Procrastinating - 10 Attributes to Positively Influence Your Family and Community and How to Grow Them #5

This is part 5 of a 10 part series. Read part 1...

#5 = procrastinating

My kids say I'm good at procrastinating :-) I guess I've taught them to be honest! Could someone write about how procrastinating is a positive attribute for me while I go off and.... think about what to write?

OK, a few hours have gone by. I have some other topics I want to blog on and I ought to finish this one first!

• Julie over at HomeschoolingIdeas suggests that procrastinating is a good thing if you put off doing laundry and snuggle up to read with your kids. Maybe she read my mind! I'm sure I must have done this before; I agree wholeheartedly!
• Procrastinating seems to be the antithesis of impulsive action. Would you rather rush into danger or take time to consider your actions. Give me procrastination any day!
• Procrastination can save the planet! Well, maybe that's a bit of a stretch but I've certainly thought of buying many things that I decided I could do without after some procrastinating.
• I really believe that certain kinds of procrastination are worthwhile. If you're someone who takes in a lot of information but needs time to categorize and organize it in your head, that may appear as procrastination. However, if you trust yourself and just wait a little, your answer may appear when you are ready. Of course this is not much use in an emergency.
• There are plenty of resources to help you learn decision making from adult self-help websites to lesson plans for a variety of ages. Hey, if you've never procrastinated would you have the patience to help a child through this? Here's a selection of links: simple laws for decision making; making good decisions; decision making techniques; learning to make good decisions; problem solving lesson plan; empowered decision making; decision making lesson plans.
• If I'm getting tied up over a decision where there are two choices and neither is perfect - there's seemingly not much to choose between them - it's easy to make a choice. After all, if I simply can't tell which is best I may as well choose any of the options and just get the agony over with and live with the results!
• Oops, chronic procrastinators are the ones who drop out of college. Hey, maybe I'm not so bad because I did make it through college! If I didn't procrastinate would I even think to share this with you?

Well, do let me know if you can think of more great things about procrastinating, but I'll go ahead and post rather than waiting for your reply :-)

Cooking - 10 Attributes to Positively Influence Your Family and Community and How to Grow Them #4

This is part 4 of a 10 part series. Read part 1...

#4 = cooking

My kids say I'm a good cook. I'm not talking here about gourmet cooking; I'm not someone who spends hours in the kitchen following recipes, or who watches cook shows on TV then shops for ingredients and creates fabulous meals. Artist Girl says my style of cooking is Comfort Food. It's just fairly plain and wholesome.

My best cooking uses simple, wholesome, inexpensive ingredients - the fewer the better. It's done without a recipe book. It's the food that reminds you of happy grandmas who put love into what they do and who are economical and can make-do in the kitchen. It's a mix of the frugal cooking I watched Gran do every Monday, incorporating the little adventures Mom made with the aid of recipe books, and my own sense of what tastes right, using whatever I have to hand.

Kids need to know how to cook basic food. Adults can benefit from ideas on being more frugal - saving time and energy in their meal preparation. Let's explore cooking up some good, wholesome, comfort food!

• If you're an adult and the closest you've come to preparing dinner is lifting the phone to order pizza don't despair. You can learn to Cook Like a Grown-Up. Joylynn is doing it and you can too!
• About.com has plenty of links on home cooking. They have Cooking 101 and also plenty of classic recipes. It looks like a good place to start if you need some new ideas or just want to increase your skills.
• Recipes at Home Cooking Recipe Box look to be straightforward and use basic ingredients. Many of the recipes have accompanying photos, always a help when deciding whether something will look appealing!
• You can take online classes at Dinner Made Simple. Hmmm... that looks intriguing.
• How about going to a live cooking demonstration? Places you might find demonstrations include farmers markets, ethnic festivals, and local TV stations.
• One of the most fun field trips I've done with my kids was to a local herb and spice store. Other ideas are ethnic food stores, candy factories, and ethnic restaurants. If your kids are at all adventurous it's fun to try foods from different parts of the world. For world cooking at home I can recommend the Usborne Children's World Cookbook. It's full of yummy foods with additional information and internet links to learn about the countries.
• Your kids can learn the joy of giving by baking cookies or preparing a meal for a friend or neighbor. They might even want to sell cookies or brownies to raise money for their favorite cause.
• Learn about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and shop locally.
• There are plenty of lesson plans related to food and cooking. AtoZTeacherStuff has a multitude of ideas that relate food to all areas of the curriculum. KidsCookingActivities has explanations of which skills different ages are ready to learn with age appropriate ideas. EducationWorld has lots of food and nutrition ideas, and this site has links on everything from agriculture and forestry to food science.
• If all this talk of food has made you hungry, you might head off for a simple, healthy snack of peeled carrots, or wholewheat bread with sunflower butter. If you want a book to look at while you are snacking, check out Starting Cooking (a favorite in our home for the last 8 years), Pasta and Pizza for Beginners, or the absolutely fabulous Children's Book of Baking with photos that make your mouth water and not a hydrogenated fat in sight.

Do let me know your favorite cookbook, style of cooking, or your kid's favorite food.

Asking Questions - 10 Attributes to Positively Influence Your Family and Community and How to Grow Them #3

This is day 3 of a 10 day series. Read day 1...

Seemingly I'm on an endless quest to find the answer to life, the universe and everything. Somehow '42' doesn't do it for me (maybe I'm just not in the right place to 'get it'). Many of my earliest memories are of asking questions. Unfortunately the answers don't seem to have been very satisfactory -- not sure there if the adults were lacking in patience or just didn't really know how to explain to me.

I've always tried to do a good job of answering my kids' questions, while at the same time helping them learn how to find their own answers. In fact I think one of the fundamental advantages of homeschooling is the opportunity to ask and answer questions. What could be more frustrating for a child who needs to ask questions than to be in a classroom where they can't do so? Let's explore asking questions!

• The way questions are worded can reveal stuff about the questioner. Is your child interested in why, how, or something else?
• Jamie McKenzie says "Questions may be the most powerful technology we've ever created." With the power of the internet at our fingertips, information is more available than ever. To use information meaningfully we need to be asking ourselves questions!
• Kids can ask the strangest questions, there are some corkers here and some more links on how to answer kid questions. Even adults ask strange questions, like this blogger.
  
• AllExperts looks like an interesting place to ask your questions.
• Your kids might find AskKids.com a good place to pose their questions and give you a break!
• You can even receive some advice on the questions to ask when planning a family vacation.
  
• Teachers can utilize project based, problem based and inquiry based learning. Eduscapes explains the three options. You can take a workshop on inquiry based learning or read more at TeAchnology.
• Asking questions isn't exactly new, The Socratic Method has been around... well since the times of Socrates. It's based on asking questions and is used at University of Chicago Law School. Livewiremedia explains how to plan a socratic lesson and you can read a brief, if not too polite, explanation here, or a more in-depth explanation at Classical Education.
  
• Now that we're all fired up to ask questions, what are some good books? Amazon.com has plenty of books about questions, as well as books about kids questions. Usborne has plenty of books that contain answers to tons of questions including Book of Knowledge, the Children's Encyclopedia and Facts and Records.

Got any questions? Just leave me a comment :-)

Dreamer - 10 Attributes to Positively Influence Your Family and Community and How to Grow Them #2

We all have our little peculiarities. My family have helped me to write a list of 10 things they think I'm good at... more

#2 = dreaming

Yes, my family say I'm a dreamer. If a day goes past when I'm not dreaming up some new idea to make life better then it's a bad day. It's so important to recognize and appreciate our kids for who they are. If one of your kids is a dreamer, or if you just want to explore dreaming and dreamers, follow along with me into the world of dreaming:

• John Lennon seems to have qualified as a dreamer - lyrics from Imagine by John Lennon. You can watch John at YouTube (I'm not sure on the copyright legality so I'm not going to provide a link. There's plenty of material about John at Amazon.com.
  
• Apparently whole families are cheering for this Dreamer! Artist Girl doesn't agree. Maybe she's skewed from watching "Dr Who" and "Aliens".
• The UK has it's own, new Little Dreamer in the form of Beth Rowley - check out what BBC has to say about her latest album, or listen to extracts on Amazon.com
• Here's a Civil War lesson plan that explores soldiers' dreams of home
• A lesson plan on Freud and dream interpretation
• What about Dr Martin Luther King Jr and his dream? There must be endless information on the web related to this. Here's a lesson plan for K-2 from Edsitement and another plan that covers leaders of the 1960's and analysis of the content of speeches. Usborne has a great little MLK biography that's perfect for a third grade reader, but will interest 9-12 yr olds.
  
• And we can't forget JFK - lots of lesson plan ideas for thinking about him and his biography from the White House.
• How about a vacuum dreamer who likes to invent and a sea dreamer who loves to sail.
• What playing tetris can reveal about our dreams at New Scientist.
• Sometimes it's hard to figure out where we want to go in life. A dreamboard may be the way to go!
• Who was thrashed, put on bread and water, and vowed to only travel in their dreams thereafter? Find out at the Eide blog.
  
• There are plenty of lesson plans on A Midsummer Night's Dream - try WebEnglishTeacher and E-Mints for starters. Pop over to UsborneReading for related book suggestions.

I hope I've dreamed up a few useful ideas for your learning. Dream on!

10 Attributes to Positively Influence Your Family and Community and How to Grow Them #1

We all have our little peculiarities. My family have helped me to write a list of 10 things they think I'm good at; I was looking for qualities that would show I have something worthwhile to share through blogging. Let's say that some will be a challenge to put a positive spin on! I'm up for the challenge though. Over the next 10 days I'll share them one at a time and include ideas for growing these qualities in yourself and your kids, and for homeschool lessons, should you feel so inclined.

#1 = nice
Comes from the English word for foolish or stupid! I think my family were aiming for pleasant and kind, but maybe I should check with them. Then again.... maybe not!

Here is a list of resources related to "nice":

• Apparently there's a danger in raising nice kids - who'd have thought it. I think you should all read this just in case my promoting nice is about to damage your family! You can even get a study guide.
• An overseas American thinks that our kids aren't really so nice and has some ideas on why. There could be some ideas here on raising nice American kids!
  
• Googling 'nice "lesson plans" comes up with a guide to analyzing political cartoons. I'm not sure why that comes up under nice, unless they're talking about "nice" politicians. Who's your favorite "nice" politician?
• Did you know that there is a Very Nice People Society? They even have a calendar of monthly opportunities for being nice!
• You'll want to know about conquering the business world by being nice and maybe even invest in the book The Power of Nice
• Let's not forget about manners and etiquette! Teacher Planet has some ideas for lessons. Or how about cross-cultural etiquette with the Peace Corps?
• Or maybe your kids would prefer to learn about morality with art activities. The high school topic of morality and brain science sounds intriguing, or you could use Aesop's Fables with lessons from National Endowment of the Humanities.
• Last, but not least, Mrs Boot at Apple Tree Farm is just plain nice! How about this, she's even a female farmer!

Have fun!