Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms, Grandmothers, Aunties, Godmothers and Bonus Moms from GCP!!! Hope your Mother's Day is filled with people you love, things you love to do, and gratitude from the children and others that you love to do things for. To honor you all, we offer two poems, both by the beloved Maya Angelou (1928-2014). [...]
Thanks to all who attended the Ground Control Parenting/Hunter College Continuing Education webinar School in the Time of COVID-19, which was held on April 22. We had a great turnout, and heard wonderful advice and tips from our panel of experts: Dr. Karen Hopkins, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, specializing in behavioral and developmental [...]
Tonight, Elmo is hosting a virtual playdate, and everyone's invited!! Elmo and his friends are all stuck at home during this pandemic, and his mommy and daddy have helped him set up a video play date with lots of his Sesame Street and celebrity friends including Tracee Ellis Ross and Lin Manuel Miranda. This half hour of fun premieres [...]
Have your children settled into a home schooling routine yet? From many reports, this is an uneven and bumpy road. Some schools are providing an entire day of schoolwork, and parents are struggling to keep track of passwords and schedules, manage device use and sharing within the family, and track their children's progress, while trying to do their own [...]
Need more homeschooling materials? Here are the latest online learning resources to help you and your children: Common Sense Media, a trusted guide for media and technology, has just released customizable learning packets for K- 2nd grade students. While these packets were principally designed for teachers, they are intended for use by parents and children as well. The materials [...]
Trying not to overwhelm you all, but we want to send along some more great homeschooling resources: Khan Academy: This free online learning site is taking it's responsibility to help parents and teachers with remote learning very seriously. Starting with the page that asks "How Can Khan Academy Be Used For Remote Learning During School Closures?", the site gives [...]
My mom taught 5th grade and was a reading specialist in NYC public schools for over 30 years. When I was young, we knew that whatever weekend family activity we planned would need to end by Sunday afternoon so Mommy could focus on her lesson plans for the week. When I started teaching my Parenting courses at Hunter last [...]
Remote Learning, Homeschooling, it's a new day, and we need to try to get up to speed on all of this pretty quickly. Here's a list of online learning resources for you and your children to help you navigate this brave new world: Getting Organized: sites to help you get started Seven Strategies to Plan, Prioritize and...Plan?!!: tips for [...]
Welp, here we are. Facing the surreality of coping with the domestic outbreak of this coronavirus, with news of more positive cases and more closures and cancellations daily. The World Health Organization has just declared that the spread of COVID-19 across more than 100 countries now qualifies as a global pandemic. In a couple of days I will be heading to [...]
To all you new moms (and friends of new moms ): did you know that 80% of a child's brain growth happens in the first three years of its life? And that there are a few everyday activities that you can do with a child in those first three years to make a big impact on it's learning? You [...]