flynn011

What is it with boys and computers, eh?  I mean, sure girls will play computer games, too, but research shows that fewer girls than boys display addictive behaviour when it comes to gaming, and it all seems to come down to the way their brains are wired. An article called Boys and Video Games: A Natural Attraction?  reports the fact that three brain structures --  the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, and orbitofrontal cortex -- were stimulated more in the male brain than the female during a controlled test of reactions to computer gaming. These three areas of the brain matter when one looks at their functions.  The first, the nucleus accumbens, is the  region involved in motivation and reward, feelings, and drug addiction    The second, the amygdala, are a pair of regions in the temporal lobe (located toward the bottom of the brain near the ears) and are linked to emotions and aggression, and more importantly for this post, to forming patterns related to l...

I decided to try out what I've read recently about boys and their preference for visual learning modes when I went to tutor a 15-year-old boy in Language Arts (GCSE English to my UK followers). First, he wanted to understand paragraphing in an essay.  I drew something like this: Fruit Bowl Paragraphs, I said, were like pieces of fruit, and the essay was like a fruit bowl.  Most simple essays have three or four pieces of fruit in their fruit bowl, such as an orange, a pear, and an apple.  The key to good writing is to make sure each fruit-bit remains whole; in other words, the writer has to make sure that bits of orange don't try to get into the apple, but that the orange stuff keeps to the orange paragraph, and the apple stuff stays with the apple. I love it when a light seems to go off in a child's brain!  Imagine, 15 years old, bright, top-set sort of student, and yet no one had ever bothered to really explain paragraphing to him. His next concern was about knowing...

Since re-reading Michael Gurian's book  The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life , I've been thinking about my provision for my sons in a whole new light.   My 3-year-old is still supposedly in non-school mode -- a bit of Montessori practical life here, a bit of reading or writing there, and a lot of playing cars with his 5-year-old sister. My 7-year-old, however, has had a mixed bag over the past year of success and stress, and it's for him that I need to make some changes Here's what definitely worked : having a daily checklist for him to tick off his accomplishments; getting a chance to work on the computer once he had finished his work for the day; map skills (by both  Carson-Dellosa and School Specialty Publishing ); the new handwriting program called  Write from the Start ; playing active games before we started school such as "The Giant Says" (ie, Simon Says but with a gobbling-up bit when you do it wrong); and ...

Mouths full of food, cups of tea at our side, children playing bubbles outside or finishing up their radio plays for the day's topic, our last co-op of the year was typical of our two-weekly meetings. Various discussions followed about our plans next year, about who might join our group, about the topics we could cover. And then this bizarre but funny conversation started. It went something like this: Mum 1: I've got so much time now that I've been cross with my husband and stopped ironing his shirts. Mum 2: I don't own anything that I iron. Mum 3: I think we should all save the planet and just stop ironing altogether.  In fact, I want to design t-shirts that say: "Go Green: Stop Ironing!" Mum 2: Why do we iron anyway? Mum 3: I think it all started with posh people -- they could afford to have servants who ironed for them, and then everyone else wanted flat clothes, too -- to look posh. Mum 1: I think there are some parts of the world where you really have to ...

Recently, my 7-year-old son was asked to participate in a survey of Sunday school provision at our church.  I was intrigued by some of his answers, and thought they could offer insight into homeschooling as well. His first point was that the crafts at Sunday school were too easy and sometimes the subject matter lacked challenge.  (I suspect these are the times when his behaviour deteriorates, and he gets silly or distracting.) One solution may be to make sure he knows why  he's asked to do this craft or talk about that subject.  According to a Schools Improvement Officer in an article appearing on-line at  Teaching Expertise , a boy won't engage with something if he doesn't see the sense or purpose in doing it.  That's why it's important for him to "talk through and share ideas before he puts pen to paper", so he's got a good grasp of what he's aiming for and why. I realise that I've accidentally gone through this process with my son in somethi...

To my mind, there’s nothing better than staying home to learn and to live.  We spend our 2 1/2 hours every morning in our school room, not always getting through "the plan", but always focussing on something that’s interesting and stimulating. The picture to the right, for example, was taken on a day we had been learning about whales in the Apologia Science text, called "Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures on the 5th Day."  The photo shows how long a blue whale actually is, tracing back to our starting point where the sidewalk ends in the distance. One welcomed addition this year is our opening routine.  We do stretches called "yes, no, maybe", starting with our heads (yes and no are self-explanatory, but maybe is tilting your head side-to-side to point each ear toward your shoulder).   Then we have adapted an idea called Five Rhythm Dance to a music appreciation segment.  Using something like "Bolero", we start off with slow, ...

I'm not talking sodium nitrate and colouring and collagen casings here -- I'm talking a fun game that you can play with your children that's especially useful if someone is upset or grumpy or out of sorts. First, I'll admit that this game wasn't my idea. I got it from a book called "The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun" by Carol Stock Kranowitz. An "out-of-sync" child has many guises: over-hyper, total couch potato, extra-clumsy. All these symptoms and several in between could be indications of Sensory Integration Disorder, where a child's brain doesn't quite register senses properly. I still haven't decided if my 7-year-old has a form of this -- he definitely requires over-stimulation to feel right, such as going to bed with a flashlight shining in his eyes and never being able to find his "inside voice". I've decided, however, that the label of SID isn't as important as Kranowitz's suggestions for tackling it, whic...