There are many fun activities for families to enjoy in the Boston area in August 2023. Check out our list of August activities and events happening around Boston and have a wonderful month! August Adventures with Highland Street Foundation When: daily throughout the month of August Where: various locations Age: kids, teens, adults Cost: free August Adventures returns! During the month of August 2023, we are excited to partner with special Massachusetts cultural institutions to…
Think about how crushed young teens can feel when a formerly close friend becomes distant or the shame that can follow disclosure of sensitive information to a mere acquaintance. Knowing what studies show—for example, that humans tend to have frenemies and we often confide intimacies in people we aren’t that close to—can assuage adolescents’ fear of being abnormal. Frank discussions about middle school friendships like these are important to have at school, since parents of…
Journaling provides teens with a regular opportunity to practice and improve their creative writing , reading, and communication skills. Kids with difficulty writing or communicating in other contexts will benefit from this. With daily journals, teens learn to find their voice, communicate openly, gain confidence, and become more comfortable expressing themselves. The term “journaling” encompasses a lot of different things, however: the list of birds you’ve seen in your neighborhood; the descriptions of sights you…
There is a new study that suggests a big sister can make a powerful difference for their younger siblings. But there’s no personal angle for the authors of the study: economists Pamela Jakiela and Owen Ozier of Williams College in Massachusetts. “No! I’m an only child,” Jakiela says with a chuckle. “And Owen is an older brother.” They were prompted to do the study after reading that many parents in Kenya give daughters a huge…
In his university teaching days, Mark Schneider watched as his students’ research sources moved from the library to Wikipedia to Google. With greater access to online information, cheating and plagiarism became easier. So Schneider, who taught at State University of New York, Stony Brook for 30 years, crafted essay prompts in ways that he hoped would deter copy-paste responses. Even then, he once received a student essay with a bill from a paper-writing company stapled…
The concept of timeouts was developed by a psychologist named Arthur Staats in the 1960s. It was created as an alternative to spanking and other forms of physical punishment, which were very popular at the time. The idea was that children would be briefly removed from a rewarding or stimulating environment when they showed a particular challenging behavior, like aggression. Timeout is short for a timeout from positive reinforcement. It is based on the behavioral…
As parents, our short-term goal is to get our children to listen to us and follow the rules and limits we set for our family, and how children learn morality plays a huge part in this. The long-term goal is to raise children who truly understand why we have created these rules and limits and develop an internal motivation to be kind and do the “right” thing. In other words, we want them to follow…
Think of how much is learned in the early years of a life: crawling, walking, talking. These learned skills are sculpting the circuitry of the brain though plasticity. As you get a little older and begin to practice skills, neurons connect and those activities become easier. Practice a song, and soon you know it “by heart,” which, technically speaking, is “by brain.” Learn a dance, and soon you can perform its steps without consciously thinking…
Summer is finally here, and so are the American Library Association summer reading lists. The lists are full of book titles to keep children engaged in reading throughout the summer. Four summer reading lists are available for birth-preschool and grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8. Each list is available to download for free. Titles on the 2023 Summer Reading Lists were compiled and annotated by members of American Library Association’s Quicklists Consulting Committee. American Library Association…
There are many fun activities for families to enjoy in the Boston area in July 2023. Check out our list of July activities and events happening around Boston and have a wonderful month! Find 4th of July Fireworks Near You in MA! Many towns around Boston celebrate on different dates and times, so you are sure to find a display to fit your schedule near you. Find out where they’ll be shooting fireworks off nearest…
