Unleash Your Smile!

Smiles brought such pleasing responses from family and friends, as a child, that I began to capitalize on smiling. As a young adult, people nicknamed me smiley.  Smiling at folks is so natural for me now, I don't even think about it.  Often people say that are attracted to me because of my smile.  I started thinking more about the power of a smile and discovered exactly why it can be so potent.

Smile for Smile  In a crowd, I find it fascinating to smile intentionally one-on-one at folks who pass by me. To make it more personal, I look each individual in the eye as well.  With few exceptions, each person smiles back, though we are strangers.

Mirror Effect  Intriguingly, the mirror neurons in another person's brain respond when she sees someone's action with a specific intent behind it.  Random actions don't have the same effect, David Rock notes.  Why?  mirror neurons seem to be the brain's mechanisms for understanding another person's goals and objectives, and the upshot is feeling connected to her.

A smile must be genuine - people easily detect a fake smile

Unleash the power of your smile by smiling...

at a spouse or colleague - especially when you don't feel like it. As the smile is returned it can transform your mood.

when introduced to someone new.  A smile enhances an opportunity to make a lifetime friendship from that connection.

at an appropriate moment as you listen intently to unique ideas or someone's story.

when you face intense events such as an accident or death of a loved one.  I find that it takes my mind to the most pleasant experiences I've had with the person and smiling calms me down.

when someone close lets you down.  Giving them a genuine form of encouragement can turn an event upside-down, which could otherwise cause a problem.

to begin your day with sunshine inside.  Your actions form inside out...

at folks many just pass by.  People in wheelchairs, from other cultures, too thin, too heavy and especially those with purple tips in their hair feel a lift from you.  I find as I go a step further to initiate a conversation by asking a 2-footed question, I am blessed.

when people serve you well - or even fail to.  Somehow it lifts the service up a notch.

when you "have to" write an essay or blog.  Missing motivation and inspiration return.

as you look for solutions to problems.  Get into an activity that really makes you smile.  In 20 minutes or less hat brings a solution aha and it might work for you.

Play it forward... Make a difference as you unleash your smile to others.  Any more ideas you'd like to share?

Less, Not More

One struggle many homeschoolers face is the feeling of not doing enough. To prove we are doing a good job, we push our children harder and teach skills earlier. With special needs children, the stakes seem higher because some tell us we are not qualified to teach. That seed of doubt tempt us to forget that children are born persons. They have their own timetables. While we may know typical developmental patterns, we cannot force development to go any faster than it is. Pushing harder may very well train the habit of frustration, creating setbacks instead of progress.

It is okay to step back and table a goal when tasks cause tears. It is okay to slow down or to reevaluate what you are doing. Last year, I felt rushed to get everything done some days. This year, I cut the amount of reading by 13% (measured by word count). Rather than spend ten minutes on a book three times a week, we read for five minutes a day if ten minutes is too long because of the complexity of the language. The benefits of a more leisurely pace became evident last week.

One book was written in the 1960s. A passage describes a large room full of computing machines. That unusual turn of phrase caught Pamela's eye. She stopped our reading (we alternate reading aloud sentences) and asked, "What about computers?" I explained that back in those days they called it a computing machine, which filled a whole room. Computers didn't work very well, and they were huge. We continued the reading, and she stopped me again when the book described a long tape being fed into the computer. "Just like tape recorder. No CDs, yet," she added. I explained that, in those days, computers had reel-to-reel tapes and people used cards with holes punched into them. While Pamela said very little, the questions revealed much about the thinking going on in her mind.

Two thoughts come to my mind. First, living books have a way of shining light on other subjects. While the passage came from a literature book, the ideas led to a conversation about history and science. Second, the sign of understanding isn't the ability to answer questions. It is the ability to ask them. "The mind can know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind by itself" (Page 16). Each time Pamela stops and asks a question, she reveals what she knows and how she thinks. A good friend who is new to Mason's ideas points out how much teacher training she received on asking the "right" questions to elicit critical thinking skills. Now, my friend realizes we take the opportunity to apply these skills in the act of reading when we do all the thinking to ask the "right" questions.

Pamela stops and shares her thoughts through reactions or in words far more frequently than she did last year. In one book, she laughed out loud at one angry character telling another to sit on a tack, just as she did with the wild inauguration party at the White House during Andrew Jackson's presidency. She applied "together or alone" thinking and said "just like RDI" when characters assessed the possibility of one character pulling all the pranks described without help. Her face lit up in another book when she learned that one character is the cousin of a president she studied last year.  While taking turns reading lines from a poem about language, she suddenly felt inspired to read aloud in unison with me just as the topic switched to conversations and dialogues.

I scaffold Pamela whenever possible. I suspected she wouldn't understand the meaning of deductions in a story about sharecroppers, so I linked it to a word she already knows: debt and debtors. I told her the sharecroppers had too many deductions whenever they shopped at the store. They gave them too much debt, and they became debtors. I found a pattern in the books that didn't work for her last year. Nearly all of them have very short stories that only take a few days to breeze through. I believe she needs to live with a character or event for much longer. So, instead of reading books that leap from story to story, I substituted recommended books with Hawthorne's A Wonder Book for mythology and Tappan's In the Days of Alfred the Great for English history (part of our own history when you think about it). Perhaps, in the future, with an imagination warmed toward a few more key monarchs and stories, Pamela can start to take possession of a pageant of our historical roots.

It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one's thoughts. We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but, 'the imagination is warmed'... (Page 178)

Expressiveness

Pamela gave a couple of priceless narrations that reflect her personality and her growing vocabulary. She kicked off the day, narrating what she had previously read in Genesis:

Abraham is sad and blue because Sarah is expired. Got to bury and buy a cave. It is almost time for the debut of Rebekkah.

From a person who has struggled with aphasia most of her life, that narration was fantastic! Debut entered Pamela's vocabulary when she started researching the history of television. Last spring, she loved juxtaposing debut and debt "From the Lord's Prayer" which stood out to her because our old church used the more familiar trespasses. I have no idea where expire came from but she's been sprinkling many narrations with it.

When she read the word anxiety in the passage on Caesar, she related it immediately to her own anxious feelings and narrated,

Caesar was mad. He was freaking out. He broke his camp. He marched! Humpf!

She borrowed some language from The Big Comfy Couch when she related a story about Andrew Jackson's inaugural party,

They put mud on the couch. Who made this big mess with Andrew Jackson? They got into big trouble.

Pamela also showed spunk when she narrated the first snow of the winter for a little brother she sometimes calls a brat,

Prediction - Pinch get into trouble ice skating. He disobey.

What Really Happened - He put stone in the snow. He make a stupid stone on snowball.

Today's Artistic Expression
Pamela also expressed herself in pictures today, drawing a mosaic we found at the art gallery, for her review of ancient art. She painted the sky again for science and added monkey grass to her nature notebook.


First Turtle
Pamela started watercolor classes in August. Every time the class meets, each painting, guided by the same instructor on the same subject, looks completely unique. People accept individuality in art, but somehow that idea doesn't translate as well to reading a passage from a book. We are tempted to look for certain facts that must be recalled and certain ways in which ideas must be expressed. That is not the point of narration. Just as art reflects the personality and reaction of the artist, a narration too reflects the personality and reaction of the reader.

We loved Pamela's turtle so much that we framed it and made a latte cup for Steve.



Pat Terry's Traveling Turtles
Pamela's first turtle was based upon a picture. Her second turtle was even better because she had live models! A friend found wild slider turtle eggs and built a nest for them. She took strong measures to protect the eggs from crows. A few weeks ago, they hatched and she has been taking them to classrooms and other settings where people can study them. The adorable baby turtles inspired the whole class. Today, Pamela added the finishing touch to her watercolor.



Watercolors from August

A Day in the Life of a Mason Homeschool

Every year I learn something new about Pamela and I learn how to arrange her education in ways to make it more living and more enjoyable. A couple of little organizational nuances helped: as always, I burn our weekly audio work (music, Spanish, audio books--to help Pamela develop an ear for other speakers, etc.) onto a CD but this time I put the selections in order of what we use most frequently to lessen the time forwarding to the right spot. In addition to putting page tabs in the books we are reading, I put them in the notebook of pages I keep in the reading notebook (passages for studied dictation, music pages, recitation poem, two books we don't have in hard copy, etc.). As always, I had the weekly schedule on hand and Pamela highlighted tasks as we completed him, which gives her a little thrill to see the column for Tuesday slowly turn from white to pink and yellow.

We spent 3 1/2 hours doing our thing in the morning and 1 1/2 hours in the afternoon, leaving time for me to shower and tidy up before our Charlotte Mason study group meeting. Today was especially meaningful to me because the first ever public school (charter) in North America opened its doors for class. Families, teachers, and those who love Mason's ideas of a relational education have worked so hard behind the scenes to make this school a reality.

I decided to give you a peek into a day. Some "exhibits"(the titles of specific books) are closed because they involve the design team developing a Mason curriculum for homeschools, private schools like Red Mountain Community School and Willow Tree Community School, and Gillingham Charter School. However, what I can show you is the process, which is what a relational education is all about.

Living Books
One thing struck me as we read very short passages, limited by Pamela's aphasia and frequent need for new horizons, from seventeen different books. Everything is so connected, but not by careful planning. The beauty of a living books approach is that the best books simply come together without special orchestration. This morning was rainy and misty, perfectly tuned into one literature book, which opens with children waiting for the fog to clear before they pick nuts, and the poem I chose for recitation is about fog. We read a poem by Kipling, which Pamela adored because it mentioned Caesar, whom we are reading about in Plutarch and slowly working through the play by Shakespeare. Our history spine touched on one president, while two books on inventions touched on two other presidents. Pamela gets a kick out of seeing all the unintentional connections between stories.

Language Arts
Pamela is doing copywork of sayings by Benjamin Franklin and studied dictation (which works on spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics of writing). This year, she advanced in her studied dictation: she studies a whole paragraph, but I only dictate one sentence to her. We added a new notebook on the menu: the commonplace book, which is a place to store copywork that has special significance to you. At first, I worried about how to spotlight this for Pamela. When we read today, the right moment emerged and I seized it. When we read the Kipling poem and Pamela's face lit up at the mention of Caesar, I shifted to her commonplace book after the reading. I told her how happy she looked when we read that verse of the poem, so that verse belongs in her commonplace book. I explained that it is like Maria and her favorite things. It is for those special passages that make her smile.

It is very helpful to read with a commonplace book or reading-diary, in which to put down any striking thought in your author, or your own impression of the work, or of any part of it; but not summaries of facts. Such a diary, carefully kept through life, should be exceedingly interesting as containing the intellectual history of the writer (Page 260).

Science
Instead of textbooks, we read living books for science about inventions and animals, rounding about by observing and doing. Today, we spent 10 minutes shredding material to make a worm bin. Pamela painted a watercolor of the clouds (which she will do for a few weeks) to observe them and learn their names. A gray blanket of stratus clouds cloaked us for most of the day. For nature study, we made entries of an egg sac made by a garden spider who inconveniently placed it near the doorbell at the front door of our house. I absolutely love what Pamela wrote and drew today.



History
Even though history is the pivot of a Mason curriculum, I will touch on that another day as I eagerly await the arrival of what I hope will be a keepsake in the years to come: a beautifully bound book of centuries. Rest assured, Pamela did bask in plenty of history: a snippet on Stone Age people (as we test drive an ancient history book), the death of Abraham's beloved wife Sarah, Caesar's fumble, two different British monarchs, an Indian girl near the Great Lakes, former slaves in Mississippi, and three different presidents from three different books. I cannot wait to learn what big ideas Pamela finds vital enough for her book of centuries.


Potpourri of Things
We listened to our classical music, listened to more Spanish stories (and will spent another year learning this language by ear before trying to read) and sang a song in Spanish, and Pamela sewed a decorative edge on her knitting needle case. We walked and talked about directions while we enjoyed fresh air and exercise. We will spend a few weeks reviewing what we learned about architecture, art, and sculpture by finding features in our town. Today, Pamela drew an arched window from a physical therapy practice near our home.







Last, but NOT Least Math
I love the math program we use but, as always, the vocabulary challenges Pamela. I have decided to spend the first two days of the work previewing new words with homemade activities and sheets and doing only three lessons per week (four if things go smoothly). Pamela enjoyed classifying angles and triangles and the introduction to new words, which I made as concrete and meaningful as possible for her (internal, external, adjacent, and nonadjacent). I allotted a full fifty minutes to this subject, and Pamela finished it in forty!

Two for Tuesday

Yes, I have been busy writing, but not blogging. I'm still writing, reading, and vetting, which put me behind in planning the school year. We postponed the first day of school until after labor day. After laboring all summer on projects, it seemed fitting.

Like-minded friends steeped in Mason gave me new ideas to help me tweak what we are doing. I cut down the amount of reading per day and increased the doing, especially for science. Since I'm a details person, reflecting what we do through pie charts allows me to visualize our day. Buried in them are the staples of a Mason program (developmentally sound language arts, living books, narration, notebooks--not adult-organized perfection, mind you--the arts, thoughtful things to do, fresh air). Hidden is the dilemma of how to categorize a living book: a narrative describing how an invention gets distributed on an international scale covers the science behind the invention, the geography and governments of the nations involved, scientists and politicians, etc. It's not just a science book, and I cannot neatly place it into a slice of a pie chart.

I have continued the system I had last year: the entire year broken up into three terms of eleven weeks and books divvied up into weekly readings, all organized in a spreadsheet. Being a numbers person, I think in spreadsheets. I have three book crates: the crate of the day, the crate of the week (we do not read the same books every day), and the crate of the next two terms (books we will hit later in the year). In the evenings, I set up the crate of the day.

You may be wondering about that bin of trash. Last year, Pamela and I enjoyed getting to know some critters through insect kits. This year, we are going to try redworm composting and our first big science project will be to set up a habitat for the wigglers. Because of my black thumb in the garden and in the kitchen, I'm not confident they will survive a month. But, as Steve Brown says, "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well."

Why is the post called "Two for Tuesday"? Not only do we have the joy of the first day of school, but we are also hosting our Charlotte Mason study group in my home after school. Getting together with friends and sharing our insights, trials, and triumphs always lifts my spirits.

The Children's Art

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

Life has been too busy to blog, but today was one of those days that I had to share!

Last Tuesday, our Charlotte Mason study group discussed some of the elements of language arts, beginning with recitation. Most of the people in the group are fairly new to her ideas, so our meetings take me back ten years to when my family was first testing out her suggestions. Recitation was a flop for Pamela due to her aphasia (severe language disorder). Even the simplest line was beyond her because she skipped short, abstract words. Unlike E. in the anecdote Mason provided, committing to memory and reciting a poem required extensive and strenuous effort:

She read a poem through to E.; then the next day, while the little girl was making a doll's frock, perhaps, she read it again; once again the next day, while E.'s hair was being brushed. She got in about six or more readings, according to the length of the poem, at odd and unexpected times, and in the end E. could say the poem which she had not learned (page 225).

Modern research bears out the wisdom of Mason's suggestion to read the poem to E. "at odd and unexpected time" while doing different activities in various locations. Studying in the same place free of distractions doesn't increase memory. The brain associates what is being learned with background sensations it perceives at the time. In Mason's example, learning lines from Tennyson is shaded slightly with the sitting on the bed feeling one's hair brushed, or perhaps, stirring cake batter in the kitchen. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations to the poem scaffolds memorization. "What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting," explains one researcher.

For many years, David quickly learned whatever poem was put in front of him, while Pamela struggled with the first line. We continued to hope for Pamela to learn the children's art without any evidence recitation was within reach. About four years ago, the miracle started when we realized Pamela needed a multi-sensory approach to memorizing poetry: her brain could make the multiple associations required when she read it aloud, copied it in her own handwriting, and used it for studied dictation (how we do spelling and writing mechanics). She loved poetry so much, she spent one morning doing what she called a poem marathon.

Singing in unison and reciting the Lord's Prayer at church seemed beyond her until we started filling in developmental milestones through Relationship Development Intervention. She was missing the ability to coordinate her actions and adjust her pace to that of another person and RDI helped fill that gap. Last fall, Pamela finally started singing with me, taking turns alternating lines, and even picking up where I left off. She even sang to herself while quietly doing paperwork. This summer, Pamela has been quietly reciting the Lord's Prayer with the congregation in church. Because of my work on the church website, she has access to Sunday recitations of The Apostle's Creed (which she started preparing for recitation last year). Over the summer, she has listened to the recordings on our computer intently to memorize this challenging statement of belief.

Today, the entire body of New Covenant Presbyterian Church heard the evidence of the miracle coming out of Pamela. As if to anticipate our pastor's sermon on pursuing God (available later in the week), Pamela "boldly" (Luke 8:11 NIV) with "shameless audacity" (Luke 8:11 TNIV) recited The Apostle's Creed in unison with the church body. Because of a slight delay in her pace, I could hear her all the way up front where I sit with the choir during the first half of the service. As I looked out into the faces of our many, many friends in the congregation, I saw bright smiles everywhere from people who know what a precious moment this was.

During and after the service, they shared their appreciation. Fellow choir members chuckled, marveled, and patted me on the shoulder. A friend in the back pew stopped me on my way to sit with Pamela during the sermon. The lady who ran the children's catechism program for a long time told me she thought Pamela was ready to become a full-fledged "adult" member of the church. Her husband, an elder emeritus, commented he had no idea she knew the creed with such confidence. Another sweet friend wished we would all proclaim our beliefs with such gusto. The husband of another dear friend told me how much he is amazed by the pictures I post on Facebook of Pamela's watercolors (overdue post to follow) and the stories I share about her. Did I mention how many wonderful friends I have in my church?

And they weren't even in Sunday School class with us to witness Pamela's recitation of Tennyson's "The Eagle". For the past month, we have been studying great hymns that touch our hearts. Every week, we pick a hymn to research for the following Sunday: the lyrics, the story behind the hymn, and the person who wrote it. Someone shared their research of "Holy, Holy, Holy" by Reginald Heber and commented that Alfred Lord Tennyson considered it the world's greatest hymn. When she heard the poet laureate's name mentioned, Pamela perked up and said, "Just like 'The Eagle.'" Then she recited the poem for them.

Yesterday, Pamela was so proud of her accomplishment she recorded herself reciting the creed from memory. Just for the fun of it!

Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Luke 11:5-13

P.S. The symmetry of all this is breathtaking. Hebrew 11 and Luke 11, which also contains "The Lord's Prayer" which Pamela recited unabashedly in church today.

Money and Contentment

Money and happiness

I'd rather focus on money than people...  Paul verbalized as he led a seminar for building savvy financial choices.  His words stuck and I couldn't let go of them. Interestingly, money - even the thought of it - reduces satisfaction from life's simple pleasures...  

Studies show that a person's ability to savor experiences predicts their degree of happiness.  Savoring leads to emotions of joy, excitement, wonder, contentment and gratitude.  You can develop an emotional attachment to money, as much as you might for relationships you hold most dear.  Your brain rewires for more of what you do and focus on. Because of the emotional pleasure connected to savoring money, it creates a strong pattern for more such pleasure.

The Rich Really Are Different  

"The rich really are different, and not in a good way," explains psychologist and social scientist, Dacher Keltner. "Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish."

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest."

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival, Keltner argued. So they learn “prosocial behaviors.” They read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need.

In video recordings of conversations, rich people are more likely to appear distracted, checking cell phones, doodling, avoiding eye contact, while low-income people make eye contact and nod their heads more frequently signaling engagement.

Momentary Happiness

Higher income women have more momentary happiness and less overall life satisfaction, according to statistics.   To determine the level of contentment in lower versus higher income women, the two were compared in data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey.  Alan Kruger, an economist from Princeton and his research colleagues found that those with higher incomes had more chores and less fun.  For example, higher income women "devoted more time to working, commuting, childcare, and shopping and were under more stress and tension than those in lower income brackets."

Men making more than $100,000 a year spend about 20% of their time on passive leisure activities such as watching television and socializing.  Meanwhile, men whose annual income were less than $20,000 spent more than 34 percent of their time dedicated to passive leisure.

Contentment


What brings you real contentment anyway?

Gratitude Thankfulness is essential to achieving well-being.

Relationships Family and friends bring large measure of psychological wealth.

Creativity Exploration and discovery makes us feel open and alive and boosts resilience and satisfaction with life.

Faith Opens a window to the meaning of life and by embracing God we find inner contentment.

Nature Relaxes and refreshes mind and soul.

Learning Leaping to meet new intellectual challenges and using gifts and talents in new ways.

Laughter A lighthearted attitude often brings aha moments when you need them most.

Courage Inner strength to stand up for what is best for yourself and others.

Empathy Caring about and helping others.

What would you add to this list?