1.

Angela Jennifer shared her awesome learning space this week, and Angela posts some things to think about when planning a space.  (Update:  Oooh, I stumbled on this link in Angela’s archives!  A learning spaces carnival!)

So, I’m planning and plotting our new learning space.  And I want to finish it by the holiday weekend.  We school all year – I took most of December and May off,  plus two weeks in March when family came to visit,

Let’s face it, with 100+ temps we don’t go outside between 11 am – 4 pm anyway.  We’ve got to do something during that time!

I wonder how a woman who rearranges furniture for fun ended up married to a man who prefers dental work to shifting couches?  Maybe I’ll have to bake him a pie first.

2.

Great essay on gifted children – and how “gifted” doesn’t always mean “performs grade levels ahead on worksheets”.

Stephanie S. Tolan compares gifted children to cheetahs:

To lions, tigers, leopards — to any of the other big cats — the cheetah’s biological attributes would seem to be deformities. Far from the “best cat,” the cheet

ah would seem to be barely a cat at all. It is not heavy enough to bring down a wildebeest; its non-retractable claws cannot be kept sharp enough to tear the wildebeest’s thick hide. Given the cheetah’s tendency to activity, cats who spend most of their time sleeping in the sun might well label the cheetah hyperactive.

Like cheetahs, highly gifted children can be easy to identify. If a child teaches herself Greek at age five, reads at the eighth grade level at age six or does algebra in second grade we can safely assume that child is a highly gifted child. Though the world may see these activities as “achievements,” she is not an “achieving” child so much as a child who is operating normally according to her own biological design, her innate mental capacity. Such a child has clearly been given room to “run” and something to run for. She is healthy and fit and has not had her capacities crippled. It doesn’t take great knowledge about the characteristics of highly gifted children to recognize this child.

However, schools are to extraordinarily intelligent children what zoos are to cheetahs. Many schools provide a 10 x 12 foot cage, giving the unusual mind no room to get up to speed. Many highly gifted children sit in the classroom the way big cats sit in their cages, dull-eyed and silent. Some, unable to resist the urge from inside even though they can’t exercise it, pace the bars, snarl and lash out at their keepers, or throw themselves against the bars until they do themselves damage.

Go read the whole thing.  (Do cheetahs ever lash out at their keepers by making their homes into giant Jiffy Pop experiments?)

3.

Starry Sky Ranch has an interesting note on the difference between Montessori and Waldorf philosophies.

4.

Not remotely educational, but here it is.  This is what the whole house looks like after Mama has a baby:

And who are we kidding – the house looks like this sometimes even when Mama has not had a baby!  Even the picture on the wall is crooked.

The picture, btw, says clearly “If it crawls, hops, slithers, or swims it stays OUTSIDE”.  It’s pretty much ignored, though.

5.

On the special education front, a victory of sorts.  Court declares public school must pay for private tuition, if the public school is unable to provide a free and appropriate education for a special needs child.  In many school systems, getting adequate services and addressing even the most basic educational accommodations is like pulling teeth.  Large institutions have a hard time providing individual and unique services to individual and unique children.

6.

Califiornia has decided to pay mothers to stay at home with their own children.  Crazy, huh?  Don’t they know only professionals are qualified to provide child care?

Sadly, they are not doing this because it’s in the best interest of the child, but because they think it will be cheaper than helping single moms acquire marketable job skills.  Why give a hand up when you can give a hand out?

I wonder why LA county hasn’t explored other options, such as consolidating child care at the schools where the mother attends, creating co-ops, or partnering with private philanthropic organizations and churches to provide care.  Why not explore a telecommuting or correspondence course option for mothers with young children?  Why n0t explore corporate internships and apprentice programs, where the single parents would get paid while they learn a skill or trade, instead of just handing moms a check for “babysitting” their own children?

7.

View on my lap:

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