“A snowman is an anthropomorphic snow sculpture of a human. They are customarily built by children… in celebration of winter.” –Wikipedia Anthony Giglio’s four-year-old son Marco spent last Sunday afternoon improvising his first snowman in Jersey City’s Overlook Park. Once he had rolled and stacked three giant snowballs, he hunted for natural scraps around the park to…
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The snow is almost melted in New York but you can bet another blizzard is waiting in the wings. We thought we’d write about sleds so you can be prepared when you’re faced with a nice snowy hill, or know someone on the East Coast who is. The reason most people don’t keep a real…
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One of those anonymous chain emails arrived in our Inbox today, with a subject line that read “Playing With the Moon”. It’s a series of photo illusions that someone went to great pains to create. It LOOKS LIKE real – not Photoshopped – photos that they made with their kids, out on some beachy dune…
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Gever Tulley, founder of Tinkering School for Kids, has published Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), a book we’ve been waiting for, not just to give to the kids we know, but us adults as well, because the same idea applies: By exploring the world (maybe doing things we never got to…
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A friend emailed this cell-phone photo of a kindergarten room. HLP HATE is not a strange coded statement about “hate” as it might seem at first glance, but a child’s spelling of “HELP HAITI”: a thoughtful attempt to help, in whatever way possible …pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters… These little kids are envisioning… …the world beyond…
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Working Big is a remarkable book about large-scale art projects for kids. Written in 1975, it is long out-of-print, but available these days as a free, downloadable pdf from Public Collectors. It gives an expansive view (with how-to’s) of discovery projects to do with your own kids, or fantasize about for your (grown-up) self. Working…
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One of my favorite recipes is called Fried Water: Melt one ice cube in a skillet by placing it in the sun. When melted, add 1 cup water and saute slowly — until water is transparent. Serve small portions, because this dish is rich as well as mouth-watering. It’s from a book I had as…
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Designer Pamela Hovland sent this image of her son Henry’s costume, a family collaboration. It’s amazing what recycled cardboard boxes and some paint can become… Thanks Pamela!
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Helvetia is a tiny town in the West Virginia Appalachians where I‘ve learned a great deal about improvising over the nearly forty years I’ve been visiting there. Settled by Swiss-German immigrants in 1869 who started from scratch in its wilderness valley, a strong tradition of resourcefulness courses through the town. “If you don’t got it,…
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Gever Tully started a Tinkering School for kids, an exploratory curriculum designed to teach kids how to build the things they think of. By exploratory he means setting kids loose in a shop full of tools and materials (with supervision) and encouragement to “fool around”. In his wonderful TED talk, Tully describes the “deep internal realization”…
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Ruth Fankushen Kunkel wrote An Alien Robot’s Cookbook for her boys who were picky eaters; she needed to find a way to engage them in eating and making wonderful food. It begins: “Due to a random mechanical error, I traveled to Earth without warning…I finally crash-landed…
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In the wonderful daddy blog Stork Bites Man, Andy (who also writes Reference Library) wrote a brief post about making this blue tape painting in the hallway outside his daughter Elsa’s room. The two had been working on it for a few months,”a few minutes at a time. She requests a ‘little one, great big…
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A while back, the N.Y. Times reported on a stylish mom whose muslin-covered John Derian sofa became a canvas for her daughter and her seventh grade class to decorate with markers. The article didn’t say whether she’d intended the white muslin sofa to be painted on or whether the blank canvas she’d meant only to…
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Bob Staake, creator of the charming children’s book Donut Chef and dozens of New Yorker cartoons, draws with a mouse using an ancient version of Photoshop. This video speaks volumes about the virtues, and humanity, of computer-generated art, and how fluid the process can be, once you loosen your head up (which this video will do).…
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I’m always on the lookout for great children’s books to give as gifts to my friend’s kids; books are inexpensive, and can be enjoyed over and over again, not to mention inspiring who-knows-what? in those young brains and imaginations. BoingBoing‘s recommendation of Donut Chef, written and illustrated the brilliant Bob Staake, is dead-on. It’s the…
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