind of freelance assignments and new projects. It’s exciting to reach a tipping point. In fact, many of you have written to ask me how I transitioned from teacher to writer so I will blog about that soon.  Hope you find these articles useful — enjoy the weekend! Won’t someone come out and play? (my... [read more ]

Once kids take off in reading, they’re dying to read chapter books. The best part about a beginning chapter book is that your kids are reading, and feel successful. The stories are cute and are accompanied by plenty of illustrations to support the reader. Here are some of my recently published favorites. Kylie Jean chapter book series Written... [read more ]

I’ve been stockpiling books to review, apparently the pile has gotten so far ahead of me that I can’t get all the great books into one post. (Or the post would be a novel.) So, for now, I’ve picked my favorites of my favorite picture books to share and will get to the others soon. A Few Blocks by Cybele Young Older sister, Viola,... [read more ]

guest post by Patty O’Brien Novak, children’s author, engineer, educational consultant/trainer and speaker. With Sesame Street’s recent change in focus to add more engineering to their programming (yeah!), I want to share an engineering activity you can do at home with your preschooler (and older children, too.)  Envelope engineering was inspired... [read more ]

How was your week? Are you ready for some good weekend reading? But first, my new favorite bumper sticker — I found it at a bookstore this week. Asperger’s is Over-Diagnosed? You Try Getting Your Kid Evaluated by Joslyn Gray / Babble Have you read the news that Asperger’s is most likely going to no longer be a diagnosis for kids? “My... [read more ]

I’m blogging over at Parenting.com for Class Notes in addition to my blogging here at Imagination Soup and my other freelance work. If you want to keep up with my blog posts at Parenting, you’ll need to subscribe to the RSS feed. I realize that over the over 1,000 of you that subscribe in RSS already know what I’m talking about... [read more ]

I LOVE heart mapping for Valentine’s Day but I also love it for pushing through a writing block. What to write about is a very common (and frustrating) challenge for young writers (and us old writers, too.) Georgia Heard suggests heart mapping as a way to generate ideas for the challenge of what to write. Once kids create a heart map, they... [read more ]

Knock, knock! Who’s there? Peas! Peas who? Peas read a new Valentine’s Day picture book. (. . . yeah, I probably need to skip the joke writing . . .) New Valentine’s Day Picture Books: Mr. Prickles A Quill-Fated Love Story by Kara LaReau, illustrated by Scott Magoon Mr. Prickles and Mrs. Pointypants learn a valuable lesson about... [read more ]

Rachelle at TinkerLab, challenged bloggers to be creative with paper bags. Of course, I wanted to take a literacy angle and made a paper bag book that you can easily make, too. I found inspiration from That Artist Woman. DIY Paper Bag Book Supplies paper bags (lunch sack size) stapler paints (tempora) paint brushes flower pictures pens drawing... [read more ]

I’m giving Mr. Groundhog the whole week. One should have more than just a day, right? We don’t get groundhogs in Colorado; but we are getting 11 inches of snow so far today, with more predicted. Snow day!!!! (Everyone does a happy dance!) Here are some of my favorite links for the week. PBS Lab  Learning, games, science, technology, and... [read more ]