Have you ever wondered how potato chips are made? Sure, you slice a potato and fry it. That’s an easy one. But how about pretzels? Or tea? Guitars? Motorcycles? Crayons? Baseball bats? They’re all made the same way: in a factory. Last year one of my friends took her family on a factory-and-museum road trip up the east coast. […]
As a dedicated prankster in my youth, I made sure to plan my April Fools’ pranks weeks in advance. Setting my siblings’ alarms for 3:30 AM? Totally. Flour in the hairdryer? Old hat. Wearing…clothing backwards? Yep, I was that kid. Eventually, I grew out of the dime-store pranks and settled into online trickery for my […]
Every once in a while, I’m stopped in my tracks while working or surfing online and I say to myself, “My kids have got to see this.” Something about the wonder of a video, the mind-blowing beauty of an image or sound, or the sheer coolness of a fact or graphic drives me to want […]
When one of my children comes to me with the inevitable, “Mom, I’m booored”, one of my go-to suggestions is, “Go build something.” When I say this, I’m thinking inside the box: blocks. Or Legos. Tower…maybe a house. This is as far as my multi-tasking mom brain goes. But when a child hears “build”, to […]
Sometimes we all need a jump start. A leap into the right direction, or any direction at all. That’s just where I was when I came across a mystical little book enticingly titled “How to Be an Explorer of the World.” Big promises, right? I was skeptical myself…and then I looked inside. The word “book” […]