THINGS I WOULDN'T KNOW IF I WAS NOT A READER

Things I wouldn’t Know if I were not a reader.

1. Elfshot, small stones believed by medieval people to be arrowheads shot from fairies. These are believed to protect humans.

2. Tattoos are often used as protective devises.

3. A Crayola will burn for thirty minutes. They make great cheap candles.

4, Tarragon, the spice, is used in magic spells for courage as tarragon means little dragon.

5. The Greeks believed in two kinds of fate. Ananke -just because you are there.Hurricane katrina, ten years ago wiped out whole towns. Everyone was affected. Heimarmene, stuff that happens because of the choices you made. Cynics were a cult who spent their time figure out the two kinds of fate.

6. Dandelions are for courage, also to keep from being evicted. Collect dandelions and place them around the apartment or home.

7. Ben Franklin published “Pamela,” the first novel published in the colonies that would become the U.S. Written by Samuel Richardson, it was originally published in England and reprinted by Franklin in 1744.

8. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans is at Bronx Community College in New York. Inductees have a bust made by a famous sculptor.Edgar Allan Poe’s sculptor was Daniel Chester French, who also sculpted the Lincoln Memorial This was America’s first Hall of Fame. The only non American appears to be General Lafayette,who was granted honorary U.S. citizenship. 9. When Teddy Roosevelt was police commissioner in New York, he took steps to preserve Edgar Allan Poe’s home in New York. The house Poe rented is still there on a land called Poe Park.

10. Gerardus Mercator, a cartographer born in 1512 coined the word “Atlas” after a mythical Titan whom he idolized? Mercator used the word “Atlas” for his collection of world maps.

11. Who gets heart and kidney transplants? One prison inmate received a heart transplant which will probably end up costing taxpayers a million dollars. A death row inmate gets dialysis and has been recommended for a kidney transplant.

12. There are 193 nation members of the United Nations.

A question for the research minded. Could General Lafayette who was, of course, born in France, have become president of the U.S.?

WHAT TO DO WITH A POEM

Wednesday is Poems Prayers, Promises Day for our blog. Let’s start with a poem.

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

Emily Dickinson.

What can you do with a poem?

Memorize it.

Take it apart and study the words and lines.

Write a response. What do you think of lines like “Prancing poetry”?

Listen to it. Some online sites have a reader reciting the poem.

Learn more about the life of the author.

Find other poems by this author.

SONGS AS MNEMONICS

People in my generation know what year the battle of New Orleans was fought. We simply remember the first line of a Johnny Horton hit song. “In 1814, we took a little trip along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.”

Johnny Horton had an entire album of songs about history, “October 1871, that’s when this great big fie begun.” It was easy to learn history from Johnny Horton.

Many years later Tom Lehrer sang about the “Elements.” Hundreds of kids memorized the lyrics and the elements. Gosh that was fun. And while singing along with Lehner or with their friends, kids didn’t even have to use chaining or pegging.

In my record collection, I have an album that includes campaign songs from each president and another album that includes campaign songs from some of the presidential losers. Google songs about history. A huge list will come up.

There are songs about adverbs, adjectives, nouns and even pronouns. On the old "Mickey Mouse Club" television program, Jiminy Cricket sang about the "ENCYCLOPEDIA." He spelled out the letters.

The days of having to buy these albums are over, thanks to Youtube, where you can find most of the songs I mentioned and more.

ANSWERS TO PRESIDENTS QUIZ

QUESTIONS:

1. In what year were each of the four men with birthdays in February born?

2. Who was the first president born in the 19th century?

3. Who was the first president born in the 20th century?

4. Who was the first president to be born after the American Revolution?

5. What president had the campaign slogan, “I like Ike.”

6. Teddy Roosevelt’s niece Eleanor married a future president while Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House? What was the name of her husband?

7. Who was president when the Berlin Wall was torn down?

8. What president wrote the best selling book, “Profiles In Courage”?

9. How many presidents were assassinated?

10. What president had a popular dog named Fala?

ANSWERS:

1. Washington 1732, William Henry Harrison 1773, Lincoln 1809, Reagan 1911.

2. Milliard Fillmore 1800.

3. John F. Kennedy, born in 1917,

4. James K Polk was born in 1795.

5. Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower.

6. Eleanor Roosevelt marrie her fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

7. George Herbert Walker Bush

8. John F. Kennedy.

9. Four

10.Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Pick up a biography of one of our presidents or first ladies and read about his or her life.

When historians are asked to rank the presidents, the three top ranked are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Look these men up in an encyclopedia. Why do you think they rank at the top?

A DOG HOUSE, A MOUSE AND A BUNCH OF PREPOSITIONS

Yesterday I showed you the PAO (Person, Action, Object) method of creating a pegging list. It is a preferred method of memory competition champs and because everybody’s PAO list is different, it is often well suited to the individual student and less boring than the alphabet.

I will be giving you other pegging lists. But practice with this one for awhile.

As a college English instructor , I found an alternative use for PAO lists. I used it to introduce students to the parts of speech.

In class we followed the steps of yesterday’s blog. We created a list of people, and then a list of transitive verbs (They take an object) and finally a list of nouns that named people places or things.

Put the items in the list together in fun ways and you have a PAO list.

Barack Obama (person) sews (action) coats (object).

Lady Gaga buys cats.

Mickey Mouse chases bumblebees.

The sentences can have some nonsense in them because this makes them easier to remember.

Those objects (coats, cats and bumblebees) are all direct objects. They get their action directly from the verb.

I mentioned yesterday there were two other types of objects.

Indirect Object

I bought my brother a car.

Obviously I didn’t buy my brother. I bought the car. So brother is the indirect object.

I plowed my neighbor’s driveway. Surely I didn’t plow my neighbor. He is the indirect object.

Find the indirect object by rewriting the sentence. If I can put either of the prepositions “for” or “to” in front of the word, that word is an indirect object.

I bought a car for my brother.

I plowed the driveway for my neighbor.

Object of a Preposition

When I was in grade school teachers told us if we could not recognize prepositions, we had to memorize the list in the book. I don’t think any of my classmates memorized the list. We all told ourselves we could recognize a preposition.

As a college instructor I have had students come up to me after class and start reciting the prepositions in alphabetical order. Those were the students who memorized the lists of prepositions. They learned them well, and all these years later were able to rattle off the list of prepositions.

“About, Above, Across, At…” These students could do the entire list.

We had a notetaker in class one day, and I asked her how she recognized prepositions. She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just do,” she said.

I am like that too. I just know a preposition when I see one. Two of my students taught me some easy methods for those who don’t recognize prepositions on sight and who never memorized a list of them.

The dog house rule:

If I can put the word in front of The dog house,” it is a preposition.

A mouse can go under the dog house: the dog can walk to the dog house. I can hang a bird feeder above the dog house.

Other prepositions are into, on in, of, from, for, beneath.

If you try this with a list of prepositions that you find online or in an English book, some may not work. “During” is a preposition, but it does not work with “the dog house.” There are a few others, but the dog house rule limits the prepositions you might have to memorize

Anyplace a Mouse Can Go

Another student told me a preposition is anyplace a mouse can go. Above, over, under, into, on, off, past, onto.

I hope these grammar tips help.

UNSCHOOLING - HOW ONE STUDENT - ME - MADE IT WORK.

Has unschooling ever worked for any student? It did for me.

I fell in love with American history at a young age. I read books about the American Revolution, westward movement and the presidents. Every week I went to the library and selected two of three books to devour. I read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s and Zane Gray’s books. I loved John Dickson Carr, whose mystery stories included locked room puzzles. They were great lessons in critical thinking, not that I knew that then.

Despite my passion for reading, I was not doing well in school. I was a strange kid with stringy brown hair that would not hold the bouffant hair styles so popular then. I wore thrift shop clothes, had cavities in my teeth and just didn’t make friends very well.

On the bus and on the playground, the bullies tormented me. I was ashamed of not having friends to play with, so I tried to hide in the bathroom with a book. The teachers would make me go outside.

I hated the lunches, so the teachers picked on me about that.

I was bored with the lessons. We studied the same things every year. Apostrophes have to be the most boring thing on earth, not to mention comparative and superlative adjectives.

I did poorly in all my subjects except history and English. I did well in history because it didn’t bore me, though the textbooks were not as good as the books I took from the library.

I did well in English because I was a reader. Maybe I didn’t know the comma rules or the nouns and verbs and other rules, but I had seen enough proper sentences in books that I could recognize the correct version. I was like a musician who plays by ear. I read and wrote by ear.

School did take its toll on me. I stopped even trying to study. I retreated into a world of daydreams. I watched television and read books because the fantasy worlds in both fed my daydreams.

But I did not just learn in books.

I joined a humane society and a writers club. These were adult evening activities, so even though I had no friends my own age, I spent time with intelligent mature people who did not repeat the same boring material over and over.

Unschooling will not work for all students. Most students don’t skip school to go to the library like I did. They have little or no interest in history, animal welfare or writing, but there has to be alternatives to public school for those of us who do not thrive there and cannot learn there.

Homeschooling is a great option, but most parents don’t have the resources for homeschooling. It takes time, effort and money.

What other options are there?

The granny cloud works in India, and I will have more about that and other options in future columns.

Learning Hack of the Day: Tweak

Find a system that works for you. When I studied writing, all the books and teachers said a journal should be hand written. It was the best way of getting in touch with feelings. One could sit on the bed, legs swinging, and pretend to be a child again as one scribbled down one's thoughts. Thoughts flowed more smoothly from hand to pen to paper. But computers and on-line journals quickly became popular. As a writing instructor, I taught as I had been taught. Write your journal in a notebook. But I quickly discovered, it is more efficient to type the material directly into the computer. It can be cut and pasted into the stories where fits.

In time planning, I would set aside special hours for cleaning house, exercising and writing. But cleaning and exercising are boring. Writing is hard work. I learned to take fifteen minute cleaning, eating or exercise breaks.

Longhand journals and blocks of time make sense to some people and to lots of writers. I still journal and plan my time, but I tweak it. I make the adjustments that are right for me. You can do the same thing. Shop Amazon - Textbook Trade-In - Get Up to 80% Back Shop Amazon - Find the Value of Your Video Games