“May the sun never set on American baseball.” ~ President Harry S. Truman For Father’s Day this year, the girls and I got my husband a family pack of tickets to a Washington Nationals baseball game. We’ve gone to a few games in past years, and it’s always a good time. There’s lots to see […]
Question: What do jumbo marshmallows, Nick Offerman, and a pond full of tadpoles all have in common? Answer: They perfectly describe last weekend. Offerman (Ron from “Parks & Rec”) is the National Wildlife Federation’s new spokesperson. He’s featured in their 2015 Great American Campout campaign, an effort to get 100,000 people pledged to camp this […]
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” […]
Startling research shows that kids lose more ground academically over the summer than one might expect. In fact, summers are arguably one of the least recognized yet most important causal factors for underachievement in schools. This 2011 RAND study found that by the end of summer, students perform, on average, one month behind where […]
In designing Brain Chase, we took advantage of the surprisingly large collection of research about how to help children stay smart over the summer. One great resource is the book Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children’s Learning. Its author is Jennifer Sloan Combs, Ph.D., a senior officer at the RAND Corporation. Here […]