How we make stuff

Articles about how we concept ideas, write words, draw pictures and — most importantly — test our ideas! We believe that kids are driven by passion and that they learn by doing — playing. And we believe the concepts, games and activities should be evidence-based, meaning tested and proven in the real world.​

Feel Your Feelings story time window display
How we make stuff

Feel Your Feelings storytime and activities

Here are some pictures of all the fun activities we did at our storytime, including an emoji cutout kit, giant slide puzzle, jigsaw puzzles, T-shirts, buttons, notepads, book signing, snacks, and lots of time to share stories and smiles.

A close-up photo of the braille overlay on our book, Feel Your Feelings. You can see the dots on the sticker overlay for both the words and the graphic of the mad emoji.
Books

Feel Your Feelings, the braille edition

Here is a sneak peek at Feel Your Feelings, the braille edition. Not only is the book in braille, but it is also filled with tactile graphics, so you can literally feel your feelings!

Our foster kitten posing with our book "Feel Your Feelings"
How we make stuff

My cat editors

A quick story about my cat editors with lots of pictures of them “helping” me in the office.

KMNH Community Spotlight authors Scott and Sara
How we make stuff

Kids Making the News Happen

KMNH, Kids Making the News Happen, Community Spotlight. Dr Sara and Scott talk about how to make dreams happen.

Intervention results graph
How we make stuff

Dream It! Achieves a Research Publication Milestone

Great news!!! Today is an exciting day for the science of dreaming (goal setting, aspiration, passions). We are proud to announce that our latest dream research study has been published in the peer-reviewed, scientific journal Child & Youth Care Forum.

Dream Workshop University of Cincinnati Facilitators
How we make stuff

Impact and feasibility of the Dream Workshop

A summary of a research study conducted by the University of Cincinnati to test the efficacy of a Dream Workshop and whether it improved children’s self-confidence as measure of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).

The book covers for our Dream It!, Map It! and Play It! featuring 3 different characters, hats and buttons.
How we make stuff

Dream It Trilogy

Here is a first peek at the trilogy of books that we just submitted to our publisher Magination Press. It teaches kids how to dream and how to turn dreams into reality.

Dream it covers side by side.
How we make stuff

How the book cover was illustrated

How the hand-drawn cover was conceived and illustrated, including descriptions of the thumbnails. And how this affected title of the book and website.

Dream Team at Parker Woods Montessori Elementary. The authors and University of Cincinnati facilitators.
How we make stuff

Improving social and emotional awareness using the Dream It! Playbook

Student’s using the workbook “Dream It!” had a scientifically proven, evidence-based improvement in optimistic thinking and perseverance (along with improvements in hope, growth-mindset and overall school climate) among elementary school students. Highlights from our most-important study to date, including lots of pictures and graphs.

Focus group on community learning centers with the Northside Education Committee and Cincinnati Public Schools
How we make stuff

Learning how the education system works

If you’ve been reading our website, you’ve learned that we spent a great deal of effort learning educational theory, cognitive development and psychological theory, and combining it all with our own life experiences to form a comprehensive, evidence-based process for learning how to dream and turn those dreams into reality. However, one aspect of the book that is not apparent by reading it is all the work we’ve done learning how to work within the bureaucracy of the school system, connecting with community leaders and implementing educational programs.

Book with pages bent into the shape of a heart.
How we make stuff

Curated Articles on Educational Psychology

During the creation of our first book, we spent countless hours researching. And we also ran our own research project. During the way, we ran across a lot of great ideas that got lost, so we thought we should begin collecting the best of the best articles we have read.

Doctor Sara Williams at the American Psychological Association's annual conference
How we make stuff

Improving Children’s Optimistic Thinking by Teaching them to Dream about Life Goals

We were honored to attend the American Psychological Associations 2018 annual conference to present the results of our study. This is a new analysis of our data that, essentially, says that young students perform better when they are taught the basics of socioemotional skills, like passion and goal setting, first before more academic subjects, such as reading, writing and arithmetic.

Step #3: Play it! Take a step of action to make your dreams real.

Take a step of action to help make dreams come true.

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