Scultptures! 1,2,3, CLICK!!!!

Here I am with one of my favorite statues! I am adding myself into the statue!
















Here's Dylan's statue of a horse. It is made of pinecones, pine needles for a mane and very carefully cut sticks for legs. Two of the legs are off the floor like the horse is prancing. The horse in our "Cities" poster has one leg off the ground. Here is Dylan posing next to his statue.









This is Will's statue of snakes and a lovely butterfly.














Here's Will posing as a sssssnake!!!
















Now here the guys are posing as cool modern art statues.
































Camilla, We'll get yours on today!

These fun games we play encourage creativity and also the important school readiness skill of "inhibitory control" which is education jargon for being able to follow directions to stop on cue (maturing their ability to control their body!) But all that aside, we're having fun and that's tops!

RIDDLE:

What's the difference between a Violin and a Fiddle?












(the fiddle player smiles!)

Here's our story time this week!




Part two:




What cute little "piggies".

Music for the brain: Start NOW

• A 2000 Georgia Tech study indicates that a student who participates in at least one college elective music course is 4.5 times more likely to stay in college than the general student population.
  – Dr. Denise C. Gardner, Effects of Music Courses on Retention, Georgia Tech, 2000

• The part of the brain responsible for planning, foresight, and coordination is substantially larger for instrumental musicians than for the general public.
  – “Music On the Mind,” Newsweek, July 24, 2000

• A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reports that music training - specifically piano instruction - is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s abstract reasoning skills necessary for learning math and science.
  – Dr. Frances Rauscher and Dr. Gordon Shaw, Neurological Research, University of California at Irvine, February, 1997

• Physician and biologist Lewis Thomas studied the undergraduate majors of medical school applicants. He found that sixty- six percent (66%) of music majors who applied to medical school were admitted, the highest percentage of any group. Forty-four percent (44%) of biochemistry majors were admitted.
  – “The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, 1994

• College students majoring in music achieve scores higher than students of all other majors on college reading exams.
  – Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999

• Music students demonstrate less test anxiety and performance anxiety than students who do not study music.
  – “College-Age Musicians Emotionally Healthier than Non-Musician Counterparts,” Houston Chronicle, 1998

• On the 1999 SAT, music students continued to outperform their non-arts peers, scoring 61 points higher on the verbal portion and 42 points higher on the math portion of the exam.
  – Steven M. Demorest and Steven J. Morrison, “Does Music Make You Smarter?,” Music Educators Journal, September, 2000

• Researchers at the University of Muenster in Germany have discovered that music lessons in childhood actually enlarge parts of the brain. An area used to analyze the pitch of a musical note is enlarged 25% in musicians compared to people who have never played an instrument. The earlier the musicians were when they started musical training, the bigger this area of the brain appears to be.
  – Pantev et al., Nature, April 23, 1998

• Research shows when a child listens to classical music the right hemisphere of the brain is activated, but when a child studies a musical instrument both left and right hemispheres of the brain “light up.” Significantly, the areas that become activated are the same areas that are involved in analytical and mathematical thinking.
  – Dee Dickinson, “Music and the Mind,” New Horizons for Learning, 1993

• The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania School District analyzed its 1997 dropout rate in terms of students’ musical experience. Students with no ensemble performance experience had a dropout rate of 7.4 percent. Students with one to two years of ensemble experience had a dropout rate of 1 percent, and those with three or more years of performance experience had a dropout rate of 0.0 percent.
  – Eleanor Chute, “Music and Art Lessons Do More Than Complement Three R’s,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 13, 1998

These quotes I found here at UAH's Music auditions webpage. It's this article: Why Study Music? by Dr. Don Bowyer and the whole page is fun to read.

On this day

A window will appear between two armies
on a battlefield. Instead
of seeing their enemies
in the window the soldiers
see themselves as children.
The stop fighting and
go home and sleep. When
they wake up the land
is well again.

Cameron C. Penny--4th grade.

March 15th is the 6th year anniversary of the War in Iraq.

Lost Generation

Thought for the day......

Laughter, the best medicine!

"Laughter increases white blood cell activity and changes the chemical balance of the blood. This is believed to boost the body's production of chemicals needed for alertness and memory. Laughter reduces stress, and low stress enhances the brain's receptivity to learning. According to researchers, laughing (having fun) also boosts the body's immune system for three days-the day of the fun and the next two."
-Start Smart!: Building Brain Power in the Early Years, by Pam Schiller

Yes, laugher and fun help build neural pathways to the frontal lobes of the brain where creativity, problem solving and thinking happen. Conversely, cortisol, the horomone of flight or fright (stress) build and strengthen the neural pathways to the brain stem where attention to and action for survival is paramont. Activity in the brain stem controls heart rate, respiration, digestion, and systems that are important for survival of the species. It's not where thinking and learning happens.

By stern reprimands, arm shaking, swats to the bottom , etc, gives the average toddler a good dose of cortisol about every 9 minutes of his waking life. Adrenaline takes about a day and a half to neutralize.

By the way, adrenaline deters frontal lobe brain growth, directing growth to the brain stem instead.

This amazing information comes from an article I read by Joseph Chilton Pearce and his book The Biology of Transcendence. See my post below to watch a video of Pearce.

Peace,
Yvette

Educating the Whole Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce

When my older two children were young I stumbled on this author. I read his book "The Magical Child". It took me a long time to get through, I put it down for a month or more to think between different sections... I've been to two events where this wonderful person presented his ideas. We all sat on the edge of our seats. That was years ago. Now there's so much more popular media to help us understand about the brain and a child's brain development. But I'm amazed that in general our society doesn't take it more seriously. There are two parts to the video clip. The second should show up off to the side after you watch the first.