Ordinary Time

First off, both my commenters on yesterday's post were correct and can claim bragging rights.  "Wumpy flappy" is from Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.  "Wumpy flappy" is what Trixie says to her father when she discovers that her rabbit, Knuffle Bunny, is lost.  (She follows it up wuth "snurp" if your curious where that came from.)  Anyway "wumpy flappy" is now our family's code for I'm upset and no one is understanding me.  Plus it's just fun to say. Now on to this week's resource, this time for the youngest children.  Are you familiar with the Cricket Magazine Group ?  They have many different magazines for all ages which are well-done and advertising free.  We have subscribed to many of them over the years, but today I want to focus on Babybug magazine.  This came to mind as I was reading an issue to G. and L.  They love these magazines.  They are on heavy cardstock so they can withstand some pretty heavy use and are beautifu...

Thanks for everyone's kind comments on my last post.  I'm feeling a bit better.  Fatigue makes it difficult to sustain the energy needed to constantly go against the flow of life. Now, on to my real post, which I planned on titling:  User Error, part 1 in a series .  As I've grown older and raised children to functioning young adulthood, I have become more and more opinionated about various parenting choices.  And I've come to the conclusion that some choices are just wrong.  This is a very unpopular statement these days.  We are so open-minded and accommodating and willing to accept everyone's personal choices that we are uncomfortable coming out and saying that there are some things that are just wrong.  But they are.  And this is what this series, as I get around to writing each segment, is to be about.  My first example has to do with who is ultimately in control of a household, the parents or the children, because the adu...

We're on Christmas break here and not doing school-y stuff, but we are playing games.  We have always liked visual discernment games such as Blink and Set , and now we have a new one to add to our list:  Spot It!   This was a gift from one of J.'s sisters and it has been fun.  The game consists of circular cards with 8 different pictures on each card.  The trick is that there is only one picture that will match between any two cards.  (For some reason this boggles my mind as to how they figured out how to do that.  When I mentioned my amazement, M. said, with a bit of boredom in her voice, that she was sure there was a computer program which took care of that.)  There are four different games you can play and it takes anywhere from 2 to 8 people.  (Another plus in a large family.)  The games are quick to play and everyone has been enjoying it.  One of the things I like best about it is that to take the card you have to say out loud...

[Go here for my Sew, Mama, Sew! giveaway.] My resource today isn't a book or curriculum, but an everyday object:  my large white board hanging in my upstairs hallway.  I use it for writing things that I want people to read but without asking them to read them... sort of along the same lines of leaving books in the bathroom.  I have found that asking my children to read something can cause automatic disinterest, but if I leave it about it will be read because all of my children are compulsive readers.  If there is print in front of them, they will read it.  With that in mind, I use my white board to write quotes I want them to think about or notices of things they should be aware of or things I would like them to possibly memorize.  (Because if you find yourself reading the same thing everytime you come up the stairs, you will find that thing lodged in your brain.)  So this morning I will be writing out the text of Luke 2... the Christmas ...

When my children were much younger, I went to my homeschool support group's resource night and remember hearing one mother, whose children were several years older than mine, say that Band of Brothers had been her best resource all year.  My first thought was to write it off as something that I wasn't interested in and therefore my children wouldn't be interested in it.  My second thought was that it was an odd sort of resource to suggest.  Well, I'm here to eat crow.  For B., Band of Brothers is turning out to be our best resource of the year.  He read it as an assignment for his 20th century literature class and has become consumed with it.  After he finished the book, he immediately looked up other things that Stephen Ambrose has written and put them on reserve at the library, he added the movie (and several others) to the Netflix queue, and photocopied the bibliography so he could work on finding the books which were on it so he could read them...

We are finishing up a unit on basic geography knowledge.  Instead of doing what the book suggested and do a workbook page, I decided to get the land form pans and land form cards out and have the children build geographical terms with clay.  I bought these cards from a Montessori catalogue ages and ages ago when M. was in kindergarten or first grade and when I went back to try to find the link to share with you, it seems they are not carried anymore.  Never fear!  I have something better.  In my searching I found a link to a free, printable version of nearly the same thing.  That's much better, huh?  Not only do the children really get to see what the geographical features are in three dimensions, they get to play with clay and water (always a plus) and the cards really demonstrate how different geographical features of opposites of each other.  For instance, did you ever think about how a lake and an island are opposite? Here is the crew worki...

Have I mentioned I have to drive a lot this week? Yeah, thought so. Between the driving and the rehearsing, there hasn't been much time for anything else. Since the commute to the theater is about 25 minutes one way, I decided to take advantage of my captive audience. We have been listening to Colonial and Revolution Songs with Historical Narration in the car while we drive.  It is a really unique telling of early American history.  A narrator will give a brief description of what is happening historically, then connect how the musical selection ties into it, followed by the entire song which was discussed.  Now, be forewarned, folk songs are history at its most unedited and some of the folk songs do make me raise my eyebrows a bit.  (Nothing explicit, but life was hard and brutal and the songs reflect that.)  It is interesting to hear some songs that I vaguely recognize and to hear the story behind them. It is the perfect car ride CD.  My children find i...

One of the most popular nights at my homeschooling support group is the annual resource night, where everyone brings one or two favorite resources for learning and shares them with the group.  I thought why just have something like this once a year?  So, I'm going to create a weekly link-up where I'll share some of my current favorite resources and you can join-in and share yours as well.  I know that many of you who read my blog are not homeschoolers, but you still do creative and interesting things with your children so feel free to join in as well. To start things off, I'm going to introduce you to one of my best science resources, The Everyday Science Sourcebook by Lawrence F. Lowery.  We don't use a planned curriculum for very much around here because I prefer to come up with my own ideas.  That's why this book is so useful.  It is really just lists and lists of science activities and experiments.  Some are very simple, some are things you ...