Tag: Collaboration

Halloween Party Cooperative Games for Home or Classroom

Perhaps you volunteer in your child’s classroom as I do and are helping plan the annual Halloween party. Maybe you are a teacher looking for ways to both entertain, celebrate, and build skills on the holiday. Or you could be planning a costume party for family and friends. Whatever your role or goal, the following …

Learning from “Building Powerful Learning Environments From Schools to Communities”

All parties – schools, families, and community members – share the responsibility for building trust. But those who hold the official power within schools and classrooms have to set the tone and lead by example. -Arina Bokas, Building Powerful Learning Environments From Schools to Communities In both roles – as a parent and as an …

Learning from You…

We want to learn more from you about your parenting. The following survey will only take a few minutes. It asks some simple questions about how you parent and how that might be similar or different from the way you were raised by your parents. Please help us advance our understanding about this critical area. Click here to answer a …

Announcing Confident Parents Academy! And Video # 3 – The Power of Parenting with Social and Emotional Learning

Today is the official opening of Confident Parents Academy! Now readers can become members and enjoy deeper learning resources through webinars, weekly tools and tips, support for putting practices into place at home and direct coaching on your family’s challenges. Parents are so often told what not to do, but seldom offered simple, research-based strategies …

“A Win for Everyone: Collaborative Games” on NBC Parent Toolkit

Check out “A Win for Everyone: Collaborative Games” by Jennifer Miller, author of Confident Parents, Confident Kids on the NBC Education Nation’s Parent Toolkit blog. The article includes numerous cooperative game ideas for you to introduce to your kids whether its in the backyard, at the park, at a school event or indoors on a …

Empathy, Kids and Nature

We must widen… “our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” – Albert Einstein “Feed the birds, Mom. Don’t forget today,” E tells me with fervor on one of the last freezing cold days of Winter while the birds chirped longingly for Spring. He heard them …

Elements of a Confident Kid…Artistic

– exhibiting sensitivity Art – the creation of works of beauty or other special significance – the exercise of human skill – imaginative skill as applied to representations of the natural world or figments of the imagination Being artistic is a human desire, one we all possess by virtue of the fact that we want …

Elements of a Confident Kid…Alliance Building

: a union between people, groups or countries: a relationship in which people agree to work together.1 There will be numerous opportunities throughout a child’s academic years to practice engaging in an alliance. Individuals need not agree on interests or even like each other to form one. Alliances are often temporary and formed with a …

Elements of a Confident Kid… Open-minded

– willing to consider different ideas or opinions.1 About open-mindedness Why would open-mindedness be a hallmark of a confident kid? We all have developed cognitive structures from our environment and our set of experiences that form the basis of our understanding. When we receive new information, we begin to build upon or adjust those structures to …

Setting Up for Homework Success

 I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. – Pablo Picasso “I am not doing my homework. No way!” said E. If you have school-age children, certainly a similar refrain has been asserted in your household – possibly on numerous occasions and maybe even …