Kids VT, March 2021
Brighter Days Ahead: Learning Through the Walden Project; Encouraging Kids’ Self-Sufficiency; An Unexpected Journey to Homeschooling; 10 Fun Things to Do This Month
Learning the Art of Slow Birding
Last October, I signed up my family, with great enthusiasm, for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s yearly citizen science survey, Project FeederWatch. The premise is simple: You watch birds and report what you see. I paid the $18 fee and received a cool poster and some simple directions in the mail. I went out and…
Designing Areas of the Home to Encourage Kids’ Self-Sufficiency
Fostering self-sufficiency is a gift to kids and their caregivers. In our family, we encourage independence to build our 4- and 6-year-olds’ self-confidence and awareness about their internal strength and motivation. If kids know they are trusted to take care of themselves and can see how their actions impact the world around them, they’ll be…
Good Citizens Are Learning and Doing
The Good Citizen At-Home Challenge is winding up! Entries in the youth civics initiative organized by Kids VT and Seven Days are due on Friday, March 5. We’ll hold a grand-prize drawing for winners on March 10 and will announce them — and showcase some of the best work we received — in the April…
Recipe: Maple Pulled Pork & Brussels Sprouts for Sugaring Season
Because I grew up in Vermont, maple syrup holds a special place in my heart. One of my favorite recipes as a child was my grandmother’s hot dogs with apples and maple syrup. A maple vinaigrette is one of my go-to salad dressings. Maple-roasted pecans? A delight. An antidote when my son, who is a…
Sharing the Weight of Pandemic Exhaustion
The first weeks of the pandemic reminded me of the first weeks with our daughter. She was born a bit early, and we had lots of trouble figuring out breastfeeding. Consequently, I ended up staying at home for several weeks. The time with a newborn was isolating and difficult, but eventually I walked out of…
How Preschool Music Educators Have Adapted to Virtual Classes
When longtime children’s music teacher and performer Andrea Soberman picked up her guitar, arranged her puppets, and tested the mic and camera on her laptop for her first virtual music class in the spring of 2020, she was taking a leap of faith. “I did not know how to do anything on Zoom,” she said…
Tips for Navigating Sadness as Winter Grinds On
It was Monday morning, and I had just finished writing my to-do list for the third week of January. I sat down on the couch, opened my computer and stared blankly at the screen. I looked at the list, which took up the entire sheet of paper, then back at the computer screen. I felt…
Kids Contribute to Their Communities Through the Mitzvah Project
Since last April, 12-year-old Orion Cooper of South Burlington has sewn 75 masks from brightly colored bandannas. He’s donated them to the University of Vermont Medical Center, the South Burlington Food Shelf, and friends and family. By this April, he said, he’s hoping to reach his goal of 100 masks. In Judaism, a mitzvah is…
A Former Public School Teacher on Homeschooling Her Kids
In the fall of 2020, two months into overseeing remote learning for my three older kids, I wrote in my journal: I’m lucky to exercise one day during the week. I work on Friday and Saturday nights. I miss joining family movie night. My days are spent smearing peanut butter on bread, graham crackers and…
Something New
My family recently started playing Monopoly while we eat dinner. My 11-year-old son somehow convinced us that we needed the more expansive Mega Edition, so we’ve stationed its huge square board in the center of our round kitchen table for our nightly game. The four of us have just a sliver of surface to balance…
Reimagine van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ With This Art Project
When post-impressionist Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh created his renowned painting “The Starry Night” — rendering the night sky with swirling brushstrokes of blue and gold — he brought to life his own unique vision. Though the night sky and the starlit landscape below it would have been largely still apart from, perhaps, some wind…
Discover These Award-Winning Books for Young Readers
March is cabin-fever month. While your family might be itching to be outside, the weather often doesn’t cooperate. Although many libraries offer curbside pickup or are open by appointment or for short visits, these systems don’t always work when you’re looking to choose picture books. Requesting books from the Red Clover Book Award lists is…
Vermont Visionaries: Project Walden Founder Matthew Schlein
On an arctic day in mid-February, with the temperature hovering around 10 degrees, a school bus pulled into the parking lot of the 230-acre Willowell preserve in Monkton. Nineteen Vergennes Union High School students, carrying backpacks and instrument cases, exited and began their hike down the 1/3-mile path leading to the base camp for the…
