1) Wherever you are, make life a “letter hunt.”  Be it the grocery store, drug store, the zoo, or in the car, pick a letter and find it in signage and brand names.   See if you can get all 26 letters.  Or choose a letter from the alphabet and search your home for words that start with that letter.  Try labeling those objects using a labeler or post-it notes. (Please be forewarned!  Pets exhibit a near-universal discomfort in being labeled.)  After naming items individually try using a different colored labels to group them by type, shape, color, or size.  For example, “couch” could also end up with the labels “brown,” “soft,” “rectangle,” and “furniture.”

2) Read to your child every day.  Demonstrate for your child how to read with expression.  If a book has pictures, relate the words to the pictures.  Even if you’re tired of a book, “Read it again!”  If you are repeating an old favorite, change the words in silly ways and let your child catch you “messing it up.” (more…)

Coney Island is real.  It is neither safer nor more dangerous than anywhere else, neither pristine nor tarnished.  It is where someone in your extended family proposed years ago, a magic place to which generations past have travelled from far and wide.  But it is also that spot you heard was “seedy” and housed an aspect of your generation’s “bad element.”  It is a place where grand dreams have flourished, and others have died tragic deaths.  It’s where we have gone to talk to the girls and boys of our dreams, get sand kicked in our faces by bullies, and either quailed in fear or rose to the challenge.  It is the amusement park venue on the beach in “The City that Never Sleeps!”  How you can you beat that for quintessential American entertainment saturation? (more…)