Mother Knows Best...

I remember the moment I realized that my mother is way smarter than I had ever given her credit for.  The memory is so clear in my mind, it's like it happened yesterday.  I was in third grade.  We were learning how to correctly address an envelope.  I remember being excited about this, because I was the only student who had a sister who was married, and didn't live at home...I even had a baby niece!  I decided to address my envelope to my sister.  Our assignment was to complete the envelope at home.  So, I did my envelope as best I could remember, then went and showed Mom.  She very patiently corrected my mistakes and told me what to do to fix it.  I was having none of it...embarrassingly enough, I told her how wrong she was, and that I was right!  I knew, because that is how our teacher told us to do it.  Finally, Mom said calmly, "fine...turn it in like that if that's how your teacher wants it."  So, I did....and I got it back with a big, fat "F" on it!  And, to add insult to injury, she had no idea who the envelope was for, since I didn't put my name on the return address, so she had to ask the class who the envelope was for...which meant everyone saw all the red marks all over it when she was showed the class to see who it was for.  And, of course they all knew it was mine when I had to walk the walk of shame to the front of the class to get my envelope back.  Needless to say, it was mortifying, and after that I listened to my Mom's wisdom more often...well, sometimes ;)  

I just wonder how much longer it will take Natalie to come to this realization that sometimes mothers really do know best, as she sits and gets her spelling words wrong, because she refuses to look at the words on the board, because she already looked at them once, which should be enough according to her.  "Fine", I tell her, "turn it in like that, if you think that's correct"....hopefully she'll get the message when  I make her go back and write them again five more times, correctly, of course.  The problem is, there is no class to be mortified in front of, so it may take her a little longer to get the message.  *SIGH*

Forget the Purell

Seeing that dirt is a major part of me and my family's life, especially my children, I thought I would share this article:

 

Playing in the Dirt Could Make you Smarter, Researchers Say

May 25, 2010 12:52 PM EDT

Go ahead, let your kids play in the dirt, it could make them smarter.

 After conducting a series of experiments, researchers have found exposure to specific bacteria in the environment could increase learning behavior, ScienceDaily.com reported.

"Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breathe in when they spend time in nature," Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, N.Y., said.

Previous studies on M. vaccae involving mice showed stimulated growth of some neurons in the brain that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety.

"Since serotonin plays a role in learning, we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice," Matthews said.

Matthews and her colleagues discovered they were on the right track.

"We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice," she said. "It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks."

The findings were presented Monday at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

Yay for dirt!