Raising Baby (Birds That Is)

Today we visited my brother Nelson, and found out that this 40-something single male has become a proud momma...to a baby robin.  A recent storm knocked the entire nest and two babies to the ground.  Despite his gruff, tattooed exterior, my brother is really an old softy and he couldn't let the little helpless creatures just die.   Sadly, one died anyway, but the remaining little bird is thriving!   He is now able to fly for brief periods and will probably leave his new home soon.

The girls watched in awe as this big bear of a man cared for this little bird; finding food, then feeding and watering it by hand.   It was even more amazing to watch the little bird follow my brother through the yard from place to place. 

So today's "lesson" was about love and extending a hand to those in need....no matter how small.

Vacation Bible School

In our area, summer isn't complete without Vacation Bible School.  If you're lucky, your kids can attend several different themed VBS's over the summer.  This week, the girls attended their first VBS of the summer (and Lindsey's first EVER).

The church that hosts this particular program is awesome.  Their activities are held from 9am until noon for an entire week.   This allows time for all of us moms to run errands, shop and hang out together CHILDFREE!   So see, this is  beneficial for moms and kids alike.    Besides learning Bible stories and memory verses, each child comes away with a CD of all the songs, and usually a gift certificate to a good restaurant for a free kids meal (Chick-fil-a ROCKS!) .   Right about now, you may be asking what this has to do with homeschooling.   The answer simply is craft ideas.   Here are a few things they made this week that I thought would be worth passing on.

The theme was "Son Rock Kids Camp" so they crafts were all outdoorsy related.   The first, which I thought was cool was this lovely bear.   Heavy brown construction paper, cut out in a bear shape, cover in glue, then covered in ground coffee.  Nice texture, good aroma and can go into the compost bin when they tire of it!

The girls also created a buffet for birds this week.  Although I'm still not sure what the inside circle is made of...but whatever it is, its smeared with peanutbutter and rolled in birdseed with a handy dandy piece of yarn to hang it by.

I thought this was pretty nifty and will be used for  capturing lightning bugs later this week.  Cut a hole in the top of an inexpensive gladware container, use colorful tape to adhere some screen and tada!!!  a bug's dream come true (or death chamber depending on your perspective).

Did you notice the spider plant inside the container?  The kids planted them in little peat pots (which yours truly managed to drop on the driveway when we got home).  So I did what any good mother would do...broke out the craft supplies then replanted.

Itza-Bitza Giveaway

Jolanthe over at Homeschool Creations is at it again!  She always has the coolest giveaways (although, I've never managed to win one yet).   This time she's offering an Itza-Bitza Computer game to not one but TWO lucky winners!!  

Head on over to Homeschool Creations for a chance or two to win!

“Socialization” and Foreign Studies

Um, yeah.....gotta love the "s" word.   This week, I had an "e-conversation" with my best friend concerning birthday parties and how we usually do family parties, but next April (there I go planning again) I was thinking of doing a girlie party for Olivia and a few friends, and I said I'm hoping that Olivia makes some close friends this year at the co-op we've joined.  And the "s" word was whipped out at warp speed.  "That's the problem with homeschooling, the girls don't get to socialize and build relationships....."  (insert the sound of nails on a chalkboard).   Yeah I guess their friends from ballet, Awana and Sunday School are chopped liver?!

So the next day the girls were invited to tea by our dear neighbor Ms. Kay.   Ms. Kay is a lovely older lady who exudes warmth and graciousness.  She's originally from Luxembourg and is a pure joy to sit and talk to.   Olivia and Lindsey were incredibly excited about being asked to tea and were quick to put on their bonnets and white gloves (although, Olivia's bonnet came up missing and she had to improvise).

Ms. Kay set out a grand tea for us!  The menu consisted of heart shaped finger sandwiches (pb&j no less); chocolate covered strawberries, cream puffs, cupcakes, Dutch windmill cookies, and Belgian chocolates.   The girls shared a pot of hot chocolate and Ms. Kay and I shared a lovely pot of tea.

Ms. Kay even used her antique tea set from Luxembourg.  I was a bit nervous to be honest, with a 3 year old and antique anything the results can be disasterous.   But, Lindsey as usual excelled beyond her 3 years and handled the precious cups and saucers with the utmost care and consideration.  Olivia made sure to hold her pinky out as she sipped her hot cocoa.  The really were tooo stinking cute.  Olivia said the blessing, and thanked God for the food, and for Ms. Kay, and for the tea party.

As we had our tea and treats, the girls asked questions about the various things in Ms. Kay's dining room.  She has a great many items from her native land and she is always willing to answer the girls questions (and mine too).   One thing in particular caught the girls interest was a little porcelain bird whistle called a Peckvillercher.   These lovely whistles are part of the end of  Easter week celebration in Luxembourg.

Here are photos I found from the internet to better show how they are made.

And here is Olivia practicing with Ms. Kay's Peckvillercher...

Growing up, Ms. Kay lived in a home in what is now the "historic district".  She showed us photos that show her childhood home.  We learned about where she was standing when the first bombs dropped on her country.  She showed us where the bomb shelters were, and how to get to them from her home.  We saw the palace of the Grand  Duke and Duchess.  We learned about the exile of Grand Duchess Charlotte who was exiled during the German occupation of World War II.

The girls and I spent 2 hours or so with Ms. Kay.  During that time, they listened to her, and asked questions like "did you cry when the bombs exploded?"  "what are these people in costumes?" (looking at festival photos).   "Was your husband a soldier, do you miss him?" (she's a widow)   Lindsey saw an American flag in a photo and recited the Pledge of Allegiance without prompting, and asked Ms. Kay what the flag of her country means.   They listened to Ms. Kay as she spoke to them in French, German and Luxembourgish and tried to figure out what she was saying to them.   They heard about her trip to America, alone (her husband was in the military), late into a pregnancy and not speaking any English.  Again questions "were you scared?"   "where did you go?"  "how did you get help?"

Ms. Kay is going back to Luxembourg in August.  She has taken on the mission to find Olivia an orange Peckvillercher and Lindsey wants a pink one.  Regardless of the color they end up with, the girls will have gained a better understanding of a far away land.   They brought youth and enthusiasm and a sense of wonder to a lovely older neighbor.

Yeah, I guess they really should "get out more" and be more "socialized".  I digress.

Funky Artist Paint Set Giveaway

Susana at Our Homeschool Fun   is giving away this totally fun paint set.  Head on over to her site to get a chance or two or three to win.     While you are there browse through her blog, TONS of fun going on over there!

2009-2010 TOS Planner (Review)

Generally speaking, I am a very organized, highly efficient woman.  For me to miss a deadline, birthday or appointment is almost unheard of.  (I once went to the post office while in labor to make sure a friends job reference request wasn't late.)   Of course, this is all to the glory of my planner , not  because of my wonderful memory.   Some people my husband say I plan too much.   There is no such thing as TOO much planning or organizing, or so I thought.  Then I  was asked to review the 2009 Schoolhouse Planner .  My first reactions was "sensory overload"!   

Boasting a whopping 374 pages, this is not your average cookie-cutter planner.  Instead it's chocked full of homeschooling forms ranging from curriculum planning, to high school transcripts and field trip logs.   Any form you could possibly need is housed neatly inside the Schoolhouse Planner. 

Once you've gotten your homeschooling planned, organized and ready to roll THEN you can tackle your home.   There are 64 pages of home organization forms including shopping lists, meal planners, chore charts and even a place for your Chistmas card list!

Are you looking for a convenient place to keep all those facts that must be memorized, such as all the US Presidents, the periodic table of elements or a list of famous composers?  Then look no further!  The Schoolplanner not only has a section for it, but they've already assembled all the information!

In all seriousness, this planner has enough information to turn the most inept organizer into an on the ball kind of gal or guy!   Will you use/need it all, probably not.   However, since the planner comes in e-form you have the abilitiy to print and reprint the pages you need.  

Honestly, there is currently only about 5% of the planner that will work for us right now.  However, as the kids move up in their schooling that amount will drastically increase.  Over the long haul this will be a valuable tool that will make my life much easier!

For more information, and to see other reviews of this product, click here.

Home Economics

Today was a "non-school day".  No books, worksheets, flashcards or facts to recite.  We spent the day living and learning.   Thankfully, the girls are young enough that they think washing the dishes and mopping the floor is a fun and exciting activity.  Seriously, who am I to burst their little bubbles?  So I cheer them on in their enthusiastic attempts to help.

We spent last evening and early this morning working in the gardens.  We spent LOTS of time weeding, working the soil and playing in the water watering the garden by hand.    I must admit, it was a BIT alarming to hear Lindsey ask "what do weeds look like?" after about 10 minutes of her working alone.  Thankfully, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of damage.    We have already harvested two bunches of lettuce.  The tomatoes, squash, eggplant and cucumbers all have blooms on them.  It looks like we'll be overflowing in vegetables soon.

Our marigolds are brilliant shades of yellow and orange, and are doing a great job of keeping bugs off the tomoatoes.

After lunch, the girls argued over who got to wash the dishes.  I assured them that this is an ongoing task and I am sure everyone will have many opportunities again.  Poor dears, little do they know that I'm trying to work myself out of a job by teaching them to take over. 

We also worked on some math, disguised as a recipe for homemade play-doh.  I used a recipe that Jolanthe at No Ordinary Moments posted last week.  It is super simple and relatively inexpensive. 

What you'll need is:

1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
2 Tbsp cream of tartar
1 envelope unsweetened Koolaid
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Mix the first 5 ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat.   Stir in oil.  Continue to stir until the dough forms a ball in the middle of your pan.  Remove from heat, place where little hands (and husbands) can't reach until cooled.    Knead until soft then play play play.   Store in an air tight container until the next play time.

The girls started making bird nests with eggs, which evolved into eggs in a basket.  So I asked if anyone could tell me a story from the Bible that involved baskets.  Of course, their first response was Baby Moses in the basket...so they quickly turned to making a baby in a basket. 

So, for a "non school day", I'd say we learned some important things together!

Wacky, Wild and Weird (Book Review)

Let's face it, kids of all ages love animals.  There is something so intriguing about creatures of the wild.  They are majestic, alluring and in some instances just plain wacky and weird.  In Jack Hanna's "The Wackiest Wildest Weirdest Animals in the World", published by Thomas Nelson, you'll have the opportunity to learn about some animals that you never even knew existed! 

The pages are colorful, with lots of interesting tidbits broken up into fun chunks.  Each endearing creature (and even the not so endearing ones) are presented in a fun and educational way.  You'll learn what the animals eat, where they live and how big they get...and of course you'll learn what makes them wacky, wild and just plain weird.  For example, did you know that the binturong smells like popcorn?  (Did you know there IS such a thing as a binturong?) Or that a snow leopard can jump forward 50 feet?

Another quality that I especially like was that Jack Hanna takes the opportunity several times throughout the book to point out that God made these animals; and what an interesting thought pattern He must have had on some of them!  Hannah also shares personal stories of some of the wild and scary encounters he's had with several of these intriguing creatures.

An added bonus in the front of the book is a DVD chocked full of Blunders, Bloopers and Behind the Scenes coverage of Jack Hannah's TV careeer....in typical Jack Hannah style.

You can purchase a copy from the Thomas Nelson site, or at  Amazon.

TOS Homeschool Crew

I am so excited to announce that I've been chosen to be on the 2009-2010 Homeschool Crew for The Old Schoolhouse!!   What exactly does that mean?   It means that I'll have the opportunity to review various homeschool products throughout the year and post my reviews here for all the world to see!

Here is a list of some of the vendors that the Homeschool Crew will be reviewing this year.  I can't guarantee which ones I'll be receiving, but it promises to be an exciting year!

Grapevine Studies
Educational Diagnostic Prescriptive Services
Barnum Software- Quarter Mile
Maverick Books
Sue Gregg Cookbooks
Web Design for Kids -Click Drag Solutions
Sense and Sensibility Patterns
Aleks
Sue Patrick's Workbox System
Journey Through Learning
Bright Ideas Press
Growing Healthy Homes
Master Innovations
Critical Thinking
Bonnie Terry Learning
Guardian Angel Publishing
ABC Teach
Sarah Books
Passkeys Foundation
Bible Charts and Maps
Educahing/ SDG Creations Ltd.
ACT,Inc
College Prep Genius
Brill Kids/Kreative Land
We R Fun Life on the Farm
3 P Learning/ Mathletics
Exploramania
Nature Friend Magazine
AVKO
All About Spelling
Professor in a Box
American Heritage Education Foundation
Virginia Soaps and Scents
Tektoma
Math Score/Accurate Learning
Worship Guitar Class
Maestro Classics
Talking Fingers Inc.
Saxon Harcourt
Math Tutor DVD
Kinderbach
Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting
Apologia
Handipoints
Kregel
Homeschool Library Builder
English for Life/Madsen Method
Christian Keyboarding
Dollar Homeschool/Ray's Arithmetic
Zeezok Publishing/The Book Peddler
Math Mammoth
Classical Legacy Press
Beeyoutiful

The Homeschool Carnival

The 180th edition of The Homeschool Carnival is available.  Click here to go directly to Principled Discovery to see what fun and exciting things await!   (Including a post by yours truly.)

Score!!

I don't know about you, but I love to find a good deal at a yardsale.  This last weekend was very successful in my opinion!  I was able to find Olivia some clothing for this coming fall/winter (including a London Fog coat for $5), and found a few baskets for home organization.

Then, on the last street of my walking tour I found IT!  A homeschool mom, selling her used things and NOBODY had bought anything.    She was dejected, I was ELATED!!   Here are some of the things I bought for the kids:

Abeka Reading for Fun Enrichment Library (55 books) $2
DK My First Amazing Science Explorer Kit (grades 1-3) $1
Fishing for Vowel Teams (card game similar to Go Fish) .50
lapsized magnetic board with magnetic alphabet (not the plastic abc's that we all have stuck on our fridge) .25
20 level 2 and 3 readers .25 each
and the best thing of all is this....

I found this game from Learning Resources...on one side it has "Add 'em up Apple Orchard".  Both players have a spinner; both players spin at the same time; then whoever's turn it is has to add the two spinner numbers together and then move their worm that many apples through the tree to the apple basket.   But wait, there is MORE....turn the game board and spinners over and you have THIS...

Pumpkin Pickin' Math...it works the same as the apple orchard game, but your game piece is a mouse to scurry through the pumpkin patch and you have to subtract the numbers on the spinners to figure out how many spaces to move.

The girls played these two games for probaby 45 minutes this afternoon.  Lindsey doesn't know how to add and subtract yet (well...a little) so she'd read the problem to Olivia "10-2=" and Olivia would do the math and then they'd take turns moving the little mice around the pumpking patch.  

The best part???? it cost me 50cents!!!   Score!!

Preschool Week 2

Lindsey asked to go faster, so I was happy to accomodate her.  I added some extra work with phonics and added cursive writing as well.  We started with our "i's" and "u's".   I'm going to give her another week and see how that goes for her.  The biggest problem with the writing is that she has little bitty hands and the pencil seems to over take her and she doesn't get enough pressure on the pencil to see where she has written.   I moved her to the chalk board and that seemed to help her to some degree. 

Lindsey is wonderful with puzzles, so I had her working on her Alphabet Train floor puzzle this week as well.   Gotta love preschool multi-tasking -  working on alphabet, problem solving and hand-eye coordination all in one activity!

Next week, I plan to make some dot-to-dot cursive letters and give her a marker to use to help alleviate some of the issue with not getting enough pressure on the pencil.  We all know you can't go wrong with kids and markers (well you CAN go horribly wrong...but I think this will work to my benefit this time).

Possible Tornado?

We had severe weather this evening.  I heard the thunder rumbling and went upstairs to check the windows and saw that the wind was picking up, so I opened the back sunporch door to go secure the backyard.  This is where I made my  mistake...I was almost floored by the door as the force of the wind took me by surprise.  I seriously had to fight to get the door shut again.  I looked at the large line of trees next to my property line and saw that the tops of the trees were starting to rotate...yeah I've seen enough of  those cheap tornado movies to know that this is NOT a good thing.  So I ran like wild back through the house to the basement with the kids, hearing a roaring sound as we went.    They asked what was wrong so I said "well, it's a REALLY bad storm".   The ever thinking three year old did just as I've always told her to do, she pointed her finger at the window and yelled in a very authoratative voice "Go away storm, in the name of the Lord!!"      Then it got dark and quiet..too quiet (again, I've watched those made for tv movies, and anyone knows quiet is right before IT happens).  So I was praying Psalm 91 over us as fast as I could and Lindsey is still yelling "Go away in the name of the Lord!"...and we waited and the rains started, and the winds died down.  I heard lots of sirens for a long while.

My brother, who lives a few counties over called me several hours later.  They are pretty certain a tornado hit his town, lots of damage.   Reports of several INCHES of hail in areas, buildings off their foundations and trees uprooted.  The national weather center will have someone out that way tomorrow to determine if it was a tornado for certain.   I'll have to check the newspapers tomorrow (we don't have tv).

So, as I go to bed tonight in my damage free home, with my two children safely  tucked into their beds I want to say thank you Lord for your protection and your provision.  Thank you for the faith of a child to stand on your Word and to believe what You said....and thanks for letting me see that what I'm teaching them about You really is getting into them.

All Kids Furniture Giveaway

Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations is having a giveaway from allkidsfurniture   Don't be deceived by the name, they have all kinds of arts and craft kits and supplies too.
So, go on over to Homeschool Creations and leave a comment to enter! Those science kits look mighty fun!

SpellQuizzer (Review)

We've started our new year, just as everyone else is ending their old year.  We officially finished the 2009 school year on February 13, and have since been spending our time in our own interesting pursuits (sickness, surgery, planting our garden, vacation).  Now it's time to get started with 1st grade (Olivia) and K-4 (Lindsey).  

Olivia is reading pretty fluently on a 2nd grade level already.  However, she has had some issues distinguishing between the short "i" sound and the short "e" sound.   One thing that I have found that has helped greatly is SpellQuizzer.  There are pre-made spelling lists that you can download and use from the SpellQuizzer website.

What I found to be beneficial is that this program allows me to create my own spelling list based upon the curriculum I'm using, a book or era we're studying or to work on those pesky "i" and "e" sounds.  Creating the spelling list is easy, and you can record your voice saying the word and using it in a sentence as well.   I found this especially helpful in aiding Olivia to clearly understand the word.

SpellQuizzer has a page specifically geared towards homeschoolers.  Importing and exporting spelling lists is very simple, making it easy for homeschool co-op's to share lists among students.  An added bonus, is that your child gets to work on their keyboarding skills while working on their spelling!

SpellQuizzer offers a free 30-day trial offer.  Click here to download the software and try it for yourself.