C-O-D-E-R-E-D

Posts Tagged ‘Reference’

Hang on. Hold out. Endure. What does survive is precious. Beauty is in the discernment of the delicate scents in different kinds of sage or the mute tones of trees where wildlife hides. Lack of moisture in the sky creates clarity just like lack of distractions creates transparency of soul. I think of Moses, prince of Egypt, living forty years in the desert, growing tough and sinewy herding animals from place to place. Might he have wondered if he’d missed his life’s calling because of mistakes made in his youth? We only know that when one day he saw the burning bush and heard the voice of God, he was an old man shaped by the wilderness. God found him where he was and called it holy ground.
Indeed, landscape tells a story.

Our friend Richard built an alpine creek bed through and around a mound of soil planted with young aspens, then sent water tumbling down the river rocks with an underground pump. The scenic area,
a mosaic of sun-dappled foliage, attracts birds and, unfortunately, also many flower-hungry deer.

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. My first grade friend Mattie Mae was a happy kid who wore her hair in short braids all over her head, fastened with colorful plastic barrettes. She lived on the other side of the tracks in my small hometown. I discovered this the day I went to her house to play after school. Mattie Mae’s prairie- type sod house was buried in the ground like a hobbit’s habitat, all covered with grass. Its threshold, however, stood upright in a mound of rounded earth, looking nonsensical and inventive. The door opened to a stairway leading down into a dark room with a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Apart from this, the brightest thing in the underground room was the smile on the face of Mattie Mae’s mother, waiting with cookies and milk.
Before visiting Mattie Mae, I’d seen underground storm shelters on my cousins’ farms. These were primitive dugouts covered with a wooden door that lay flush with the ground. In the earlier part of the last century, you had to lift the heavy door of a shelter straight up to slip in under it, and you had to be careful not to squish your fingers when it soundly slammed down. I ventured into a shelter in a game of hide-and-seek. Peeking out through cracks in the wooden door, I shivered from the damp chill of the cave below and the excitement of concealment.

Finding innovative ways to exclude the munching invaders from his landscape becomes simply another part of participating in the landscape of life.
“We are never nowhere,” explains Kevin Sharpe, a professor at Union Institute. “From our first environment in our mother’s wombs to the last breath we take, we continually interact with the world around us.” The summer I had a large strawberry patch was one of the happiest times of my life. My toddler “worked” beside me, both of us on hands and knees. I was glad when one-year-old Terza learned that those red squishy shapes tasted good. She quit picking the plants by their roots and plucking off the green fruit. I let her eat her fill until she fell asleep in the grass. Her exhausted sleeping form—back lit by the sun, which shone through a mop of curls—was an icon of that holy place and time. Within a twinkling, it seemed, she was eight and had been joined by two sisters. Still, Terza led the entrepreneurial effort to pick lemons and limes from our backyard trees and sell them on the street (“Five cents, please”), and a pitcher of homemade lemon-limeade was her idea. Little did it matter to me that the sugar and the paper cups cost far more than would be earned. The pleasure on three cherub faces was my contribution to the world that day. This was the true landscape of my life, sweeter than the scent of the roses along the neighbor’s front porch.

As the child starts to respond to adults, storybooks reading is a definite must. Homes that do not have books can have members of the familya retell stories their grandparents or parents told them, or flip through magazines or family photos with their babies.

These interactions with other family members are good, especially if there is much talking or conversations going on. Very soon, the child is able to handle things on her own like using a brush to paint or playing her own composition on the piano. Encourage all of these and allow for more opportunities to experiment or play. I have become a virtual tape recorder in telling parents that they should be very selective of the preschool or early learning experiences of their child. opportunities for play should be major factor in the selection of a school. Play allows the child to think, weigh things over, and most of all, create.

To validate his talents, the adult caregiver can ask an experience eye to preview the works of the child ( a visual artist for his painting or a concert pianist for a child’s talent would come next. Ask around. Perhaps a talented aunt or uncle would be the best mentor. Whatever it takes, the adult can take cues on recognizing a talented child by reading more about it and talking to various talented mentors about your child. You may have a talented child in your company.

Another factor to keep in mind is that children have to work with concrete materials in order to learn. A teacher cannot simply describe how an orange smells. A child has to see, taste, and touch the fruit to know just what it is like. This lesson can be extended to planting an orange seed and seeing what happens.
The greater part of the preschool budget should go to materials. From paper to learning equipment, all these should help the child recreate what he sees and what he is learning. Sadly, however, there are many preschools that do not have these learning materials and rely solely on the more traditional workbooks, notebooks, crayons, and pencils. In addition, at such time when the child is still developing his eye and hand coordination skills, he is expected to already read and write beautifully.
Another important consideration, which differentiates the high from low quality preschool, is its physical plant. A good school should be safe with well-lighted and well-ventilated rooms, and sufficient number of toilets and wash basins for everyone..
Then there are the teachers who make the school. And the only way to find out how qualified they are is to visit the place on a regular school day.
Since preschool is the beginning and the foundation of your child’s learning, parents should certainly take time to find out which one is best for his or her child.