Music Appreciation for the summer

Harmony Art Mom has put together a summer music/art appreciation course. It's mostly free! :)

Go check it out.

rather cool crafting site

homeschool freebie of the day sends out freebies to folks that they found here there and all over the place online.

Nice to have them doing the work.

anyways, they came up with this one over at Canon.

not exactly easy to do with a preschooler, but way cool none-the-less. If you have an older ... probably 8 and up ... child, then this site might be just the ticket for the crafty side of them. (if, of course, they have one).

I'm going to try this japanese bobtail one with my cat crazy lad.

Homeschool View Tube

hadn't heard of this site, someone...I think TOS alerted me to it.

anyways, here's the main page link to Homeschool View Tube.

Israel Unit Study

don't want to lose this TOS freebie on an Israel Unit Study.

Things to consider when doing a unit study

Books to use:
Welcome to Israel - Lilly Rivlin
Israel - Debbie Smith

History and Timelines
Learn more about Israel by compiling historical facts and events from its long and eventful history and adding them to your timeline. If you do not have a timeline on the go, you can construct one by following these directions - How to Make a Timeline Easily. Here is a link to a wonderful resource for timeline entries about Israel - http://contenderministries.org/middleeast/timeline.php. Here is another one that you may enjoy perusing or using for dates & events - http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/History/Facts+about+Israel-+History.htm.

Maps:
A unit study would not be complete without taking a good look at the lay of the land. Click here for both a labeled and unlabeled map of Israel. Have your students mark some of the major cities, the neighboring countries, and the sea to the west, at the least. For older students, have them use your teacher's map and fill in the rest!

Recipes of the land such as

Fava Bean Spread

Ingredients

• One can of fava beans, drained
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon pepper (more if you like pepper)
• Pita bread, torn or cut into triangles

Procedure

1. Drain the can of beans, and empty the beans into a saucepan.
2. Heat over low heat, mashing the beans against the side of the saucepan with a wooden spoon as they heat.
3. Continue mashing until the beans have become thick, pasty, and warm.
4. Add lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Serve warm or at room temperature with triangles of pita bread.

Felafel

Note: This recipe involves hot oil. Adult supervision is required. Many grocery stores now sell prepared felafel in the deli section.

Ingredients

• 1 cup canned chickpeas, well-drained
• 1 clove garlic
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ⅛ teaspoon pepper
• ⅔ cup fine breadcrumbs
• 2 eggs
• 2 Tablespoons oil
• Oil for deep frying, enough to fill the pot about 3 inches
• Pita bread

Procedure

1. Mash the chickpeas in a large bowl.
2. Cut the garlic into tiny pieces. Add the garlic, salt, pepper, and bread crumbs to the chickpeas. Mix the ingredients together.
3. Add the eggs and oil to the mixture and mix thoroughly.
4. Heat oil in the pot until little bubbles rise to the surface.
5. Shape the mixture into 16 balls, each about 1-inch across.
6. With the mixing spoon, gently place a few of the balls in the oil—do not drop them in because the hot oil may splash.
7. Fry a few at a time until they are golden brown—about 5 minutes.
8. Remove the felafel with the slotted spoon. Drain them on a plate covered with paper towels.
9. To serve, cut pita bread in half to make pockets.
10. Put two or three felafel balls into each pocket and drizzle with tahini sauce (see recipe).

Serves 6 to 8.

Tahini Sauce

Some grocery stores stock tahini sauce, already prepared, or packaged tahini mix.

Ingredients

• ¾ cup tahini (sesame seed paste; can be purchased in stores that sell Middle Eastern foods)
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• ⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/3 cup water

Procedure

1. Mix tahini, lemon juice, and garlic powder in bowl until you have a smooth sauce.
2. Add the water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until sauce is thin enough to pour.
3. Pour tahini sauce over pita sandwiches; can also be used as a dip for raw vegetables.

Hamentaschen

2/3 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup pulp-free orange juice

1 cup white flour

1 cup wheat flour – no substitutes

2 tsp baking powder

Jam

Beat butter and sugar thoroughly. Add egg and mix until well combined. Add the orange juice and mix again, until well combined. Add flour, ½ c at a time, alternating white and wheat, blending thoroughly between each addition. Add baking powder with last addition of flour. Refrigerate until chilled thoroughly – a few hours or overnight.

Roll dough as thin as possible without tearing (you may want to roll it between two sheets of flour-dusted wax paper). Cut out 3-4 in [7.6 – 10 cm]circles. Put a dollop of jam in the middle of each circle and fold up sides to make a triangle, overlapping as much as possible so only a small amount of jam shows in the center. Pinch corners to seal. Bake at 350 F [176 C] for 15 – 20 minutes until golden brown.

Sesame Candy

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar
• 24 ounces honey
• 24 ounces sesame seeds
• Juice squeezed from one orange (or ½ cup orange juice)
• Grated rind of orange
• Peanut oil

Procedure

1. Measure honey and sugar into a saucepan. Heat over medium-low heat until the mixture boils vigorously.
2. Lower the heat just enough to keep the mixture bubbling. Add the sesame seeds, orange juice, and rind.
3. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 10 minutes.
4. Lightly grease a 9 x 13-inch baking sheet with peanut oil.
5. Pour candy mixture onto it and press down on the surface with a wooden spoon to flatten it.
6. Set baking sheet on a cooling rack and allow to cool for about 10 minutes. Cut into rectangles or diamond shapes.
7. Allow to cool completely. Wrap pieces in wax paper to store.

And then doing some crafts of toys from there

Hebrew Calligraphy - Learn to write like a Sofer using these handy tutorials! Before long, you'll be drawing like a pro. Here's the link - http://www.babaganewz.com/activities/index.cfm?cat=22&sub=calligraphy

Make your own dreidle - Chanukah Dreidels (spinning tops) are a tradition going back to the beginning of Judaism. Here's the link - http://www.chadiscrafts.com/fun/claydreidels.html

Where to Find Forms for Schooling

Printables:
The Homeschool Mom has a variety of printable organizers.
as well as Donna Young, Heritage Highland has these organizers, and the homeschool tracker comes with these ones.

There are some that are on-line as well.
google has a calendar, homeschool skedtrack, and homeschool inc.

If I have time to do more searching I'll add more. :)

Homeschool Freebie of the Day

Did you know that there are LOTS of homeschool resources on line that are free for the taking?

One such place is Homeschool Freebie of the Day. Just sign up (only to get reminder emails once a week). Get freebies! :) Easy peasy.

There are other places as well. Most governments will have stuff you can download, agricultural sites, poetry and such like. Give credit where it is due. But wow....it's amazing the stuff that is out there.

PLUS curriculums like hands of a child, knowledge quest and such like, if you join their mailing lists will give you free stuff from their sites as well.

school house rocks - pronouns

school house rocks - interjections

Conjunction Junction

another fun way to learn grammar.

Make your own Juice box car!

Go here.

make a car.

looks fun doesn't it?

How creative can you be???

You’ll need:

Two clean and dry juice or milk boxes
Some thin, flexible wire
Four matching bottle caps
Modeling clay
Scissors
A magic marker
Adhesive tape
Paint

WorkSheet Works

The Old Schoolhouse sends out weekly emails with freebies listed in them.

This week the freebie they sent out sends folks for the The Worksheet Works website.

From the email sent to me:

.... try this new educational website that I recently found.

Worksheet Works is a website with free printables in Math, English, Geography, and Puzzles of all kinds. There are also other printables such as calendars, graphic organizers to help with the writing process, graph paper for math, and many more. The best part is that it's all free for you to use!

Having gone to the site I have learned they have math, English, geography, a variety of puzzles, miscellaneous stuff, handwriting sheets, and such like. looks like a nice little site to keep track of.

I thought the secret map puzzle was just neat! hadn't thought of that idea before. :)

NOW... if you want to get the store freebies ..... go to The Old Schoolhouse website and subscribe to the emails yourself. :)

Some posts i liked and want to remember

Here are some posts that I've appreciated in the homeschooling world.

Successful homeschooling presents Why I am Still Homeschooling.

Walking Therein gives us Isaac's water experiments.

Justin liked this one: chicks hatching. :)



Homemade homeschoolers taught a lesson on Lichen.

Whereas Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers thought that mini-offices was interesting. I agreed. Thought it an idea worth keeping for later down the road.

Wired for noise talks about socialization and isolation.

graham family ministries

I just want to remember this site.

Graham Family Ministries.

They have downloadables of a variety of sorts. Spurred my imagination.

Math Mammoth Contest

Explain WHICH book or product interests you most (see the website). Then explain in several sentences the reasons and factors that keep you from buying it at this time. In other words, give your "excuses" for not buying. You can explain how much you perhaps love your current math curriculum, cite economics, and so on. Just let your fingers fly on the keyboard!

Math Mammoth is having a contest for books from her website.

This here be my entry. :)

What would I like to get should I have an opportunity to do so?
Math Mammoth Clock

is a worktext that covers telling time and reading the clock, telling time intervals, and understanding the calendar. It is suitable for grades 1, 2, and 3.

Why? Because telling time is important. :) And I figure this book will have some hints for helping my buggy learn to tell time that I might not think of.

Math Mammoth Canadian Money

is a worktext that covers money-related topics usually encountered during grades 1-3, using the coins and bills of Canada. The book contains both textbook explanations and exercises, and is designed to be very easy to teach from, requiring very little teacher preparation (you do need to find some practice coins before the lessons).

Why? A book that uses Canadian money! so many are just USA only. So I think this is cool.

And last but not least Math Mammoth Introduction to Fractions

contains fraction-related material suitable for approximately grades 2-4. This material does not include division or multiplication of fractions, nor adding unlike fractions. The lessons are mostly simple, introductory lessons to various fraction topics.

why? simply because the idea of teaching fractions seems a bit beyond my thinking today. I know my buggy is only 3 and fractions is not something he'll be learning yet....but it's good to be prepared. :)

Learn Greek

Dan Phillips has a greek blog. Go figure that I ever check it out as I'm not into greek...but I do think it would be good to learn...and as I'll be homeschooling our buggy I figure in time we can learn it together. Hopefully this site will still be around. If not..we have DAD! :)

So why learn greek?

because God used it to speak to us. What better reason? :)

it's all in videos as far as I can tell, so it should be interesting.

Canadian Electoral System

The US Election has the various US based homeschool boards posting all types of stuff on the US electoral process. It gets me thinking sometimes....some of these companies are able to spread their stuff world-wide...why not have a bigger offering of electoral process things...like for Canada? We just had an election too! Has no one made a Canadian Electoral Process Study?

So anyways, I figured I'd see what I could pull together from sites on-line. :)

Elections Canada On-line
- this site seems to have everything you can think of. from the basics down to the nitty-gritty.

Library of Parliament
- these folks put together a list of frequently asked questions.

Wikipedia
- they of course would have some type of entry :)

Elections
- gives us a good overview. Lists all the parties currently available as well.

That's all I've managed to find for now. I'm thinking it would be fun to pull some of this stuff together and see if I can make an actual study unit of it all. Wouldn't that be fun? :)

Should I ever get around to doing so...this site might prove useful for ideas (not copying, just things to think about). Found out about it here. And here's another site for ideas.

I would probably need to think about doing something also on all the different prime ministers we've had as well.

Homeschool blogger award nominations

from what I understand, you go here. follow the links and then nominate the homeschool blogger that you really like for whatever category.

should be interesting to see who wins.

Types of Poems - Acrostic

An acrostic poem is very easy to write. It can be about any subject. This kind of poem can be written in different ways, but the simplest form is to put the letters that spell your subject down the side of your page. When you have done this then you go back to each letter and think of a word , phrase or sentence that starts with that letter and describes your subject.

For samples go here.

for instance here's one I did

Rabbits:

Rascally
apple and grass eaters
binky about when happy
born in 31 days
into trouble they hop
totally enjoying their foods
smile makers

Types of Poems - Diamante

Do you want to try some poetry with your kids? In Our Write Minds has a great post on writing a diamante poem!

Diamante: A seven-line poem that takes the shape of a diamond.

Lion

Majestic, proud

Roaring, snarling, prowling

Mane, muscle . . . Fleece, fluff

Bleating, leaping, grazing

Meek, gentle

Lamb

A Poem of Opposites

Remember that the first and last words of a cinquain are synonyms—the last word of the poem renames the first. Diamantes, however, are poems about opposites: the first and last words have opposite meanings (or convey opposite ideas).

A diamante has seven lines that follow this sequence:

Line A: Topic A (must be a noun)

Line B: Two vivid adjectives that describe Topic A

Line C: Three interesting “-ing” action verbs that describe Topic A

Line D: Two concrete nouns about Topic A and two about Topic G

Line E: Three interesting “-ing” action verbs that describe Topic G

Line F: Two vivid adjectives that describe Topic G

Line G: Topic G (must be a noun)

So hop on over to Writing a Diamante Poem for another sample poem as well as detailed instructions for teaching your kids to write one of their own!

Copyright 2008 Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Here’s another example:

Light
Clear, brilliant
Glowing, shining, revealing
Mirror, candle . . . Whisper, shadow
Deepening, sleeping, shrouding
Black, quiet
Darkness

all this comes from In Our Write Minds.

My boy is Three

Boy are the questions starting to come.

When I am going to put him in preschool?
Why I am not teaching him right now?
How am I going to give him social time with other children?
What's wrong with the public system...it's working for our children.
Do you realize how much time it's going to take you to do this?

Yes..... I knew there would be questions....

But some questions come so laden with "attitude" I have to be careful not to give attitude back.
Inform, educate, explain...don't be attitudinal.

ARGH!!!!!!!!! :)