How Long a Small Child Can Actually Concentrate
What is typical at two, three, four and five, the stages attention moves through, and why the same child concentrates beautifully at nursery and not at all at home.
Read more →Guides for parents and teachers
Practical advice on getting the most out of printable worksheets — and on knowing when to put them away.
Teaching Shapes and Colors in the Right Order
Match, sort, point, then name — and why a child shown only one kind of triangle has learned a picture rather than a shape.
Read more →What School Readiness Actually Means
Ask a reception teacher what they wish children arrived able to do and almost nothing on the list is academic. What to spend the year before school on.
Read more →Sounds Before Letters
Reading is built on sound, not on letter names. Why the alphabet is the wrong place to start, and what to do for the year before it.
Read more →A Workable Week, from Two to Five
How often, for how long, and what fills the rest of the time — a practical weekly rhythm for each year, where the printable part is deliberately the smallest part.
Read more →Choosing Crayons and Pencils for Small Hands
Short beats fat, pressure matters more than grip, and the most effective thing you can do costs nothing: break the crayons in half.
Read more →Left-Handed Children and Early Writing
Most of the difficulty left-handed children have with writing is equipment and setup designed for someone else. Nearly all of it is fixable in an afternoon.
Read more →Scissor Skills, Age by Age
Cutting develops in a predictable order and does more for handwriting than most worksheets. What to expect at each stage, and the setup that makes it possible.
Read more →Counting Is Not the Same as Understanding Numbers
A child reciting to twenty has learned a rhyme. The understanding underneath arrives later, in five separate pieces — and knowing which is which saves a lot of worry.
Read more →Using Worksheets Without Pressure
The difference between ten minutes that helps and ten minutes that teaches a child paper means being tested — almost none of which is about the sheet.
Read more →What Has to Come Before Tracing
Tracing asks a child to do four things at once. How to build each of them first, and how to tell when a child is actually ready.
Read more →Pencil Grip by Age, and When to Leave It Alone
How a grip develops between two and five, which problems are worth fixing, and why correcting too early is the most reliable way to make a child dislike drawing.
Read more →Twelve Screen-Free Activities for 3 Year Olds
Simple things to do with a three year old that need no preparation and no screen — most using what is already in your kitchen.
Read more →The Order to Teach Letter Formation
Why alphabetical order is the worst way to teach writing, and what to do instead.
Read more →