This is an awesome self-directed virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. Trust me-it is amazing. You definitely want to go check it out.
http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Nephi and the Brass Plates
Tristan over at Our Busy Homeschool did a review of Nephi and the Brass Plates DVD from Living Scriptures. She also had a copy to giveaway...and I won!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Fall Crafts
Here's a couple fun crafts we've done lately:
Fall Leaf No-Mess Painting
Here's what you do: Put a large piece of wax paper on the table. On top of that, put a small piece of poster board. Then let the kids decide which colors they want placed where on their paper. Just put little drops of paint at random places. Then put another piece of wax paper on top.
Then comes the fun part: the kids just use their fingers to spread the paint around and blend colors together as desired. When you're done, peel off the top wax paper and let the poster board dry. When it was all dry (the next day-we used a lot of paint!) we used a leaf we collected to cut a couple leaf shapes out of our poster board. We even discussed the veins on the leaves and drew those in and then used the real leaves' stems as stems for our painted ones.
Bonus: after we peeled off the top wax paper, we placed a piece of regular paper on top of the paint that was left behind and rubbed to transfer it. So here is what that looks like. Isn't that neat?
These things are supposed to be Turkey Centerpieces. The girls made these at Lakeshore. Lakeshore does free crafts like this every Saturday. This was the first time we had gone and it was fun.
At the beginning of November, I made this construction-paper Thankful Tree. Every morning during our calendar time, Primus has to think of one thing that she is thankful for and then I write that on a leaf. My favorites so far that she has said she is thankful for: "the Earth because Jesus made it," "library books", "all the trees," and "My mommy is my teacher."
The next couple pictures aren't crafts, but rather a way that we display our crafts. It was super cheap and easy. I just put a couple big nails in the wall high up by the celing and tied a white shoelace to the nails. Add some clothes-pins, and you're good-to-go.
Big Book of History
The Homeschool Village wrote a review a little while ago abou the Big Book of History. They also held a contest to give 3 away. And guess what? I won! We were super excited when it arrived in the mail.
The Big Book of History is just a fold-out 15 foot long timeline. It is made by a Christian publisher so it starts with Adam and Eve and ends with today. It has so much information about a ton of stuff. World history, Biblical history, technological history, etc.
We all had fun looking at it, reading a couple entries, and just marveling at how many years have passed since several different events. While the information is mostly too advanced for Primus right now, it is very helpful to be able to give her a visual representation of how long ago things happened. And I really like that it includes Biblical events because she can easily find the entry that says, "Jesus is born." And then that gives her a good reference point for anything else that we are studying.
Love it!
Super Easy and Yummy Cookies
My friend Cindy shared this recipe with me. They are sooo yummy and soooo easy and quick to make. And I like to assume that they are healthy. My children may-or-may-not have had at least 2 of them each for breakfast.
1 (30oz) can of pumpkin
2 boxes of spice cake mix
1 bag chocolate chips
Mix it all together. (Do not add anything to the cake mix. Seriously, just dump the powder in the bowl with the pumpkin and chocolate.) Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees.
To appease picky spouses or children, these don't even taste like pumpkin. And they don't taste "healthy." They're just really yummy, super soft chocolate-chip cookies! I used my medium-sized Pampered Chef cookie scoop and it made 5 dozen cookies. That's a lot of cookies but they went fast! After we inhaled about half in a day or two, I had to throw the rest in the freezer so I would have some to share with my sister-in-law and family.
And since this recipe is so simple, it is perfect for getting children to help. My little ones can totally handle dumping 3 ingredients into a bowl and then stirring.
1 (30oz) can of pumpkin
2 boxes of spice cake mix
1 bag chocolate chips
Mix it all together. (Do not add anything to the cake mix. Seriously, just dump the powder in the bowl with the pumpkin and chocolate.) Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees.
To appease picky spouses or children, these don't even taste like pumpkin. And they don't taste "healthy." They're just really yummy, super soft chocolate-chip cookies! I used my medium-sized Pampered Chef cookie scoop and it made 5 dozen cookies. That's a lot of cookies but they went fast! After we inhaled about half in a day or two, I had to throw the rest in the freezer so I would have some to share with my sister-in-law and family.
And since this recipe is so simple, it is perfect for getting children to help. My little ones can totally handle dumping 3 ingredients into a bowl and then stirring.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Principal for the Day
Today I participated in the first annual "Principal for the Day" event for San Juan Unified School District. Every school in the district was assigned a member of the community to be their Principal for the Day. I am so glad that I got to be at my school of choice.
So basically what I did was follow around the regular principal as she went about her business for 3 1/2 hours in the morning. I was given a tour of the school and we observed almost all of the classrooms for a few minutes.
Right at the beginning of the day, as we walked out to the playground to make sure everyone got to class, the principal asked me if I knew anything about the school already. So I told her that my friend's son told me, and I had observed, their morning walk arounds. She enthusiastically said, "Oh, yes! Our Striders!" So I told her that I thought it was awful and that it looked like a prison. She said something about it being about promoting healthy exercise and that the kids love being able to walk around with their friends. So I told her that playing and running and climbing are fun and good exercise for kids, too. I also told her that when I talked to the school secretary about it on the phone, she didn't tell me that the reason for the walk arounds is about discipline and limited staffing, but that I am sure that is part of it. I also recognized that schools have to do the best they can with what they have, but again, I think it is weird. When I got done saying all of this, the principal was notably silent. She didn't say anything until we arrived in a classroom to begin observations.
The rest of the day went well. All of the staff was really nice. I found out that this school has a large population of English-as-second-language learners. Also, a lot of the families are poor. This year they were declared a Title 1 school, which means they were granted lots of extra funding.
After our observations were done, we headed to the Citrus Heights Community Center for a really nice lunch. This included: principals, principals-for-day, select school board members, select community leaders, and the teachers/staff of the year. The lunch was catered by the students of the culinary institute at the new San Juan High School. Entertainment was provided by Rio Americano's Jazz Band.
I was hoping that at the lunch I would be able to voice my concerns about our tax dollars being mismanaged and spent too much on junk (like this event) and administration, and not enough on actually educating our children. But in actuality, it was nothing more or less than a PR campaign. And I feel silly for hoping I would have the opportunity to turn it into anything else.
The program for the lunch was on a strict agenda. Most of the time was spent listening to a couple people (who each were very charismatic speakers, and liked to hear their own voice) go on about how wonderful this school district is. The theme of the event was that schools are facing challenges and budget cuts, and the media is telling us that our public schools are failing, but San Juan is doing great! Too bad their own statistics say that every grade has 30 students per classroom and only 30 out of 60 schools "meet the California goal of an 800 or higher score on the Academic Performance Index."
We were told there would be time for participant comments. But actually what happened is that they told us to discuss with our table the positive things, the successes, that we saw in our observations today. And then four volunteers were given the chance to share with the big group. The four people who spoke were also charismatic men who liked to hear themselves speak. And they had nothing but wonderful things to say. They were all big cheerleaders.
One good thing that I learned is that the whole event was actually sponsored by ACSA (Association of California School Administrators.) But my next question is, where does ACSA get their funding?
I'm glad that I participated because I saw a lot of great things that the school was doing, or at least trying. I collected some great ideas that I will hopefully be able to implement in my own classroom.
So basically what I did was follow around the regular principal as she went about her business for 3 1/2 hours in the morning. I was given a tour of the school and we observed almost all of the classrooms for a few minutes.
Right at the beginning of the day, as we walked out to the playground to make sure everyone got to class, the principal asked me if I knew anything about the school already. So I told her that my friend's son told me, and I had observed, their morning walk arounds. She enthusiastically said, "Oh, yes! Our Striders!" So I told her that I thought it was awful and that it looked like a prison. She said something about it being about promoting healthy exercise and that the kids love being able to walk around with their friends. So I told her that playing and running and climbing are fun and good exercise for kids, too. I also told her that when I talked to the school secretary about it on the phone, she didn't tell me that the reason for the walk arounds is about discipline and limited staffing, but that I am sure that is part of it. I also recognized that schools have to do the best they can with what they have, but again, I think it is weird. When I got done saying all of this, the principal was notably silent. She didn't say anything until we arrived in a classroom to begin observations.
The rest of the day went well. All of the staff was really nice. I found out that this school has a large population of English-as-second-language learners. Also, a lot of the families are poor. This year they were declared a Title 1 school, which means they were granted lots of extra funding.
After our observations were done, we headed to the Citrus Heights Community Center for a really nice lunch. This included: principals, principals-for-day, select school board members, select community leaders, and the teachers/staff of the year. The lunch was catered by the students of the culinary institute at the new San Juan High School. Entertainment was provided by Rio Americano's Jazz Band.
I was hoping that at the lunch I would be able to voice my concerns about our tax dollars being mismanaged and spent too much on junk (like this event) and administration, and not enough on actually educating our children. But in actuality, it was nothing more or less than a PR campaign. And I feel silly for hoping I would have the opportunity to turn it into anything else.
The program for the lunch was on a strict agenda. Most of the time was spent listening to a couple people (who each were very charismatic speakers, and liked to hear their own voice) go on about how wonderful this school district is. The theme of the event was that schools are facing challenges and budget cuts, and the media is telling us that our public schools are failing, but San Juan is doing great! Too bad their own statistics say that every grade has 30 students per classroom and only 30 out of 60 schools "meet the California goal of an 800 or higher score on the Academic Performance Index."
We were told there would be time for participant comments. But actually what happened is that they told us to discuss with our table the positive things, the successes, that we saw in our observations today. And then four volunteers were given the chance to share with the big group. The four people who spoke were also charismatic men who liked to hear themselves speak. And they had nothing but wonderful things to say. They were all big cheerleaders.
One good thing that I learned is that the whole event was actually sponsored by ACSA (Association of California School Administrators.) But my next question is, where does ACSA get their funding?
I'm glad that I participated because I saw a lot of great things that the school was doing, or at least trying. I collected some great ideas that I will hopefully be able to implement in my own classroom.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
How to Eat a Lollipop
We were unable to watch General Conference on Conference weekend so instead have downloaded it. We are picking our way slowly through it, watching a talk or two at a time. (Should I emphasize *embarrassingly slowly*? We just finished the Saturday afternoon session finally.)
Tonight the kids were told to each pick a sucker and then sit down to listen. The plan was that the suckers would keep their mouths busy and keep them quiet. We had only watched a couple minutes, though, before Secundus had already chewed up her sucker completely and Primus had thrown hers away because it was "too hard to bite" (it was a very thick one.) My plan didn't work!
So we paused the video, we each picked new lollipops, and Hubby proceeded to give them a thorough lesson on how to enjoy it. The lesson was complete with demonstration and practice of licking, sucking, and saying, "Mmmm...tasty." The number one rule was, "No biting!" The kids thoroughly enjoyed it.
We learn very important lessons in our house!
Tonight the kids were told to each pick a sucker and then sit down to listen. The plan was that the suckers would keep their mouths busy and keep them quiet. We had only watched a couple minutes, though, before Secundus had already chewed up her sucker completely and Primus had thrown hers away because it was "too hard to bite" (it was a very thick one.) My plan didn't work!
So we paused the video, we each picked new lollipops, and Hubby proceeded to give them a thorough lesson on how to enjoy it. The lesson was complete with demonstration and practice of licking, sucking, and saying, "Mmmm...tasty." The number one rule was, "No biting!" The kids thoroughly enjoyed it.
We learn very important lessons in our house!
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Phonics vs Sight Words
I feel very strongly that too many kindergarten and first grade classrooms focus too much on Sight Words and not enough on Phonics. My nephew's school does sight words. We chose to do Distar with Primus. (Distar is very heavy phonics-based.) Primus, as a kindergartner, is reading better than my nephew, as a first grader.
Now, of course this could be because Primus is a girl, or that she is naturally talented at reading, or any other number of reasons. But for the sake of this argument, I am going to assume it is because of this Sight Words vs Phonics issue.
I was looking at nephew's sight word list and one word that jumped out at me was, "like." Seriously? This is a sight-word? How about instead of teaching him to memorize this word, you teach him the "silent-e" rule? So then that way he can apply that rule to many, many different words he will encounter? "Like" is definitely a word a child should be able to sound-out.
Or how about this word, "it." Really?? How hard is it to teach a kid what "i" says and then teach them what "t" says? And then with that knowledge they can sound-out "it" or "tip" or "tin," etc. Why do they need to emphasize memorizing this little word, "it?"
Am I way off base? Do I need to observe one of these classrooms in action? Admittedly, I have only ever had personal experience with Distar. Am I missing something? Also, I do admit that the American-English language is kind of ridiculous and that there are plenty of words that don't follow any of the phonics rules.
Anyway, now that Primus has finished her 100 lessons in Distar, I am kind of at a loss of what to do. One of the things our ES (the teacher at the charter school that checks up on us) suggested is now working on high-frequency words (sight words). So, given that Primus has a really good background in phonics, I've decided to give it a go. I've downloaded all the Dolch lists. It will be fun to see how fast she can zoom through and pass off words that she already knows how to read.
I also found this good website that has printable record sheets and games for using with Dolch. The games sound really fun. So maybe we'll get a chance to play some of them. I'll let you know how it goes!
Now, of course this could be because Primus is a girl, or that she is naturally talented at reading, or any other number of reasons. But for the sake of this argument, I am going to assume it is because of this Sight Words vs Phonics issue.
I was looking at nephew's sight word list and one word that jumped out at me was, "like." Seriously? This is a sight-word? How about instead of teaching him to memorize this word, you teach him the "silent-e" rule? So then that way he can apply that rule to many, many different words he will encounter? "Like" is definitely a word a child should be able to sound-out.
Or how about this word, "it." Really?? How hard is it to teach a kid what "i" says and then teach them what "t" says? And then with that knowledge they can sound-out "it" or "tip" or "tin," etc. Why do they need to emphasize memorizing this little word, "it?"
Am I way off base? Do I need to observe one of these classrooms in action? Admittedly, I have only ever had personal experience with Distar. Am I missing something? Also, I do admit that the American-English language is kind of ridiculous and that there are plenty of words that don't follow any of the phonics rules.
Anyway, now that Primus has finished her 100 lessons in Distar, I am kind of at a loss of what to do. One of the things our ES (the teacher at the charter school that checks up on us) suggested is now working on high-frequency words (sight words). So, given that Primus has a really good background in phonics, I've decided to give it a go. I've downloaded all the Dolch lists. It will be fun to see how fast she can zoom through and pass off words that she already knows how to read.
I also found this good website that has printable record sheets and games for using with Dolch. The games sound really fun. So maybe we'll get a chance to play some of them. I'll let you know how it goes!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Why am I sending my 3 year old to State-run Preschool???
For the past couple months, I have been doubting my decision to send Secundus to preschool. I'm debating whether or not I should pull her out.
Why I enrolled her in the first place:
1. I wanted my poor middle child to have something fun to do that was all her own.
2. I thought it would be nice to have some time every afternoon with Secundus at school and Tertius napping to focus on Primus' kindergarten work.
3. Primus' preschool teachers, Ms. Lyn and Miss Lisa, last year were just awesome. They had so many resources and ideas and ran a really great program. I hoped Secundus could be in their class, or at least be in an equally awesome class.
4. She desperately needs speech therapy. I thought it would be easier/faster to get her set up with therapy if she was already enrolled as a student in the district.
5. Ms. Lyn had interacted with Secundus and gave a strong recommendation to enroll her. She was sure that simply being in the preschool setting with the other children and the teachers, that it would improve her speech.
Well, she has been enrolled now for over 2 months and I am extremely disappointed. Secundus has FINALLY been evaluated for speech. I am meeting with the therapist on Friday morning and then therapy is to officially begin.
Besides that delay, I am also disappointed with the preschool class. It is not what I had hoped. First of all, Secundus is not in the same class as Primus was last year. (That is a long story of budget cuts and poor management and poor planning on the part of the public school district.) But I was still hopeful that the class would be good. Wrong! This teacher has a completely different personality than Lyn and Lisa. And her assistant teacher has changed a couple times. Last year Lyn and Lisa were a well-oiled machine that had worked together for a decade and were both sort of take-charge people. This year, not so much. It kind of feels chaotic in the classroom.
Plus, and this takes the cake: her teacher has a lisp! And it seems like half the kids in the class speak Spanish (and both teachers will speak in Spanish to those children on occasion). I'm not being discriminatory to people with speech impediments or to people who speak something other than English. But the question is, "How is MY daughter going to benefit and improve her articulation when she is surrounded by that?"
Then there is another big reason I want to pull her out: I absolutely LOATHE getting all the kids in and out of the car a million times everyday. This is actually one big reason that I chose to homeschool in the first place; I don't like being a slave to the daily pick-ups and drop-offs. When you add up our morning activity, plus pick-up and drop-off, I buckle or un-buckle the kids at least 10 times every weekday.
I could go on. But long-story-short: the benefits are not outweighing the frustrations. I think I will talk to the speech therapist about it when I see her on Friday and then decide. I should be able to bring her in for an hour at a time a couple times a week or something like that. If I do take her out, I may let her be until Christmas break. She loves going to school so I don't want to just yank her out suddenly. It seems like Christmas break would be a good opportunity to make changes.
Why I enrolled her in the first place:
1. I wanted my poor middle child to have something fun to do that was all her own.
2. I thought it would be nice to have some time every afternoon with Secundus at school and Tertius napping to focus on Primus' kindergarten work.
3. Primus' preschool teachers, Ms. Lyn and Miss Lisa, last year were just awesome. They had so many resources and ideas and ran a really great program. I hoped Secundus could be in their class, or at least be in an equally awesome class.
4. She desperately needs speech therapy. I thought it would be easier/faster to get her set up with therapy if she was already enrolled as a student in the district.
5. Ms. Lyn had interacted with Secundus and gave a strong recommendation to enroll her. She was sure that simply being in the preschool setting with the other children and the teachers, that it would improve her speech.
Well, she has been enrolled now for over 2 months and I am extremely disappointed. Secundus has FINALLY been evaluated for speech. I am meeting with the therapist on Friday morning and then therapy is to officially begin.
Besides that delay, I am also disappointed with the preschool class. It is not what I had hoped. First of all, Secundus is not in the same class as Primus was last year. (That is a long story of budget cuts and poor management and poor planning on the part of the public school district.) But I was still hopeful that the class would be good. Wrong! This teacher has a completely different personality than Lyn and Lisa. And her assistant teacher has changed a couple times. Last year Lyn and Lisa were a well-oiled machine that had worked together for a decade and were both sort of take-charge people. This year, not so much. It kind of feels chaotic in the classroom.
Plus, and this takes the cake: her teacher has a lisp! And it seems like half the kids in the class speak Spanish (and both teachers will speak in Spanish to those children on occasion). I'm not being discriminatory to people with speech impediments or to people who speak something other than English. But the question is, "How is MY daughter going to benefit and improve her articulation when she is surrounded by that?"
Then there is another big reason I want to pull her out: I absolutely LOATHE getting all the kids in and out of the car a million times everyday. This is actually one big reason that I chose to homeschool in the first place; I don't like being a slave to the daily pick-ups and drop-offs. When you add up our morning activity, plus pick-up and drop-off, I buckle or un-buckle the kids at least 10 times every weekday.
I could go on. But long-story-short: the benefits are not outweighing the frustrations. I think I will talk to the speech therapist about it when I see her on Friday and then decide. I should be able to bring her in for an hour at a time a couple times a week or something like that. If I do take her out, I may let her be until Christmas break. She loves going to school so I don't want to just yank her out suddenly. It seems like Christmas break would be a good opportunity to make changes.
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