Elementary
The Difference Between Play & Fun
This little piece of art by Lynda Barry stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw it: It’s so true! And it’s also true that it’s easy to forget as adults and classify […]
Preteens
Autism
Explaining Neurodivergence with Phones
One way that I sometimes explain the concept of neurodivergence — that autism, or ADHD* are different wirings of the brain, without being something “wrong” with the brain — to children (or sometimes to their […]
At Home
Two Stories of Power and Powerlessness
Two stories about power and powerlessness. A child and an adult were entering a classroom, together, one on one. The child skipped ahead of the adult through the open door of the classroom, zigzagged to […]
At Home
Giving Kids Power
Okay, after my last post, you might be asking, how do we give kids power and autonomy? Honestly, a different way to ask this same question might be, how do we protect their right to […]
Elementary
Self-Autonomy
There’s a quote that I’ve seen on the internet that goes like this. “Sometimes people use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like a person’, and sometimes they use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like an […]
At Home
At School
Occupationally Meaningful
When I get a kid on my caseload who has been forced, from too early, to trace and write — for whom it is HARD to trace and write, who quickly learns to HATE tracing […]
Activities
Spy Code: Intermediate & Expert Mode
Since people were into my “spy code” activity in its extremely simplified form, I thought I’d share a few printable ones along with the whole “code” that I usually use. (Eagle-eyed readers may notice that […]
At Home
Reward Charts
Two people have asked me questions about reward charts in the last week or so, so that seemed like a reasonable question to answer next. The reason for both of them asking it was because […]
Activities
Wizard Scrolls
A multi-week activity: a student and I have been working on making “wizard scrolls”. First we used teabags, coffee grounds, and brown markers to test which would make the best “aged paper” by staining them […]