Mr. Jeremy

Remainders (1/10)

2011-01-10T22:54:00.000+09:00

I recently put together a list of Bible verses about love. What amazed me as I researched for it was the overwhelming number of verses about God's love for us compared with verses about our love for God or others. It's really true that "we love because he first loved us."

Justin Hyde gives a peek into his family's intentional evenings in a blog post titled "How I Pastor My Family."

If your the type who isn't into plowing through the Bible in a year, then maybe the Daily Bible Meditation Guide (pdf) is something you would be interested in. Actually, the whole life2gether.com blog is really good. (via)

Flip teaching, or backwards teaching, is a classroom teaching innovation that interests me. The idea is that kids watch lectures and videos at home, and then class is for hands-on work and face-to-face interaction with teacher and peers. Check out this article in the Daily Riff and this one in the Telegraph. Like many other educational "innovations," homeschoolers have been doing it for a long time.

Beware New Year's Resolutions

2011-01-06T22:56:00.000+09:00

by SarahFranco CC2.0

Not to put a damper on New Year's aspirations, but a book I'm reading suggests a good test when deciding whether to make a new commitment:

Is this activity worth my time?

What will I have to eliminate to make room for it?

What will its impact be on my family life?

The book I'm reading is called Help for the Harried Homeschooler: A Practical Guide to Balancing Your Child's Education with the Rest of Your Life by Christine M. Field. It's a good book; I may write more about it later. She actually gets the test from James Dobson's pamphlet, "Fatigue and the Homemaker."

Chess with My Son: 8 Steps to Beating Dad

2011-01-04T23:25:00.000+09:00

photo by Jose Daniel Martinez (CC3.0)

My ten-year-old son beat me at chess today for the first time. Not to make excuses, but the sun was in my eyes, not to mention that annoying hangnail I've been nursing. Kidding aside, I knew the time would come; I just didn't think it would be so soon!

Here is how he learned to play chess and beat me. Some things I taught him, and some he learned on his own.

I first taught him how to set up the chess board and all the ways that pieces can move and take opposing pieces.

I talked him through our first several games as we played, telling him what I was doing and why. I also asked him to explain his moves to me, and I gave him feedback on his strategy.

When we first started playing, I allowed him to turn the board around at any point in the game (as long as he wasn't in check) and for us to finish the game playing each other's original pieces.

I started playing with just half of my pieces, then increased the number of pieces I used as he improved.

I let him take back moves if I hadn't yet touched a piece.

I never lost on purpose; I handicapped myself, but always played to win. This kept things fun for both of us.

Recently, he read this beginning chess book and did the exercises in it.

He played a chess game on my ipod touch on the way to Kyoto and back.

And today he beat me with both of us playing at full strength! I'm proud of him. Pretty soon he'll be spotting me pieces just to keep our games interesting.

Japanese Kite-Flying on New Year's Day

2011-01-01T13:30:00.000+09:00

Schoolchildren in Japan often make kites during the winter holidays and fly them on New Year's Day. Timothy made one this year. He designed, built, and flew it himself. It's made of paper and bamboo sticks. The first flight ended with the kite in a tree. After patching it up, he went back and flew it well in the park, as well as could be expected on a windless day.

Japanese Paper Kite (patched up)

This kite will fly!

Maybe next year, we try to make a kite like the one on the cover of this book.

Benefits of Sudoku

2010-12-29T23:17:00.002+09:00

We're on a sudoku kick at the moment. I spent a couple hours today on a really tough one and messed it up twice. Timothy, Rina, Tomomi and her parents are all in on the action. Besides being fun, addictive, and sometimes frustrating, sudoku helps development in the following areas.

logic
problem solving
working memory
concentration
perseverance
pattern recognition
creativity
confidence
dealing with frustration

by jen_maiser

Of course it's important to start children out with easy puzzles so they don't get too frustrated right away and give up. You can model solving a puzzle and talk your way through it, but once your child has the basic concept, don't help too much. A big part of what makes sudoku fun is the satisfaction of completing a puzzle "all by myself!"

You can find easy printable sudoku puzzles beginning with 4x4 grids.

Here is a link to the more typical 9x9 sudoku grids with various levels of difficulty.

If you'd rather work with words than numbers, there are lots of logic puzzles that are more like story problems. Here is a collection of 12 printable logic puzzles with grids.

Sometimes it's fun to work through a puzzle book from easy to hard. If you want to try that, here are some links.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

2010-12-28T23:53:00.000+09:00

I watched "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" today with my kids. What a fun and wacky movie! Like many of the other animated movies that come out these days, it touched on several important themes without being too heavy handed.

Generation and communication gap between fathers and sons. "Not every sardine was meant to swim, son."" I don't understand fishing metaphors!"

Large food portions and obesity. "Bigger is better!"

Smart girls/women who act dumb to be accepted. "It's a solid, it's a liquid, it's a viscoelastic polymer made out of polypeptide chains but you eat it! I mean, it tastes good! "

Living on past glories. "I'm Baby Brent!"

Redeeming past failures. Spray-on shoes

Unintended consequences of messing with nature.

I also loved the voice casting, especially these two guys. Know who they are? The first one is easy.

Ice Skating at Hirakata Park in Osaka

2010-12-28T21:10:00.000+09:00

It has become a winter family tradition for us to skate at the Hirakata Park ice rink in Osaka. This year Daniel had grown into the smallest size of rental skates so he came with us and had his first ice skating experience. He got tired of skating after about one minute ("It's fun but the ice is too slippery") and went to play in the fake snow for a while.

He came back later and gave it another go. This time he was able to keep his feet under him and skate around the rink several times (with help). He was the littlest guy on the rink and had quite the fan club of junior-high girls. "Soooo cuuute!"

Rina and Timothy somehow improved a lot even though we hadn't been skating in a year. Between hauling Daniel back and forth to and from the snow area and helping him skate, Tomomi and I even had a little time to hold hands and skate around like teenageers.

Hirakata Park is a nice place for ice skating in the Osaka area but it's a little pricey. If you go by train, you can save quite a bit of money by purchasing a combination train/park entrance/skate rink entrance ticket from any Keihan railway ticket office. This year they are calling it the HiraPa Go!Go! Ticket. If the link is broken, search google for ひらパーGo!Go!チケット.

Skating with my kids made me think of this book about a father taking his children skating for their first time.

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-24T17:56:00.000+09:00

Join Johnny and June Cash as they visit with Billy Graham and sing my favorite Christmas song, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." (RSS or email readers, you may need to click through to see the video.) I featured this song two years ago at Christmas, but it's worth sharing again.

The lyrics are from a poem that Longfellow wrote during the Civil War shortly after his son had been severely wounded and his wife had died in a fire. If he could proclaim the last stanza in those times, then we certainly can in these times too.

"Christmas Bells"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat