Blogs I love:
One Child Homeschool Policy
Crazy Busy
Pioneer Woman Cooks
Sites with freebies I visit:
Homeschool Share
Lapbook Lessons
Homeschool Launch
Curricula we are using:
WinterPromise CATW
World Geography & Cultures
Otter's Science
First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind
Sequential Spelling
Teaching Textbooks 5
and a bunch of other stuff!
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Otter: Our wiggly 4th grader
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This blog is meant to be viewed in FireFox. Sometimes I forget to check it in I.E. If it looks funny, then you know why. ;-)
February 12, 2009
Here are some more printables for the ongoing nutrition lapbook project!
Vitamin ABC's (2 page printable)
Liver: Vitamin Storage Center Petal Book
Nutrition Facts Label (2 page printable)
February 11, 2009
Here are some more printables I made for Otter's nutrition study. They are also posted on the nutrition lapbook page.
Amino acids link together to make proteins (2 page printable)
Activity 1: Make a chain of amino acids to learn that proteins are "chains" of amino acids.
Activity 2: Cut out "boxcar" strips of the 20 amino acids your body needs. Boxcars are labeled with the amino acids. Essential amino acids are blue. The others are red. Paste the strips together and fold accordian style.
Activity 3: Make a pocket to store the amino acids. Learn that each amino acid can link to 2 other amino acids just like a boxcar in a train. Put the amino acids from the previous step into the pocket.List of amino acids taken from http://www.nutritional-supplements-health-guide.com/amino-acid-list.html.
Complete and incomplete proteins
Also, it appears that I forgot to link to the printable schedule for World Geography and Cultures. I have now fixed that. If you are doing our geography program, or supplementing Winter Promise's Children Around the World curriculum, you can now print out a rough draft schedule to help you keep things on track without having to be online.
February 8, 2009
I am working on creating a FREE lapbook to go with Janice VanCleave's Food and Nutrition for Every Kid: Easy Activities That Make Learning Science Fun .
Janice VanCleaves' Food and Nutrition for Every Kid is a book I scheduled in Otter's Science for weeks 19-24. It's a great book, but I could see that Otter was having a hard time retaining some of the concepts and new vocabulary. I decided to help him out by creating the materials below. Now he can tell you all sorts of things about monosaccarides and what one of the jobs of the hypothalmus is, etc.! I love how lapbooking helps information stick!
As I create the lapbooking materials, I will continue to add them to the site printables. I've created a page for this lapbook here.
Chapter 1
Macronutrients, micronutrients, Mr. Hypothalamus
Chapter 2
Monosaccharides and Disaccharides
Examples of Monosaccharides and Disaccharides
Chapter 3
Fats chart with cut & paste squares
Chapter 4
More printables are coming soon for the other chapters! I will post them as I finish making them for Otter. Check back on the blog here or on the page I made specifically for this lapbook.
February 6, 2009
This is one benefit of living in California:
Garden produce in February...
Flowers in February too... (and yes someone bites her nails *cough cough* Emily *cough)
Thanks to Alyssa for her black and white frame action!
Today Otter completed a really fun activity I scheduled in to go with our geography study. We are studying South America and one of the things we learned about was chocolate. After reading Chocolate: Riches from the Rainforest we did the Make Your Own Chocolate Kit.
First we opened up the package and read the informational sheet that discusses how cacao is harvested as well as some of the history of chocolate. On the flip side of the sheet are the instructions on how to make your own "homemade" chocolate. The kit also included two actual cacao beans to taste.
First we put the cocoa butter in a bowl.
The cocoa butter was quite hard and smelled very chocolaty. Cocoa butter is the fat extracted from the cacao bean. After microwaving it for 3 minutes it looked like this:
We stirred the remaining lumps until they melted.
We then added in cocoa powder.
Then we added powdered sugar.
Stirred...
...and stirred some more until there were no lumps.
After the concoction was smooth, we inserted a small temperature strip and waited until it registered 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
For the next step we added a small package of crystallized chocolate in order to "temper" our chocolate. Tempering makes the surface of the chocolate shiny and also is what makes candy bars "crack" when you break them.
We now placed the candy wrappers from the kit onto a plate and added some peanut butter and marshmallows on the bottoms of some.
Then we spooned the thickening chocolate into the candy cups.
The finished product was then put into the fridge for about 20 minutes or so to fully harden and after that everyone had to have a taste, or two...or three....
Now don't you wish you were studying the rainforest too?
If the pictures are tempting, you can order your own kit from Rainbow Resource. Gosh, I love homeschooling!
February 5, 2009
Julie S. is going to be using Little Otter's Science with her children and created a printable schedule for it. She donated her work to our site so we can share it with you! I've posted it on the Little Otter's Science main page.
I also (at my daughter's request) created a printable schedule to go along with our free world geography and cultures curriculum. It's posted before the weekly topics here.
I've made a few changes to Otter's Science and added in a book on nutrition. The Chew on This book was just not up Otter's alley. I found a much more age appropriate book: Why Shouldn't I Eat Junk Food? with colorful pictures and easy to understand information.
I am also working on lapbook materials to go with Janice VanCleave's Food and Nutrition for Every Kid: Easy Activities That Make Learning Science Fun. Otter likes the book and the activities that go with it, but I found that he wasn't retaining some of the advanced vocabulary and concepts. Now he can tell you without missing a beat what the hypothalamus does after coloring "Mr. Hypothalamus".
He can also tell you the difference between monosaccarides and disaccarides as well as give examples for each, etc.
He gets to be my "guinea pig" for the lapbook materials. Let's just say that I'm ...uhhhh...spatially challanged. Poor kid gets stuck with stuff like this (see if you can figure out what's wrong):
The Macronutrients "cover" was to fold "in" as was the pictures of the macronutrient "characters". In case you are as challenged as I am *cough cough* - see how the words on the cover, once folded over, are upside down?
I'm SURE that was obvious to all you seasoned lapbookers and smart cookies out there!
Anyway, I'll post it when I'm done making it for Otter. I think it's a nice addition to our nutrition study. I love how lapbooks make information stick!
January 20, 2009
O.K., so much for getting my new site (Guesthollow.com) up and running! I'm learning CSS and it's a total pain (for me). However, once I get that finished, I'll start constructing the new website. Here is an amazing site that shows the capabilities of CSS: Zen Garden. Select a design from the right hand column and see how much a site can change by ONLY changing the CSS. This is going to give me a lot of design flexibility.
In the meantime, I've gone ahead and made a few little updates to this site for now. For today's blog entry I'd like to share something my daughter wrote.
Emily wrote a review of Of Knights and Fair Maidens: A Radical New Way to Develop Old-fashioned Relationships . I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. I am proud of what kind of young woman she is growing up to be!
A Review of the book Of Knights and Fair Maidens by Jeff and Danielle Myers
Review by "Emily"I have never encountered any Christian books on relationships that were as simple, practical and fun to read as Of Knights and Fair Maidens. The book is written in a candid question-and-answer format, and the book is a short read of less than 100 pages. Here are some of the book’s highlights.
A hilarious beginning. The book draws you in right from the start, while subtly challenging you to examine your expectations about what you are looking for in becoming married some day, and also how the culture has affected what ends up more often occurring. The authors point out that today the attitude of romancing couples is more often than not “I love you so much I want to spend the rest of my week with you”, rather than commitment to marriage. The authors encourage for readers to go in the opposite direction. One of the great aspects about this book is that the authors make clear that Of Knights and Fair Maidens is not about making it to the latest Christian bestseller lists by re-hashing the same relationship gumbo that has become popular. Relationship-geared titles sell well, but this book certainly is not a bestseller, and can even be hard to find copies of. Instead, it is about targeting those who want to truly counter the culture, and equipping them with the tools to do so, with a particular focus on Biblical principles versus legalistic methodology.
An inviting Interview. I really enjoyed the interview formatting of this book. The authors laid it out really well, and the questions of the “mystery interviewer” are sometimes humorous, and flow much like the conversation I imagine going on in my head.
Pulls no punches. What options are there other than dating? Of Knights and Fair Maidens covers one option- courtship- and does not attempt to get into the issues regarding any other ways of pursuing marriage, nor does it dwell much on the issues regarding dating vs. courtship- but it does make courtship seem to be a viable solution to the dating epidemic, that many call “a training ground for divorce”. The author’s intent seems not to pit one method against another, but to give an alternative to what a growing number of Christians disagree with. I really appreciate how simply the authors explained everything regarding courtship. Never have I read anything that was so downright practical. Courtship may be old-fashioned, but it is definitely a good fit for modern times. Also, the authors are familiar both with Joshua Harris’s original article Dating Problems, Courtship Solutions which is reprinted in the back of the book, and with John Holzmann’s book Integrity Dating, which helps make for a well-rounded viewpoint.
Principle-based structure. Jeff and Danielle Myers use much of the book to discuss principles- three of which are “accountability, character and preparation”. The Myers believe that in a courtship, accountability to your parents or surrogate parents is important; that it is necessary to focus on character rather than appearances; and that couples need to prepare for marriage. The book includes the Myer’s own love story, which is as amusing and practical as the rest of the book.
Breaking bad habits. One problem that the authors see with many of today’s relationships is that couples tend to go it alone. Rather than following this trend, the Myers lay out how to keep you accountable in a relationship by involving parents and others. The authors understand that some people view this as invasive, but they show how rather than being invasive, involving others can be an asset. It also lines up Biblically with giving one’s sons and daughters away in marriage (see Jeremiah 29:6 for one reference), and can actually be a supportive atmosphere.
Going without masks. Danielle and Jeff Myers address how to get to know the person you are courting in situations that pull away any ‘mask’ that you might wear, that would hide who you really are. They show how getting to know each other is not about putting your best foot forward, but being put into many different situations that would make it easier to examine the other person’s character.
Postpone and prepare. Jeff and Danielle Myers talk about why someone should wait to get married, and also how to prepare for marriage while in a courtship (as well as how someone should be prepared beforehand). The authors also deal with a lot of ‘what-if’s’ that someone might have about courtship, such as ‘What if my parents are divorced?’, and ‘What if my parents are not Christians?’.
Personal thoughts. After researching dating, courtship, betrothal and arranged marriage, this book was a fresh perspective. When I read Christian relationship-geared titles, I look for a couple things: (1) the message needs to be Biblical. I went back and forth with trying to figure out which ‘method’ I would be following in my own life. The books I read tended only to complicate things, and I was looking for something that just made ‘sense’ in a very simple way. This book did just that. It was all about solid Biblical principles. (2) The message has to be practical, and, rather than being a ‘step-by-step’ guide, it must be useable in all different cultures, in all different situations. Also, the message that the book gives must line up with certain scriptural references, such as those referring to parents giving their sons and daughters away in marriage. I see a problem with today’s culture that says that young men and women are on their own with their relationships. There has also been a degrading of moral boundaries, and of the whole concept of the community blessing a marriage. Today people are less concerned with pursuing marriage, and often-times it is women who do the pursuing. Of Knights and Fair Maidens is a book that sets out clearly how to maintain a pure approach to marriage, to make and protect boundaries, and to guard the heart. It moves the focus from ‘looks-attraction’ to friendship and character- though the authors point out that there is certainly no absence of emotion and becoming in love by following the guidelines in their book, though love itself is more “an act of the will”. One of the great things about this book is that it’s not legalistic, but it is also not about ‘blurry grey areas’ like often happens with dating. The book creates no loss of fun, nor is it stuffy- it is, instead a ‘sweeter song’ than the deprivation in our day and age.
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