National Novel Writing Month or put your fingers to keys and don’t look up until you are done.  I have written about creating… children creating, adults creating.  I believe in dancing with your dragons and flying with your fairies.

Now, I am going to do it!  Yes, I am.

I signed as a member of NaNoWriMo today.  I am putting myself out there for public humiliation if I do not finish. 

National Novel Writing Month is just that.  Everyone participating starts November 1^st and attempts to complete a novel or 50,000 words written by November 30th.  Setting limits on yourself and announcing them publicly aids the creative process by causing you to actually participate IN the creative process.  It is after all, a process, not an end destination.  Participation is necessary rather than mere spectatorship.

I came to the discovery this past week that whatever else I proclaim myself to be; I am ultimately a story teller, a teller of tales.  Even as an architect, I am merely helping my clients realize their story of how they want to live, work, play, and worship.  As an architect, I tell these stories in concrete.

In NanoWriMo I will tell these stories in words.  Join me if you dare!

I just discovered Susie Shina at Be Fit Enough.  I have absolutely NO interest in diet or exercise “programs,” but I heard her interviewed on another show.  “Be Fit Enough” sounds like it is more up my alley.  I do agree that the body and mind work closely with each other and if either goes down, the spirit goes right with them.  So, “Be Fit Enough” to enjoy life, to create and let your spirit soar.  Well, I’m all in!

To be honest, I really enjoyed her videos…THEN I discovered that I agree with her outlook.  Take a look for fun!

http://www.befitenough.com/

After emptying my children’s backpacks, weighing approximately 352lb.s a piece, I add the fresh pile of school papers to the tower now falling off of the kitchen cabinet.  I would move them to my “office space” except for the fact that I am relatively certain that the bottom most papers are adhered to the counter with an unknown substance with the holding capacity far exceeding the current version of super glue.

Teachers, I ask you most sincerely and with the utmost respect for what you do for and with my children and 23 additional wiggling unruly children every day, I ask you this, “Do I REALLY have to read through all these papers?”  Are you sending these to me for informational purposes or to ensure that I suffer a small piece of the pain you go through each day with parent’s excuses, education board forms and county policy reports.  I feel for you!  I do!  I love each and every one of you dearly for what you do each day, but please, please!  After a day of work, fixing dinner, throwing a load of laundry into the washing machine and cleaning up cat vomit, I simply do not posses the mental capacity to screen through the relevant and irrelevant papers.

On the off chance that they are ALL relevant, I am truly doomed!

I can not in good conscious badger my neighbors for another fund raiser, no matter how cool the glowey plastic spinney radio my child will win may be.  I am not going to try out for the assistant teacher’s exam, no matter how many times you send me the form, because, quite simply, I find a class full of small people terrifying!  You are brave and heroic for what you do, just please, put it on a yellow or pink or blue half sheet if I REALLY need to look over it.  Otherwise, it may just become stuck to the counter along with the rest until next fall.

Sincerely,

The Bewildered Mom

 Children Constructing Their World

Shelves full of wooden blocks hold the building units needed for a child to construct the world.  These simple cubes, rectangles and triangles exist as the concrete equivalent of a child’s imagination.  Towers grow from simple rows and stacks, towers containing the world of childhood, and examining the elusive world of adults.  Pieces of wood strengthen the fingers of toddlers and the friendships of schoolmates.  The medium is as simplistic and complex as a child’s world.

 What Can Playing With A Pile Of Blocks Teach?

Quite A LOT!

The concept of Kindergarten originated with Friedrich Froebel  in 1840.  A strong believer that children learned through play, he developed sets of wooden building blocks for play and teaching that he referred to as “Gifts.”  Caroline Pratt later developed standards for a set of blocks we now refer to as “Unit Blocks” that are used in Kindergartens today.  From these “Unit Blocks” a child can play and learn all the elements needed in education through the first grade and beyond. 

 So….

What Can Be Learned?

Math   Space, Shape, Counting, Patterns, Size, Fractions, Symmetry

Science   Gravity, Planning, Problem Solving,  Balance, Cause and Effect, Inductive Thinking

Art   Pattern, Creativity, Design, Order, Symmetry, Self-Expression

Literacy   Reading “Visual Directions,” Naming, Labeling, Discussion and Planning

Oral Language   Story Sequence with Role Playing, Directions for Clean-up, Directional Words

Come Learn and Build with us at DreamArc

I started a drawing, our families portrait for the website, before I went to pick up the children and a friend of theirs. After getting home, a neighborhood child came to play. The girls are busy creating on the family computer. (The one for sticky fingers…although, they are supposed to wash hands first. The video card is shot and the screen wavers, causing nausea in adults, but apparently it does not affect sticky fingered children) The boys were outside ridding the yard of “Invisible Bad Guys.” Apparently, all the invisible bad guys are gone now, and I don’t see any visible ones left either. So, they have moved inside to destroy the invisible peace in the house.

BUT…..You know how it is once you start a project, a FUN project. You just don’t want to stop, even to protect the house from four foot tall defenders.

So, I have been hiding in the “Office.,” formerly dining room, and drawing. Taking breaks to yell, “Leave the furniture alone!” “The 16 year old cat IS NOT a Bad Guy.” And “We will eat when I am finished…No, I don’t know what yet.” They really aren’t too destructive. Of course, I have not been in the living room in the last 20 minutes.

The raucous sound of little super heroes is actually exciting, as well as, terrifying! Maybe I should try this more often. Well, the Fashion Fairy just came to tell me that they are rearranging the house. Let me go survey the damage before I recommend Creating with Kids About.

Wish Me Luck!

Albert Einstein had quite a high regard for the importance of the Imagination in how we see the world around us.  Einstein was a German born American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics.  Below I have gathered a few of the many quotes credited to him regarding the imagination.  I will let his words speak for him.

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There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

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For more quotes regarding Imagination, Dreams & Creativity visit the link or go to the DreamArc home page to begin exploring your own Imagination.