Entries from December 2007 ↓

Oneof the most important things we can do as parents is to bond with our children and spend precious time with them getting even closer to them. The more opportunities we have to bond with our children, the more well adjusted they will be and the more happy they will be. Sometimes though it is hard to find the time to devote to the family a much as we would like to.

My husband and I came up with a great idea to increase the amount of family time we spend with our children. We set aside one evening a week for Family Together Night. From dinner time until bed time, it is family time. It starts off with dinner and after dinner, we all do the chores together.

Next we will pull out some puzzles or other activities and do them all together. Sometimes, I will play my guitar with special songs for the kids. Other times we might work on the family scrapbook. When it’s time to go to bed, we put the kids to sleep together and read them stories.

After the kids are asleep, my husband and I spend time talking, sharing and maybe even play a game of scrabble or chess. The important thing is that it is family time.

TEFLWatch is a site devoted to helping teachers deal with bad schools. Many months ago, they took on TEFL International, a major TEFL course provider and pointed out some problems that the course provider had run into in the area of employment and business issues.

The good news is that according to a statement on TEFLWatch, TEFL International has made changes in their business dealings and TEFLWatch has removed them from their Hall of Shame. This is a good thing all the way around. Teachers benefit because TEFLWatch adds another victory to their cause. TEFL International students benefit from a better educational experience.

Christmas Dinner is one of the favorite meals in my family. We enjoy it all the time. This year will be a special year for our family so we are preparing a very special meal for this Christmas dinner. We won’t have turkey because we are going to have a Filipino style dinner.

A Filipino meal means adobo, lumpia, and spaghetti. Lumpia is like Shanghai spring rolls. We will stuff them with tuna fish and other we will stuff with corned beef and carrots. They certainly will taste very good. Our adobo will be beef adobo. I am anxious to see how the family enjoys the cooking this year. Merry Christmas!

If you look over on David’s ELT World, he is putting up some awesomely great resources and information for teachers. In fact, his latest article, Methods of Teaching English has a link to a pdf file that examines many of the teaching methods available. He covers such topics as the grammar translation method, The direct method, The audio-lingual method, Communicative language teaching, Language immersion, Minimalist/methodist, Directed practice, Learning by teaching (LdL) and the Silent Way. Lots of good information in it and it’s definitely worth it to check it out.

Ah, family time. It’s wonderful to spend the day with the family. It is nice to be able to go out and do things and not have to worry about other things to do. I love being able to go around town, maybe visit the mall, do some shopping for the kids. It’s Christmas time very soon so shopping for the kids is such a great idea. Ah, family time, it feels so good. Family time is time we can treasure and hold and it gives us memories to last a lifetime.

New York decided to come up with a law to deal with problems that airlines passengers are subjected on a regular basis. The goal was supposed to make air travel much better for passengers. It’s a very good idea. Passengers should be treated well, I don’t know if they need to make a law for it, but certainly airlines should be doing it voluntarily.

The fact that NY needed to pass a law says the airlines didn’t do it voluntarily. All the law asks for is give passengers food, water, clean toilets and fresh air when the planes are delayed more than 3 hours. The airlines have filed a law suit to keep the law from taking effect. Good job airlines!

Well, it looks like the government finally is making some efforts in eliminating some of the really bad lending practices that the consumer have been dealing with. For example, they have eliminated the kind of lending that says that it’s ok give a home loan to someone who obviously can’t pay it back and could only pay it back if the house increases in value. That’s a good rule change.

Another change that lenders can no longer larger commissions to broker who get consumers to pay a higher rate. In other words, no matter the interest rates, brokers will earn the same. This should really do a lot to curb the advertising for loans.

We will see how this all works out soon enough.