Healthy Habits for Winter Teaching TipWritten by Freda J. Glatt, M.A.
During winter, when colds are plentiful and absentee rate is high, reinforce appropriate healthy habits.1. Have children use their dictionary skills to look up word 'contagious.' Then use a thesaurus to locate synonyms and antonyms. 2. Brainstorm a list of contagious diseases and write them down. 3. Divide class into groups for them to come up with suggestions to avoid getting sick or lessen effects if they do. Each group will need a leader to make sure everyone participates and a secretary to write down all suggestions. Make sure they understand that no idea is too frivolous to be counted...stretch their thinking skills to think outside box, so to speak. 4. As a class, write list of all ideas without duplicating any. If habits you know to be healthy are left off list, suggest some of your own and let class vote for their inclusion. Some would be covering their nose and mouth when they cough or sneeze, throwing away used tissues instead of hiding them in desks, frequently washing their hands, and using different towels at home when they are sick. Make a bulletin board or a class book for your library. Perhaps your students can do typing and artwork. 5. As an Art project, have your children use paper plates, markers or crayons, yarn or construction paper, glue, and tissue. Draw facial features on plates and glue tissue on tip of nose to cover nose and mouth. These would also make an appropriate bulletin board inside classroom so children will have a visual reminder of what to do.
| | The Kensington RunestoneWritten by Robert Bruce Baird
Contrary to Hobbesian prediction of anarchy (freedom) and brutish or unproductive results in event that elites (often termed 'beneficent paternalism') aren't fostered: we find lots of evidence that team play and open organizational structure actually creates more civilized and productive governance. Lincoln Electric in Cleveland is a well-documented example of how sharing wealth and responsibility builds communication and profit. A Brazilian city named Porto Allegro that opened itself to citizen involvement and socialist ideals is flourishing as corruption wanes. It was predicted they would fail financially but more than a decade of good results has been outcome. Singapore reduces government as a percentage of GDP and is fully modernized. Instead of 'expertise' being solution, it might well be these technocrats in bureaucracies are problem. Archaeology Magazine has a frequent contributor named Professor Wiseman who comes under our critical gaze for all his fine 'expertise'. He truly has struck a sore spot in our view of what is real about Runestone at Kensington. Most importantly he did his duty just after he was proven wrong in a conference of 'experts' from many of his own colleagues as well as other disciplines. It was February, 2001 when we read his 'Camelot in Kentucky' attack on most speculative of all articles that hit newsstands in early 2001, about Europeans in America or Diffusionist History. Shortly thereafter this organ of gods of archaeology had a piece on natural landforms of desert that became Sphinx and Pyramids. No credit due to man and science in ancient times is allowed, it seems. In fact all of us are mere 'post-modern speculative' trash as he would have it. We hit ceiling and laughed simultaneously. Let's allow his own words to prove our point (again). "Perhaps unwittingly, Stengel follows in footsteps of hyper-diffusionists, raising old hoaxes exposed long ago. He brings up once again Kensington, Minnesota, Rune Stone with its account of Scandinavian visitors in 1392, which over past century has been repeatedly rejected as a forgery by scholars, most recently by Stephen Williams, a curator emeritus of Harvard's Peabody Museum, in his book Fantastic Archaeology... Refutation of baseless speculation {That is YOU, if you are thinking!} and repeated resurrection of previously exposed frauds and forgeries is a seemingly endless task. So it seems to teachers who must explain year after year to new groups of students that reports of Celtic inscriptions in Precolumbian Midwest or Phoenicians in Brazil are false. The problem is aggravated by a spreading notion in Western society that all opinions should be given equal weight and are valid until proven wrong. In this Post-Modern democratization of ideas, utter speculation by uninformed ranks alongside reasoned hypotheses of scholars and other experts in field."(9)
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