Category Archives: Preschool

What a Mother Can Do About the Flu

A really bad flu seems to be going around. It is going around in Austin, with kids and with adults. It is going around the rest of the country. I hear it is going around in other countries. It is a bad one.

I also hear (rumors and televised news is close to the same these days) that the CDC flu vaccine doesn’t stop it. This is quite possible because how the flu vaccine is only a guess at the top 3 or 4 strains out of many many. I also heard a strong, middle aged adult say she wasn’t going to get a flu vaccine because she was afraid she would get autism. Well, neither the mercury implicated in autism nor the aluminum implicated in giving babies strokes is likely to hurt an adult. I’m not taking any stand on flu vaccines for adults. Discuss with a competent wellness professional.

Whether or not you and your family are into flu vaccines, still, there is much that can and should be done to stay healthy.

Washing hands is very important. In our century the mass of people discovered how important hand washing was, but then we are forgetting. We are with so many people! Have they washed their hands? Have they touched something with sticky hands? Most importantly, little children, crammed in with many other little children from different homes — this is an artificial and dangerous situation. So professional childcare experts are very big on handwashing. And table washing. And door knob washing. Knowlegable parents will also want to be informed if a plague is circulating through a classroom. Is there a way your child could stay home in such weeks?

All of this relates to learning disabilities and learning problems, because studies show that children who more health insults, even these comparatively minor ones, do less well in school. One study even showed that children with dirty fingernails, tended to have colds, and thus miss school, and thus did more poorly and were often thought to be less bright. More of their energy was going to physical wellness instead of learning.

Dr. Ensign will share his interview. This is a re-run from 2009. Notice, he favors real hand washing over the alcohol sauce, but public schools have often made that the only option.

Carl Sommer’s Principles of Success

Last week, we talked to Carl Sommer about his books for young children that teach character principles — like the mouse who discovered it was best to pay attention to what his mother said. This time he lost only his tail! And how the bear found his smile.

Mr. Sommer gave us a great discount of 25% this month for typing in the code “great.” This applies even to a subset of his books that have library binding that are already on sale for half price of …. get this… $4.95. We can’t be sure that there will be any of those books left. My librarian and preschool director friends have probably already snapped them up. So go right now.

All of the books are inexpensive for what they are and the 25% discount is great by itself. Be sure to peruse the whole website. You will find some free things. www.advancepublishing.com

In this episode, Mr. Sommer let out that he writes even more than is on www.advancepublishing.com. Advance Publishing specializes in character building books, in a variety of languages, that teach character principles and are acceptable to public schools in the USA. But there is more. He is part of a project that teaches math. He provides the practical lessons, so students understand that math really is needed in the real world. For math resources, all the way up to Trigonometry www.numbersuccess.com. This is suitable for public, private or homeschool educators.

Then, for specifically Christian content, especially success principles for youth, go to www.dovepublishers.com.

Finally, for the the ebook format for the Kindle or iPad, let us help you with direct links. For a fee ebook edition of Education in Crisis go here. And for Teen Success in ebook form, go here. Many of his books are online with various vendors, including his books on Electric Discharge Machining, even a book on sex for young people, and his book

that originally alerted me to his work.

Please let us know which books of his you like most below.

New Books for Children With Character Development

New discovery for me and for many people I hear from: a set of better books, all with themes that develop character for children: Carl Sommer at Advance Publishing.

Not long ago, in a group of women one said, “I have been looking everywhere.. and I just can’t find good books for my grandchildren.” Everyone nodded. Yes, I knew that for 40 years stories with morals were not welcomed in the publishing industry. Then I received, as a gift for joining the Christian Educators Association International, a book entitled Character Under Attack.It was Carl Sommer’s book, telling how he had faced this and overcome it by starting his own publishing house.

I went to see him. He gave me an interview. I bought books! They are high quality, well bound — and on discount. Listen to the interview! IN it he offers our listeners a 25% discount for typing in the promo code “great.” Only through September 2017. You may also find some library bound books still on close-out. This would be a great find for preschools! Hurry; those may be gone already. And you will find that if you buy over $50.00, you get free shipping.

Check out www.advancepublishing.com.

Please! Share this episode with your friends, relatives, and teachers.

New Book Announcement – English Spelling Patterns


I wrote this first for my grandsons. I have never seen spelling taught in an organized, sensible fashion. Well, except once: my friend was teaching her preschooler at home and started with cat, rat, bat. So sensible. Never done.

Later, I discovered that many students could not intuit the rules like I could. Give me a word and I normally can guess how it is spelled. Many can not do that. So why not teach them the rules? I discovered that the Orton-Gillingham Method for teaching students with dyslexia does this, at least to some extent. So it was not until I was grown, with all my education, many degrees, and had a daughter in junior high and in a program for remediating Dyslexia, that I heard “when 2 vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and says its name.”

I also realized that all Montessori teachers will need this, since all they have is the basic “what you see is what you get” from Montessori, who spoke Italian — a wysiwyg language.

Then I discovered that some very well educated ESL students appreciated the work. So now it is available on Amazon and Kindle for everyone.

Enjoy. Share.