Family Learning

We are living through an unprecedented and stressful time, and many parents around the world have been asked to care for and educate their children at home. This presents unique challenges, especially for parents trying to work and oversee their children during long days at home. Extraordinary Parenting offers authoritative, calm, credible advice that is easy to digest and put into practice straight away, as parents learn to navigate unthinkable circumstances. Central to this quick, informative book is a guide to building strong, flexible family rhythms.

Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys challenges the widely-held cultural impression that boys are stubbornly resistant to schooling while providing concrete examples of pedagogy and instructional style that have been proven effective in a variety of school settings. This book offers more than 100 detailed examples of lessons that succeed with male students, grouped thematically. Such themes include: Gaming, Motor Activities, Open Inquiry, Competition, Interactive Technology, and Performance/Role Play.

This exciting book by three pioneers in the field of cognitive science discusses important discoveries about how much babies and young children know and learn, and how much parents naturally teach them. It argues that evolution designed us both to teach and learn, and that the drive to learn is our most important instinct. It also reveals fascinating insights about our adult capacities and how even young children - as well as adults - use some of the same methods that allow scientists to learn so much about the world.

Through the alternating voices of 12-year-old Morning Girl and her younger brother Star Boy, we step into the extraordinarily rich lives of an indigenous family on a Bahamian Island in 1492, just as their paradise is about to be discovered and a new world order begins to take shape.

After Alice Dreger's live tweeting of her son's abstinence sex ed class went viral, Dreger was asked by many parents how she had managed to raise a 14-year-old so comfortable talking about sex - comfortable enough even to challenge sex ed teachers when they presented misinformation. The Talk is a response to those questions.

Bringing Up Bébé meets Last Child in the Woods in this lively, insightful memoir about a mother who sets out to discover if the nature-centric parenting philosophy of her native Scandinavia holds the key to healthier, happier lives for her American children.

A bold challenge to the conventional wisdom about early childhood, with a pragmatic program to encourage parents and teachers to rethink how and where young children learn best by taking the child's eye view of the learning environment.

As parents, we dream of creating a magical childhood for our kids, yet it can be so easy to slip into autopilot. Ainsley Arment-- a mother of five, founder of the thriving community Wild + Free, and bestselling author-- is no stranger to the barrage of decisions, opportunities, and daily tasks that each day brings. But what Ainsley has discovered is that the magic of life isn’t found in the hustle and bustle of constant activity but in the intentional ordinary decisions of our days.

Oh Crap! I Have a Toddler is about doing more with less - and bringing real childhood back from the brink of overscheduled, overstimulated helicopter parenting. With her signature down-and-dirty friend-to-friend advice, Jamie is here to help you experience the joy of parenting again and giving your child - and yourself - the freedom to let them grow at their own pace and become who they are.

Charles Dickens is known not only for his novels, but also for his short stories, particularly "A Christmas Carol." In the latter genre, interestingly, these stories had a powerful commercial impulse, for they were serialized in magazines at the Christmas season.

In the newly revised and expanded second edition of Free-Range Kids, New York columnist-turned-movement leader Lenore Skenazy delivers a compelling and entertaining look at how we got so worried about everything our kids do, see, eat, read, wear, watch, and lick - and how to bid a whole lot of that anxiety goodbye. With real-world examples, advice, and a gimlet-eyed look at the way our culture forces fear down our throats, Skenazy describes how parents and educators can step back so kids step up.

In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that our children, if free to pursue their own interests through play, will not only learn all they need to know but will do so with energy and passion. Children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.

A 15-year-old boy is walking through a swirling fog on his way to school when a voice calls out, "Come here. We need to talk." Out of the mist emerges an old man with a white beard. He is a fantastic figure, as wizardly as Merlin, as wise as Socrates, as peaceful as Buddha. Whoever he is, the old man has appeared on that very day to change the boy's life. "You are old enough to learn about things," he says mysteriously. "And who is going to teach you but me?" The old man gives the boy four days of "soul training", a time of riddles, tricks, parables, and incredible twists.

In a world overflowing with information, how can we adapt our learning methods to thrive? Dave Cormier, a pioneering figure in digital education, presents a thought-provoking manifesto in Learning in a Time of Abundance. A leading voice in digital learning, Cormier offers a fresh perspective on how we can face the uncertainty of a world where our challenges don't have clear answers amid an overwhelming digital landscape.

Those who have made the decision to homeschool their children have done so out of great love for them and a desire to provide them an excellent education in the context of a warm, enriching home. Yet so many parents (mainly mothers) who have taken up this challenge find the enterprise often full of stress, worry, and anxiety.

Why America's sons are underachieving, and what we can do about it. Something is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere 20 years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. In Boys Adrift, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than 20 years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home.

If you're the parent of a "smart but scattered" teen, trying to help him or her grow into a self-sufficient, responsible adult may feel like a never-ending battle. Now you have an alternative to micromanaging, cajoling, or ineffective punishments. This positive guide provides a science-based program for promoting teens' independence by building their executive skills - the fundamental brain-based abilities needed to get organized, stay focused, and control impulses and emotions.

This is the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in darkness but covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl with a simple, impossible wish. These characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and ultimately, into each other's lives.

We are socialised to believe that schooling is synonymous with education, but it's only one approach. Self-directed education puts the child back in control of their learning. This enables children to flourish in their own time and on their own terms. It enables us to put wellbeing at the centre of education. Changing Our Minds brings together research, theory and practice on learning. It includes interviews with influential thinkers in the field of self-directed education and examples from families alongside practical advice.

Carson McCullers was all of 23 when she published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. She became an overnight literary sensation, and soon such authors as Tennessee Williams were calling her "the greatest prose writer that the South [has] produced." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter tells an unforgettable tale of moral isolation in a small southern mill town in the 1930s.