Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Wordless Wednesday





Psalm 123
The Message (MSG)

A Pilgrim Song

123 1-4 I look to you, heaven-dwelling God,
    look up to you for help.
Like servants, alert to their master’s commands,
    like a maiden attending her lady,
We’re watching and waiting, holding our breath,
    awaiting your word of mercy.
Mercy, God, mercy!
    We’ve been kicked around long enough,
Kicked in the teeth by complacent rich men,
    kicked when we’re down by arrogant brutes.

Life of Amazonic Kichwa people


Kichwa culture is oral.

The stories and histories are told, not written down.

Teaching is done by telling and showing, moving around and practicing.

Not by copying or reading and writing.

People can sit down and be quiet.

It's a skill you need to be able to concentrate on what people are telling you.

They even have quite incredible auditory memory skills since it is the way information has always entered.

They also usually have a beautiful handwriting, are skilled illustrators and artists, and take care of the presentation of their work.

Singing and dancing are other important cultural ways of information input.

The songs tell about history, important people and cultural events, animals, weather, environment and other culturally pertinent facts.

They tell people how to live and act, in the proper way, the Kichwa way.

The dancing also tells stories and histories.

They are highly choreographed to express cultural information with an interesting story that the people will recognize.

It is normal to role-play different important events in people's lives, like marriage, and the audience lives in the story, all through it.

The humor is integral to all this and very earthy.

Jokes, especially about sexuality, are very much appreciated and people capable of telling good jokes are celebrated.

As much as people able to tell a good story, dance a good dance, sing a good song or play good music.

The games played are a practice for cultural skills, like hunting for men or taking care of home and children for women.

About fifty years ago, when most of the elementary schools in the Amazon area of Ecuador were founded, they were mostly religious Catholic schools and only in Spanish.

Why is this important?

Because schools were seen as a vehicle to turn the Kichwas from their savage ways into Spanish speaking Catholic Christians.

Speaking Kichwa was prohibited, school uniforms were obligatory, cultural references were minimized and the punishments were severe.

At the same time, the segregation was the practice.

On one side were the colonial children, the children of mestizos from the Andes, and on other side the Kichwa children from the Amazon, los indios.

The colonos, the so-called white children, ate one meal, with chicken and occasional meat.

The Kichwa children had another meal, without any kind of meat.

The Kichwa child caught speaking in Kichwa, his or her own language, was beaten and told never to do it again.

Worse was if you were found following your cultures savage, pagan ways, communing with demons, as it was called.

The children were taught a limited, stumped Spanish and also limited and stumped reading and writing skills, in Spanish.

And some basic math.

Then they were ready to serve their betters.

Twenty-five years ago Kichwa speaking school system was founded and along it the first non-Christian schools meant for Kichwa children.

There were no University trained Kichwa teachers.

There was no written Kichwa language.

But there was a will to be overcome and succeed.

First Kichwa High School graduates were born.

Then the first Kichwa University graduates.

But there was no work for them.

You could be a lawyer, engineer or doctor, no one would hire you because you still were an indio.

Only way to get hired in the Amazonic region was to work for Kichwa education system or in special community programs for the Ecuadorian government.

Or you could go to the big cities and towns in the Andes and pretend not to be a savage from the jungle.

That is still the image in the Ecuadorian mind.

A naked warrior with his nose pierced and face painted, standing with a spear in his hand and parrot feathers in his hair.

Something other, something to be scared of.

How can you work in an office and tell to your coworkers that is you, or your father, brothers and uncles.

That the picture was taken in your village and your home isn't that far away.

Amazonic Kichwa culture is in a crisis.

So much has been forgotten in the oppression.

So much has been thrown away because of the shame.

And still there is pride and will to continue the ancient ways and live like the grandparents have always lived.

It is a hard way to mix Ecuadorian Spanish speaking culture with Amazonic Kichwa culture.

The modern technology with ancient technologies.

The outside beliefs with the Kichwa way and the outside languages with the Runa Shimita, People's Language.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

How to develop fine motor skills with recycled material




Fine motor skills are important both in child development and in special education.

Many times these skills are overlooked in the race to higher intelligence.

But children develop in stages and teaching skills of a higher stage will only create pseudo-skills without real understanding.

Fine motor skills are tasks that utilize the small muscles of the body like those in the fingers. 

The fine motor skills involve the small muscles of the body that enable such functions as writing, grasping small object, and fastening clothing.

To be able to do all this, a person needs strength, fine motor control and dexterity.
Weakness in fine motor skills can affect a child’s ability to eat, write legibly, use a computer, turn pages in a book, and perform personal care tasks such as dressing and grooming.

While many children don’t have difficulties with gross motor skills (such as walking, running and jumping), fine motor skills require more control and more precise movements of smaller muscles.

Toddlers around a year of age are usually able to perform fine motor skills like holding a cup, grasping a spoon, picking up chunks of food and putting small objects into a larger container.
Usually at this age, there is not much involvement of the thumb.

As a child gets closer to two years of age, fine motor skills increases to include tasks like drawing with a crayon, using a fork or a spoon with more precision and stacking small objects like blocks.

Closer to three and four years of age, children begin to master fine motor skills like zipping, snapping and buttoning clothing and drawing and writing skills show marked improvements.
Fine motor skills are essential precursors for many of the skills students need to complete academic skills.

Such as cutting with scissors, writing, and keyboarding.

Since fine motor control is a very important skill to master for writing, it is important to make sure your child is continually improving those skills.

When you are working with your child to develop fine motor skills you’ll want to build hand strength, independent manipulation of both hands, and hand-eye coordination.

You can encourage your child’s development in this area by offering plenty of opportunity to practice.

Also try to avoid doing things that might hinder fine motor development, like feeding your child from a spoon instead of letting him pick pieces of food off his a plate.

Allow your child to practice new skills and better his dexterity as soon as he shows interest.

Good small muscle coordination and fine motor skills help your child gain more independence.

There are many ways to develop fine motor skills.

The following exercises were created by Kichwa special education teachers from recycled material.

They are cheap to make but effective to use.

By helping your child to practice the activities in this article you can help your toddler, or bigger child, to sharpen her fine motor skills.

God Allmighty


Most of the humans ever to have lived have believed in different kinds of gods.

In all times, everywhere people have believed there is something bigger, something that existed before us, some reason that the universe is the way it is.

And they have always tried to explain it and somehow they have felt that there is a need in them, in us, of someone.

That we were not here by accident, but we were created and we need a personal relationship with that Creator.

It is true that there have been dreams and whispers of the Perfect Story, the one and only True Story, even before it happened.

Because all of our hearts are attuned to God, and all of us seek to belief, be it in gods or in science.

And that is why week keep looking for the Truth, until we finally find it or die, never knowing what could have been.

God is love and heaven is filled with His love.

He cares for each of us and He is not restricted by time or space.

He has all the time in the Universe to spend with us and show his love and care.

The adoration you described comes from the joy that we're going to be filled with.

The place you describe as Heaven is actually the Hell.

In Hell the fallen angels are arrogant and have no care for people.

The evil will expect constant adoration and lip service to him.

You will not have time to enjoy anyone there; your time will be used in serving the evil and his minions.

All that is good, all that is beautiful and appealing comes from God.

And Hell is removed from His presence.

There will be no hot girls, no sex and no fun; because all this is a gift that God has given to us.
The sexual attraction, the joy and pleasure comes from Him, from what He created in us.

And when we are removed from His presence, nothing of this will exist.

Just the empty, vacant husks adoring and servicing the devil.

I refuse to live in a dog-eat-dog world.

I know that I don't really "know" God.

He's too great, too immense, too marvelous for me to know Him or understand Him.

But I strive to do it.

Because I look for goodness and call that goodness God.


God is the good force in the Universe.

God is what is good and perfect.

God is who created us.

God is the source of love and joy.

God is the giver of happiness.

He is God.

That is what I believe.

 


Did you like the post?

Maybe you would like to more about know who God, Mighty Creator is? 

Or what the world was like In the beginning?

Would you like to know more about God, the Creator