Resources to Empower Children

I started this blog in an effort to gather and express my thoughts about raising intelligent, creative and empowered children. I have found that the combination of intelligence (as in multiple intelligences), creativity and empowerment, promotes the development of bright, competent and independent children; children who can understand the world around them, face difficult challenges and make right choices; children who are ultimately capable of surviving without me (and isn’t that, after all, what we aim to be able to do as parents?).

The focus of this blog is on providing strategies for parents. However, I wanted to take a moment to mention a couple of resources that provide practical opportunities for children to develop these key competencies: engagement of multiple intelligences, creativity and empowerment. These are resources that I have created through my company NiSoSa (which I founded specifically for the purposes of designing and implementing resources designed to empower children).

I invite you to visit the sites and learn more about them. I am, of course and as always, happy to hear your thoughts on these developing concepts:

Rock Thoughts

Rock Thoughts - global art and collaborative storytelling

Rock Thoughts is a global art and collaborative storytelling initiative. Since our launch in April of 2011, we have placed over 500 rocks in 15 countries and feature content in multiple languages. This is a free resource that is open to anyone and has been of particular value to the academic community (we have partnered with teachers and educators around the world who are using this tool to enhance their literacy and art curricula).

The process is simple: participants paint rocks to resemble monsters. The monsters are hidden for others to find. Finders of the rocks use the monsters as plot devices for stories they submit to our site. The rocks then go back out into hiding for someone else to find and continue developing the narrative. Participants can also adopt previously painted rocks or crowdsource stories for rocks featured on the site.

Participation is easy! You simply need rocks and paint (or you can get a full monster-making kit on our site) and your imagination. Once the rocks are painted, send us a picture of each monster against a white background. We will assign a code to your monster(s). The code along with our site’s URL are printed with a permanent marker on the underside of the respective rock and then the monster is ready to go. We encourage kids (or grown-ups – close to 50% of our monsters were created by grown-ups) to send us the first story for their monster before releasing it into the wild.

We’ve had rocks make little journeys (from city to city), medium ones (from state to state), big ones (from country to country), huge ones (from continent to continent), and even a multiple country trek ending on the summit of a volcano! I invite you to bring your little ones and come play with us.

Nico Knows

Nico Knows

Nico Knows is a place for silly stories to take flight. Hosted by a fictional character and written by a brave seven year-old discovering his storytelling voice, this site invites young readers to play around with stories, exploring their imaginations and sharing their own creative ideas.

A story is posted on a weekly basis. The story includes guided questions to help inspire children to expand upon the stories engaging their multiple intelligences and creativity. Children are encouraged to submit their work which is then added to the story, expanding upon it in numerous ways and making it a collaborative narrative.

I am very proud of how these two projects are growing and am eager to continue developing them. I hope you enjoy them and appreciate your efforts and support in sharing them with others.

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• Last week: the Sparkle in my Eye (or not)
• 2 weeks ago: controlling The Switch
• 3 weeks ago: Parenting in a Digital Era (Multiple Intelligences)
• 4 weeks ago: Parenting in a Digital Era (Courage)
• 1 year ago: Time-outs on The Negotiator