God had a message that was essential to the well-being of all people, throughout all time. The starting point was to take a group of people and teach them a phonetic alphabet, a set of characters where each character represents a specific sound and those characters can be put together to form words. Nothing like … Continue reading Moses learns to read and write
reading
My current reading list
Your Life is a Book - How to Craft & Publish Your Memoir, Brenda Peterson & Sarah Jane Freymann- Kobo e-bookEveryone has a story to tell. However, most of us are not naturally endowed with the ability to select the parts that may be most interesting to others and how to tell them without appearing … Continue reading My current reading list
How I stay sane during a time of confinement
(Or at least try to) Talk to my cats. I know this probably sounds like I'm already losing it, but if there are not many people to talk to, cats are not a bad substitute. They are not persons, but they do have personalities, often a little eccentric, Both of ours are largely Siamese and … Continue reading How I stay sane during a time of confinement
Gifts my mother gave me
The Nelson Gage Dictionary has this note about teaching: Teach emphasizes giving information, explanation, and training, by guiding the studies of the person who wants to learn. Every little child is a question box, wanting to learn about the world in which he finds him/her self. The questions become wearisome for parents. We don’t have … Continue reading Gifts my mother gave me
Matthew Effects in Learning
“For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath” (Matthew 25:29). In 1986, Keith Stanovich published a study entitled Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy. The “Matthew Effects” … Continue reading Matthew Effects in Learning
Learning to see
Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere. –Pablo Casals Writers do much the same thing, though I do not believe it is proper to call it theft. We learn something from everything we read and everything we see. Often it is just a … Continue reading Learning to see
If you want to be a writer, you first need to be a reader
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading. In order to write a man will turn over half a library to make one book. -Samuel Johnson, 1705-1784. Johnson was a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, biographer, editor and the sole author of A Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1755 and … Continue reading If you want to be a writer, you first need to be a reader
In memory of Julia
Julia was 18 years old when I was born. We were cousins, but she seemed more like an aunt to me. She started teaching in a one room country school in the fall of that year, taught for two years, then married Ed. Their first child, Doreen, was born a year later. Ed & Julia … Continue reading In memory of Julia
Belle Plaine years
In 1966 Belle Plaine had all of 16 houses, two grain elevators, three other small businesses and a school that was no longer used. UGG rented one of the houses for their elevator manager. I had learned the basics of weighing and unloading grain by now, how to grade it and determine dockage and how … Continue reading Belle Plaine years
What shall our children read?
What books are safe for children to read? Some Christian parents provide only books about nice people who do nice things and everything turns out nicely for them. How realistic is that? Children know that there is evil in the world. There are scary things out there, things happen that they do not understand. Other … Continue reading What shall our children read?
Flatlander Faith 