“We have more pigs than sheep,” Jacoby tells his friends. Preschoolers are naturally curious, noticing little things in their everyday play. It might be, “How many red cars do we have?” or “Who has the biggest apple today?” This is actually the start of data recording—and it happens long before they can write numbers or fill out […]

Crash! The Magna-Tiles the children had carefully arranged along the window sill slid down in a colorful clatter.  “Fast fail!” Mallory shouts.  “I think that was a fast fall,” Noah adds, grinning.  The children laugh and scoop up the tiles again, but not before inspecting what went wrong. “Maybe the big squares should go on […]

“I can’t get my sandcastle to stay up," moans four-year-old Juan to his older friend Rokia. "I fill the bucket all the way to the top and I pat it down just like you did yesterday. But when I flip the bucket over, the sand just pours out! Can you help me make a sandcastle […]

“I’ve got some acorns and some water!" announces five-year-old Gabriela, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "Who wants to make potions with me?” “What’s a potion?” asks Amara as she jumps off of her swing and heads over to see what Gabriela has in mind. “You mix things up, like a recipe,” Gabriela explains. “Sometimes the […]

It all began with a concert ticket. More specifically, a ticket to a concert on the Ben Folds Paper Airplane Request Tour 2024. During these concerts, Ben Folds—an Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter-composer—encourages fans in the audience to send their song requests to the stage via paper airplanes. To ensure that the planes carrying my song requests would […]

“Would it be okay if I took this sunflower apart?" asks Mia, pointing to a vase of week-old cut flowers. "It's kind of droopy anyway." “Sure," I respond, remembering that Mia is our "Concoction Queen" with a penchant for creating potions packed with flower petals. "Are you going to make another one of your magic […]