Parents'education comes first

FindingDulcinea search engine

2009-03-21T19:14:00.010-04:00

Many political problems nowadays are confusing, and I think that sometimes the press adds to the confusion instead of helping us make our mind. For instance, they would invite an economist linked to the Republicans and one linked to the Democrats (that is objective, right?). One will say we got to let the banks close and the businesses get ruined, because the less the government does, the better for the economy; the other one will say we got to get out of the hole and only the government can do that. There is no common ground: who are you going to believe? I do not think it is good journalism, it gives me a headache, and this kind of journalistic attitude is true about politics but also a ton of other subjects.
A good resource in cases like this, for adults as well as for kids is FindingDulcinea: they dig lots of problems for you, look at the history and make the issues much more clear without deciding what you should think: you can do that yourself.
It is not about "politics": it is mainly about democracy, daily problems, birthdays, writers, basketball... and gangs, and music: a wonderful resource for teachers, parents and kids.
It will give you the rarest thing in this time of "news everywhere all the time": real information.
Thanks for a good honest site!

Brain and food

2009-03-17T06:36:00.010-04:00

I dislike the expression "You are what you eat": I hope we are a little more than that. But there is no doubt that you feed your brain when you feed your body, and if you eat poorly, you are going to perform poorly. There is a reason why athletes have a special diet. Think about it: don't you think that it is reasonable to watch what children eat every day? You already know that they do not perform very well if they do not have any breakfast.
They do not want to eat breakfast? Maybe they get up late and have little time left: do they get enough sleep? Maybe breakfast should be prepared the preceeding night. Maybe it should just be eaten on the way to school. But breakfast is the most important meal to get, schoolwise. Check that your children eat before school; very often it is a matter on having a better management.
Sweden recently had a large study on the importance of eating fish. Look it up on this site: eurekalert.org/
There is something to be said for omega-3 compounds, I guess. Do you remember all that bad press that transfat had? One of the main reasons is that the brain is fond of it (and who wants to have transfat in the brain?).

In summary LET YOUR KIDS EAT MORE FISH.

Recipes for brain fitness can also be found here on the positscience.com site.

Memory tips (13): the egg timer tip

2009-03-01T14:58:00.006-05:00

Many teachers involved with students who suffer from attention deficit use this tip: the make the students study in small increments of five or ten minutes, then suggest five minutes physical activity, then start again.
It is a useful tip for anybody: first it prevents blockage (you know, when you sit in front of a page and your mind goes blank for the duration?). Then it gives the brain some oxygen: even a short exercise like raising your arms over your head several times for thirty seconds will help.
Try ten minutes, for yourself or the children, and see if the egg timer helps.
The fact is that the brain likes to learn in increments and loves to learn by repeating the information.
You might enjoy reading this page, entitled "We are programmed to be interrupted." It describes a book by Maggie Jackson with the nice title "Distracted". I m not sure the theory of the author is a good one, but the page will make you think.

Memory tips (12): repeat immediately

2009-03-01T14:43:00.004-05:00

There was in France a pastor that everybody appreciated, and most of the time, people who talked about him would say: "I had not seen him in five years and he remembered the names of my kids". He remembered people and people felt appreciated. I once heard the dancer Gene Kelly say the same thing about Fred Astaire. When he was a young unknown dancer, Fred Astaire had remembered his name and it had boosted his morale.
If you are not like that, here is a tip: repeat immediately the name aloud while looking at the person: "Mrs Williams, happy to meet you". It will help associating the face and the name, at least a little bit.
It does not always work: my father, who could quote hundreds of poems by heart had such a hard time with names that he always transported lists of names with him on small cards. More than once, I observed my own name on his memory cards!

Memory tips (11): understanding

2009-02-20T14:57:00.003-05:00

It is easier to remember:
1) what you understand
2) what you experimented with
3) what you discovered and formulated yourself

Everybody knows that. Why we apply it so seldom in the classroom is a mystery to me. Here are three examples.
Example 1
Method 1. Suppose you are teaching how to use a shovel in the garden. You can show a diagram to your students explaining that the shovel should enter the soil at a 45 degrees angle. Another diagram will show that when they place their foot on the shovel's head, it should be close to the handle. You ask your students to copy your drawings and memorize what you said and ask them to repeat that one week later.
Method 2. Let the students experiment in the yard and reach conclusions themselves. They might not only learn that the foot should be placed close to the center of the shovel's head (therefore close to the handle), but also that it is useful to have sturdy shoes. One week later, they are more likely to write a whole essay about their experience than to forget how to dig.

Example 2
A number of years ago, I got confused while teaching French grammar: I could not find a grammar that explained a specific point in a way that I could understand (then how could I teach it?) In despair, I decided to explain my dilemma to the students. I brought ten different French grammars at school and asked them to discuss in several groups what they thought what the best rule definition. After a few minutes, my students were in revolt: all these grammars were contradicting each other, some were plain wrong, the examples were not clarifying the subject. They all complained: my students had never considered before that there maybe such a thing as a bad grammar. But after half an hour, I did not have students, I had little grammarians very ardent at defending their point of view. Checking what the grammars said became a game that they played, and of course, they all became pretty good.

Example 3
There are a very small number of equations and rules in mathematics that students have to know by heart. But they got to know them. Why is that? First because time is short during a test, but mainly because recognizing the rule usually gives you a tip on how to solve the problem. All carpenters know that they can verify the square they are building by measuring the two diagonals: if the diagonals are equal, then they got a square. The method is much easier than to verify each angle: students who build a box or delineate an area in the yard do not forget that tip. It makes it easy later one to remember interesting rules about triangles.

Students come to the teacher with varied levels of knowledge. One school in New York experimented with teaching chess to kids, and their professor discovered that they did not know what a corner is. Corner, he said, if for them the grocery at the corner of the street, but they did not understand what is the corner on a chess game. It comes then as no surprise that kids learning chess were better at math!

Memory tips (10): paying attention

2009-02-04T20:49:00.005-05:00

Common scientific wisdom says that a child can pay attention 3 to 5 minutes per year of age, that is to say that a three years old can pay attention for 9 to 15 minutes. Adults are said to be able to pay attention for 50 minutes.
These numbers give you a frame of reference, but of course they are not true. I have been teaching all my life, and I think that the attention span is much smaller than that, because attention is usually measured by scientists with tasks (push this button when you see this), and we are good at that. A three years old could pay attention to building blocks for ten minutes, if the game is good and played with somebody exciting. An adult can pay attention to splitting wood or playing on the computer for one hour. But would the child listen to you for ten minutes? Are your PhD students captivated by what you say for a full hour? If you believe that, you are delusional. A teacher has much less time than that. Students attention, whatever their age, is floating in and out.
What can you do as a teacher or a parent?
1) Do not talk too much
2) Preach by example
3) Be practical
4) Involve children in activities related to what you teach
5) Give then frequent breaks. I got a good listening capacity with college students by interrupting every 15 minutes for a five minutes "publicity time" that we used to talk about careers, goals, expenses etc.

Because the attention span of children is so small, teach them when to pay attention: for instance pay attention when the teacher gives homework, and at the start at each hour, when the teacher explains what the class will do. You would be surprised to see how many children come home and their whole day is a blur. Where I live in Savannah GA, I am certain the blur affects the majority of children. I ask kids what they learned today, and they have that look...it is a killing question.

Memory you do not want (9)

2009-01-28T08:40:00.008-05:00

I do not know about you, but me, my memory is full of trash. Somehow it seems that the less an information is useful, the easiest it is for me to remember it. For instance I remember what Paul Newman said about popcorn at some time before 1960, a long time before he started selling popcorn. Why? Probably because I lived in Europe and I did not know what popcorn was and my curiosity was aroused, but I am also curious about lots of things that I immediately forget. There is that CD I like, but I could not tell you the titles on it; however, if I listen to any song on that CD, I know which song will follow: my memory has been working on that without any effort from me. There are books I like and I remember everything in the book 50 years later and books I like and read several times and I could not tell you what they are about: it is just like chewing gum. It means one thing: a large part of my life, my memory is on its own and stocks information I do not want for mysterious reasons. I guess I am not alone.

Then there are things that I forget because I should not know them. If a friend tells me that she is pregnant, but I should not tell anybody, I totally forget, to the extent that I am first surprised to see her later with a big belly; then I remember the conversation: it was in my memory but somewhere with a "no entry" sign.

The most difficult to get rid of is the memory of a trauma. Contrary to what the psychologists of my generation said about letting it all hang out, express yourself, and analyze it endlessly, I thing some stuff is much better covered with dust. A lot of soldiers do not want to talk about war, not for 20 years. A lot of people tortured during WWII did not speak about it for years. Very typical, I think is the book by Semprun The Long Voyage (Tusk Ivories). It was published in 1963 just 20 years after the author internment in the nazi camp of Buchenvald; and then it only describes the way to the camp and the way back. This is one of the most poignant examples I know of how memory really works.

But this way of "forgetting" the bad stuff is not recommended for children: they are entitled to the best help you can find for them.

Memory tips (8)

2009-01-28T07:53:00.009-05:00

For long-term memory tips, read first How memory works(7) which is about the pathway to long-term memory. There are plenty of tips to improve your long-term memory, but you should try first to understand what you are good at.
A good, not too long examination on how you do can be found on the BBC website.
After that, you can go to the "improve your memory" page. Most of these tips, and others, will be described here, but give that a try to start.

How memory works (7)

2009-01-28T04:55:00.006-05:00

Between short-term and long-term memory, there is a path, and that path is using the pretty part of the brain called hippocampus because of its curly shape. What it looks like can be found here with a good presentation of brain structure or here with an introduction to the effects of alcohol on adolescents' brains.
What we know for sure is that if your hippocampus is impaired, new information does not go from short-term to long-term.
Where is the information stocked? I will give you a careful answer: in various places! We know that because people who have some types of surgery or a stroke can lose just one type of memory. For instance, after a first stroke, my mom did not recognize people any more: she said it was because she had a bad eyesight, but she read well without glasses and could see tiny spots on a mirror. She recognized her grandchildren by their voices. I once noticed that she had difficulties following movies: that is because she did not recognize faces. So despite there has been controversy, I believe that the memory of faces has a special place in the brain: if it is hit, your memory of faces and your capacity to recognize faces is gone. Words, numbers, visual information: all of that is stocked in different places.
It does not make sense to say that you have a poor memory: you are always better at some aspects of it than at others. For instance, I have good memory for words and numbers, and I am very poor at visual memory. I would not notice that the chimney is gone if I did not see bricks on the ground!
Besides, we can improve with exercise.

Memory tips (6)

2009-01-23T18:39:00.011-05:00

Short-term or working memory Read first How memory works (5) which is about working or short-term memory.. How can you help your short-term memory? It is much easier for it if you cut information in small groups, such as letters or digits by groups of 3.

Can it be improved? Yes it can. For instance if your job was to copy series of numbers, you would get used to remember suites of 8 or 10 digits instead of 5 to 7 just for enough time to jot them down.

But the best tip of all is to pay attention!

How memory works (5)

2009-01-23T17:01:00.007-05:00

OK, you are looking at your own house from the street. The information is processed by a vision sensory memory which is like a first computer in your brain. It does not stay there, because whatever happens in that computer is not going to stick around very long. If you want to remember your own house, the information goes to the step number 2: in a bigger computer called short term memory or working memory. There is not much capacity in that second computer: you cannot stock much information at once (like no more than a phone number at a time) and you cannot stock the information very long (up to about a second: that is why it is called short term.)So to really remember your house tomorrow, the information about your house has to go much deeper into your brain processing. But let us stop at this step: working memory. Working memory helps you remember phone numbers for enough time to dial them, and up to seven information, allowing you to make a link between them. In her book "Animals in translation", Temple Grandin makes the hypothesis that dogs who get tangled around a pole cannot untangle themselves because they do not have enough working memory to work out which way to turn to free the leach. I do not know if it is true, but indeed, very intelligent dogs are helpless with that situation.

What happens between the sensory memory and the short term memory: you pay attention. If you don't, the information is lost.

It is a step that we cannot bypass: you go from short term to long term. If short term is affected, there is no long term acquisition. So, how can you loose your short term memory capacity?
Most people nowadays think of Alzheimer, as it is a leading cause of memory loss with elderly people. But what can affect kids? As far I understand, there is a large array of causes such as, for example: convulsions (some types of epilepsy), inflammations (like meningitis or malaria), some brain injuries (good reason to wear a helmet when required!), and of course drugs and alcohol.
Let your kids know that marijuana can affect memory. This has been known quite some time. A scientific paper by Lunkvist (2005) states this: "Cannabis induces loss of internal control and cognitive impairment, especially of attention and memory, for the duration of intoxication. Heavy cannabis use is associated with reduced function of the attentional/executive system, as exhibited by decreased mental flexibility, increased perseveration, and reduced learning, to shift and/or sustain attention."

Memory tips (4)

2009-01-23T16:32:00.015-05:00

Read first How memory works (3) which is about sensory memory. Sensory memory is the first step used by your brain to get information. This information comes by your senses and it is well known that in order to stick around in your brain, the information has to be processed further than that first step. Still, for a lot of people, information from one sense is better transferred than information coming from another.

It is interesting to notice what is your strongest memory pathway: do you remember more easily what you see or what you hear?
Some people have a better chance of remembering what they listened to, or what they repeated aloud.
Some people like what they see, what they read, they study by making plans or graphics.
Some people need to move around.
Some people do better with nice smells.
Try it out, help your kids discovering what they are better at. It is not the whole secret, but it is a start.
For simple things, like "three apples", most people will remember more easily seeing them on the table than listening about it. But it is more complicated for school matters.
You might try to take a small poem and let them memorize each verse with a different trick: reading it several times, making a drawing of what it means, reading it aloud, writing it down and copying it. The results are not written in stone: six months later, your kid may have changed, or your experiment may have been too simple. But give it a try from time to time: the kids will figure it out themselves after a few tries. Make them aware that there are different techniques to remember something, and knowing what is your strongest memory sensory pathway is one of them.

How memory works (3)

2009-01-22T19:30:00.010-05:00

People who have "no memory" cant survive by themselves, so before you complain, know that you have a memory, in fact you got a lot in a very complicated system.

STEP ONE: SENSORY MEMORY

Anything you look at or hear or smell or touch gets processed by your brain: you may imagine that a small computer is there in your brain to code the signals the brain receives from each sense. That small computer is called sensory memory, The event is encoded but it does not stick there very long. Suppose you are used to smell mildew, you do not pay attention to it when you go home, this interesting information (that you should clean the bathroom or find out if there is a leak in the roof) just goes away immediately. Suppose you listen to a boring professor who tells you about history and you do not pay any attention, well the information does not stick either. This is expressed in lots of proverbs; the French and the Italians say "In one ear and out the other"; Kenyans put more faith in education and say "After a deaf ear comes death but after a listening ear come blessings".

Sometimes one brain computer gets such a strong signal that the other computers stop transmitting. I remember a beautiful classic concert in Paris. I was all into the music with everybody else, and suddenly a terrible smell of fried fish came from the air conditioning. Quite a number of people moved in their seats and looked around to see where the smell was coming from and I bet that, just like me, for a while they did not hear the music at all!

The last dangers a kid understands

2009-01-15T12:14:00.008-05:00

We are all intent at teaching our kids the dangers of electricity, the dangers presented by fire, the dangers of cars. But there are three things that children learn late, not until 8 or 10 years old, so you should pay special attention.

1) protecting their eyes. I see a lot of kids who play with paint guns without protection; their parents do not know this: they play with friends. If I tell the kids to go home and grab some protective glasses, I get answers like: "Oh, if there is paint in my eyes I will just get it off".
Children that age think, despite the evidence of the mirror, that there is always a skin over their eyes because it is what they experience when they rub their eyes or wash their face. So remember the child's brain is not like yours: it does not have a good understanding of the eye-eyelid relationship. Maybe that is a good way to start: make them conscious of the relationship and the reason for it. Closing one's eyes is a reflex, protecting one's eyes has to be learned. It makes it difficult to get across the message that eyes are a specially fragile part of the body. Teach that: teach how to use a saw or a drill and protect their eyes, then talk about paint guns.

2) protect their breathing. The only way we breath is by keeping our nose and mouth free of obstruction. Most of us do not teach that to our kids because there is no reason to in normal circumstances. Well there is no reason for the kids to think about it either, and that brings them to harm when trying stuff out of your watchful eyes. This is why plastic bags have a warning: many kids died while playing with plastic envelopes. I have known a 8 years old who almost died when she tried to hide in a pile a shaff. It is something to teach: it is surprising how late in life children understand this.

3) Protect their nose. Odors can be dangerous. Most children do not know that anything they can smell is made of matter: it is a bunch of molecules. And while all books tell you to keep chemicals out of the reach of children, they never tell you to teach your children how to open a bottle. Chemists always open bottles away from their nose, because some chemicals are harmful. If you want to smell, you start at arms length and bring the bottle closer to your nose. When kids are big enough that you do not have to hide household chemicals any more, it is time to teach them the smell trick with chlorine, diluted ammonia and any harmful thing around the kitchen: always open away from your nose!

4) Protect their eardrums I am stuck here: we are breeding a generation of deaf young people by allowing them to stay in the blaring mode.

Excellent math tips (math 1.0.1)

2009-01-13T15:31:00.011-05:00

There is an excellent page on good habits for young math students here on the regentsprep.org website. You should print it and stick it on a closet door, so that you can use these tips with your kids until they use them efficiently.

My own principal tip is to always write clean clear numbers. Students who are afraid of math tend to make a vague form that the teacher could interpret as the right thing. More often then not, they cannot read their own garbage, so even if they know the answer, they will make mistakes.
To add some remarks to the list on that website:
Tip 1: What is the question? Reading the question too fast is very common: it goes with being emotional. Kids will think "I know I know" and go ahead without being quite aware of what the question is. When they do an exercise, interrupt them and ask:"What is the question again?" You will see what I mean. Give the kids the good habit to re-read the question at the end of the exercise: many times, if the answer is two-step, they will forget to perform the second step. Also the question may be: give the answer in inches (and it does not do to give it in feet).
Tip 6:Pay attention to the units: always perform calculations in the same units. I am used to force kids to write down first the unit equivalences they are going to use. Suppose the problem comes with inches and feet, the first line MUST be 1ft = 12 in.; writing it down themselves help the kids concentrate on the task at hand.
EXAMPLE question Convert the deepest point in the ocean, the Marianas Trench at a depth of 36,000 feet, to meters.
answer I make it mandatory for remediary math students that the first line written is 1 foot = 0.3048 meters even if the information is somewhere on the test: it forces them to think in the right order so that writing this down on more complex problems will come first. Then I want them to write down the reasoning: 36.000 feet is 36,000 times bigger than 1 foot, so I need to multiply 0.3048 by 36.000
Third line is the usual: 36,000 meters x 0.3048 meters = 10,972.8 meters with all the units plainly written down.
Students who give me a number of good answers without mistake can skip line 2. Many students never know if they have to multiply or to divide in a case like this: let them write down their reasoning until they are not afraid of that spot any more.

Learn, forget, learn again (memory tips 2)

2009-01-13T12:41:00.014-05:00

Let your kids know that the best way to learn is in several steps: step 1: learn; step 2: forget a bit or all of it; step 3: learn again.

You learn one rule of math like (a - b)² one day; the following day you see if you can recall it is a² -2ab + b² and if you don't recall, see if you can redo it by yourself; you just need to remember that (a - b)² is just shorthand for (a-b) x (a-b). Day three: see if you remember the equation again.
WHY? It is the way the brain works, forgetting is part of learning, and we remember BEST if we have tried several times. That is the reason why the flashcards suggest that you work in increments: like repeat 3 hours later, 1 day later, two days later, four days later etc.

The rule works for everything you need to remember. It is specially useful for languages. Try it for the fun of it on one Chinese way of saying "hello" here at bbc.co.uk/languages where you can get the sound by different voices. Just listen and repeat. Bookmark the place. The following day, do it again. Now wait a week. You probably will not remember how to say "hello" but if you go back to your bookmark, then you will say "Oh yeah, I remember it now"; if you hear it in a Chinese restaurant, you will know what it means, but you might have to go back to your bookmark to pronounce it correctly. The aim of this game is to convince you that it is the way to work.
How many repetitions each kid needs to remember is different from kid to kid and for each item they got to memorize.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? It means that studying at the last minute may be good enough to pass, but it is not good enough to remember later: it is not efficient. THEREFORE you need to help your kids by posting a calendar on your refrigerator with lessons to learn. If the lesson has to be learned for Thursday, post it on Monday and Wednesday night. Do not make the kids work more than usual, just cut the work of learning in two.

Watch that computer!

2009-01-12T08:51:00.013-05:00

The difference between a TV and a computer is that a computer is interactive: it lets people you do not know come into your house and discuss with your kids. Computers are a necessary instrument nowadays: do not deprive your kids of it. But watch out and teach them how to use it.

***

Read this from the FBI January 8th
Baltimore, Maryland - Patrick G. Mahan, age 34, of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty today to interstate travel with the intent to engage in a sexual , securityact with minor, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein.
“If parents do not monitor their children’s internet use every day, it might be too late,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “Within minutes after Patrick Mahan ‘met’ a child in an internet chat room, Mahan solicited the girl for sex. Within five days, Mahan traveled from Pennsylvania to Maryland to follow through on his plan to abuse the child. This case demonstrates how quickly internet predators are able and willing to act when they find vulnerable children.”

***

Kids who do not have a father at home, kids who are not very happy are at greater risk.But even a very happy well adapted kid should not be allowed in chat rooms: these are too often dirty dark places. There was in an event earlier last year an erotic picture of a naked kid. What horrified me is that it had hundreds of thousands of viewers in 24 hours. There are many many pedophiles around, and they work hard at finding victims. It is a fact of life. Watch out.

The many intelligences of kids

2009-01-10T05:38:00.009-05:00

It is always a great pleasure to look at a five years old you meet in a store and try to guess what they will be. Every kid is different: there is the little engineer who gets his fingers in everything and tries to see how it works, and there is the linguist who speaks all the time, and the diplomat who meets your eyes and smiles, the hyperactive and the one in a daze.
So yes, I believe that there are multiple intelligences, a theory presented a generation ago by Howard Gardner. You can read a little bit more on this here.
What does this mean? That we are all born with various regions of the brain that are lit up more than others. It is true for everybody, even the most retarded children. My neigbour had a kid who was profoundly retarded: he could not even be fed by mouth. That kid always laughed when I called his name because I have an accent, and somehow he knew that the way I said his name was not "right"; I can't pronounce r correctly (my native language is French), I always marveled at that kid. There are treasures in the most damaged brain. My mother had large damages of the brain after a stroke. Her memory was affected, she could hardly speak, she had bizarre delusions; but in the middle of it all she baffled me. She could not remember that her father was dead long ago, but she could try to discuss with me that it was a rather obscure Frenchman, Pierre-Paul Le Mercier de La Rivière, who first advocated international travel for students.

Sometimes, these bright regions are so strong that the kids have an early vocation. For instance, the Belgian composer Boesmans was the son of people who worked in agriculture and never had an interest in music; he knew as long as he could remember that he would become a composer. I knew three sons of a shepherd who became physicists. The mathematician Melvin Stern was born poor and sold newspapers in the streets of New York when he was a kid; he got a lot of abuse for covering the margins of the papers with equations...

But most of the time, if we do not, as parents, notice and encourage the bright spots, they disappear in time. A lot of parents are doting on their kids, but still they do not observe them at all. I know a teenager in the neighborhood who is always plunged in a car: mechanics is a passion of his rather than school. Nobody in his family pushes him to explore this further: they act as if they did not know it can lead to a valuable profession. Ah, he likes cars, they tell me dismissively. His parents, like himself, tell me that they do not know what he should do, because he is "not good of school." What kind of attitude is that?
I am not saying that the kid should necessarily work in a garage or go to technical college: I am just saying that it is a shame to see something bright left unexplored, After all, the kid could be happy in a lot of jobs, from car racing to welding to becoming a metal artist to being an inventor.
Look at your kids with new eyes: notice the bright spots. There are always bright spots, it is a law of nature, or rather: a law of statistics: so many things happen in the brain that there is a huge probability that some spots are very bright.

Mighty soap bubbles recipe

2009-01-05T14:00:00.005-05:00

The picture above was taken by photographer Stephen Berend when working for our local newspaper, the Savannah Morning News.

I found this soap recipe on a French site (Grenoble university) and it worked. Here it is in short and in English. You need water, sugar, glycerin if possible, dish concentrated liquid soap (such as Dawn). Start in a plastic bowl (never a metal bowl) with 20% water, pure is better (like battery water) but not necessary. Add 5% sugar and mix slowly to avoid incorporating air. Add 20% liquid soap and mix again slowly. Add 10% glycerin mix again and finally add about 45% water, mix slowly. Let it sit for a while. I make long bubbles, starting with a circle cut in a paper plate and dragging the plate from left to right in front of me. You can do better using a rope or a hoop). Just be patient! These bubbles can be so big that you can blow a bubble around an entire kid. The trouble is not with the soap solution, frankly, it is to find a large enough container for your solution and hoop!

Fractions are boring (math 10)

2008-12-26T16:31:00.006-05:00

Fractions are not difficult. Essentially, they are extremely boring, and it is the main reason why kids "do not understand them"; plus: fractions have no real "deep" use in math. Studying fractions is revolting. It was my opinion 60 years ago, and I have not changed it yet. An honest teacher should say: "OK, this is going to be very boring, we got to get through this together because it is on the program and there is no escaping it, so let us make an effort and do it quickly"....instead of prolonging it with silly games.
There is no obligation for teachers to pretend that everything in life is fun and games.
You got to teach FRACTIONS, promise that PROPORTIONS will be more fun, because proportions can be used in daily life.
The pizza trick I already mentioned and a lot of help can be found at missouristate.edu/ShaeJohnson

Memory tips (1)

2008-12-26T07:58:00.004-05:00

We all study best in different ways. Many of us can easily remember a song, so if you can sing it (a list of kings, a multiplication table) you will remember it. Some are better with what they see or better when they write it down, some are best if they say it loud, some do best when changing places (studying while climbing stairs or standing in the four corners of the room for four different topics).

But all of us do better if:

1) We learn how we study best: help your child by trying different learning strategies.

2) We remember that context is important for memory. It is a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because an image (like a ring) can help you remember a page on dendrology, or a war that happened because of a woman (Troy), or a list of movies. It is not a good thing if you have to recite the whole multiplication table to find out 3 x 6. Kids who never learn to answer random questions are victims of the way they learned (the have to say 1 x6 =6, 2 x 6 =12, 3 x 6 =18 etc)in the right order to find the response.

3) we repeat what we learn at regular intervals: 5 minutes every day for three days gives better results than 15 minutes one day.

Track Santa!

2008-12-23T15:18:00.005-05:00

You can still track Santa with all kinds of satellites on n2yo.com
And if you are mad at Santa for any reason (I usually am), follow that cute little tool bag lost by an astronaut "in the sky" and see if it comes close to your house.

Math as a crooked house (math 0)

2008-12-22T11:30:00.008-05:00

The history of the celebrated crooked house can be found at www.sedgleymanor.com with this picture. People say that they feel drunk just when entering the pub.

The following thoughts and tips center on elementary maths, because it is usually where the kids get lost: quite often at college level, you see a student having a very hard time, and when you scratch a bit, it is not the higher math level that bothers him or her, it is something they did not get right in K-12.
Math is a construction: if you miss a foundation stone because you were sick, or you had a bad year, or your teacher was not up to par, or you moved schools in the middle of the year, or any reason....your whole house of math can be crooked.

It is up to parents, not teachers in a busy loud class, to check that the basic stones are there. Maybe they should, but there is evidence that it is an unrealistic expectation. Here you will find out how to do it even if you never liked math yourself.

Is math useful? Yes it is. You can think with images, with words, or with math. If your children are deprived of math thinking, they will be deprived of the most important weapon we have to understand our universe. And to be practical, they will not understand why it is important to try to pay a little bit more than what they owe each month in mortgage.

Do you have the math bump? (math 1)

2008-12-20T13:15:00.003-05:00

Some parents who have never been good at math are afraid to help their kids, even with the most elementary things. In 99% of the cases I have seen, it is not that you are not good at math: almost everybody is: it is just that you gave up.
The brain of each person is wired differently: there are kids naturally great at drawing, math, music, running, etc: it comes naturally to them. The reverse is true: any one thing, like recognizing faces can be weaker in you than in most people. What is going to help you out? Exercise: it is like walking or trying a bicycle; exercise does it.

Are there some extreme cases of people who really will not "get" the math (or language, etc)? Yes. I have good news and bad news. Bad news: some people have a real deficiency in math capacity that can be seen on a brainscan. Good news: I never met one. In half a century of volunteering to help kids, I never got one who failed. So it is not as frequent as you and your kids may think.

When I was a little girl, all kids were still palpating their head to know if they had the "math bump", the magic place that indicates you are going to be good at math. It was a belief inherited from the 19th century. You do not need to know much to help your kid becoming math-smart. Massage your head and let us start at the beginning.

Just counting (math 2)

2008-12-20T07:22:00.008-05:00

All animals can count because it is beneficial to see the difference between a little and a lot of food. Birds can count seeds. Cats can count their litter, at least up to four. That is how a capacity for math came to be ingrained in the human brain:it is beneficial for us. All languages have words for counting, one language, I have read, has only "few" and "a lot", many languages have "one, two three, lots", most languages have refined counting systems. When does it become refined? Generally with agriculture: you suddenly need to develop high numbers, and additions, and geometry to describe parcels of land, and of course some astronomy to predict the seasons and know when to plant seeds. Early Mesopotamia (now Iraq), just as early China, early India did all that.
Recommended book: What Counts: How Every Brain is Hardwired for Math
Best book for small children about counting: Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds
Internet resources: : aaamath has all levels mathcats.com this site is more fun, much smarter, but less organized (it takes a bit more time to find the activity of the right level); primary games some fun, some not.

The great fear of zero (math 3)

2008-12-19T23:30:00.004-05:00

There was that 15 years old who made me sweat, because he was bright, he understood his math, and he never got an exercise right. After weeks of observation, reading what he was doing and trying to figure out what his problem was, I asked him: "What is 2 minus 2?" And he did not answer and looked at me like he was trapped. He was!
Another of these kids for whom "zero" means "you are a nullity". I had forgotten that important disease.
I gave him a dollar and took it back. He had nothing left: zero.
I explained to him that the concept of zero is so difficult that it was invented very late, long after all other numbers. So if it was difficult for our ancestors, it is normal that it was difficult to him: there is no shame in that. In fact, kids have difficulties with everything that our ancestors found difficult, including fractions, negative numbers, calculus etc. Check here for the History of zero.
Book on this fascinating subject: Kaplan, Robert. The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero, Oxford University Press, 2000. The book has one of the smartest titles I ever saw.

Decimals: It pays to look at digits (math 4)

2008-12-19T14:46:00.003-05:00

A very common mistake kids make is to think that 0.1002 is bigger than 0.2 because it has more digits. It is a little thing you got to check. Write a few numbers to order (always include a zero in the list) and see if your kid can find the biggest number.
Remedial exercise can be found here (mathisfun)
Math is fun is an excellent site for other subjects too.

Billions in the family (math 5)

2008-12-18T23:29:00.004-05:00

This end of the year 2008, with all the bailouts and money and job losses is a pretty good time to introduce your kids to big numbers. Most of us think only in terms of thousands because that is what me make in a year, so here are a few tricks to understand big numbers.

SMALLER NUMBERS Because I earned some money for extra chores when I was a kid, my parents always told me when I wanted a toy or a book, how many hours of work it represented. It grounded me: I do not hesitate buying a dress that I like, but I never was a shopoholic: 20 bucks has a value for me. Counting in hours of work (theirs or yours) is the greatest tool to get your kids grounded.

THOUSANDS you can count with your kid in monthly salary or in price of cars. one year of tuition in college? it is about five cars, don't waste it.
My kids were once very excited about buying a Rolls Royce, I made a calculation: if we sold our house, we could buy a Rolls, but we would have to live in it. They thought about it for the night, and the following morning they told me the Rolls was not worth it. Good kids!

A MILLION 1,000,000 or 10^6 is easy to understand, there is probably a million dollars home in your neighborhood. Let us drive there with the kids and discuss this. Questions: How many ordinary houses would you have to sell to buy a house like this (in case you are renting, take an average price for an ordinary house as 200.000).
It is a number I keep in mind all the time.
How many kids in the US? About 75 millions. How many children neglected or abused in the US? Check it out yourself on childwlfare.gov because you would not believe me.

Your chances of winning a million dollars at the lottery are smaller than your chances to get killed in a car accident.

A BILLION 1,000,000,000 or 10^9 dollars. OK, what can you get for a billion dollars (equivalent 1,000 million dollars)? I found that Jesus was alive a billion minutes ago here.
6 billions is the annual budget of science research in the US (it is run by the National Science Foundation) and covers about two thousand college and universities. NASA is of course more expensive (about three times as much), and the war in Iraq did cost about 500 billions in 2008, all according to livescience.com
How much will each of us pay for one year of war in Iraq? Take a number of taxpayers roughly equal to 100 million people. How do you divide 500 billions by 100 millions (10^8 or 1 followed by 8 zeros)? You write the numbers down and take off 8 zeros our 500,000,000,000 that leaves about an average of five thousand dollars a year per taxpayer that, between you and me, we do not pay: our children will be happy to pay that for us.

The first real misunderstanding (math 6)

2008-12-18T23:08:00.005-05:00

OK, you got a kid that can write numbers and understands what numbers mean. By now, your kid can discuss with you the price of a toy (so many hours work) and the price of a house.
You believe your kid understands numbers? Well, maybe not.

Here is the first bump in the road. Take a group of 14 years old kids. In Savannah, GA, where I live, all of them can write a number, but most do not know what they are doing. How do I know that? Because most of them (all of them so far in my experiences)cannot divide by ten. It means that they did not grasp what the place-value system means. In our counting system, the value of a number depends on what the number is and what its position is. For instance in 111.11 the number 1 has five different values: one hundred, ten, one, one tenth and one hundreth. The value in each position or digit (thousands, hundreds, tens, units)is ten times the value on the next digit to the right. It means that by sliding up or down your numbers, you can multiply or divide by ten. No calculation necessary. Here is a sliding rule to demonstrate this to your kids, because I do not know the schools where you are, but down here they are not going to teach it. Cut a band in a folder, draw and cut windows in it. Then place a paper under the windows: it is where you write numbers and show by sliding the paper right or left that you can multiply or divide by ten. It will look like the one on this picture: pretty neat trick.

Is this important? You bet! It is pretty hard to be successful at the SAT if you need a paper and a pen to divide by ten! But it is even more important than going to college: people who do not understand what is an order of magnitude are kept away from some very useful concepts all their life.
Use the internet:themathpage.com and the beautiful BBC.co.uk/skillwise/ site.

Bugging with addition? (math 7)

2008-12-17T03:21:00.004-05:00

It is pretty hard for a young mind to concentrate on the difference between a plus sign and a minus sign. Kids do not "observe" the signs because they do not "see" the signs. It needs training. Just like observing tracks in the forest: you need to learn to see them first. Smart teachers make you trace a circle around all the + signs if you have a long addition-substraction exercise. The funny thing is that if you do not learn to pay attention to this when you are 8 years old, you will still make the same mistakes when you are thirty.
Look out for this, Parents, do your children pay attention? Do you help them with any little trick?

Math has its own cozy little rules (math 8)

2008-12-17T01:09:00.001-05:00

Do not abuse of images and metaphors. Too many teachers do that: any kid is able to understand abstraction. It is fine to explain negative numbers as a debt or as a temperature below zero, but the multiplication of debts will never make you rich in life and it becomes a positive number in math. Another example is dividing by zero: math has a rule that you cannot divide by zero which does not make sense in language terms: if you divide your stuff by nothing, you just keep your stuff. The reason why it is not like that in math is that you get that answer by dividing by one.
So, give examples by all means: every child will understand fractions if you bring home a pizza. On the internet, you can see any fraction as a part of pizza at saab.org But once the concept of cutting a pizza has made a fun introduction, go back to the abstraction: that is the right way to do. The smarter a kid is, the more the kid will get confused if you try to "ease" everything into a metaphor.
You will find all kinds of games on the internet, it is fine. I do like simple drills though, which is why I recommend saab.org : these drills are done by people who know what is difficult for kids. Games can make math fun for a few minutes, which is nice, but it is not practice.

Multiplication (math 9)

2008-12-16T05:50:00.001-05:00

In math, the mutiplication table is one of the rare things you got to know by heart, because at the SAT level, you need to save time. It is faster to know it than to use a calculator. Plus: when you know it, it gives you IDEAS to solve problems that you never get if you rely on a calculator.
Do not let your kids escape it. Print a good multiplication table and stick it on the refrigerator. What is a good multiplication table: one that includes multiplying by zero. Indeed, as explained earlier, many kids are afraid of zero (see math 5) so you need to include it as often as you can.Check nicholasacademy or lessontutor.com The tables I prefer have one line out of two highlighted, but I could not find one in three hours, so I did this one with a few colored tips.

At breakfast or at night, ask one or two questions. But do it every day. Allow kids to run to the fridge and look at the table if their answer is not right. There are a huge number of games and stuff, usually expensive, on the internet, about multiplication tables. I think you should pass and show interest in it one minute per day.

The whole sky is home! (astro 1)

2008-11-29T20:52:00.002-05:00

This splendid image of earth seen from the moon was taken by Apollo 11 astronauts and comes from this NASA site.

If you look at the sky at night with your kids, what you see is home: it is our galaxy. I always thought it was comforting.
I think the best start with your kids is to look at the moon, because, well, it is easy to find, interesting to look at and you can see lots of details with the naked eye or simple binoculars. Be persistent, take a few minutes say, twice a week, to look at the sky with your kids and see the moon.
It is easy to explain the phases of the moon. If a kid understands that the earth spins on its axis and that the sun always illuminates one half of the earth, then it is easy to shift to the moon. You can use as an example an electric torch and a ball. The best site I could find about the phases of the moon is moonconnection.com
It is much more difficult to explain why we always see the same side of the moon. You tell a kid that it is because the rotational period is the same as the orbital period, you might draw a blank stare. There is a nice video on How stuff works but the first way to see little eyes light up because they understand is to let them make the demonstration themselves. Take a chair which will represent the earth, and have the kid turning around it, always facing it. Now that we have seen how it is possible, we can let the kid show it to us on a piece of paper: pick up something that will represent the earth (a key, a cup), place it in the center of the page. Have the kid playing the moon by showing a pen going around the earth. The point of the pen should always be turned towards the earth. Then we can draw how the pen looks at several "moon" positions around the earth. Depending of their age, kids can be satisfied with this or ask why. It is because the connection between the moon and the tides: that is easy stuff compared to the basics and it is all on these internet sites!
I like the PBS site nova: moon

I once hold a lunar sample in my hands: it was just a few specks of dust in a small vial, but I was the proudest woman in the universe.

Recommended book: The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America's Race in Space
Recommended movie: Apollo 13 (Widescreen 2-Disc Anniversary Edition)

The sky is the limit (astro 2)

2008-11-28T15:30:00.001-05:00

Amateur astronomers can still beat scientists in the field: it is not true for most sciences nowadays, just because science is so expensive. But in astronomy, there are so many things to see, you can still be first to detect an interesting event.

But the real reasons why I think you should go out and show the sky to your kids at night are:
a)it gives you quality time and kids memories that cannot be beaten
b) it takes kids out of the electronic world
c) it allows kids to learn to think in 3D. We have our feet on the ground most of the time, and most of the time we think in 2D, specially when using all these new gadgets with screens.

You think you cannot do it because you do not know anything and cant even find the North star? Then you are just like me. But I can tell you what kids need to know and where to find fun information.
What is important to understand is that
1) the sky changes all the time. Because the earth is spinning on its axis, we see all the stars rising east and setting in the west.
2) because the earth orbits around the sun, there is a change every night in what we are able to see, and the cycle takes one year.
3) The portion of sky we are able to see depends on where we live: Australians do not see the same portion of sky as Americans.

Where do we start? Get the most useful free software on your computer: it is called Stellarium and it will let you see what you want, where you are: you just enter your longitude and latitude. If you don't know them, google "(your town name)longitude". Do not rush to buy a telescope, the beasts are complex. Binoculars are fine to start and with just the naked eye, you can take years to learn what there is to see. Get from Stellarium one of two celestial objets easy to spot, get out and try to find them. You are going to need two pieces of information to make it simple as pie: Where are the cardinal points (so if you go to a park, take with you a small compass). Stellarium will tell you what is the azimuth (AZ) of the object you are interested in; it is the angular distance between the North and the object along the horizon. If the object is straight north, the azimuth is 0 degree, if it is east the azimuth is 90 deg. south: 180 deg, west: 270. How high in the sky you should look: it is the elevation(ALT: how high above the horizon) it goes from zero to 90 degrees just above your head. On the Stellarium image you point out to the object you want to see and you take note of the AZ/ALT values: you cannot miss the object then. Do not forget to tell your kids that there are other systems of reference: other ways to define where a star is, but this is the most convenient for a beginner (always let it known that we can go further).
More information: Most of the basic questions you could have are finely explained on this Cornell university site (It is part of astronomy 201). If your kids really like it, look for a club nearby: there are amateur astronomers everywhere.

More fun: What about looking at satellites? They are easy to spot, because they move fast. A list of all the sats visible near your place is available at n2yo which shows real time tracking of satellites.
As a matter of fact, I am following right now a toolbag lost by astronauts. Life cant get better than this.

Go to the moon! (astro 3)

2008-11-27T23:30:00.002-05:00

For parents who are not inclined to look at the sky but who might be interested in cars, here is a competition for a new moonbuggy: moonbuggy

Spinning thought (astro 4)

2008-11-26T11:19:00.000-05:00

Meeting a friend in a corridor, Wittgenstein said: "Tell me, why do people always say it was natural for men to assume that the sun went round the earth, rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend said, "Well, obviously, because it looks as if the sun is going round the earth." To which the philosopher replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth was rotating?"
Tom Stoppard

Analemna (astro 5)

2008-11-25T14:28:00.007-05:00

The game today is to go to google images and search "analemna". What is it? It is the figure eight that the sun makes in the sky if you take a photo of it every day at the same time for a year.
Do people do that? Yes, some people have the patience to do it. How to DIY is explained on a good site, and if photography is your passion, you should try this with your kids: The analemna project.

Why does the sun make that figure eight? The vertical difference during the year reflects how high the sun goes in winter and summer. Like the seasons, it is caused by the inclination of the earth orbit. The horizontal difference reflects, I think, the difference of the speed of the earth along its ellipse. You go check that on analemna.com and tell me if I am wrong.

Some parents do not like children, even theirs

2008-11-18T11:10:00.008-05:00

You do not feel the love? Sometimes it comes and goes, but for some people it does not come at all. Do not worry about it: duty and compassion will do the job.

I have seen young girls who get pregnant: they think that a baby is like a doll, then the real thing appears to be no fun. I have seen lots of young men who quit their pregnant wife or girlfriend because they cannot stand the idea of having children: they want to be at the center of the world. I hear of pregnant wives getting killed every year. I see around me plenty of girls who abandon their kids to the grandparents because they want to have fun and get out and "have a life". There is in this country about one million mistreated, abused or neglected kids every year.
What can we do?
1. Recognize it.It is unpleasant, but it is real. Keep an eye on the kids of your neighborhood, maybe you can help.
2. Do not make pressure on other people. There is nothing worse than putting pressure on people to have kids when they are not equipped for it. The idea that "You will love the baby when it is there" is a myth: sometimes it happens, most times it does not.

If you are not happy with the situation of parent but you want to do the right thing, just take a deep breath. Complain to me: I understand, don't complain to the kids: they don't understand and it does not help either of you. Focus on getting a bit more money (it always helps) and getting more organized.

I hope it is still true...

2008-11-07T12:16:00.000-05:00

"I hope it is still true that the Lord looks benignly after children, drunks and the USA."

Dean Acheson 1893-1971, was President Truman's Secretary of State.This seems like the perfect quote to initiate this new blog!

You have an accent! (1)

2008-11-01T15:49:00.002-04:00

I just found the funniest web page about how we sound. It is accent.gmu.edu Well it is a very serious site, but let us just look and listen for the fun of it. You go to browse, you go to languages, you pick up English. There are about 300 English-speaking people who read the same silly sentence. I suspect that they are mostly educated, because the accent is much stronger in certain places I know (when you go to college, your accent gets a bit neutralized).
Look for a place close to where you are born or close to where you live now. Click: you listen to the sentence pronounced with the local accent. Now you can show to your kids that the US are so big that even if people travel all the time, local accents persist. People in Pittsburgh do not talk like people in Texas or people here "down south" (I live in Savannah GA). The site provides a phonetic transcription of what the people say, you do not have to study that, maybe your kids will get a taste for it.
Me, I could spend the whole day on that site, it is a perfect joy. And it tells you something, because I am getting more deaf by the day.
So, get ready, play with the kids, then make a quizz: they listen to an accent and have to guess where the person is from. It is one small step to understand diversity.

Secrets of a secret life ( it is only about me)

2008-11-01T09:13:00.000-04:00

This is my hero, Pic de la Mirandole (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.) It is appropriate, as I was born in Belgium, to select an image from a Belgian website: this image comes from www.ecoles.cfwb.be

Well well, I don't specially enjoy blogs where people talk about themselves, but after some teasing from Jim (you might visit him as co-stumbler chainc), I decided to disclose my deepest secret (even my kids do not know about this, and now it will be on the web for you to enjoy).
It so happened that when I was nine or ten years old, I found in our French Larousse dictionary that Jean Pic de la Mirandole, an Italian humanist who died very young shortly before year 1500, was "the last man who knew everything". And I thought: this is what I want to do: I want to know everything. And what a great name Jean Pic de la Mirandole was for a little girl!
Where do you start to be like him? I wanted to go to maths, but my parents thought that you have no real culture if you do not first learn Greek and Latin, so that was it for next few years. After high school, the literary thread did not leave you with many choices. I went to listen to the lead psychology professors of the time: the whole generation was teaching behaviorism, and that disgusted me. I wanted no part of it: I understand animals too well. I then went to listen to Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine who gave lectures at Brussels University, and not only I did not understand a word he said, but I can swear to you that nobody else did either.
I then thought that I should start with the existence of God, as it is the most important question in anybody's life. I kept that in mind and got a degree in theology, to the great despair of my parents (yeah, it is tough to get a job if you are not supported by a specific church). It was not very satisfactory, because in theology like in philosophy, you build the logical system you want: who is going to prove you wrong? Nobody checks your premises. You learn a bit of history, logic, philosophy, Hebrew, archeology, but you do not learn to recognize the truth. I still was not sure that there was a God, but I was certain of one thing: you got to help other people. So, I did that for a number of years. I only got in trouble when Americans landed on the moon. I thought: people go to the moon, and I don't even understand electricity: I live in the 19th century, what kind of life is that? It is a sin!

I was frustrated, and one day, a visitor told me: "Why do you always speak about what you have to do and never about what you want to do?" Well, to tell the truth, I still wanted to be Jean Pic de la Mirandole. By that time I knew that I could not know everything but I thought I could understand the basics of everything. Maybe. This is how I decided to become a scientist and I worked my way from secretary to technician to student to Ph.D. in a great laboratory in Paris. I became an oceanographer. I was 40 years old. Now an oceanographer has to understand a bit of physics, chemistry, geology, biology and use a bit of math and stats, so I thought that I was well covered. What it meant to me was that finally, I was able to read about other disciplines and learn more. I got a research position in France, I felt the world was in my hands.

One day, I came out of our laboratory and went to the scientific library of Paris University at Orsay, which was a few miles away. The place had a lot of technical information. They had maybe three hundred scientific publications on all kinds of subjects. Could you guess what happened? For the sake of me, I could not even surmise from the titles what some of the publications were about. You think you can understand everything, and here you are: you cant even say which magazine relates to which branch of science because you don't even understand the titles!

You may laugh: I almost fainted.

After many many years, I discovered another truth: You can only judge what is important if you are inside, and it takes a lot of effort to be an insider. So I understand most of the papers I read, I can see what is fake or weak because I have the training for that. But to judge the importance of a discovery and see which way a discipline is going? You got to be an insider. For instance take a paper on the protein folding problem, or a paper on building resistance to earthquakes. You can read, but you won't know what is important unless you are an insider. So, Pic de la Mirandole I ain't, but it has been a fun trip.

It is the story of fool, but I still believe that if, today, you live in the 19th century, you live in sin. If you do not encourage your children to live in their own century, you are committing an even bigger sin.