Good morning, humans, cyborgs, definitely giant dogs and elephants, and, oh what the hay — ALL creatures and beings out there! 😉

I’ve been digging into all kinds of (free) elearning courses. The paid ones definitely look great, too — no dis on them at all, I’m just a little tapped at the moment. One day soon, though…

On my agenda today — brush up on my HTML and CSS skills, begin to learn Ruby. And possibly dip into an Excel course, too.

I’m hoping that learning Excel will be like going from learning Spanish to learning Italian — with its having loads of similarities to Google Sheets. I learned a lot in Sheets, working with the ever-awesome, Luria Petrucci.
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This is such a cool little movie about cool science facts that I had to share it with you! It’s called “The Wonders of Science” and it was created by Mariela Kleiner, the author of a wonderful new book I’ll tell you all about after the movie!

The book is called Meet Einsteinand it looks absolutely fabulous! Here is the description from Amazon:

Meet Einstein. He is a scientist who loves to study light and gravity. Einstein helps to introduce your kids to science, and show them that they are already great scientists!
Light and gravity are concepts that preschoolers are ready to learn. Help them make the connections in everything they see and do, and teach them that science is all around them.

They also have a great website set up to go along with the book with lots of cool things for you to dig into! You can read about the author and the illustrator. You can follow ‘Meet Einsteen’ on Facebook and Twitter. And there are some fun PDF activity sheets available, too! Check ’em out!

How in the world do you get your child to write? This is the battle cry of many parents. A lot of imagination, with a little bribery (or praise) is all you need to get your child writing. We’ll supply the imagination. The praise and bribery is all up to you.

Grocery List: Enlist your child’s help in making the grocery list. Walk around the kitchen, naming things you need from the store. Ask your child to write everything down. Your child can also suggest foods you might need from the store and he can add those, too.

Old Checks: If you’ve recently switched banks and have checks that need to be destroyed, first let your child play with them. Give him some envelopes and he can pretend to pay bills – while getting him to do some writing. Of course, destroy the checks afterwards. If you do not have checks available, you can just give your child some blank pieces of paper and he can make his own checks.

Cards: If your child is interested in Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards, then give him some index cards cut in half and have him design his own cards. Encourage your child to give the characters names and special abilities on their cards.

Fictional Journal: Sometimes it is hard for children to write in a journal. What is there to write about? Instead of a standard journal, give your child a fictional journal. He or she can pretend to be anything they’d like to be and write a journal as that person. Your child could write from the perspective of an Astronaut discovering a new planet, Prince or Princess on an Adventure, Archaeologist finding a new species of Dinosaur, Famous Athlete, President of a Country, Passenger on the Titanic. Your child could write from the perspective something instead of someone, a mailbox, an animal, a pen. The possibilities are endless.

Letter-writing: Have your child write a letter to Santa, the Easter bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Or, your child could write to their favorite athlete, fictional character, or movie star.

Alphabet Game: Take a piece of paper and write the letters A-Z in the left column. Then, choose a category from the following or make up one of your own. Vegetables, Fruits, Animals, Musical Instruments. For older children, the categories can be narrower and more difficult, like Countries, Characters in Literature, Presidents, etc. Set a timer and you and your child both list as many of the items in the category as you can for each letter. The trick at the end is that you have to cross off anything on your list that your child has listed. (for instance, if you both have “apple” for an “a” fruit, then the parent crosses theirs off.) Whoever has the most words wins.

Character Game: Tell your child to pick a character from a book or movie that he’s familiar with, and you do the same. Then, ask several questions and you each write the answers to the questions on a piece of paper. When you’ve finished asking the questions, then have your child read the answers and try to guess who he was pretending to be. You do the same and see if your child can guess who you were. Whether you are pretending to be Peter Pan or Shrek, you and your child will have fun and your child won’t even realize he’s practicing his writing!

Article by:

Nicole Dean
Visit www.ShowKidsTheFun.com and Free Online Preschool Themes for more fun ideas to spend time with your children.

What, I mean, what, could I possibly even say to that? Oh, I don’t know, maybe I could tell you about something “nuke-you-ler”, or maybe I could tell you that I, too, “do the Google” – but, I don’t know.

I know I certainly don’t want to get on my No Child Left Behind soapbox, because, I’ve got work to do. No, I don’t have no time for them dang praisedents that cain’t even speak no Ainglish krect.

Those are the words of my sweet 10 year old daughter. She had to write a paragraph at school about a beautiful garden, and those words just really struck me. Are you just experiencing that waterfall with her upon hearing those words? I know that I am!

It’s funny, because, a group of friends and I have been having a lot of discussions lately about just this sort of thing. Taking your readers there with you, right into the scene, and letting them wholly experience it with you – like you’re looking at it on a viewsonic monitor – or even better, like you’re actually there! And here that concept is so beautifully demonstrated by a fifth grader! That’s just awesome!

I would love to share with you her whole paragraph, though, as I found it really sweet:

Designing a Garden

My imaginary garden is beautiful! In my garden I have all kinds of flowers. Also my garden has a rocky path leading up to a stream of water comeing from a rushing, gushing, spectacular water fall! With fish, tadpoles, and frogs. Next to the stream is a open field with a gazebo in the middle. In the middle of the gazebo is a swing. Sometimes I will move the gazebo and put a beautiful mahogany picnic table. Surronding the field is all kinds of trees and flowers. Some of the trees are: pecan, oak, apple, and Maple. Some of the flowers are: Daises, roses, and daffodils. Also I have fruits and vegatables.

I left her mistakes in place, because, they are cute, and I wanted to you read it as I see it on thepaper. (I’d scan it if it wasn’t in pencil and my scanner wasn’t fussy.) And the colorations were my doing, so I could emphasize that beautiful use of ‘taking your audience with you’. And also so that I could point out that, yes, that child’s father is a carpenter – how did you guess?

I think it would be so cool to get a psychology degree. I think if I had been the ‘college type’ – psychology would have been one field I would’ve seriously considered. If I already had my bachelor’s, I could even work on a psychology degree online! I’m serious – isn’t that cool? People can get Chicago School Online Psychology Degrees, if they apply and are accepted into the program of studies. This school was started in 1979 by practicing psychologists who wanted to start a not-for-profit training center for students entering the field. And as of this year, they are offering distance learning. And the really cool thing about this school is that they have a major focus on diversity and multicultural studies, as they believe that multicultural awareness plays a very important role in psychological therapy. And they seem to not only be a good part of the community there in Chicago, but, also they are a good community themselves. I really like schools that are like that. You don’t just go and absorb information, regurgitate it, and that’s all there is to the school. It is an actual thriving, supportive community. I really hope that my children pick a school like that – and if one of them were to choose psychological studies, I would just be thrilled.