The Hundred Chart

The Hundred Chart is a simple tool that parents can use to help their children learn math. There are as many ways to use it as there are numbers on the chart, from teaching simple number recognition to learning addition, subtraction, multiplication and figuring out basic math patterns.

Recently I gave my friend Mellissa a few copies of The Hundred Chart along with a few suggestions for using it with her children’s homeschool math. A few days ago told me that she posted a copy at the breakfast table and now, after a couple weeks, her 6-year-old daughter is counting to 100. 

The chart looks like this:

Being a Better Parent, One Day at a Time…in October

For eight years I wrote a short parenting tips column for The El Paso Scene. The column featured one tip for each day of the week, and I tried to give parents a balance of tips that would address their own priorities & attitudes as well as their children’s physical, social, intellectual and spiritual development. The column was formatted so that parents could easily cut out the column and keep it as a handy reminder through the month. Here is a sampler for the month of October

How to Be a Better Parent in October

On Sundays… Remember to take regular walks for health, perspective and renewal.

On Mondays…Try to avoid the mistake of assuming that anything that belongs to your child is really yours, so you can borrow it without permission or do whatever you please with it. Respect is a two way street. If you want children to learn to respect your property, you must respect theirs and insist that siblings respect it, too.

On Tuesdays… Remember that children need to practice reading aloud every day. So encourage older children to read to younger siblings, and let beginning readers read to anyone in the family with the patience to encourage them.

On Wednesdays… Remember the power of action. Although it’s a temptation to sit and yell “Don’t- don’t-don’t” at children, it only makes you frustrated and hoarse. Children consistently test their parents’ words. So discipline yourself to get up (now! after the first request) and match your words with action. When you are consistently firm without losing your temper, children learn to pay attention.

On Thursdays… Make a list of recipes your family likes, take a few minutes to refer to it each week, and plan a week’s meals before you go to the grocery store. Keep alert for recipes that can easily be made in the crock pot. These few minutes of planning will help keep everyone in the family healthy.

On Fridays…Remember that puppets invite creativity. They stimulate preschoolers’ natural acting ability and encourage older children to devise plots, produce sound effects, design scenery, and create special effects. A lot of household junk can be recycled into puppets.

On Saturdays… Cultivate contentment. It will move your family into a deeper level of gratitude than mere etiquette. Contentment involves recognizing what can and cannot be changed for the better. It means accepting what cannot be changed, changing what can be improved, and concentrating on whatever is positive in a situation.

Why Reading About St. Peter Makes Me Think About Gays in Church

Recently several people have asked me how I think Christians should respond to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) people coming to services in the church. My pastor asked. One of the moms in my Bible study struggles for wisdom to know how to respond to her son, who has come out as gay. Another Christian mom recently  asked me about her son, who was the one who got her going to church and now tells her that he has same sex desires. I think we will face this issue more and more because in the local high schools, being gay is the new cool. Since it has become popular, more kids will experiment and some will choose gayness simply because that’s the cool thing to be.

Behind the question, when Christians ask, is the idea that we should somehow straighten out gay people who attend services, that we should somehow try to make them change into heterosexuals. But that idea misses the point.

The Chaos and Creativity of Homeschooling

This afternoon I ran across an old letter to my son Erik in my computer, written over a dozen years ago. Reading it reminded me how I wound up writing an article later based on that correspondence. Today I’d like to reprint the article to encourage any overwhelmed homeschool parents out there. Here it is:

Home schooling our children was such a rewarding experience that by the end of each school year, I was willing to do it another year. The beginning of each school year was a different story, though. Every year frustration took over as I faced the task of setting up the new school year. I felt overwhelmed, drowning in details — all those books to look through, subjects to plan, music lessons and sports activities to schedule, a house to manage, a home school support group to lead, and on and on…

Then one year, in the middle of the annual mess, I read the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. As I read, it struck me that Genesis 1 not only says God created the earth, it also describes the creative process. For in the beginning, God started with a giant massiveness that was “without form.”  It was empty and covered in darkness. That sounded just like what I faced at the beginning of each school year!

Complaining as Worship

Last week I talked with a friend of mine who has an adult daughter with special needs. Some unsavory people took advantage of her daughter, who has been hospitalized. My friend is a Christian, and she was struggling with the ferocity of her rage. “I feel like a Mother Bear: ‘Don’t get near my cubs!’” she said. “I want to go and beat up people. I just want to get revenge on the people who have hurt my daughter. Is it wrong to be so angry?”

I told her that I believe it is right to be angry at the things that make God angry.

Our culture is offended at the idea of a God of wrath and judgment, especially a God who would become enraged at us. Yet at the same time, we all long for a God who will right the wrongs that upset us. That’s why we like Superman so much. He has power. He gets mad at injustice, and he does something about it. We really want God to get angry and do something about people who rape children. We want God to get mad and swoop in to rescue vulnerable people like my friend’s daughter. And the Bible says that the real God does this – in His own way, in His own time, and with incredible power. God gets angry.

This blog post could proceed at this point, I suppose, to discuss free will and original sin and why God doesn’t always swoop in like Superman, in the way and with the speed that we think He should. But I just want to talk about a mother’s pain and anger. Or anybody’s pain and anger. People do things that deeply hurt us or those we love. Things that may not necessarily be illegal, but things that are cruel and unfair. And we get angry. We want revenge. We want to get back. A lot of Christians think we’re not supposed to want those things – or feel that way. After all, “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord. “I will repay.” And didn’t Jesus say we are supposed to turn the other cheek?

So what does that mean? Pretend it didn’t happen? Swallow your rage?

Being a Better Parent…One Week at a Time

For eight years I wrote a short parenting tips column for The El Paso Scene. The column featured one tip for each day of the week, and I tried to give parents a balance of tips that would address their own priorities & attitudes as well as their children’s physical, social, intellectual and spiritual development. The column was formatted so that parents could easily cut out the column and keep it as a handy reminder through the month. Here is a sampler for the month of September

How to Be a Better Parent in September:

On Sundays… remember that you are less likely to burn out as a parent if you replenish yourself by taking care of your own needs. Learn to recognize not only your physical needs (for exercise, rest and proper diet), but also your inner needs for solitude, prayer, time with friends, mental stimulation, spiritual growth and creative expression. Then build routine solutions for meeting these personal needs into the fabric of your week.

On Mondays… keep in mind that children need warm approval as much as food, and they will be influenced all their lives by the people who praised them in childhood. So make sure that your children know you are their biggest fan.

On Tuesdays… encourage silent reading. Some families give their school age children an early bedtime to allow them personal times for reading in bed.

On Wednesdays… be aware that teaching children to be thankful begins with simple etiquette – learning to say “please” and “thank you,” and to express appreciation by writing thank you notes and making thank you phone calls.

On Thursdays…discuss chores with your children for the up-and-out process on school mornings. Keep a chore chart in the kitchen with tasks and time limits clearly communicated. Then give your children a list of their morning chore assignments at night. Instead of nagging about each chore in the morning, simply ask, “Have you checked off everything on your chart?”

On Fridays… remember to encourage creativity by keeping a desk, table or other working surface available for projects. Then keep supplies (appropriate to your children’s ages) handy where they can get them. Children will be more apt to start projects if they don’t have to wait for someone to clear work space and get out supplies.

On Saturdays… be sure to take hold of your family’s heritage of faith by learning the words to hymns and spiritual songs. Sing them through the day, at bedtime, and in the car. Thinking about the words will help you change your mental focus when you are worried or upset. You’ll feel better, and your family will benefit from the change in atmosphere.

 © Becky Cerling Powers 2001  Reprint with attribution only.

Why Kids Get Stuck in Math

Note: a shorter version of this post will be published in the September 2009 issue of the Southwest Homeschool Network newsletter

“My son has trouble with division,” a young mom told me once. “I think it’s because he hasn’t memorized his multiplication facts.”

She explained that her child had figured out his own method for getting the right answers to multiplication problems. He just kept adding the multiplied number mentally until he had added it enough times for a correct answer. His multiplication method was slow, but it gave him right answers. Division had him stumped though. He couldn’t figure out the problems.

Although it may not appear that way, this boy’s trouble with division was the same problem that 5-year-old Elias had with addition the day I asked him, “How many places should we set for lunch today?”

First Elias counted himself and me. Then we talked about the other people who would be eating lunch with us – my husband (who was working in the garage), Grandma (who lived in a mobile home on the back of our lot), and Daniel (who was asleep in the loft). This talking wasn’t enough. Elias still couldn’t figure out how many places to set. If all five people had been there in the room, he could have easily figured out the answer by counting them. But since he couldn’t see the people, he couldn’t count them.

I tried to help him by showing him how to count people in his head, using my fingers to represent each person : “You (thumb), me (index finger), Dennis (middle finger), Grandma (ring finger), Daniel (pinkie) – one-two-three-four-five – see?”

His face went completely blank. Obviously, to Elias, a finger did not represent a person. He could not count people by counting fingers.

This is a developmental characteristic.

Osteoporosis and Bone Broth

             My sister phoned yesterday. In our conversation she mentioned that she is developing osteoporosis, and she warned me that her doctor said that women like us who need to take thyroid supplements are more likely to have problems with osteoporosis. We traded ideas for increasing our calcium absorption, like making sure we get enough vitamin D from the sun. I mentioned my practice of making bone broth, and she took notes.

            Now I’ll pass along the tip to you.

            It’s hard for the body to absorb calcium from supplements. Milk and milk products are much more easily absorbed, unless you are sensitive to milk, like me. I’m lactose intolerant. I only drink milk if I need a laxative. So my favorite source of easy-to-absorb calcium is the yummy soups and stews I make from homemade bone broth/soup stock.

            Whenever my family bakes, roasts, or broils a chicken or turkey, I make bone broth (also known as soup stock) from the carcass and bony parts. The basic idea is to extract as much minerals, flavor, and unrefined gelatin as possible out of the bones by boiling them in water. Here’s how:

Secrets in the Salt

Nova Science Now aired a segment  July 28 that shows some just-for-the-curiosity-of-it research that my husband Dennis did in collaboration with some Utah profs. You can also see more of Dennis’ work at the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson, KS where the KUSM folks set up a special exhibit. The museum is definitely worth seeing if you’re in the area. You can find the Nova Science Now program here:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0405/02.html

Why I Attend a Church Where I Feel Uncomfortable

This week I decided why the women in my church kiss the air instead of each other when they greet.

I attend Alfa y Omega, a Spanish language church in nearby Anthony, Texas, a small, working class town of 5-6,000 people, but growing. Rents are cheap. A lot of recent immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America, live here – not too many Anglos like me. Since the culture of people in my church is in many ways very different from the culture I grew up in, I’m always trying to figure out the customs and the why behind them.

When I walk into Alfa y Omega, even if I’m late and the service has started, people usually greet me. They stretch out their right hand as I pass their pew. “Dios la bendiga,” they say, “¿Como está?” (“God bless you. How are you?”) The men shake my hand. Women who don’t know me well also shake hands, but if a woman knows me a little better, she shakes my hand and leans her upper body forward. I do the same. Then she lays her right cheek flat against my right cheek, and we kiss the air.

I notice that when the men greet each other they shake hands and they often hug as well. And if a man is greeting a woman he knows well, he leans in and kisses her – her check, not the air. None of this Anglo “Hi, Mom!” stuff. When a man sees his mother or his sister in public, he gives her a big kiss. Smack on the cheek. But if a woman sees her mother or sister, they rub cheeks and kiss air.

One of the first things I learned when I started going to this church was the importance of acknowledging people’s presence, of greetings, of hellos and good-byes that pronounce a blessing with words and with touch. I grew up in the Midwest. I was raised to get things done. So when I first started going to this church, I walked in exuding purpose and direction. I had my goal: find a place to sit (hopefully next to someone who could translate), try to hear Spanish, immerse, learn the language. But my progress was impeded by all these gentle greetings, all this blessing and affirmation.