gift and learning
Not Your Usual Teacher Gift Ideas
My feelings on school starting ping back and forth at least 400 times an hour. Summer is the best. Why does it have to end? HOW long until summer ends? Lazy summer days are amazing. Crud. It’s only 8:07 A.M.! 11 hours and 53 minutes until bedtime. I’m soaking up every moment with my babies. You JUST had a snack! And so on and so forth. The one feeling that remains constant is my profound appreciation for the teachers and support staff who teach, nurture, protect and inspire my children. At some point in the year, I know I will be giving a teacher gift or participating in a classroom gift…
Tourist Maps Make Great Wrapping Paper
Monday’s post was a little heavy, emotionally speaking, so let’s reel it back in, shall we? Besides, this blog, similar to the inner workings of my brain, thrives on randomness and abrupt topic changes. Keep up! Keep up! The whiplash is worth it. How many of you have traveled someplace new and picked up a tourist map (or 3 because each of your kids needs their own map even if they ask you to hold it 7.3 seconds later, thank you very much)? *raises hand* Then how many of you have chucked that map(s) in the recycle bin or garbage when you were finished? *raises hand* If one of your tourist maps survives…
Two Books That Made My Eyes Leak
As a general rule of thumb, I’m not a crier. I make exceptions for the occasional sappy movie and anytime my kids are on stage. Oh, and when I was pregnant I could cry during those Coca-Cola commercials with the polar bears. Dang hormones. The point is I don’t remember the last time my kids saw me cry. That’s why it’s a little awkward that the two books that made me cry recently are CHILDREN’S BOOKS that I was reading aloud to my CHILDREN. Oy. On a whim, I picked up A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd while in a bookstore in Corvallis, Oregon. It was on the bookshelf of staff…
Our New Pet
Meet our new pet, a blue whale named Per. Did I have you going there for a second? Okay. It’s not a real pet, but my kids don’t know that. I don’t think. Well, my 9-year-old kind of knows, but she likes to believe, so I’m not going to ruin the fun. A few months ago, in a riveting blog post, I told you about an amazing TED talk I listened to by author Mac Barnett and the children’s book I bought as a result, Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem. I think I mentioned in that previous post there’s a fun surprise under the jacket cover of that book. My kids…
