August 17, 2006 @ 6:41 pm | Filed under:
ClubMom Nope, I don’t mean what I used to dream of during my days as a waitress at Friendly’s. (Tangent: I was a TERRIBLE waitress. Spilled a lot of ice waters. Had to make three times as many trips back and forth to the kitchen as the other waitresses because I was too spaghetti-armed to carry a tray full of plates. The day I quit, I felt like Scarlett O’Hara: "As God is my witness, I will never wait tables again!" So of course I got married and had a bunch of younguns on whom I wait at table several times a day. And LIKE it. Go figure.)
No, what I’m talking about here (besides long-gone ice-cream-and-burger-schlepping days) is a Very Enticing Contest being held by Amanda at The Naked Ledger. She is offering a $50 gift card (your choice of vendor—the list is long) for the person who submits the best budgeting tip. The judge: her husband Dave. So pony up the advice, my dears. I know what a smart, frugal bunch you are.
I’m trying to think if I have any budgeting advice. Nope, it turns out I don’t. But I can advise you on excellent books to read about Fictional People Who Are Thrifty Yet Likeable. So if you hear of any contests offering prizes for that, please let me know.
*Where "day" = "as often as I remember to do it." How’s this for a fun idea? In addition to regular posting, I’m going to start posting daily quotes about How People Learn Stuff. Such as:
"The child is curious. He wants to make sense out of things, find out how things work, gain competence and control over himself and his environment, and do what he can see other people doing. He is open, perceptive, and experimental. He does not merely observe the world around him, he does not shut himself off from the strange, complicated world around him, but tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how reality works, he works on it. He is bold. He is not afraid of making mistakes. And he is patient. He can tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, and suspense."
—John Holt, How Children Learn
"Tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it." Boy is that right. Actually this is just what Maria Montessori was talking about in that quote I posted on Bonny Glen the other day.
"Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants—doing nothing but living and walking about—came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child’s way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love."
So there you go: your Joy of Learning Quote of the Day, where "quote" is sometimes plural.
