it’s fledgling season

E reads Earlybirdwhen I’m at my sink or at my desk I have views to different bits of lawn.  I can hear (I always hear them first cos they are LOUD) and see fledgling birds following their mothers around, and yelling for food.

It’s all I can do to not run out and give the fledglings a lecture.  They could find a sweeter tone when they call out, surely.  And then I’ll turn to the mother starling and insist she set some clear limits and encourage fledgling to develop the set of skills that will enable him to fend for himself, some day.

So I’ve been thinking about big ol’ fledglings, almost the same size as the parent but so clearly in need of their parents protection.  And then LO! and behold I went to a delicious and delightful book launch last night, for a lovely book called EARLYBIRD, by Julie Burgess-Manning with illustrations by Jenny Cooper. You can order your copy HERE.

Anyway, it is a beautiful picture book for children and families about a Pukeko family whose new egg hatches too soon, the care that egg must receive and the ways that the li’l Pukeko can (and does) flourish.  It will be such a gift for families to support understanding and hope during a really tricky time of life.  More and more babies are born prematurely, so lots of families could use a bit of extra support and let’s just say access to such support is patchy.  This book will help.   All hail, Champion Centre!

Other things that have been happening include a busy week of presenting and a final date for university work, and I foolishly had an expectation of kicking back thereafter.  Instead it’s catching up on appointments, tending to spring time garden, commitments with the kids, family stuff.  Which is all a blessing, to be sure, but sometimes I long to switch lives with my 11 year old nephew.  Muck around with a ball, eat, make fart jokes, do the occasional chore, eat, read, and sleep.  Oh, and hang out with your mates.

Sounds AMAZING.  That pretty much sounds like my dream holiday.  Throw in a lounger, some yoga, and cocktail hour, and I am on vay-cay!

But I’m the Auntie, not the nephew, so I’d better make the most of it.

Nerding out is one way I do that, so please do join me in a quick link dump before I go make dins for my peeps.

Alright: first up … I saw another awesome webinar from the Children’s Screen Time Action Network, this one features Nancy Carlsson Paige and her content is so good … well, all of them have been good.  Check out the archives HERE.   Annnnnnnnd, that webinar also served as an announcement for the release of this piece of goodness, it’s Dr Carlsson Paige’s Parent’s Guide to Young Children in the Digital Age: it is both free and wonderful.

Hey: I learned about this event “Roaring on Aotearoa” .. TOO LATE!  I have not read this book  or heard of this movement but it looks like my cup of tea, 100%.  Fingers crossed Santa could get that book for me.  Did any of y’all get to go?  Was it awesome?  I did manage to get tickets for this, though … turns out I’m a sucker for slapstick British comedy.  Blame my upbringing – big brothers = the Young Ones, etc.

Meanwhile, I thought this local bit about young leaders was both depressing and inspiring, and MATE our young people could use some back up, too … I ain’t lying about the need for caution around the tech and education for folks about the ways we’re being manipulated … in the meantime, we could all use the tech to look up loveliness like this recipe for simpler holidays from New Dream, then jot our favourite ideas onto a bit of paper and power down.   Just for a couple of hours.  GO ON.

 

 

geeky links, pretty links

Kia Ora ladies and gentlegeeks,

Many links to share, today, and school bus soon to arrive.  So let’s GO …

First up, Scientific American wonders if it is possible to quantify awe.  Well, is it?  If so, you might give this site “a lazy girl goes green” a passing grade for awesomeness.

This is an abstract to a piece of research dealing with the fine line between advertising and content in apps designed for children, and here you will find a write up of that research by the Washington Post.

This is a toolkit for educator and student privacy from the Children’s Screen Time Action Network (specifically their “Badass Teacher” subset) and speaking of teachers, this is a piece about how many of them are observing poor fine motor skills  in school starters.  Perhaps they ought to become craftivists? 

Here is a piece about early childhood education here in NZ, written by a visiting ECE teacher from the US, and (poor segue, but hey!) speaking of early, this is an article about the toll that early exposure to cortisol takes on our thinking abilities, and here is one of my fave dudes Dr Bruce Perry talking about such things on the telly.  Speaking of trauma, this is an article about the ways that such things interfere with formal learning.

You have GOT to read these two articles about the tech execs in Silicon Valley who are now becoming parents themselves … guess what decisions they make for their own kids?  (“I am convinced the devil lives in our phones”).  And read the second article from the NY times HERE.

A couple of nerdy links for the students among us (whoop!  whoop!) this one is about statistical procedures  and p-values (still learnin’) and this is a glorious method for organising notes, from the awesome (quantifiably so!) Thesis Whisperer website.

This is a link to the work of an artist named Ulla-Stina Wikander which I think is just bloody gorgeous, here is a pretty website about house plants, and this is an item I covet.