Free Ideas for "Bible Time"

Okay, I’m going to put together ideas for Bible time for your free homeschooling.

Ambleside Online format of daily time, that I have been using for many years, constitutes (1) Bible reading (you could consider Penny Gardner’s scripture highlights from Old or New Testament, or Bible Gateway); (2) Bible Memory, and (3) Hymn.

I just found a great Bible reading plan that is entirely free, where you go through the Bible in four years. It comes with discussion questions and periodic tests. My hyperlinks aren’t working in this post… Go to the AnchorCross website (http://anchorcross.org/books.shtml) and scroll down to "Through the Bible with my Child". Paragraph 3 says “The entire content of Through the Bible with My Child can be downloaded and read from this website free of charge. To view the book in pdf format, click here.” Click on the word “here” on that web page and a pdf document will download for you to use for your daily Bible time.

Today I also got a really great suggestion from a blog of doing the daily Keys for Kids each day, to keep it fun for the kids. I don’t know how that will work with my ten-year-old (going on 30 in his head), but I might give it a try.

Free English Grammar Curriculum

Okay, I know I had seen this site previously, but for some reason I never made a blog entry about free grammar resources. I'm sure this is not the only one out there (in fact, I KNOW of another one too, but don't have the website handy...). But I was looking at this one today, and it looks quite good!

This site is made in a way that an established student, say... beyond elementary, maybe... could work through the lessons alone, daily, and progress at his/her own speed.   However, in my opinion it could also be adapted to use with younger ones, with mom at the side, reading to the little'un, and asking questions, then filling in the provided (by young'un) answers.

This is intended to be used, used, and re-used forever, to completely cement all the correct grammar issues into the student's brain. It could be all you ever need for grammar. It even has tests.

It also has a "Premium" selection (a.k.a. you must pay something) that also looks great, like it gives immediate feedback and probably grades tests, etc. for $40/year, which is incredibly reasonable. I don't think I'll use that this year, cause the free stuff alone is amazing enough for me. But I might consider it for next year. (My kiddo is 5th, btw, with a reading level of reading whatever he wants and refusing to read what he doesn't want... So I'll sit with him on this one.)

So, give it a look-see. That web-address again is:
http://www.englishgrammar101.com/

[Disclaimer: I am listing all sites for my own and other homeschoolers' benefit. I get NO kick-back, nor affiliate privileges.]

A New Puppy in the House

Didn’t know how long we would wait to get a new dog, but some of the family were really wanting/needing a new furbaby to love.

We searched long and hard. Didn’t know for sure what we wanted. Didn’t want a pit bull, which our local shelter is full of.

Did want a yellow labrador puppy; one didn’t come along at the right time. Looked at one black dog, one year old; too much dog for us, and probably part pit bull.
Finally settled on one whose papers say they think he is 1/2 chocolate lab and 1/2 German Shorthaired Pointer.

I want my friends to tell me what they think.
Here are photos of the puppy we brought:

Our Beloved Bailey, 1999-2010

We said good-bye to our beloved furbaby, Bailey, today.
For several months he had been plagued by stomach issues that we could not determine the cause of... vomiting, and more recently refusing to eat, followed by temperature, dehydration... We had tested and tested, and could not find out what was wrong.
Well, last night he had a bad night, with non-productive vomiting, water, bile... and this morning the weather was nice, so I let him sit out in the cool on the deck to enjoy the morning.� After I saw him change spots and lie down by the sliding screen (he seemed to be unusually shakey in his movements...)... after a bit I went out to check on him, and he had passed on.� Very quietly, in a happy place, he passed away.
On taking his body to the vet, after examination, it was determined that his passing away was not caused by the long-term issues that we had been battling (which were probably intestional cancer which had probably spread to his lungs, guessed at due to his recent development of a cough and a spot on his lung noted on a recent x-ray)... Apparently during the night he had developed a twist in his stomach, which was evidenced by abdominal bloating. This cut off the blood circulation through the vena cava to his upper extremities, resulting very quickly in death (like in 1/2 hour from when it occurred). This is like in the movie Marley and Me.
So, we say good-bye to our wonderful yellow lab, who we adopted when he was about 2 years old, so long ago that my son remembers him always being here.
Our Bailey:

We love you, Bailey, and hope we see you on the other side.

I Blink, and Tomorrow becomes Last Week!

It is unbelieveable how quickly time flies sometimes!  I can’t believe how long ago my last entry already is!

Anyway, we aren’t starting our school year until the day after Labor Day. You would think I would use this time to be preparing for start day, but….. Nah…..  I am actually catching up on some housework (which we know, actually, IS preparing for the first day of school), and have been trying to finish some last UFOs (crafting term for (U)n(F)inished (O)bjects).  I finished knitting a baby sweater (need to sew on buttons), matching booties (need to finish sewing the 2nd one), and want to make a matching hat (a set for a charity).  I also made a nice tote, and hope to get a pair of pajamas and a pair of pants made for my ds.

We have a little local fair that I am planning to add these to; entry day is next week, so that’s what I’ve actually been preparing for!

I’ll try to post some photos to show these items, but not today. I need to go get going with my day!

My FlyLady Days

Summer is coming to a close, and some of my responsibilities that have been distriacting me outside of my home as well.  My (deceased) mom’s house is finally fixed, cleaned, and on the market. Renovations to my own house are (almost) finished. Time to et back into the swing of things.
Trying to work towards a more normal working schedule for my home and homeschool.
Flylady Mondays include:

• dust all surfaces
• sweep/mop/vacuum
• empty all trashes;
• change sheets
• clean mirrors, sliding door, major windows,
• declutter weekly periodicals

…need to check and see if that is all.  Then there are the Flylady "daily"s. 
Morning routine:

• make bed(s)
• morning shower and such; swish and swipe bathroom;
• feed the critturs;
• start the coffee; make the breakfast;
• unload dishwasher, breakfast, vitamins. Check calendar;
• eat the breakfast; quiet time; then rouse, feed, and do Bible time with my boy;
• a load of laundry started;

Later in the day routine:

• Look at or create "To Do" list;
• homeschool;
• hit the hot spots (load the breakfast dishes; clear "hot spot" surfaces;
• lunch and recess break/ email, phone calls;
• homeschool in afternoon/ any appointments for the day

After homeschool:

• Clean up school area;
• make sure everything’s on hand for dinner;
• some mom "craft time"
• start dinner

Bedtime routine:

• Leave kitchen clean with dishes loaded, dwasher running, coffee set up, counters wiped, sink shined;
• brush teeth, get dressed for bed;
• snuggle in and read, or do computer or watch movie while knitting or crocheting.

So, anyway, I got the sheets changed. I had to major clean my bathroom, because it had been ages… I pretty much have to dry mop the hardwood every day because of the dogs. I’ve been able to keep up with the dishwasher and coffee every night, but still need to remember to wipe down surfaces.

Majorly, I have boxes to unpack and declutter.  We had hardwood put in last week, and everthing was boxed and removed from the rooms. Now the boxes need to be unpacked. Realistically, a lot of the stuff that got packed needs to be thrown away, given away, or put away. In other words, when we packed up there were piles that should have been dealt with that were just packed. Now they need to be dealt with.

Anyway, time to get on with my day. I got the breakfast/coffee part done, but not the bed made part, nor the shower, nor the quiet time, nor the dishwasher, etc. Gotta get moving.
~D

Greetings!

Well, I’ve been blogging on my anonymous blog, but I don’t seem to have much readership there. My friends here haven’t found me there yet. And I haven’t had time to increase my readership there by random blogging and leaving comments and such… So I thought I’d update here.

Then I worked on an update, only to have my computer come unplugged and the update lost, so I’m trying again.

First, my dad’s estate is closed, except for $3 and something cents that is still in a bank account. I need to write a letter of instruction to the bank and send them some copies of legal documents to show them we’re done, and close the account.

The house that my mom lived in is not on the market yet, but we’re close.  My goal had been to go through 50+ years of clutter and sort, throw, sell, etc.  My step-sister, still living in the house, stepped up to "assist", and apparently basically stored most everything, thanks in part to a good friend who apparently can’t say no and who apparently has unlimited available storage…
So, using your imagination, what are the types of things you don’t want to have happen to a house you are about to sell that the buyer might bulldoze, but that you’re not sure if the buyer will, and that still has someone living in it?  Okay, I’ll just tell you.  We had to have the hot water heater replaced. ::sigh:: And upgraded, of course, since the county codes have changed and all new heaters need to be installed with certain new fittings and a certain overflow tank, and all the new heaters are different and new codes require different, larger flue vents and…  ::sigh::

So, that’s done.  The carpet has been ripped out, and I need to get over there and spray the place with an enzyme to try to neutralize the dog urine odor.  The back porch needs the indoor/outdoor carpet removed and taken to the dump.  The entire place needs a thorough cleaning. The front yard has an infestation of harmless bees that have to be outa there for the house to be on the market. And…

In November I ripped my rotator cuff.  It took until March to get into surgery. So, I am now in recovery. I’ve been in a sling six weeks and am just recently freed from the sling and able to type two-handed again. I have another 3 MONTHS of physical therapy ahead of me to get full use of my arm back again. So I am DEFINITELY not going to be the one to remove the carpet from the back porch of my mom’s house, and I am not going to be the one to thorough clean the whole place.

Well, I have a follow-up doctor’s appointment to get to in less than an hour, and I haven’t had my lunch yet, so I’m off.

Leaving me comments would be a nice thing, so I know you got this.

Oh, and I wanted to post a link to another blog that I saw today that I really like:

http://www.joyofjello.blogspot.com/

I’d like to get back to doing what I think she did, posting the menu plan for the week each week.  And I’d love to be able to put up my recipes, so I’ll need to review and tweak them to make sure they are all always original and not violating copyright…

Gotta go now! Ciao!

D

Why Homeschool is COOL!

Here’s my amazing homeschool story for the day. 
First, the groundwork for this story is that for a couple of years there has been some unusually rapid deterioration in the vision in my right eye. On my last visit to the eye doctor, she was concerned that she was seeing Macular Degeneration, and wrote me a referral to a specialist.
Tack on to that some information about my little guy’s interest this year. He wanted to study the five senses. I owned a Scholastic book called The Body Book (you can click it on the sidebar), so I made copies of all the student pages in preparation for going through it. The first section is on the Five Senses, so it is a good fit.

So, yesterday I had this specialist eye doctor appointment, and I was wondering if I should get a sitter, when it dawned on me that I could try to capitalize on the visit in light of our studies.  Would the doctor be able to talk to my son at all, or would the office be too busy?…

Well, not only was the great doctor able and willing to, but he also let my son look INTO my eye!  He let my son look through two different pieces of equipment. My son saw the optic nerve (it is yellow), the retina (it is orange), blood vessels that feed the eye, …the whole bit.  He said my son is the only child his age that he knows of who has ever seen some of that stuff!  It was so cool!

So then we came home and put together the paper model of the eye (over two days).  Now I just wish he ever enjoyed coloring, because I really wanted him to use the colored pencils and get the model colored, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I’ll keep working on him.

What's Cookin'?

Today Mama’s cookin Bison Chili.  Okay, okay, you can make this with your meat of choice, but Mama’s makin it with ground bison.  Mama’s makin this to go in the freezer for two meals sometime in the future, but Daddy’s gettin home late tonight, and it looks like Mama might just serve the first dinner from this chili tonight, since Mama doesn’t much like to cook dinner twice in the same evening.

Here’s the recipe.  This is a CORE recipe on the Weight Watcher’s plan:

2 pounds ground bison
1 onion, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
3/4 tsp. chili powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
1 15-ounce can dark red kidney beans
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 15- ounce can tomato sauce
non-CORE optional ingredient: brown sugar

Brown meat with onion and green pepper in large Dutch oven; add remaining ingredients.  Bring to a boil; reduce heat.  Cover and simmer over low heat for 2 hours, or in a crockpot for 6 hours, stirring occasionally.  Serve hot with fat-free sour cream, and for non-core eaters, shredded cheddar cheese.

Serve with salad.  For 2 Weight Watcher points, cook up some hot muffins (in paper baking cups) and crumble into your bowl of chili.

Also a great meal in the following ways:

• Stuffed Baked Potatoes:  Bake potatoes and serve covered with steamed broccoli, Mama’s chili, fat free shredded cheddar cheese,  and fat free cheddar cheese.
• Chili Dogs:  (not CORE) Cook up some Hebrew National all-beef hot dogs and serve in hot dog roll, smothered with Mama’s chili and more chopped onions and cheddar cheese, with baked beans and saurkraut on the side.

So, as a way to do this, you can

1. Eat chili for dinner, and place the left overs in a heavy-duty freezer zip-lock-bag, mark it either "Stuffed Baked Potatoes" or "Chili Dogs", and plan to serve it for dinner two weeks later (so the family doesn’t feel like they are eating "leftovers".
2. Using a Once-a-Month-Cooking mentality, make up the whole thing and freeze 6-cups-worth in a gallon-size freezer bag marked "Mama’s Chili", and the rest of it bag in a 1-quart freezer bag and mark it either for dogs or stuffed potatoes.

Hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my madness today. I love to serve this with a Hot Muffin recipe I will have to post later.  While I was posting this Papa called, and he plans to swing by a Vie de France store and pick up some salad and French bread to go with tonight! He spoils me so!

D

Why Homeschool Moms Quit trying to Exercise...

Let's see, how can one begin?

I hope to make this humerous, while bringing truth to light about the real life of a home school mom! 

At about 9:30 a.m., the mom decides it is time to get ready to exercise.  She plugs her 6 year old into a computer phonics game and goes to put on exercise clothes.

She sees the bed and remembers that she needs to strip the sheets on her bed.  She strips the sheets.

She goes to use the bathroom, so that the old, saggy female plumbing won't give her trouble while she is exercising, and she gets sidetracked playing “Jawbreaker” on her Pocket PC.  She finally gets up and gets dressed.

She heads downstairs to the treadmill, but halfway there remembers the sheets sitting on the bed that need to go in the wash, so she goes back and gets them.  On her way, she sees the tissues that her allergy-prone child has discarded on the carpet, and picks them up and throws them away. 

She gets the sheets and goes down and sticks them in the washing machine.  While she is at it, she folds the stuff in the dryer and takes it up and puts it on her bed.  Since she is upstairs again, she goes into dear son's room and strips his bed as well.  While she is in there she puts away his toys, throws away stray tissues, and puts away clean clothes that are sitting on his dresser.  She takes his sheets downstairs, and makes sure that she has her hair clip, her MP3 player, and her water jug.  She dumps the sheets at the washer and then goes to the treadmill.

She turns the treadmill on and sets it to run Program 1.  Seems easy. It's for 30 minutes, and that's what she wants.  She starts out the warm up and walks for 3 minutes, and then she sees her dear son poking his head around the corner. She stops the treadmill and asks him what's up. He says the computer locked up. He rebooted it but needs help getting back into the phonics program.

She walks upstairs and shows him how to get back into the program, and gets him into it.  While she is in the kitchen, she empties the dishwasher and loads the things that are in the sink.  She goes back downstairs to the treadmill.  She sees part of a sewing project has fallen behind the treadmill, and she squats and squeezes and gets to where it is and picks it up.  It is the sleeve to a size 6 months sweatshirt. Her son is now six.  ::sigh::  She turns the treadmill back on.

The crazy treadmill does not seem to understand what she wants to do (remember, she selected a pre-set program).  The crazy thing keeps changing pace, changing to an inclined ramp, no matter how many times she reduces the speed and puts the ramp back to level.  It seems convinced that she should go 6.0 miles per hour.  She knows that she will get an inflamed knee if she goes that fast, but it speeds up every 60 seconds anyway.

Dear son is back again.  He says big sister kicked him off the kitchen computer.  She turns the treadmill off again and sets him up at the downstairs computer, by the treadmill, to do the phonics program there instead.  She turns the treadmill on again and is finally able to finish her time on it, with her son resting his foot against it the whole time, giggling because it tickles his bare foot as the treadmill turns.

She turns the treadmill off and closes it (so dear son won't play with it), and goes to check the washer.  There is very little time left on the cycle by this time, so she goes into the sewing room to do some pick up while it finishes.  She picks up the construction paper that is all over the floor from dear daughter's birthday card project last week.  She also picks up pins from daughter's sewing project, and ignores the mouse droppings from whoever had the pet mouse out last.

The washer turns off, and she transfers the sheets to the dryer and starts the next load.  She goes upstairs to shower, but since she is still sweating, she puts away the clothes that she brought upstairs earlier.  As she reaches the bottom of the pile, she is glad she put them away, because her shower towels were in this load, and she is going to need them.

She goes into the bathroom to shower, and resists the urge to clean the bathroom first.  She turns on the water and hops in.  She shampoos, conditions, and starts to shave limbs.  By this time the water is no longer hot.  Remember, she just started the second load of sheets in hot water – necessary to kill dust mites in an allergy home.  By the time she finishes shaving the water is truly 70 degrees–not her idea of a good time.

She gets out of the shower and gets dried and dressed.  She starts to dry her hair, and daughter comes in to remind her that she needs a ride to work.  Hair finished, it is now 1:05 p.m.  Daughter is supposed to be at work at 1:00, and it took 3 and 1/2 hours to exercise and shower. 

That's why homeschool moms don't usually bother trying to exercise.