Activities

With the gift giving season beginning its approach, I am vaguely considering getting a jump start on the usual shopping it requires. But I have a confession to make. I already know that I am planning to buy my boys some fancy new Legos this year. Sure, there's certainly nothing unusual about buying your sons Legos. I expect many Legos will find themselves wrapped up and waiting beneath all sorts of decorated trees in a few months. But it's why I am buying them Legos that deserves the confession. I am really buying them for myself. Read More »

A cardboard box is just that at least until you become a parent and being brainstorming about all the wonderful structures it can become. In its most primitive state, push in the flaps of the top of the box and it can be turned on its side to become a perfect cave that can be filled with blankets for a space of one's own. Or take out a box cutter and create a recycled playhouse by cutting an opening for a door big enough to crawl through and some sideways H shapes for windows that can be opened and closed for hours. Read More »

There's nothing like a construction site -- the mounds of dirt; the bright, yellow bulldozers; the cranes -- to capture a certain kind of toddler's attention. And if you live with this certain kind of toddler, the kind of toddler who, say, spends more time building miniature roads and modeling hard-hats than eating, you've probably wondered what it is about the nature of construction that gets your little one so fired-up. Though really, when you think about it, there is something pretty amazing about making something from nothing, about taking a heap of bricks and steel and lumber and turning it into a grocery store or a house. When we, in our jaded adulthood, look at a highway or a shopping center, maybe all we see is the way to work or the place where we buy our toilet paper and orange juice. But the construction-loving toddler, so curious about everything's origins, looks for the girders, for the graders, for the why and how and where of every structure he sees. Read More »

My kids love things with their names on it. It makes it special, theirs. It makes them feel important, recognized, and gives that stake of ownership kids so crave. What better way to indulge that than through stationary, letters, cards, and other "old-fashioned" niceties? In kindergarten, my daughter began a snail mail pen pal letter exchange with a friend from out of state. Although we keep up with this friend online, too, there's something special about a private letter between the two girls and even more special about the mailbox containing something just for my daughter. Read More »