Family Learning

The Truth About College Admission is the easy-to-follow, comprehensive, go-to guide for families. The expert authors - with inside knowledge from both the high school and university sides of the experience - provide critical advice, thoughtful strategies, helpful direction, and invaluable reassurance during the long and often bewildering college admission journey.

One day, Stan and Jan Berenstain were captured by a family of bears. It was a family of three - an overenthusiastic Papa whose high opinion of himself was exceeded only by his ability to do silly things (often placing himself in jeopardy from bees, skunks, low-hanging branches, whales, irate farmers, etc.) a wise, steady Mama with a firm grip on reality, and a bright enterprising little boy cub.

The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.

If you've ever wondered whether you have what it takes to homeschool your children, look no further. Parenting author, podcaster, and homeschool mom Monica Swanson is here to tell you: you can do it. In fact, it can be the most fun, family-unifying, character-building, life-equipping experience you and your children will ever have.

We have a tendency today to over-parent, micromanage, and underappreciate our adolescents. Dr. John Duffy's The Available Parent is a revolutionary approach to taking care of teens and tweens. The available parent of a teenager is open to discussion, offering advice and solutions but not insisting on them. He allows his child to make some mistakes, setting limits, primarily where health and safety are concerned. He never lectures - he is available but not controlling. He is neither cruel nor dismissive, ever....

For too long, parents and teachers have focused on identifying and "fixing" kids' weaknesses to improve academic performance. Passionately written and informed by Fox's 25 years of experience, Your Child's Strengths turns that flawed paradigm on its head.

This book is an outgrowth of the School of New Spirituality program. In it, Walsch has joined with Laurie Farley and Emily Filmore, the directors of the school, to put into one place all of the spiritual concepts of a home schooling curriculum. This book makes available for parents not only the tools for teaching CwG’s concepts, but a narrative summary of the concepts themselves, because this special articulation for parents would form the backbone of their home schooling efforts, and help them to use the other tools created by the school with maximum effectiveness.

Can you teach your child to be kind? This vital question is taking on a new urgency as our culture grows ever more abrasive and divided. A world-renowned developmental psychologist, Dr. Thomas Lickona has lead the character education movement in schools for 40 years and now he shares with parents the vital tools they need to create a culture of kindness at home. Kindness doesn’t stand on its own. It needs a supporting cast of other essential virtues - like self-control, good judgment, courage, and gratitude.

Bobby Phillips is an average 15-year-old boy. Until the morning he wakes up and can't see himself in the mirror. Not blind, not dreaming, Bobby is just plain invisible. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to Bobby's new condition; even his dad the physicist can't figure it out. For Bobby that means no school, no friends, no life. He's a missing person. Then he meets Alicia. She's blind, and Bobby can't resist talking to her, trusting her.

The first thing every listener will want to know is whether Anne Shirley appears in these stories of Avonlea and Spencervale. She certainly does. As a matter of fact, page one starts off in this manner: "Anne Shirley was curled up on the window seat of Theodora Dix's sitting room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnight of her vacation."

The spirited child - often called "difficult" or "strong-willed" - can easily overwhelm parents, leaving them feeling frustrated and inadequate. Spirited kids are, in fact, simply "more" - by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child. Through vivid examples and a refreshingly positive viewpoint, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka offers parents emotional support and proven strategies for handling their spirited child.

For kids and students, parents and teachers alike, How to Teach Kids Anything takes what academics know about education and pedagogy and translates it all into real-world skills and techniques. The learning brain works in very predictable ways, and we can use this to our advantage. Whether you are a student, tutor, professor, teacher, or even TA, understand how information takes hold and becomes useful.

A best-selling expert on education shows how to make the school system work for your child. How many parents have a child struggling in school? The answer: a great many. This audiobook is an informed, practical resource for such parents. As the author of the classic book on home-schooling, The Well-Trained Mind, Susan Wise Bauer knows how children learn and how schools work. Her advice here is comprehensive and anecdotal, including material drawn from experience.

Inspirational words on parenting from the beloved Fred Rogers, showing appreciation for parents whose children are grown as well as giving advice to those parents raising young ones.

Middle school is its own important, distinct territory, and yet it's either written off as an uncomfortable rite of passage or lumped in with other developmental phases. Based on her many years working in schools, professional counselor Phyllis Fagell sees these years instead as a critical stage that parents can't afford to ignore (and though "middle school" includes different grades in various regions, Fagell maintains that the ages make more of a difference than the setting).

Nine-year-old David has recently lost his mother to a freak accident, his salesman father is constantly on the road, and he is letting his anger out on his grandmother. Sarcastic and bossy 13-year-old Primrose lives with her childlike, fortuneteller mother, and a framed picture is the only evidence of the father she never knew. Despite their differences, David and Primrose forge a tight yet tumultuous friendship.

In The Homework Myth, nationally known educator and parenting expert Alfie Kohn systematically examines the usual defenses of homework - that it promotes higher achievement, "reinforces" learning, and teaches study skills and responsibility. None of these assumptions, he shows, actually passes the test of research, logic, or experience.

Twelve-year-old Natalie Nelson has written a powerful school story. It's a short novel called "The Cheater," and her best friend Zoe is certain it should be published. All Natalie has to do is give the manuscript to her mom, an editor at a big publishing house. However, Natalie doesn't want any favors from her mom. Still, Zoe won't drop the idea.

In the hands of Sophocles, the master dramatist, the anguished tale of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother retains its power to shock and move beyond any Freudian reference.

It's a rite of passage almost no one will escape: the difficult, emotional journey of downsizing your or your aging parents' home. Here, nationally syndicated home columnist Marni Jameson sensitively guides listeners through the process, from opening that first closet, to sorting through a lifetime's worth of possessions, to selling the homestead itself.