Jun 26 2016

Highly Recommended: Alternative Education Conference in Portland, Oregon

After five years, the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) is finally bringing their annual conference back to the US West Cost at Portland, Oregon, August 3-7, 2016. Sign up right away if interested. There is not much time left. As one who attended the conference the last time it came to Portland, I can attest […]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,


Jan 09 2016

Fractions Made Visible – and Fun

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons The aptly named website, “Visual Fractions,” shows fraction concepts and operations the way I teach them – from a visual basis. Although it is standard for math curricula to introduce fractions visually, most of them drop the visualization too early. Worse, when many children are just starting to grasp these […]

Tags: , , , ,


Sep 17 2015

New Osmo Game

Osmo®, the educational game platform that incorporates actual, hands-on pieces while giving software-based feedback and enhancements, has a new game for teaching basic math concepts and operations, called “Numbers.” As I mentioned in a previous post, Osmo uses the camera on an iPad to “see” which game pieces the player(s) have put in front of […]

Tags: , , , , , ,


May 12 2015

New Story for Young Children Supports Nature as Natural

Category: Health,Learning,Play,Self-Directed LearningAdmin @ 3:41 pm

To counteract "Nature-Deficit Disorder," a new release from Barefoot Books, Outdoor Opposites, plays with words for opposites while portraying children enjoying the natural world. Macy Koch has written a nice description of the book (for ages 3-7) here. It is good to see a book that reminds children and parents how much fun playing outside […]

Tags: , , ,


May 25 2012

Nature and Children

When I was a child, I roamed the woods and played outdoor games with my friends. Few children today seem to be so lucky. Below are recent articles that point to the lack of outdoor experience among children and why that matters. “Kids These Days: Why Is America’s Youth Staying Indoors?” (Nature Conservancy website) “Only […]


Apr 09 2012

Family Life Expo & Camp Fair

This is the first in what will be a series of articles about science and math education for children, activities, learning philosophy and psychology, and a few summaries and comments about interesting education-related stories from other sources. My assistant Stan Jackson and I enjoyed the March 2012 Family Life Expo & Camp Fair, our first […]

Tags: , , , , , ,