This Safer Internet Day post is sponsored by Google It’s the first email I see in the morning as I open my inbox. It’s from an individual whose tone tends to range from passive aggressive to hostile. I take a deep breath and click to open it, not knowing if it will elicit an eyeroll…
Giving Your Child Their First Cell Phone? Read this first!
This post is sponsored by Google Family Link and Be Internet Awesome If you’re giving your child their first cell phone (or any digital device), take some time to develop a strategy for what happens next. It’s ok if you haven’t thought this until now because you’ve been focused on trying to figure who has…
How Kids Can Play Their Way Through Interland to Learn Digital Citizenship
This post is sponsored by Be Internet Awesome When I was a technology magnet coordinator, one of my beginning of the year tasks was to acquaint kids with our school system’s User Responsibilities for Computer Systems, Electronic Information, and Network Security during their first visit to the computer lab. This nine page PDF was filled…
How to Talk to Kids When They See Adults Being Unkind
This post is sponsored by Be Internet Awesome “Ugh,” my husband typed when I texted him to ask how the team meeting went before our son’s weekly baseball practice. The three letter response left me with more questions than answers about the mandatory pre-practice meeting that I thought the coach was holding to address bullying…
3 Simple, Positive Actions to Teach Tweens to Combat Bullying
This post is sponsored by Be Internet Awesome “Hi, how was your game?” I shouted to my tween son as I walked in the door from my daughter’s soccer game. For years, Saturdays in our house have been for soccer while Sundays are reserved for baseball which means I rarely miss a game. I love…
How I Taught My Tween to Be an Upstander After Bullying in the Baseball Dugout
This post is sponsored by Be Internet Awesome After two hours of playing baseball in the midday sun, I watched my son and his teammates emerge from the dugout with smiles on their faces from their win as sweat beads dripped from underneath the brims of their ball caps. I was folding my chair when…
6 Questions Parents Need to Ask Kids to Reinforce Kindness in the Digital World
This post is sponsored by Be Internet Awesome When my daughter was in preschool, she used to come home with sand in her mittens. Each afternoon I’d wonder what she’d done to fill her tiny pink mittens to the brim with sand and she thought it was one of life’s great mysteries too. Tethered to…
How Google Be Internet Awesome Teaches Kids It’s Cool to be Kind
This post is sponsored by Be Internet Awesome When my kids were preschoolers, many of our conversations centered around kindness and friendship. We read books about friendship, talked about what it meant to be kind, modeled how to be a good friend to others, and seized teachable moments to turn teary playground playdates into positive…
Little Miss Techie: Motivated Learner and Independent Googler!
Six year old Little Miss Techie has been very curious about which animals see in color. She knows that dogs do not but has been wondering about her grandparents’ sheep. Being the motivated learner that she is, she tried to find the answer in our nonfiction books about animals here at home. We’ve talked about…
Learning on the Go: Teaching Map Reading Skills While Traveling
After spending a gorgeous weekend in New York City with our favorite plastic laminated fold out map, I was reminded that despite living in a high tech age where GPS navigating with technology is becoming more and more common, a child’s natural interest in maps provides a wonderful opportunity to reinforce spatial skills, math, and…
