Great Books

At Mommy Poppins we love the blog www.ethansbookshelf.com for recommending great age-appropriate ideas for children's books, and Ethan's Bookshelf has been distinguished as an American Library Association recommended site (one of 14 this year!). Creator blogger mom Jennifer—a former NYC teacher—tells us about literacy and reading styles in this interview, plus summer reading recommendations.

What was your biggest motivation for starting this blog and how has it evolved over time?

I started my website, after my son was born and the blog that goes along with it, Read Imagine Talk (www.readimaginetalk.com) launched just about a month ago. Ethan's Bookshelf was born out of a desire to find work I could do from home that I could really love. Some of my most favorite things to do are read and write, and running the website allows me to do both. Before I had Ethan, I worked as a teacher in NYC. I taught second, fourth and fifth grades. I received my Masters from Bank Street College of Education in Reading & Literacy and then worked as adjunct faculty at Bank Street. I loved teaching in general, but my favorite part of teaching was helping kids fall in love with books and reading. Again, the web site allows me to stay in touch with something I love doing, albeit in a slightly different way! Read more »

The travel industry is notoriously ridden with a lot of "guides" that are actually just advertorials. But family bloggers and parent writers are stepping up to give parents traveling with kids real information based on their personal experiences. We've gathered together the top genuine resources for family travel from blogs to books.

DeliciousBaby
An excellent site I have found is DeliciousBaby. Debbie blogs about traveling with her two small children in the US, Canada and Europe, sharing their favorite destinations, kid-friendly restaurants, plus her site has lots of great family travel tips to make traveling with kids a little easier. Read more »

You don't have to move to the suburbs to experience nature right in your own backyard. Here in New York City we have more nature all around us than most people realize. I asked Leslie Day, author of Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City, to give NYC parents some ideas for how to find, experience and learn about nature with kids in New York. Read her article below for NYC nature activities; and I highly recommend her book, with detailed information on the flora and fauna of NYC and where you can find them, as an excellent resource to help you get more nature out of NYC with kids! Read more »

Casey Halper, an Occupational Therapist who works at our school, recently gave a seminar to parents to teach us about sensory balance and activities for a sensory savvy schedule throughout the day. Many kids are now diagnosed with sensory integration issues, but the more I learn about this, the more I find that sensory issues are something that we all face and can all benefit from exploring.

For instance, I now realize that my engine tends to run too low and I need to work harder at energizing myself throughout the day. I have actually become more sensitive to when I am running low and have incorporated some of the activities below to help keep my energy up. I find this whole thing really interesting because I never really thought about actually trying to manipulate my energy level this way, and certainly for kids it can be invaluable as sometimes any kid can be too hyped up or having trouble getting going.

I thought it would be cool to put together a list of sensory activities. While these activities all revolve around sensory stimulation, I think they are just great all-around activities for any kid, and a great list to pull up when you are stuck at home and need ideas for how to pass that last hour in the day or when you need a calming or invigorating activity when your child is stuck in a bad mood. These sensory activities are perfect for any kid from toddlers on up and some are even good for babies. Read more »

Every few months I get to a point where I feel overwhelmingly bored of all the books my daughter chooses to read and need to find some exciting new ones to lure her away from the endless re-readings of her favorites. The Beeman, one of Barefoot Books' new Spring titles is our most recent savior.

The Beeman teaches about the process of harvesting honey through the story of a boy whose grandpa keeps honeybees and while it's still a bit out of reach for my two year old, she happily listens along and asks for more. The book ends with some solid in-depth science information and a recipe for apple honey muffins. Read more »

I haven't done an archive post in a while and it's too bad, because looking back on the posts from last March there a ton of good ones. In fact, I just updated the POPULAR POSTS list over in the left sidebar with some new, great old posts like Useful Links for School Hunts, An Overview of the Preschool Admissions Process, and more.

But today's post is a great list of alphabet books. Unique, artistic alphabet books have become very trendy lately. These ones all celebrate the alphabet through urban environments: Read more »

Having the happiest toddler on the block is no small feat in NYC where you're potentially competing against hundreds of toddlers per block (thousands if you live in Park Slope). But screw having the happiest toddler, I'll settle for a single day without a mega-nuclear meltdown toddler tantrum.

And I may have found the answer Read more »

I have to admit, I was skeptical when I ordered my Custom Made for Kids personalized book. We had received a personalized book before, and, while my daughter loved it, I ended up having to hide it because it was so very painful to read. It was the dumbest story I had ever read and the illustrations were embarrassingly bad.

So I was overjoyed to discover that The First Adventures of Incredible You, is a huge leap over any other personalized book I've ever seen. What I like most about these personalized children's books is that you get to fill in not just your child's name, but over a dozen personal pieces of information about your child, so the book is really personal and a great memento of this special time. Read more »

At Mommy Poppins we always try to provide real information by real parents that you will really use. So what could be better than a gift guide created by your fellow NYC parents. This guide will be just as useful for birthday gifts as it is for Holiday presents. And at the end of the post, we'll announce our lucky winner of the $100 gift certificate to the Scholastic Store. Read more »