Story Starters from Madame Esmé

I furiously adore story starters, and in a future life I shall do not much more than complete story starters and eat blueberry muffins.

Esmé Raji Codell’s story starter list makes me want to be a young learner in her class.

Write the lesson plan of a very mean teacher.

Describe the school of your dreams!

Describe a walk down the street from the point of view of a ninety-year-old person.

Write something using exclamation points as your only punctuation.

Check her book How to Get Your Child to Love Reading for loads more (pages 324-330).

What’s your favorite story starter?

The Very Hungry Caterpillar in Japanese – the show

Quite possibly the cutest version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar you will see today.

[ありがと！]

I count my way, you count your way

The lessons on conversions can be great fun, even if it’s not until centuries later that you finally grasp why your teacher made you learn them.

You know, from Celsius to Fahrenheit, from anything metric to anything not.

It’s the message behind conversions that can be tricky: you have a perfectly sensible way to count things, right? It always works. And then your teacher casually tells you that other people have different perfectly sensible ways to count the exact same thing.

Well now what’s the all important advantage to that??

The neighborly thing to do is learn each other’s ways of counting. This minimizes confusion, and it’s faster than twiddling your thumbs and wondering why the world leaders don’t just play a quick round of rock scissors paper to settle once and for all on the International Way To Count.

Those self-contained bunk beds

My dad once built a bunk bed with closet space for my sister and me, and I’ve been hooked on cozy sleeping spaces ever since.

When I come over to visit, if this bunk bed is all you can offer me, please oh please know that I’ll be thoroughly delighted! Embarrassed? Not at all! In fact, I’ll probably start yawning right after dinner if that will let me get to bed earlier.

Just know that I’ll need to call dibs on the bottom bunk: I’m that kid who needs to go to the bathroom a couple times a night, and I frankly don’t trust me with that ladder there.

Love the idea, Apartment Therapy!

PlayGroundology

There’s a movement for just about everything.

Meet the PlayGroundology group! New to you? New to me! Look around, familiarize yourself with the concepts, then gallop off to tell everyone you know.

Swings that make music? Please excuse me. I must go to the nearby park to hum while I’m on the suddenly sorely-lacking swings there.

[via 21 Balançoires and Swiss Miss]

Yummy Fun Kooking

Someone sent me over to Yummy Fun Kooking, but I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.

(Yes, yes, I noticed it, too, that spelling…..)

Go ahead and see what the excitement is all about (heads up: very flash heavy site).

I like the Kooking Club for Kids: 3 recipes mailed to you every month? Nifty! (All vegetarian? Oooh, I don’t know….) Something for you and your Cooks-in-Training?