flynn011

One of the most common complaints I hear from parents about boys -- whether they're home educated or at schools -- is that they don't want to write anything. Why do (most) boys hate to write so much? The short answer is that boys develop later in that area of the brain. In fact, research has shown than girls' brains develop in the region of language and fine motor skills about six years earlier than boys!   On the flip side, boys develop their spatial memory areas about four years earlier than girls. Unfortunately, our expectations as educators are geared more toward writing than spatial memory, and so the boys get labeled or pushed too hard too early.  Is it any wonder they can develop a hang-up about writing? Logic states, therefore, that boys should be allowed to develop more slowly in this area, and in the meantime, be provided with opportunities and strategies that can help them achieve as writers at their level ! Here are a few ideas based on experience w...

He's only a little blue wooden train with a number 1 on his side and a fairly jolly looking expression on his front, but Thomas the Tank Engine seems to be one of the few toys amongst our mountain of plastic that is a perennial favourite.  I mean, my kids really do play for hours with their trains. Did I say "play"?  I meant to say "work", because that's what a child's focussed attention is with any object or in any activity.  It's their work, and should be respected as such.  In fact, if you look at this article here  about child development and Montessori theory, you will see a list of bullet points about learning through play, all of which a good session with Thomas and friends will satisfy. Let's take for example the second point in the list, "creativity expanded using problem-solving skills".  If you've ever tried to make anything more than a simple figure-8 or circular track with the Thomas railway, then you know that this ac...

It's an unusual snow storm that dumps 15 inches of snow on us within 8 hours. We all trekked down to the village sledging slope, but it was on an exposed ridge so the wind was really cold.  Busy Timmy decided he'd had enough even before we started, so I left the others with their daddy and marched back home. On the way home, I took a lot of photos of him.  Here's my favourite: It reminds me of one of our favourite picture books for winter: Ezra Jack Keats' book, Snowy Day.

Uploading my daughter's cartoon: Chinese whispers during the Exodus!  Enjoy! (Hint: Click on the picture and it will zoom large enough to read all the comments)

"Killer" has been working on animating a WWI poem for his history project this term.  With the help of a local sixth former (17-year-old) who's a computer whiz, Killer has completed the project and uploaded it to YouTube. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt9R3IGlOXE Please visit, comment, and encourage him -- he found the whole thing a lot of hard work, and I'd like to see him get some attention for it. Thanks.

I've been investigating my children's personality types.  For this purpose, I like the book called Nurture by Nature  written by Paul D. Tieger.  Although I found it difficult to pinpoint my own type, that's probably because I'm ENFP -- the one that finds it difficult to make decisions! The knock-on effect is that I find it hard to decide what my children are as well.  However, they stumbled onto a quiz that they took on-line. http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp Thus, they informed me of their personality types themselves. I was surprised to discover that Killer is an introvert.  He always seems so outgoing and jolly and energetic, but then again, I'm not the only one who has noticed that he sometimes gets out the Beano books and reads while his friends are over. Considering how much he and I seem to clash, I'm also not surprised that he's almost exactly my opposite: ISTP. ISTPs are easily bored with convention I'll investigate further whethe...

I had the privilege of driving with my son to Ikea the other night in order to return a damaged item.  It's a two-hour round trip, and gave us some valuable one-on-one time. On the way, I thought I'd ask him how life was going.  He's only 7, so I'm not sure how much detail I was expecting. Nevertheless, he opened up to me.  "I just wish I did my work better." Mommy-probe got into high gear: what do you mean by work? work, as in chores at home? work, as in homeschooling?  And when you say you want to do it better, do you want a schedule?  Something written out? He was pretty quiet after that, so I gave him the low-down of what our homeschool schedule was going to be like this year: the Bible study, the history, the map skills and math and art. "And you'll have a project this year.  Something for history, when we're studying World War One." "I could do something with poetry," he said.  "Like make computer stick people do the acti...