Inspiration:
The Drop Box Story
"Suffering is not a mistake and isn't the absence of God's goodness because He still presents in pain." Kara Tippetts
Only kindness begets kindness; kindness begets love.
Anger does not beget heart change; it begets shame. Yelling does not beget understanding; it begets hurt. Harsh words do not beget love; they beget humiliation. Intimidation does not beget kindness; it begets fear.
I’ve already seen a return on my investment; as I trust God to help me respond to my rebellious children in kindness and love instead of fear and anger, these young hearts are learning that kindness is always right and they treat each other with kindness. What a joy for my mama’s heart!
"Your time spent pursuing love will not be wasted. The time spent embracing your moments, reading that extra bedtime book, sitting together to dinner, loving a child in their unkindness and weakness matter. Live each moment knowing even your unseen movement toward love and away from unkindness matters." Kara Tippetts, Big Love
To read/ study:
Two-Step Authentication on Everything
13 habits to improve your life
12 habits to create explosive growth
21 Places to Learn Useful Skills
10 Ways To Have Better Conversation
1. Be present. Don't multitask
2. Don't pontificate
3. Use open ended questions
4. Go with the flow
5. If we don't know; say we don't know. Talk shouldn't be cheap.
6. Don't equate our experience with theirs. It's not about you.
7. Try not to repeat yourself.
8. Leave out of the details. People don't care about the details.
9. Listen.
10. Be brief
"Go out, talk to people, listen to people," she says. "And, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed."
Business/ Money
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
13 Ways You Waste Your Money
Ten of The best Business To Come Out of Shark Tank
A Dad Started a Company to Employ His Autistic Son
Best advise about money
Jack Ma's explanation on Alibaba: Interesting point: scale doesn't matter instead focus on variety and efficiency
Broke college students life hacks to save money
Amazon vs Costco and Trader Joe's vs Whole Foods
Parenting/ Teaching:
5 Vital Life Skills
Good learning to type website for elementary kids
Growing in grace and wisdom and stature isn’t an immediate download — it happens the way a tree grows up: over decades
The Benefits of Bilingualism
Good reminder for me as parents/ educators to focus on what's important
100 chart
Number bonds (these are FABULOUS for learning fact families!)
Clocks (three versions of blank clock faces without hands)
Calendar (one with the days of the week filled in and one blank)
Coordinate planes (some with one quadrant, some with four)
Number lines (some with numbers filled in, others that are blank)
Graph paper (in two sizes)
What We Learn By Studying Amazing Kids
Low Teach Gift Ideas
Good reads: http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/living/feat-happy-project-kids-happiness-backfire/
Lego learning: http://livingmontessorinow.com/2013/06/20/free-lego-printables-and-70-plus-lego-learning-activities
From now on, I will start saying we're hackschooling. Logan's TedTalk
Sending balloon to space
I love Brene Ted Talk and enjoy her talk in this Gift of Imperfect Parenting Series:
How a Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam
The message: The brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. The way you exercise your brain is by embracing challenges, practicing skills, learning new things. As Khan puts it, "the brain grows most by getting questions wrong, not right."
http://richhabits.net/will-your-child-be-rich-or-poor/
How to survive the college admissions madness
Especially love this dad's letter:
Dear Matt,
On the night before you receive your first college response, we wanted to let you know that we could not be any prouder of you than we are today. Whether or not you get accepted does not determine how proud we are of everything you have accomplished and the wonderful person you have become. That will not change based on what admissions officers decide about your future. We will celebrate with joy wherever you get accepted — and the happier you are with those responses, the happier we will be. But your worth as a person, a student and our son is not diminished or influenced in the least by what these colleges have decided.
If it does not go your way, you’ll take a different route to get where you want. There is not a single college in this country that would not be lucky to have you, and you are capable of succeeding at any of them.
We love you as deep as the ocean, as high as the sky, all the way around the world and back again — and to wherever you are headed.
Mom and Dad
