About Mokifun
Mokifun is a passion project by two sisters. We write short, practical articles for parents of elementary-school kids (Pre-K through 6th grade) about how children learn to read, do math and get through the everyday side of school, from kindergarten readiness to report cards. No accounts, no paywall, no courses to buy. Just the answers we kept giving at pickup, written down properly.
How it started
Emily taught kindergarten and first grade. Samantha tutored upper-elementary math and has two kids in school herself. For years we traded the questions parents asked us: is it normal that he still guesses at words, why is 7×8 so much harder than 7×5, what is a number bond and why does the homework insist on it. At some point the shared notes file got long enough that we figured other parents might want it too. That file became Mokifun.
It is still the two of us. We write in the evenings after our own kids are in bed, we edit each other (sometimes harshly), and we argue about the Oxford comma more than two adults should.
Emily
Emily spent years in K–2 classrooms before trading the whiteboard for a laptop. She writes most of the reading and early-school pieces: phonics and sight words, invented spelling, the first weeks of kindergarten, how to listen to your child read without correcting every word. Her test for every article is whether she would actually say it to a parent standing by the cubbies at 3:15. If not, it gets rewritten.
Samantha
Samantha is the numbers half. She tutored upper-elementary math for years and now translates "new math" homework for a living, more or less. She writes the pieces about math facts, times tables, telling time and money, plus a good share of the school-life articles, because homework battles are, in her experience, mostly math homework battles. She keeps an analog clock in the kitchen on purpose and would like you to as well.
How we work
- Ranges, not cutoffs. Kids vary enormously, and "most kids somewhere between 6 and 7" is almost always more honest than a hard age. Where school practice differs by state or district, we say so.
- No diagnosing. We never tell you your child has dyslexia, ADHD or anything else. When something is worth a closer look, we say what to mention to the teacher or pediatrician, once, without alarm.
- No fabricated research. If a finding is common knowledge in classrooms, we phrase it loosely. We don't invent statistics or quote studies we haven't read.
- Every article is read by the other sister before it goes live. That is our entire editorial process, and it works better than it sounds.
- Corrections are welcome. If a grade level is wrong or a claim doesn't match your school, tell us and we'll fix it, with a note on the article if the change matters.
How Mokifun is funded
Everything on the site is free to read. We may show a small number of ads to cover hosting and our time; we do not take sponsored posts or paid links, and we don't sell anything. If that changes, this page will say so first.
Get in touch
Found a mistake, have a question an article didn't quite answer, or want to suggest a topic? We read every message ourselves via the contact form. Teachers are welcome to print or link to articles for class newsletters and parent nights.