My Journeys Through Life . . . Herding Cats In New Mexico!

So, my kids are still “doing school” as they call it, though their friends are done for the year. As a member of the Review Crew, we receive review products almost year ’round, so even during the summer months they are doing something educational.

They do, however, only have to spend a short time each day for educational work, so really, they can do it and be done and playing with their friends fairly quickly. For example, today “Mr. Loquacious” worked with a review product which you’ll read about in my next post, and we all played an educational game that you’ll hear about by tomorrow! And both were fun!

So, this was just to wet your appetite, and make you want to keep turning in, lol!

As always, i’d love to have you join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life.” Just go to the subscription box and enter your email, then you’ll always know when there’s new content on the blog.

Having spent the better part of the past few days working on making sure “The Artist” would be able to get the prescription filled that he needs, I have once again come to realize that bureaucracy exists for the sole purpose of making our lives miserable.

“The Artist” is listed on my husband’s insurance, and we are required to do mail order prescriptions, so we get a three month supply. If we fill at a local pharmacy, we pay quite a bit more, for quite a bit less medication. Well, that’s what ended up happening yesterday, once we finally got it all fixed.

The prescription provider wanted a pre-authorization from the doctor, but we were never notified ahead of time. for the record, they never have given us a heads up, either. So the doctor himself spent time on the phone trying to get through to the correct person at the subscription provider, only to be routed from place to place. Our doctor had never received a request for a pre-auth, either, by the way.

Finally, my husband called the place where our prescriptions are filled, and got through to someone. She gave him a good phone number to get right through to the correct department. Then, she faxed a request to the doctor, and they faxed the information back yesterday afternoon.

However, yesterday morning, our local pharmacy still couldn’t get the short term 30 day prescription to go through, so i called. Again. I spent some time explaining (again!) what was happening, and the lady put me on hold for a while. I don’t know what she did, but when she came back she had gotten the pre-auth accepted and gave me a number for it just in case. I was finally able to go to the local pharmacy for the 30 day supply, which he will need to hold him until the 3 month supply is received through the mail, processed and sent to us. BTW, that 3 month supply? $20.00. The 30 day supply purchased locally? $35.00, because that’s how our plan works.

Don’t misunderstand, I am very thankful that we have insurance through my husband’s job, and I still disagree with socialized health care. But really, couldn’t there be a better way to let a patient know they will need a doctor’s pre-authorization? In this day and age, a simple computer generated message via email, text, or phone to say “before your next fill, you will need a pre-authorization from the doctor.” That would be so much better than, say, going to fill your kid’s prescription, and finding out right then that it is needed. What this causes is worry over the patient being jerked off a needed medication, when that is not safe. This needs to change.

I have to say right away, I personally think that the company Institute for Excellence in Writing is pretty awesome, and *I* thought it would be just great to learn with their Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization, I was NOT so very sure about the kids. As you know, I have all boys. Boys? Poetry? I didn’t know how well that mix would be.

First, here is what Institute for Excellence in Writing provided to us for the purpose of this review:

• Spiral bound Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization teacher’s book
• An attractive case containing five CD’s which have all of the poems and speeches for each of the five levels in this course
• 7 audio MP3’s
• The DVD “Nurturing Competent Communicators”
• downloadable e-book of the Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization Student Book

The Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization teacher’s manual is very thorough!

Institute for Excellence in Writing very generously also included in our package a spiral bound copy of the student book, which you may, if you wish to have it already pre-printed and bound, order here.

Right off the bat is a blue page with special instructions for the owner of this curriculum to go to the IEW website and log into our account. At that time I was able to check off the e-resources I wanted to download. It gives full instructions as to how to get exactly which resources we would be using with the Linguistics through Poetry Memorization course of study. This is where we were able to download the seven MP3’s:

• Nurturing Competent Communicators
• Mastery Learning, Ability Development, and Individualized Education
• Ten Thousand Times and Then Begins Understanding
• On Listening
• On Speaking
• On Reading
• On Writing

As the owner of this course of study, we were  also able to download the Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization Student pages for personal use only, within our immediate family or classroom. I believe strongly that this is an extremely generous copy-wright policy.

I found it very interesting when reading the Teacher Manual to see how much I had never really thought of. the author Andrew Pudewa, begins by talking about why memorization is very important, especially in this day and age when students are not being taught to use it very much anymore. I don’t know why it is considered useless, given that every single child I have ever known can recite or sing lyrics from a song or a commercial they heard years ago, and in the case of at least a couple of my kids, recite lines from cartoons or movies that are so old I don’t even remember them!

Not only do we read about the “why” of memorization, we read about the “science” of memorization. It helps with brain development. I learned this a long time ago with my oldest child who was born with brain damage as a result of his birth mother’s alcohol consumption. When I would break Bible verses up into sections and give them a cadence such as one might hear in a poem, he could do it. He memorized the whole of Psalm 23 when he was quite young because we did that.

In the course Linguistics through Poetry Memorization, the whole idea is to begin with the first poem in level one (there are five levels), which starts with short, enjoyable poems. This way, one can begin at any age to gain mastery. This plan is similar to the Suzuki plan for music instruction, something I became familiar with through friends who’s children learn with that method.

To teach the program, the teacher and the student(s) recite one poem together several times a day. They can use the audio CD to recite along with, which will help with correct pronunciation. Using the downloaded student book allows for each student to put together their own book of memorized poetry into a notebook. I like this because then they each have the pre-printed  chart for checking off all poems memorized to date. In order to remember previous poems, whenever a new one is started, and recited several times a day, all previously learned poems should be recited at least once per day. Hey, I just realized that this method also will cause ME to learn all of the poems and speeches to mastery, won’t it! How nice!

Another positive about having the downloadable student pages is that several poems come with a coloring page for those who may enjoy personalizing that poem.

We like very much that there is a wide variety of poems and speeches to appeal to all of us. There are poems for the young, poems I enjoy, and definitely poems my boys can enjoy, too! I imagine this course will take us a good long time to complete, but I like that, myself. We enjoy things that we can take our time with, and really dig in deep. I think  in the end, we will (including me!) have learned and memorized all 20 poems in each of the first four levels, and the twenty speeches in level five!

To see what my crew mates thought of this wonderful resource, please click the banner below.

As always, I would just love it if you joined me on all of my “journeys Through Life”! Simply go to the subscription box at the top of the blog and enter your email information, then you will always know when a new post is here. Hope to see you come on board! 🙂

So, yet again our dear “Mr.Loquacious”, the guy who seems to believe he is indestructible, proved not to be.

THIS time, while on a trip to a local park with the boys next door, he managed to injure himself on some exercise equipment. It seems that he tried to get off of it without bringing himself back to the ground, and the metal bar conked him a good one on the right side of his head.

So, we spent several hours in the E.R. after having done exactly the same thing, exactly two weeks previously when he flipped head over the handlebars of his new bike.

Alas . . . the life of the mom of a daredevil boy!

So, “Mr. Loquacious”, our most dare-devil kid once again thinking he must be indestructible, wiped out on his new bike and had to go to the emergency room yesterday. Thought this time he really might have fractured something or sprained it, but it turned out to be very deep bruising. He sure was in substantial pain, though! They x-rayed the injury, and we went home with a sling and a prescription for pain medications.

As always, I’d love to have you join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life”. Just enter your email into the subscription box at the top of the blog, and you’ll be notified when there is a new post!

As always, I would love to have you join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life!” Just enter your email into the subscription box, and you’ll be notified whenever there’s a new post!