Jennifer L. W. Fink

Snapshot Sunday: A Boy and His Dino

A long, long time ago, before Boy #2 became a nine-year-old boy obsessed with video games and destruction, he was a boy who loved dinosaurs. In recognition of that love, one of his amazingly fabulous uncles (who also happens to be his godfather) gave Boy

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Want to Learn a New Language?

I’m not going to turn this into a giveaway blog, I promise. But this one was just too good not to share. @mommyPR is giving away a Rosetta Stone Language Learning program. Just visit her blog, tell her what language you’d like to learn, and

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Are Single-Sex Classes the Answer?

School is not usually a boy-friendly place. But what if your son was in an all-male classroom? Would make a difference? A just-released report from Arizona suggests that it might. Officials at Anderson Junior High School say that four years of single-sex education have increased

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Kids Need Unconditional Acceptance

What’s more important: getting our kids to do as we say, or helping them grow into fulfilled adults? You might argue that it’s not an either/or choice, that it’s fully possible for a child to obey and grow into a fulfilled adult. And yet the

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Giveaway: LeapFrog Tag Reading System Bundle!

I love educational toys. So I’m very pleased to announce a new contest (drum roll, please!), the LeapFrog Tag Reading System Giveway. Thanks to my friend Sarah Ludwig at Parenting by Trial and Error, I’ve been selected as one of ten bloggers to host a

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5 Reasons Boys Love Gardens

Gardening: a way to get boys engaged in outdoor play while also teaching valuable lessons about nutrition, the environment, and  hard work. And the best part is that while gardening is hard work, most boys hardly notice it because playing in the garden is also lots of

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Are Boys Overscheduled?

You’ve heard it before: Kids today are overscheduled. Between school and sports, church and community, there’s simply no time to just be. Writer Laura Vanderkam disagrees. The author of the forthcoming book 168 Hours passionately argued her point in a recent Wall Street Journal article,

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Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by Dr. John Gray

Mars and Venus

Remember the book by Dr. John Gray, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? The idea was that men and women have different emotional needs and different ways of communicating (and expressing) those needs — and that by learning to communicate with our partners

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Photo by 142129088@N03 via Flickr

Tool Safety

After my First Day of School post the other day, Christine at Origami Mommy asked if I had any tips for teaching boys how to use hacksaws safely. She brings up a very good point. Normally, young children aren’t given tools to use. Plastic tools?

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Building Boys

You can purchase the newest book from Building Boys at the following websites: