Recent reads

Been reading/have read:

Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Between Expectations: lessons from a pediatric residency by Meghan MacLean Weir

Recent Reads

Recent Reads I've enjoyed:

Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman

A Love that Multiplies by Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar

Homeschooling: a family's journey by Gregory Millman

Metal Cowboy

I recently finished Metal Cowboy by Joe Kurmaskie. I wasn't super excited about it, since I've read his Mud, Sweat, and Gears and only thought it okay. Metal Cowboy proved to be much more interesting. It was a set of unrelated stories (one story per chapter) about Kurmaskie's bicycle travels over several years. He clearly picked the best stories and carefully crafted them into little pieces of art full of humor and great insight into human character.

Chickens

One of my current interests is raising chickens. (Can you guess what little animals are in a cardboard box in our kitchen?) I've spent quite a bit of time on backyardchickens.com. I've also enjoyed the following two books.

Chick Days: Raising Chickens from Hatchlings to Laying Hens by Jenna Woginrich. It has beautiful photography.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Raising Chickens by Jerome D. Belanger. I appreciated how this book explored the physiology and behavior of chickens (in addition to the expected "how to take care of chickens" information).

A Thomas Jefferson Education

After hearing about it for the second time, I decided to read A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century by Oliver Van DeMille. I don't feel like summarizing, but I'll just say that I agree with several of his ideas-- especially that children need to learn "how" to think and that classics and mentors (good teachers) need to be an important part of a child's (and adult's education). I feel inspired to again work through a lot of the "classics" sitting on our bookshelf and to encourage and help my kids to do so too. I don't feel inspired to follow DeMille's ideas to a tee (or assume that all his "phases of learning" or "seven keys of great teaching" are gospel). There's also a bit of a haughty, over-idealistic tone in the book that I didn't like. Overall though, this was a wonderful book with opinions on education that really opened my mind.

American Playgrounds

I've been thinking about buying or building a playground for our backyard. I've heard from many parents who've purchased fancy backyard equipment that their kids enjoy it for a few days and then don't play on it much. So... I decided to read a little bit about playgrounds/playground design/playground history. I found this great blog: http://playgrounddesigns.blogspot.com/ (and got wonderfully distracted from the goal of getting a backyard playground). It has tons of photos and information about playgrounds as well as book recommendations. I recently read one of these books: American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space by Susan G. Solomon. It talks about playgrounds at the turn of the century (big fenced areas with a "play leader" to facilitate games), postwar WWII steel slides/swings/seesaw playgrounds, a creative period of playground design in the 1960s, and the current trend of very "safe" boring equipment. A good chunk at the end of the book talks about several well-done individual playgrounds. This part I didn't read completely and sometimes read out of order. I wanted more photos to more easily visualize the different playground features. All in all a wonderful read though!

Reading lately?

Not so much time for blogging. I've read lately:

Free-Rage Kids by Lenore Skenazy

From Microsoft to Malawi by Michael L. Buckner

Beyond 2012: Watch Where You're Going by Jaimy Mauricio