The McEldowney Family: April 2009

Monday, April 6, 2009

March is already over and done!!!1

Hello to all!!
we had a nice month in March, very, very busy. We all managed to auxilliary pioneer, so it made things go really quickly. We celebrated our 17th anniversary by buying roller skates for the entire family,..we are all trying to get active again after 'hibernating' over the winter. We applied for our passport cards...I partcipated in a Market research panel where they paid me $100 to give my opinion on Campbells cooking sauce!!....uhm, what else. Well, we placed a total of 15 , yes, I said 15 'What does the bible really teach' books with some really interested people.
The kids are doing well,...we started some lessons on Health and science for the month of April. They built an incubator for some eggs we are trying to hatch...that is the science experiment...they have to monitor the humidity and temperature and rotate the eggs regularly during the day. We have also started many garden plants in mini greenhouses inside the house. We hope to be able to plant in a few weeks. We will keep you updated!!

We are enjoying this week of the memorial celebration and the invitations ,..Sean is giving the talk so he is preparing for that.
Take care,
keep in touch!!

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)