Spelling Bee

The annual Spelling Bee was held last night and was a terrific competition.  The students of Mary Rowlandson were well represented.  Of the 27 participants last night, 15 students were from MRE.  Of the 5 finalist in the championship round, 2 were 5th grade students.  The winner was a 5th grade students, pictured above. The second place student was an 8th grader. 

How to Improve Language and Memory Skills

Here is an excerpt form an article by Eric Jensen.  There is amazing research that shows specific types of sugars lower language and memory skills.

"We know that our brain runs on glucose and oxygen. We know the hippocampus needs glucose to learn, but too much is bad. The form of sugar matters to your brain and there are six types of sugar. The two worse forms of sugar are high fructose corn syrup and concentrated fructose. Every single product that lists fructose as an ingredient might be contributing to problems. High fructose sugar impairs memory, but not learning. Moderate-high levels of fructose in your diet will impair neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons). On-going fructose consumption may damage the liver.
Recently, two large and high-quality studies (both randomized, double-blind) used a total of 780 typical, healthy school aged children. All were given either a combination of vitamins and minerals, a supplement of omega-3 essential fats EPA and DHA, or the vitamins and minerals with the omega-3 fats, or a placebo on 6 days a week for 12 months.
At the start of the trial, the children were tested for blood levels of all of these nutrients, all of which significantly improved when they were retested after 12 months. The schoolchildren on the vitamins and minerals had significant improvement in tests of verbal learning and memory.(Osendarp SJ et al., Am J Clin Nutr. 2007)."

Click the following following link for the full article.  A New Insight to the Brain and Nutrition Puzzle - Eric Jensen