Merry Christmas

Give The Ultimate Gift This Season FREE!

Give the gift of life this holiday season by donating blood. It's safe and free.

Where else can you save THREE lives in one sitting while watching your favorite TV show or reading that great book completely uninterrupted? They even feed you after it is all over. Here in Virginia you might just get a cool t-shirt and a gas card.

Please take 30 minutes out of your day to give Life and Hope to those in need this year. During these tough economic times we are all looking for ways to make a little go a long way and with one donation you can save three lives. Now that is value!

You can even make it part of your friends night out or office outing. Round up a group of your friends to save lives this season. It is the best gift you can give.

For donation locations check you can call 1-800-448-3543 or find a location at www.redcross.org.

Be Blessed!

Let It Snow Let It Snow

Final tally by the end of the day 6 inches of fun.

Wordless Wednesday-Roadside Turkey

Click to Enlarge

Week in Review: Wee Gillis, Migraines and Flag of Scotland Built From Legos

Pardon the corporate jargon but last week’s key learning was “learning happens all the time”. Praise God for the opportunity to homeschool first and for most. Last week was a struggle for both mom and student with a healthy dash of only child homeschooling guilt on my part. But let us start at the beginning….

We started the week learning about earth’s core in Co-Op. TS came home with a model of the earth made of clay and our job was to cut into the layers and discuss it as a family. It was so AWESOME!

However by midnight I felt like my planet was cracking in half. I had a blinding migraine headache. It was not your typical sinus relative migraine this happened after I took new allergy meds. First I had the chills, and then the migraine and the pièce de résistance I broke out in bumps and hives all over. After talking to the allergist apparently I had an allergic reaction to the allergy meds. So much for Mom being proactive and preventing down town.

The most I could handle was Read-A-Loud of Bring Me Some Apples and I'll Make You a Pie: A Story About Edna Lewis. We then drew “What-Ifs” of the story.
The week got better as we had a wonderful time on a nature walk and started Wee Gillis. In order to get fine motor skills into this unit I incorporated Legos. I built the flag of Scotland out of Legos, took a picture of it and challenged TS to rebuild it from the picture.
He had a BLAST! Now he wants to do all the flags of the world. Hmmmmmmmm let me work on that.

For Math we did more Horizons but also worked more on graphing. Then we read Stuart J. Murphy’s Lemonade for Sale introducing bar graphs. We took a Slinky and graphed how many stairs we could get it to go down. (I had so much fun with this….)

Additionally we:
• Daily Journal
• Handwriting Without Tears
• Redefined Chore Expectation Chart
• Workbook Reading Comprehension

I am now designing basic Capitalization Rules Chart Jedi style.

Blessings!

Lego Education Rocks!

The good people in the Education Division of Lego forwarded me my FREE Lego Education kit from the spring. We moved and it didn't get forwarded via the regular mail. After clearing my email box I realized "Hey, where are my free Legos?" So I sent a quick email and three days later free Legos.

We were to late for the contest but had a good time building some of the challenges.

Thanks Lego you live up to your name.

Lego Defined: The name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well".

Free Menu Planning E-Book

We all love free right? I really need to get back to planning weekly menus. It saves time and gas. (Less trips to the grocery story.) Enjoy!