Uncategorized

• 3 Comments

•

COMPUTER UPDATE:  I'm typing on the new laptop (Vista and all).  So far, all is well, but the thing came with Norton and Comcast gives me McAfee - so there's a bit of a conflict that I haven't taken care of yet.  But so far the my software is working.

HEALTH UPDATE:  Thank you for the prayers - part of me knows this is really minor, but the part that doesn't know the future frets... The surgical nurse has to talk to the doctor before they'll schedule.  The nurse said "D&C", which I didn't know was on the agenda.  I don't like generals, but if that's what it takes, I'll make sure I take an extra day off.

CAT UPDATE:  It took about 3 shots before Henry figured out that "insulin bottle = canned cat food".  Manda was out so I gave him the injection last night - as soon as I took the insulin bottle out of the fridge, the cat was next to the cupboard with the cat food...
~~~~~

My new laptop is on its way...with the wrong operating system. It comes with Vista, NOT the XP Pro that I ordered (and paid extra for). I am currently playing phone tag with the guy who is "taking care of it".

My cat has diabetes. That means 2 insulin injections every day and high protein, low carb food (why do vets recognize that low carb is the way to go for diabetes, but the American Diabetes Association is still recommending a high-carb diet for humans?) Amanda learned how to give the shots (I've given cats shots before) and she was a real trooper. Put food in front of Henry and he doesn't even notice the needle.

And I'll be having a (below the fold for TMI)...test/surgery

...continue reading →

• 1 Comment

•

HENDERSONVILLE — Joshua Jackson Reeves, four days old, slept undisturbed Monday afternoon in his mother's arms, blissfully unaware of war, or a city called Baghdad, or his mother's shattered heart.

Leslie Reeves, gently traced her baby's chin, a miniature version of another's chin, and smiled through wet eyes.

On Friday, Mrs. Reeves delivered her seven-pound, 14-ounce boy into this world without complications. Soon afterward she phoned Iraq to deliver the happy news. There, Spc. Joshua H. Reeves, her soldier-husband of two years, was stationed with troops from Fort Riley, Kan.

He was due to come home in November for two weeks of vacation from war.

One day's joy turned to sorrow on Saturday as a bomb detonated as Joshua Reeves' Humvee drove down a Baghdad street. Leslie Reeves, a Hendersonville native who had returned to be with her parents while she delivered, was still in the hospital with her new baby when she learned she was a widow.

• 3 Comments

•

For one of my classes (Educational Psychology) we have to read an article each week and write a paper on it.  This week, the article is: "The New First Grade:  Too Much Too Soon?"

Too Much Too Soon?

Are we asking too much of our students, too soon? At what cost? I believe that we are; or at least asking too much of the wrong thing. At earlier ages, a child’s world fuels curiosity; curiosity fuels experimentation, experimentation fuels learning.

Rote learning (including the rote learning of sight words) leaves little room for natural curiosity within that teaching method. Yes – a child can learn that “b” + “at” reads “bat” – but this is like teaching them to play Beethoven without letting them first listen to the music. With the emphasis on “reading at grade level”, there is also an emphasis on “seat work”, and seat work does not fuel curiosity. Life fuels curiosity.

I recently read an article about a school called “waldkindergarten” – or “forest school”. Originating in Scandinavia, the schools I have read the most about are in Germany, and most of the websites are in German. The basic concept is a “school without walls.

This type of school uses a child’s inner curiosity and need for movement to teach them about nature, science, natural consequences, physical education, and more. It does this while improving gross motor skills, logic skills, and awareness of the world around them. Waldkindergartens believe that a child who is able to build on the foundation of motor development is better able to manage his or her own body.

Being able to manage his own body enables a child to recognise and use shapes, signs, deal with quantities and abstract numbers. Only a child that has learned to orient himself in play and experience can bring this orientation to paper or on a blackboard.

Just like in any other kindergarten, we offer paper, pencils, paint, brushes and scissors, and teach the children how to use them. Children who were able to run around and let off steam in kindergarten are able to sit still and concentrate later in school, as they have learned to occupy themselves with simple things and with few distractions in nature.

Children who have mastered day-to-day life in the forest, together with other difficult situations, and have learned to make arrangements and stick to them have gained social skills for living and working together. Skills that are not only valuable at school.

http://www.zipfelmuetzen-walldorf.de/waldkindergarten.php?lang=en )

In this type of school, children are learning. They are learning about the world around them, they are learning about “how stuff works”, they are learning about the limits of their own abilities.

Incidentally, this pressure for “too much too soon” is demanded by standardized, high-stakes testing. What do the Germans call this testing? Amerikanische Prffung (American tests). Whether or not high-pressure performance in first grade leads to better learning in high school and beyond really remains to be seen. But for those children who “make the cut” in kindergarten, childhood is lost forever.

•

This is cross-posted at Laced With Grace.

I had a good day at work; my dad has told me many times that it is a privilege for a person to have a job that they like. I am blessed - I don't like my job; I love it.

I'm working with yet another different level of population this year. This is my first permanent assignment in a POHI classroom. POHI = Physically and Otherwise Health Impaired. Among the impairments, CP, birth injuries, pre-birth injuries, traumatic brain injury, down syndrome, autism, vision impairments, sickle cell anemia and a general description of "cognitively impaired".

I cannot describe the range of emotions that I feel when I work with these wonderful, gentle people. I know that there are many "at-risk" populations, but the people that I'm working with this year are fragile in many ways. They are not only physically fragile (with the lowered life expectancy that comes along with that fragility), they are emotionally and mentally at risk as well.

Sometimes I want to cry - could this have been prevented somehow? (in the case of birth injuries, this is a very real question) . How can I help? Should I help? Or will my helping come with the penalty of the loss of muscle tone?

But most importantly, how do I relate to all of these people, as I see them as God's children?

Kindness (being nice) tells me that I should "do" for them. Love dictates that I make them work to keep what they have. Love touches my heart and tells me to be gentle, and it strengthens my heart and tells me to be firm.

Love allows me to see them as people - yet forever children.
Sometimes, in my spiritual walk, I feel as though I'm "stuck" in that childhood. Always in need of something. Needing help, yet needing to work it out for myself.

My struggles, although different, allow me to feel love for that person in the wheelchair, doing her "laps" around the edge of the work floor (we are a sheltered workshop).

Matthew 25:45 Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' (ESV)