Best Elementary School

You know you love your child. Discover your child’s love language Assist your child in successful learning Use the love languages to correct and discipline more effectively Build a foundation of unconditional love for your child. I wish every parent, grandparent and educator had The 5 Love Languages of Children (The Secret to Loving Children Effectively) to read. I have been a lover of the 5 love languages since I first stumbled upon it and I love that this helps in opening the door when dealing with children. Each child is different so I love the practical and useful ideas not just in loving them and making sure they know that they are loved but for discipline and everyday interactions." You love your child, but does your child feel loved? Every child has a unique way of feeling loved. Use the love languages to help your child learn best Discipline and correct more lovingly and effectively.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The love languages (Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Quality Time, Acts of Service, and Gifts) are the same. Also, there were sections devoted to parenting philosophy and the nature of children whereas the original book focused more on the spouse and romantic love relationships. Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell had plenty of good and wise things to say about raising children and I highlighted up a storm. -Affection and love mean expressing appreciation for the very being of a child, for those characteristics and abilities that are part of the total package of the person. The goal is that the child would reach a level of maturity that will allow him one day to function as a responsible adult in society. While I without a doubt knew that both of my parents loved me I definitely grew up in a household where punishment was the main form of discipline. It's an information packed book with easy concepts to implement into your daily life in hopes that your children will feel more loved."
"I have used the concepts presented in the original 5 Love Languages book with my clients for many years. However, it can be a bit of a challenge for clients to translate the concepts presented in that book to interactions with their children."
"Great book!"
"If you wanted to, you read the entire book in one sitting."
"Informative Book."
"Great sound advice for communicating love to my kids, it's helped me better understand myself and my family better."
"This book opened my eyes and help me understand my kids better ...and myself!"
"Love this book-- just finished it."

Guffaw with delight as your class, guided by the Guff Counter, halts back talking students in their tracks! Based on cutting edge scientific research, Whole Brain Teaching recognizes that students learn the most when they are engaged in lessons that involve seeing, hearing, doing, speaking and feeling. Transform your students from passive receivers of information to dynamic creators of high energy lessons. Chris Biffle, a college educator with 40 years teaching experience, is the author of seven books on critical thinking, reading and writing.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This is my second copy of the book because my student teacher ending up loving this approach so much she kept my original."
"I wish I'd learned about WBT when I was still in the classroom."
"Loved the info in this book."
"The book is good if you are going to use the ideas in your classroom."
"When applied consistently, these techniques work well."
"Purchase book for use by teachers in an elementary school."
"I am still reading this book but have already discovered techniques that I plan on using in my classroom."

3 Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play (MIT Press)
To thrive in today's fast-changing world, people of all ages must learn to think and act creatively -- and the best way to do that is by focusing more on imagining, creating, playing, sharing, and reflecting, just as children do in traditional kindergartens. As founder of MIT's Lifelong Kindergarten research group and creator of the programming language Scratch, Mitch Resnick not only illuminates the rich history of scholarship on creative thinking but succeeds in bringing it to life through the experiences and practices of young people around the world. Lifelong Kindergarten is not only essential reading for educators trying to cultivate 21st century skills in the classroom; it's also a vital resource for anyone -- parents, entrepreneurs, artists -- interested in the creative mind at work and at play.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Fascinating!"
"I really enjoyed this book."
"Teachers, read this and chase boredom out of your classroom!"
"A well thought out and provoking read about the importance of play for learning."
"I read this book in a week... this is exactly what I was looking for!"
"The most touching and authentic book I have ever read, which is Lifelong kindergarten team continues to inspire to people."
Best Children's Ancient History Books

Newly revised and updated, The Story of the World, Volume 1 includes maps, a new timeline, more illustrations, and additional parental aids. Each Story of the World volume provides a full year of history study when combined with the Activity Book, Audiobook, and Tests—each available separately to accompany each volume of The. Story of the World Text Book. “This may well be the best multi-age read aloud narrative of world history yet to have been written.”. - Homeschooling in Japan Susan Wise Bauer is an educator and academic who has worked with parents and students for more than twenty years.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Up through to the end of 3rd grade in the public school system, the only exposure she'd had to history is to the timespan just before and just after the American revolutionary war. But I didn't want it to turn into a grind for her, so I took the authors' intentions to heart and I'm using this series to form a groundwork for a basic understanding of history. So all the complaints about inaccuracies in the book and the author's religious slant (which I didn't find and I was looking for), they don't matter. What really matters is that my daughter enjoys learning about history (it's her favorite class) and she's building a foundation that can be built on in later years. All history books will turn up people who will disagree with the content, will find inaccuracies in the material, or won't agree with the author's point of view."
"I have been reading this to my 7 year old boy ( we started it when he was 6) and he is absolutely captivated."
"Our school year hasn't started yet."
"We love this book."
"I was a little worried what my kids will think, but they LOVE this narration."
"We also spent some time in other sources during the Roman chapters just because there's so much there in the records, and this volume brought up subjects we wanted to investigate further."
"If you are really into the activity book, make sure you get the newer version."
"I was very hesitant to purchase this book at first, due to some of the negative reviews."
Best Preschool & Kindergarten

But in How Children Succeed , Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter more have to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, optimism, and self-control. How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators, who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character. How Children Succeed is an attempt to answer those questions, which for many of us are big and mysterious and central in our lives: Why do certain children succeed while other children fail? Why is it, exactly, that poor children are less likely to succeed, on average, than middle-class children? That makes a huge difference in how children’s brains develop, and scientists are now able to trace a direct route from those early negative experiences to later problems in school, health, and behavior. And that’s a big part of why so many low-income kids don’t do well in school. Many readers were first exposed to your reporting on character through your article in the New York Times Magazine in September 2011, which was titled "What If the Secret to Success Is Failure?" A. That’s an idea that I think was best expressed by Dominic Randolph, the head of the Riverdale Country School, an exclusive private school in the Bronx where they’re now doing some interesting experiments with teaching character. That’s a skill that parents can certainly help their children develop--but so can teachers and coaches and mentors and neighbors and lots of other people. By not giving them the chance to learn to manage adversity, to cope with failure, we produce kids who have real problems when they grow up. *Starred Review* Debunking the conventional wisdom of the past few decades that disadvantaged children need to develop basic reading and counting skills before entering school, Tough argues that they would be better served by learning such skills as grit, conscientiousness, curiosity, and optimism. Tough (Whatever It Takes, 2008) spent two years interviewing students, teachers, and administrators at failing public schools, alternative programs, charter schools, elite schools, and a variety of after-school programs. He also interviewed psychologists, economists, and neuroscientists and examined the latest research on character education beyond the bromides of the Left and Right to discover what actually works in teaching children skills that will aid them in school and in life, whatever the circumstances of their childhoods. Most compelling are Tough’s portraits of adolescents from backgrounds rife with poverty, violence, drug-addicted parents, sexual abuse, and failing schools, who manage to gain skills that help them overcome their adversities and go on to college. Tough ultimately argues in favor of research indicating that these important skills can be learned and children’s lives saved.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Following the footsteps of Jonathan Kozol, Paul Tough employs his significant storytelling abilities to help readers see and feel the plight of children, families and communities trapped in cycles of failure and poverty. How Children Succeed challenges some conventional wisdom on causes of failure (poverty, teacher quality) and contends that nurturing character in children and young adults is the key to success. Adolescent Character Formation. ==============================. Paul Tough highlights the work of school and support programs that intentionally focus on forming the character strength habits that enable children to learn well in schools, form healthy relationships, and avoid the destructive decisions and behavior patterns modeled in their communities. Just as early intervention with parents and young children yields wide ranging benefits for families in poverty, so character interventions in adolescence can and do enable young adults surrounded by cycles of poverty to learn self-control, perseverance and focus that are critical for escaping the gravitational pull of their communities. Tough shows compellingly that parents and children in poverty can and do overcome the powerful environmental forces of their communities - and that this is a beautiful and essential component of breaking cyclical poverty."
"I bought this book because it is a requirement for a Character Education course that I am taking for re-certification."
"He states: "[S]cientists have demonstrated that the most reliable way to produce an adult who is brave and curious and kind and prudent is to ensure that when he is an infant, his hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functions well. First, as much as possible, you protect him from serious trauma and chronic stress; then, even more important, you provide him with a secure, nurturing relationship with at least one parent and ideally two." Tough also cautions us parents to balance "our urge to provide everything for our child, to protect him from all harm" against "our knowledge that if we really want him to succeed, we need to first let him fail." But those who remember a time when they cared about other people's children will eat up what is essentially Tough's second book-length New Yorker article examining the intersection of education and poverty (the first, "Whatever It Takes," is arguably an even more interesting read). molded, in measurable and predictable ways, by the environment in which children grow up," and even after the most formative years "are very much changeable - entirely malleable, in fact. Tough skillfully splices their stories together and distills complicated concepts into easily digestible explanations (e.g., "mental contrasting ."
"It should be clear that strong character is not a given for people and that we need instruction, correction and, to some degree, material assistance to develop it. Paul Tough lays out what, I suppose, must be presented as an existential appeal with stories about young people who overcome weaknesses in character."