MollyMoccasins.com Offers Unprecedented Value, Extensive Variety and Quality Content
Incorporating contemporary media and cutting edge technology, MollyMoccasins.com is a unique blend of family-friendly stories, games and activities for children, parents and educators to enjoy on virtually all digital platforms including the web, apps, eBooks, enhanced eBooks and audio books.
Consistently featured in Apple’s iBook store and purchased by parents in over 70 countries, the world of Molly Moccasins and the theme that “life is an everyday adventure” has placed this innovative multimedia company at the forefront of the children’s web, eBook and app revolution. What makes Molly Moccasins stand out is the value, variety and quality not seen with other digital children’s book platforms.
MollyMoccasins.com is an entire library of stories (nearly 70!) created to inspire young adventurers to explore their everyday realities and surroundings by using their natural curiosity and sense of wonderment. New content is added frequently to the already extensive offering, which, in addition to the stories, includes hundreds of game options and activities.
Molly Moccasins has a no-advertising policy and stories can be purchased for as low as $0.99 each or a lifetime membership, all access pass – great for gift giving and curing a case of cabin fever this winter – can be purchased for $29.99.
Author Victoria O’Toole’s blend of adventure, fun and solid storytelling raise your spirit and promote good, solid life lessons. The bright and vibrant illustrations and quickly paced stories easily engage young readers. Though readers can choose their own order of which stories to read, it is recommended to start with Molly and her Moccasins first to learn how Molly gets her moccasins and finds her purpose. Molly Moccasins is a bright, imaginative, young and curious character who delights in all that life has to offer. Her uncle once said, “A curious mind is never bored,” and Molly takes this quite seriously. Her curiosity is simply catching – and the creators of the series note that readers are coming back for more and more of Molly. Victoria O’Toole explains the significance and staying-power of the series, “The response around the world has been amazing—80 percent of our visitors come back…sometimes more than 100 times a month!”
Charity: A Story for a Story
The creators of Molly Moccasins care deeply about young adventurers around the globe and are dedicated to helping children become and remain inspired and literate. No matter where you buy Molly Moccasins stories and for whatever digital device you choose, a story will be given to a child in need—story for story.
About the Author: Victoria Ryan O’Toole
The first dictionary that Victoria Ryan O’Toole ever received was inscribed with a powerful message from her favorite uncle: “A curious mind is never bored.” As soon as she read that line, she knew life would never be boring – and it never has been. She delights in her life in Southern California with her husband, twin daughters and twin yellow labs. She is thrilled to be writing stories that encourage children to use their imaginations and natural curiosities, just as she continues to use hers.
About Urban Fox Studios
Urban Fox Studios transforms the traditional publishing house into a full-service digital publishing and production studio for the next generation of storytelling. Urban Fox Studios Executive Management team brings with it years of extensive experience and award-winning design and technology.Their development and design teams have successfully launched numerous multi-million dollar products across a variety of channels and platforms; from immersive 3D worlds, games, interactive ePubs, and a variety of Apps for Apple and Android, including Choose Your Own Adventure books and MollyMoccasins.com.
Molly Moccasins –nearly 70 stories and counting…
www.mollymoccasions.com
http://www.facebook.com/mollymoccasins
http://twitter.com/mollymoccasins
Or search for “Molly Moccasins” at your favorite digital retailer for apps, eBooks,enhanced ebooks, and audio books.
For additional information and to receive press access to all offerings at MollyMoccasins.com please contact Tracey Daniels, Media Masters Publicity tracey@mmpublicity.com.
Let the adventures begin!
The Adventures of Beanboy – This Friday on Book Bites for Kids
Children’s author Lisa Harkrader will be my guest this Friday at 2:00 p.m. CST on Book Bites for Kids. She’ll talk about her new middle grade novel, The Adventures of Beanboy.
Listen to the show at 2:00 on Friday at www.bookbitesforkids.com.
About the Book
Never underestimate the power of the bean.
Tucker MacBean has been drawing comic books almost as long as he’s been reading them. When his favorite comic has a contest for kids, he hopes he has finally found a way to fix his family—all he has to do is create the winning superhero sidekick . . . Introducing “Beanboy”—the first comic book character to truly harness the power of the bean for good. He is strong, he is relentless, he can double in size overnight (if given enough water).
With thoughtful characterizations and copious comic book illustrations, this laughout-loud novel will have readers rooting for a superhero with true heart.
Best Children’s Books for Black History Month
Listen to several children’s writers discuss some of the best children’s books for Black History Month on a recent episode of Book Bites for Kids.
Wait Time – Just Give Me a Second
by Amy M. O’Quinn
Impatience. It’s something most parents and teachers struggle with every now and then. And instead of giving our children or students a few seconds longer to formulate or search their brains for the correct answer to our queries, we jump in a little too early to ‘help’ them. Honestly, for educators, the silence can be uncomfortable and we may feel frustrated by the lack of an immediate response.
In fact, according to an excerpt from the book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Success as a Teacher © 2005 by Anthony D. Frederick, “Classroom observations reveal that teachers typically wait less than 1 second for students to respond to a question. Teachers often conclude that students don’t know the answer to a question if they don’t respond quickly. And when they do respond, they usually use knowledge-level responses.”
But is this really the most beneficial strategy for students? Learning to use wait time, even for a few extra seconds, can yield amazing results!
Why Children Hesitate
There may be many reasons why children hesitate to answer questions quickly. They may be afraid of being laughed at by other students if they are wrong. They might not want to disappoint the teacher (or parent) by not knowing the answer. Or, in many cases, they may simply need just a few more seconds to ponder the question before they formulate or verbalize their answer or explanation. Young children, especially, and even ESL students do better if they are given ample opportunity to process information and mentally rehearse before trying to give their responses.
What is Wait Time?
Wait time is defined as the pause between asking the question and soliciting a response. Providing additional wait time after a student response also allows all students to reflect on the response prior to further discussion. Increased wait time results in longer student responses, more appropriate unsolicited responses, more student questions, and increased higher order responses.
Studies beginning in the early 1970s and continuing through the 1980s show that if teachers pause between three and seven seconds after asking higher-level questions, students respond with more thoughtful answers and that science achievement is increased. This finding is consistent at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels and across the science disciplines.
Just Wait A Second — Or Several
By practicing this strategy, parents and teachers might just discover that wait time is one of the best teaching tools—ever. However, it does take diligence and patience, as it goes against most of our natures to sit in silence for several seconds, waiting for an answer. But it works, and students will feel more successful as well. They might not always know the answer, even after several seconds of wait time, but at least they have the opportunity to try before being cut off prematurely.
So remember, when your student doesn’t immediately answer a question, take a deep breath, bite your tongue to keep from jumping in with the answer, and wait. You might just be surprised by the results!
Visit Amy at amyoquinn.com.
Journey to Gameland – How to Turn Your Favorite Children’s Book into a Board Game
Here’s something that will help your children build reading skills in a variety of ways. They can create board games from their favorite books! How cool is that?
About Journey to Gameland
Take a journey through your favorite book and transform it into a board game! Choose your characters, design your board, and create obstacles and other fun activities all according to what happens in your favorite book. Learn how to take the joy of reading to another level and discover your own creativity.
Eleven-year-old Ben Buchanan, who created a board game based on the popular Harry Potter books, provides advice for all children who would like to turn their favorite book into a board game. Along with his co-authors, he offers a step-by-step process, with suggestions for parents, librarians, and teachers, on how to help children transform their favorite book into a board game.
The book shows how you can have hours of fun creating the board game–and then have lots more hours of fun playing!
Journey to Gameland encourages children to develop their own creativity.
Support Building a Bookshelf, Inc.
This past Saturday I was at Barnes and Noble in Oak Park Mall, here in the Kansas City area, signing my book The Lucky Baseball as part of an event for Building a Bookshelf, Inc..
Watch this video to learn more about this great charity to promote children’s literacy:
PBS KIDS Launches Its First Educational Augmented Reality APP
ARLINGTON, VA, Nov. 14, 2011 – PBS KIDS today announced its first augmented reality app for iPhone and iPod touch, FETCH! Lunch Rush, which is now available on the App Store. Available for free, the app uses the camera on iPhone or iPod touch to overlay computer-generated graphics on top of the physical, real-world environment. Extending PBS’s leadership in using augmented reality as an educational tool, FETCH! Lunch Rush opens a new world of learning by teaching kids ages six to eight math skills, like addition and subtraction, while blending the virtual and real world into a truly engaging experience.
“Augmented reality is becoming a popular marketing tool and a compelling feature for gamers, but no one has fully explored what this could mean for educating children,” said Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President, Interactive, Product Development and Innovation, PBS. “We were among the first to offer educational augmented reality kids content when we launched the DINOSAUR TRAIN Hatching Party online game last year, in which a player’s real world intersects with a virtual environment online to help hatch a dinosaur egg. We’re excited to expand our exploration of this space by launching our first augmented reality mobile app and continue PBS KIDS’s leadership in using new technologies to further learning.”
“The FETCH! Lunch Rush App is designed as a 3-D game, which helps kids visualize the math problems they are trying to solve,” added Lesli Rotenberg, Senior Vice President, Children’s Media, PBS. “At PBS KIDS our goal is to use media to nurture kids’ natural curiosity and inspire them to explore the world around them; we can’t wait to see what this new app will mean for furthering that exploration.”
The Fetch! Lunch Rush App was produced by PBS member station WGBH and is based on the PBS KIDS GO! series FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman, also produced by WGBH. In this multiplayer app, Ruff Ruffman has to collect the lunch order for his studio crew. The challenge is keeping track of how many pieces of sushi everyone wants using augmented reality “markers” (printable hand-outs) that prompt activity within the app. The app uses 3-D imagery to reinforce the early algebraic concepts, helping kids to make the connection between real objects and corresponding numeric symbols.
The FETCH! Lunch Rush App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone or iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore.
Developed in partnership with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and powered by a Ready To Learn grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Fetch! Lunch Rush is part of a new suite of games available on the newly launched PBS KIDS Lab website (PBSKIDS.org). Combined with online and interactive whiteboard games, this new app helps build a learning experience for kids that takes place across platforms, all with the goal of accelerating learning. In addition to FETCH!, six suites based on hit PBS KIDS series are available on the PBS KIDS Lab: THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT!, CURIOUS GEORGE, SID THE SCIENCE KID, FIZZY’S LUNCH LAB, SUPER WHY!, and DINOSAUR TRAIN.
To date, PBS KIDS mobile apps have been downloaded more than 1.4 million times. With a transmedia approach, PBS KIDS is increasingly serving children wherever they live, learn, and play – through mobile devices, as well as on TV, online, in the classroom, and through a new line of educational toys.
Parents in the Classroom – Teacher Offers Tips for Being the Best Volunteer Ever
As states continue to slash education budgets to accommodate declining tax revenues, schools respond by trying to squeeze even more out of their beleaguered teachers: class sizes grow, planning periods are cut, each student gets less attention.
What can we do? Project Appleseed, a non-profit public education advocate, is asking parents across the country to lend a hand in their child’s school on Nov. 17, its 18th annual National Parent Involvement Day. Not coincidentally, it falls during American Education Week, Nov. 13-19.
“Volunteers and adult assistants in classrooms make a huge difference, especially with schools and teachers under so much stress,” says Paddy Eger, a veteran teacher, parent trainer and volunteer, and author of Educating America 101: Strategies for Adult Assistants in K-8 Classrooms.
“With a little training and a handful of strategies, most adults can effectively assist both teachers and students,” Eger says. “One hour a month or a week helping students is a small investment of time that has big returns.”
Sometimes, however, the best-intentioned volunteers become yet another pair of hands tugging for attention on the teacher’s sleeve. Volunteers working with small groups of students, such as tutoring sessions, also risk wasting precious instructional time if they’re not prepared and don’t know how to manage the group.
In more than 20 years as a primary and intermediate grade teacher, Eger has developed a number of simple strategies that allow volunteers to both maximize their usefulness and minimize distractions to the teacher. Her suggestions don’t replace training provided by the school, since that’s tailored to the teachers’ needs, but they will greatly enhance time spent working directly with students.
They include:
* If you have questions for the teacher: Schedule a meeting that’s not at a time when students are in the classroom. Do not expect to meet with the teacher unannounced for “just a minute.” Also, if the teacher provides materials for an activity, don’t expect him or her to walk you through it. Take time to read the directions and gather supplies days before your classroom visit.
* Establish a consistent meeting place: If your group will meet regularly, ask the teacher before your first visit to help you establish a place that you can use every time you visit. Nothing kills an activity faster than spending valuable time looking for a place to work.
* Choose your seat wisely: Don’t sit at one end of a rectangular table. Sitting in the middle seat along one side allows you to see all of the students and reach out to touch their work. It also makes you part of the group, and allows you to speak in a softer voice. For round tables, sit so you – not the students – face nearby tables or other distractions.
* To help children become active listeners, don’t repeat questions: If the student says he doesn’t understand the question, ask him to repeat what he thinks he heard. If the student is still confused, ask another student to rephrase the question. Once again, ask the first student to repeat what he just heard.
* Be prepared for a change in plans: Have a “pocket activity” ready in case a schedule change means you’ll have less time with the children. This is a simple game, such as a math or spelling game, or a book or news article that can be started or stopped at any time without losing its value.
Assistants, especially those who’ve taken the time to prepare, can have a big impact in a classroom, Eger says.
“Assistants provide the extra hands and help to gather materials, lead small groups, prepare enriching activities and manage day-to-day tasks,” Eger says.
“While they can’t solve all of the problems associated with drastic budget cuts, they can help ensure students feel as little of the sting as possible.”
About Paddy Eger
Paddy Eger is a 20-year teacher from Washington State whose years as a trainer in the Parent Cooperative Education Program created the basis for her. She graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in elementary education. Visit her online at www.paddyeger.com.
Kids Need to Read: For Readers Who Cut Their Teeth on Vampires – Maturing Kids Need Something More To Chew On
Good parents try to stay plugged into their kids’ lives, and nowadays – for parents of teen girls, anyway – that’s likely to mean reading the Twilight vampire series by Stephenie Meyer and tuning into the hit teen TV drama, The Vampire Diaries, on The CW.
With the fourth in the series, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, opening in movie theaters Nov. 18, there’s plenty of bloodlust building, but how to keep whetting that appetite for books? As teens outgrow the high school drama and simple romance of adolescent fantasy fiction, they need something with the same allure – and a little more substance – to keep them reading.
Bravo to those 30-, 40- and 50-something parents who want to continue hanging with their kids, even if it’s only in the pages of books. Many of these adults have become vampire literates, though by now they’re hankering for something a little more substantive than Type 0 fantasy.
Paul Dorset, a father of five girls and boys ages 13 to 27 years old, says it’s important to keep kids reading – even if they’re 20-something “kids” – and when parents and children can talk about the books they’re sharing, that’s better yet.
“Kids have a short attention span these days,” he says. “It takes a really good book to get them focused. You really have to encourage kids to read.”
Dorset is the author of seven books, including fantasies for younger children and how-to’s for adults. However, he says it’s that middle ground of readers – ages 16 to 30 – that need special attention. In their world, the written word is all texts and Tweets, which can contribute to a short attention span and inability to absorb more complex written material. “Young people trying to get jobs need to be able to do the short and sweet – and the longer and more complex,” he says.
As a pioneer in the computing world (he was writing classified code for the British government in the late 1970s and early ‘80s), Dorset has an unusual insight into what clicks, literally, for young readers – and their parents.
His newest book, New Blood: Melrose Part 1, draws from his 30-plus years in Information Technology. Toss in a little paranormal activity (a graduation from vampires) and Da Vinci Code-style intrigue and you’ve got something older teens, young adults and their parents can sink their teeth into.
“I wouldn’t recommend it for my 13-year-old, but it’s perfect for my 16-year-old,” he says. “Even my 22-year-old loves it, and the guys like it as much as the girls.”
Dorset, a British native who lives near Seattle, Wash., says it’s important to give young adults books that offer readers something to chew on intellectually without being overly graphic, something that both parents and their young adult kids can have fun with and talk about – without blushing.
How does one do that? Hit on the themes affecting all of us today: layoffs and corporate reorganization; technology and the looming shadow of “big brother;” ambition and its costs.
“Add to that mystery, the paranormal culture and two people who must never get together and you’ve got lots of layers for any adult, or young adult, to peel back,” he says. “The more things that happen, the more you uncover.”
That should keep young people perpetuating a declining skill: reading.
About Paul Dorset
Paul Dorset is a 51-year-old father of five who has worked as a computer consultant for more than 30 years. His previous publications include fantasy novels for ages 12-plus and how-to books for adults. He incorporates his extensive experience in computers – and his insightful perspective on the possibilities therein – in novels that include layers of contemporary intrigue, romance and mystery. Visit him online at pauldorset.blogspot.com.
Authors and Illustrators Team to Create Picture Book Month
“I have always believed that literature begins in the cradle — the poems we say to the babies, the stories we tell them — prepare them to become part of the great human storytelling community. We humans are the only creatures in the known universe who make and remake our world with story.”
- Jane Yolen from her Picture Book Month essay
The New York Times declared, “Picture Books No Longer A Staple for Children” in an article published in October 2010. The controversial article incited a barrage of responses from the children’s book industry, many in defense of the venerable picture book. In addition, the digital age has ushered in an unprecedented amount of ebooks and, with devices like the iPad, the color Nook, and the Kindle Fire, picture books are being converted to the digital format.
Thus, Picture Book Month was born. Founder Dianne de Las Casas decided it was time to celebrate picture books in their printed format so she created an initiative to designate November as “Picture Book Month.” Katie Davis, Elizabeth Dulemba, Tara Lazar, and Wendy Martin came on board to champion the cause and spread the word. A logo was designed by Joyce Wan. A website (www.picturebookmonth.com) was created to feature essays from “Picture Book Champions,” thought leaders in the children’s literature community. Each day in November, a new essay will be posted from such notable contributors as Suzanne Bloom, Denise Fleming, Leslie Helakoski, Eric A. Kimmel, Tammi Sauer, Dan Yaccarino, and Jane Yolen.
Better World Books and organizations like Scholastic Book Fairs Philippines are lending their support. The website will also feature links to picture book resources, authors, illustrators, and kidlit book bloggers. In addition, parents, educators, and librarians can download the theme calendar to help them plan their picture book celebrations and access picture book activities.
Join the celebration! Visit www.picturebookmonth.com. The website officially opened on November 1, 2011.
“Picture books are important because they are with us for life. They are the most important books we’ll ever read because they’re our first. No matter how many books we’ve read since, they will always have a place in our hearts.”
– Dan Yaccarino from his Picture Book Month Essay
