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!

Wordless Wednesday-A Nature Walk Collection

The Week In Review: October Week 2

We are in our second month of using Sue Patrick's Workbox System. We love this system. Using this system I can plan work that is challenging followed by something fun and met all our milestones. It also keeps me from running too far off track with something "oh just for fun".

This week we finished FIAR Mr. Gumpy's Motorcar. I finally stopped calling it Mr. Grumpy's about day three. Ironhide liked the book and his officially review was "It wasn't Glorious Flight but it was OK."

• Workbooks: We learned about constants and vowels.
  
• Horizons Math: Completed double digit math and graphing experiments. We choose to document Slinky and Steps.
  
• Art: In art co-op we studied Monet.
  
• Music: We discussed Vivaldi's Spring Concerto.
  
• Science: In co-op we discuss Creation and the Sun.
  
• Cool Science: We completed a Mad Science flask experiment of explosion. Thanks Chick-fil-a for the cools kids meal science tools.

Baking Soda+Vinegar+Lime Jello= Gooey Slimcano

• Fieldtrip: Our co-op got to visit the Capital and received tickets to the Congressional Gallery. That my friends is a separate blog.
  

Well those are the highlights.

FIAR:Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car

Lapbook Resources

Homeschool Share

The Homeschool Mom (THM)

Wordless Wednesday-Mr. President

Kid Question of the Day #6: Who is that lady on the Stabucks symbol?

So today on my weekly post co-op Starbuck run Ironhide asked the following:

Who is that lady on the Stabucks symbol? Is it lady liberty?

So as we pull up to the drive-thru window and I ask our friendly Stabbuck partner the question of the day. He says roll down the window and I will explan all. (This guy, we will call him Derrick, is the best. He always has a smile and a natural joy about him even when the drive thru line is wrapped around the building and the machines are not working.)

"The name of the company Starbucks in based on a character from the book Moby-Dick, "Starbo," the name of a mining camp on Mount Rainier. Combining the Moby-Dick idea with "Starbo" resulted in the company being named for the Pequod's first mate, Starbuck.

The company logo is a two-tailed princess siren, not a mermaid. Because Seattle is a sailor's city and the marine inspired name of the company they need a symbol that means good luck."

Ironhide's response "Cool let's go read Moby Dick tonight."

Okay now I have some explaining to do. LOL

FIAR: The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

Added Reading....

New York, New York!: The Big Apple from A to Z

Lapbook Resources

Homeschool Share

The Homeschool Mom (THM)

After we complete each lapbook this school year Ironhide will complete an elementary book report for his folder.

Great Advice About Moving Forward

This weekend has been a character building experience. Ironhide became sick, not seriously but enough for us to pause and say "God is it time for a trip?". The more we prayed the more things started to become clear that this was not a time for going back but for building and moving forward.

We have all been really homesick lately. We wanted to go back to what was familiar, to catch our breath from all the "newness" of moving across country. The homesickness has felt like a blanket adding weight to our daily journey. We thought this trip would help lift that weight, but prayer lead us to cancel the trip.

Then we found this in our morning bible study.

Shake it Off
October 18

Let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) . . . and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us.
— Hebrews 12:1

One of my favorite stories is about a farmer's donkey that fell into a dry well. The animal cried pitifully for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do for his poor donkey. Finally, he concluded that the well was too deep, and it really needed to be covered up anyway. Besides, the donkey was old, and it would be a lot of trouble to get him out of the pit. The farmer decided that it was not worth trying to retrieve the animal, so he asked his neighbors to help him fill in the well and bury the donkey.

They all grabbed shovels and began to toss dirt into the well. The donkey immediately realized what was happening, and he began to bray horribly. Crying would be our normal response if somebody was mistreating us this badly, so this donkey was responding the same way we would at first, but then he got real quiet. A few shovel loads of dirt later, the farmer looked down the well and was astonished at what he saw. With every shovel of dirt that hit the donkey's back, the donkey would shake it off, and step on top of it.

As the neighbors and the farmer continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would continue to shake it off, and take a step up. Pretty soon the donkey shook off the last shovel full of dirt, took a step up, and walked right out of the well. We can learn so much from this story. When trouble comes, if we will get still and listen, God will tell us what to do.

By the grace and the mercy of God, I was able to shake off a lot of things in my life, a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of mistreatment, a lot of abuse, a lot of unfair, unjust, unkind things. Just like the donkey, in order to keep pressing on and have victory in our lives, we are going to have to learn to shake off the troubles that come our way.


From the book New Day, New You: 365 Devotions for Enjoying Everyday Life by Joyce Meyer. Copyright © 2007 by Joyce Meyer. Published by FaithWords. All rights reserved.

(The full text be found at Joyce Meyer Daily Devotionals)

Thoughtful Thursday

Can you name the three National Monuments in the photo? Using that information can you guess our location?

Moving Forward with Workboxes

This year we started using Sue Patrick's Workbox System. The homeschool community has been all a buzz about this system all year. I was intrigued by the system but being in the middle of the move it was not time in the spring to start this system. So during the summer I purchased the E-Book and read it in one day. This is a simple easy to institute system that appeals to my organizing nature.

So we started the first day of school with the workbox system and haven't looked back. Ironhide loves this system. He says "This is much better than the way we did school in Texas." It gives us a beginning and end to the day. It helps me keep focused on a theme and not wonder off with "just one more thing".

This is how our system works:

Since we have downsized from 3,000 sq ft to 1800 sq ft we don't have a formal classroom with have a class corner. I rearranged some of Ironhide's bedroom Pottery Barn's Kids Cubby and plastic bins from Target's $1 Spot.

After surfing the web I found great ID tags from Maureen @ Spell Out Loud to create a colorful contrast to engage our energetic student.

Now after explaining this system to Ironhide he embraced it and went right to work. The only glitches were on my side because I didn't make some of the boxes more challenging. Also I had to go back and add some physical activities that are learning again using cards from Maureen @ Spell Out Loud.

This is the results of the end of the day. I was able to pack backpacks during Ironhide's independent work for afternoon two co-ops.

Back Online and Waaaaaay Behind

Well after a four week vacation from Laptop Land we are back with my new baby….The Dell 15.

Isn't she pretty? I promise to treat her right. No more late night sleepy chats. No more drinking while chatting and using palm rests as a drink holder. I know better, but bad habits are easy to acquire but hard to break. I thank God for the computer limited time over the last four weeks. I got a lot of things done WITH my son and not AT my son. I was able to take the time to look at my environment and start turn it into home. I discovered the lost art of handwriting. When you write things it seems more personal, more of a commitment.

With that said I have a lot to catch up on but I will do it slowly. Plus I have to figure out how get an online gig to pay off this new system. (I do not like debt.)

More coming…..

Blessings

Wordless Wednesday: Our Leaves

Welcome Fall

Farewell Backup Laptop

That's right I killed my backup laptop. How? Let's just say chatting with your HS Lounge sisters after 11pm while sleepy is not wise unless your floor is padded.

Homeschooling is not going smoothly this year in the Mom department.

Kid Question of the Day:Why is school called school? And who invented it?

You can just guess how this question came about. LOL

Why is school called school?

Answer
The word school comes from the greek word skhole or "lectureplace," but earlier it meant "leisure," "learned discussion," and "study." Cha Cha!

Who invented school?

Answer
"Schools have existed as far back as Greek times if not earlier. The Byzantines were the first to establish a schooling system."Cha Cha!

The National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport is the companion facility to the Museum on the National Mall.

Make a Smilebox slideshow