On the cusp of reading

Z, who turned 4 in November, is showing more and more signs of reading readiness. She can sound out a lot of words and yesterday she wrote MGAZEN and said "Look mommy, I spelled magazine. I just sounded out the letters!" Before MGAZEN, all the words Z's written have been memorized, and most of them are the names of her family members or friends.

Check out this Slate article on how you can help your infant, toddler or elementary school child build his or her reading skills.

Slate's got my number

My sister gets Lyme Disease and Slate publishes The life story of a tick. My best friend steps down from her job as a social worker at a seriously mismanaged agency for part-time work at fairly well-run day care center and Emily Yoffe answers the question Can I cut it as a day care worker?

Now if they'd just write an article on getting a preschooler to go to bed cheerfully, without an hour's worth of tearful drama...