They do grow up!

I've been noticing lately that our family has left a whole era behind: the era of the little kid.

Yesterday I took my daughter to a wonderful workshop at WaxWorks West. My old friend from my pre-mom years, Daniella Woolf, is a wonderful artist who does encaustic and started a studio with her friends Judy and Wendy. All three were there to guide a bunch of homeschoolers through a workshop in which they learned some basic techniques.

Encaustic is an art where you embed various media in hot beeswax combined with a resin to make it harden when it cools. So obviously, this workshop included the use of hot wax, not to mention a blow torch, and thus >>>>>>>

Hands On Learning with Heddi

If you have a child who is learning to type, check out BBC's Dance Mat Typing before you buy any software. This is a free typing program available online and perfect for elementary aged students who are learning to type.

Rock-and-roll animals guide you through learning each of the letters in Flash animation. After learning the position of the letters, you practice lines of typing, as a little record "breaks" at the end of each line of type. Every few lines is another encouraging animation. If you make a mistake, the correct letter on the pictured keyboard calls out, "Me, me!" continued >>>>

SWITCHED

by TARA PARKER-POPE, The New York Times

"Children playing before lunch at Sharon Elementary School in Robbinsville, N.J. are calmer after they've had recess first," the school's principal said.

Can something as simple as the timing of recess make a difference in a child's health and behavior?

Some experts think it can, and now some schools are rescheduling recess - sending students out to play before they sit down for lunch. The switch appears to have led to some surprising changes in both cafeteria and classroom.

Schools that have tried it report that when children play before lunch, there is less food waste and higher consumption of milk, fruit and vegetables. And some teachers say there are fewer behavior problems.

"Kids are calmer after they've had recess first," said Janet Sinkewicz, principal of Sharon Elementary School in Robbinsville, N.J., which made the change last fall. "They feel like they have more time to eat and they don't have to rush."

One recent weekday at Sharon, I watched as gaggles of second graders chased one another around the playground and climbed on monkey bars. When the whistle blew, the bustling playground emptied almost instantly, and the children lined up to drop off their coats and mittens and file quietly into the cafeteria for lunch.

"All the wiggles are out," continued >>>>>>>>>>>>