Day 9 – A rose by any other name

Some of who know my early childhood, know that I was homeschooled by my mom till I completed my fourth grade. We lived in the suburbs of Oman at the time, and all around the schools were Arabic medium schools. My mom, armed with her Bachelors in English Literature and a healthy zeal for learning, went about teaching us the subjects and also a lesson in how to learn. I appreciate my mom for teaching me the nuances of the spoken and written English language. As far back as second grade, I remember my mother asking me to read Shakespeare’s sonnets/portions of plays and asking me to interpret them. I didn’t get them at all. She was not disappointed; she asked me to read again and again and attempt to understand the author. With a dictionary in hand, I did attempt though. I don’t remember how much I was able to grasp or if I finished the work, but I have never been “afraid” of reading something or having any student work intimidate me.  The more you read, the more you understand.

Writing as an art form

Writing requires that the thoughts be well organized either on paper or in the mind. So to write any essay, I have asked Ben to start working on the topic as a top down, where we start with what are we going to talk about in the essay or an article. Start a new page for every topic that we will cover. Always the first topic is introduction and the last one is the conclusion, then we are talking no more than 2 or 3 relevant topics in the middle. In each of the pages, I ask him to write the points for the topic, so we can string them along into sentences to make the paragraphs. One page per paragraph, to write sample sentences, add more, breakout another topic, add citations, and ask more questions.

One key point for each sentence, is to ask why or what. For e.g., he said, child labor is cheap. So naturally I asked why. He said kids are paid less, so I said, why.  Kids are paid less than adults, because that is just how it is. I said good. We have to write it out.

With this in mind, the 4 paragraphs for the social studies project is the introduction of the article. The issue is child labor, and then we talk about the reformer and what she discovered, what did she do, what law was passed, and how did the passing of the law help with the issue. Was that the final solution or more followed?

The rose

What about the rose? Glad you asked. This is the topic or the heading for the article. It has to be relevant obviously to the article, though short has to pull in the reader’s interest, and it also ties in several pieces of the article together. In this case Shakespeare and the art of choosing a title.

Report for the day

The muckraker project is still underway, we are doing the final formatting of the newspaper. I have kept up with my schedule of walking, and meditation. I just picked up another book to read called “10 mindful minutes”, more on that later!

Welcome to Day 9 - Abundance and the Law of Giving

Our centering thought for today is:

"Today, and everyday, I give that which I want to receive."

Today's Sanskrit mantra and its English essence are:

Om Vardhanam Namah

I nourish the universe, and the universe nourishes me.