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Bouncing bubbles is a fun way to get kids outside this summer

It is officially summer time for my kiddos! School is out and warm weather has us spending all our free time outside.   I love summer time and getting to soak up all the nice weather with my kids, especially after being cooped up in the house during the cold winter and rainy spring season. My kids love to play in their backyard on their swing set, in their corn pit, riding bikes, coloring with chalk and using their water sprinklers. However, we are still practicing “independent play,” where the kids don’t need Mommy and Daddy to  play alongside them. I do love to ...

‘Furiosa’ is fine, but lacks power of its predecessor

“Mad Max: Fury Road” has been one of my favorite action movies of all time. The incredible visuals, the spectacular performances, the sheer scale — everything works together to make it one of the must-watch films of the past decade. Because of my admiration for the first film, George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” has been among my most anticipated films of 2024. And while “Furiosa” delivers on so many fronts, I still left feeling underwhelmed. The film opens on Young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) as she is gathering fruit in her bucolic homeland, The Green Place. When ...

The science of language

It is simply amazing what we can do with language — the intricacies we can communicate through spoken language, the poetry we’ve written and even the fact that we can’t always trust language: after all, people have the ability to lie. We humans are not alone in our ability to communicate. Other species are able to convey information to each other, such as bees dancing to indicate where food sources may be or plants sending chemical signals to warn each other of incoming danger. We know spoken language came before written because evidence of the positioning of our larynx and ...

Take kindergarten graduation photos to celebrate your kids

I honestly cannot believe how fast this school year has flown by! This is my firstborn’s last week in kindergarten and I’m in disbelief. It is just as emotional as the first day of kindergarten was, in the sense that it reminds me how fast my little girl is growing up — and how quickly time is flying by.   I don’t know about your school district, but in ours they don’t have a kindergarten graduation ceremony. When I found out I was really bummed. I wanted the whole picture-perfect moment of my little girl finishing out her first year in school. To that end, I have ...

‘IF’ is a wild card that plays well

I have always been the serious one. I gravitate toward people who love play, but my natural tendencies lean toward cynicism and somberness. Imaginative play has never been something that I excel at, so I have a slightly complicated relationship with media that puts that at the center. I want to love it, but it’s not always easy for me to get on board. So I had some trepidation about John Krasinski’s newest film, “IF.”  Bea (Cailey Fleming) loses her mother at a young age, forcing her to grow up too fast. When her Dad (John Krasinski) returns to the same hospital for ...

Wildlife news from North and South America

In 2006 a hunter shot what he thought was a polar bear on Banks Island, off the coast of the Northwest Territories. The fur was creamy white, which is typical in polar bears, but it had a hump on its back and brown patches around the eyes and nose and all those traits are typical of grizzly bears. If the bear was judged to be a grizzly bear the hunter would have had to pay a $1,000 fine since it was illegal to hunt grizzlies there. A DNA test showed it to be a hybrid with a grizzly bear mother and polar bear father. Between 2012 and 2014 another six hybrids were either killed ...