Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Welcome back to my column on child-friendly activities for outdoor adventures! In the first two columns of the series, I wrote about ways to play with observation and gave some specific ideas for enjoying shorelines. Today, I’m going to introduce one of my favorite tools for developing a child’s love of the outdoors: the […]

Before kids, I loved to walk up and down the hills outside our house in Charlottesville, VA. The sloping roads were perfect for strength and endurance training: steep and lined with gravel, with flowers on the sides. Other days, I brought out my old bike from the shed and rode those same hills.
Fast forward about […]

Here’s a tip for the organizationally-challenged: Follow The Two Minute Rule. What’s the Two Minute Rule?, I hear you ask. Well, it’s pretty simple, and no, I didn’t make it up, it’s part of a larger organizational/time management system called GTD (Getting Things Done). The Two Minute Rule is this: If, during the course of […]

There’s a silent pressure in our house lately. While my husband and I are doing a decent job of managing that pressure and not letting it take over our lives, the pressure persists, silently pressing on us whenever we’re not dealing with any particular, immediate problem or situation.
It is the pressure to make a decision […]

Sometimes I watch my children and simply laugh. They are amazingly creative and funny and I can hardly believe the things that they say. I am preparing for another solo-parenting stint as my husband leaves tomorrow on another business trip. I’ve been busily preparing for that and I’ve found myself a bit […]

“Motherhood is much more important than a role. A role is something you play; motherhood is something you live….Roles are symbolic while motherhood is for real. Roles can be changed while motherhood is for life.”

–Editor/Publisher Jane Raphaely

When you have children, your life gets divided into two separate […]

This book, The Case Against Homework - How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It, just came across my radar and I look forwarding to picking it up. Here’s a key paragraph from the description provided by the publisher, Crown Publishers:

“In The Case Against Homework, Bennett and Kalish […]

Has it kept you up at night? That nagging question that reappears each time you close your eyes? What the heck is “Hot Stuff?” Well, lemme tell you… there are so many millions of wonderful things on the internet. If you line up all of our blogrolls we might […]

Growing up, we always had fresh cookies in the house. I don’t know how she did it, with three kids and a workaholic husband, but somehow my mom always managed to have a batch of her homemade chocolate chip cookies in a plastic bag on the counter.
I don’t ever remember seeing her bake them until […]

As summer approaches a whole new toy buying period arrives. Suddenly, all of my local stores are filled with outdoor toys appropriate for summer fun. The seasonal aisle at my favorite drugstore features (along with the requisite beach towels and BBQ accessories), 15 different types of pool toys ranging from noodles to squirt guns (or […]