Archive for the 'School' Category

Helping Kids Stay Organized

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Productivity blog The Daily Saint offers some tips on Teaching GTD to Young People. GTD stands for “Getting Things Done”, a productivity system developed by David Allen and detailed in his aptly titled book, Getting Things Done. GTD emphasizes simplicity, keeping the mind clear by keeping lists of tasks that need to be done, and […]

Building Confidence

Monday, October 29th, 2007

“Always leave on a good note”. This is the advice Lisa Hendry of Productivity @ Home gives in her article Building Confidence in Children.The idea is to always let children finish a project, activity, or whatever with a success, however small — a homework problem done correctly, a goal scored, etc. That way they’ll remember […]

Giving the Right Kind of Praise

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

Cultivate Greatness has a powerful, long piece on current research into the role parental praise plays in encouraging children to succeed. As it happens, it’s not all about building up self-esteem by telling your children how smart they are. Instead, researchers find that kids do best when parents commend their hard work — and […]

Against Homeschooling

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

A few months ago, our 11-year old girl came home from spending the weekend at dad’s with a proposal. Her 11-year old step-sister, a competing martial artist who spends a lot of time out of town at competitions, was going to be homeschooled and her step-mother thought she should join them.
Now, there’s some history […]

The Death of Handwriting?

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

My dad just moved and is unpacking some boxes that have been packed for decades. He was showing me a stack of my fifth and sixth grade papers, and I noticed how good my handwriting was then compared to my sixth and seventh grade step-kids. I don’t think I held any particular fondness for […]