“It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error…”

…to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has.” Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind   It’s okay to make mistakes.  We often learn more from the mistake than we do from completing a task successfully.  Errors, viewed through a healthy prism, motivate us to try again,  repeat until we master, and achieve.  In so doing, we build our...

Sources for Teaching Digital Citizenship

These stats about internet safety for children will frighten you. 4,000,000 children, ages 7 to 17 are posting content to the Web everyday. 15,000,000 youth use Instant Messaging (texting and on-line chatting). 61% of 13-17 yr olds have a personal profile on social networking sites. 1 out of 17 kids have been harassed, threatened, or bullied. 1 in 5 children who use computer chatrooms have been approached over the...

Top 3 Reasons to Own an E- Reader

Why invest in an e-reader?  For the ADHD household, I can think of 3 reasons. 1. Cuts down on household clutter.  Less paper to organize, be it magazines or library books.  It also lessens the number of items, to be watched- kept safe from water spills, or scribbling toddlers. 2. Makes reading material more accessible- makes it easy to take a variety of material with you.  One device allows you to carry...

Overcoming Reading Anxiety: Read to the Clip

Inspiring reluctant readers is a challenge- a challenge that becomes bigger and bigger as students become older and reading requirements become larger and more frequent. Let’s be honest, when you look at it from a student’s point of view, here comes an authority figure handing you, the non-book lover, a huge book which you are not only required to read, but answer content questions. It would overwhelm any...

Raising a Reader with or without ADHD

I don’t think anyone would argue against the idea that reading is critical to a child’s life success. Reading provides the foundation for school achievement in all the other academic subjects, including math, science, social studies, writing, and foreign languages. What is discussed far less, is how reading can provided insulation from life’s adversity- be that everything from poverty and neglect to social...