Author: Scott (Page 45 of 80)

A Crazy WikiLeaks Spin

November 30, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’m really surprised some wingnut out there hasn’t hypothesized the whole WikiLeaks fiasco was orchestrated by the current administration in an effort to weaken both the United States and Hillary Clinton at the same time. Maybe some conspirotist out there has come up with that, but I haven’t heard it so far.

Of course, that’s ridiculous. It would take a very high level of competency to pull something like that off. Then again, the wackos on the other side didn’t have any trouble painting G.W. Bush as both an idiot and an evil mastermind capable of single-handedly raising gas prices, so I guess it’s not too far out there.

Our Co-op For Preschoolers In Action!

November 24, 2010 / Scott / 1 Comment

Ana isn’t going to toot her own horn about this here, so I’m going to step in and toot it for her. A few months ago, she posted on a local website asking if there were any other moms in our area who would be interested in starting up a home preschool co-op for a small group of kids. The response was great, and before they knew it they were having a meetup so the kids and moms could all get acquainted.

The results have been so much better than we could have hoped for! I can’t speak for any of the other families/kids, but we’ve seen a huge acceleration in Pea’s learning since she started going to a “real school” with other kids who have different talents and abilities. The biggest benefit has been the different skill sets and creative ideas the other moms have brought to the group. Of course, Ana is teaching reading, but other moms are in charge of math, writing, science, cooking, calendar time, art, etc. Every session has a lead teacher and a helper which allows the moms who aren’t teaching to help take care of the smaller siblings.

The school meets Monday and Tuesday mornings for instruction, and Fridays are for field trips and play time. It has been an incredible supplement to the things we work on every day at home, and the introduction of other kids and teachers have had an impact on Pea’s behavior and interest in learning from other people.

I’m so thankful for Ana and the rest of the moms in the group for their huge efforts and contributions to our children’s educations!!!

Cutting Back on Screen Time

November 22, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

From today’s Tennessean, Dr. Frank Boehm calls for replacing t.v. time with book time:

If we began to encourage our children to replace screen time with reading books, they would be more able to counter ignorance in themselves and others by being able to enter conversations with real facts rather than sound bites from television programs and the Internet.

I won’t pretend our kids don’t watch any television. They do. But we’ve found it easier to limit their tube time by getting rid of cable and only using a Roku player to stream Netflix. This allows us to limit what they see to very specific programs and zero commercials. An added benefit of using only a streaming player is that when a show ends, it’s over. There aren’t any “Coming up next…” announcements. Pea usually gets up and turns the television off when her show ends, saying, “We don’t watch t.v. all day.”

It’s been good for us (the parents) as well. We watch considerably less television now. Gone are the days of flipping through channels looking for something to watch. The only time the television is on at our house is when we sit down to watch a specific movie or an episode or two of a television program we’re streaming after the kids’ bed time. If you thought DVD was the best way to watch a series, you should try streaming it!

Again, no commercials, and we spend a lot more time reading and talking than we do staring at a screen.

We’re also saving a ton of money. For the cost of one month of cable we were able to buy the streamer to connect to the television, and Netflix is less than $10 per month. Cutting cable completely may not work for every family, especially if you like to watch sports live, but we love it!

Image Credit

Oh Yeah, This Is Fun Too

November 19, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

The other night I was reading the girls a book at bedtime, and I picked up on something I think may be really important to our girls learning to read. Now, we seem to always be on the lookout for “teachable moments” around here. Sometimes that means stopping to ask questions about the book we’re reading or pointing out some aspect of the book that ties in with something else we’ve been working on. We’re lucky that they usually lead us into this , so it’s not as if we’re forcing them into it. In fact, we never push anything on them if they don’t seem interested because we want them to enjoy the learning as much as we enjoy the teaching.

But this time something weird was going on. Chick Pea wasn’t stopping me on every page to ask questions about the story, and Bug wasn’t grabbing at the book or pointing at the pages while yelling out made-up words. They were both sitting quietly, listening to the story. They were engrossed. So I went with it.

I realized later that I wasn’t actually missing out on a teachable moment. I was taking advantage of one.

The lesson I was teaching them is that reading is an enjoyable and fun thing to do! We don’t always have to have a measurable objective every time we pick up a book. Sometimes (most of time?) the best part of reading is getting so into the story that you lose yourself in it. If we can one day establish a love of reading independently in our kids, just imagine the gains they’ll be able to make in fluency and vocabulary on their own, not to mention all the other things they’ll be able to learn about.

We have to keep our long-term goal in mine: give them the tools that allow them to read to learn.

Loving to read is a pretty powerful tool.

Comprehensive List Of Instances Where TSA Has Prevented Airline Terrorism

November 19, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

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Sanford Airport Opting Out of TSA

November 18, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

I love using small airports, and Sanford is pretty close to where I live. It’s much more convenient than MCO, especially when flying to Knoxville on Allegiant. Now, it could be even more convenient to fly out of there, since they are asking TSA to “go back“!

Orlando’s Sanford International Airport believes they will offer passengers “better service at a better price and more accountability and better customer service” by doing away with TSA screenings.

I predict a movement is beginning here. Not surprising, considering the professionalism I’ve noted by the TSA in the past.

Weaving Literacy Into Learning Numbers

November 18, 2010 / Scott / 3 Comments

Here’s a fun way to help your child expand their vocabulary when you aren’t even “working” on reading.

Chick Pea is working on a weekly art project that is geared towards helping her learn the numbers that are multiples of ten. Each week, she gets to glue the appropriate number of objects onto the numbers, counting them out (with Ana’s help when needed). There’s also a corresponding sentence that accompanies each number that describes what’s going on in the picture. These will later be put into a book that she can look through on her own for review.

She loves to do art projects, and it’s really helping her get a concrete idea of amounts of objects. That alone makes this a great activity. But while I was admiring her work last night, Ana pointed out something very interesting about the project that I hadn’t picked up on. Can you see it?

Notice that the words “speedy” and “fierce” are used to describe the animals in the project. This is important because Chick Pea doesn’t know what these words mean–at least she didn’t before. She knows what “fast” and “angry” mean. Those are words she can naturally understand because they are used so often. And even though she may not make sentences with the new words on a daily basis, just being exposed to them is helping to expand her vocabulary.

Another activity Ana has planned once an entire book is finished is to point out to her that all of the sentences start the same: “I am as…”. Notice how those small words are one line by themselves. This can be used to help her expand her bank of sight words and also introduce the concept of similes.

Some Linkage for Lookage

November 17, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Ironman – The Inner Revolt and Busting Out – I think there’s even more to this. Part of it is convincing yourself that you are as tough as you’ve convinced everyone else you are.

An Even Tougher Deficit Plan – Sounds good to me, except for the VAT

Dr. Drew on Obamacare: ‘You will see a massive flight of physicians from the field’ – But he only plays a doctor on TV, right?

Stay Worried – “One way or another, it was worth having Microsoft Word with the expectation that the zillionaire Bill Gates’ shower is still no hotter than ours, and his private jet goes not much faster than our own cut-rate Southwest Airlines flights. All that seems simple enough — until now.”

The Parallels between Today and the Great Depression – To quote the great Jackie Martin Jr., “You all know the rules, they’re very much like Pyramid, but different.”

Word Group Hunt

November 16, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

Chick Pea loves to play hide and seek, so we made up a fun game to help her with her word groups. Right now we’re working with the “-at” words (cat, hat, mat, rat, etc.). The game is pretty easy–make up cards with the words on them and put them in various places around the house. Next, we go to “base” and look at a group of pictures that represent the various words. For each picture, we send her off “hunting” for the word that goes with the picture.

The words don’t really need to be hidden. In fact, it’s probably better if they can see the several different words as they are looking for a single word, just to become familiar with the differences. It’s also a memory exercise since they can spot words they aren’t looking find them quickly when the appropriate picture shows up.

If you have a group of kids, you can make it a contest–send them all out hunting and see who can find a word first. It’s a great game for outdoors as well!

Jailhouse Movies Are Torture?

November 15, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

This poor Brevard County inmate thinks so.

“Like the old Chinese water torture, the inescapable sounds of these movies over and over works on nerves and psyche.”

I’ve watched Smoky and the Bandit and Swingers too many times to count, so I can say from experience that kicking back on the couch memorizing dialog isn’t exactly the toughest thing someone can force you into. Maybe this guy should become more familiar with the business end of a shovel to help ease his nerves and psyche. You know…when the body suffers the spirit flowers.

Of course, this has nothing to do with torture or legitimate complaints. It’s really just an attempt by this guy to further extend his stay at Hotel Taxpayer.

Poulin was arrested by Palm Bay police in January 2007 for allegedly driving and crashing his car while intoxicated, an accident that killed his female passenger.

There have been 14 motions for continuances in his case and six federal lawsuits against the jail, all of which have been dismissed

Great. Just great.

My Next Great Idea – The USPS Stimulus Package

November 12, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

After reading this article on the USPS losing $8.5 B (yes, that’s $500 million AFTER THE DECIMAL PLACE!). With all the hyperbole over evil corporations, at least their management has to answer to shareholders…at least they have to answer to someone. I was talking about it with a couple of people on Twitter:

[blackbirdpie id=”3124711739363328″]

[blackbirdpie id=”3116082235711488″]

Obviously, they aren’t huge fans. Come on…what’s a few billion amongst friends? But then I saw these articles about the Swedes storing emails and texts and our own government getting ready to grace us with an Internet Czar and a light bulb went off…

USPS Stimulus package!

Just set up (yet another) federal agency to track and log every single piece of electronic communication. This will have the (un)intended consequence of forcing…err…encouraging people to go back to sending coded messages through the USPS and hoping they are delivered within a few days. Think of how many USPS jobs this could save or create!

IKEA Homemade is Best Cookbook

November 8, 2010 / Scott / 1 Comment

What does IKEA mean to you? To me, it means flat packaging, easy to follow assembly instructions with pictures instead of words, and stuff that is so cool and affordable that I usually end up buying something I hadn’t planned on.

Check out IKEA’s “Homemade is Best” baking book.

Flat? check
Easy instructions with no words, with beautiful photos by Carl Kleiner? Check
So cool and (presumably) affordable that I’ll definitely be buying one on my next trip to IKEA, even though I hadn’t planned on buying a cookbook for the rest of my life? Check

The Facts and Science of QEII

November 5, 2010 / Scott / 0 Comments

The newly announced monetization of debt…ERRRRR…devaluation of the currency…ERRRRR…quantitative easing announced by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday has many Americans confused and baffled. What does this really mean for us? After all “facts and science and argument does [sic] not seem to be winning the day” with the collection of hilljacks that is the American people.

Maybe what we really need is an easy to understand analogy to explain in terms that we can relate to.

Let’s say the money supply is a big pile of rich, high-grade manure we are using to to fertilize our gardens. Now, imagine that a big stud horse (the Fed) comes along and, with increasing frequency and volume, adds to our supply of manure. I guess the theory is that we’ll respond by just planting more crops. But how long would it take for us to stop calling this big stinking pile of crap “fertilizer” and start calling it “a big stinking pile of crap”?

Over time, the manure’s value to us would be greatly diminished, and we’ll be lucky if we can load a bunch of it up in wheel barrow and trade it for a loaf of bread from our neighbor. Meanwhile, no one knows who owns the damned horse that keeps adding crap to the pile.

Oversimplified? Maybe so. But it’s pushing the limit of what our government educated brains can handle. Best to leave it to the horse to decide what is best.

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Gettin’ After It!