Alison Gopnik, author of ‘The Scientist In The Crib‘ and a new book called, ‘The Philosophical Baby‘, has a nice piece in the Sunday Opinion section of the New York Times. If you follow Ms. Gopnik, you will already be familiar with what she is saying. But if you haven’t read anything by her before, this is a good place to start.
New studies, however, demonstrate that babies and very young children know, observe, explore, imagine and learn more than we would ever have thought possible. In some ways, they are smarter than adults.
I also recommend her books as well, they made me think more about me and my whole deal then the development of my child (but then again, I already knew my baby was pretty smart).
A lot of times these cute clips on the internets are funny from the ‘little people doing big people things’. In this case however, it’s an eight year old girl rocking so hard it hurts. This is reminds me of the little kids in Mexico who surfed better then I ever will. So the big question is, will she grow up to be a rock star?
“Snow Day,” written and performed by 8-year-old Emma at the 2009 Spring Coffee Shop Jam, at The Columbia City Theater in Seattle, WA. Emma announced during a guitar lesson one day that she felt like writing a song. I started playing some chords, and this is what she came up with. Amazing. The Jam’s a chance for Heartwood Guitar Instruction students to showcase their talents. Enjoy!
I’ve been meaning to put this on the site for awhile now. This NY Times blog entry made all the rounds when it first hit, but I still find it relevant. There has been a running joke around here that when Dad is watching the kid he’s not ‘babysitting’, he’s actually caring for his child. Not surprisingly, this isn’t limited to our little sphere of influence.
Most often, I was asked if I was babysitting the kid for the day or playing nanny. When I explained that I was at home full-time for three months, the movie title “Daddy Day Care” was brought up more than once. I was offended, and not just at being compared to an Eddie Murphy character 20 years after he did anything funny. When my parental leave began, some of my co-workers (with the best of intentions, I should add), threw me a little party to celebrate my “extended vacation.” Grateful though I was, I tried my best to explain that I wasn’t going on vacation. I was going to be a parent — full-time.
I am a lover of Legos, always have been. Even though there made from the evil plastic, I think that the creativity they unleash in kids (and adults) is worth the trade off. They can probably stop making them now anyway, there are enough in the world already.
To that end, we bought Edison a box of Duplo Legos which are aimed at kids 3 and up. He’s only 19 months, but I thought I’d get started. They worked well enough, I could build cool things with them and Edison could knock them down and pull the blocks apart. But they were just a bit too small for his dexterity level and he couldn’t put them together. So I figured we’d wait it out.
A few weeks ago we stopped in the ‘Play-Well TEKnologies‘ store in San Rafael which if you live in the area, is an absolute must visit kind of place. It is a very simple and open space filled to the ceiling with Legos. You can drop your child off for an hour or two or better yet, host a birthday party there and let the kids go crazy. They also sell Legos and in the corner of the store I stumbled across the Quatro Legos. Now, I’m not an expert in Legos, but I’m pretty familiar with all of the lines and I had never heard of this before, and it turns out that’s because they were introduced in 2004 and discontinued in 2006.
They were a special line of Legos made for kids ages 1 to 3. I’ll have to dig deeper into why they were discontinued, but it certainly wasn’t because they don’t work. Edison loves these things, they’re the perfect size for him and he figured out how to snap them together immediately. Not only that, but the clever Lego engineers have designed the blocks so that the connect together with the Duplo blocks and the regular size blocks, so my Duplo set isn’t wasted. And once E figured out the Quatro blocks, it was a simple step to figuring out how to put together the Duplo blocks. I was a proud Papa indeed.
You can still find Quatro blocks on Amazon and assorted other places on Google.
This is one of those books that I have no idea how it got into our collection (I suspect it migrated down from the grandparents house) but I am so glad that it did.
The story is simple and fun, but it’s the drawings that make it. It has a beautiful combination of color plates and simple, crisp black and white line drawings that tell the story perfectly. I would read this story every night if I could.
Apparently it’s not in print anymore, but there are plenty of used copies floating around.
