Coyote Craft pretty useful things from Bean

Enchanted with Little Things

In collage, domestic bliss, mail art, swaps on 10 March 2012 with Comments Off

These are out in the mail today, and I love how they came out!

Layered papers, scraped on acrylic paints, mod-podge, glitter, rubber stamping and collage materials from vintage books, patterns and magazines – oh my!

What are you thinking?

In homeschooling/unschooling, meditation, philosophy on 7 March 2012 with 3 comments

The roots of  critical thinking  in the western world can be found with one of history’s great thinkers – Socrates. He felt that throughout life, the need to know oneself, to be true to oneself, and the ongoing pursuit of knowledge were imperative to living a happy and full life.

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” ~Socrates

With the Socratic Method, we are forced to open our minds to all possiblities – questions and answers are designed to dive into the heart of a matter and reach Truth. As largely egocentric beings, we naturally believe that we are right and whoever we are arguing with is wrong. When we’re angry, we see things through an angry filter. Sad? a sad filter – and so on. This method helps us reveal general, commonly held beliefs that shape our opinions, and scrutinizes them to determine their consistency with other beliefs.  

“All we are is dust in the wind,” dude.

The real purpose of the method is not to define conceptual ideas, but to improve our thinking, and our understanding of why we’re thinking what we’re thinking – helping us think confidently for ourselves, objectively.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” ~Albert Einstein

In our time, as in Socrates’ 2,500 years ago: unclear meanings, insufficient evidence, and unsubstantiated absurd beliefs often lurk beneath sleek but mostly empty rhetoric. Socrates recognized the value of asking intense questions before concluding that other people’s thoughts and ideas were credible and worthy of support.

“Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.” ~Francis Bacon

• A Brief History of Critical Thinking
• Critical Thinking from Wikipedia
• The Socratic Method – University of Chicago Law School Prospective Student Intro
• The Critical Thinking Co. – Curriculum Resources
• Think About It – Critical Thinking Resources from Scholastic

Under Pressure

In family on 7 March 2012 with Comments Off

we have been stuck in the house with debilitating sinus pressure and watery eyes…allergies? sinus infection? the treatment is the same…. and we try to remain thankful for little things, like new coloring books from the drugstore, full length foreign nature documentaries on Youtube, and Zicam Sinus Relief. Ahh-choo!

I Heart Mail

In domestic bliss, mail art on 1 March 2012 with 2 comments

Don’t you just love to send & receive mail? I do, too – and I know how good it feels to get something extra-special/pretty/awesome/weird in the mail, so I send stuff out almost every day. I really like typing out my envelopes, too – they’re full of so much awesome!

working on swapsI always need to finish my typing before midnight, the hum & hammer of my electric typewriter is too loud when the house needs to be quiet.

a handmade recycled letterset
from picklehead on EtsyThis week, I joined the Letter Writers Alliance too – how fun! Our mail carrier has told me how much she likes delivering and picking up our mail every day. Isn’t that one of the nicest compliments ever? I make her work fun! Yesterday we received a postcard from Siberia (!!) and I told her a little about PostCrossing. It is amazing how much of the world the USPS can bring right to your door, especially when you’re an introverted hermit without a car