By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

With Mother’s Day fast approaching, you may be looking for a few more things you can do to make Mom’s day a little more special. Music is amazingly evocative -- there are few things that can capture complex emotions so quickly -- so why not look for the perfect song to describe your relationship?

A Mighty Girl is proud to present our top ten songs for Mighty Girls and their Mighty Moms: songs that are loving, sweet, and powerful in their depiction of one of the foundational relationships in a girl’s life.

We will describe each song here, but for more details, including information about concerns parents may have about content in either lyrics or video, and to preview songs via embedded YouTube videos, please follow the links to our full entries. Each of these songs, like all of those featured in A Mighty Girl's music collection, is also available through either iTunes or Amazon.com’s MP3 download service via the links on each song's page. By using the links on A Mighty Girl, you also help to support the site at no added cost to you, and can have your Mother’s Day playlist set up in no time!

And, to discover wonderful books celebrating Mighty Moms, check out our previous post entitled: A Mother’s Day Special Feature: Celebrating Mighty Moms and Their Daughters. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

“Play is the work of childhood.” — Jean Piaget

Today is Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day, a day in which children all over the world will shadow parents or other mentors through a day at their jobs. Carolyn McKecuen, the president of the Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day Foundation, shares the value of these experiences:

“Exposing girls and boys to what a parent or mentor in their lives does during the workday is important, but showing them the value of their education, helping them discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, and providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future and begin steps toward their end goals in a hands-on and interactive environment is key to their achieving success.... By bringing girls and boys together, we will continue to create a more equitable world — at home, at school, in the workplace, and in the community.”

For children younger than 8, however, a day of job shadowing probably isn’t feasible. How can you provide them with some of the benefits that older kids get from a day at work? One great way is to give them pretend play toys that allow them to roleplay different careers. With that in mind, A Mighty Girl has selected ten toys from our Career / Jobs Collection of pretend play toys to feature. Each toy represents a different career that your Mighty Girl might aspire to, from astronaut to veterinarian. So, let her get down to work with some serious play! Continue reading → Continue reading

by Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

Today we continue our Mighty Girl Creators Series with our latest installment: an interview with esteemed author and illustrator Jeanette Winter. Ms. Winter is the creator of numerous highly regarded picture books, many of which feature the true stories of amazing women.

Ms. Winter loves writing about artists, since her own desire to be one growing up has resulted in a fascination with the artistic process, though she also writes about any story that captures her interest. Her latest book, due for release in the summer of 2013, is Henri’s Scissors, the story of Henri Matisse’s work in his later life.

On A Mighty Girl’s website, we feature several of Winter’s books, including the picture book biographies My Name Is Georgia, about artist Georgia O’Keeffe; The Watcher: Jane Goodall’s Life with the Chimps; and Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa about Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. Her book The Librarian of Basra: A True Story From Iraq tells the amazing story of Alia Muhammad Baker’s rescue of the books during the invasion of Iraq. And Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan is a testament to the power that reading and books can have to heal even the deepest wounds.

Winter lives in New York City with her husband, painter Roger Winter. You can read more about Winter’s life and writing at her Macmillan author page or her Simon and Schuster author page. Continue reading → Continue reading

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese opposition politican. Photo credit: Htoo Tay Zar

Happy International Women’s Day! Today countries around the world celebrate the contributions of women past and present. A Mighty Girl has chosen to mark the day with this blog post featuring eight amazing women from around the world. Some of them will be familiar, but some of them will be new to you; all of them have left their mark on the world.

We have included reading recommendations for children and youth about each of the featured women. To view our complete selection of over 350 inspiring biographies of remarkable girls and women, visit our biographies collection.

Alia Muhammad Baker (b. 1953)

Baker was the chief librarian of Al Basrah Central Library in 2003 when the war in Iraq began. When she was denied permission to move the books, even after government offices moved into the library, she started smuggling books home; and when the officials fled the British advance and looters started to enter the library, she convinced the owner of the restaurant next door to allow her -- and eventually neighbors who joined her mission -- to store books safely in the dining room. Thanks to her efforts, 30,000 books were saved and became the core of a rebuilt library in 2004.

You can read more about Baker in The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq (ages 5 to 9) or in Alia’s Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq (ages 8 to 12). Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

Welcome to the second part of our discussion about teaching money management skills to kids! If your child is a pre-teen or teenager, money is likely becoming an increasingly important aspect of their lives: the things they want cost more, they are able to start taking on age-appropriate work for pay, and independent adult spending is not many years away. In this article, we’ll present some resources for preparing your pre-teen or teenager for living a financially savvy adult life. For resources for younger children, check out part one in our series: Teaching Money Skills (Preschool and Elementary).

Practicing Money Skills

Board games and other money-related games can still help teach the complexity of money to pre-teen kids; you just need to make sure that the games you select include components other than simple money recognition. The Allowance Game, while suitable for a child as young as 5, still has plenty to teach to kids as old as 11 as well. The game features several ways to earn money, and lots of ways to spend it, but kids must keep in mind that the winner is the first person to collect $20. Choosing whether to buy or save, with a final goal in mind, is a great way for kids to practice money management in a risk-free way. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

Welcome to the first of two articles about resources to help parents teach their Mighty Girls money management skills! Every parent wants their children to learn how to manage money effectively, but many families aren't sure how to go about discussing finances -- especially since few of us grew up in homes where money, spending, saving, and debt were discussed in any detail. However, with a few good resources and a little time, even very young children can start learning about how money works. In our follow-up post, we provide resources for teaching money management skills to older children and teens.

How Money Works

One early step in learning about money is learning how to recognize different denominations of paper money and coins. A toy like Melissa and Doug's Play Money set, which comes with dozens of pretend bills from $1 to $100 as well as play coins in all US denominations, allows kids to role play the whole process of a purchase: selecting an item, learning a price, recognizing and totaling bills and coins, and making change.

At the same time, parents can read books to their kids that involve money being invested, saved, and spent. One good book is Lemonade in Winter by Emily Jenkins, in which Pauline and her younger brother John-John start their first business -- a lemonade stand. The book covers addition, subtraction, sorting, and money recognition, but also more complicated concepts such as investment and return, selling techniques, and entrepreneurship. Continue reading → Continue reading