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By LitCraft, July 21, 2010 7:13 am

At around 7 months, babies all begin to make the same “ba ba ba” noises. The babbling noises aren’t the only indication that babies are aware of speech patterns. Babies also talk with their hands.  they make rhythmic motions with their hands that follow speech patterns.

Laura Ann Petitto, a Professor in the Department of Education and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College did research in 2001 on children of deaf parents.

According to Petitto, The results of the study, titled “Language Rhythms in Babies’ Hand Movements,” support the idea that babies are born with sensitivity to highly specific rhythmic patterns found in natural language–a sensitivity that is so powerful that a baby can find and produce the rhythms of language on the hand as equally as is possible on the tongue.”

“The sing-song way in which delighted parents speak to their baby, and the playful rhyming games common to nursery rhymes at home and in school, are clearly more important for a child’s developing brain than we ever imagined, and they provide an important tool for the young child to discover the grammar and structure of her native language.”

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By LitCraft, June 24, 2010 4:08 pm

1. Musical training helps develop brain areas involved in language and reasoning. Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the left side of the brain.

2. There is a link between music and spatial intelligence (ability to perceive the world accurately to form mental pictures of things). This kind of intelligence is necessary for solving math problems to being able to pack a backpack with everything that will be needed for the day.

3. Studies show that students who study arts are more successful on standardized tests.

4. Study of the arts provides children with an internal glimpse of other cultures.

5. Students of music learn what constitutes good, as opposed to mediocre work. These standards demand a new level of excellence and require students to stretch their inner resources.

6. Students learn the value of sustained effort to achieve, and the concrete rewards of hard work.

7. Music study enhances teamwork and discipline to achieve a single goal, the performance, and must commit to learning, attend rehearsals, and practice.

8. Music provides children with a means of self-expression. Self-esteem is a by-product of this self-expression.

9. Music study focuses on “doing,” as opposed to observing, and teaches students how to perform.

10. Arts education exposes children to the incomparable.

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By LitCraft, May 19, 2010 8:34 am

The Braille Bug offers a free braille card, games, a reading club and more. You can also receive a free braille card by mail.

The word braille is shown here in braille. The site is hosted by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). It’s a fun resource, and one that all literacy programs should have bookmarked.

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By LitCraft, May 17, 2010 2:32 pm

“From Homeless to Harvard” is a movie about Liz Murray’s life. Miss Murray was born in September of 1980. Her parents were poor, HIV infected, drug addicts in New York.

When Liz was 15 her mother died of AIDS, leaving Liz and her sister homeless. While caring for her sister, Liz graduated from high school in two years and went on to Harvard. She left Harvard from 2003 to 2006 to care for her father. After his death in 2006, she returned to Harvard and graduated in 2009 with a bachelors degree in psychology.

She is currently pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology at Harvard. She accepts engagements as a motivational speaker.

In interviews and during her speaking engagements, Liz Murray thanks her parents for the gift of literacy. She feels strongly that her ability to read well was the tool that allowed her to pursue her goals and achieve them.

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By LitCraft, May 5, 2010 11:15 am

Some studies suggest that first and last name initials may affect grades.

Yale colleagues Simmons and Nelson found a relationship with students names and grade point averages. Those with the initials C and D were likely to have lower scores than those with the initials A or B.

Click here for the report.

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By LitCraft, April 30, 2010 6:35 am

Dana Carter continues her home schooling interview.

LV: What methods of schooling did you consider?

Parents who opt out of traditional schooling have several options. A parent can register their home as a school in my state (California). Different states may have different requirements for parents who aren’t part of a formal program.

Alternately, parents can participate in an independent schooling program (ISP). This is a school that warehouses transcripts and handles some paperwork, but the parent is the principal teacher, teaches at home, and generates the transcripts and other paperwork.

The U.S. government recognizes parents as their children’s primary teachers. If parents want to have a co-op school, some states require a credentialed teacher as the primary instructor unless parents do the teaching. This varies by state.

I chose to become part of an ISP, so that’s the method I’m most familiar with.

LV: What other choices did home schooling allow you to make?

Curriculum is always a choice. I wanted my son to go to college, so we chose the curriculum that a typical high school student would have. My son’s athletic team was his physical ed. class. Music lessons were provided by a teacher with me present. When he surpassed my mathematics knowledge, I let him take those classes at a junior college. Many colleges and universities allow students to take classes. These classes can be used for high school and college credit, so that was a bonus.

We also had a lot of flexibility in scheduling. The typical class is 75 hours of class time with homework. The home schooled student can wrap this time around other activities. My son had vacations that included music lessons, and Spanish lessons. There’s so much more flexibility.

LV: What educational goals did home schooling meet?

College was a goal, and my son went to college with more than a year of lower division units completed. His SAT scores are high, and that was important. Another goal was that he learn to focus and schedule his activities responsibly. He is extremely self directed and his time management skills are great. We also wanted to choose our electives, and home schooling allowed us to include Bible study and other unique subjects as part of his curriculum.

LV: Would you do anything differently?

The only thing I’d do differently is start him on music lessons sooner. I think music is far more important than most administrators and parents realize. If I had it to do over again, I would stick with home schooling all the way. I enjoyed teaching him, and he enjoyed learning more.

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By LitCraft, April 30, 2010 6:23 am

Creating Habits for Success involves continually reviewing your activity. This is the same activity you did two days ago.

Write down what you did, just like you did in part 2.

Don’t bother analyzing why you didn’t achieve any goals. That is a separate activity for a separate day. Just take time to update your list and write down which goals were completed. It’s important to acknowledge what works as being separate from what doesn’t work.

Write down how much time you spent on your daily goals. Include the exact time. Include any distractions that you ignored. For example:

I practiced the harp for 25 minutes and ignored the ringing phone!

Tomorrow we’ll get to part 5, and we’ll be one step closer to success.

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By LitCraft, April 29, 2010 7:43 am

It’s time to analyze your results for creating habits for success.

Creating habits for success requires that you determine what stands in the way of implementing those habits. So get your list from yesterday and analyze your results.

Why didn’t something get done? Was there a time conflict? Were your daily goals impossible to implement with your resources: time, money, energy, and inclination?

Write these things down. For every single daily goal that didn’t get met, you should generate a list of reasons. Take time today to really reflect on why something didn’t get done. Don’t be hard on yourself. Just acknowledge that there are only 24 hours in a day, and your time and other resources get allocated to other things. The point of this exercise is to determine where your new habit will and won’t fit into your existing routine.

Keep these lists handy. You’ll be updating them as you continue to create successful habits.

Tomorrow: we’ll refocus and continue.

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By LitCraft, April 29, 2010 6:58 am

Dana Carter is a parent who chose home schooling. She’s one of many. The number of home-schooled students is growing. Here’s an interview with one parent who left traditional, public education in high-school and switched to home schooling.

LV: How did your home environment affect your decision to home school?

I was a single parent. Unlike families that have one parent at home all day, I had to work outside the home. I also had just one child. This meant that I didn’t need curriculum for more than one grade level. It also meant I didn’t have lots of spare time.

When my son was young, he didn’t have a peer group outside of school, so I left him in public school. Once he entered high school, that changed.

LV: When did you first consider home schooling, and how long did it take you to make the switch?

I considered it when my son was in junior high. I tried it for a week, but switched back to public school. We didn’t have a network of other home-schooling families. I really wasn’t ready to go it alone. I think networking is extremely important for a person’s intellect, social life, mental stimulation, work goals, and religious life.

It wasn’t until my son was in his freshman year of high school that we made the switch.

LV: Mid year?

Yes. After junior high, we moved from a small town to a large city. My son complained that all the students were cheating. He also didn’t like the values of the students there. He felt that they were extremely materialistic, into drugs, unaware of global or national politics and social issues, and overly concerned with trivial activities. He was very focussed on his future and wanted to be in an environment that allowed him to achieve goals.

I didn’t care for the school district. It was far less tailored to individual students than our small-town schools had been. I felt like it was a factory designed to warehouse 3,000 students and spit them out after 4 years, with no regard for the results.

The city also offered us two important networks: a home schooling ISP with a 17 year history of success, and a nationally competitive athletic team. Those two networks gave me the community I was looking for as a home schooling parent. They provided a learning method with curriculum in place, two social networks that were focussed on achievement, and two groups of people who were social and supportive of their members.

These two networks made the decision easy for me.

In her continuing interview tomorrow, Dana discusses how she home schooled her son.

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By LitCraft, April 28, 2010 7:35 am

The second activity for creating your habit for success is to monitor your results.

This is very important. Don’t criticize your results, just write them down. The idea is to keep track of what you did do. Successful habits are on the way, and this is the process for creating them.

If you completed all of the activities on your list, write that down. If you didn’t do the list items, write that down.

The important thing here is to get a very clear picture of what you did. You already know what you haven’t gotten done to achieve your goals. This list is to determine what you are doing.

Part 3 is the next critical step. It’s the review process and it begins tomorrow.