Cognitive and Effective Learning While on Lockdown from Corona - A Parent's Guide

Homework For CHILDREN IN LOCK DOWN
 (and parents) 

Informal Learning With a Twist

These are activities designed to help your child grown by focusing on items that will engage them and in a patterned learning program, will enhance their abilities to make associations.  We need children to associate various items with normal things while engaging their brain to creatively apply these items in other areas.  I call this patterned learning.  In that sense I am not focusing on repetition so much as the uniqueness of how one helps a child receive information that is delivered.  In order to channel your child's thinking processing into productive and more expedient ways of learning, we can begin to provide them an edge that will create successful learning within parameters that they can successfully meet.  I focus a lot on creativity and language.  These two items set forth fundamental building blocks that ensure your child's future success.  With these simple guides, I have attempted to create from items that you will have at home, even if you are not a home schooling mom or dad.  

It is my hope that you will utilize these as a way to engage your child in creative and patterned learning. 

Today's work includes the following:

For Kinder Care -  Hand prints - Draw the child's hand by placing on paper and tracing around with a pencil or pen.  Ask the child what color their hands are and ask them to pick the color closest from the crayon's you put on the table.  Hold each crayon up and state the color.  Pick the crayons up again one by one and repeat the color and how it is spelled.  Today focus on white  - w h i t e -  w ... water, where, when, why, wing, whistle, write, wish.  Write the focus items on a board or paper, ask the child to write or draw these (age appropriate use here); Let them associate w with why do I need to wash my hands?  Where do I want to go.  What has water?  When do I wash my hands?  What do I use to do this assignment with?  HANDS and hands write, draw, paint, etc.   Make a wish - ....  Use your imagination here.  
At the end of this session, you should have the following:  A paper for each child that has their hands drawn on the paper, the words WHITE, Water, Where, When, Why, Wing, Whistle, Write, Wish.  
Place this paper in their pocket folder, we will further expand on this tomorrow. 

Remember, if your child is getting antsy, and not focusing, ask a question, ask them to raise their hand when they know the answer.  

Note that we are going to use the above also for the lower class program.  Instead of you drawing their hand around their hand, let the student do that themselves.  

For first and second grades - let's focus on their numbers.  
On a second piece of paper have them draw the following:

1 A    1 B  1 C 
A B C  
add the numbers 123
ABC                                        1 2 3 
Have them fill in the alphabet
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 
12345679 10 

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Now their paper should look like the above example 

Point out the letters A B C -  Apple starts with ? A  America starts with A  Animal Starts with A, etc. 

A- apple, America; animal
B - bug, banana, biscuit
C - cat, color, cap

Have your child write the above, if you are working one on one, this is a good time to stand by your child and point out the different letters in the words.  

The next step is associating these items so that your child remembers. 
A - Apple, America; Animal  etc.  So simply say the word and ask what letter does it start it. 

The next step is actually associating the entire word with how it is actually spelled.  We will start with 
A little girl named Anna ate an apple, then went to school in American and took her stuffed animal. 
Point out the words with the letter A.
Write the words Apple 5 times, America and Animal 5 times. 

So now your paper should look like this. 

 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 

12345679 10 

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

A- apple, America; animal
B - bug, banana, biscuit
C - cat, color, cap

A                                          B                                                     C 

apple  America animal     bug banana biscuit                         cat color cap
apple America animal      bug banana biscuit                        cat color cap 

apple  America animal     bug banana biscuit                         cat color cap
apple America animal      bug banana biscuit                        cat color cap 

apple  America animal     bug banana biscuit                         cat color cap
apple America animal      bug banana biscuit                        cat color cap 

Note:  I prefer the words to be aligned in columns for patterned cognitive learning. 

The final item to this exercise is to come back to this later the same day or evening.  Please do not do this when a child is actively moving or hyper.  Attempt this when they are calm, perhaps while you are cooking dinner or immediately after eating. 

With the same paper that you have as shown above, have the child turn the paper over.  Give them a pencil and ask them to write A B C 123456890 

Then ask them to write Apple Bug Cat 
Ask them to draw an apple bug  Cat
Color the apple bug cat 
Let them be creative.  

The lesson for tomorrow you will repeat the above with a fresh piece of paper, except for the last part.  
Focus on the words America  Banana  Color 
Word association:  America has a flag with what colors?  Red White and Blue 
Draw the flag, (pull up an american flag or draw one correctly for them to draw from.  
Draw a banana, (take a banana that you have and let them draw around it); if you do not have one, draw or pull up a colored banana (YELLOW).  
Draw a cap - that sits on the head, give them a cap that comes off of a soda or water bottle, let them draw around it.  The cap may prove a bit difficult for them, so make sure you use a line drawing and help where necessary.  
Color all of these items appropriately. 

Here's the additional items you will need everyday for quite sometime.  
A set of A-Z flash cards.  Either make yourself with index cards or print out and attach to cardboard (optional buy).  

The same with numbers 1-25 and in increments of 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 
Please try to make all of these with the same size and font for both letters and numbers.  
They need to be visible and at least the size of a set of index cards. 

Everyday at different times of the day, use these cards to create word associations.  You can: use tv time is a great time to pick a commercial and ask them to choose the correct letter with whatever product is being offered.  You can give them the cards and ask them to pick letters and put on items in a room.  
Table, Bench, coffee, tea, cola, dog, cat, hat, cap, cape, coat, clock, kitchen, living room, dining room, counter, window, watch, chair, floor, animal, dog, cat, etc.  This is a great activity to motivate and create associations.  So here's where your part comes in, ... D Dog ... also put the A for animal if they do not do that.  T table, associate with Table TOP .... hat ... head   Cap .. color   Cat  Color of cat  watch  color of band  watch  hands ....  

Every day add one of the following to the same game.  
1)  Sound that the chosen object makes  Watch tick tock   Dog woof woof  bark  Cat  Meow  

2)  What color of that item is normal and what color do you not normally see?
3)  How many of that item in the entire house?
4)  Put several forks and spoons in different areas of the house for the student to find.  Give them 3 minutes to find all, but give them 5 letters that they have to put in the room where they found the forks and spoons.  The letter has to match an item - C  Couch  Cat   Christmas Tree  etc. 
5)  Using the same spoons, add some wooden spoons or other cutlery that is non hazardous, place them all on the table or counter.  Have your child count the number of items and write on their daily paper. 
6)  Note:  They should already everyday write the alphabet on their daily paper and the numbers from at least 1-10  then add more each day. 
7)  Start focusing on the vocabulary list that I have provided, have them write at least five of those words every day and draw one of the items from those 5.  Provide crayons or pencils to do this with. 
8)  We are going to incorporate an art project, and note that you can use cardboard instead of a painting canvas if you choose.  You can also reuse the canvas by painting over with white paint and allowing to dry for reuse. 

Art work the first project -  

POGO - TRIVIAL PURSUIT -DAILY 9 (2022) Check it out.

 Pogo Launched a New Trivial Pursuit Game 

in January and rolled out to half of their current subscribers.  The goal was to have interactive gaming for this game, i.e., multi-players.  There is also a daily 9 section, that like the version previously, allows you to capture wedges for answering a series of nine questions on topics such as geography..  

I am listing these as I do them here.  At this point it will be sporadic as I do not have time to do them all at one time from January, however when I am caught up I will attempt to place here each day if at all possible.  

http://www.pogo.com

January 17, 2022 - Honolulu - Sunset Bay - Sun Valley - Santa Claus - Venice - Forest Lawn Cemetery - Victoria Station, London - Italy - Pacho (not lefty :) )

January 10, 2022 - Spain (makes manchego cheese) - France makes Baccarat Crystals - France loves the Head's Monkey Art Work - English is the world wide language spoken in Zimbabwe - Miami - Lenny Bruce said its where the sunset goes to die - Miami - known as the Billion Dollar Sandbar - Bordeaux - Minnesota has the logo the land of the sky tinted water - Aphrodite was the lady of love and beauty.

January 13, 2022 - Nash (centipedes and euripedes) -- Sandberg was poet on Tonight Show - Robert Frost was a 4x Pulitzer Price Winner - Judy Blume was a teen girl's favorite author - Ghandi was theTimes Man of Year Next ? - Udall - Atlas Shrugs Ayn Rand Book - J. Galt -  Ayn Rand Book - Atlas Shrugs  - Allen Ginsberg 980,000 articles submitted 

 futurelearn.com

thompson-morgan.com

dutchreview

REMINDER: FALL INTO WINTER PREPARATIONS

FALL INTO WINTER PREPARATIONS

💧Pruning

Cleaning up the debris from the planting areas

Sowing any cover crops for the winter

Taking Up any bulbs that need to be wintered over inside

Rain Barrels - empty and clean with bleach water before storing

Taking up any temporary fencing 

Giving the closets a proper cleanup with bleach or other disinfectant 

Sorting the chaos from the storage closets

Drying any seed heads that you want to save for the next year 

Cleaning and disinfecting tools 
  (Make sure to use bleach water or disinfectant, and use silicon spray or wd40, or vegetable oil for metal tools to prevent rust).

Prepare the garden area by raking and cleaning the debris, then either sowing cover crops, mulching over, or covering with weed fabric. 

 

Open Air Composting - The Good and The Ugly

 OPEN AIR COMPOSTING - Why To and Why Not To Do It.

The answer to that really for me relies on where your location is.  If you are in the city or suburbs NO.  

If you are doing an allotment or you have quite a large acreage in which to grow and compost, then it is often easy to make large amounts of compost.

Let me start first by saying, I am not such a fan of open composting for a few reasons:

1) If you are composting kitchen scraps, you need to bury them at least 8" in the center of the pile with some soil each time to avoid having raccoons, and other wild animals coming to search for a meal.  The other thing that I do not like is if you have house snails or regular snails, they too are attracted to the pile.  

While this may seem like a good idea to keep them away from your plants, "think... food, house, shelter.. babies...  The future snails are the issue.  Here in the Netherlands there are 200 different varieties of "slakken" / snails, when you realize that for everyone you take away, they have probably already reproduced many more, and that can become a huge issue.  

It's easy to just toss things onto a pile without thinking through what is going to compost quickly and what will not.  In  a container system you are more limited to the amount of space you have, thus you will quickly learn to snip things into small pieces and to compost things that will quickly compost.  With a compost bin that is open, or just in a pile, people tend to just throw things on without thinking, brown and green and in between.  

Brown and green and in between means -- you need brown and green and a bit of good stuff to heat up the compost pile.  By good stuff I mean adding in a shovel of horse, cow, rabbit, chicken manure to the center of the pile every once in awhile.  People use to recommend adding lime (aka) kalk to a pile to help it to heat up, but that really defeats the purpose.  You are composing nitrogen rich components in your compost pile, adding lime would lower the PH level.  If you are composting primarily highly acidic elements such as evergreen tree limbs, leaves and pine needles, then indeed you could add lime to counteract the acidic nature of those elements however that is hardly ever the case, we normally compost more kitchen scraps, garden debris from overspent plants and weeds.  Thus lime is not needed in that environment.  

Thus, an open compost absolutely works, and can work very well when you mix... brown and green and in between.... along with turning the pile at least once a week, preferably more when possible.  The aeration of the pile improves the breakdown of materials and helps to alleviate alot of the smell from piles.  The piles need air to compost quickly and efficiently.  You will also find that with turning it you will get more worms working the pile which will greatly enhance the compost.  

So, while I may not be the greatest advocate for open composting, it can certainly make a large volume of compost in a short time if properly sorted into layers, brown, green and in between.  If you remember that little saying, you will always remember how to properly layer your compost.

I do think that a wire mesh covering around and over the pile is always better, it alleviates many of the snail issues, though as we all know small ones will find a way in, but at least the huge subway size snails won't make their way inside if it is properly covered and it helps to keep some of the wildlife from grazing there. 

Is there a better way than this method or an enclosed tumbler?  You should try filling clear see through trash bags with brown and green and in between, as well as black garbage bags (both only filled half full), place in the bright sun location.  You might be surprised at how quickly they decompose, and it's a great way for a quick liquid fertilizer, make sure you dilute the liquid 1 part composted stinky liquid to 10 parts water. 

TIP:  Add nutrient rich stinging nettles to your compost piles, they are full of vitamins and minerals, and you can find them in most every location where there are wooded areas.  Just make sure to wear gloves when handling, because they do sting when their hairs get trapped in your skin. 

DO ADD:
Egg shells (crushed only); kitchen vegetable scraps,  newspaper print (not colored ads); cardboard broken down into tiny bits; biodegradable peanut packers; saw dust, lint from the dryer and the normal compost articles.

DO NOT ADD:
Meat, bones, urine (I just shake my head at this one because if you are composting properly, you would simply not need to ever think you needed to add it, (PLUS IT'S DISGUSTING).  Do not add wood that has had chemicals to preserve it; do not add plastic (why would I even add that you are asking yourself), because some items that are prepared in biodegradable products are sometimes have an overlay of plastic over them, misleading the consumer into thinking it is a biologically friendly package, when essentially it is except the plastic isn't, another marketing trick...  There are many people that say it is ok to add potatoes and tomato plants to the pile, I don't recommend that due to the mosaic virus, and also do not add in diseased plants, don't ruin a perfect product when fully composted with virus and materials that can contaminate your soil and give your healthy plants a disease.  What would be the point of compost?  Lastly, sometimes it is better to send excess material to the city compost because there is obviously only so much we can compost at one time, and the room can be better utilized with actually growing crops.

Let me hear your success stories, do you get more compost from your open piles or closed container piles?  Do you have any secret tricks or tips to make better compost or to compost faster?  I've love to hear. 

 

Migrating Items From My Former Website To Blogger

 I am migrating blog posts from my former website to here, so many of these will not be "new" blog posts.  I will attempt in the future to mark the new items as such, so that you are not confused, but I don't know another way to separate them on blogger because it's date driven.  I hope it's not too much of an 
inconvenience, and since most all of you old timers have read the old posts most through email updates, this would be old topics for you, however because I am doing more work in apps answering questions these days, sometimes I just do not want to type out an entire instruction on something, and / or ask for email address etc., so I want to place these here where I can just put out an url for them.  It's much easier and less time consuming for me.  I do not have a great deal of time now to dedicate to blogging, and I would like what I do to be as productive as possible.

Thanks in advance for your understanding, I hope it doesn't create confusion.  If anyone has a better suggestion, email me.

So You Want to Take On a Second Hand Garden

How To Prepare a Plot For Gardening

Part 1 - Organizing before you begin.  Click Here
Part 2 - Prep Work
Part 2b - Clearing 
Part 3 - Actually adding some good things 
Part 4 - Snap, I forgot a step
Part 5 -