ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

I am not really in a mood to write anything yet.  The vacation has come to an end and I have about four hours to sleep before heading to work.  Anyway, I thought that you might be interested in seeing the pictures I took this year.  Yes, I have already taken quite a few pictures in year 2010, using my new camera.  I have nagged my husband for it for years and he finally gave in for the reason that I need to have an ultra compact thin camera, fit in a purse, not to miss out any photo shooting opportunity.  The camera is a Sony W230 with 12.0 mega pixle and 3.0 LCD dispaly (compared to the one we bought in 2002, which is 3.2 mega pixle with a 1.5 or 2.0 LCD display).  I can't really tell the difference.  The only difference I see is that the file size is larger as well as the LCD display.  I do like that the LCD display is larger.  My husband seems to notice that I am able to hold the camera straighter.  He used to complain that the photos I shot always looked tilted.  A flaw I see is the sensitivity of the buttons.  I would always accidentally press the button and shot the pictures unintentionally.  As a result, more deleted pictures. 

By the way, since the image size is larger, it may take longer to load the pictures.  Please let me know how it feels.  Maybe I can try to resize them when I have time and learn the trick.       

Perfect Sense, recommended from the National Council for Gifted Children, is a riddle game to uncover a word using clues related to the five senses. (www.patchproducts.com)

Today, I am not going to talk about the game.  Rather, I would like to talk about our teaching philosophy and our child-rearing theory.

Snow Sledding  

    My son recently asked to invite his friends over for play dates and he indicated that one of his friends would like to come over to our house again for snow sledding like they did last year.  I have no idea how long our slope is.  I know that it is longer than 2 stories high.  I kept giving out wrong information to people.  Anyway, to set the record straight, I decided to ask my husband.  He said to me that the slope should be roughly 50 feet long (about 15 meters or 16.67 yards).  Okay, now you have it.  Our neighbor, two houses next to ours, has a slope of close to 70 feet long (about 21 meters or 23.33 yards).  My son’s school, within 5 minutes walking distance, has a slope close to 200 feet (about 6o meters or 66.67 yards). 

We didn’t head for the Holidazzle parades in downtown Minneapolis.  Instead, we went to Rice Park in downtown St. Paul yesterday for the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony.  The tree is humongous, standing at 60 foot tall, decorated with twenty thousand energy-efficient LED lights and holiday décor.  Alongside are the dozens of other glittering trees.  Initially, my husband and I were puzzled by the two wires hanging in the sky near the stage in the center of the park.  We were amazed when we saw the fuse lighted up and the flame travelled from one end along the wires to the other end to light up the Christmas tree.  It was indeed magnificent as the lights were set in a twinkle-frenzy of five minutes per hour. 

Next to Rice Park, outside Landmark Center is Wells Fargo WinterSkate.  Yesterday marked its grand opening.  In addition to the tree-lighting-ceremony and the skating exhibitions, there were dance and music performances as well as fireworks. 

Parents, Poetry and Punch

My son’s school has a “parents, poetry and punch” event yesterday.  I am not able to attend because I work from home on Fridays and have to be in the office from Monday through Thursday.  My husband attended the event instead.  If you have been reading my articles, you know that I cannot praise enough the American educational system.  Others might not agree with me about the American education system.  To be precise, it is the American education system provided in a good school district that makes the difference.  America is nevertheless a country built upon capitalism.  The rich get richer and the good school districts with high property tax provide better and higher quality education.  Anyway, we can’t really complain much.  Even with some inconvenience caused by the heavy involvement required from the parents, it is a good thing.  Parent involvement is key to a child’s development both academically and socially. 

If you want to stay out of the spotlight, don’t bring my daughter with you.  Her non-stop chatting invites too much attention.  She is not a girl to be ignored or temporized.  She will make sure that you hear every word she said.  Wouldn’t you chuckle at the statement, “Hey, you are not listening” followed by the action of twisting your head towards her!  If you hear her talk, you will be illluded into thinking that you hear voice of a nightingale.  (I am probably over-exaggerated again.)    Wherever she goes, we will have strangers smiling at us, saying that she is so cute and her voice so sweet.  Occasionally, we will have strangers coming up to her, asking her name and age.  Luckily, she doesn’t know her home address and phone number. 

The problem with kids growing up in America is being overly friendly.  She is just like a typical American kid, unwary of strangers.  This reminds me of the little girl I met at the swimming pool.  She is not as talkative as my daughter; however, friendlier.  My daughter would not approach a stranger directly.  This little girl came up to us and started telling us stories like we were her best friends.

Kids Educational Games websites – Primary / Elementary School Students

Since I have talked about the favorite books that I like to read to our kids and the favorite books that my son likes to read, it doesn’t make sense to stop there without sharing with you some of the websites that my son visits.  They are websites provided by my son’s school.  We live in a very good school district.  The resource provided by the school is exceptionally good.  It is both entertaining and educational.  I only have time to browse the information provided through 3rd grade.  The one that my son likes to play the most is the game at planetturtle.com.   However, we are unable to log on from home.  I think that it has something to do with how our wireless system is set up.  We have to go to our local library to log on to the site so he can play.  He likes it a lot because he can play with kids from his school if they are logged on. 

It pays off to live in a good school district, though housing price was high, and the taxes are substantial.  However, we get to live in a nice neighborhood and our kids get to receive high quality education.  When looking at the pros and cons, the benefits outweigh the costs.  It makes no sense for us to trade off our living quality with high tuition cost of a private school.

There is a huge difference in the quality of education your kids will receive depending on which school district they attend.  We live in a very good school district.  Numerous parents with kids transferring to our school have stated the difference in quality they see and the huge progress their kids made.  I was somewhat surprised to learn from my colleagues and friends that a great many of the public schools do not have the homework system.  Even though our child rearing philosophy is quite different from those of the Taiwanese, we still believe in the homework system.  I am not talking about the heavy homework system implemented in Taiwan.  Homework is a tool to refresh what the kids learn in a day.  I like what I see from our school.  My son started writing homework when he was a kindergartener.  It is a refresher of what’s taught for the day, such as pairing up the words.  You can finish the homework in less than 5 minutes.  They are not hard but it helps the kids retain the knowledge with repetitive exercises. 

Since we are on the subject of children’s books, I would like to talk about some other books that my son reads by himself.  By the way, my son will be seven soon.  His favorite is the Magic Tree House book series by Mary Pope Osborne.  These chapter books target kids from kindergarten to 3^rd grade.  Each book is roughly 80 pages, written in simple sentence format, so it is pretty easy for kids who start to read chapter books.  The stories are entertaining and full of imagination. 

Chapter books - http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/magictreehouse/books.html

I highly recommend the Skippyjon Jones book series by Judith Byron Schachner for young children.  These book series target children from kindergarten to third grade (in an English speaking environment).  I like to read them to my kids, one in preschool (roughly over 3 years old) and one in first grade (close to seven years old).  It is about a hyperactive Hispanic siamese cat, Skippyjon Jone, which has ears too big for his head and a head too big for his body.  He has a fantastic imagination, too wild for his mummy to handle.  The stories are hilarious.  They often made our kids laugh.  Apart from being hilarious, the books are also a good practice material for my son to brush up his Spanish vocabulary.

Here is Skippyjon Jones' website:  http://www.skippyjonjones.com/

These are the books I have read to my kids.

I just came back from my son's Halloween Party at school.  It is so amazing to see so many kids in costumes.  Some were really innovative and funny.  Here are some of the pictures I took.  I am sorry that I cannot enlarge the photos.  This is to protect the kids' identities. 

My daughter had her Halloween parade yesterday at her daycare.  I didn't have time to attend so I don't have pictures of her addressing as a Hello Kitty princess.  I will take the pictures tomorrow when she and her brother go out to trick or treat. 

My son and his photographic memory

When I said that my son has a photographic memory, I didn’t mean on everything.  Wouldn’t it be nice that your kids have a photographic memory on their academic studies?  This way, parenting would be a lot easier.  I would not have to chase after him to get his homework done and readings completed for the day.

Talking about my daughter’s obsession with Hello Kitty was a digression from the topic about Minnesota winter in the article “Is it a fluke?”  To make it easier for the readers to find what they want to read, I decided to pull out the content related to my daughter’s obsession and write a separate article about it.  I also post some pictures, just for kicks. 

Talking about Hello Kitty, my daughter has a complete wardrobe of Hello Kitty clothes, jackets, socks, pants, shorts, tops, dresses, underwear, skirts, belt, leggings, umbrella, slippers, swimsuit, sunglasses, lip balms, hair brush, mirror, head band, pony tail, bandage, tattoos, backpack, handbag, lunchboxes, water bottles, glues, pencil sharpener, crayons, pens, marker, stickers, stamps, plates, bowls, spoons, folks, cups, alarm clock, toothbrushes, toothpaste, DVDs, books, Christmas stocking, piggybank, toy cell phone, candy, plush toys, dresser toy with music, puzzles, ring toss rings with base of Hello Kitty, and etc.  You name it.  We have it.  As you can see, I might have given in too quickly to her.   

A Bones Scavenger Hunt

Yesterday afternoon, my neighbor came over and asked us to join them on a bones scavenger hunt.  We live next to a natural park so we have lots of wild animals.  We did manage to find some bone fragments.  We believe they were victims of the coyote(s).  I don’t know if there is more than one coyote or not.  To me, they look alike.  Anyway, it was fun and healthier to educate the kids in nature.    

My daughter is a chatterbox.  There is not a moment of silence with her at your side.  It is so funny watching the two opposite personalities of my kids.  My son keeps the motto “silence is gold” dear to his heart.  

----- To be continued ----

Can you see the resemblance?