Schools editor
Marisol Fuentes
Marisol Fuentes taught second grade in a Texas public school for twelve years before she came to The Cradle Press as Schools editor.
Beats
Published in The Cradle Press
Family Rituals
The After-School Snack as a Ritual
A small ritual of an apple and a glass of water at the kitchen table in suburban Austin, six days a week, for seven years.
Food
Eating Out With Small Children: A Field Report
Marisol Fuentes spent four restaurant evenings with three Austin families and their children, ages two through seven. She kept her notebook on her lap and her expectations low.
Generations
What Grandfather Taught Without Saying So
Kenji Watanabe ran a small dry-cleaning business in Sacramento from 1968 to 2004. His granddaughter Mira, now twenty-nine and a tax attorney in Oakland, says he taught her more about work than anyone she has had a job under since.
Sleep
A Week in a Bedtime Routine
Marisol Fuentes spent seven evenings observing the bedtime routine of an Austin family with three children, ages eight, five, and two. The choreography is precise.
Books for Kids
The Bilingual Picture Book in a Spanish-English Household
What three years of reading in two languages did, and did not do, for one four-year-old in San Antonio.
Schools & Learning
A Spanish-English Immersion Kindergarten in San Antonio
At Hawthorne Academy in the West Side of San Antonio, half of the kindergarten day is conducted in Spanish and half in English, and a teacher named Lupita Camarillo has been moving between the two for twenty-one years.
Early Years
The Twelve-Month Well Visit
Vivienne Crouch-Adler turned one on a Tuesday in May. On the Thursday, she had her well-visit with Dr. Felipe Soto at a small pediatric practice on East Cesar Chavez Street in Austin.
Books for Kids
The Chapter Book That Marked a Fourth Grader's Year
How one nine-year-old in Austin spent six weeks inside <em>The Wheel on the School</em>, and what the long stay did.
Outdoor Childhood
A Half-Acre Suburban Backyard Reconfigured for Children
Over fourteen months, a family in Newton, Massachusetts dismantled a manicured lawn and replaced it with mud, brush, climbing logs, and a long path through what was once a hedge.
Schools & Learning
The First Day of First Grade at a Title I School in Memphis
At Alcy Elementary in the Orange Mound neighborhood of Memphis, the first day of first grade arrives, as it does every August, with a line of yellow buses, a hot wind off the parking lot, and a teacher named Talisha Brown standing at the door of Room 112.
Schools & Learning
A Small Private Day School on the Maine Coast
The Blue Hill Day School enrolls forty-eight children from prekindergarten through eighth grade. It occupies a converted Methodist parsonage on Union Street, two blocks from the harbor.
Food
Packed-Lunch Realities for School-Age Kids
Marisol Fuentes spent a week at Travis Heights Elementary in Austin, watching what children actually eat from the lunches their parents pack. The findings are humbling.
Family Rituals
The Sunday Afternoon Family Meeting
A Texas household tries the family-meeting idea for three years running, with chairs around a kitchen table and an agenda kept in a spiral notebook.
Schools & Learning
A Public-School Kindergarten in East Montpelier, Vermont
At East Montpelier Elementary, the kindergarten teacher, Hannah Berube, has been doing the same job in the same building for nineteen years. The Tuesday in April begins, as it always does, at 7:50.
Schools & Learning
A Morning Inside a Montessori 3-to-6 Classroom in Brooklyn
At Cobble Hill Children's House, a 3-to-6 classroom of twenty-two settles into work by 9:15 on a Wednesday in May. The lead guide, Anna Krijowsky, has been there since 7:40.