Julie A. Duncan

Saint Patrick's Day is coming up. I love green so of course I celebrate this holiday! You always hear the phrase "Luck of the Irish" around this time. I don't really know what it's referring to. Are the Irish luckier than us? I'm sure there is a story around that and I should probably Google it. Anyway, I happen to be listening to a book right now that takes place in Ireland. It's called Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy. It's a series of fictional stories of the people who are somehow associated with the town of Rossmore. Near Rossmore, in Whitehorn Woods, is a cave with a well. A statue of Saint Ann had been put there and thus it came known as St. Ann's Well. People believed that you could go petition St. Ann for your needs and she would meet them. Many of the needs center around wanting to be married or infertility or sickness. Most of the people in the stories say they don't believe in it, but it couldn't hurt to try. Some of them bel...

( This is my answer for "Describe your experiences with children. Reflect on what you have learned from these experiences." This is for my application to teacher education.)   Where children are concerned, you can expect the unexpected. Even the best plans have to be flexible. While coming home from school with my three children one day, I was planning in my mind everything we were going to do when we got home: math homework first, then play a game that would help Jordan and Ashley with their spelling words and Hailey with recognizing her numbers. While I prepared supper I thought we could use a potato for a science project that was on the back of a handout they'd brought home earlier. They were going to learn a lot academically that afternoon. I had it all planned. However, as we drove into the driveway, Ashley asked if they could play outside. We'd been cooped inside with cold weather for a long time and it was beautiful that day. I checked the time and told them...

Yesterday we were driving to school and I said, "Look girls! Two shoes in the road!" It occurred to me that it really sounded like the title of a book and I said as much. I said we should write a story that goes with the title. Ashley says something like, "There were two shoes on the road. There were ants in them. The ants got squished. The end." Jordan proceeds with a story about a girl who was running down the road and ran out of her shoes. She didn't notice though. A policeman came by and found the shoes. He searched for a long time to find the owner but eventually gave up and placed them in the lost and found box. The girl came by and found them in the box. She was very happy to have found her shoes. Ashley says she liked her story better. I mentioned I thought Jordan's had a little more depth to it. Then I told them it really sounded like it should be a poem. Ashley sang a song about the shoes. A few minutes later, I had a poem ready: Two shoes in the...

We went to Wal-Mart on Saturday with a list in hand. Ashley would read off the things on the list: eggs, yogurt, pancake mix, etc. And as we approached that section of the store I would sigh and say, "Well, mark that off." There was nothing in the store. Absolutely no eggs. The pancake mix I normally get was out. Yogurt, cottage cheese, and the like were practically gone. We picked out a couple of yogurts that didn't have expiration dates of tomorrow. There were entire sections of meat gone. The place for refrigerated biscuits, rolls, or bread of any sort was completely bare. We have been so snowed in that the trucks can't get to Oklahoma. I saw a post on facebook from Tiffany up near Tulsa indicating the same thing. They have been out of school for an entire week and are still closed tomorrow. We've pretty much thawed out here in southwest Oklahoma and just have really ugly greyish blobs piled everywhere along the roads and parking lots. What's scarier th...

I remembered two other things that we did with our time. On Wednesday, Groundhog Day, we watched Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. I haven't seen that in forever. It's still good, although not as good as I remembered. We also shoveled snow. Anticipating that Cameron would be open Thursday and I would have to go to class, we shoveled out our 200 foot driveway. I checked my email Thursday morning before leaving only to find out that class was canceled because the instructor had the flu. I didn't mind staying home one bit! It took me awhile before I remembered why my legs were so sore though. You don't realize how many squats you're doing when you shovel snow! So today I promised myself to be productive. I did six loads of laundry and the dishes. I made blueberry muffins for breakfast. I played bowling on the Wii with Hailey and tennis on the Wii with Jordan. I went to class and made a 100 on my test. I went to the grocery store and bought milk and one of the last loav...

Wouldn't it be nice if we just spent almost an entire week at home and actually did a lot of stuff? That we were productive? Yep, that would be nice. But we haven't. The TV is a horrible time waster. So is studying for a psychology test. My children and Greg watched TV and I studied. However, I just couldn't stand watching them do absolutely nothing so I did plan a few things to distract them from the TV periodically. Yesterday I was determined that we would do some stuff with school. So to help Hailey learn the letter Q, we threw quarters into a big Q as a game. Then we made a paper Q quilt where they colored different items that started with the letter Q and then I used yarn to tie them together into a quilt which we hung in Hailey's room. She seemed to know the letter Q at the end of the day. Jordan and Ashley had no interest in writing a story with q words and their spelling words though. Today, we cooked. Mom had given them a "cookie party" activity b...

What I like best about snow is staying home! I don't mind snow, but I don't want to drive in it. Either give me lots of snow or give me none. Nothing in between that means I'll have to drive. This snow storm is being called the storm of the season. Apparently 1 in 3 people in the United States was affected by this storm. We mainly got sleet at night and then it turned to snow this morning.They had called off school both at Fletcher and at Cameron before it even hit just based on the weather predictions. So we've had the day off. And we get tomorrow off too. Yahoo! Because I have a test on Friday and I still have chapters I have to read. So...I'm spending my time reading. Off to finish chapter 7.....