Thanks to SleepbyConnection for sharing this wonderful personal insight in our Sleep Training discussion (see “Crying it out” may damage baby’s brain and Cute parenting technique or child abuse?)
As a retired sleep trainer and now a sleep deprived mother, my knowledge of the brain, years of sleep training, years of working with all kinds of children, and now a new mother, I know deep in my heart that developing the limbic brain is very important. We as adults impose our own needs onto our children without much awareness of the long term effects.

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Luckily, our venture into the public school has been very rewarding so far: my older one has got a really wonderful teacher: kind, knowledgeable, understanding, creative, positive yet firm. We’ve encountered our first set of issues – Montessori-style script writing is not appreciated in our local public elementary schools, but after some pondering we decided it is not a battle worth fighting – as long as the teacher is courteous in her ways of insisting in writing in print, we can do it.

Yet lots of our friends weren’t so lucky with their teachers this year. I really like the advice by Melissa Taylor in Scholastic Parent & Child magazine, and since I couldn’t find these tips anywhere online to link to it, I just typed it here for anybody who needs help communicating with the teacher:

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The link for an European Bingo Game… is here! See more information about it in European Bingo Game – Free Board Game!, but you can download the game itself using the links below.

The file with the game turned out too large, so I split it out into two:
European Bingo 1: Italy, Spain, Greece, Russia, Czech Republic
European Bingo 2: UK, France, Northern European Countries, Southern European Countries, Natural Wonders

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While our little stuffed mouse Maisy is happily enjoying Barcelona (see more about this here: Maisy The Mouse Goes Traveling), I finally had a chance to upload our most helpful tool for learning about Europe: the European Bingo Game, that I designed back at the time when I was participating in a Montessori Continent Swap.

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The little stuffed mouse Maisy is on a mission to travel around the globe and help us learn more about the world! (See more about this here: Maisy The Mouse Goes Traveling) So with his little laminated passport safely stashed in a toy backpack behind his shoulders, Maisy is joining our very kind neighbors on their family trip to Barcelona, Spain. And while we anxiously wait for them to to return, we trying to learn some fun facts about Spain in general and Barcelona in particular. These are the resources that we used to make learning fun:

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Learning more about the world became the major subject that we concentrated for the past year. Now we found a new exciting way to set forth our explorations.

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Wouldn’t you love to walk into a kitchen all clean and sparkling? I just loved how this family came up with a practice that helps everyone clean up quickly, without fights and with whole family participating: Around the House After Dinner Jobs.

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Many parents have reported that the fantastic randomizer by Matt Hudson no longer is available at its original location: Matthew Hudson’s Doman plugin. So, now everyone who has problems with the original location, can download it from ChildAndMe: zip file “Doman”.

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I found some wonderful resources that I wanted to share.

First of all: this site has fantastic collection of free mazes for kids. Various mazes, various levels, easy to print out and fun to use. I also used the idea from my favorite Montessori Yahoo group to avoid using a pen, but to trace the way with a finger. Apparently, it develops a lighter touch (later on translated in not pressing the pen so hard on paper), and a good tracing ability, all improving writing later on. Enjoy: Crazy Dad’s Mazes.

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