My twenty cents keeps moving!

May. 22, 2008

Our Marco Polo lapbook

Posted in Mystery of History

We glued two folded lapbooks together back to back so we could make it say "Marco" and "Polo" like the game.

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Mar. 21, 2008

For everything else...

Posted in Mystery of History

I am on an email loop for the history curriculum we use, Mystery of History.    The next volume is due out this spring (Volume 3) and it was recently announced that it will be in color, and that there is a separate companion book for the activities and reproducibles. Some of the moms were worried about the price increase, but Linda Hobar (the author) explained that a) it had to be in color because many of the Renaissance pictures are required to be printed in color and b) the companion book is in black and white to cut costs and had to be printed separately because of the size limits for paperback books.

As I was reading Spenser walked by and saw my open email titled Mystery of history 3 release date. He clapped his hands and said "3? When is it coming out?"

Y'all he is a thirteen year old boy, and he just clapped about a history book.

MOH3 Student text      ...................... $59.95
Companion text        ...........................$29.95

Shipping and handling ....................$9.95

Having a teenager excited about any school subject, much less World History........Priceless.

(And I made up the part about shipping and handling-- I have no idea how much it will be.)

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Dec. 3, 2007

Greening Service at Church

Posted in Mystery of History

Last night was our greening service at church, or hanging of the greens. Whatever it's called. For the explanation/framework of each element, our family did a skit instead of someone just reading it. We were on stage in front of a faux fireplace as if we were decorating at home. We discussed the meaning of each part (evergreens, poinsettias, wreaths, candles) with the kids, and then the whole congregation decorated the sanctuary. During the part about the evergreens, Spenser read about Boniface from our Mystery of History 2 book. So that was neat-- to bring our school to church LOL.

Overall I thought the service was nice but too somber. Next year I think we should have cookies and play festive music. A girl can dream right?

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Oct. 25, 2007

HIstory LInk

Posted in Mystery of History

We are studying the Dark Ages in Mystery of History, Volume II. I found a neat link on History.Com where you can make your own Dark Ages character. I am Fredegonde the Life-giver.

They have videos and other things about the Dark Ages, but I haven't explored them yet to see if they are appropriate.

Check out my Dark Ages profile!

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Aug. 16, 2007

History Notes

Posted in Mystery of History

We have begun Mystery of History 2, which the kids seem genuinely excited about. We all enjoyed it last year and are looking forward to more of the same.

In studying Paul, one of the assignments was to think of someone who, like Saul, is an enemy of God. We chose Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the book, god is not Great. (capitalization his)

So the assignment was to pray for the person you chose. Our prayer is that Christopher Hitchens will somehow see that God is great. My son remarked what a powerful testimony it would be if he converted as Paul did.

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May. 16, 2007

Mystery of History Wrapping Up Volume 1

Posted in Mystery of History

We are almost finished with our school year, and trying desperately to finish history by Friday. We have 5 lessons left (somewhere along the way, we got behind. We normally only do 3 lessons a week.) This is such a great curriculum; I highly recommend it for all homeschool families. We have had a blast and have all learned so much! I can't wait to dig into Volume 2.

For our lesson on John the Baptist, we were supposed ot make locusts from vienna sausages (body), potato sticks (legs), apple slices (wings), mustard (dots for eyes) and honey (because that's the way J the B ate them.) I was ~~hoping the kids wouldn't notice~~ ill prepared and didn't have all the ingredients. Undeterred, my 8 year old daughter improvised and made this (and another one for her brother.) She used brocolli slaw for the legs, potato chips for the wings and ranch for the eyes because Spenser doesn't like mustard. We skipped the honey because we were out and frankly honey and sausage-- eww.

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Jan. 19, 2007

Our version of Habakkuk's Poem (for Mystery of History)

Posted in Mystery of History

Habakkuk 3:17-19 (King James Version)

17Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit
be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail,
and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be
cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:

18Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy
in the God of my salvation.

19The LORD God is my strength, and he will
make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me
to walk upon mine high places.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Even if we run out of money and have to eat
peanut butter sandwiches every day of the year,
even if our dog runs away and our hamster dies;
even if we never get a Wii or a Play Station 2,

Still we will trust God and be happy with what He gives us.

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Nov. 8, 2006

MOH Olympics

Posted in Mystery of History

We are studying the original Olympics in history so today my older 2 planned an Olympics for all the kids (my 4 plus the 2 I babysit.) They had alot of fun, and they all won "medals!" The contests were: a foot race (the older 2 had to run backwards when they all raced together, and then we divided into "Junior" Olympics and the older 2); "Javelin" throw; soccer kick; football throw; "horse" race; and balloon volleyball. It was great!

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Sep. 4, 2006

Our First Lap Book-- Ancient Egypt

Posted in Mystery of History

Cover, pretty paper printed from here

Pop-up pyramid that I couldn't figure out how to do, but my 11-year-old son could.

inside of Pharoah shape book-- all about mummies, by Reed.

Pharoah colored by Sydney

Note cards with cool info about Egypt.

Inside of pyramid book.Nile accordian fold map.

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Aug. 21, 2006

Sumerians and Cuneiform

Posted in Mystery of History

Today we studied the Sumerians, and we found this site that shows you your initials in cuneiform. I printed the page, and the kids copied it in Play-Doh. They had a good time, and I thought it was a neat hands-on idea to go with the lesson.

Oh and here's the Tower of Babel:

Another idea in the book was to build a ziggurat with Legos or sugar cubes. I skipped that one because we are currently building a sugar cube igloo (for Julie of the Wolves and Mr Popper's Penguins.) Also, the kids were leaving for Handbell class.

This is the first time they have done the handbell class, but we had to drop piano for financial reasons. The teacher called and asked if they could do handbells (its only $45 per semester compared to $54 a month for piano.) And she gave me a two for one deal.

This is my 99 th post so I have to figure out something fun to do for my 100th post. Any ideas?

Thursday is our 15th wedding anniversary. We can't celebrate this week because my husband is in a play, and next week we are supposed to go see inlaws. So we will have a delayed celebration. He wrote the sweetest post in his blog the other day (in response to one I wrote in April. He doesn't blog much anymore) I will have to think of something special to post on Thursday. I will probably do the Thursday Thirteen about him.

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