NOT "Just a Cold"!

So, after 36 hours of terrible throat pain, swollen lymph nodes, and ear pain, I decided to go see the PA in the clinic this morning. I mostly wanted help with all the inflammation in my throat - my uvula is swollen and I can really feel that sensation in my throat. I was thinking that a couple of days of a low-dose steroid might help things out. The PA (the wife of one of my former partners - they hired her after I left) took a good history and did a good exam and told me that it might be a virus, but my throat looked awful, and I didn't have a cough (something that usually comes with a virus and that both kids had), so she wanted to do a strep test. Indeed, it was positive - apparently, very strongly positive. So, now I'm on amoxicillin and we decided against trying any steroids. I'm using a steroid nose spray, so that may help some of the inflammation around the eustacian tubes. I was so convinced it was a virus, but the PA saw some signs that pointed to Strep. Not only that, she had an objective physical exam to help guide her, not just a list of symptoms. This is another example of how practicing medicine is an art and a science - practice by algorithm just won't work.

Movie Reviews:
Akeelah and the Bee - Wonderful movie! This movie is the story of a girl in a middle school in LA who is a good speller and loves words. She wins her school's first spelling bee and moves all the way up to the National Spelling Bee, where she ties for first place. There is very little negative about this movie. I believe it is rated PG because of some foul language by some minor characters. In addition, Akeelah's brother has friends in a gang, and her sister is an unwed mother. Akeelah deceives her mother about the spelling bee. She is allowed to continue in the spelling bee, but is punished for lying. The positives, though, far outweigh the negatives in this film. The wonder and power of words is displayed throughout the film. The spelling bee, and Akeelah's hard work in participating, brings together a community - her brother's friends who are probably gang members help her to practice her words, the family and community watches on TV, her teachers and a former university professor spend time with her to prepare her for the bee. At the end of the movie, Akeelah and another boy both demonstrate that they want to win the spelling bee honestly and not because their opponent has given less than their best effort. My final recommendation is that this is a great movie for the entire family, although kids probably need to be 7 or 8 to stay interested and follow the story.

The Magic Flute - Yes, this is the Mozart opera. The kids are doing the play "Of Mice and Mozart" this year for the homeschool play, so I had us watch Amadeus and I will have us do a little more research about Mozart and his music. After we watched Amadeus, L asked if we could watch The Magic Flute. She wanted to see it because it was written for the common people, not the nobility. Of course, it is sung in German, but we had subtitles. C was not terribly interested in the movie, so we only read the subtitles out loud when he asked. L and I really enjoyed the music. I have never thought of myself as an opera-lover, but I really liked listening to this music. It did help that the words were on the screen, so I didn't have to work to listen for them. The problem, though, was that the story got kind of convoluted, so we had trouble following at times. I think that Mozart composed this opera to a story that was known to the people of the day (if that is incorrect, please feel free to correct me, but it is the impression I got from Amadeus). It may have been easier for Mozart's contemporaries to understand, but we still had some trouble with it. In any case, the costumes and set were wonderful. The singing was amazing. Of course, the composition itself was magnificent. I can't imagine too many other 11 year olds wanting to see opera, but I would recommend The Magic Flute if they express an interest.

Amadeus - what can I say? The music of Mozart is simply amazing. The story of Salieri and Mozart is quite fictionalized, according to some other reading that we did later, but it provided an interesting framework for the movie. The kids didn't really like the movie, but they did learn a little about Mozart. I have ordered a documentary of Mozart's life from Netflix to compare with this movie.

Book Reviews:
Getting Things Done - by David Allen. I'm a sucker for books about organization. This one is really very good. His theme is that you need to get all the stuff you need to do out of your head and onto paper (or into the computer/PDA). Then, you need to manage your to-do lists and in-basket on a regular basis. This way, you don't have to worry about forgetting things or having stuff get lost in your to-do-lists.

A Charlotte Mason Education - by Catherine Levinson. I wanted to get a better idea about Charlotte Mason's ideas since they have become quite prevalent among homeschoolers. In addition, the curriculum we use, Sonlight, does use some Charlotte Mason ideas. Basically, though, the only idea that I find really useful from Charlotte Mason is narration. I agree that children should narrate back to us what we have read aloud to them or what they have read themselves. This is more effective than just asking questions, because it requires them to synthesize the information, not just parrot it back. So many of her other ideas, though, are very dated and/or should be used with just younger children. She recommends the use of nature notebooks for the majority of science education. The use of these notebooks is wonderful for biology and even some geology and other earth science things. However, there needs to be some systematic education in the other areas of science. Charlotte Mason also has very little to say about math except that concrete concepts should be taught before abstract concepts. Children should be able to see a reason for the math that they do. Overall, I have not found this to be a really helpful book. I was already doing narrations. Many of the other ideas and recommendations are either useful for children younger than mine or not adequate for a technological society like our own.

L did her first opinion paper this week. She wrote about why she likes cats. It is excellent for her age. She has a creative mind and uses words like a surgeon with her surgical instruments. Unfortunately, she doesn't like to write. We are going to do lots more writing with our notebooking that we start next week, and I hope that she can start to see how it really isn't all that hard! I'm also going to be better about letting her writing for history/geography/literature be graded on the content, not the mechanics. She will have plenty of opportunities to have the mechanics of her writing graded. I'm looking forward to our new "paradigm" of school. I know that my kids will do well with it - I just hope that they give it a chance early on so that we don't spend the first few weeks arguing over how to "do school".

I think I've written quite enough today. Now it's time for a nap, and then time for putting together next semester's notebooks. The nap sounds really good right now, though.