By Sarah Vander Schaaff And so we have come to this, a headline: “Let’s stop trying to turn lemonade stands into MBA programs.” In the post in Fortune that followed that headline last July, Dan Mitchell says, essentially, “enough already.” Mitchell’s argument is more nuanced than the headline but his point is blunt: let the games of childhood serve their own purposes. The only thing to squeeze into an afternoon pitching refreshments to the neighbors is a bag of lemons, not lessons in profit margins. Mitchell refers to Michal Lemberger in Slate, who in her post, “Down with Lemonade Stands” debunks the idea that lemonade sales teach entrepreneurship because customers don’t actually compare prices and the quality of the lemonade…. Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff I had a good hand. A couple of giraffes, some elephants. My six-year-old opponent was going down in this game of animal rummy. I played my hand, went out, and then she showed me her cards. “Oh,” I said, looking at the cards she’d squirreled away and not wanted to part with. “Actually, you won,” I told her. And so it goes when you play with the foxes. And sheep. And fish for that matter, when each animal is beautifully painted as they are in a deck of eeBoo animal rummy. If one has to lose, at least it can be done with great art. Mia Galison started the unique company eeBoo 18 years ago when… Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff Continuing our series on What to Expect When You Have No Idea What to Expect (raising tweens to teens), we hear from a mother of two girls and a boy, whose ages range from 15 to 17. If the theme last week was to listen to your growing children, this week’s may be to give credence to what they say. They may not tell you much, but behind those bits of expression, may be deep concerns. Our featured mother’s screen name today is: Cobblestone 1. How would you describe the process of raising a child from early tween to teen years? Difficult. We, too, experienced a difficult time for our girls (and boy) during these years…. Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff I am not a trailblazer. That may be my mantra as I head into the process of raising a preteen. Someone has done this before—and I want to learn from them. Times change quickly, to be sure; the social media of last year is now passé, and young people seem to absorb cultural shifts light-years ahead of we parents. But there is wisdom in those parents who have crossed these parts, and our next series this summer is going to share it. I’ve asked mothers who have strong relationships with their teenagers how they have maintained such ties and what advice they’d give.  Today we hear from a mother of a fifteen-year-old daughter and sixteen-year-old son. Her… Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff When Peggy Kaye was first starting out in teaching, a parent asked if there was something she could use for the classroom. “Yes,” she said, “a tape recorder.” The parent got her one, and Kaye recorded herself reading books her students could later listen to on their own. Today, Kaye is Director of Joyful Learning for the Learn with Homer App, and it’s children who have the ability to record their voices in the product designed for beginning readers. She’s come a long way, it seems, from the days of analog cassettes. But Learn with Homer is all about blending the creative and imaginative traditions of the past with the capabilities of the present  moment. As… Read More