Sunday, December 29, 2013

New Year Joy and Challenges

  As the New Year starts I am having a lot of fun reviewing the greatness of 2013 with family members and getting excited about what 2014 will bring. We always take any bad things that happened and write them down on a piece of paper then bury the paper in a snow drift. As the snow melts in the spring the paper will disintegrate emphasizing that we need to discard the bad and carry forward the good.

  The new year is a time for planning the future. What are we going to accomplish and learn?  I was taught an important lesson at Christmas time. Never underestimate the learning curve on a young child. My granddaughter is just 3 years old and most of the family thought she was not going to be able to operate a computer, even though she has played on the iPad for several years. I bought her the internet course ABCMouse. She was a little confused when I set my computer in front of her and handed her the mouse. The very first lesson was in how to use the mouse and she flew through it. For the next hour she played and learned at a rate that I was in awe of.  My first worry was that she would become glued to the screen but that proved groundless as her natural desire to play physical games had her jumping out of the chair. No, I do not earn anything from the program, just desire to share a positive fairly inexpensive resource with all of you. Will be interesting to see what she does with it in the next few months.

  What are your educational challenges this year? Mine have traditionally been to stay out of my children's way and just try to help them find resources as they became interested. As a parent and grandparent I continue to stretch my brain by taking computer programing classes, even though I am not very good yet. Are you continuing to stretch your mind?

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