Happy Holidays, everyone! I’m taking a blogging break to spend time with family. Look for exciting, new blogs for the new year! Upcoming topics: Gingerbread Trap Engineers, Growing a Reader: Making Nonfiction Fun, Talking to Children about Engineering and many more. See you in 2010!

Wow!  Yesterday, I enjoyed an hour-long Twitter tutoring session from a wonderful mother of 4 I met on Twitter recently.  My Twitter story is like many others before me – “started, didn’t get Twitter, stopped for a while, started again, then really GOT Twitter!”

About 3 weeks ago, I got started back on Twitter and within a few days, somehow found Mindi @B_A_Bookworm.  From our 1st Twitter micro-chat, Mindi has been warm, encouraging and helpful.  If she lived in my neighborhood, Mindi is someone I would choose to get to know better.

Alas, Mindi lives about 4 states away.  Not likely we’d ever meet in the pen & paper world, but the virtual Twitter world altars the time and distance dimensions – making connections possible that weren’t there before.

But Facebook makes connections, so why Twitter?  Facebook is wonderful, but Facebook operates on the premise of  the known – it suggests friends I am likely to have known or know someone who knows them.

Twitter is like a communal string of house parties and I get to jump around from party to party to check out who’s there.  I might spend a few minutes and move on or linger to learn more about some of the party guests.

I wanted to learn more about Twitter and Mindi generously gave of her time Wed. morning to guide me.  Some of the things we covered were:

*WeFollow.com – site to find Twitter users based on keywords such as homeschool, politics, celebrities, etc.

*HootSuite.com – site to manage social media networks.  Sign up for an account, add your social media info (Facebook account name, Twitter account name, LinkedIn, etc.) and you can see the day’s activity across several networks on one screen.  Can even schedule Tweets.

*TweetChat.com – Twitter chat rooms for various hashtag groups such as #kidlit.  No group membership needed – join the parties anytime.  Note – sign up for an account with TweetChat to view the Twitter message box and participate in chats.

*Bit.ly – although Mindi and I did not discuss this one – wanted to add it for anyone who may read this post looking for Twitter help.  This site shortens URLs to fit in the 140 characters allowed on Twitter.  Other URL shortener sites include owl.ly, tiny.url & probably a few more!

*Mompreneursonline.com – found on Twitter, but not a Twitter app.  Mindi recommends this site loaded with helpful tips for Mom Entrepeneurs.

*Themomentrepreneur.blogspot.com – another site recommended by Mindi.  Interactive Google support group for mom entrepreneurs.

Thank you @B_A_Bookworm for all your help!

Share with me ~ What is your impression of Twitter?  Have you experienced a Twitter “ah-ha!” moment? Care to share?

Anna's kindergarten My Book

The other day, Anna came home from school with one of her “My Books.”

“My Books” are published by Scholastic and have been around for 13 or so years.  They are reading books with short sentences, repeating vocabulary and the best part according to Anna, illustrations the child can color.  Anna really enjoys these books.  They give her confidence in her reading skills and I can see how she beams with pride after reading one of her books to me.

Now Anna comes home many days with a “My Book,” but this particular book titled “I Can Be” raised my interest.  The book is 7 pages and each page contains a picture and sentence describing “what you can be.”  For example, the 1^st page reads like this:  “I can be a teacher.”

Anna was coloring her “I Can Be” book and I asked her excitedly if engineer was in her book.  She thought for a moment, then quickly flipped through it and replied “no.”

This book is a great example of simple ways we could introduce engineering to young children.  One page, one picture, one sentence – “I can be an engineer.”

Perhaps the author and Scholastic thought young children may not understand the word engineer or that it was too long or too difficult.  Thinking about it in a different way – “engineer” is 8 characters long, just 1 more character than 4 of the 6 other “jobs” in the book.  “Engineer” is rich with repeatability – with 3 “e” and 2 “n” letters, it only has 5 unique characters.  As for widespread recognition and understanding of the word “engineer”, there’s no better time to begin than now.

Share with me ~ Do the young children in your life hear the word “engineer?”  Can they recognize the word in print?