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Was the bear cold? Originally uploaded by teachergal “Proceed to the first landing,” I told my Assembly Line Managers once I saw that my class was ready to leave the lunch room. I saw a big bump under one of my student’s coats, which she was holding [...]

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From an Early Childhood Educator:

Today at circle time we talked about love. I asked the children, "What is love?" Here are some of their answers.
Love is....

• when you love a girl and you buy her a Sleeping Beauty dress.
• when you buy the boy you love shaving cream.
• when you kiss a bunch.
• when you put on a ring and kiss.
• when Mommy and Daddy watch Monsters Inc. with me.
• a sleepover with my brother.
• a snuggle with my mommy.
• love is when your heart gets happy.

I also asked, "What does love feel like?"

• It feels good...really good!
• It feels like a happy heart that is smiling.

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The last TedTalk to make a big impression on the home education blogs and groups was Ken Robinson's, on how schools educate children to become good workers rather than creative thinkers.

The next TedTalk to start making the rounds and already making a splash is Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do by Gever Tulley of The Tinkering School, a summer program to help kids ages seven to 17 learn to build things. The talk comes from Tulley's book in progress, Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do; click the book link and you'll find some of Tulley's labels which should be familiar to Make fans; we here at Farm School are always keen on subversive labels and stickers. As I once quoted Charles Darwin,

"Doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life as one can, in any likelihood, pursue."

Gever Tulley and Matt Hern, author of Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn't Always Better (and whom I wrote about here) certainly seem to be on the same wavelength.

Oh -- those five (really six) things? Not including playing with power tools at age two, which Tulley mentions at the beginning of his talk (and one of these days I'll have to write about my daycare program for Laura when I was pregnant with Daniel; it consisted of sending Laura to work with Tom, her father the builder, six days a week to build a house for a client. Power tools, scaffolding, ladders, and openings to the basement without stairs, were a given. Needless to say, they're all whizzes with power tools by now.)

1. Play with fire

2. Own a pocket knife (better yet, two or three or four, one for each pair of pants)

3. Throw a spear (or a paper airplane, or a baseball)

4. Deconstruct appliances (Tulley suggests a dishwasher, but radios and toasters are great good fun, and if you don't have a dead one of your own, you can find them cheap and ailing at your local Goodwill or Salvation Army store)

5. Break the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (which we apparently do routinely)

6. Drive a car (or truck or tractor if you have no cars about)

Some helpful related links

Interview with Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept

Kitbashing in the homeschool with Willa at Every Waking Hour and Mama Squirrel at Dewey's Tree House

GeekDad, where I first read last week about Gever Tulley's TedTalk

Boing Boing

Make Magazine and Maker Faire (where the motto is "Build, Craft, Hack, Play, Make")

Make Blog

Craft Magazine

Craft Blog

And, of course, the usual Farm School ramblings about childhood fun, danger, acceptable risk, responsibility, and independence.

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This came across my Google Alerts, and strikes me as worth reprinting. From David Phillips, the publisher of The Spring Grove Herald in Minnesota (additional links are mine, not Mr. Phillips'): PUBLISHER'S NOTEBOOK: Do children need a manual for childhood? by David Phillips As the Christmas shopping season kicked off a few weeks ago, I recommended buying a book as a gift. That's because,

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Devon T, an early childhood teacher in Japan and blogger for Head, Shoulders, Knees and all that, says Remember the automatic flush toilets when it comes to introducing children to something new. There's much more, including a neat little anecdote about a teacher introducing a variant of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" to children who might otherwise be resistant to a game that involves a blindfold.

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They’ve made a film of Nancy Drew and I’m mildly indignant. Call me bookish (it’s in the job description) but I’m a bit cynical when it comes to books I love(d) being turned into great big motion pictures. Of course, I have exceptions to my own rule, The Shawshank Redemption, The Remains of the Day, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to name a few. But don’t get me started on Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. There’s a case in point.

Nancy Drew is special to me because she was mystery and adventure when I was all of ten years old. Before starting at Puffin HQ, I clambered into my parents loft to hunt down and blow the dust off my hardback Matilda, The Sheep-Pig, The Chronicles of Narnia, The BFG, First Term at Malory Towers, Alice in Wonderland and yes (she says in a whisper) Forever. I was off to work in children’s books and I wanted a few of my beloveds with me. Tiny doodles and all (sacrilege I know), but I’d forgotten how much I truly did heart A.B. It was sweet to remember.

My point? I do have one. The Child that Books Built is a memoir of childhood and reading by Francis Spufford, which I discovered whilst waist high in dissertation research five years ago. I just love the concept. I spent some time pondering the books that built me and to what extent they affect (effect? I never could) me now. I can’t begin to explain the happiness I experienced when, this September, The BFG with my blurb hit the bookshops. But that’s the privilege of doing what I do.

Books from childhood are part of you – spend a few moments recalling the books which delighted and fascinated you as a child and see if it doesn’t make you smile.

As for the ND film, I’ll watch it but I think my mind is made up. My Nancy Drew has titian hair and freckles. This young lady (charming though she no doubt is), has not.

Sarah Kettle, Puffin Copywriter

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I thought it was bad enough when I heard the other day that my beloved Paddington Bear was going to get the live action treatment (just thinking of poor Stuart Little makes me shake). I went to the, erm, "official website" and not only was the movie business confirmed but there for all to see was the gloating about Paddington shilling for Marmite of all things. Of course, what do you expect of a

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"Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them." German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), quoted in "The Case Against Adolescence" by Robert Epstein I started Farm School two years ago in part because I blathered on for much too long on the subject of children and independence at L's blog Schola. Independence, self-reliance, and

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We are all of us, especially the kids, aware of the shortening days (dark comes around nine now, instead of eleven), and that the first day of school is just about one month away. I'm trying to make the most of what's left of the summer, which is why I haven't been online much, except to order some school supplies and things for Laura's birthday later this month. The country fair is always a

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New since the beginning of the month ig The Dangerous and Daring Blog for Boys and Girls -- "inspired by The Dangerous Book for Boys and the upcoming The Daring Book for Girls" but "not connected in any way to the authors or publishers of those books". Rather, the new blog is brought to you by The Llama Butchers, who I believe came to my attention through our mutual pal Melissa Wiley. Labels/

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I'm enough of a Luddite that I found it more than a bit disconcerting earlier today, when bringing up the Amazon website to look at a book, to find the main page welcoming me with "Science Picks for Becky". But disconcertedness turned to intrigue when the first cover's illustration, and then its title, caught my eye: Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great

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the lesser of two weevils: The New York Times article yesterday, Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play (free registration or use Bug Me Not) or The Daring Book for Girls, the not very daring but very manufactured response to The Dangerous Book for Boys, pandering to those who say they are offended by a "boys only" tome and hoping, no doubt, to strike the same nerves and chords as

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Penny from Heaven
Author: Jennifer Holm
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN-10: 037583687X
ISBN-13: 978-0375836879

Penny from Heaven is the story of 12-year old Penny Falucci, an Italian-American girl growing up in the 1950’s. Her father has died under mysterious circumstances when Penny was very little. She and her mother live with her slightly eccentric maternal grandparents. The grandmother, Me-Me is a horrible cook, Pop-Pop, the grandfather is constantly working on the plumbing and causing leaks, Penny’s mother works very hard and is struggling to make a life for herself. Penny also has this huge, extended Italian family with one favorite cousin, a gaggle of aunts and uncles that are devoted to her as well as her Italian grandparents that adore her. For some reason, the two families do not get along.

Penny’s not lacking in love. What she is lacking in is knowledge of her father. Nobody speaks of him, no one will tell her how he died.

This summer begins like any other with Penny and her favorite cousin Frankie playing baseball, delivering meat from their uncle’s butcher shop and hanging out. For her birthday, her Uncle Dominic has bought her Dodgers (Dem Bums) tickets for her birthday. It’s her very first game so she’s understandably excited and wiggles out of her mother’s birthday celebration for her. It conveys both Penny’s excitement and her mother’s quiet resignation and hurt.

Penny’s mother starts dating the milkman, Mr. Mulligan and Penny goes nuts. She’s hurt, she’s jealous, she doesn’t give Mr. Mulligan or her mother a chance. Things start to escalate and then something happens to Penny that turns both families upside down and bring them closer. Old secrets are disclosed and a shameful history of the country is exposed.

The cast of characters in this book is completely amazing. Each one of the characters is very detailed, well-defined and multi-layered. The former dancer, Aunt Gina and her battles with Nonny, the Italian grandmother were very realistic. It sounded just like my grandmother Ruth and her disapproval of one of my aunts.

The post-war 1950’s are portrayed so vividly that you feel you’re in that time period. Everything is so real. There’s a lot of history woven into this book and I think boys will like it just as much as girls. The real fans however are going to be adults that remember that era fondly.

Penny from Heaven is a completely remarkable book and it has something for everyone. Highly recommended!

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A couple of months ago, after seeing the Macleans magazine cover story about "dressing our daughters like skanks", I wrote, What continues to surprise me is how many mothers around here, and remember, I'm far away from liberal east coast urban types, so your experience may be wide of my mark, are the ones who choose to pimp put their daughters in (often matching) stripper chic not because it's

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