Remote learning turned my house upside down last year! It was kind of a mess with me trying to education my son while working full time. I know I was exhausted by the end and I’m sure my son felt the same way. As schools are reopening for the fall, I thought I would share some of the resources I found helpful.

Reading & Literature

Storyline Online (Website, free): The Screen Actors guild created this website where famous actors read books online. It’s completely free and has a wide range of books to choose from.

StoryNory (Podcast, Free): This is a free weekly story podcast for kids. My son’s favorite is The Old Woman Who Lost her Dumpling.

Kanopy Kids (Website/App, Free with Library Card): Kanopy Kids offers a curated website of videos for kids. Many of the videos are animated versions of children’s books. You can also set parental controls.

BookFlix (Website, Free with Library Card): This website is ran by scholastic and breaks books down into categories (i.e. Animals, Nature, Celebrations etc). Each category has different modules that include a video to watch and a book to read to reinforce the material. It also contains games to play related to the book and links to learn more if your child is interested.

TumbleBooks (Website, Free with Library Card): Similiar to BookFlix or Kanopy kids, Tumble books offers a slew of books that are read to your children and are typically animated. They also have books for more advance readers and the children can read the books independently online.

TumbleMath (Website, Free with Library Card): I’m guessing this is the sister site to TumbleBooks. It features books about, you guessed it, math!

Free Children Stories (Website, Free): This website offers a combination of videos of animated picture books and just printed text of other books.

Poetry Foundation (Website, Free): When B was in kindergarten, he would bring home a new poem to read to us every week. To keep his interest in poetry, I wanted to find some resources and the poetry foundation provides free poems and breaks them down into different categories based on age, form and topic. Maybe as a mom or dad you could also find something that interests you.

Poetry For Kids (Website, Free): This is my favorite poetry website for kids because it has a huge list of funny poems. Poems are in print or can be read to the student. A couple of my son’s favorite: I Stuck My Finger Up My Nose and I Think I’m In Love with My Smart Phone.

Writing

Journal Buddies (Website, Free) – A website that has tons of journals prompts that are broken down by grade.

All Kid’s Network (Website, Free) – A ton of writing worksheets are available to download for free. They have something for every level and grade. It includes simple things like circling pictures with letter sounds to grammar worksheets for older children.

ThinkWritten (Website, Free) – Another list of free journal prompts.

Kids’ rooms are my favorite to decorate. There is so much freedom, whimsy and fun in those spaces. I especially love when the kids’ personality and interests are on full display. We just started updating my son’s room. He requested a desk which prompted a new configuration of his furniture and spiraled into a room update. Sounds about right.

Now that he is getting older, we can update how he styles his bed pillows. Right now I’m happy if the pillows land in the general area where pillows belong but I think he’s ready for the responsibility of making his bed in the morning. I know that any new style we implement should be easy and simple. There shouldn’t be too many pillows and the configuration should take basically no time and very little thought, because what young boy wants to spend time styling his bed?

I found 6 simple pillow configurations that could work for any kid, any age and any style. All 6 styles have a lot of flexibility. Each of these configurations generally use a combination of three types of pillows: Euro Pillow ( 26 x 26 inch square), Standard Pillow (20 x 26 inches) and Accent Pillows (sizes varies but includes standard rectangle/squares, lumbar, round and bolster). I created a little key to identify the different pillow types used in the illustrations (see below).

The first style is what I consider “Classic.” My mom taught me this configuration when I was a kid and it’s how I styled my bed for a good portion of my life (Okay – I still use it frequently). It’s what my son will do when I ask him to make his bed. It’s a simple combination of two standard pillows in the back and an accent pillow in the front. It’s a great one to start with because it feels intuitive. The accent pillow style can vary and it can even be replace with a soft toy if that makes your kid happy. This is a great beginner style and a good option for kids who are just making their bed to make mom happy.

I dubbed the next style the Small-Tall-Long and it layers three different size pillows in an interesting way. To achieve this look start with a small accent pillow in the front, a euro pillow in the middle and a standard pillow in the back. This creates visual interest. You can also generally see all the pillows, so it’s a fun way to mix and match color and pattern. This configuration requires a little more thought than some of the other styles because most of these pillows will probably be moved around at night as they’re not really used for sleeping and it doesn’t necessarily feel intuitive. But the result is high end and achievable for kids to do on their own.

The Step-By-Step approach is another intuitive option. You would arrange three pillows from smallest (front) to largest (back). You also see every pillow in this configuration, so it’s another opportunity to have fun with color and mixing/matching patterns to create visual interest. I think kids would find this easy although, much like the Small-Tall-Long version, some of these pillows will probably be tossed about the bed/room since they aren’t necessarily used for sleeping. You can also mix and match the shapes of the pillows as long as the height makes sense.

The Double Euro + Accent style is good for individuals who want to keep it simple but add some height. To me, this is a an variation of the “Classic” style, but creates a different overall shape. This look is achieved by having two Euro pillows side by side in the back row and a single accent pillow in the center. Again, the accent pillow can be any style (bolster, lumbar, small square or a novelty-shaped).

The Euro Front and Stacked Standard is one of my favorites. It’s easy and simple but creates visual impact. To get the look, stack two standard pillows in the back and center a euro pillow upright in the front. Of course, you can mix and match colors and patterns here, but I am particularly drawn to plain white cases on the standard pillows and a bold print or color on the Euro pillow.

A variation of the previous style is when the two standard pillows are stacked in front and the euro pillow is in the back (hence the not so clever name: Reversed Euro & Stacked Standard). This may be the easiest configuration as it’s possible that all the pillows will generally stay in the same place while sleeping and the “styling” takes a quick second to straighten it up in the morning. I adore the inspiration picture below from Serena and Lilly. I can’t stop thinking about the mismatched pillow cases!

Do you have a favorite style? I’m excited to try out all of these in some capacity. I’m not sure which one will resonate with my son, but we’ll see! I’ll be sure to share pictures of his bed when we finish his room update. I’m crossing my fingers it’ll be finished before school starts.