What most educational systems don’t account for is the vast discrepancy between students and their individual learning styles or ‘intelligences’. Some students are great at math or reading, while others are great learning a new sport or a new song. The key to a good education is allowing for all of the intelligences to be built on.

As a homeschooling parent/teacher, I found Dr. Mercola’s simple article about ‘multiple intelligences’ did a great job of outlining each learning style in an easy-to-understand format. In fact, I could easily recognize most of my strengths as well as my daughter’s, too.

But, the fascinating thing (to me anyway) was the link to an online test to determine your percentages of each intelligence. After I took the test and had fun dissecting my own chart, I had my 7 year old take it, too. (I wouldn’t suggest it for anyone much younger unless you’re ready to re-phrase most of the questions and even answer the questions for them.) What was amazing to me, was seeing how she answered differently than I would have for her. It turns out that she’s stronger in some areas than I’ve given her credit for, and vice versa.

Of course, the next step is for me to start recognizing her most prominent intelligences and allowing her the space to do more of her school work aligned with those strengths while not neglecting the weaker areas. Should make for an interesting next few months…

What about you? Have you heard of these intelligences before? If you have, is it now easier for you (or your student) to complete necessary tasks with this information in mind? Share your stories!

Second disclaimer:
I married into a racing family that LOVES Indy racing. I have become thusly indoctrinated into the world of open-wheel auto racing and now enjoy a good race alongside all the other men in my husband’s family.

Put those two things together and this book was just meant to be in my hands!

The way that the author tells the story through the eyes of the dog, Enzo, is actually a fascinating idea that works beautifully! The racing analogies and metaphors that are used throughout the book are great, too. I feel like I not only learned a little more about racing, but a little more about how to apply those lessons to living life, too.

An emotional and deep read that keeps from becoming too serious through the levity of Enzo’s narration, this is a book I definitely plan to own and read again.

View all my reviews >>

I called a friend of mine who is very in touch with all things organic, natural, and homeopathic and begged her for a natural remedy to help us through the weekend. And of course, she had one! I had totally forgotten about this solution until a mutual friend of ours came to a Mom’s Night Out with her sick baby who also had an ear infection. Not only did my friend tell this mom how to take care of it, another mom in the group walked into the kitchen, prepared this solution below and took it to my friend to administer to the desperate mom’s crying baby. The mom sent an email to all of us the next day thanking our friends for helping her out and ecstatic that the solution took care of her baby’s ear infection without a doctor’s visit!

(Obviously, you’ll want to go with your gut on anything anyone recommends for treating your children – if you’re not comfortable with it, don’t do it! Research another solution and go with what gives you (and your partner) the most peace. Just my own little disclaimer here before dispensing ‘medical’ advice…)

Here’s my friend’s instructions:

For ear infection: Pour 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan with some 2-3 cloves of diced garlic. Cook it until you get most of the aroma out of the garlic. (I think she cooked it for about 5-8 minutes.) Let it cool to room temperature (obviously!) before pouring the liquid into the ear (4 to 10 drops). You can use a small spoon or even an eye dropper to administer the liquid. You can pour it inside of the ear as many times you want, depending on the severity of the infection, but I would recommend that you wait about 1 hour in between ‘doses’.

By the way, another discussion that came up that night related to ear infections was the D word. That’s right – DAIRY. It seems that there is some link between children that get multiple ear infections when they’re little and dairy products. Sometimes, the ear infections are acting as an allergic reaction to the dairy, and when you’re able to wean the child off of dairy, the ear infections decrease. Just an idea for those of you moms that are pulling your hair out trying to figure out why the ear infections keep happening.

One last idea my friend sent us to try is a natural remedy for fever. Cut a garlic clove or an onion in half. Rub the cut side of the garlic or onion on the feet. Your feet actually absorb and process things rather quickly and this natural remedy has worked for MANY years before Tylenol was invented.

Not only has my friend done these things with her own children, but a couple of the other moms in our group have also tried these natural remedies for ear infections and fever with great success. If you try either of these ideas, please leave us a comment to let us know how it worked for you!

Coming of age in the years of living dangerously

So what things did you do as a kid that you wish your kids could do also? Or that you wouldn’t allow your kids to do nowadays?? Leave a comment below…

Holy cow!! Great use of visuals to help explain the proposed budget cuts and their actual impact on the overall budget.

I love the twist of Kate reading Me Too Iguana (one of my sister’s childhood faves) to everyone. Of course, some of my fondest childhood memories include listening to that beautiful gray-haired woman read me bedtime stories – specifically from a big book of Uncle Wiggily’s Tales. I still get teary-eyed when my kiddos ask to pull down that special book off the shelf to read another adventure of the long-eared gentleman.

Just wanted to share a little moment of our life with you all today, and encourage you to go read one of your favorite books with your little ones.

Wondering what to do with your elementary age kiddos over the summer? Have a Mac at home that they’re wanting to learn more about? Apple stores are offering summer camps where your kids can learn all about stuff to do on a Mac. Here’s what they have to say:

Your kids could talk about what they did this summer—or just press Play. At Apple Camp, kids ages 8-12 learn how to do cool stuff on a Mac: make a movie, show off photos like a pro, write and record a song, or create a multimedia presentation. You can sign up for as many three-hour workshops as you like. But space is limited, so do it soon. Then get ready for an adventure.

Interested? Check out Apple’s Summer Camp page here.

“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”

For Mother’s Day we have a tradition of planting in our garden in the back yard. The kids help pick out what we want to plant while we’re at the nursery, then enjoy digging holes in the garden to plant their favorites.

Since Kate and I are studying butterflies for her lapbook (and since we both like butterflies a lot), we decided to plant some milkweed to attract Monarchs. Monarch butterflies like to not only sip the nectar from the flowers of these plants, but they also like to lay their eggs on the leaves. The baby caterpillars then eat the leaves as they grow, turn into chrysalises, and then eventually finish the life cycle to become an adult Monarch butterfly.

Within only an hour of planting our milkweed in the back yard, we spotted a Monarch butterfly flitting around the plants over and over for a good 10-15 minutes. Little did we know that it was a she and she was actually laying her eggs! Just a few days after planting is when we noticed the eggs on the undersides of the leaves and then a couple of days later we were already noticing TINY green caterpillars starting to gnaw holes in the leaves.

Today, only one week after planting, we saw a much larger yellow/white striped caterpillar on the underside of one of the leaves.

Needless to say, we are all very excited to get the opportunity to watch the life cycle of a butterfly in our own backyard!! And I just had to share it with you all! I’ll keep you posted as our caterpillars grow larger and turn into chrysalises. We can hardly wait!

And my two favorites:

so true…