This blog post will be my last one for a month or so.
My grandfather was re-admitted to the hospital this past Saturday with kidney failure. Yesterday, we found our that he has terminal kidney cancer. We brought him home today for in-home hospice care. He has a few weeks left with us, and we will be spending as much time with him as possible.
I am not going to be doing some of the "extra" things that I normally do, such as this blog.
I will, however, still operate my website. Even this week, I have shipped orders out each day. I just do it late at night. So I encourage you to continue ordering your materials as needed. I appreciate my customers, and I have back-up plans in place for someone to do my shipping if I cannot get an order ready. So please do not hesitate to place an order.
If you need to contact me personally, feel free to email me. I will do my best to reply in a timely manner, usually within 24 hours.
I am also thankful that I homeschool my children. We have stopped our regular schoolwork until later. We are going to make as many memories as we can with my grandfather.
Thank you! Enjoy your Thanksgiving! I am looking forward to spending it with my family.
In our house, we are making our list of items that we want to serve on Thanksgiving Day. The best part of making the list is scanning the local grocery store sale papers and my coupon stash. Last year, I got an awesome deal on our turkey, and I am hoping for the same thing this year.
We will also serve some of our favorite side dishes, such as pumpkin crisp. We will also have some of our homemade wheat bread. And, of course, we will have mashed potatoes and green beans. And for dessert, we will have a chocolate pecan pie.
The best part of Thanksgiving is spending it together with my family. What are you doing next week to celebrate your thankfulness?
Welcome to the 151st Edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling
Monday, November 17, 2008
Welcome to the 151st edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. I can remember when this carnival started, and it is hard to believe that this is the 151st week that it has been hosted. Thank you, Henry and Janine, for starting this carnival so long ago. I know that it has been a labor of love for you to keep up with the various hosts from week to week. And I know that each time I have hosted life has always thrown me curve balls. This week was no different. But I made it through the week, and hopefully, this will be posted on time!
I thought a lot about the theme for this carnival. And I decided to go with a cooking theme. Last week my children participated in our annual 4-H bake-off. This year I had 5 children who participated in the bake-off. All total we prepared and baked 35 recipes in two days' time. I should get a ribbon for kitchen management, ingredient procurement, and dish washing. The ages of my children who participated ranged from age 5 to 18. I had to assist the younger boys more than my two oldest children. In other words, I had to make sure that the cracked eggs indeed ended up in the batter and not somewhere else. It was a lot of fun, and they did very well at the award ceremony. Our 7-yr-old won a "Best of Show" ribbon for his mexican cornbread. And that made his day! I was just happy when it was all over, and I could sit down.
So this week, I am going to share with you a few pictures from the bake-off, and I will throw in a few fall pictures, since we are having a gorgeous fall! I hope you enjoy this week's carnival! It is always fun to read all the entries as they come in.
Let's get started with a nice apple pie.........
From the kitchen, we have a lovely post about starting dinner preparations at lunch time.
The Reluctant Homeschooler tells us, "I'm an avid gardener. The gardens I've put in around my home, I've worked on little by little over the years. You just can't get instant results with gardening - at least not if you do it yourself. One day last week after completing a garden project, I realized how similar gardening was to teaching my children: you can't do it all at once; you have to work on it bit by bit."
And I enjoyed reading a dad's perspective on how he helps out in the home education experience in his family.
Sanity, what is that? Most people think I lost any semblence of sanity when I started homeschooling. (wry grin) Here is an interesting post for my fellow homeschoolers.
This next post is interesting in that I have used Dr. Phelan's 1-2-3 Magic technique in discipline. The comments quickly change tone to corporal punishment. So I am giving this advisement that if you want a light read and no controversy, you might want to skim this one.
How many times have I told my boys to keep their hands to themselves? Everytime I read this blog, I chuckle at the title. It is so appropriate to my life!
It's not too early to start planning to attend your state's homeschool convention. I already have my hotel reservations. And the next post will encourage you to start planning now!
This last section of blog posts is reserved for those posts that are not "technically" homeschool-related, but I found them interesting. So enjoy these as you end this week's carnival.
And here is the end of the 151st edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. I want to say that I have enjoyed being your hostess. And a small disclaimer is in order. The posts represented here are very broad in scope and information. I did not include a few articles that were basically "advertisements" and had nothing to do with homeschooling. I am fairly lenient in what I will put in a carnival when I host. And I did notice a word in one of the posts that may offend, but overall the article was good, so I put it in the carnival. There is no way to make everyone happy. So just read and enjoy and take it for what it is. Your hosts from week to week are volunteers, and it is a hard job sometimes.
The Carnival of Homeschooling helps you meet other homeschool bloggers, and it brings new readers to your blog when you participate. So next week send your submissionsin to the Headmistress over at The Common Room. I think the easiest way to submit an entry is through this form at Blog Carnival.
The Old Schoolhouse Magazine has generously offered a free one-year subscription to ALL of this week's Carnival of Homeschooling Participants! So, if you would like to receive a free ONE YEAR subscription to a great homeschool magazine, then get your entries in to me before 9:00 PM EST on Monday, November 17, 2008.
I am working on my theme tonight, and I would appreciate any homeschool-related posts. And if you have already sent in your entry, THANK YOU! You will receive your subscription to The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. The rest of you wonderful homeschool educators, get busy writing! You have time to get your entries in to me!
Just a quick reminder that I am the host for next week's Carnival of Homeschooling. If you are unfamiliar with it, you can go to the blog where it all started at www.whyhomeschool.blogspot.com. Entries related to homeschooling are due to me by 9:00 pm EST on Monday! You can go to this form to enter you blog articles:
You will receive both of these ebooks when you subscribe to the Homeschooling with the Trivium newsletter. This offer is only for new subscribers to Homeschooling with the Trivium and is good only through November 30. Go here to subscribe.
http://www.triviumpursuit.com/list/
In addition, if you subscribe to Christian Logic's Fallacy Detective News you will receive two lessons from the logic textbook The Thinking Toolbox by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn (Lessons 12 and 13, along with exercises and answer key). This offer is only for new subscribers to The Fallacy Detective News and is good only through November 30. Go here to subscribe.
A Review of Writing Tales - Levels 1 and 2 by Amy Olsen
A Review of Writing Tales, Level 1 and Level 2 by Amy Hastings Olsen
Recently, Amy Olsen asked me to review her Writing Tales books. I have long been a language arts major, so I was excited to review her program for students in grades 3, 4 and up.
In Level One of Writing Tales, the student is introduced to classic children’s literature. The basis for a classical education is to expose young children to great writing examples. Through copywork and dictation, they learn to create their own writing projects. The true classical method does not include a creative side to the student’s writing, and Mrs. Olsen uses each story to teach various language arts concepts, such as grammar and punctuation, in addition to the copywork. And then she also includes a component for the student to rewrite the story in his or her own words.
In the teacher’s guide, you will have lesson plans for use in a homeschool setting, and she also includes lesson plans for use in a co-op setting. And she includes an answer key to the student workbook. And she has three appendices for have teaching resources, recommended resources, and game synopses.
I particularly like the student book, because it is spiral bound. This makes it easier for my students to open their book to the correct page. The Level One book was written with a 3rd grade student in mind, but you could use it with an older student, if he needed some remediation in writing. Or it could be used with an advanced 2nd grade student.
The level 2 book does not require that a student complete level 1 first. The stories are familiar classic stories, and we enjoyed the variety of stories offered by both levels. I have been looking for a writing program that fits our learning style for years, and I am pleased that Writing Tales seems to fit in with our style. It is easy to use, and it is enjoyable for the student. There are 30 lessons in each level.
Recently, I was given the opportunity to review a Holiday ebook by Joy Marie Dunlap. I have reviewed some of her copywork ebooks in the past, and I knew that I would be pleased with the quality of her Thanksgiving ebook that focused on songs of Thanksgiving. She provides table decoration ideas, menu art ideas, Thanksgiving recipes, and Thanksgiving crafts.
She has also compiled pages for copywork based on ten Thanksgiving songs. And for each song, she provides both manuscript and cursive examples. And she also added six extra blank writing pages in six sizes for additional copywork projects.
At the end of the book, you will find coloring pages and pictures of their family orchard. I found that with a large family of six children, I was able to find something for each of my children to work on that focused on Thanksgiving. And it was a fun activity that helped build their writing skills.
It was very easy to print just the pages I wanted to use. And I could print more than one copy of a page, if I wished to have more than one child use the same copywork page. I love the flexibility of using ebooks in my homeschool.
If you are looking for a well-thought out Thanksgiving copywork book with additional activities, I believe you will enjoy Mrs. Dunlap’s ebook. The artwork in this book is breathtaking.
I have spent a lot of time today working on my blog template. The main reason for the tweeking of the design was to add information on my sidebar for three ebooks that I recently completed.
How do I keep my enthusiasm going throughout the year?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Recently, I was asked how I kept my enthusiam going throughout the year. There are several techniques that I utilize to keep me enthusiastic about teaching my children throughout the year.
First, I schedule breaks in my school calendar. The fastest way for me to burn out and lose my enthusiasm is to overschedule our school work. We will typically do school for 6 to 9 weeks and take a week-long break. I use my curriculum as a guide for choosing when to take a break. And we all come back to our books refreshed once we have a break. This does mean that we might school on a year-round schedule, but it certainly helps keep me from getting burned out.
Secondly, I use a curriculum that makes learning fun. I love using KONOS and the unit study approach to learning. I love learning along side of my children.
Thirdly, I plan field trips to give us a change of pace from hitting the books. Admittedly, we are not able to do a lot of field trips due to budget constraints and the limited amount of time I have for field trips. But, a well-placed field trip is a welcome change to our day-to-day schedule.
Fourthly, I try to get out of the house for a mom's night out or other similar event. I need to get out and recharge my batteries. And a homeschool mom's night out is a great way to relieve some stress. If it does not relieve your stress, don't go! I found that I could get caught up in doing too many jobs for the mom's night out that I was burned out. So be careful of that!
How do you keep your enthusiasm going throughout the year?If you have any questions or comments, I welcome them at orders@dhss.com.
This week for Works for Me Wednesday, Shannon has asked for a toys worth buying list. I would say that the best toys we have bought over the years have been in the following order:
1) wooden train set
2) bicycles
3) Tonka Trucks
4) Anything made by Little Tykes
5) Any of the Melissa and Doug wooden toys
We have five boys, and the Thomas the Train wooden train set with hand-crafted wooden table has made it through all of them. We also live way out in the country, and the children all love to ride bikes. Some of them even learned to ride without training wheels in January, because they were so excited with their Christmas bike! We have also invested heavily in Tonka trucks. I think my mom still has some Tonka trucks that belonged to my brothers. We also have had very good service out of any toys we purchased that were made my Little Tykes. That stuff is nearly indestructable! And we have also enjoyed the wooden toys made by Melissa and Doug.
I suppose I could link to all of these, but they are pretty well known, so I will just let you use Google or Ebay to find products.
The Bloggy Giveaways are now over. I have selected winners for the four contests that I held this week, and I want to thank everyone for their participation. I have also emailed the winners, so please be on the look out for those emails!
Contest #1 - State the Facts book, Vocabulary Book, Mind Benders book
Random number generator choose commentor #6 - Stephanie.
Contest #2 - Latin Books
Random number generator choose commentor #12 - FLMOM
Contest #3 - Reason and Write Book
Random number generator choose commentor #4 - cvdmvega
Contest #4 - Basic Skills book and word practice cards
Random number generator choose commentor #14 - samsakara
Name: Tami Home: North Carolina, United States About Me: I am a homeschool mom of six children with varied interests. I love my family, and I love to read and write for fun. I also have a homeschool bookstore at http://www.dhss.com.
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