More drama in our family.  I have a genetic defect called medullary sponge kidney disease.  It's not as ominous as it sounds, although some people do seem to have a terrible time with it.  People with MSK have deformed kidneys.  The drainage tubes in the kidneys have small pockets where urine collects and turns to stones.  I have hundreds of these pockets in both my kidneys and hundreds of stones.  I know; it sounds like I'm exaggerating.  But my doctor said there were too many stones to count.  I used to joke that my x-rays looked like I had been hunting with Dick Cheney.  (An x-ray of my kidneys shows tw oval areas of what looks like buckshot!)  Some people have chronic kidney infections, constant pain, and other problems.  I am truly blessed with sporatic pain, and so far only one kidney infection when I was 11 years old.  (I wasn't diagnosed until I was 38 y.o.  Most people aren't diagnosed until their first kidney stone.  I probably had my first stone when I was 18, but they didn't do any x-rays or extensive testing, just sent me home with an "I don't know what's wrong with her, probably in her head" look.)

Thursday I had another kidney stone, large enough to cause severe pain.  The only reason I even want to write about it, though, is that I have to tell you about my sweet children.  Around 8 p.m. that night after about 3 hours of unrelenting pain, I lay down on our bed.  Before that I had a heating pad and rice sock (tube sock full of dry rice heated in the microwave) and sat in a chair or paced the house.  By this time, I had reached the point of wanting to go to the ER.  I made calls to arrange that, knowing I would probably be there HOURS if not days.  Then I just lay there.  Praying.  Oh, how I prayed. 

Then my sweet children came in to ask if I needed anything.  They re-heated my rice sock, brought me water, and then began to sing the most beautiful songs.  Noah sang "Good night, sweet Mommy, flush that stone right down the drain."  Jonah sat on the bed and held my hand, and Gracie sang "Silent Night".  What an amazing prayer meeting we had.  They got ready for bed, and we had our evening prayers.  Again, they prayed for my healing, and as they prayed the pain subsided GREATLY.  Within an hour, I passed the stone!

I love my children and my dear husband.  You're probably wondering what he was doing?!  He so hates to see me in pain and feels completely helpless.  He's really good, though.  He makes sure I have what I need, reheats the rice sock, brings me water, stays close enough that I can tell him if I need anything, but doesn't hover.  He prays for me, and reaches out to our friends and family to ask for prayer.  I had prayers going up all over this country.  (Just before Mark's heart attack, we joined Facebook at the urging of one of his brothers.  We thought it would be a good way to stay in touch with family and share pictures.  It has turned into a blessed prayer ministry.  When we need prayer, we share our requests--our "friends" are limited to family and friends, no strangers--and friends post their prayer requests.  So many people we have been able to pray with, so many old friends we've found, and so many relationships built with family that we saw only at reunions and so briefly, then.)

So today I am just resting.  We will be celebrating Jonah's 11th birthday with my parents this afternoon.  His birthday isn't until the 16th Nov., but my parents will be out of town.  He's kind of excited.  He gets an early birthday and then we will celebrate his birthday at home on the day.

And I'm counting my blessings!!

 

 

I was so excited to get All American History II in the mail to review as part of the Old Schoolhouse Crew.   It’s a complete American history program that covers the Civil War through the 1990’s.  The curriculum contains 32 lessons that are easily adapted to a multi-age environment; I’d say K-12.  I probably would do something like this when your oldest is 5th or 6^th and adapt it for younger children.  The publisher states that it’s written at a Jr. High level but adaptable lower and higher.

The lessons are easy to read and at the end of each section there are “reviews” that could be graded as well as “further study questions” that also could easily be done in written form and graded.

 

One of the features that make this curriculum stand out in my opinion is the worksheets that go with each lesson.  They are really more like notebooking then workbooking.  By that I mean it’s not so much a fill in the blank guided answer as spaces to put down the important events, timelines, key figures etc… in your own words.  What I also like about these is that many have maps included right on them!  I get so tired of searching for maps or honestly we often leave them out and not so with this curriculum.  All American makes maps easy!

The sheets also tend to keep my kids busy as I read.  There are often photos of key figures and flags of countries to cut out and paste in.  Now I do have to say my daughters age 9 and 11 like this feature more than my boys ages 14 and 16.  The 16 year old tolerates it but I pretty much have to make the 14 year old do it.  I’m not sure if it’s an age or gender issue but I think its great reinforcement so we did/do it.

I’m not sure that a short review can really do this curriculum justice as it’s quite comprehensive!  You really do want to get the student activity book, reader and teachers guide.  The teachers guide has all your answer keys as well as suggested additional reading by age level and other recommend added activities by ages.  The student activity book has all the notepages, maps, key figure pictures and reproducibles.

There are special pages and suggestions if you want to do a Native American notebook, war battle pages (civil, WWI etc...), and president pages.

Please ask questions if there is anything I haven’t answered about this curriculum.  You may want to bookmark the blog as well as we’ll be using All American for much of our history after the 1^st of the year and I’ m sure I’ll have blogs to write as we go along!

Can I think of any negatives?  This is tough!  I really have a hard time coming up with any.  For some it may seem costly and though it is from a Christian perspective it’s not quite as apparent as for instance Mystery of History curriculum.  That’s not necessarily a negative but something some might want to know.

I highly encourage you to check this one out!  It’ available from Bright Ideas Press.   All three are $68 and they are also available priced individually.  On the website they also have sample pages so you can see for yourself.

This year Rebecca decided to do math club.  She is in high school now and so the math is TRICKY.  She, being the perfectionist that she is, came out of class today in a rather foul mood.  Methinks it has something to do with the review they had of a recent contest the team competed in.  She was not happy on that day either.  I'm just sayin' there may be a connection somewhere...

We have long since outgrown Trick or Treating and Halloween has become somewhat of an awkward holiday.  It was never really a favorite of mine (although the loads of candy was cool) and now that my kids are all teens it's almost an annoying "holiday". 

 

This year was a bit different, however, because the girls got to go to a dance!  Rather than doing the costume thing and having a plethora of "thou shalt not's", the organizers decided to employ black lights and have a "who is the brightest" contest.  It was soooo much fun!

 

 

The kids have recently become card game aficionados and the idea of dressing with a deck of cards theme was enthusiastically embraced.  They spent a couple of hours creating their assigned/chosen card and this was the result. 

 

Josh was supposed to be the jack of clubs, but he decided to hang out with some buddies instead. 

 

Did you ever go Letter boxing or heard of Geocaching?  Well this Educaching is using your GPS for educational purposes.  I'd never heard of this product that was up for review by the Old Schoolhouse Crew. 

We were sent free materials from Educaching in exchange for our reviews.   It’s a 128 pages guide which gives you lessons and instructions to use your GPS for education.

 

There are five sections to this manual; teacher education, lesson plans, field sheets, acquiring GPS and beyond the basics.  I spent quite a bit of time on the teacher education as this was a pretty new concept for me!

 

This section defines a lot of the lingo like geocaching, waypoints, educache and more.  “Basically” it boils down to using Longitude and Latitute coordinates to have students find hidden things and plot certain points. 

 

Once you figure out how that’s done which requires a little knowledge of your GPS (more on that farther down) you’re on your way to the lessons.

 

The lessons range from math, science, thought process and more.  Ideas are also given for modifying to fit your own needs.

 

Honestly we don’t have time for a lot of extra things beyond what we are already studying and some of lessons the kids would all need to have studied the same things so if I were to use this I’d be modifying and making my own lessons a lot.  We did find one on chemical and physical changes which we studied together last year so we decided to test that one.

 

You could take many of the ideas but exchange your science or history concepts but it would take more teacher preparation.  Some of activities like types of triangle, finding perimeter etc… would obviously be more suited to a group of same age rather then multi-age kids.  It would work very well in a class or co-op setting, even a co-op class specifically on Educaching would be a neat idea.

 

We did use the field sheet section to print the worksheet that went with the Chemical/Physical change lesson we chose.  It basically was a fill in the blank sheet to write in the coordinates and locations as you found them along with whether they where chemical or physical changes.

 

For the activity you place things (or I used slips of paper naming the item) that demonstrate a chemical or physical change in container (or I used zip locks.)  The book gives you the suggestions.  Things like a burnt match (chemical), rusty nail (chemical) or popped balloon (physical).  Then you go out with your GPS and find your place and write down the coordinates. 

 

Though this could be a very fun activity it obviously takes a lot of teacher prep time (without kids in tow) to complete. 

 

Well on to our experience…

 

My 9 year old daughter tried it out with me.  I first got all the coordinates and then I gave them to her to find.  This is where we started having a lot of problems.

 

Our GPS did not handle this very well.  Apparently our GPS only does street directions and won’t go “through the woods” so to speak.  By coaching her (since I knew where they were) we were able to do the exercise but it obviously wasn’t ideal and not nearly as fun as it could have been.

 

My recommendation is to definitely check out your GPS and know how it works.  In the manual they go over what to look for in a GPS but having ours already we obviously didn’t follow these guidelines.  We had problems with charging our GPS and keeping it off the charger for very long.  Prior to this we only used it in the car constantly (pretty much) plugged in, so battery life is an issue. 

 

I truly don’t know much about GPS systems but my husband though more expensive models would do the off road that ours wouldn’t.

 

With the frustration of our GPS aside I think this could be very useful for a homeschool family especially if you take part in co-op’s or classroom situations that could make use of it.  You would also need to consider if you have the teacher prep time.  One option could be to have one of your older children “plan” the event and do all the prep.

 

The price is very reasonable at $32 so if you've been wanting to check out this technology with your kids this might be your ticket!

 

 

 

 

Praying for our soldiers, especially those stationed at Fort Hood near Austin, TX.  There has been a deadly, mass shooting.  7 reported dead, 20 wounded.  2 or 3 shooters with one in custody.  Story here.  First thing I did was call my parents to see if they had heard.  My dad is retired military.  Of course, as I dialed the phone my next thought was, "Surely, they didn't go to Fort Hood today."  They frequently travel the 45 minutes to the base to fill prescriptions and do their grocery shopping.  They were home and hadn't heard the news.  This is so terribly sad.  There are also several elementary schools and middle schools on base.  I pray for the children, although not in harms way, they are all the children of military personnel and have so much to deal with.  What a terrible tragedy!

Next week we will begin a unit study around the founding of America.  We will read several books by the d'Aulaires including:  Leif the Lucky, Columbus, and Pocohontas.  We will also read:  The Light and the Glory for Children by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, selections from History Stories for Children by Dr. John Wayland, The Christian Foundation of America by Gary DeMar, and finish with the book ...If You Sailed on The Mayflower in 1620 by Ann McGovern.  I would really like to end by making either placemats or dioramas.  The children are very creative, so I rarely need to assign an art project.  They would probably spend their days making art if given the choice.  There are several good Thanksgiving movies to include:  a Charlie Brown special, the Waltons' Thanksgiving show, a more recent Thanksgiving special that I've seen at Red Box (I haven't looked into it, so I'm not sure how appropriate it is.), First Landing (Again, not sure if appropriate).  I haven't really looked for movies at our library, mostly because those are so easy to find and usually available.  Besides getting ready for the holiday, these books, movies, and activities should keep us very busy, be lots of fun, and educational!!

We are taking an extended break from our History of the World unit study.  We have worked our way to Noah and will take up the history of Noah and his sons, the Tower of Babel, and Sumer when we resume our studies in January.  In the meantime, we will NOT be idle.  (Aren't idle hands the devil's workshop?)  This week we have been doing a fun unit study around the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

I found a unit study using this book here.  We will be using some of these ideas as well as our own.  We added a Bible study reading the story of Moses and the children of Israel who were fed manna and quail from the heavens by the Lord.  Egermeier's Story Book Bible is a great resource.  We have two weather books to use:  The Magic School Bus:  Kicks up a Storm and How It Works:  The World's Weather.  We continue to discuss healthy eating.  And, of course, we will be eating spaghetti and meatballs.

 

 

For Old Schoolhouse Crew we received both printed material and access to online functions of the the Discover program from ACT Advantage.  Their site describes it as, “.... (a)career planning process (that) begins with a research-based assessment system that allows students to assess their interests, abilities and values—a critical step to building a career plan based on personal strengths.  Students can then explore multiple career paths using DISCOVER's up-to-date databases of occupations (including military), majors and colleges.”

 

 My daughter who is middle school helped me take a look at these materials though we plugged in some information for our high school boys too. 

 

We first received a lot of printed pdf material which actually looks like it’s free for download from their site here.  This appears to be how to use this in a classroom setting.  As typical for us at home it seems to me anyway that things for the “classroom” take much less time at home so we condensed and did some of the information from these pages orally.  We did some T/F type sheets about preconceived ideas about particular careers and used questions on worksheets to talk about ideas you’ve heard from your family and society about working.  These are obviously geared toward the typical classroom, secular environment but I just adapted as I went.

 

As we worked through the information (typically condensing and doing 5 or so of the “prepared”  lesson in one setting) we’d come to a point where there would be a worksheet I would print like a sheet to write out what job/chores she liked best least and why or thoughts about 1^st job she ever wanted to do and what she wants to do now.  Then it directs you to go online and check out a particular section related to what you just looked at.

 

Honestly, it was a bit confusing but I think we did get some good discussion and information from it.  We spent a lot of time on the paper information and I’d probably in hind site skip sooner to the information online.  Once she went online it was again a bit confusing at first but the career information was very good.  The paper parts would be a good place to spend some time if your child still needs some thinking about work, careers, values etc…  If they have some solid ideas you might benefit more from exploring specific careers online.

 

They use a “World-of-Work” map which confuses me a little.  It’s supposed to be a pie wedge graph that breaks up careers into segments and places the results of your interest inventory within the proper “pie”.  Maybe I’m not visual enough to appreciate this but we did better just using the selections in wording that they tell you were the highest areas.

 

The biggest plus to this program in my opinion is the career information.  When a particular field is recommended you then explore many choices within that area.  What I really liked is they give you extensive information about that particular career.  Often we’ve done career things that give you a list but then if you don’t know or just have vague ideas of what particular careers are you have to do further investigations.  With Discover all your choices and lengthy definitions of what those choices entail and require are just clicks away.

 

There was only one inventory to complete but the focus here I would say is more on investigating choices.  Once you chose a field/career it gives you majors, classes and even lengthy lists of schools that have what you want.  As you start investigating you can save your favorites to come back to later.

 

My boys have better ideas of what they want so we played a bit with this feature.  While they do have extensive information on Computer programming (one of my oldest son’s interests) we could not locate specifically computer “game” programming which is what he wants to specialize in.  So if you have a “specialty” it may not give everything you need but it does give a lot on the general major of computer programming.  It lists high school classes recommended for that particular field which pretty much correspond to other lists we have found. 

 

There are also a lot of screens and help on resume building, interviewing and job seeking as well. 

 

Would I go ahead and do it if I wasn’t reviewing?  Yes, I think I would if we needed some direction in that area.  Right now we seem to have been checking into a lot of career’s/majors and the kids are pretty confident of what their doing and the plan they have so at this time I wouldn’t but if you’ve got a Jr. High or High Schooler who needs some direction this may be worth checking out.   The cost is $19.95 for a three month access.  They also have a demo to view on their site.

*Free materials and trial of the site were provided me in exchange for my opinions.