I don't know if anyone is still reading because I haven't updated in FOREVER.  Sorry folks!  But I was writing posts and then finding roadblocks when it came time to add the pictures to the post.  HSB was talking like it would get easier to add pictures, so I took a break and waited.  No such luck.  So if I'm going to continue to blog, I'm going to have to find a blog host that will work with Flickr--most seem to.  HSB is just "special" I guess...

My second point of frustration is the political stance taken by the HSB people.  The gross promotion of Spunky's all out attack on Mike Huckabee makes me sick to my stomach.  They are promoting it as a place for debate, and that does occur in the comments, but the articles that the commenters are replying to are terribly closed-minded and just not responsible writing.  It is as bad as the yellow journalism in the very biased newspapers in Arkansas, taking quotes out of context and interpreting them in some utopian view point rather than the reality of the political and governmental climate in Arkansas.  Then, when someone who actually lives in Arkansas and was involved in the legislation being criticized (not me, another poster) tries to set the record straight, she is not acknowledged as someone who might know what she is talking about.  Her views are not considered persuasive in the least.  I just have no respect for that. 

I have even less respect that HSB is promoting and encouraging this and that the posts are on the blog of the publisher of The Old Schoolhouse magazine.  It is becoming very clear that HSB and TOS are going to be a big Ron Paul love fest and a complete lynching of a good man (Huckabee) who actually has a chance of doing well against a democrat opponent.  If that is what these people are about, I want nothing to do with them or their blog or their magazine.  So I'm officially closing this blog, such that it is, and will be taking my thoughts and ramblings to a new host, hopefully somewhere that I can post pictures without being led to say things I shouldn't say.  And I'm thinking I'll probably cancel my magazine subscription too.  I just don't need the stress...

If you've read this, thanks and sorry for the negative and frustrated tone.

   I went to a craft night at a friend's house Friday night and made this cross.  This isn't the best picture of it, but you get the idea.  We started with a wooden base that we spread liberally with mastic (sp?).  Then we had tons of old jewelry, buttons, beads, tiles, and all sorts of other junk that we could pull from to stick all over it.  When we got it to that point, they all looked pretty junky.  But then we started sponge painting or spray painting them and all of that "junk" turned into lovely texture.  I don't know if you can tell, but I sponged it with a mossy green color and then added bits of tan, linen, and ivory over that.  It's has a warm, mossy, shabby chic kind of look in person.  It looks kind of gray on my screen right now because I didn't have a lot of sunlight to work with when I photographed it.  It has a layer of sealer over the paint to keep everything looking good.  I can't wait to hang it up--I'm looking for the perfect spot. 

We love crosses and are working on collecting some.  I would love to make more for our collection, so if you have seen some fun ideas around the 'net, let me know. 

  Our Netflix selection this week happened to be the movie, Eight Below.  We saw it at the theater last year and really enjoyed it.  We had no idea, though, when we put it in our Netflix queue that when we received it our temperature would actually be 8 below (with a windchill factor of -28)!  This southern girl is feeling SO out of her element in this frigid weather.  It is supposed to be -10 F with a windchill of -25 to -30 (yikes!) at 9:00am tomorrow when we would normally be leaving for church.  Am I a total chicken here?  We've decided to just stay home.  We never skip church--ever!   But I don't know if our car even works in such cold weather--LOL!

Morning Prayer and hot cocoa anyone???  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

Good news!  After an unseasonably warm Christmas and New Year with no snow in sight, we finally got some great snow last week.  So my sad view of bare trees and paper snowflakes changed to this:

Isn't that beautiful?  And the next good thing is that we got enough snow over the course of a few days we got enough snow to make the sledding great.  So last Sunday after church and lunch, everyone bundled up and headed for the sledding hill. 

Even Emma (15 months old) enjoyed going down the hill a few times on our laps.  But she enjoyed being pulled in her own little inflatable sled even more.   

We've enjoyed the snow immensely and have even spent some time studying snow in our homeschool.  Miles and Grace Anne recently completed their lapbook projects based on Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton.  We used the Katy's Big Snow units from Hands of a Child for our study and having the prepared graphics and activities made my job so much easier!  See what a great job they did:

Grace Anne's Katy Lapbook

And here is the one Miles did: 

I love using good literature to tie their learning together and make it relevant and the Hands of a Child unit made that so easy for me.  We studied the various elements of the literature, but then we went further to do a study of the compass, how it is made, how it is used.  We took the various businesses/institutions mentioned in the story and classified them as government or private institutions.  This led to some great conversations and learning opportunities.  We learned about blizzards--what is required to classify as storm as a blizzard?  We looked at famous blizzards in history.  This was cool because we had just experienced a blizzard on December 1.  We looked at snow plows (which are pretty easy to find around here) and other heavy equipment and even designed our own piece of heavy equipment that serves duel purposes.  We had a great time with this unit and look forward to our next one.

If you have been meaning to try lapbooking, I encourage you to visit Hands of a Child to see what they have to offer.  They always have a freebie unit available for you to try to see what you think.  Katie from Hands of a Child has written a series of articles for the Homeschoolblogger Front Porch explaining more about lapbooking.  You might want to check them out too!

Have a blessed day and do something fun with your kids!

OK, so the photo worked...  Things are looking up!    I have a small (ha!) tendency towards perfectionism, so I haven't been blogging lately because I've been pouting about not being able to figure out the photo thing.  I definitely need blogging lessons.  But, good news!  There is a new resource out in blog land for blogging dummies like me.    It's called Blogging Basics 101 and appears to be just what I need at this point.  So watch out blog world!  I'm going to be armed and dangerous.  LOL

In other news, you may or may not know, we're in Wisconsin for a short three years so my husband can attend seminary.  We usually live in the southern climes where "winter" is a very relative term.  We were both nervous and excited about moving up here because of the cold and snowy winters.  Well, last winter (our first) was relatively mild without too much snow, but enough snow to play in and discover that it's fun and driving isn't nearly the problem up here that it is when it snows in the south.  So here we sit in "snowy" Wisconsin ready for fun sledding and building and it's 46 degrees and humid.  This is what winter is like back in Louisiana.  We're so bummed!  So what did we do?  We had to make our own snow! 

OK, since this post has already been lost and resurrected once, I'm going to quit while I'm ahead!   I'm working on some lapbooking photos to post and some other goodies, so maybe I'll be back on later today.  Thanks for stopping by!

I hope you have had a wonderful Advent and Christmas.  It has been a while since I blogged.  I had great plans for blogging through Advent, but between my husbands term papers and finals, the extra homeschooling we were trying to do, and preparations for Christmas, something had to give and the blog was it.  I have good news, though!  My wonderful family blessed me with a new digital camera for Christmas, so not only am I back to blogging, but I should be able to post photos as well.  I'm excited to be able to show you what I'm describing and to add some beauty to my little corner of the blogging world. 

So here goes...  The first thing I wanted to share is our Advent wreath.  I usually have something a little more traditional, but since the wreath is on our dining table which also serves as our school table, I though pillar candles would be a little sturdier than the usual tapers.  So off I went to find three blue and one pink pillar candles.  They were not to be found!  I finally settled on white candles with ribbons in the appropriate colors, put them on my glass cake plate, added some fresh greenery, and I like how it turned out.  Here's a picture: 

I've actually been having trouble getting photos into my posts.  This post actually got lost in cyberspace the day I was writing it and I just found it again.  So I'm not going to try to do any more photos until I get this one posted.  Cross your fingers!

I've always loved WFMW hosted by Rocks In My Dryer and I thought I would jump in and give it a try. 

My tip has to do with internet shopping.  I love how easy it is to shop for Christmas gifts on the internet.  You get to avoid the crowded chaos at the stores and, if you're like me, you can even shop late at night after everyone else is asleep.  But keeping up with what I've bought and when it is expected, etc. can be such a hassle.  I've seen all sorts of cute little log sheets where you can enter the website name and what you bought etc. etc. but that always seems like such a pain.  So I set up two email folders in Outlook.  The first one is titled "Shopping" and the other is a subfolder titled "Received."  Each time I purchase something online and get that confirmation email, I put those emails and anything else pertaining to that order into the "Shopping" folder.  Then when an item is received, I move the emails pertaining to that item to the "Received" folder.  Once every couple of days I go through the Shopping folder to see what items are there that I'm expecting.  If it seems to be taking longer than expected, I have all of the information there to follow up with the place I purchased the item and, if they sent a shipping confirmation, I have tracking information handy to track the package.

This has made keeping up with my internet purchases so much easier!  It definitely Works for Me!  Hop on over to Rocks In My Dryer for other WFMW entries...

Today and tomorrow we are wrapping up our Pilgrim and Thanksgiving lapbooks.  This has been such a fun study!  I can't thank the ladies at Hands of a Child enough for putting together such fabulous units to make our learning enjoyable.

Through our studies, we have learned things like:
What is the difference between Puritans and Separatists?
Where did the Separatists come from and why?
What was it like on that long voyage across the ocean?
What was it like trying to settle into a new land and survive your first winter?
What happened at that first Thanksgiving?
How do you calculate when Thanksgiving will be each year?

And many many more things.  For each activity, there was information in the research guide to help us find the answers to the questions and there was a fun graphic to put the information in to display in the lapbook.  I let my six year old do things like color the pictures and trace vocabulary words and draw pictures to go with vocabulary words.  Sometimes we even looked for clip art to illustrate the vocabulary.  She also did some of the booklets that didn't require as much writing, like Mayflower passenger statistics.   Then I had my nine year old doing the more writing-intensive activities such as the biography of Miles Standish and the mini-book on the Mayflower Compact.

Both children learned a lot from these units and had fun doing them.  We are looking forward to getting all of our mini-books compiled into the folders and getting to show it off to Daddy when he gets home. 

You might want to pop over to Hands of a Child today.  They are having a Cyber-Monday sale.  (30% off ebooks from noon to midnight tonight - coupon code CYBERMON)  You could get the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving for next year, or, better yet, get the Christmas Symbols and Christmas Cheer lapbook units to do with your kids during December.  Those are the ones we are doing next!  Oh, and we will be doing Katy's Big Snow in conjunction with the Christmas books.  I've been looking through that one and I can't wait to get started on it.  Maybe we'll even get some snow later this week to get us in the mood!

Have a great day, y'all!

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to reflect on the many things for which we have to be thankful.  I have the usual things on my list, family, friends, our health...  But none of these things would be possible without God's incredible faithfulness to provide for us--all that we have, all that we are, all that we will be.  From time to time we will sing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" in church and I can never get through the hymn without being overcome with gratefulness for His great faithfulness to me.  By the end I am struggling to sing through tears while wanting to just fall on my face and worship the One who has provided for me and delighted me and loved me even when I didn't deserve any of it!  Oh GREAT is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Here are the words so you can sing along with me or you can listen to it here:

Great Is Thy Faithfulness  by Thomas Chisholm

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father!
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not:
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

     Great is Thy faithfulness, Great is Thy faithfulness,
     Morning by morning new mercies I see:
     All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.
     Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Pardon for sin and peace that endureth.
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

Have a blessed Thanksgiving, everyone!

I've been writing math problems for a co-op I'm involved in online, and I am reminded that it is important for us to make math fun and interesting.  Now, I'm not saying you should throw your math textbooks away, because most of us need the expertise and security of a good math program.  Others of us would be able to come up with a perfectly lovely math program on our own, but who has the time?  So I'm all for having a well-designed math program with plenty of hands on experiences with manipulatives and plenty of word problems to keep kids thinking about math.

All that said, I think it is also important to work math into other subjects in our curriculum.  When Gracie was doing her Pumpkins unit, there was math naturally worked into the project by the authors.  All I had to do was adapt it to her skill level.  As part of the Pilgrims co-op the past two weeks and the Thanksgiving co-op this week, I've been writing math problems to go along with our unit.  It has been a fun challenge for me and for the kids.  I'll include some of these problems for your enjoyment at the end of the post.   

I've been doing these problems with a 4th grader who is into multiplication in his math program right now and a 1st grader who is learning single digit addition in her math program.  So when I got to a multiplication problem, did I only do it with my 4th grader?  No!  We got out our math manipulatives and I helped my first grader think through the problem with blocks.  There was one problem about six families each having five members and we got out our five bars and set up six of them.  I had intended for her to put them end to end to see that two of them made a ten and how many tens would that be, etc.  But while I was reaching for the ten bars, she just skip counted them and said 30!  Knock me over with a feather...I had forgotten about skip counting.  I did go ahead and show her with the ten bars as well to sneak a little place value learning in there. 

Does she now know that 5x6=30?  I don't know.  But that wasn't really the point.  She spent some time working with and thinking about numbers.  Her brain got a good work out.  And we are building that intuitive side part of her that will allow her to do math in her head. 

Now, here are some math problems to work on with your little Pilgrim!  If you have trouble with any of them, feel free to email me and I can send you the solutions.

1. The Scrooby Separatists moved to the Netherlands in 1608.  If the current year is 2006, use subtraction to find out how many years ago the Separatists moved to Holland.
2. Seven Separatists left the Church of England to form their own church.  If five more people joined them the next week, how many people were attending their church?
3. Six families from Scrooby decided to move to the Netherlands.  If there were five people in each family, how many people were moving to the Netherlands? 
4. Take the year that William Brewster was born.  Add to that the number of passengers that sailed on the Mayflower.  Subtract from that sum the year that Myles Standish died.  What number is left?
5. If it takes 4 yards of fabric to make a skirt like the Pilgrim young ladies typically wore, how many yards of fabric would be required to make a new skirt for the four young ladies in the Brewer family?
6. Can you convert the yardage in #5 to feet?
7. Now try to convert it to meters!
8. Massassoit had 90 warriors who kept close watch on the 102 pilgrims.  Write this as an inequality.
9. How many more pilgrims than warriors were there?
10. If there were 90 warriors and 102 pilgrims, how many people were there all together?
11. What percentage of this group were warriors?
12. At the first Thanksgiving, there were 50 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoags.  How many people attended the celebration all together?
13. The Pilgrims had prepared food for 60 people total.  How many more people had arrived unexpectedly?
14. Massasoit had his hunters kill 5 deer to feed everyone.  If 140 people were attending the celebration, how many people ate from each deer?
15. If there were 50 pilgrims and they prepared food for 60 people, how many Wampanoags were they expecting?
16. If Prudence is older than Faith, Faith is older than Oceanus. Oceanus is younger than Prudence and Humility is older than Prudence.   List these Pilgrim children in order from oldest to youngest.
17. If the Mayflower could sail about 50 miles per day, how many miles did she sail during the month of October?
18. Take the year that the Mayflower set sail for America and subtract from it the year that the Scrooby Separatists moved to the Netherlands.  Add to that the number of passengers on the Mayflower.  Subtract from that the number of days the Pilgrims were at sea on the Mayflower.  Divide that by the number of babies born during the Mayflower voyage.  What number do you have?
19. Take the following recipe for Marshmallow Sweet Potatoes that serves 6 people and figure out how much of each ingredient you would need to feed your extended family of 24 people.  This recipe is from:  http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=15121

• 3 large sweet potatoes, cooked until tender, or 1 29 oz. can of sweet potatoes
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups mini marshmallows

Try some of these with your kids this week and see how it goes.  Let me know if you get stuck and I'll try to help you out.  I'll have more up for Christmas later.  Now go forth and do math!

Everyone piling on my bed to watch cartoons...

Fresh Belgian waffles with plenty of syrup...

Staying in our pajamas just a little bit longer...

The lure of friends asking the kids to come out and play...

A few minutes for Mommy to go play in the sewing room...

It's all good!

Have a happy Saturday. 

When I was filling out the profile information, there was a question about what our homeschooling style is.  I pondered it for a bit and finally chose eclectic.  I guess that is my term for not sticking truly to one particular style.  LOL  Actually, in my heart, I believe the most in the methods of Charlotte Mason and this is how we begin each year.  But in my reality, I have a baby toddling around and sometimes our schedule gets crazy and we start to get behind on our readings.  Then I have guilt!  Plus, I have a couple of kids here who love the color/cut/paste activities and we need to add those in. 

So I've decided that for November and December we would take a break from guilt and just schedule in a lot of color/cut/paste learning and do things differently for a while.  We are having an absolute blast with lapbooking units from Hands of a Child!  We actually started the last week of October doing a Bats unit with my 4th grader and a Pumpkins unit with my 1st grader.  They learned a ton about their topics and had fun being crafty to boot.  More!  More!

So this month we've been working on a Pilgrims unit and a Thanksgiving unit.  We've really dug in deeply to our Pilgrim study and have been able to tie in our math and writing to our topic.  Next month we are going to do a unit on the Symbols of Christmas and another one on Katy's Big Snow Day.  I can definitely see the appeal of the Unit Study homeschool crowd. 

So this got me to thinking...  Should we set aside Charlotte Mason for a while and just go this route?  I don't think so.  The richness of the literature and the short lessons and all of the other reasons I believe in Charlotte Mason's methods are still there.  But we love the crafty lapbooks!  Why can't I strike a balance here?  So my goal for our Christmas break is to take what we need to do next in our Charlotte Mason studies and add in the crafty lapbooks along-side.  Coordinate the two together.  I'm going to have to be a little more deliberate and organized for a while until I get a good feel for how this works.  But I've decided we should have our cake and eat it too!

Welcome to my little corner of the 'net.  I've enjoyed my wanderings around blog-land so much and have gotten a lot out of the blogs I've read.  From spiritual insights to homekeeping advice, to homeschool inspiration, to sewing and crafting ideas--I've been amazed and inspired.  So I think it's time that I leave my mark on the blogging community.  Will my posts be profound?  Probably not.  Inspirational?  Who knows?  But I hope you will be encouraged in your own journey the way I have been by others.

Now...to figure out how to add "stuff" to this blog and include pictures!  My kids are working on some Thanksgiving projects right now that I would love to share.