The McEldowney Family: August 2008

Friday, August 15, 2008

Hello Everyone!!
it has been too long since I last posted , but we have been really busy. We have moved into a very lovely farmhouse just outside of Brookville, Ohio. It is closer to where Sean works in Phillipsburg and we love the setting. We are also fitting right into our new congregation in Englewood and the friends have welcomed us with open arms. We are also getting ready for a trip to Canada for 2 weeks to visit my Mother's family. We are very excited about that. The kids have never been there and we have talked about Saskatchewan for years to them and now they will experience it for themselves. Not to mention that they will meet all of their cousins on my Mom's side of the family. And get to see their aunts and uncle that live in Canada. We are doing a unit study on Canada to start off the year with schooling, how appropriate!! Alexis and Aidan and I plan to auxilliary pioneer in Sept. or Oct. we are waiting to see how things go that way. Well, we had a great convention and I especially was happy that we received the Young people ask book,....it was 20 years ago that I got mine at the Divine Justice convention. I am so happy to be part of an organization that takes such care of our young people. Well, I need to get off of here to eat dinner. I will write more later.

my love to all reading this,
Danita

My current favorite quotes about education and life

"What does education often do? It makes a
straight-cut ditch of a free meandering brook."
~Henry David Thoreau, Journal,
1850

"Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he's not interested, it's like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating."
- Barbara Lamping
"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience."
-- Anne Sullivan (Helen Keller's teacher)