How was your 2011?

I want to do a bit of introspection for the year that was 2011. I know, there are still a few days left before we finally say goodbye to 2011 and this seems something that looks like “forced” and too early.

• 2011 was a busy year with even more focus on the children’s needs and activities as well as more focus on my students whose needs are developing too.

• 2011 was a challenging year especially since the family has to deal with more pressing concerns in different aspects of our lives.

• 2011 was like a myriad of emotions when it comes to how we reacted to the different local and world events as they unfold

• 2011 was and still is a year I have to deal with health issues plaguing the family members but we try our best to stay healthy by choosing healthier food choices and getting rid of or avoiding things/events that bring a lot of stress

• 2011 made me realize I can do so much more if only I put more effort into what I know I can do best

Are you looking forward to doing more improvements to your life and meeting more challenges in 2012?

The Department of Education (DepEd) has issued memo No. 244 s.2011 DECLARING NOVEMBER AS NATIONAL READING MONTH OF EVERY YEAR AND NOVEMBER 25, 2011 AS THE NATIONWIDE ARAW NG PAGBASA.

Reading is an important aspect of the whole learning process and not just a part of language development.

Reading is the basic foundation for learning. In this day and age when students are more adept at copy-pasting that they pass off as research, the fundamental reading (and writing) skills needed to create original research and documents seem to be rare traits in students.

We want our children to learn to read. We want our children to love to read. We want our children to have fun reading.

So how would we encourage them to do so?

They’d probably argue that reading does not just limit to holding a book and reading this. Sure, reading translates to many mediums like those troves of “comic book” treasures in the internet, e-books, magazines, newspaper articles and even instruction manuals of the latest gadget bought.

Technology has changed the way people read. I for one used to do an all-nighter, an I-can’t-put-a-good-book-down-until-I-finished-reading habit while tossing and turning on my body pillow. All these reading habits have changed because of technology. Yes, I’ve been into e-books several years before the tablets were invented because I read a lot of these in my old Palm Pilot and big Symbian phone. I’ve read almost all HP books (except 1,2 and Deathly Hallows) in e-book format.

In this blog, I’ve written posts about reading:

• children’s books to read like Chicka, Chicka Boom Boom, Grover, Grover, Come on Over, Franklin is Lost
• reading can take many forms like this rebus story
• some teaching techniques

On Friday, my youngest daughter will go to school “dressed” as a storybook character. We’ve been doing this storybook character for a long time when the teen-aged oldest child was still in preschool. Since we already have a costume worn by Kuya from last school year’s drama club presentation, we will just add details to it. No buying since we will adhere to the school’s “recycle and reuse” costumes rule.

Other school activities lined up till next week are: fashion show (for the storybook characters), speech choir, declamation pieces, English Night presentation, Drama Club presentation and exhibit of works related to reading and literature.

Reading is fun. Reading is great.

Now, off to prepare to face a student who asks: “Why can’t I read like my classmates?”

The winner of a spanking new iPad 32gb 3G and wi-fi is…. NOT ME

Congratulations to Pehpot!

It was fun doing this giveaway because I got to know the different internet connectivity of friends. Several of those who answered are real-life friends who are noob in joining contests. I won’t name them but in my heart I am grateful they were willing to step our of their comfort zone and do this for me. Thank you.

Thank you all to those who joined.

Wait, there’s more… I will be doing something for you guys soon, just lemme finish whatever I need to finish so everything is well taken cared off.

For now, I need to focus my energy in accomplishing a lot for something I should have prepared a long time ago and that means getting a new pair of footwear to replace the easy spirit sneakers.

I have a Cisco Linksys E4200 router giveaway contest here. Should I get the most number of respondents for the survey questions, I will raffle off that PhP9,000 worth router. I will also get to win a gadget when that happens, so woot!

On the other hand…

A “lucky” reader also gets the chance to win a gift pack from Johnson’s Baby World of Firsts here by just writing a caption referring to the first photo in the post.

So many contest to join online and I’m sure there are a lot of happy winners out there and that includes me, yey!

Giveaways have included mobile phones, laptops, hewlett packard toner cartridges, food, gift certificates, beauty products and even webhosting packages.

In fact, there was that “heated” talk a while back if a certain government agency should ask bloggers to pay for a business permit of something like it when they hold online contests and host giveaways even if respondents did not purchase anything to qualify. I won’t get into that since I rarely host giveaways.

These online contests range from high priced prizes to fab and fun ones. There are of course the issues about “professional online contest joiners”. Hmmmm… intriguing so I will not delve into that.

Anyway… continue reading this entry »

The Millennium Run for Women’s Health is happening on November 6, 2011 at the McKinley Park.

Bravehearts and the Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society (POGS) will be having Millenium Run for Women’s Health, a fundraising event to that aims to increase awareness on women’s health issues. The registration fees Millenium Run for Women’s Health will help fund the many women’s health projects of POGS. Pregnancy-related deaths, breast cancer and cervical cancer issues are where these pledges will go to.

In the Philippines, over 4,500 Filipinas die of childbirth, around 8,000 die from breast cancer while around 4,380 die from cervical cancer. These numbers are higher compared to other countries in our region.

Among the many causes that doctors see are poverty, lack of awareness about maternal health and lack of support from the government.

The last part being my opinion, so yes, I say YES TO RH BILL.

The Millennium Run for Women’s Health supports the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) which aims to lower mortality rates by the year 2015. POGS targets to improve maternal health in the Philippines.

There are several categories for the run: 3k, 5k and 10k. <- click that for a bigger photo.

Millennium Run for Women’s Health is organized by Run For Change. Click here for more details.

Bravehearts also support The Tour of Hope which raises fund for the purchase of cervical cancer vaccines for the women in far-flung areas in the Philippines.

Christmas is just around the corner and I’m sure a lot of moms have started their shopping at this time of the month. For those who have limited budget and are on the look out for personal gifts/giveaways, I suggest digital scrapbooking.

I am fond of doing these wonderful digital scrapbook pages online and offline. I was able to publish several of these simple scrapbook pages in this blog:  sunflowers here, a dandelion here, Chocolate Hills in Bohol, my son’s birthday and another sunflower here.

I did all the above pages offline because I was able to download embellishments and papers a few years ago. I use Adobe Photoshop to put these together. Not really difficult but not too easy too since I don’t think I have it in me the creativity in putting on the pages what I have in mind,

You want to try digital scrapbooking to give as gifts for Christmas? Here is a free digital scrapbooking site for you. You can also make these as invitations, notepads and stationery. just create and print the pages!

I say this is more fun than just Facebook-ing. Enjoy creating beautiful pages and memories to savor!

Hmmm… this gave me an idea to try this with my students!