MindMake - The Quantified Child

Six Ways That JAM Creates “Good Screen Time” For Kids

JAM | Chalon Bridges At JAM we think learning should be awesome so we’ve created online courses to help parents give their kids good screen time and kids get really good at something they love. We invite kids to invent their own solutions, not memorize answers. At JAM, we think learning should be awesome so we’ve created online courses to help parents give their kids good screen time and kids get…

Artificial Intelligence Is The Next Giant Leap In Education

Raconteur | Alex Wood As schools seek to raise standards, help could come from an unlikely source – a virtual teaching assistant packed with the power of artificial intelligence Glancing around school classrooms in 2016, it’s easy to miss just how far technology has transformed learning over the last decade. The desks, whiteboards and rows of chairs are the same, but so much else has changed that…

Age Appropriate Chores Chart For Children

Fatherly | Erik King That Montessori chart on age appropriate chores that burns up the Facebooks every few years is back. It’s the one that suggests your 2-year-old should be setting the table; your 4-year-old should be vacuuming; your 6-year-old should be weeding the garden; your 8-year-old should be baking cookies; your 10-year-old should be mowing the lawn; and your 12-year-old should be doing…

5 Vital Skills Schools Are Failing To Teach Well Enough

Forbes | Bernard Marr Used to be that reading, writing, and arithmetic were all you needed to get by and do well in the world — but that was also around the time that the vast majority of jobs were agricultural, factory work, or service jobs like maids and butlers. While our society and jobs market has changed drastically since then, our education system has not.  Today, our education system…

What is “Metric Parenting”?

Fast Company | Reva Seth Here’s How “Metric Parenting” Can Help Relieve Working-Parent Guilt We track our fitness goals, nutritional intake, and spending, but few of us track our parenting activities in quite the same way. Earlier this year, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna announced that she’d be leaving the office every day except Thursdays at exactly 5:30…

Should You Monitor Your Teen’s Internet Use?

VeryWell | Amy Morin, LCSW Texting, social media use, and blogging are issues that no other generation has dealt with before. For parents of teens, establishing healthy rules and setting limits on internet use is unchartered territory. It’s important for parents to be well-educated about the potential risks teens face when their on the internet so they can make an informed decision about how…

Homework and Screen Time, What’s The Plan This Year?

ScreenAgers | Delaney Ruston Screen time and homework can be a real problem. Our children often need screens to do their homework and then are automatically vulnerable to distraction when they need concentration the most. Famous research out of Stanford showed that when people multitask they feel as if they are doing better and better at the different tasks but actually they are doing worse and…

My Kids Did Absolutely Nothing This Summer And It Was Fabulous

Scary Mommy | Angelica Shiels I still remember that July afternoon in the early ’80s. I was dressed in the summer uniform of my four-year-old self — my pink sequined tutu from Rummage-o-Rama. I ran in circles around the cracked plastic pool in the middle of the yard and leaped over the hose hanging out the side. My toddler sister sat naked in the middle of the murky water, happily splashing…

5 Things That Meditation Taught Me About Parenting

Headspace | Chris Lentz Parenting may be the hardest job in the world. You can’t really prepare for it until you’re in it, so it’s a role fraught with opportunities for self-doubt. Of course, there are also great rewards that come along with the hard work. But no matter what, it is continuous on-the-job training, and it can wear out even the most prepared parents. When it comes to my own…

Parenting Tools to Get Your Kids to Listen

Lifehack | Heather Didomenico What does it really mean when our kids are listening? It means they are cooperating and being responsible—two very important habits to help our kids master for future success. Parenting that kids can understand teaches habits they will carry for a lifetime, and it will help you and the entire family get along (including you and your spouse!) I recently wrote an…

Summing Up Parenting in One Sentence, According to Jim Gaffigan

Parents Magazine | Melissa Willets Did we mention he’s a dad of five? This past weekend, my husband and I hunkered down on the sofa with snacks and binge-watched Jim Gaffigan stand-up comedy shows on Netflix. You’re right; it was awesome. He’s hil-arious! And I thought so even before I learned Gaffigan is a dad of five! Yes, you read that right. The comedian and his wife Jeannie have five…

Teen Makes ‘Sit With Us’ App That Helps Students Find Lunch Buddies

The Huffington Post | Elyse Wanshel ‘Sit With Us’ also aims to help reduce bullying. A new app makes finding friends in the school cafeteria a piece of cake. “Sit With Us” helps students who have difficulty finding a place to sit locate a welcoming group in the lunchroom. The app allows students to designate themselves as “ambassadors,” thereby inviting others to join them. Ambassadors can then…

The Importance Of Mindful Parenting

The Huffington Post | Michelle Vale As a mom and wife who works full-time, it sometimes feels like I am forever serving others. On days when this feeling overtakes me, I too engage in a little “lazy parenting,” where my kids spend significantly more time on their iPads or in front of the television than I would normally deem appropriate. I am sure all parents have days like these! However, I’d…

What Kids Should Know by the Time They’re Done With School

The Atlantic | Hayley Glatter, Emily Deruy, and Alia Wong Education experts weigh in on the content areas children should have mastery over by the time they graduate. We asked prominent voices in education—from policy makers and teachers to activists and parents—to look beyond laws, politics, and funding and imagine a utopian system of learning. They went back to the drawing board—and the…

Children Won’t Be Saved By A Digital Detox

The Guardian | Eva Wiseman he idea of a “digital detox” makes my eyes roll so far back I see memories from a past life as concubine number 6. When will we come to terms with our own desires and, rather than banning something we fear altogether, try to understand it? Whether booze or sugar or Celebrity Big Brother, there is a more adult way of dealing with something we feel has a hold over us than…