19 April 2009

Come on, summer!

I read a really interesting article last week on the New York Times opinion page about how America can and should raise our collective IQ, and what parents and teachers can do to help. Did you know our collective IQ has risen substantially in the past century? Interesting fact: Half our country's population in 1917 would be considered retarded by today's standards.

Anyway, this article also says that children form a lot of their IQ before age six. This got me thinking that I need to start doing some more structured learning activities with Claire. She'll start going to "Thursday School" one morning a week at the other Church of Christ in the fall, so she needs to be able to sit and focus on an activity, anyway. So I ordered a book from Amazon and checked a few out of the library about Montessori activities for kids aged 2-6. That's our plan for this summer. As you can see, Claire is already getting ready! (She really wanted to "read" this book for some reason; when I told her it was "Mommy's book," she actually ran in the other room with it, like she needed to hide from me to read it!)

Another Claire note: She's started saying "What's that?" and "Who's that?" The questions are starting!

5 comments:

Shelley said...

In case you haven't seen this blog, check out http://mommylife.net/.

Barbara wrote a book called Mommy Teach Me! that is quite good. http://mommylife.net/books.php

Audrey said...

Cute! I have a feeling she'll soak up any learning that she gets. K has started saying "why?" AND it's in context. Oh boy..... Carson still says why alot. I guess that's why they are so smart. :)

Tabitha said...

Hey Kim! Thanks for your comment about the Knotty Leg warmers on etsy...I will definitely be checking them out! You're right...they are addicting,they are so darn cute!

Audrey said...

tagged you today!

Amanda said...

interesting post. glad to hear you are concerned with claire's intelligence--it is true that the first years of her life are VERY formative.

the question with IQ is, are we getting smarter or better test takers? are different people taking the IQ measures now? there are lots of alternative questions that you have to ask yourself when interpreting the fact that scores have increased over time.