ivman's blague

I love children and the wonderful things they say! At the end of this past week, our grandson Drew has come up with his special name for his grandpa - Papi (pronounced like the flower - poppy). His two grandmothers remain nameless, but I suspect that their special names will be revealed shortly.

Today’s instant vacation starts off with some four year olds’ ideas for Thanksgiving dinner. Some of you struggling with what to have for Thanksgiving next week may want to consider some of their ideas. That list is followed by some junior highers’ ideas concerning the Seven Wonders of the World.

Kids’ Thanksgiving menus

This comes from the teacher of a 4 year old kindergarten class. Their assignment was to tell about their family’s Thanksgiving meal.

Ashley - We eat pizza. Put it in a really hot oven. My mommy knows when it’s done. It has white cheese and pepperoni on it.

Jessica - For Thanksgiving we eat chicken. Put it in a pan and cook it. Check on it and when it’s all black it’s done. For dessert have chocolate chip cookies.

Emily - Put the chicken bones in and get them hotter. Serve it with cranberries, and carrots. For dessert have chocolate candy.

Christina - We eat corn and cereal. Put sugar on the cereal and eat it. Have cookies for a treat.

Mario - We eat popcorn. Put it in a microwave for 2 times. Put butter and salt on it.

Stanley - We eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Put jelly on the bread. Then put the peanut butter on. Have milk with it.

Shedric - We eat turkey. Put the turkey in the oven. Put bones inside of it. Have pie for dessert.

Brett - We eat cereal. Put it in a bowl. Add milk. Use a spoon. It tastes good.

Sara - Cut up the turkey with a knife. Have mashed potatoes. Eat pumpkin cake for dessert.

Briana - Put the turkey in the oven. It has to stay in the oven until night time. Stuff it with stuffing. Serve it with peas and mashed potatoes. For dessert have nothing.

Larry - We eat raisin cereal. Put it in a bowl. Put milk in it. Serve it with chips.

Amanda T. - We eat turkey. Put it in the oven for a really long time. Stukk it with ham. It’s black when it’s done. Eat it with white potatoes and corn. For dessert have chocolate pudding.

Joseph - We eat pork chops. Put ketchup on them. Put them in the oven at a whole bunch of degrees. Serve it with french fries.

Courtney - We eat macaroni. Put the macaroni in a bowl and cook it up. Serve cheese with it. Have salad with ketchup on top.

Cara - Cook the turkey on the stove. Stuff the turkey with chicken. Cook it for 16 minutes. Have yogurt for dessert.

Cassondra - We have chicken. Clean the chicken. Put butter on it with a knife. Then it’s ready to eat. Have butter potatoes. For dessert have strawberry yogurt.

Amber - We eat peanut butter. Put the peanut butter on bread. Put the jelly on the peanut butter.

Pangtala - We eat bananas and milk.

Nicholas - First you cut the turkey witha knife. Then you cook it in the oven for 12 minutes at 4 degrees. The alarm goes off when it’s done. Eat it with a fork.

Kelly - Put seeds on the turkey and put it in the oven. Put it on the table with spaghetti-O’s, toast, and pork chops.

Anthony - Put the turkey in the oven. It has to be very hot. When it beeps, it has to come out. Serve it with carrots. For dessert have chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

Thomas - We eat pizza. Pat it and spread it. Put mushrooms on it. Cook it in the oven for 3 months. Eat it with corn.

Devin - We eat macaroni. We eat mashed potatoes. You make it in the kettle. Cook it 2 minutes, and you sit down. Then you go in your room. We drink water.

Gabriel - We eat pancakes. They are hard. My mommy makes them.

A junior high Geography class was studying the Seven Wonders of the World. At the end of that section, the students were asked to list what they thought could be considered the current Seven Wonders of the World. Though there was some disagreement, the following got the most votes:

1. Egypt’s Great Pyramids
2. India’s Taj Mahal
3. The Grand Canyon
4. Panama Canal
5. Empire State Building
6. St. Peter’s Basilica
7. China’s Great Wall

While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student, a quiet girl, hadn’t turned in her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she were having trouble with her list. The quiet girl replied, “Yes, a little. I couldn’t quite make up my mind because there were so many.” The teacher said, “Well, tell us what you have and maybe we can help.” The girl hesitated, then read, “I think the Seven Wonders of the World are

1. to touch
2. to taste
3. to see
4. to hear

She hesitated again and then added

5. to feel
6. to laugh
7. and to love

The silence in the room was almost deafening. It is so easy for us to look at exploits of man or at spectacular things and refer to them as “wonders” while we overlook some of the seemingly little things God has given us, regarding them as merely “ordinary.”

May we all be reminded today of God’s ordinary blessings that are truly wonders. In connection with the Thanksgiving season, I try to imagine the reaction of a group of women at a bridal shower if the bride opened her gifts without comment, then at the end said, “I sure am thankful for all this!” without thanking any individual gift-giver or commenting on any gift along the way. Don’t you think we’re sometimes like that at Thanksgiving? “We have so much to be thankful for!” we cheerfully exclaim. As we are “thankful” at this time of year, let’s be sure to remember to say thanks to the One from whom all blessings flow, and not just be thankful that we’re blessed, forgetting the Giver.

I’ve put a new poll question in the sidebar about your Thanksgiving traditions.

quotation…

“When God is good to you, it’s not because everything is okay. It’s because He is good.” - Dr. Drew Conley

=^..^= =^..^=
Rob

Thanksgiving is not just a holiday - it’s an attitude.

Tags: children, geography, students, Thanksgiving, traditions

Do you enjoy fielding tough questions? As a teacher I have been accused of posing unanswerable questions on my tests. But let me tell you, I’ve been asked some real doozies by my students as well. Our children asked us some hard questions as they grew up. In fact at one stage of life, our son Mark asked so many questions that we nicknamed him “Question Mark.” In case you’ve not seen a recent interview of Biden on a TV station in Florida, you can see it either on YouTube or on the WFTV website. It’s clear that Biden, who has not had to field many tough questions in recent days, did not enjoy the experience.

Today’s iv is a list of tough questions you probably wouldn’t want to have to answer.

Can you cry under water?

How important does a person have to be before he’s considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

If money doesn’t grow on trees, why do banks have branches?

Since sandwich bread is square, why is sandwich meat round?

Why do you have to “put your two cents in” but it’s only a “penny for your thoughts”? What’s that extra penny going to?

What did cured ham actually have?

Why is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?

If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?

Why do people pay to go to the top of tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?

Do people in Australia call the rest of the world “up over”?

Can a stupid person be a smart-alec?

Why is it called lipstick if you can still move your lips?

Are part-time bandleaders semi-conductors?

Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn shop?

Did Noah keep his bees in archives?

If a person thinks marathons are superior to sprints, is it considered racism?

Do they have reserved parking for non-handicapped people at the Special Olympics?

Why are there 5 syllables in the word “monosyllabic”?

Do you overthrow a puppet government with toy guns?

Do pilots take crash courses?

How many weeks are there in a light year?

If blind people wear dark glasses, should deaf people wear earmuffs?

What do you call a male ladybug?

What do chickens think we taste like?

If peanut butter cookies are made from peanut butter, then what are Girl Scout cookies made out of?

How does a shelf salesman keep his store from looking empty?

How does AVON find so many women willing to take orders?

If “pro” is the opposite of “con,” then what is the opposite of progress?

How do they get a deer to cross at that yellow road sign?

Do hungry crows have ravenous appetites?

If people aren’t supposed to drink and drive, why do bars have parking lots?

What was the greatest thing before sliced bread?

How can there be self-help “groups”?

Why do the signs that say “Slow Children” have a picture of a running child?

Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

How do you get off a non-stop flight?

When a Smurf chokes, what color does it turn?

Could someone ever get addicted to counseling? If so, what treatment could you give them?

What do you do when you see an endangered animal that eats only endangered plants?

If a stealth bomber crashes in a forest, will it make a sound?

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

How come wrong numbers are never busy?

What would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?

Daylight savings time - why are they saving it and where do they keep it?

If I save time, when do I get it back?

Speaking of which, don’t forget to switch your clocks back to standard time this weekend if you’re on Daylight savings time here in the USA.

I’m sure my readers have some tough questions of their own that they could add. Please post them in the comments.

For the last ten days I’ve had a poll question in the sidebar - Who do you think will be the next president of the USA? The results were 37 think it will be Obama, 32 think it will be McCain, and 1 thinks it will be a third-party candidate. I’ve now put a new poll question in the sidebar - For whom will you be casting your vote for president? (please, only those who will actually be casting a vote in this election) I thought with all the other polls of questionable scientificity out there, ivman would add one more to the mix. (Don’t look for this one to be quoted by the MSM….)

quotation…

“Money is America’s god, and money cannot save us.” - Dr. Drew Conley

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Rob

To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question … or is it?

Tags: politics, students, teachers, tests, time

What motivates you? How do you motivate others? Is it even possible to motivate others?

Motivation is an interesting phenomenon. Here at the beginning of a new school year, we teachers try to think of ways to motivate some of our less enthusiastic students to try harder in our classes. Not necessarily an easy thing to do. If you read the “experts” in the field, you find a wide range of ideas and suggestions — instructor’s enthusiasm, reasonable expectations and goals, showing relevance of the material, asking engaging questions, active involvement and participation of students, building self-confidence, variety, rewards and privileges, rapport between teacher and students, and on and on it goes.

There’s a whole industry out there whose goal is to help motivate people. One of their products is the motivational poster. You’ve undoubtedly seen them. They generally have a symbolic picture, a keyword, and an inspiring or motivating saying or quotation. Here’s an example…

Here’s one on persistence…

There’s another whole industry that is a spin-off of the motivational posters. They call their products demotivational posters. Here’s their version of persistence…

Their whole premise is that “motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them.” They go on to say, “…we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!”

This poster of theirs pretty well sums up their philosophy…

Some of their posters are quite cynical, but many are downright hilarious. Sometimes the picture is indispensable and other times their wording is enough. Here are a my absolute favorites…

Blame - The Secret to Success is Knowing Who to Blame for Your Failures.

Challenges - I expected times like this - but I never thought they’d be so bad, so long, and so frequent.

Defeat - For Every Winner, There are Dozens of Losers. Odds are You’re One of Them.

Dysfunction - The Only Consistent Feature of All of your Dissatisfying Relationships is You.

Failure - When Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough.

Futility - You’ll Always Miss 100% of the Shots you Don’t Take, and, Statistically Speaking, 99% of the Shots You Do.

Ineptitude - If You Cant’ Learn to Do Something Well, Learn to Enjoy Doing It Poorly.

Mistakes - It Could Be that the Purpose of Your Life Is Only to Serve as a Warning to Others.

Pessimism - Every Dark Cloud Has a Silver Lining, but Lightning Kill Hundreds of People Each Year Who are Trying to Find it.

Trouble - Luck Can’t Last a Lifetime Unless You Die Young.

Underachievement - The Tallest Blade of Grass is the First to be Cut by the Lawnmower.

Wishes - When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it’s really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you’re pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it’s death by meteor.

You can see the whole Demotivators® collection on their website despair.com and maybe even decide to buy some of their funny products.

Before leaving despair.com behind, I’d like to highlight a couple more of their posters. Here’s one that goes to the very heart of this French teacher…

I wonder if anyone has shown these two demotivational posters to Obama…

Ever since I first found the Demotivators® website, I have been saving things that others have put together, following the same basic template, satirizing a number of areas of life. Here are some of the ones I’ve collected…

I found one that I altered — I thought that the blank image with nothing but the word Alzheimer’s was over the edge, so here’s my softened version of it…

I hope that you were more amused than demotivated by the preceding posters!

Anyway, back to motivation… What motivates you? If you are in a position to try to motivate others, what works for you? Like those posters above, what has demotivated you at times?

As cute as it may be, would the following “motivational” poster be enough for you or those around you?

I fear that that is what is happening in many classrooms today — teachers telling their students how great they are in an effort to motivate them.

I’m really looking forward to getting some reader input on this whole area of motivation.

quotation…

“When I choose to sin, it’s like taking a spoonful of death because sin and death go together.” - Dr. Drew Conley

=^..^= =^..^=
Rob

In the world of political correctness, people aren’t lazy, they’re only selectively motivated.

Tags: funny pix, school, signs, students, teaching

A freshman at Eagle Rock High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair a few years back. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to the alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical “dihydrogen monoxide.” And for plenty of good reasons, since it can

1. cause excessive sweating and vomiting
2. it is a major component in acid rain
3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
4. accidental inhalation can kill you
5. it contributes to erosion
6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

He asked 50 people if they would support a ban of the chemical. Forty-three said yes, six were undecided, and only one knew that the chemical was water!

The title of his prize winning project was, “How Gullible Are We?” He believes that the conclusion is obvious.

Water is on the minds of a lot of us right now - the flooding in the Midwest and the severe drought in the Southeast. Our lawn is crunchy because I simply can’t afford to spray dihydrogen monoxide on it as well as the Lord can. Speaking of water, just today I received a link to an interesting picture from nasa.gov - a picture of water on Mars - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0504/WaterOnMars2_gcc.jpg

Though we try to live responsibly in our house, I for one am getting sick to death of hearing the expressions “green” and “global warming” - basically having them crammed down my throat. I strongly suspect that it is driven more by agenda than by science. And people are gullible enough to fall for it, lapping up whatever the alarmists dish out.

Now some more weird science, possibly as credible as some of what we’re being assailed with lately….

Then there are those students who aren’t quite as lucid as the freshman in the first story….

A teacher sent me the following list of comments from test papers, essays, etc., submitted to science and health teachers by elementary, junior high, high school, and college students. As she noted, “It is truly astonishing what weird science our young scholars can create under the pressures of time and grades.”

“H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water”

“To collect fumes of sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube”

“When you smell an oderless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide”

“Water is composed of two gins, Oxygin and Hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.”

“Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillars.”

“Blood flows down one leg and up the other.”

“Respiration is composed of two acts, first inspiration, and then expectoration.”

“The moon is a planet just like the earth, only it is even deader.”

“Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire”

“A super saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.”

“Mushrooms always grow in damp places and so they look like umbrellas.”

“The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.”

“The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to.”

“A permanent set of teeth consists of eight canines, eight cuspids, two molars, and eight cuspidors.”

“The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon. All water tends towards the moon, because there is no water in the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.”

“A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extinct it is.”

“Equator: A managerie lion running around the earth through Africa.”

“Germinate: To become a naturalized German.”

“Liter: A nest of young puppies.”

“Magnet: Something you find crawling all over a dead cat.”

“Momentum: What you give a person when they are going away.”

“Planet: A body of earth surrounded by sky.”

“Rhubarb: A kind of celery gone bloodshot.”

“Vacuum: A large, empty space where the Pope lives.”

“Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative.”

“To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.”

“For a nosebleed: Put the nose much lower then the body until the heart stops.”

“For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.”

“For head cold: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.”

“To keep milk from turning sour: Keep it in the cow.”

Who knows, one of these young scholars could have first come up with the global warming hoax….

The poll that I had up for a week revealed that over 80% of my visitors prefer that I leave the picture of the Paris skyline at the top of my blog, and so there it remains. Thanks to those who took the time to give their input.

My most recent blog post was about senior swingers and their personal ads. This weekend we received some pictures of a young swinger … our grandson Drew. Here are a few of the pictures we received:

quotation…

“Today people boldly redefine right and wrong. … The reason we want to redefine things is because we don’t like the guilt we feel when we keep falling short” - Dr. Drew Conley

=^..^= =^..^=
Rob

After eating, do amphibians have to wait one hour before getting out of the water?

Tags: global warming, math and science, school, students

This past school year was my 35th year of teaching, and I still love teaching and students. This blog post is a reposting of something I sent out exactly five years and one day ago, at the conclusion of my 30th year of teaching. I can think of so many people in my past whose influence on me continues - several of them are reading this right now, and many who have passed away but who, in a sense, live on in their students. I’m sure many of you can think back to a teacher who made a huge impact on your life.

What does a teacher make?

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, “What’s a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?”

He went on to tell the other dinner guests that he thought it was true what they say about teachers - “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

To corroborate his statements, he said to another guest, “You’re a teacher, Susan. What do you make?”

Susan, who had a reputation of honesty and frankness, replied, “You want to know what I make?”

“I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like the Medal of Honor and an A- feel like a slap in the face if the student did not do his or her very best.”

“I can make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute silence.”

“I can make parents tremble in fear when I call home.”

“You want to know what I make?”

“I make kids wonder.”

“I make them question.”

“I make them think critically.”

“I make them apologize and mean it.”

“I make them write.”

“I make them read, read, read.”

“I make them spell “definitely and beautiful” over and over again, until they will never misspell either one of those words again.”

“I make them show all their work in math and hide it all on their final drafts in English.”

“I make them experience music and art and the joy in performance, so their lives are rich, full of kindness and culture, and they take pride in themselves and their accomplishments.”

“I make them understand that if you have the brains, then follow your heart … and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make, you pay them no attention.”

“You want to know what I make? - I make a difference.”

“Now, what do you make?”

quotation…

“Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.” - Chinese proverb

=^..^= =^..^=
Rob

2 teach is
2 touch lives
4 ever

Tags: inspirational, school, students, teaching, work