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Source Cited: http://www.ahaparenting.com/ages-stages/toddlers/toddler-preschooler-tv-computer
Sometimes doing new things can be daunting. It’s intimidating, frustrating, and can lead to feelings of inferiority of the subject or of the teacher. This road block is nothing new.
It stems from fear.
Mostly fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, or fear of rejection. Perhaps combinations of these fears. So we avoid the pain.
In an attempt to minimize pain, we demote this intimidating subject as something unimportant and therefore care less and less about it. In return, this attitude protects our ego.
This is the driving force behind the dejected learner. Soon this process becomes second nature and is the first line of defense for ANYTHING that comes their way that is perceived as causing pain.
It’s a vicious cycle. As teachers, we must fight against it.
Submitted for your approval:
Go get some lessons!
This is a website that teaches you the ins and outs of chess. From learning how the pieces move to advanced strategies.
With videos, games, and tactical exercises; you are equipped to learn and study chess at a high level.
I think this creates a lot of opportunities for the student to use their creative talents. Once strategies and deep understanding of the game are developed, the student should be able to use their creative mind to play chess. I think this is a great resource.
Here is a sample video
I wanted to make sure you were aware of it for the coming school year.
Chess has now become fun and cool.
Chess club anyone?
I received an email a few days ago offering my readers $5 at Educents. I have been watching them for the past year and they have had some great buys and great products to promote creative education. So if you’re in the market for educational products, as many homeschooling families are purchasing curriculum at this time, here is $5 to a great resource if you’re a new customer. Just click on the big red $5.
I have been away from the blogosphere for a while (does that terminology still exist?). I have shut down a failed website on music education, redecorated my office for better aesthetics and functionality, and starting new projects for myself and my family that I am really excited about.
However, I am not going into that today. I want to share with you something that I read recently. I think this article may change the way I homeschool forever because so far the implementation of ideas I gleaned from this article has worked extremely well.
I have been inspired this week.
I took my family out to a pizzeria and we sat down in the back room away from the main dining room. This room is normally reserved for sporting events (as evidenced by their large T.V.s) but since we are out of season, so to speak, it was just background noise. Until this commercial came on:
I love seeing a composer’s talents utilized in such a creative fashion. You can actually hear the song they intended through the water. So this inspired me to write some tutorials on how one could do this in their own home. If you have some talent and experience in music and rhythm, this will be easy for you. However, if you don’t have any, don’t worry. I have a fool proof way anyone could come up with something like this.
Here is another talented example:
So how do you get started? Well, find some things around the house, garage, or closet and see what you can find that could become a percussion instrument. In the following weeks, I will show you how to use them.
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I hope all of you are enjoying these creative genius activities. I know that you may be a bit out of your comfort zone (I often am) but it gets better, trust me.
With my current piano students, I am having them compose their own song. Paradoxically, the younger ones are having an easier time even though they are less experienced. The older ones (near teen age and teens) are having a harder time. They expect there to be a right or wrong answer. They sit at the piano creating nothing because they are too judgmental. I met with one student yesterday having a very hard time. I finally got him to boil the problem down to fear. He was afraid it wasn’t going to be good. He feared criticism.
I told him that he would have to take a small risk. I wasn’t going to get on his case. I also told him no one at the recital was going to judge his composition or him because they haven’t composed before. I told him to risk the criticism, shove fear aside, and just write something! The pep talk seemed to work after I gave him a few pointers and told him to at least write 8 measures worth of music.
So why tell you this? Risk creativity. Be bold in just one creative pursuit. If it’s not your size, you don’t have to try it on more than once.
In the last creative genius post, you were to connect 9 dots using just 1 line. Here are two ways you could have solved it.
Well, I think I have learned that the beginning of the week for creative genius practice is too busy for me. So I am going to shoot for the middle of the week.
So how did you do on the last problem?
Did you get all 9 dots lined up with only 3 lines?
I hope you did! If not, here is an idea to help you.
I gave you a clue: Use your TAN lines. TAN being all capitalized….for “tangent”. If you look below, the 3 lines become tangent lines for 2 out of 3 circles in each row.
The lines do meet together, I just didn’t have enough room in my graphic editor. Oh well.
Now we get to try this with one line.
Notice: The instructions are a bit different so you have even more freedom to be creative with the solution.
What would you do? Leave your possible solutions in the comments below.
This late creative genius post is brought to you by the flu. My daughter is currently in the trenches and it started yesterday. Our family has been sick since Dec 26th. It has been a veritable blitzkrieg of disease on our house. But now to the main issue:
In the last creative genius post, you were supposed to connect a matrix of dots with just 4 straight lines without lifting your pencil. Now, there are many different ways to accomplish this but here is the most famous one:
To think outside of the box on this one, you have to realize…there is no spoon…I mean box. A lot of people will automatically assume they cannot go outside of the boarders that are artificially created by the rows and columns of the dots. So this brings us to our new one: Continue reading
The Creative Dad HomeSchooling Blog 