I just finished reading an article that is absolutely incredibly mind-boggling.  This article (Click here  to read it) states that a rather large experiment was performed in schools, back around 1930, which showed that children who had no formal math training before sixth grade actually caught up with their peers in math by the end of the sixth grade year, showing that when the brain is developmentally ready, math is learned very quickly.  The children were able to learn in one school year what their colleagues had spent six years on.  The even more surprising things is that the children who were part of the experiment FAR surpassed their peers in language.  These children developed more interest in reading, a better vocabulary, and greater fluency in expression than their peers who had spent so much time trying to learn math in the earlier years.  Not only had math study been largely unproductive, but it had cheated them out of time for other activities which would have benefited them more.

I have long suspected that math is shoved onto kids too soon, and this article made me sort of angry.  If it has been known for all these years that this system works very well, and the children enjoy school a great deal more, then WHY for crying out loud, have we all been forced to struggle with teaching/learning math in the early grades?  Just think, thousands of American children have been taught that math is hard and hateful, when the real problem was that their brains simply weren't ready to assimilate it.  All that time...wasted!  And when I think of all the wonderful learning they have sacrificed because they had to spend a great deal of time on math, it's just terribly frustrating! 

Makes me wish that I could start all over, and have the courage to go against the status quo, trying this method of teaching.  And it makes me very angry that this method was not adopted nationwide after its success.  It is just WRONG that young children are pressured to so that learning becomes a drag.  And I suspect that children who struggle with math in the early years often give up, feeling that they will never understand it, so when they actually reach the age where they are developmentally ready for it, they no longer have any desire to try.

I have lamented many times the fact that my children generally want to just "get done with" school, rather than enjoying the process.  It is a sad thing that many people see the learning process as a necessary evil, and completely unrelated to their lives.  I have enjoyed so much all the things I have learned by homeschooling my children, and now I can't help lamenting the fact that we could have made it infinitely more enjoyable for them.  But, having been brought up in the traditional school system, I simply didn't know any better.  I can only pray that God will be able to bless my efforts anyway.

And I can't help thinking that this is a good example of how our government works, too:  If something has been proven not to benefit the people, go ahead and keep doing it anyway...

Yeah, call me cynical.

This evening I was in the kitchen when I heard tires squealing frantically and the sound of a crash.  I thought, "Oh, no," and headed toward the front of the house to see what had happened.

Turned out that the boys were in the front bedroom playing some kind of racing game.  Where they got it, I'm not sure--I think they have some sort of barter system with their friends--but apparently it's a LOT more fun if you hook it up to speakers so that you can hear all the sound effects really LOUD.

You can also give your mother a scare, and that's pretty fun, too... 

"Now that we've rescued the economy..."

~Barack Obama, during an interview by Jake Tapper

The full interview is here 

Gifts that make my life worth living,
gifts that make my moments holy.
Not gifts that I wish for,
but gifts that I have received.
Gifts that bring me back
into Joy and Gratitude.

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white birches, leafless against a deep blue sky
my sons creating hurricanes of leaves with the new leaf blower
tangy apple cider
golden asparagus fields rippling in waves like the ocean
gooey pumpkin cake
geese honking as they organize themselves into a V
the crunch of leaves as you walk through the woods
wispy windswept clouds
smooth creamy chocolate-y fudge
red and yellow mums, boldly standing where other flowers have faded
turkeys ambling off the road, taking their own sweet time
and gossiping together as they walk
the smell of freshly cut wood
that tired but oh-so-good feeling of muscles that have worked hard
a field of perfect little Christmas trees
a bear carved from a tree stump
Amy chatting and waving to her own picture on the computer screen
chili and cornbread eaten outdoors on a warm November day

I recently read the novel Deception by Randy Alcorn, and found myself thoroughly enjoying his way with words.  I just love the way he uses the language.  For instance, he is a master of the opening hook.  Here are the openers for the prologue and the first two chapters:

#1   In a dark room punctured by a bare hundred-watt bulb...

#2   My chest pounding like a dryerload of army boots...

#3   In the mornings I go fishing.
        By the side of my bed.
        For clean clothes.
        I seldom catch much.

Aren't those just absolutely great?   

The main character is sort of a hard-nosed, crusty type of guy, and the descriptions are from his perspective.  Here are a couple more snippets that I thought were pretty clever.

This couch had known a thousand posteriors, and so far it had spent forty minutes getting to know mine.

My partner doesn't just have a lot of issues; he's got the whole subscription.

Kendra declared that condoms should be distributed in schools to prevent diseases and pregnancies.  So I said yeah, and how about we use the same strategy to solve the problem of battered women by handing out boxing gloves to abusive men.

Not only is the writing great, but it's a great story, too.  It's the third in a trilogy that began with Deadline and Dominion, so you might want to read those first, though it's not at all necessary.  All of them are worth reading, though, because Alcorn has such a neat perspective on eternity.

In other news, the official Homefire computer was virus infested and is, even as we speak, being restored to a factory prisitine condition.  Which is not a good thing.  I think we were able to recover most of the data, which I am very thankful for, but now I am wondering what I may have forgotten.    It's a scary thing to watch your computer go through and wipe everything clean... 

And now it's rebooting.  .............................waiting.......................................  and waiting.................................

and waiting.  I'm getting worried.

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edit:  I wrote that last night.  It took a LONG time to go through all the rigmarole, but now I am typing on my computer and I have a LOT of things to reinstall and restore.  (That will make plenty to do today, not to mention cleaning and school and food and laundry and all that other fun stuff.)  Thankfully, I think we were able to keep most of my info, with the exception of e-mail.    Soooo...

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

If you are my friend and would like for me to ever write to you again, please e-mail me!  I have lost ALL of my addresses, so I'm starting from scratch.