If you’ve spent any time with the Night Buddies books, you know Crosley. He is the bright red crocodile who lives under John’s bed, the one who grabs a belt full of gadgets and sneaks out into the Borough after lights-out to chase down whatever needs chasing. Crosely gets the cover. Crosely gets the glory. […]
Every summer, parents worry about the reading slide. Will their children lose ground on math? Will the writing get rusty? Will September arrive to find everything they learned last year quietly leaking out of their heads? It is a real thing, and it is the slide everybody already knows to watch for. But there is […]
There is a moment, right before the first big firework goes off, when an entire crowd goes quiet and tips their heads back at the same time. Kids and adults, all of them, staring up at the dark and waiting for something to happen. Then it does, and everybody makes the same sound. For something […]
Most summer bucket lists are either too young or too vague. Blow bubbles. Have a picnic. Visit a museum. Middle graders need something with a little more edge to it. Something that feels like a real challenge, a real adventure, or at minimum a really good story to tell later. Here is a list built […]
The last day of school has a particular energy. Backpacks hit the floor. Folders get recycled. And somewhere in the back of every parent’s mind, a quiet concern surfaces: will they read anything this summer, or will the whole thing just slide? The summer reading slide is real. Kids who don’t read over the break […]
While May is filled with end-of-school activities, June is basically a month-long exhale. School winds down, schedules loosen up, and suddenly, there is actual time to do things just because they sound fun. Lucky for you, June comes loaded with unofficial holidays that are exactly that kind of fun. Here are the ones worth putting […]
The last weeks of school look like excitement from the outside. Field days, yearbook signings, countdown chains taped to bedroom doors. The excitement is real, but for many middle graders, something else is running quietly in the background. This is a transition, and transitions are complicated at any age. At eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, […]
There is a window, somewhere between the end of car seat requirements and the beginning of teenage indifference, where traveling with your kid is genuinely great. Not just manageable. Not just fine. Actually great. If you have a child between eight and twelve right now, you are in that window. Middle graders are old enough […]
Middle graders are not always easy to impress. But tell a ten-year-old they can grow a pumpkin the size of a small car, or a plant that eats bugs, or popcorn they can actually pop in the microwave, and suddenly they are very interested in going outside. Gardening with kids this age works best when […]
It’s raining. School is out or winding down for the day. Your middle grader has exhausted their usual options and has arrived in the kitchen to deliver the news: they are bored. Completely, desperately, nothing-to-do bored. The instinct, especially on a rainy afternoon with nowhere to be, is to fix it. Suggest something. Hand them […]
Every year around this time, millions of people fill out brackets predicting which college basketball team will take the championship. Most of those brackets are busted by the end of the first weekend. And yet, people love it. There is something genuinely fun about setting up a tournament, picking your favorites, and watching the whole […]
It starts gradually. Bedtime gets pushed back a little. Then a little more. You walk past their room at 10:00 p.m., and there’s still a light on. By the time spring break rolls around, your middle grader has somehow flipped into a schedule that would make a college student feel comfortable. Sound familiar? You’re not […]