Couric's library piece sounded odd to me

Katie Couric’s "In the Stacks" notebook commentary from April 4 about children and libraries intrigued me, since I’m interested in children reading, public libraries, and technology. After hearing the piece on the First Light radio program early in the morning, the commentary stuck with me while I was more awake. I try to keep up on information about these topics as a library advocate and patron, high tech parent, and reviewer of children’s books. Since I was not familiar with the study she mentioned, I wanted to find Couric’s source. I checked the web looking for it. After viewing the video on the CBS website, I noticed she didn’t cite a specific study. In further research, I found Jeff Zaslow’s column, "Of the Places You'll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?" which mentioned similar material.

For his Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal.com column, Zaslow interviewed several people and referred to sources to back up his claim that children are using libraries less for books and more for technologies, but that they’re buying more books. I emailed him for the exact source connecting children, libraries and technology. He responded quickly with the materials.

I’m not in complete agreement with how Zaslow interprets the library focus group study cited in his column. But that’s ok. There’s another study that is a more solid report on how people are using libraries, which is even more revealing. Check out Households’ Use of Public and Other Types of Libraries: 2002 published by the National Center for Education Statistics out of the U.S. Department of Education published in January 2007. I hope to comment on it in another post.

Zaslow is a well-known reporter. His piece was on the Wall Street Journal website, not some obscure publication by an unknown writer. So it’s particularly odd that those who are putting together the CBS Evening News believed no one would see the connection between what they wrote for Couric and what Zaslow wrote. To be fair, since I never saw the written version of Couric’s piece until today, I didn’t completely comprehend how word-for-word it was. Just that it seemed quite similar.

Zaslow and WSJ have been gracious about noting the plagiarism, which is professional and impressive.

When I was a college journalism professor, I emphasized the serious nature of plagiarism to my students. Unfortunately, some of the students learned the hard lesson that I do take it seriously. I hope they were saved from worse problems later in life, like the one the unnamed producer is learning. I hope that person can recover with grace.

I am surprised at how much Couric, listed as the program's managing editor, trusts her staff.

Why isn’t an editor checking over producers’ stories? Someone should have asked the producer the source of the information. There are no definite sources mentioned, which was what clicked with me in the first place. I know the commentary is just over a minute, but that’s enough time to cite a source.

I appreciate how Katie Couric seems to be growing into her job at CBS. But this offense is both sad and revealing about Couric and the staff at the evening news. Maybe they’re short staffed. Maybe they’re not following up really well. I hope they can solve the problems. I want to support a woman anchor on the evening news.

Here's perhaps the most complete story on the Couric issue as reported in Newsweek/MSNBC.

Check out the "Finding My Voice" blog with a good perspective on why the CBS Evening News has a real problem.

Taxes

Doing taxes involves mostly organizing. Even though I spent several months following the Fly Lady lifestyle, I am still not very organized. So the initial part of gathering everything together for taxes is hard. This year I'm back with TurboTax, which makes the math part and the forms issues much easier. Also, for the first time there's a program that calculates cost basis for stocks. Yeah! (my enthusiasm probably qualifies me for a finance geek...now I just need to make lots of money) Also, every time I open another one of the Important Tax Documents I am struck that the envelope has a direction on how to open it. Taxes are hard enough, so why do so many companies put extremely important information into oddly shaped envelopes which require a three-step process just to open them? I realize that these things save money and trees and are easier for printers. But who cares about the people who use the information? I am always terrified that I am going to tear a W-2 and have to send it in with lots of tape. Not red tape. Just tape, kind of like a Frankenstein W-2 with lots of seams that are fixed.

So I pull here, tear there, and then run my finger under another seam. Sometimes, then I cut myself and have to find a bandage. Who writes these directions? Who opens these things?

The Roots Below & Perfect Eggs

Last week, I spent some time preparing for the school's science night. This year, the parents decided to present many easy science experiments for the students to try out, instead of having kids do poster displays. This ended up being more fun and educational for the students than last year's pairing of older kids who took over the science projects from their younger partners. I am not so sure the current trend of partnering kids from lower and higher grades in school works as well as the educational experts and media are touting. I can list at least five examples where it didn't work for several students during the last year.

Other parents did projects on litmus paper, paper airplanes, mobius strips, water on pennies, gloppy stuff, bacteria from ears grown for a week, and more.

I put together a table on plants and herbs. Children and adults were impressed with the length and detail of the roots of two-week old bean plants. It's always a revelation to see what you've only sort of imagined. They all also took pleasure in smelling the 10 herbs I brought from my garden (which were growing even tho the temperatures have been below freezing). I found it interesting to talk with Japanese and Indian parents about their culinary experiences with some of the herbs, particularly Chinese garlic, lemon balm, and mint. One mother suggested lemon balm could possibly be substituted for lemon grass in recipes. That would be helpful as this herb that smells like extremely strong Lemon Pledge to me is growing somewhat like a weed in the yard. Lots of plants are growing weedy. Gardening is about controlling nature.

In my attempt to control cooking, I have found that using the Eggsact Eggtimer is the only way I have ever been able to get great (maybe not perfect) hard boiled eggs. I should have written about this before Easter. But thought I would put this in today for future reference. The egg shaped thing goes in with the eggs when you start cooking them. It gets a darker colorer as the eggs are cooked longer and the water gets warmer. When it has completely changed color, the eggs are ready. I also learned last week that putting salt in the water prevents the eggs from seeping too much, if they do crack while boiling. We had fun color Easter eggs. It was the first time my son figured out how to make two-colored eggs. He made a U.S. patriotic red, white and blue egg and a Mexican flag colored egg, too.

Nashville Skyline

For spring break, we traveled to Nashville for a conference and to explore, to shop, to enjoy the warmer weather. Nashville is fun every time we visit. The weird combination of universities, music producers, musicians, bankers, Christian book publishers, good food, and New South sensibility makes it interesting.

We had to visit the Frist Art Museum, which is one of our favorites. We love the Art Quest area upstairs where children, adults, grandparents get to make art that's somewhat influenced by the lead exhibit. The current exhibit (Matisse, Picasso, and the School of Paris) is Impressionist art from the Cone Collection in the Baltimore Museum of Art. We made cubist collages, prints, paintings, drawings to music, sketches, still lifes. Sometimes I think we spend as much time in Art Quest as we do in the exhibits. This is a beautiful space and one of the most impressive hands-on art areas in any museum we've visited. The photo is of the sketch area.

The Adventure Science Center was a favorite of the youngest family member. He particularly liked the seven-story climbing area, the laser fight between the white blood cells and the germs, the lever that lets you lift a car, the instruments to play on. The climbing area leads up to a dome where the adventurers can have a wonderful view of the Nashville skyline.

Since we spent much of last spring studying about Greece, we were interested in seeing the replica of the Parthenon. While the original is in Athens, the one in Nashville is probably more like it was when it was built. Built for a World's Fair, the temporary structure was designed to be an exact replica. Now reinforced as a permanent museum, this building also houses plaster molds of the Elgin marbles as well. But the most impressive part is the 47-foot scupture of Athena that is now covered in gold.

My husband particularly likes to go to The Great Escape, which we have discovered is right off the I-65 interstate at the Broadway exit. That's in the middle of the music area. Besides great CD's, DVD's, we also somehow managed to pick up a few more Star Wars guys. Gee, I wonder why.

Visual Literacy & Art Museums

Visual literacy is a critical skill, especially for anyone interested in new media and technology, but it's often misunderstood as simplistic. When speaking, we get most of our communication clues visually. As we travel, negotiate space, watch television, surf the web -- we use our visual literacy skills. Unfortunately, the concept of teaching and enhancing visual literacy is often disregarded. Still, I have been championing and even teaching courses in visual literacy and media literacy during the last ten years.

One of the reasons we spend so much time in art museums as a family is because my husband and I understand the importance of visual literacy and the extraordinary impact of visual and design sense within our culture. We have been taking our son to art museums since he was just a few months old. For years, he toured museums from the comfortable vantage point of a stroller. Now he strolls through museums as we all go around somewhat independently and somewhat as a group. I strongly believe that most children can be taken to museums when they are young and can continue to go throughout their teen-age years. But both parents and museums need to work on socializing children on how to handle the experience. Some museums are better than others. Going to your local children's museum is a good place to start. But that shouldn't be where you stop.

Parents who want advice on helping children with understanding art will find many books that will help them learn about specific artists, some art museums, and how to talk about art. Here are a few:
How to Talk to Children about Art by FranCoise Barbe-Gall. a good guide for parents to read before visiting an art museum and answers to common children's questions.
Faces, Places and Inner Space by Jean Sousa Using the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, this book helps children understand art through a cultural perspective.
Seen Art? by Jon Scieszka. About a boy wandering around the Museum of Modern Art.
Babar's Museum of Art. by Laurent De Brunoff. Uses Babar the elephant as a guide through art in this pleasant over-sized picturebook.
The Smart About Art series has books about specific artists including Van Gogh, Picasso, Degas, Kahlo and Monet.
Come Look with Me: Enjoying Art with Children by Gladys Blizzard. This book encourages looking at details about specific paintings. It is part of the Come Look with Me series.
Museum ABC from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Art Institute of Chicago has several online lesson plans for teachers that parents might also find useful. Check out the thoughtful ideas for lesson plans about the nude in art, which is something you have to deal with when taking children to art museums.

I'm writing this entry about art in part as a response to a comment on my previous post about renting audio tours. The commentor has an interesting blog about his weekly visits to the Art Institute with many images from the Cezanne to Picasso show. I wanted to add a context for my reasons for recommending the audio tours. While it is wonderful to wander museums at any age, visiting a big, highly promoted, blockbuster-style exhibit like this one seems to demand a different style of viewing. First, most people have paid extra for the tickets so they feel they should get a higher quality experience, i.e. no screaming children. Second, my son, like most younger children will have difficulty reading the annotations on the walls, yet often wants me to read them outloud. One of the unwritten rules seems to be no talking around great art, so when I read aloud people find it rude. These kind of exhibits in general demand a different style of behavior. That's why renting an audio tour seems to work so well because it helps my son hear what he cannot read, it helps him be quiet among older adults (he was one of 5 kids when we were in the show), it causes him to look intently at the images and as a result he is given a respectful, and closer, viewing of the paintings by the older adults, and it helps him learn something about the art. Consequently, we were able to spend a good 1 1/2 hours in a show while we saw another boy slightly older than our son be fidgety and force his father to run through the show.

In general, taking children to art museums, or any museum, can be a wonderful learning experience. But it needs to be set within a context and everyone needs to consider how children and their parents together can have an interesting visit.

Yes, the Chicago River is dyed green.

Once I thought it was a myth that the Chicago River was dyed green on St. Patrick's Day. But I have seen it several times and still find it rather amazing, odd, funny, and weirdly patriotic that Chicagoans dump some kind of coloring into the major river through downtown to make it a bright emerald green to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. (This is also the river that's engineered to flow backward.) The darkness in the photo is from the shadows of the buildings nearby. You can also see the people (even the most jaded) on the Michigan Avenue bridge looking at the color.

We went to Chicago for a spring outing and thankfully the weather was sunny, not six inches of snow like in Washington, D.C. again. We tried taking photos of the food we ate, like the great Swedish food at Ann Sather's. But we are finding these close up photos more difficult than we thought. Still, the food is great at Ann Sather's and we enjoyed the Swedish American Museum nearby. We are trying to get our son acclimated to the museum atmosphere, and he seems to like them! The Swedish Museum has a great play area on the third floor with a Viking ship, a steamboat, and cabins. Good for children from 2 to about 10.

Here's a high tech parent tip: We have learned to purchase the headphones and recorded messages at museum exhibits. We rented one of the headsets for our son when we saw the fabulous show at the Art Institute on Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard Patron of the Avant Garde. Just seeing a roomful of beautiful Van Goghs is worth the ticket. Our son loved punching in the buttons on the machine and listening to each recorded message. He seemed as intrigued as the older patrons. Yes, he has been to many art exhibits, but I think even inexperienced kids would enjoy their own headsets and would help them behave. They would also learn something in the exhibit. And they stay quiet. More on our trip later.

This flu is made for reading

For a moment there, I thought I had a heart attack. My fear was fueled by propaganda from the recent February Women’s Heart month. Women frequently miss the signs of heart attacks. Those red dress pins and symptoms listed on grocery bags make me concerned. And then, I was feeling achy from the flu virus that has brought down everyone in the house to lethargic, coughing, and complaining creatures. Or maybe it was just my computer arm muscles upset from over use. Thank goodness I did not have a heart attack, but just the flu aches and pains. However, now everyone is laughing mildly about my moment of worry; the new in joke is about my weirdness during sickness. At least we can all laugh together!

I am posting yesterday’s photo of our garden frog. Two weeks ago it was covered in snow, and a week later it was poking its head out. Now it looks like spring.

While in this fog of illness, I have been thinking of ideas to blog. I am trying to focus on just writing about parenting, kids culture & stuff, and how these intersect with technology

The only book I have been interested in while sick is How Children Learn to Write. [see link on side list] Perhaps this flu is a good thing: it makes one read informative books! I am trying to figure out how learning writing works. It is more difficult than reading. Speaking comes relatively naturally to all children. Reading is a about deciphering codes, and quite difficult as well. But writing also involves eye-hand coordination, hand movement, and a very structured way of communication. In order to write, writers must have an idea and then be able to organize their thoughts coherently, rather than the loose way of speaking. (The only person I knew who deliberately spoke in complete sentences was a high school English teacher and I found it annoying.) More on writing later.

Intersecting writing with technology, I find it interesting that my son is trying to learn keyboarding, sort of bypassing one kind of hand movement for another. I think many children must be doing this. He’s taking a keyboarding short class in school, so we’ll see how this goes.
One tech issue that bugs me is that my Bluetooth mouse from Rad Technology doesn’t work as well as I thought. It does not connect consistently and I have to keep reinstalling the software. My brother said he had some problem with his Bluetooth mouse. So I am wondering if Bluetooth technology is more buggy than I thought.

And, hello to my brother out in Microsoft land who emailed that he’s read this blog, which is great! But now I can’t say anything bad about the xBox he gave to his nephew for his birthday last summer! Actually, the xBox is a lot of fun, but a little addicting. It has made our son rather popular among his friends. I particularly like how the hard drive saves games. That has made playing Lego Star Wars II, with characters from the earlier game, more fun.

Finally, on technology…does anyone know of a good sponge mop for cleaning floors? I have yet to find one that doesn’t fall apart in some way. Or, when I want to purchase sponge replacements, they’re not available because the mop model is outdated.

Engineering Open house

Once again we have had a great time at the University of Illinois's Engineering Open House. If you want your children to be engineers, take them to such an event. When I was growing up, I thought engineers were good, kind men. But engineering didn't seem the kind of profession I wanted to enter. When we go to the UofI's engineering events, the college students make all their practical application experiments seem fun and interesting. These students are enthusiastic about showing everyone, whether young or old, what they're doing. What's pleasing is the cheerfulness seems to run through the wide diversity of students, men and women.

The photo is of concrete balls that float. There's a floating concrete boat contest every year that engineering students enter. They have to figure out how to make concrete lightweight, using special light material, and then make a canoe that is fast enough to win the race. The American Society of Civil Engineers is holding the 20th annual National Concrete Canoe Competition.


Clearly engineers like to compete. We cheered on the computerized robot competition. We saw a small remote-controlled plane for another competition.

We saw computer games using the new Wii controller, which was harder to use than we thought. We built a small rocket and shot it off. We made lipgloss, cement coaster, a kind of silly putty, and glow-in-the-dark bracelets. We learned about differences in brain sizes, shape and uses from the Beckman Institute's Center for Healthy Minds. (what a great name for a place to work). There were lots of ideas for science projects. Of course, I loved the computer geeky stuff and seeing all the Macs in use.


We have all had a weird flu virus that has mostly made us lethargic and complaining. So we were thrilled to get out to the open house in warmer weather!

Where would we be without Star Wars?

For several years, our son was into pirates. This was before Pirates of the Caribbean. We played with Playmobil pirate guys and pirate ships. He had several pirate costumes, including a great one from Gymboree. Pirate books. Pirate toys from Imaginext. Pirate maps. Pirate activity books. A pirate bath mit, to keep you clean. Pirate jokes.

I learned how using one topic that appeals to your child, and hopefully you, the educational appeal is endless. We are still somewhat fascinated by pirates. The pirates of childhood are more silly than mean, altho they do have disagreements.

Currently, we are in a Star Wars phase. My husband has realized that he has to read more of the Star Wars books that our son reads just so we can keep up. Boba Fett rules. If that Lego guy gets lost, the whole house is turned upside.

We are also enjoying playing Lego Star Wars I and II on xBox. Thanks to my brother for the xBox, which has made his nephew really popular among certain friends. These two xbox games are some of the best that we have played. The second one is a vast improvement over the first, which was great. The second one has even more little puzzles, games, and character switches to make it more fun. One of the great aspects to the xBox is that it has a hard drive, so we can bring in characters from the first game into the second. It's cool to watch Darth Vadar battle his younger self.

Check out Gamer Dad, in the Media list on the side, for reviews of games with a sense of what's appropriate for family members.

Praise and where it takes you

I have been mulling over the ideas in a recent cover article in New York magazine, by Po Bronson, titled "How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise." This is a rather long article, but the gist of it is that children seem to respond a lot better to praise that is specific. They want to know exactly not what they have done correct, not that they are good kids. Because, the research thinking goes, if they think they're good and smart then 1) they can't figure out the exact effort that got them to that point and 2) if they're so good why should they try harder. Sincerity of praise is also important.

Bronson admits at the end that he's a praise junkie and that it's harder for him to stop abstractly praising than he thought it would be. He writes, "I’d thought “praise junkie” was just an expression—but suddenly, it seemed as if I could be setting up my son’s brain for an actual chemical need for constant reward." Earlier in the article he writes, "After reading Carol Dweck’s research, I began to alter how I praised him, but not completely. I suppose my hesitation was that the mind-set Dweck wants students to have—a firm belief that the way to bounce back from failure is to work harder—sounds awfully clichéd: Try, try again.But it turns out that the ability to repeatedly respond to failure by exerting more effort—instead of simply giving up—is a trait well studied in psychology. People with this trait, persistence, rebound well and can sustain their motivation through long periods of delayed gratification."

Researchers learned that kids who were taught that the brain is a muscle and that the more you worked it, like any muscle, the better it performed, performed better in school and in homework than those who were not taught how the brain worked. They could understand the logic of the idea of keeping trying to get their brain at its peak performance levels. They could see a reason for homework and did it better.

Self-esteem by itself is not as great as it's been proposed. Failure leads to the abililty to figure out how to not fail and then how to succeed. A recent study shows that college students are quite narcissistic. There has been some commentary and some research about the current group of people who are in their twenties who even admit to being coddled too much. We'll see. One thing is for sure...parenting makes you realize that you can make mistakes, but you have to keep trying.

Thankfully, we have the humor of British writers to have developed the genre of Bad Mothers Club literature. Unlike Americans who take things far too seriously, the British are usually able to swallow their pride and publish self-deprecating, but funny, realizations in slightly smart books. Check out the Bad Mothers Club (incorporate Bad Dads) website.

iPod accessories

I've owned an iPod for more than a year and am still figuring out which accessories I need, like, or simply desire. We love our iDog because it's cute and trendy. But the speakers are not very loud. I have a lot of trouble using a tiny Phillips screwdriver to open up the battery section, which I seem to need to do more often than I like. We ooh and awww over the latest variations: iCat, iFish, etc. But if you get it, don't be suprised that it's not as functional as you hoped. Also, the dog keeps barking on its own even though it's not cute five minutes later. I want it to stop barking sooner than it does. Very annoying to hear the electronic dog barking in the kitchen while we're eating. Still, the design is spiffy.

Recently, I bought an iLive speaker set from Kohl's. Okay, it's somewhat embarrassing to buy electronics from Kohl's, but I had noticed it was on sale before Christmas and then never saw that price again until before Valentine's Day, when I bought it. The speakers are small, but pack a lot of punch. They don't sound distorted and have a nice range. I can also hook up my tiny radio for AM/FM listening. (I could hook up the speakers and iPod to the TV, but haven't.) The iLive also recharges the iPod. I bought it for kitchen listening and have found it serves that purpose quite well. I'm glad that I didn't miss the sale. And now I can listen to my podcasts, including Creative Mom Podcast, while cooking and cleaning and dancing around.

I continue to be mystified by all the accessories for the iPod, as some make a lot of sense and some don't. The iPod seems so much designed to be listened to individually that listening to it without headphones seems to be an afterthought.

I have found a lot of help and reviews for iPod paraphenalia at iLounge.com, but it's almost too detailed.

Nature vs. Nurture?

The Washington Post parenting blog has a relatively civil exchange about the age-old question of nature vs. nurture. Are boys really more likely to be interested in guns? Are girls more likely to be girly and wear fluffy clothes? It's an intriguing question. Before my life with children, I thought it was a lot more nature. I couldn't really fathom how boys could be so filled with a certain kind of energy and curiosity that they would be continually fascinated by guns, destruction, and, well, fart sounds using their arms. I have now rethought this.

I remember reading Dr. Dobson comment on this within the last several years. He wrote that even if you don't give boys guns, they'll make them out of peanut butter sandwiches. I am not really a fan of Dobson, although I am thankful he has mellowed with age and the influence of his adult children. But that image has stuck in my mind.

My husband asks "What about life before guns?" My answer was that boys would still have that impulse for destruction, for curiosity, for those fart sounds. That's what the anthropologist seemed to conclude in the comments. It's more nature.

Well, I'm going to stop this because we're watching Buckaroo Banzai again. Wherever you go, there you are.

Handwriting and typing help

My son has been enjoying learning how to type with the SpongeBob Typing CD. I bought this several months ago and he liked it, but then found it frustrating. Now he is motivated to learn how to type because he is using the computer more at home and school, so he wants to use the keyboard. And he has better hand-eye coordination after piano lessons. So much seems to be having things in the house ready for him when he's ready...and I'm not always sure when that is.

He is quite intrigued by anything SpongeBob and this CD is very much in the upbeat, slightly silly SpongeBob style. There's a keyboard on the screen that he uses to help him find the keys as he types the words on the screen. He is up to 8 words a minute. (Edited later: He eventually clocked in at 11 words at minute and now must type even faster on his own while typing on Club Penguin.) We have tried other typing programs for younger kids, but this one seems both better and more sophisticated. Definitely worth checking out for a high tech parent.

(Additional: Check out this review chart of Top Ten Typing Programs for Kids: http://typing-for-kids-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ ) We use MacBooks at home, so our options were somewhat limited on which typing software to purchase. Still, I think that the SpongeBob works.

Another benefit to consider for those debating about their child learning to type: Typing using both hands. This is a good way to develop both sides of the brain and to get muscles going for playing the piano or other musical instruments. I am pretty sure that because I played the piano and learned to type in sixth grade, that I have more ambidextrous confidence.

After examining numerous workbooks and ideas on handwriting, we have found that the handwriting program that worked best for him is Handwriting without Tears. This program using an up-and-down, rather than slanted, style. The style is not filled with lavish curliques that make little sense for today's handwriters. Still, it flows together nicely and the results are pleasant and easy to read.

The workbooks are relatively inexpensive, nicely designed, and kid friendly. The program starts with activities for kindergartners and moves on up. I like that there are workbooks for printing and cursive improvement in fourth and fifth grade levels.

We found that going through the books was easily manageable in one to three pages at at time. We also bought the lined paper, which is different than the standard, three-lined learning tablets. The two-line paper is innovative but quite helpful. I would highly recommend the entire program.

Before we got into the HWT program, he practiced cursive handwriting using School-Rite's handwriting instruction guides. I bought these on sale at Kid's Palette (noted on side list) and was skeptical. But they seem to be working for him as he needs to feel the movement of cursive handwriting. The guides make letters that fit into paper lines that are about one inch, so this is large. Every letter has arrow directing the writer. We have both the uppercase and lowercase instruction guides, which I would recommend. The guides are heavy plastic that seem quite sturdy.

Edited in later: The guides don't follow the HWT modified style. In retrospect, the guides seemed like a good idea. But the HWT workbooks are the best and proved better in the long run.

Kolackys

For the Cultural Fair at my son's school, we decided to make kolackys to celebrate his Slovak heritage. My mom, who's not Slovak, used to make these frequently as well. The tiny cookies are made with a cream cheese dough and filled with a jam (usually apricot), poppyseed (using a can of Solo), walnut mix, or cheese.

To find a recipe, first I explored the 50-year-old Slovak cookbook from my husband's grandparents' Slovak Lutheran church. It had a whole chapter on kolackys and I discovered that the sweet little cookie treats I loved are only one version of kolackys. The other is more of a small, fruit-filled bun made with a yeast recipe. I also found my mother-in-law's recipe in my 3-ring notebook collection of recipes. It was the non-yeast version. She made them thumbprint style.

I decided to check out kolacky recipes on the Internet, which is where I've been going more often for recipes. I am even bringing my laptop into the kitchen these days.

I love the little hints I found for kolackys. The best was to use a baby spoon to dollop the filling into smaller cookies. My son thought it was funny using his old babyspoons. Another was to roll the dough into a log to easily cut rounds. Another good idea was to use powdered sugar instead of flour.

Some of my favorite recipe sites:
Recipezaar
Epicurious (the site of Gourmet and Bon Appetit)
All Recipes (sometimes not particularly sophisticated, but often quite good.)
This is the link to the kolacky recipe that most resembled the one I ended up using.

I am so glad to be able to have this high-tech recipe source.

Moms Organizing Online

The New York Times article about Moms Organizing Online is intriguing. Last year I began checking out the Moms Rising web site. I was somewhat dubious about exactly what they're trying to organize for and about. Maybe it's a good thing. There certainly are numerous issues about motherhood and parenting that feminists have refused to even acknowledge that they exist.


I used to prefer to identify myself as a feminist in that I thought equal-pay-for-equal-work was right and vital. I supported feminists causes. But I have felt betrayed that many so-called feminists have turned a blind eye to issues related to motherhood.

I still try to support some feminist issues. But I would hope that the dichotomy between mothers and non-mothers would someday end. I am tired of being called a breeder by feminists.

Thoughts on Newbery Award

The high tech part about the latest controversy over the 2007 Newbery Award is that it began through librarians and then children's literature experts discussing this online. Would the controversy have arisen if librarians only communicated to a few others online? Would Publishers Weekly, The New York Times and other media taken it as seriously if a school librarian from Kentucky called a NYT reporter to say that she had problems with words in the latest Newbery winner? I doubt it.

But because librarians and academics could discuss this on the internet the issue unfolded in a different way. Different aspects of the issue were aired in a somewhat sensible way. Yet, as usual it seems that those who are noisiest seem to want to win more and often end up doing so.

I am coming close to an end of a six-year-term as an elected board member of our local library, so I have come to see library issues from several perspectives: reader, parent, taxpayer, board member, free speech advocate. Librarians are not obligated to purchase a book just because it won a Newbery Award, or any other award. This is especially true for school libraries who serve a very select audience and who have a limited budget. Even so, the Newbery is not so much as about the best book of the year per se. Instead, it is an award more about consumerism and selling books. Why should people be upset that librarians have brains and have decided not to bring a book into the library that they don't think works for its constituents? Librarians select books. That's what they're paid to do, among other things.

Libraries have limited budgets. I am always asking for more money to be spent on books. I do want more ideas into our community. I am glad that our library is now using a national program that seems to be bringing in a wider range of books. And I am frustrated when our library doesn't have a book I think it should have. That happens all the time. If any patron asks specifically for a book that a library doesn't have, libraries can either inter-library loan it or decide to purchase it. And that is what may happen for some of the libraries that don't initially purchase a book. But don't scream at librarians for falling into the award-business with eyes wide shut.

And, I am very curious why the people that selected the Newbery even chose this book in the first place. They must have known it would cause controversy. Would they have felt differently if the body part being bitten was a girl's? Why aren't the names of the committee ever revealed in public anyway?

The writer's defense of the controversial word is particularly lame, especially since her day job is a librarian in LA. She likes the sound of this word as she thinks it's sounds 'delicious.' The word sounds 'delicious' which seems to be why she wrote a whole book around it. 'Delicious'?

The Newbery Award doesn't always recognize the best children's book of the year. Look at what won the year that Charlotte's Web was published. It is an award that reflects the time, culture, and values of the committee. It tends to reflect what many librarians think should be appropriate, think should be read about. It is also an award that was specifically designed to sell books.

Link to The New York Times article

Returning to High Tech Parent blog.

Well, I decided to come back and try this again. I am still interested in parenting, children, and related high-tech gadgets.

And we are still into Legos. But this time my son is now 7 and able to put together the Star Wars Lego sets pretty much on his own. I showed him how to sort out the pices into bowls and am convincing him that it's easier to work on a table than on the floor.

He also recently put together a SpongeBob Lego set from his cousins, as shown above. You can see the Lego versions of Spongebob, Patrick, and the snail, Gary. This was harder to put together than I thought because of the roundness of its shape and so many pieces are orange. Oh, the thing we assembled is SpongeBob's pineapple home. We like all interior decorating inside. He even has a basketball hoop.

What is it about SpongeBob that seems so attractive to kids? Is it his eternal optimism? The brightness of the colors? The bigness of his face? (studies show that children respond to large faces, which is why Scooby-Do and many others have bigger heads than their bodies, proportionately.) I think some of the jokes are still kind of funny.

toys

As it's Christmas time and holiday time, it's also the major toy time. One thing I wanted to be sure to do on this blog was to post ideas about toys.

I went to the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio page and found this interesting info on its web site, Five Myths About Toys
http://www.toyportfolio.com/TVArchives/ToyStoreBan/ToyStoreBan.asp

If you're a high tech parent, you probably find high tech related toys hard to resist. Your cool factor among your children may also rise if they see you fondling the latest Game Boy game or figuring out how some kind of talking toy works. I love many of these toys, too. But I am already becoming tired of some of them. And I am wondering how many batteries are leaking all over our house.

If you want to know which toys (high tech or not) from last season didn't sell well, go to a garage sale. That talking ewok-yoda doll is at a lot of garage sales. People find it creepy and it doesn't seem to work very well. It's supposed to tell stories and interact with children. I think a lot of well meaning aunts and uncles bought it. Parents often have told me they and their children just can't stand it. I have found many of once hot interactive-type toys at garage sales. They seem to loose their luster fast and kids often outgrow these. On the other hand, you can almost always make something out of blocks, Play-doh and Legos.

Another major offering at garage sales are the zillions of toys from fast food kids' meals. They're fun, but kids seem to loose interest quickly. Still, I find them often quite innovative. Did you see those hand-held games McDonald's had early in the fall? I saw a lot of parents play with them. As toys, I like the meal toys sometimes more than the ones I pay a lot more for. Well, that's another post.

We are debating about buying a Leap Pad in our house. I think it's cool. My child is fascinated for moments in a store. But I purchased an earlier Leap Pad brand product and was disappointed that it broke after not a lot of use and that my child really wasn't as keen about it as I thought. My mother, who was a teacher, is reluctant to buy a Leap Pad because she thinks it encourages children to think that all books are interactive, that there are buttons on all books. Books aren't like that, she says. It's not the price that bothers her, but the principle. I don't know. Stay tuned.

assembling toys, deconstructing them

I talked with a friend about his son's birthday toys. He said he's constantly coming up to him and asking him to fix a Transformer Dinosaur toy. As I mentioned earlier in a post about Legos, many toys seem sturdier than they really are. The toys purchased at the dollar-type stores are often of such poor quality they're only good for an afternoon. But the books and workbooks you can buy there are often much higher quality.

Parents are always fixing toys these days. But as the dad and I agreed, we could use an electronics or engineer degree just to get some of these things working properly.

We have a large selection of Playmobils in our house. Still, for small fingers they are sometimes difficult to put together. But most of them have smiling faces, even though they may be "bad guys." We like that there's more imagination involved in these. Playmobil characters also have a weird sensibility when it comes to U.S. history. It's filtered through a German lens, so sometimes it's odd. But in general, Playmobils are a lot of fun to have in the house. Everything except the space toys have been very sturdy. They lead to imaginative play for girls and boys. Check the shopping links for my favorite online site to buy Playmobil. Puffins is a cute store in Madison, Wisconsin. The online site has many other of the educational-type toys.

a science & art fair

Last week we went to our school's arts and science fair. We had fun looking at the exhibits the students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade had created. I particularly liked the idea that children could submit artwork or stories as well as the traditional science fair-type project. You have to admire the kids' and the parents' involvement in these things.

Nothing, however, seemed extraordinary which is kind of reassuring. Even in this day of great technological advances and connections to more science than ever before via the web, students still have to learn the basic science project stuff. That appeals to me and it must to kids. There's still something amazing about making your own volcano, explaining how levers and pulleys work, observing bread mold, and finding out the differences among products such as soaps, diapers, and nail polishes.

I also think it's great that the creativeness of art projects is also included in the school's fair. Both science and art require you to think ahead, build on an idea, and see it through to the finish. The thinking and visualization before art is created is tremendously under-estimated. People seem to think that anybody should be able to make great sculptures with Play-doh. This, of course, is untrue. But the myth persists. Instead, art is about asking a question, considering how to carry it out, and then doing so. It's a lot about having the skills, which means practice. This seems most obvious for classical music and dance. It seems less obvious for design, painting, some types of dance and music, and writing. Intrinsic talent is a plus, but so is hard work and a discerning mind.

Another important part is knowing when to quit a project, knowing when it's done, when it's time to perform, to exhibit, to publish, to show others. A current vogue in teaching writing is to having students constantly re-write. Teachers have told me that a student can always re-write again and again. This is not true. Eventually, you have to know when to stop. Scientists probably have it easier, perhaps too easy sometimes. They know when to stop when they have answered their hypothesis. But the question becomes: was it the right hypothesis?

It's good to see children's art and science projects mingle together and the school support both equally. It will be a better day when the U.S. culture supports both equally, too.