(YouTube link)

Random kids in Brooklyn tell us what they are thankful for. I also did not know that Thanksgiving is a Jewish holiday. Link -via Breakfast Links

At some point, every parent thinks that s/he's somehow brought a demon into this world. They'd be more convinced if their children looked this this doll on a regular basis. Bean Shanine, the artist behind The Twisted Beanstalk Nursery, makes baby dolls that are both cute and terrifying.

Link -via Technabob

Jill's daughter loves to color, but makers get expensive and can make a mess. Her solution was to cover an old coffee table with a chalkboard:

Right now she has been happily drawing for an hour and letting her imagination run wild. What’s more is that chalk is …… Drum roll….. Easy to clean up!

Even if you don’t have children this table would be great for college and high school students. Not to mention for adults too! A coffee table you can write on when you REALLY need to remember something or just like to doodle. Don’t forget those annoying moments when you need to write something down but can’t find a pen or paper.

Link -via Offbeat Mama

We read laments all the time about how our society places so much emphasis on female appearance that women -and girls- never feel pretty enough. As much as the world around us may be to blame, Amanda King, in a guest post at Offbeat Mama, decided to take matters into her own hands, as far as setting an example for her daughters.

I don't want my girls to be children who are perfect and then, when they start to feel like women, they remember how I thought of myself as ugly and so they will be ugly too. They will get older and their breasts will lose their shape and they will hate their bodies, because that's what women do. That's what mommy did. I want them to become women who remember me modeling impossible beauty. Modeling beauty in the face of a mean world, a scary world, a world where we don't know what to make of ourselves.

"Look at me, girls!" I say to them. "Look at how beautiful I am. I feel really beautiful, today."

I see it behind their eyes, the calculating and impression. I see it behind their shining brown eyes, how glad they are that I believe I am beautiful. They love me. To them, I am love and guidance and warm, soft blankets and early mornings. They have never doubted how wonderful I am. They have never doubted my beauty. How confusing it must have been for them to see me furrowing my brow in the mirror and sucking in my stomach and sighing.

No matter what the rest of the world tells them, parents remain a child's most lasting influence. Read the rest of the essay; it will make you smile and feel beautiful. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user Gustavo Devito)

Redditor spoonpie tucked a note in her second-grade son's lunchbox. She later found it amended. Kids can be stubborn! Link

For wealthy mothers of two centuries ago, this hand powered breast pump was an alternative to natural breastfeeding. The Science Museum doesn't describe it in detail, but I'd guess that the knob at the top can be pulled out to induce suction. Do you think it would work?

Link | Photo: Science Museum of London

Photographer Martin Bennett of Swindon, Wiltshire, England, took this fantastic photo of mom, dad, and the three kids (how does he get the baby to sit still like that?): Link - via Neatorama's Facebook Page

I don't think it is possible to have a more comfortable nap than this. Holy Moly. One thousand people just died from smiling too hard when they saw this, another thousand just decided it's time to have a baby, and a final thousand went out looking to adopt puppies. I have to stop posting cute things today - it's too much strain on my cold little heart.

Side note- While this is about the cutest thing of the decade, I can't imagine it is all fun and games when these munchkins decide to wake up. Raising three puppies and a baby all at once would be quite a task.

-Via Daily Picks and Flicks

(YouTube link)

Not really PSY -this is a video celebrating this little boy's first birthday. But he does the "Gangnam Style" dance really well, doesn't he?  -via Everlasting Blort

Okay, want to see babies really dancing Gangnam Style? Continue for  the cutest little dancers ever!

Seven-year-old Remi Urbano has been begging for a cat for a while. His dad, Dan, kept saying no, but then agreed to buy a cat if a picture of Remi and his little sister pleading for a cat got 1,000 Facebook likes. You can probably guessed what happened. 

November 5th @ 6PM
Posted by Dan’s wife with the headline “Dan thinks there is NO way we can do this. I say there is. Help us out. We really want a cat named Hairy Pawturrr. If you can’t like, share. Shares count too! Thanks so much everyone!!”

Hairy Pawturr … HAIRY PAWTURR! If those little kiddies weren’t enough, how can you pass up on having a small kitten in this world named Hairy Pawturr!! (not to mention the HA HA to the face of the man who belittles social media). Of course, I did my part to ‘like’ and ‘share’. I didn’t think much about it until 10PM that night when I checked the photo again. It was just under 900 shares and 400 likes. I snickered and anticipated the look on Dan’s face in the morning.

November 6th @ 9:30AM
The post had gone viral and it exploded to over 20,000 shares and likes—not to mention a following on the Ellen DeGeneres Facebook page. It was total insanity, but also total hilarity to hear Dan say, “Maybe I under shot it”.

The picture now has over 100,000 likes. Remi's new cat is named Hairyette Pawturr, and you can see pictures of her with the kids. Read the family's recap of the story at their blog. Link -via Daily of the Day

(Image credit: Marisa Papile Urbano)

This chair, made of wood, leather and iron, offered optimal birthing comfort two centuries ago:

The seat shape allows a clear route for the emerging baby and access for those assisting the birth. The chair is also known as a parturition chair. They were used from ancient times until the 1800s. The grooved parts on the bottom of the frame were used for leg rests, which the mother would use for support and to press against.

Link -via Curious History | Photos: The Science Museum

Take your time - read the sign. I feel bad for this little girl, her dad is a Reddit troll. Somehow I think this will end up as a traumatic event for this girl, she will never want to sign another contract again. Marriage? Forget about it! She has already made one 17 year commitment and that won't turn out well at all.

-Via Hypervocal

Photo: Adele Enersen

Adele Enersen of Mila's Daydreams is back at it! This time, she snapped pictures of her baby Vincent with her iPhone and sketched out his imaginary activities. Why not dressed him up like his big sister Mila? Vincent isn't as sound of a sleeper.

Take a look: Link - via 22 Words | More at Adele's blog

When she was forced to teach her students Latin and Greek word roots, high school English teacher Suzanne Kail thought that such "drill and kill" method would backfire. (Progressive educators tend to think that rote memorization would surely kill students enthusiasm for learning, hence the term.)

But is a little old school learning really that bad?

As soon as she began teaching her students the Greek and Latin origins of many English terms — that the root sta means “put in place or stand,” for example, and that cess means “to move or withdraw” — they eagerly began identifying familiar words that incorporated the roots, like “statue” and “recess.” Her three classes competed against each other to come up with the longest list of words derived from the roots they were learning. Kail’s students started using these terms in their writing, and many of them told her that their study of word roots helped them answer questions on the SAT and on Ohio’s state graduation exam. [...]

For her part, Kail reports that she no longer sees rote memorization as “inherently evil.” Although committing the word roots to memory was a necessary first step, she notes, “the key was taking that old-school method and encouraging students to use their knowledge to practice higher-level thinking skills.”

That’s also true of another old-fashioned method: drilling math facts, like the multiplication table. Although many progressive educators decry what they call “drill and kill” (kill students’ love of learning, that is), rapid mental retrieval of basic facts is a prerequisite for doing more complex, and more interesting, kinds of math. The only way to achieve this “automaticity,” so far as anyone has been able to determine, is to practice. And practice. Indeed, many experts who have observed the wide gap between the math scores of American and Chinese students on international tests attribute the Asian students’ advantage to their schools‘ relentless focus on memorizing math facts.

Annie Murphy Paul of TIME has more: Link

Photo: Dave Banks/Flickr - via Geeks Are Sexy

You'd be forgiven to think that identical twins have the same DNA. After all, that's part of the plot of many crime novels and TV shows. Plus, "identical" means, well, identical. Right? Maybe not.

Turns out identical twins are actually not identical at the genetic level:

Even though identical twins supposedly share all of their DNA, they acquire hundreds of genetic changes early in development that could set them on different paths, according to new research.

The findings, presented Friday (Nov. 9) here at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting, may partly explain why one twin gets cancer while another stays healthy. The study also suggests that these genetic changes are surprisingly common.

"It's not as rare as people previously expected," said study presenter Rui Li, an epidemiologist at McGill University.

LiveScience has more: Link