catching up

So it's been a few weeks since I've posted.  It seems I go in spurts - posting a lot, not posting.  Maybe eventually I'll settle into a better pattern.  I have a bunch of things I want and need to get up here soon.  We're in our third week of school, and we've sort of been easing into it.  The first three weeks of topics weren't that heavy anyway, so it's been a nice transition.  I realized I was probably scheduling too much stuff anyways, and  I've got to get us on a better schedule timewise.   Anyway.  I came across a fascinating and dreadful newspaper article and report today.  Tragic.  Newspaper article

American Civic Literacy website, with report

a couple exerpts -


"America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about
America's history and institutions. There is a trivial difference
between college seniors and their freshmen counterparts regarding
knowledge of America's heritage. Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher
on average than freshmen, and at many schools, seniors know less than
freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and
economy. Overall, college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with
an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading
scale."


we included in our survey six questions from the National
Assessment of Educational Progress, which is designed to test high
school seniors' knowledge of America's history and institutions.
Overall, college students scored even more poorly on these six
questions than they did on the remaining 54, which were created
specifically for this survey.


In summary, though a university education can cost upwards of
$200,000 and the average under-graduate leaves campus $19,300 in debt,
they are no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring
knowledge about key areas of America's constitutional and economic
systems.

Bible Story ideas

For our unit studies, I just listed the name of the Bible story and
didn't say what we were going to do with them.  Here are some
things that we'll be doing.

A couple of years ago I
got something in the mail and it looked neat, so I sent away for
it.  We now have a huge collection of these Bible
cards.  I don't get them any longer, but they are really
neat.  Great
Bible Adventures  You get 9 cards that tell a Bible
story, and then on the back is a puzzle that they put
together.  And there is a reuseable activity card with a few
pages in it, as well as a coloring sheet.  It also has some
craft and activity ideas and discussion questions.  I think
each packet is 5 or 6 bucks.   A little bit pricey,
but the kids love them and it's a fun, easy way for them to really get
to know the Bible stories.  It came in handy this summer -
I've been using them for sunday school at church.

Creation

Rice Crispie Earth Recipe 

Basically, just your basic rice crispie squares recipe with
food coloring added.

1/4 cup
margarine

40
regular marshmallows

1/2 tsp. vanilla

6 cups rice crispies

green and blue food
coloring

Melt margine and marshmallows over medium heat in a large
pot, stir in vanilla and rice
crispies.  

Divide into two bowls

Add green food coloring to one bowl and blue food coloring
to the second.

Stir

Allow the children to take a scoop from the
blue bowl and a scoop from the green bowl and mash them together in a
ball (the earth). 

Set the balls aside until completely cool.

creation
worksheets
fish craft
- use sequins
soak seeds in water, put on a wet
paper towel and put inside a ziplock bag, tape to window...watch it
sprout!
talk about rules and why we have to obey
God.  Have them help make a list of house rules they should
obey.

Noah's Ark
coloring pages
rainbow
cookies


Abraham
Get a big piece of poster
board and make a family tree, starting with Abraham.  Add onto
it as we go through the Bible.  Another idea is to get plain
paper dolls and decorate them as the people, and post them on
the board.

Abraham and Lot
talk about
fighting and being selfish

Abraham and the promise

talk about how Abraham recognized that one of them was
God.  Can we lie to God? 

Abraham
and Issac
make an altar out of cheerios and
frosting

ACTING ON
SCRIPTURE - WILL YOU DO IT?  GAME

Have
the children line up in a horizontal line across the back of the
room.  This game is similar to Mother-May-I.  Instead
of taking turns all the children listen to your question and respond
with, "Yes, I do".  You then issue the command and they all
may respond.  In this game everyone will be a winner when they
reach you. 

1.  Mother asks you
to turn the TV off.  Will you get up and do it without saying,
"wait"? 
2.  Teacher asks you to stop
talking in class when she's talking.  Will you stop
talking? 
3.  Big brother asks you not to
play in his room while he is at school.  Will you stay out of
his room? 
4.  Grandmother tells you
eating cookie dough is bad for you.  Will you keep your
fingers out of the mixing bowl when she's not looking? 

5.  Daddy tells you to come straight home from
school and not stop for any reason.  Will you go straight home
even though your friend calls from his house to come see his new
kittens? 

Talk about how we have to obey
even though we can't understand the reason for it. Only Jesus can help
us do that.  When someone asks you to do something and you
feel like saying, "no" say a prayer for Jesus to help
you.

Issac
Issac and
Rebekah
egg
carton camel

Jacob
Jacob and
Esau
re-enact the
story

GETTING INTO
SCRIPTURE - BIBLE STORY DRAMATIZATION

Materials
needed:
2 small pieces of fur felt 
 (to place on a
child's forearms like Jacob did)
4 large rubber bands (to hold
the fur in place on arms)
Sleeping bag or blanket
2
baby dolls
Small stuffed lamb or beanie baby lamb
Bow
and arrow or slingshot
Small serving
bowl

WHAT THE TEACHER DOES: (To prepare
ahead)
There are no advance preparations
necessary.

WHAT THE CHILDREN DO:
Tell the
story using the children to dramatize the
following
scenes:
1. The angel making the announcement to Rebekah
that
 she was going to give birth to twins. Include
the
 message that the younger of the twins would
receive
 the birthright.
2. Rebekah holding her twin
babies
3. Jacob holding the lamb, Esau holding the bow
and
 arrow or slingshot
4. Rebekah planning with
Jacob how to deceive Isaac
5. Jacob receiving the birthright
blessing from Isaac
6. Esau returning and finding out that
Jacob has
 already been blessed with the
birthright
7. Jacob having to leave
home

Jacob's Ladder
go camping in the living
room.  Build an alter out of boxes.  Use a rock for a
pillow

Tagged! Homeschool resources

I was tagged by Two Kid Schoolhouse


1) One homeschooling book you have enjoyed.

Well, since we're so early into homeschooling, I haven't read a ton of resources yet.  So I'd have to say my favorite one is The Well-Trained Mind.

2) One resource you wouldn't be without.

The library and the internet.  Garage sales and used book sales are also great!


3)  One resource you wish you had never bought.

none, yet, since I haven't bought much at all.  I've bought lots of small, hands-on toys and activities. 

4) One resource you enjoyed last year.

Last year was preschool so again, didn't buy or use a whole lot.  So I'll say the internet :D 


5) One resource you will be using next year.

umm.....I'd like to buy a good world history book/s.  I will probably look into that more next year. 


6) One resource you would like to buy.

A nice set of McGuffy readers.  I'll either ask for that for christmas this year, or get a set for next year. 

7) One resource you wish existed.

I copied this one, a great answer!   Something to keep me from using time unwisely.

8) One homeschooling catalog you enjoy reading.

Learning Resources and Oriental Trading Company.

9)   One homeschooling website you use regularly.

I need to find some good ones.  Right now it's a few random yahoo groups that I use occasionally, and HSB.

10) Tag 5 people... Following the Ancient Paths   Homeschooling Grandma      In Good Company     Higher Up and Further In   Four in a Row

an excellent book

I just finished reading Left Back by Diane Ravitch.  It is very very good.  Very well written and well documented.  It is incredibly mind-blowing and angering read.  It is unfathomable to me how people could be that stupid and could do so much damage to the public schools.  Half-way through the book I told dh that my biggest fear was him dying and me having to put my kids in public school.  By the end of the book I told him that if I die, he is not to put the kids into public school.  There is no way on God's green earth that my kids are stepping foot into a public school until we are finished thoroughly educating them and they go to public high school when they are 16, as missionaries, as we've already planned.    This book was that influential.  I linked to the amazon page for this book and you can see excerpts and other reviews of it.   I have her other book The Language Police on hold at the library....that should be just as good of a read.

games, file folder games

A lot of the file folder games I've found online are very preschool based.  Very simple skills.  Which is nice, for preschool, but now that I'm starting to move towards actual subjects, is frustrating.  So I've been searching the internet for games that I can put into a file folder game, that is science, history, geography, or bible based.  I've come across some ideas, so I'm going to be making some today.  I'll post pictures in a day or two when I'm done.  But here is a bunch of links to various ideas, and some ideas that I'm going to use.  

Printable manipulatives resources  I'm going to use the rulers for a measuring game, I think
Blank Clock I saved this to my computer and then resized it to use in a FFG
Clock Rummy
A lot of teacher created games
Telling Time Worksheets
A LOT of math worksheets, games, ideas
free good Bible maps  I'm going to make an Egypt/Exodus game with the Exodus map
Games for Learning
tips, techniques, and ideas for making games
59 different games, different ages
game boards
educational games
file folder game links

Free Lewis and Clark cd-rom curriculum

Very cool.  I just emailed them yesterday asking for one, and they are sending me one today.  Back to School with Lewis and Clark 

neat cheap resource

We went to Wal-mart today to get some school supplies.  While I was browsing the normal aisle for crayons and folders (totally didn't see the temporary school supply aisle, LOL), I came across something kind of neat.   They were Learning Playground Tiles.  They were only 5 bucks.  I couldn't find them on the website to show you, but I found some at Office Depot.  I got the Letter Tiles  and also the Phonics Tiles (which OD apparantly doesn't carry).  And, at the OD  website, I see they have telling time tiles, coin and currency, numbers, and animals.  Very cool.  They are little plastic 1 inch square tiles in bright colors.  I think they'll be fun for Alysa to use to practice making words and learning the phonics aspect of words.

cleaning out my bookmark

I have a ton of links in my favorites and I need to clean them up, organize them, and probably delete some.  So I figure since I'm doing that, I will also post a lot of them here, since a lot of them are blog/school related.

Links

Preschool Bible Stories
Preschool Bible Coloring Pages
OT Bible Coloring Pages
Bible Crafts for Kids
Sunday School Resources
Lots of Old Testament Stories and ideas - my favorite Bible resource
Mom's Minivan - lots of car trip ideas
Bible Gameboards
Bible Crafts
Book Adventure

Blogs

A Second Generation
Mrs. Sam Sack
A Large Family
My Little Ones and Me
Following the Ancient Paths - I love this one
Small Town Homeschool
The Lilting House - lots of stuff here
It's an Incredible Life
Beginning Our Journey
Why Homeschool - very very good blog
B Avenue Boys School
Teaching Miss Smarty Pants

Family Choice Act

from onemillionmoms.com

Cable Choice Bill Introduced in U.S. House - Real Choice for Parents

Last week, Representative Dan Lipinski (R-IL) introduced The Family Choice Act of 2006 (H.R.5919), giving parents real control over television by choosing and paying only for the cable channels they want.

OneMillionMoms.com and OneMillionDads.com strongly supports this bill and needs you to take action to help get it passed!

Under
this bill, cable companies will be no longer be allowed to force you to
pay for indecent channels as part of your cable package.

If you are "Fed Up With FX Network" or any other filthy channel, your cable provider will have to block them from your home and deduct the cost from your cable bill.

The
entertainment industry already has their Washington lobbyists lined up
in rows, opposing this bill and beating down the doors trying to
convince legislators to let it die a slow death. I'm sure this doesn't
surprise you.

That's why we need to make every effort to let our Representatives know that voters want real cable choice with no excuses.

Action Needed!

Take a moment to personally call your representative's office and tell him/her to co-sponsor H.R. 5919, The Family Choice Act of 2006 today!

To
really make a difference, would you also call his district office with
the same message? We need thousands of phone calls flooding their
offices to make sure they understand that protecting our children is
more important than satisfying the whims of greedy cable company
executives.

Click Here to find the phone number of your representative's offices. While at their website, consider sending them an email.

Here's a recommended message:

Dear Representative ________,

I
support H.R. 5919, The Family Choice Act of 2006, and strongly
encourage you to do likewise by becoming a co-sponsor of this bill.

For too long, the cable industry has forced consumers to pay for raunchy channels we don’t want or watch.

Give
parents REAL CHOICE by co-sponsoring H.R. 5919. By doing so, you will
prove to me that families are more important than special interests.

I look forward to your positive reply to my request to co-sponsor H.R. 5919.

Sincerely,

Ancient Egypt Links

The month of October is going to be spent on Ancient Egypt.  So I'm starting to gather resources and ideas to form the individual weeks and topics, so I'm just going to post everything I come across here.  I really dislike what I'm currently doing, of just posting a lot of links to various websites....because usually, eventually, websites get taken down and you end up with dead links, along with the loss of that information.  But it seems just as silly and pointless and a waste of a lot of space, not to mention time, to copy everything down and put it here.    So I guess this will be a gathering spot for links, and then when I actually form my lesson plans, I will detail what items I've chosen to do, so at least some information will be here.


some ideas, some dead links, at this website
A ton of links
egyptian fonts
a good site with a gazillion links
maps of ancient egypt  they even have a map of the exodus here

well duh!

Matthew 6: 22"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But
if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then
the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Study: Sexually Explicit Song Lyrics Prompt Teens to Have Sex Earlier

CHICAGO — Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.

Whether
it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens
contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to
depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs
depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with
explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual
behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and
relationships appear more committed, the study found.

Teens
who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages
were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual
activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to
little or no sexually degrading music.

Among
heavy listeners, 51 percent started having sex within two years, versus
29 percent of those who said they listened to little or no sexually
degrading music.

the rest of the article is at Fox News 

A Nation of Wimps??

I just read a really interesting Psychology Today article.  It is pretty long.  But the author makes some really good points.  Here are a few excerpts from it:

Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without
skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids need to feel badly
sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts
University. "We learn through experience and we learn through bad
experiences. Through failure we learn how to cope."

Messing
up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although
error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are
taking pains to remove failure from the equation.

"Life
is planned out for us," says Elise Kramer, a Cornell University junior.
"But we don't know what to want." As Elkind puts it, "Parents and
schools are no longer geared toward child development, they're geared
to academic achievement."

But taking all the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of
development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns
out to be misguided by just about 180 degrees. With few challenges all
their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the
normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it
makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the
process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of
accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget,
too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life
skill.

Enter: grade inflation. When he took over as president of Harvard in
July 2001, Lawrence Summers publicly ridiculed the value of honors
after discovering that 94 percent of the college's seniors were
graduating with them. Safer to lower the bar than raise the discomfort
level. Grade inflation is the institutional response to parental
anxiety about school demands on children, contends social historian
Peter Stearns of George Mason University. As such, it is a pure index
of emotional overinvestment in a child's success. And it rests on a
notion of juvenile frailty—the assumption that children are easily
bruised and need explicit uplift," Stearns argues in his book, Anxious Parenting: A History of Modern Childrearing in America. [I might have to look at this book!]

Kids are having a hard time even playing neighborhood pick-up games
because they've never done it, observes Barbara Carlson, president and
cofounder of Putting Families First. "They've been told by their
coaches where on the field to stand, told by their parents what color
socks to wear, told by the referees who's won and what's fair. Kids are
losing leadership skills."

It's bad enough that today's children are raised in a psychological
hothouse where they are overmonitored and oversheltered. But that
hothouse no longer has geographical or temporal boundaries. For that
you can thank the cell phone. Even in college—or perhaps especially at
college—students are typically in contact with their parents several
times a day, reporting every flicker of experience.

The perpetual access to parents infantilizes the young, keeping them in
a permanent state of dependency. Whenever the slightest difficulty
arises, "they're constantly referring to their parents for guidance,"
reports Kramer. They're not learning how to manage for themselves.

Some psychologists think we have yet to
recognize the full impact of the cell phone on child development,
because its use is so new. Although there are far too many variables to
establish clear causes and effects, Indiana's Carducci believes that
reliance on cell phones undermines the young by destroying the ability
to plan ahead. "The first thing students do when they walk out the door
of my classroom is flip open the cell phone. Ninety-five percent of the
conversations go like this: 'I just got out of class; I'll see you in
the library in five minutes.' Absent the phone, you'd have to make
arrangements ahead of time; you'd have to think ahead."

Herein
lies another possible pathway to depression. The ability to plan
resides in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the executive branch of the
brain. The PFC is a critical part of the self-regulation system, and
it's deeply implicated in depression, a disorder increasingly seen as
caused or maintained by unregulated thought patterns—lack of
intellectual rigor, if you will. Cognitive therapy owes its very
effectiveness to the systematic application of critical thinking to
emotional reactions. Further, it's in the setting of goals and progress
in working toward them, however mundane they are, that positive
feelings are generated. From such everyday activity, resistance to
depression is born.

What's more, cell
phones—along with the instant availability of cash and almost any
consumer good your heart desires—promote fragility by weakening
self-regulation. "You get used to things happening right away," says
Carducci. You not only want the pizza now, you generalize that
expectation to other domains, like friendship and intimate
relationships. You become frustrated and impatient easily. You become
unwilling to work out problems. And so relationships fail—perhaps the
single most powerful experience leading to depression.

Virginia's Portmann feels the effects are even more pernicious; they
weaken the whole fabric of society. He sees young people becoming
weaker right before his eyes, more responsive to the herd, too eager to
fit in—less assertive in the classroom, unwilling to disagree with
their peers, afraid to question authority, more willing to conform to
the expectations of those on the next rung of power above them.

Using the classic benchmarks of adulthood, 65 percent of males had
reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960. By contrast, in 2000, only
31 percent had. Among women, 77 percent met the benchmarks of adulthood
by age 30 in 1960. By 2000, the number had fallen to 46 percent.

Bill Gates Teams Up With UNESCO

This is a few months old, but my jaw just dropped when I read it.   I found a link to this on Spunky's blog.  You all should read this: Bill Gates Teams Up
With UNESCO
It's about the globalization of the public school curriculum.

awesome coloring books

I just found this site today.....fantastic coloring books for not too much $$.  I just ordered some; I can't wait to see them in person.  Dover Coloring Books   I did find that a few other resource places were selling them for slightly cheaper, but they didn't have a very wide selection, so I ended up getting all mine from Dover.

who is Green Helmet??

this story is being reported on a bunch of other pundit blogs.  This one has a nice rundown of all the various pictures.  It's so bizarre, it makes me laugh.

Green Helmet

cool blogs about Israel happenings

this is a daily, frequently updated blog about what is happening in Israel.  I think there are 2 or 3 ppl who write the postings, and some of them are in the IDF, or on the ambulance team or something....I'm not real postive.  But really good updates and some good photos, too.

The Muqata


another good one I read occasionally is Yoni

Dingbat Fonts

I love fonts.  I use them in my scrapbooking and paper arts, but they can also come in very handy with school things.  There are so many kinds of dingbat fonts out there, it's amazing.  Here are 2 sites that have a lot of free dingbat fonts:

Dingbat Fonts

Dafont

Here are a few good categories under Dingbats at Dafont - Animals, Ancient, there are some cool fairy tale fonts under Fantastic, Nature, and there are a lot under Various.  Since there are 21 pages of various, here are a few that look good:  Biblical, Biblish Pictures, Ding Maps, Famous Buildings, Weather Dings, Music for a while, SC by the sea, ShipsNBoats, US-bats, We Inside, We love America's wisdom.

All of these fonts are free, so you will just have to download them and unzip them with Winzip.  Then save them into your C://Windows/Fonts folder.  Now that you have all these cool fonts downloaded, what can you do with them?     You can make them a very very large size, so that one letter takes up a whole page, and print it off and let your kids color it.  You could make bingo pages out of different fonts.  You could use them as spaces on a homemade game board.  You could use the states and famous buildings ones as trivia questions.  For animals and nature fonts, you could print off various pictures and use them in crafts.   I am looking at making some more file folder games, some social studies ones, since I have some math ones already, and so that is what got me looking at fonts.  Here is a link to an old post I have about FFG's, and ways that you can use the dingbat fonts in them:  File Folder Games.   The possibilites for these fonts are endless.   So, download and enjoy!!

cool decks of cards

I came across a neat find tonight at Dollar General.  While I was in the checkout line, I noticed this little display of decks of cards.  They were National Geographic cards, 2 different sets.  There was a Culture set and an Expedition set.  The Culture set has 52 pictures of famous places around the world.  The Expedition set has images from various expeditions throughout the last 100 years or so, and has little factoids on each card as well.   And, these still have all the numbers and suits printed on them, so they can be used as playing cards.  I think they would be neat to use as trivia cards in different games, with older kids.  And they were only 2 bucks each.

So, I was going to try and look up and see if these are in any stores..........and the only place I can find them is on a few british websites, and ebay.  Here is a link to the manufacturer, so you can see what I'm talking about.  I don't know if you can order from him or not.   Cartamundi    If not, check out your Dollar General.  How this British deck of cards made it to DG in Michigan, I have no idea. 

Week 3 - Year 1 - Dinosaurs

Monday

Social Studies - Isaac
retell with the felt pieces
100 easy lessons
time
Art Lesson 3

 
Tuesday

Social Studies - Isaac
retell with the felt pieces
Fossil cast
Write letters
Workbook pages out of the activity book
Measure dinosaurs
Coloring pages – warm colors

 
Wednesday

Social Studies - Jacob
retell with the felt pieces
Dinosaur Sandwiches
100 easy lessons
time
Art Lesson 3

 
Thursday

Social Studies - Jacob
retell with the felt pieces
Dig up dinos
Write letters
Workbook pages out of the activity book
measurements
Coloring pages – cool colors

 
Friday

Social Studies - St. George and the dragon
Dinosaur Cookies
100 easy lessons
time
Coloring pages

Week 3 Dinosaurs

Social Studies
St. George and the dragon
Isaac
Jacob

Math
time
Measure dinosaurs, compare to each other and against kids

Science

Dig up dinos - Go out in the sandbox or garden….have buried
dinosaurs or bones.  Grid it off and have them dig to find things.  Use brushes and dig cautiously.
Fossil cast

Language Arts

Write letters
100 easy lessons
Workbook pages out of the activity book
For all Bible stories, have her retell them with the felt pieces

 Misc. links

Dinosaurs
pro teacher dinosaur

Dinosaur Sandwiches
Make open face dinosaur sandwiches by cutting dinosaur shapes from wheat bread. Spread with peanut butter or cheese spread and add raisin eyes.

Dinosaur Cookies
Let students bake sugar cookies. Use cookie cutters to cut dinosaur shapes. Bake, cool, and let students decorate with different colored frostings.

 
Art curriculum –  Lesson 3  warm and cool colors
Dinosaur coloring pages

 
Books

Dinosaurs by Design - Creation Research Institue
The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible Creation Research Institue
look at J 567.97 to see if there are any decent dinosaur books
Archeology J 930.1 M

Lapbooking

I am looking at lapbooking and thinking about incorporating that as a way to keep track of some of what we do in our unit studies.  Lapbooking is basically taking file folders and making mini books to store various information in, so you have a whole theme inside the file folder.  So, here are a some sites that have a lot of information and links that I've found.

Lapbook Learning
Yahoo Group for Lapbooking
Cindy Rushton Lapbooking Links
In the Hands of a Child

books about Israel

I have read several books about Israel and thought I would list them here.  These are all very good and very well-written, very factual, etc.

The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz 
From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman
If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State by Daniel Gordis  He also has a website, DanielGordis
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters
When I was a Soldier by Valerie Zanetti  


there is also a great fictional series by Brock and Bodie Thoene, called the Zion Chronicles (5 book series) about the founding of Israel. 

and one great website that I came across was For Zion's Sake.  This is a christain organization and it looks amazing.  They also have a really neat store that helps to benefit the Israeli's and this organization:  Jerusalem Gifts

Cleaning Kids

Last night we were getting ready to brush our teeth, and I looked down at our sink and saw all of this dirt and mustard all over.  I sighed as I realized I was going to have to clean the sink yet again, because Aiden cannot manage to wash his hands without getting everything else dirty.   

Then.......I had a revelation. 

If Aiden made the mess, why doesn't Aiden clean it up?   I know, I know, a very unique concept  

So.............I told him today that he is old enough to start learning how to clean things, and for that matter, so was Alysa................and they were thrilled.  They were so excited to clean, it was funny.

Here is collaged pictures of the dirty sink....




and here is the nice, clean sink:




I showed Aiden how to clean the sink, and Alysa how to clean the tub.  We clean with vinegar, so don't worry, they weren't covered in chemicals, LOL.  They were so excited, that they wanted to switch jobs.  So I told them next time we do the bathroom, Aiden can do the tub and Alysa can do the sink.   They both did a really good job.  I didn't have to touch up anything Alysa did.  I really didn't have to touch up the sink, either, but I wiped it all down anyways, just to make sure that the vinegar touched everywhere, so I would know all the germs were gone, LOL.

And tomorrow......they get to clean the glass door that goes out to the backyard that is covered with fingerprints!!

Week 2 - Year 1 - Ice Age

This is Week 2, the Ice Age.  The things that are italicized are because there are links at the bottom, that go into a more detailed description.

Monday

Noah

retell with felt

Evaporation Station

Write letters

time

100 easy lessons

Paint animal plaster of Paris casts

J 530.4 PIP 

J 530.4 F 

 

Tuesday

Babel

retell with felt

Write letters

Build tower of Babel out of boxes and blocks

Workbook pages

Learn about complementary colors – use to paint Babel coloring sheet

J 551.453 K 

 J 551.31 F 

 

Wednesday

Abraham

retell with felt

Excavate the ice

Write letters

100 easy lessons

time

Abraham coloring pages

J 551.576 G

J 551.577 B

 

Thursday

Abraham

retell with felt

Melting Ice

Write letters

Workbook pages

Abraham coloring pages

Learn about complementary colors – do paper weaving

J 569 DIX

J 569 W   

 

Friday

Abraham

retell with felt

Write letters

100 easy lessons

time

Learn about complementary colors – use to paint Abraham coloring pages

J 560 STE

J 560 R

Week 2 The Ice Age

 

Social Studies – Read Bible

 Noah

Babel

Abraham

Abraham coloring pages
Babel coloring sheet

Science –

Evaporation Station

Excavate the ice

Take a roasting pan and fill it with water, glitter, marbles, plastic dinosaurs and animals, sea shells, rocks, and , finally, some ice cubes to help get it freezing. Freeze until edges, bottom and top are really solid but some water remains inside. Give the children a chance, one at a time, to don safety glasses and use the rubber mallet and a dull old chisel to excavate the ice.

Melting Ice

Children predict and experiment what will melt ice the fastest. Salt or water or both. Three pie pans of ice. One for the salt. One for the water. And one for both. Make a chart for the children's predictions and for the outcomes of their experiment.

Math - time

Build tower of Babel out of blocks or boxes

Language Arts –

Write letters

Workbook pages out of the activity book

For all Bible stories, have her retell them with the felt pieces

Art –

Go through art curriculum – 1 lesson a week

Paint animal plaster of Paris casts

be strong and resolute

I read a book a couple of months ago called Dispatches from an Anxious State, by Daniel Gordis.  He was an American Jew who moved to Israel a few years ago.  This book is a collection of emails he wrote to family and friends, eventually some of them making it to the New York Times.  He's written a couple of other books as well, and he also continues to periodically post these dispatches on his website.     Here are some exerpts from the latest dispatch, today.


That small block of Haifa, with its shattered shell of a building,
rubble all along the street, citizens dazed as they wandered about
looking at it all, appeared to be exactly what it was – a war zone.


And yet, the people in the street stayed near their homes, going
nowhere. The newscaster asked them why they didn’t go somewhere else,
where it might be safer. One man answered with statistics. “Why leave
now? We’ve already been hit. The chances of us being hit again are one
in a million.” To which another man responded almost with outrage.
“What do numbers have to do with it?” he asked. And then, he turned to
the camera, almost screaming, pointed to the broken building, and said,
“This is our home. Mi-po ani lo zaz. From here, I am not budging. And
he repeated his refrain over and over again. “This is my home. And from
here, I am not budging.” Mi-po ani lo zaz.


Israelis understand what this is. This is a war over our homes. Over
our homes in the north, for now, but eventually, as the rockets get
better and larger, all of our homes. This is not about the territories.
This is not about the “occupation.” This is not about creating a
Palestinian State. This is about whether there will be a state called
Israel...............................................

.....................Now, the bitter reality of which Israel’s right wing had warned about
all along is beginning to settle in. It is not lost on virtually any
Israelis that the two primary fronts on which this war is being
conducted are precisely the two fronts from which we withdrew to
internationally recognized borders. We withdrew from Gaza, despite all
the internal objections, hoping to move Palestinian statehood – and
peace – one step closer. But all we got in return was the election of
Hamas, and a barrage of more than 800 Qassams that they refused to end.
And then they stole Gilad Shalit {one of the kidnapped soldiers}. Not from Gaza. Not from some
contested no man’s land. From inside the internationally recognized
borders of Israel. As if to make sure that we got the point – “There is
no place that you’re safe. There is no place to which we won’t take
this war. You can’t stay here.”


Because as much as we have wanted to believe otherwise, they have
no interest in building their homeland. They only care about destroying
ours............................

....................And which is why this incredibly divided and divisive society has
rallied so monolithically around a Prime Minister who until last week
wasn’t terribly popular, and around a war that may or may not
accomplish all its military objectives. It explains why, even as the
air raid sirens go off across the country, and may eventually start
their wail in Tel Aviv, too, as people dash across streets, panicked,
trying to find the nearest bomb shelter, no one complains about the
government. No one’s complaining about the amount of time it’s taking
the air force to put a stop to this. It explains why all over this
city, advertisements on bus stops have been replaced with a photo of an
Israeli flag and the phrase Chazak Ve-ematz – “be strong and resolute”
(Moses’ words to Joshua in Deut. 31:7)..................

....................It’s sad, because deep down, people are starting to wonder. Would going
there be the only way to get beyond their hate? We got out of Lebanon.
We left Gaza. Olmert was elected after he openly declared his intention
to give back the majority of the West Bank. But without intending to,
we called their bluff. And now we know: the issue isn’t their
statehood. It’s ours..........................

..........................It’s the eighth war, or the ninth. But it isn’t the last war. It’s the
first war, all over again. We’ve got this war for the same reason that
we had all the others. We have this war for the same reason that people
in Haifa are still saying mi-po ani lo zaz. We got this war for the
same reason that we got the first, and the second.

We know why they attacked then. And we know why they’re still
attacking. And we’re determined to hold on for the same reason that
they’re so determined never to stop. There’s one reason, and one reason
only:

The Jewish People has no where else to go.

the Hoff

So when I was writing my other post, I saw the dancing baby icon.

 



and it reminded me of a video that everyone must see.  Awesome Hoff Video

You will laugh so hard.  If not........well, I don't know what to tell you.  Life must be tough without a sense of humor. The fish in the mouth part is my favorite scene.

I won!

My cool mug shown down below won the mug contest!  I get some free coffee!  Cool beans 

Week 1 - Year 1 - Creation

I am going to do a 3 year cycle through history.  And then repeat that cycle a couple of times.  And I'm going to go ahead and start that cycle with Kindergarten.  So, this is week number 1, and we started at the beginning, of course :)    The things that are italicized are because there are links at the bottom, that go into a more detailed description.  We'll see how this week goes.  Hopefully I didn't plan too much for each day. We will also use many more books than I have listed.  I just wanted a jumping off point for where to look in the library.   When we actually do this week, I'll post more details about how it goes and what we do, and actual books and other things we end up using.

Monday

Day 1 - God created the light, and day and night.  2 - God created the sky/atmosphere.

Retell with felt

100 easy lessons

Air takes space

Make a cloud

Coloring pages, mini-book

 

Tuesday

God created the waters, the land and the vegetation.

Retell with felt

Write words

Memorize days of creation

Workbook pages

Learn about primary and secondary colors –  paint coloring sheets from primary colors.

J 551.46 H   

J 551.46 RIC   

 

Wednesday

God created the sun, moon and stars.

Retell with felt

100 easy lessons

Constellations

Make planets out of clay

Write words

Memorize days of creation

start learning about time

Coloring pages, mini-book

J 525 BIR

J 523.8 VOG

 

Thursday

God created the birds and the fish.

Retell with felt

Saltwater and Sun

Write words

Memorize days of creation

Workbook pages

Paint coloring sheets from secondary colors.

J 598 K

J 591.92 K

 

Friday

God created the animals and man.

Retell with felt

Write words

100 easy lessons

Memorize days of creation

start learning about time

Coloring pages, mini-book

Week 1 Creation

Social Studies – Read Bible

Coloring pages

Mini-book

Days of creation crafts

Science –

Air takes space

Clouds

Saltwater and Sun

Constellations – put glow in the dark sticker stars on black paper in shape of various  constellations.

Take modeling clay, and using proper dimensions, made each of the planets with a different color (sun=yellow, earth = green, Uranus = blue, etc.) and of the proper proportionate size.

Math - start learning about time

Language Arts -

learn to write alphabet properly - use a vocab word from each day  to ease the boredom  :)

For all Bible stories, have her retell them with the felt pieces

Art –

Go through art curriculum – 1 lesson a week

Do workbook pages out of the activity book

Memorize all 7 days

New Look!

I finished giving my blog a new look.  More of an artsy feel for right now.  And I have 2 units finished, so I'll be posting them soon, too!  

planning Kindergarten!

I'm gearing up to start Kindergarten this fall, so I've started working on our yearly plan and unit studies and all of that.  I'm also going to redo the look of my blog a bit :)  I can't wait!!

Mug Contest

So I was just browsing a few blogs and came across this contest at Under His Construction  So, here is my entry for favorite coffee mug.  This is called Monday Morning Mug. 





   
 

Lewis and Clark

We took a 3 day road trip to Mt Rushmore a couple of weeks ago,  and on the way there, we stopped at the rest area on the Missouri River near Chamberlain, SD.  This is a spot where Lewis and Clark camped on their journey.  They had a neat little museum inside.  On the way home, we went south through Wyoming down to Fort Laramie, and then took part of the Oregon Trail east through Nebraska, driving by Scotts Bluffs and stopping at Chimney Rock before driving back home.

So the kids have been all excited about all of that.  So I checked out a few books out of the library and we are doing some Lewis and Clark things. I have got to say (again) that I just loooooove love love love the Williamson Publishers books.  fantastic.  I would love to own all of them.    If you do an amazon advanced search, you can search by Publisher and search for Williamson Publishing Company, you can see all of their books.

I also found this book at the library and was using that as well.

So.....we did 2 things today.  One was making 'vermillion' like Lewis made and gave to the indians as a gift...they used it to paint their bodies.  So, we made it and the kids painted their bodies.   Then, we made journals and went and inspected some plants and drew pictures and colored them, like Lewis and Clark recorded the various plants they saw.