Autumn is officially here! In case you were overloaded with back-to-school-daze and all the other shifts that come with seasons changing, we’ve got the best of the #brainbuilding community captured for you right here:
- Nerd alert! Check out the neuroscience of kindness in children— and how to activate the brain-building that leads kids in your life towards their hardwiring for empathy.
- Over at the Harvard Center for the Developing Child, they’ve got a great explainer video on how play is an effective way to support the 3 core principles of child development.
- We loved this interview with with Erika Christakis at Edutopia: “Developing brains aren’t really designed to cope with adult schedules and pacing.”
- Your preschooler can do way more math than you think! A new study from Dr. Bethany Rittle-Johnson at Vanderbilt University has loads of info, tips and myth-busting.
- A fantastic collection of resources from the Los Angeles Times: Reading by 9. So many brilliant tips, articles, books and more packed into this guide!
From our end of the world, we’ve got new interviews up in two series we’ve launched this year:
- 5 Questions for the Mayor: Milwaukee’s Tom Barrett (Check out other #5Qs interviews, too.)
- Students Rebuild Inspires Creativity, Builds Global Community for Philanthropy–Meet Leonetta Elaiho, Chief Empowerment Officer (And check out our other Community Cultivators while you’re at it!)
And, from our ICYMI files, some of our most popular articles from this summer:
- PBS Kids’ “Molly Of Denali” brings endless creativity to TV: Indigenous characters created & voiced by Indigenous people, #brainbuilding adventures, the heritage & history of native Alaskans, & more. We’re IN LOVE.
- Early learning & childcare are the buzzwords of many states, but how will we PAY for them? The Economic Policy Institute and the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment have built an incredible proposal for CA that could revolutionize budgets across the country.
- The perennial question: How much screen time is too much screen time? We dove into the World Health Organization’s brand-new, first-ever guidelines, and discussed the recommendations with Dr. Ari Brown.
- “We are building social capital–weaving a tapestry of support for our children, and each of us has a thread we can lend to the tapestry.” Beth Duda, director of the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, on their community-building success with “Pop Up Neighbor.”
Last, but definitely not least, one of our favorite seasonal cartoons is making the rounds again:
