It has been called “Nature Deficit Disorder”—the problem of people who, partly because they do not have much interaction with nature and partly because they are not educated about it, simply do not know much about the natural world. The first cause of this disorder is simply that we don’t spend much time outside anymore. […]
Most adults can recall feeling a momentary panic in a math class at one time or another, but some children feel despair about math daily. They may struggle through math lessons for many reasons: attitude, handwriting difficulty, poor number sense, language-based learning disability, or difficulties with memory, fear, or discouragement. We can address these effectively […]
Natural disasters, natural resources, natural gas, dying of natural causes. Natural beauty, but also freaks of nature. Going back to nature and getting a natural high. Mother Nature, nature hikes, all-natural foods, natural family planning, natural childbirth. There’s the natural order, and second nature. There are natural numbers. There are all the examples I didn’t […]
On the Feast of St. John the Evangelist in 1571, a baby boy named Johannes Kepler came into the world. Born prematurely, he was weak and sickly as a child. By the time he was born he had two brothers and a sister. When Johannes was five years old, his father left the family. When […]
Using a structure built from several different types of argumentation, the dilemma corners your opponent by presenting him or her with a difficult choice between two unacceptable alternatives. The most sophisticated and yet elegant argument form is the dilemma. If you know how to use the dilemma you have achieved the logical equivalent of a […]
How long can you stare at hieroglyphs you can’t decipher before you shrug your shoulders, smile, and move on? Without a cipher, or the ability to translate the pictograms into meaningful sounds or images, they would be just fancy lines and dots to you. I sometimes imagine that to the child with a language impairment, […]
I’m not a Latin teacher; I’m a doctor. I didn’t learn Latin growing up, other than maybe the conjugation of amo, but I’m learning it now as I teach my children. I have heard many times about the benefits of Latin—not only how it helps to build vocabulary knowledge, but how it helps you to […]
I received a lovely note the other day thanking me for an article Cheryl Lowe—not I—had written. With two people in one publishing house named Cheryl, things can become confusing. Let there be no mistake: I was but a quiet mother of toddler twins in Missouri when Cheryl Lowe founded Memoria Press in 1998. Two […]
One of the ways we can understand ourselves better is to look at the metaphors our culture uses. Medieval and ancient peoples drew their comparisons from nature. Today we often look at things in terms of machines or computers. We tell our unmotivated children they need to “get it in gear.” When we forget something […]
Phonics instruction nearly disappeared in the 1930s, and only started making a comeback in the 1970s. Now, there are so many phonics programs to choose from it’s enough to make your head spin. How do we know which one to choose? A systematic, logical approach to phonics is the best way to teach students to […]