The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here!
Around the Web
A Cup to Fill
Alyssa Ramsey explores filling her child’s cup at Cords of Light.
- You built a fort in the basement, so tall that it nearly touched the ceiling tiles. I helped you clip on the fabric. You brought a lamp inside and said it would look like a glowing fire from the outside, with the red and gold fabric all lit up.
But then you left it standing for two days and never played in it at all.
This morning you started taking it apart. “But you haven’t used it yet,” I said. “Why are you taking it down?”
You had been planning a fort party, you said, but you decided not to do it.
17 Must-Read NonFiction Books for Kids
- Grab one of these must-read nonfiction books for your kids to get them reading expository text and learning from what they read. Here you’ll find a variety of selections from true stories to high-interest topics as well as books filled with interesting experiments. Enjoy!
It’s ‘digital heroin’: How screens turn kids into psychotic junkies
- There’s a reason that the most tech-cautious parents are tech designers and engineers. Steve Jobs was a notoriously low-tech parent. Silicon Valley tech executives and engineers enroll their kids in no-tech Waldorf Schools. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to no-tech Montessori Schools, as did Amazon creator Jeff Bezos and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Many parents intuitively understand that ubiquitous glowing screens are having a negative effect on kids.
Bible Basics: A Baby Believer Counting Primer
Danielle Hitchen has a new Kickstarter for a fascinating new book project.
- Bible Basics: A Baby Believer Counting Primer is the first of a groundbreaking series of board books that go beyond Bible stories and introduce young children to core tenets of the Christian faith.
A one-of-a kind counting book, Bible Basics is designed for children from infancy through preschool. It’s a fun and easy way to introduce your child to foundational Biblical and theological content in a format which helps them grasp and retain the information. For older children, Bible Basics includes quotations from the Bible, hymns, and early church writings to help reinforce the content.
Around the Warren
A Prayer for Kindred Spirits
Glenn McCarty shares a prayer he’s been praying over his sons.
- We pray so many prayers over these little lives we’re tasked with nurturing – for physical safety, for direction in their future path, for confidence in themselves, and on and on. But one prayer I’ve found myself saying more frequently lately is a prayer for kindred spirits. Lord, may my children find those who revel in the unique way you’ve formed their spirits, those who draw out a new appreciation for the value of their identity.
Brambly Hedge
A throwback post from Sarah Clarkson (now newly minted as Mrs. Sarah Fink-Jensen!), in which she recommends the picture books of Jill Barklem.
- When I think back to the favorite books of my childhood, books whose tang of atmosphere and illustration are still keen in my mind, one of the first I remember is the series of English country tales known as theBrambly Hedge books. These picture books were so intricately illustrated and vividly told that I remember them as if they were a place I visited, some small corner of earth that I explored. The author of these fine tales, Jill Barklem, spent years researching the customs, handcrafts, and traditional celebrations of the rural English countryside before she set to illustrating them in her own stories for children. Such was her success that when I read her books as an adult, I feel that I have returned to a place that brought me comfort, creativity, and hours of joy.
Something to Do with Your Kids
Imagination Soup has a piece on a book of instructions how to make cute creatures with modeling clay, and has a really fun suggestion about making them with Creatibles, a material that dries into erasers.
And Something to Watch
This guy is a scientist and an artist who creates shadow puppets out of Lego and says things like, “Our scientific interpretation of nature often depends upon our point of view. Perspective matters.”
This is cool. And there’s more here.
Thank you for reading. We’re on your side.
You can find her at carolyncgivens.com or on Facebook or Instagram at @carolyncgivens.
- The Warren & The World Vol 13, Issue 16 - May 10, 2025
- The Warren & The World Vol 15 - May 3, 2025
- The Warren & The World Vol 14 - April 26, 2025
Wow! That lego video is awesome!