DIY Pre-School & Playground, Topaz Internment Camp, Delta, Utah

The Central Utah Relocation Center near Delta was later renamed Topaz Camp, after Topaz Mountain, which loomed over it to the west. When it opened on Sept. 11, 1942, several rows of tarpaper barracks had been finished and outfitted...
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Research: Numbers Are Hardwired

It's interesting, but if you don't have time to read this entire Economist article, here is a quick summary: Newborn babies can tell the difference between 2 and 3. Apparently, numbers and counting are built into our brains. Even Aboriginal...
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Obama Loves The Little Children

Early education advocates are giddy as a bunch of preschoolgirls at Barack Obama's advocacy of expanded federal support for early education and preschool. From what I read in the New York Times, it seems every president since Nixon has hated...
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And Joan Ganz Cooney Said, "Let There Be Street"

You probably already know that the Children's Educational Television Workshop was co-founded by Joan Ganz Cooney to create Sesame Street in order to help ghetto kids learn their ABC's and 123's as easily as they learned advertising jingles. In other...
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DT Freakout Monday? The New Yorker Looks At Overparenting

So you want to prep yourself for Thanksgiving table discussions of the Overparenting Crisis, but, what with the baby yoga and Mandarin playgroups, you don't have time? No problem. Joan Acocella has summed it all up for you in this...
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The School Search

Regular readers will have noticed a drop in posting volume recently. Myself, I have noticed a steady increase in the number of open browser tabs and flagged-yet-unread/unanswered emails with tips, questions, and press releases. I usually try to tee up...
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It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Kristian Vedel

Sure, Kristian Vedel's molded plywood chair/desk is an elegant classic. But could your kid stand on it? Or ride it around the house? Gablenz is a German woodworking firm that makes traditional furniture, toys, those little whirligig things with...
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Wow, Did The Kid Love Digging Up This Fake Dinosaur Skeleton

Somewhere in the past few years, a farmer in the city my in-laws retired to, St. George, Utah, found a motherlode of super-detailed dinosaur tracks and fossils, and they built an entire museum around them. Just like that. So...
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Tessell: I, For One, Welcome Our Korean Tessellation Play Mat Overlords

OK, so in the US, we're making foam playmats with alphabets on them. And in Denmark, they're making Bobles, ride-on, climb-on animals made from computer-cut foam. All well and good. Until you find out that in Korea, they're making foam...
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Or Is It High-Margin Quackery 1st? "Safety 1st Babyplus Prenatal Education System"

If you will recall, after seeing one too many "Ooh, look! New gadget!" blog posts about the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System last year, I decided to investigate. At first, I was satisfied to find that not only was the...
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Kid O Toys Arrive, Are Awesome

You know, I was just wondering to myself the last few weeks, "Where are those Kid O toys I was promised would be hitting the market soon?" And here they are. Wow. Educational clarity and simplicity of design that...
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DT Friday Freakout: Coming Soon Edition

I'm sure this week's Freakout will involve the ever-expanding poisoned Chinese formula crisis; BPA--especially in liquid formula cans, not that you can realistically avoid it completely anyway--the asthma risk associated with kids taking paracetamol--fortunately, we use acetominophen in this country,...
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You've Come A Long Way, Retarded Baby

Was 1992 really so long, long ago? That's when Ellen O'Shaughnessy, a teacher of retarded special ed mentally disabled special needs kids wrote her PC heart-bearingly titled children's book, Somebody Called Me a Retard Today ... and My Heart Felt...
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Heh, West Xylophone

An awesome little alphabet song by They Might Be Giants [youtube via swiss-miss] Buy TMBG's Here Come The ABC's CD/DVD combo [amazon]...
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Whoops, Old School Sesame Street Not Graded For Spelling

Was just scrolling through the YouTube with the kid for a minute and found this. It looks like the work of Fred Calvert's studio, which also did the animation for Steve Zuckerman's "I in the Sky." Did I mention...
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Except There Are No Brooklyns

I know the big issue is really the pre-K admissions trauma, but still this is a useful snapshot of Williamsburg kid names circa 2004. Half the list could be from any yuppie enclave anywhere in the country:Ms. Yourke added: “I...
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On Waldkindergarten

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach... - Henry David Thoreau I'd say I must have...
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