My new favorite picture book easy readers are written by author and illustrator Jan Thomas. Here Comes the Big, Mean Dust Bunny! is the perfect book — rhyming, bold illustrations, and funny as heck! It follows the also hilarious book, Rhyming Dust Bunnies. One dust bunny (the blue one) has rhyming issues — but it turns out he’s... [read more ]

This summer, try telling mixed-up fairy tales!  Recommended for road trips, plane trips, camping trips, bedtime and waiting rooms. From three different fairy tales, pick a character, a setting and a plot.  Put it all together in your own unique way and voila — you have a mixed-up fairy tale.  You are now a storyteller.  For example: -... [read more ]

Artist Date guest post by Mary-Frances Main, writer, crafter, blogger and mama. We’re enjoying a warm summer but spending a lot of it inside in the air conditioning. If you think about it, it’s a lot like being snowed in – but lazier! Of course there are the rainy days, too where you must find something NEW to do around the house. So, why not... [read more ]

Guest post by Melanie Sklarz of A Dose of Creativity. Part II:  Encourage Your Child’s Creativity As I mentioned in my last post (Part I), creativity allows children to develop skills for life. So how can you encourage creativity in your child? First of all, you don’t even have to consider yourself creative. Raising a creative kid is more... [read more ]

Guest post by artist, educator and blogger, Melanie Sklarz. Part I: 3 Reasons for Creativity Did you know that as humans we have the unique ability to make connections between different ideas and things, understand symbols and metaphors, and use our imagination? By tapping into our personal creativity and imagination we help our brain and positively... [read more ]

Her husband got the news last week– cancer.  (Again.)  Their boys are one and four. When she told me, I taught her boys a bad word. Somehow it just slipped out. Sorry. Cancer is scary and big and inconvenient. Not knowing what to do I asked another friend, Michelle, a breast cancer survivor with two young kids. She told me, “Support... [read more ]

Artist Date Guest Post from Debi Huang of Go Explore Nature. I love to seek creative inspiration from nature. Now that I have kids, I encourage them to do the same. Nature provides an endless and ever-changing landscape with an array of free tools and resources right at your fingertips. What better place to enjoy an artist’s date with your kids... [read more ]

Guest post by Maya Bisineer, author, mom and founder of Memetales. I do not recall making up stories until I had my kids. And then, all of a sudden I started making up stories – out of thin air. Well, not really thin air. I think the imagination spark that kids create and  the inspiration they provide really makes us all wildly creative. In... [read more ]

I have fond memories of the wonder and possibility of wordless picture books in a particular inner city classroom in east Denver. Wordless picture books give pre-readers and beginning readers reading success.  Why?  Because  kids are good at “reading the pictures”. They look and tell the story as they see it unfold in the illustrations.... [read more ]

I’ve read about dream boards and never gotten around to making one.  Basically, the idea is to find things that you’d like to see in your life, your future dreams.  But, it is also a cool, creative artist’s date you can have with your kids — although theirs will be less intentional and more whimsical which is wonderful, too! ... [read more ]

Guess what? I WON the Scholastic Blog Award! And I have YOU to thank. Thank you so much for voting for Imagination Soup! I never thought in a million years I would win the Scholastic Award (– but I sure hoped that I would.) It’s still unreal. Here’s what the editor wrote me: Congratulations! You are one of the winners of our 2010... [read more ]

Guest post by Suzanne Santillan author of picture book, Grandma’s Pear Tree. My favorite picture book as a child was “Mrs. Twiggley’s Tree” written by the late Dorothea Warren Fox. It was a quirky tale about a terribly shy woman who lived in a tree with her dog and some visiting bears. During the story Mrs. Twiggley rises above her shyness... [read more ]