I apparently owe a lot to my 9th grade math teacher. Every Friday, Mr. Smith would have the class play a game. He would write a series of numbers on the board, and the goal was to use basic math to make the first four numbers total the last one. For ..

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In a classroom awash with morning sunlight, 25 kindergartners at Marcy Open School in Minneapolis recently worked on a self-portrait of sorts. Teacher Kilee Chistnagel gave the students paper plates, a few markers and some yarn -- for hair, of course...

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Let's say you learned to drive in America and spent the formative years of your driving experience on American roads. If someone dropped you in the heart of London behind the wheel of a car, odds of a collision are high. You would need to relearn ha..

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Fewer children are reading in their spare time because of the “embarrassment” of carrying books in front of friends, according research. Figures show a gradual year-on-year drop in the number of eight- to 16-year-olds choosing to pick up..

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Music has a remarkable ability to affect and manipulate how we feel. Simply listening to songs we like stimulates the brain’s reward system, creating feelings of pleasure and comfort. But music goes beyond our hearts to our minds, shaping..

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Holly Hageman loves watching her daughter, 3-year-old Brooklynn, learn new concepts. Alphabet flashcards, books and shapes and numbers puzzles are a just few of Hageman's favorite activities to play with Brooklynn at home in Atco, N.J. "She likes t..

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Corey Moore, of Cedar Hills, says her 8-year-old son, Kyle, for some reason likes to wear the same outfit every day. Sometimes these clothes end up with stains and tears. With the new school year approaching, Moore wondered how she could get her son to..

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I’ve spent a good bit of time away from my kids this summer. My 9-year-old went on a month-long trip to Alaska with his grandparents, while my 7-year-old had her first taste of sleepaway camp in a four-night introductory session. I wasn’..

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Technology offers new and exciting ways for your children to learn and for you to increase your involvement in your children’s education. Children given technology opportunities at home watch less television, improve problem solving and critica..

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Parents who want to allow their children to shop online have a dilemma: how to enable the purchases? “If you’re a kid and you have $20 in your pocket, you can go to a store and buy something, but there’s no way to buy anything online ..

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When it came to teaching my children to swim, I did what all parents do: I Outsourced. Lessons with an instructor, I figured, were the safest environment in which to teach a life skill. It wasn’t until my husband had jumped, fully clothed, into ..

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Making it a priority to teach these kids to do something on their own. As usual, I was patting myself on the back about how much better of a parent I was than my friend who wouldn’t let her 1½-year-old jump off a tiny wall that my childre..

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Picture a child of 8 or so. He wakes up and carefully makes his bed before going downstairs and emptying the dishwasher. He fixes himself a bowl of cereal and calmly eats it at the table, then clears his place, rinses the bowl and spoon, and places t..

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Families are paying a pretty penny to keep their children busy this summer. The average American family expects to dole out an average of $601 per child this summer, according to data released Wednesday by American Express, bas..

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When friends learn that my nearly six-year-old has been playing violin for three years, their voices shift a bit, especially if they also have a child learning an instrument. Two questions come in quick succession: "Does she like it?" and &..

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In a recent article, "Colorado legislature, school districts debate effectiveness of having struggling students repeat a grade," about third grade retention, this statement was made: Conventional wisdom says that students learn to read from..

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While reading at all ages has always been seen as important for child growth and development in literacy, now the benefits of asking students questions during reading are becoming even clearer. A new educational study released this week reveals that i..

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Just as you learn to value yourself financially and build your own wealth, you can raise your children to be wealthy as well. In The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom, a set of disciplines and ideas are designed to encourage women to enjo..

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America’s last competitive advantage — its ability to innovate — is at risk as a result of the country’s lackluster education system, according to research by Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner. Taking the stage a..

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Educators say basic writing and spelling skills still necessary for success in school and life. The practice of students endlessly copying letters and sentences from a chalkboard is a thing of the past. Teaching perfect strokes and proper curves in cu..

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Anna Timby, 8, spends at least 30 minutes reading every day after school. And this summer, the second-grader’s parents plan to have her read even more. “We just have more free time to read,” her mom, Tammy Timby, said. “She enj..

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College kids supported by parents party more: Study » Students who pay their own way have less risky behavior and feel more adult. College students who get significant financial support from parents might graduate faster, but they party more, wo..

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April is Financial Literacy Month, a perfect time to teach your kids about money  While parents know it’s their responsibility to teach their children about finances, many fall short The financial crisis was a wake-up call for many - bu..

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Ready or not, here comes a swarm of Android touch-screen tablets just for children. Leading the pack is Nabi by Fuhu ($200), a tablet with a split personality. One is for children; the other is for parents who know the password. It is easy to customiz..

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My wife and I made the decision last year to equip our kids with iPads, something that might have sounded excessive only the year before. Now it only makes sense. When you do the math, an iPad (or tablet of choice) for a child makes sense; when you ..

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Kids perform better in school if they know failure, and trying again, is part of the learning process, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association. The research included several experiments intended to see whether pa..

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A 60 Minutes segment this week focused on “redshirting.” That’s the practice of not starting a child in kindergarten until after his or her sixth birthday. It isn’t because of school-district rules, but is something that..

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For many kids, the most important years of schooling come before they can even read. Consider the groundbreaking work of the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman, who has repeatedly documented the power of early childhood education. One of his..

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With so many toys on the market nowadays, parents can find it a challenge when it comes to buying educational gifts for their preschoolers. Everywhere you look, there are electronic toys that light up with the press of a button or spew out strange n..

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As a researcher in the field of early childhood education, I relish the idea of uncovering how factors in early childhood related to children, families, and schools, connect to children’s academic achievement once they enter school. As a paren..

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Today's kindergartners are expected to know what first-grade students 20 years ago knew. They need to write their name, know the alphabet, count to 10 and more. But half of students -- if not more -- enter kindergarten unprepared. School districts ar..

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On questions of how to live, the French never disappoint: They're all for liberté, so long as it's stylishly tasteful. How to eat, how to dress, how to love—we all know, because they've told us, that the French have a distinct, and bett..

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“What’s your major?” Ask a college freshman this question, and the answer may be physics or chemistry. Ask a sophomore or a junior, however, and you’re less likely to hear about plans to enter the “STEM” fields &md..

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Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? All are exactly opposite the best strategies for learning. Really, I recently had the good fortune to interview Robert Bjork, director of the UCLA Learning and F..

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Suppose your child is about to enter the fourth grade and has been assigned to an excellent teacher. Then the teacher decides to quit. What should you do? The correct answer? Panic! Well, not exactly. But a landmark new research paper underscores th..

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Sometimes moms do things without realizing they are doing them. I don’t mean the audible conversations with ourselves or hiding in the bathroom for a few minutes of peace and quiet. I mean things like tying our kids’ shoes for them. I&rs..

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To a baby, blocks aren't just toys. They're appetizers. Eight-month-old Anna Swanwink doesn't just stack her soft cloth blocks. She chews them, inspects them, rolls them across the carpet. She shakes them, listening for the hidden rattle or jingle ..

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 "Can I have a Facebook account?" If you're a parent and you haven't yet heard that request, then it's only a matter of time. And while you may be able to push back for a while, it's almost inevitable that the "everyone else has on..

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I don’t know about you but Thanksgiving snuck up on me this year. With the Nor’easter, Halloween and both kids' birthdays, I am halfway into the month and just starting to think about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is such a great time ..

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Both boys and girls who play video games tend to be more creative - even if the games they're playing are violent. A study by Michigan State University of nearly 500 12-year-olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they we..

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Preschool children with relatively poor language skills improve more if they are placed in classrooms with high-achieving students, a new study found. Researchers found that children with relatively poor language skills either didn't improve ove..

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What’s the most important 18 minutes of the day for families? “I hate mealtimes with my kids,” confessed one mom at a parenting workshop. “I prefer some time at dinner with my husband rather than being a disciplinarian with ..

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Prepping for the SAT—or any test—is easier with a few key skills. Be your kid's coach with these tips. Whether you've got a 'tween prepping for a math test, or a mired-in-high-school teen, you are probably acutely aware of how much our ..

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New research suggests musical practice and learning to recognize rhythms may help improve literacy: The ability to hear and remember instructions — a necessary part of musical ability — is critical for childhood reading skills. In a n..

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If you coexist with children and iPads, you’ve undoubtedly discovered they have an insatiable “app”-itite (sorry, couldn’t resist). Here are eight recent noteworthy selections for younger users, listed from young to old. Haro..

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Families who spend more time together while their children are young tend to have a stronger family bond for decades, experts say. But it takes a lot of effort to plan and then live the "slow family" lifestyle, which suggests that kids don..

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Most children are taught to print the first few years of grade school and, depending on the school, either they stay with printing throughout their school careers or they are also taught cursive, usually in second or third grade. Is learning cu..

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Of all jobs out there, Parenting is one that presents the most challenges. Difficult challenges to say the least. The Investment My experiences with my own children and other children whose parents put energy and time trying to be the best parents pos..

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Sam Wang is an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton. Sandra Aamodt is a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience. They are the authors of “Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows From Co..

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Take two kids, one from a low-income family, the other middle class. Let them run around and do little-kid things in their respective homes and then, at age 5, enroll them in kindergarten. Research shows that when the first day of school rolls aro..

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Previous generations took better care of their stuff than most of us do now. They sprayed sofas with Scotchgard, threw plastic slipcovers on chairs, and stayed out of their dining rooms except on Thanksgiving. Or if the boss was coming to dinner. Not..

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our years ago, when Erica Patulli felt the environment at her local high school in Montreal was intimidating, her parents decided to look for an alternative. “It was hard to concentrate in class,” says Ms. Patulli, 15, adding that her ..

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Years ago, pre-kid, I remember reading a pretty amusing article in the Post about some of the crazy things docents at the Air & Space Museum overhear parents telling their kids when asked a question to which they don’t actually know the an..

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As the new school year begins and thoughts turn to subjects, studies and scores, many discussions recently have focused on math. Math skills arguably are more critical today, as technology - which relies on math knowledge - grows by leaps and bounds..

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There's no substitute for staying home with your children. Pre-k programs make me think of getting a puppy and taking it to the kennel during the work week. Nobody does that, yet thousands of small children are dropped off at pre-k programs as soon as t..

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Whether you realize it or not, reading is an important part of your everyday life.  We need to read for information every day. Whether it’s our daily email exchanges or important documents at work, reading is important to be successful ..

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Kindergarten is getting tougher this year. Counting to 20 and dabbling in addition and subtraction aren't going to cut it anymore. This year, the young students will be expected to count to 100, both by tens and by ones, and will need to be flu..

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When I was a kid, I used to love going back-to-school shopping. I would color-code my binders and notebooks, sharpen my pencils and line up glue sticks on my desk. I'll admit I was a bit of a nerd; my seriously stocked backpack was definitely indic..

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Teary-eyed kindergarteners who thought their school buses would carry them away forever have grown up and adjusted to teachers and homework by the time they finish elementary school.   But then they start middle school and are no longer with th..

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The back-to-school season is upon us and that means it’s time for parents to start cleaning out closets and making room for this year’s new clothing and supplies. It’s also an opportunity to donate gently used goods to charity. And..

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The American ideal of lazy summers filled with fun has an unintended consequence: If students are not engaged in learning over the summer, they lose skills in math and reading. Summers off are one of the most important, yet least acknowledged, cau..

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Earlier this month, the Indiana Department of Education joined the ranks of school systems that will no longer require the teaching of cursive writing. In a memo sent to school leaders, the Department stated that, in accordance with the Common Core ..

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U.S. schoolchildren, noses in their smartphones, don’t know the lay of the land. Only half of fourth-graders correctly put the following in descending order of size: North America, the U.S., California and Los Angeles, according to a federal tes..

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A team of researchers in the UK has shown that although social background has a noticeable effect on a child's readiness for school, what parents do with their children, even before they begin to talk, is actually much more important.   Parent..

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Parents might label it a waste of time but the hours spent surfing the internet, chatting online, and even on the dreaded Facebook appear to improve children's reading skills, The Australian reported Wednesday. An international online reading test condu..

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What are your kids doing this summer? Are they spending it productively? This is the second week of 9 ½ weeks of summer vacation in South Pasadena.  Summer vacation is a time for kids to unwind and enjoy carefree unstructured activities...

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Is your child about to start practicing yoga at school? Does he or she seem interested in taking a yoga class? If so, you may have questions about the possible benefits of yoga for kids and what a typical program entails. Before your child does his o..

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Lately, I hear more and more complaints about education and educators: Teachers are not teaching well. Students are failing. People graduate with less than the minimum skills needed to survive in the workforce. High school teaches nothing. College co..

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  (HealthDay News) -- Children enrolled in a full-time preschool program that sees them through elementary school have a better life 25 years later than children who were not in preschool do, University of Minnesota researchers report. Child..

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Summer’s here and the livin’ may not be easy — especially if you have children out of school for the summer and running around like crazy. But the TV schedule is just bursting with great ideas for the times you can’t just send..

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With an iPad and a few great apps, you can broaden your kids' view of our planet without ever getting on an airplane. Here are two outstanding apps that take kids on exciting adventures and, in the process, teach them about geography, science and ani..

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Classes are done for area schoolchildren, but that doesn't mean the learning should stop. (Wait just a second, you kids are thinking. Learning? But it's summer vacation! We know. Just hear us out.) "Every time we come back (to school) in the fall,..

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TUESDAY, May 31 (HealthDay News) -- As the school year wraps up, many kids will replace class time with cyber time -- a trend leading one researcher to caution parents to watch out for online hazards such as "sexting" and cyberbullying. ..

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Nolan Bushnell once almost destroyed his family’s garage. As a youngster in Utah, he went tooling around with a liquid-fuel rocket on a roller skate and things went awry. He (and the garage) survived, and Bushnell went on to be a lifelong innov..

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Growing up in a household where both my parents worked full time, I spent several hours a day in childcare programs when I was in elementary school. Unfortunately for me, I did not enjoy many of the standard daycare activities such as kickball o..

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Local mom Tonya Scarborough, who homeschools her kids, responds: When I began homeschooling six years ago I had a whole list of cons in my head--nagging doubts and fears that I imagine any new homeschooling parent would have.   However, afte..

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Parents and school administrators consider ditching the art of cursive writing so the teaching time can be used for other subjects. Kids today are growing up in a texting, typing and emailing world. Sure, they take notes in class and some even scri..

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On command, Eze Schupfer reads aloud the numbers on a worksheet in front of her: “42, 43, 12, 13.” Then she begins to trace them. “Is that how we write a 12?” her instructor, Maria Rivas, asks. “Erase it.” “T..

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Study Links Childhood Music Lessons With Better Brain Function in Older Adults. Learning to play a musical instrument as a child may help keep the mind sharp for years after the last note is played. A new study suggests childhood music lessons may impr..

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  (Reuters) - In Mandarin immersion teacher Kennis Wong's kindergarten class, her young pupils are making paper masks glued to sticks that they twirl between their palms, showing a different face on each side. With a similar duality, the chil..

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Kids are leading the world's transition to digital media. This is in part because kids aren't afraid of technology, and in part because kids haven't spent years getting use to anything else. So if you want to get a sense of where the world's media hab..

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If you have a child in preschool, one phrase you start to hear fairly often this time of year is "kindergarten readiness." With Austin public kindergarten registration about a month a way, many parents are wondering, "Will my kid be r..

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Encouraging toddler imagination by all means is parenting your toddler by an educational standard and it does make a difference. The difference is huge too, no matter what the latest trend or thought is on the subject. We are dynamic creatures in th..

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March is national reading month -- and a good time to focus on some rather bleak news about the reading gap between boys and girls. From elementary through high school, males are reading at lower levels than females. This doesn't bode well for fu..

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Parents who want to provide their babies a learning advantage these days often turn to what's been nicknamed "baby media" — videos specifically designed to stimulate very young minds. But researchers and pediatricians have begun to ..

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Studies show rise in test scores for chess players. Caleb Johnson doesn't realize it, but he's setting himself up for success at an early age. While he's flopped on his belly in the Pitts School Road Elementary media center, with a chessboard betwee..

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My mom was the negotiator in our family. To her, price tags were mere “suggestions.” As kids, we witnessed her haggling prowess in furniture shops, clothing stores, yard sales, car dealerships, you name it. Now as her adult children, my ..

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Kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend 11.5 hours a day using technology — whether that’s computers, television, mobile phones, or video games – and usually more than one at a time. That’s a big chunk of their 15 or 16 wa..

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Florida lawmaker wants teachers to grade parents Orlando, Florida (CNN) -- If an elementary school teacher graded you on your involvement in your child's education, what kind of a grade would you get? Should your kid's first-grade teacher be grading..

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It may be boring for parents – but reading the same book over and over again to children is the best way to develop their vocabulary. Researchers at Sussex University have found that repetition is more likely to help them improve their reading..

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Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.  

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Knowing a language that uses counting words can shape one’s ability to understand large numbers. A new study of deaf people who have made up their own hand signals to communicate shows that without number words, it’s hard to keep track of..

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It is understandable that the Chinese child-raising style of Chinese-American “tiger mom” Amy Chua has ignited controversy in the United States. But Americans may find it difficult to understand why the “tiger mom” controver..

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Single-gender classrooms are a growing trend in school districts across the country. For the fourth year a row Baker Elementary School in Wayland is offering single-gender kindergarten classes. It is an option many parents are now choosing for their..

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At her Harvard commencement speech, "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems "worth more than any qualification I ever earne..

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Thirty years ago, two Hungarian educators, László and Klara Polgár,decided to challenge the popular assumption that women don’t succeed in areas requiring spatial thinking, such as chess. They wanted to make a point about t..

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  The research is clear: it's not just about class sizes, the state of the school buildings or whether you're born on the right side of the tracks. The biggest factor in whether students succeed in school is the attitude of their parents. So ..

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 Forming Letters Is Key to Learning, Memory, Ideas. Ask preschooler Zane Pike to write his name or the alphabet, then watch this 4-year-old's stubborn side kick in. He spurns practice at school and tosses aside workbooks at home. But Angie Pike, Za..

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Ambitious middle-class parents help their children get better grades at school by making teachers work harder, according to new research. Reading bedtime stories, helping with homework and regularly attending parents’ evenings all encourage c..

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In the mid-1960s, Betty Hart was a graduate student in child development working at a preschool in Kansas City, Kan. The preschool was for poor kids — really poor kids. Many came from troubled housing projects nearby. But Hart was determined n..

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At TEDxPSU, Ali Carr-Chellman pinpoints three reasons boys are tuning out of school in droves, and lays out her bold plan to re-engage them: bringing their culture into the classroom, with new rules that let boys be boys, and video games that teach a..

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Teens are under great pressure to do well on exams, with no time for friends or sports. Educators fear the students will become expert test-takers lacking creativity and imagination. January 13, 2011|By Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times Reporting ..

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Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back? A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what t..

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When Becky O’Bryant attended high school 20 years ago, she needed two general math classes to graduate. “I never took algebra, but it didn’t matter,” the Kalamazoo resident said. “I knew I wasn’t going to college.&r..

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Helping your young child succeed Here’s a shocker, and something for parents of preschoolers to look out for in the New Year, if it hasn’t happened already: According to a band of researchers at Oregon State University, “A record n..

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Blaming teachers for low test scores, poor graduation rates and the other ills of American schools has been popular lately, but a new survey wags a finger closer to home. An Associated Press-Stanford University Poll on education found that 68 percent ..

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    (CNN) -- The government's air defense system tracks Santa's progress on Christmas Eve. The United States Postal Service even accepts letters to the North Pole. With that kind of evidence..

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During this past week, with the news so focused on the Congressional tax debate and the “wikileaks” controversy, you may have missed reports of a very impressive school choice victory. The parents of students at McKinley Elementary School ..

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I was always envious of those parents that did flashcards and daily drilling of ABC’s and numbers with their kids.   You also had the parents who transformed their whole life into a classroom all in the hopes of making superstars. I coul..

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