The Lincoln Memorial...Really??

I got this picture in a United States themed poster pack.  It's the Lincoln Memorial.  But would you have known that if it didn't say so at the bottom of the picture? 

 

 

If you were going to teach grade-school kids about the Lincoln Memorial, don't you think you would show them a picture like this?  You know, one that is looking at the front where you can see the iconic statue of Lincoln inside?

 

But no, this is a photo of the back of the memorial...with trees obscuring half of it.  There's a better picture of it on the penny!  The absolute ridiculousness of it almost makes me laugh.  Almost.  I just...I can't...WHY??

Hubby thinks it's hilarious and actually really likes it because he thinks Lincoln is overrated (he's probably going to kill me for that oversimplification.)  He even put it up on his man-cave wall. 

You're Beautiful

I LOVE this song! Just now we were watching the above video for What Makes You Beautiful  by One Direction. The chorus repeats "You don't know you're beautiful.". So when it came to the chorus, Secundus chuckled and told me, "I know that I'm beautiful!"

Then she told me that this song is silly because everyone should know that they're beautiful.

I hope she never forgets that!

I support your right to choose the best educational path for your child...

Blogging homeschool moms post all the time about the stupid/ignorant/silly/annoying questions they receive from non-homeschoolers (my favorite is here.)  A related frequent topic is "how to handle criticism and deal with lack of support." 

I am amazed and pleased to say, however, that I have never encountered anywhere near the amount of disapproval that I expected to. 

Whenever it comes up in conversation, people will usually respond with something like, "Oh, cool.  My cousin/friend does that, too."  And anytime one of my friends asks me about it, I feel that their questions are sincere and come from a place of genuine, respectful curiosity. 

Homeschooling is definitely becoming more "mainstream" and accepted.  Even people of older generations have expressed encouragement to me, including my Grandma!

Bottom line is, I am so thankful that I have the freedom and opportunity to educate my children in the way I feel is best for them.  And I am even more thankful for the support that I receive from those around me. 

I hope I am likewise showing all my friends the same support for the education decisions they have made for their own children!

Reading Tent Town 2

This post won't make any sense unless you first go here to read about the first time we did Tent Town.  Ok, go. 

 Did you read it?  Alright, moving on...

This time we had the same amount of kids, but less moms and one more tent.  That was a little hard because there weren't any extra moms around to wrangle the littlest kids.  So my son (3 years old) and the other 2 year old boys mostly wandered instead of sitting down to listen to stories.  Oh well.  I'm just happy that Tertius at least listened to the food story and the story that I read. 

Speaking of the "food story," this time instead of Stone Soup, Cindy read The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) by Philemon Sturges.  After the story, the kids moved to my patio where they made their own English muffin pizza.  (Last time the food tent was just way too crowded with all the tables we needed to accommodate all the kids.  So instead of using a bigger tent, we just removed the tables.)  The toppings we had available were pepperoni, Italian sausage, olives, and mozzarella and cheddar cheese. 

Tip: Pre-label a square of tin foil with permanent marker so the kids can make their pizzas on there and then easily move them to a cookie sheet. 

While the kids visited the other story tents, the pizza was popped in the oven for a few minutes and the mess was cleared away.

The stories that were read this time were: King Bidgood, The Hiccupotamus, Caps for Sale, A Girl and Her Gator, The Gruffalo, a book about trains, and a book about fire trucks. 

When everyone was done listening to stories, they came back to the patio to find their cooked pizzas on a plate with the ingredients for a fruit dessert pizza. 

Tip: To make things easy, buy sugar cookies from the bakery.  To make things less messy, scoop a glob of Cool Whip Frosting (so yummy!) for each child with a large craft stick before they sit down to decorate.



Everyone was sent home with these cute books I made out of Hershey's Nuggets.

A big thanks to Cindy for helping me and making these fun events possible!  Her and I (Ok, mostly her) were coming up with other fun ideas for Reading Tent Town so here they are:

*Do it monthly and maybe rotate between homes.  If we were to do this, I don't think we would do a food story each time.
*Do it in the evening.  Roast hotdogs and marshmallows over a fire pit.  Have the kids come in their pajamas.  With older kids, it could even be a backyard sleep-over afterwards.
*Instead of making lunch, do a craft.  You could even have an easy craft (and/or coloring page) available based on each story read.  The kids have to choose at the end which was their favorite story and then do the corresponding craft. 

I'm sure we'll be doing another one of these soon!



Another Trip to the Textbook Warehouse

Go here to read about when I talked about the textbook warehouse.

Today I went to the textbook warehouse again.  This time they had changed the location and there were only 8 shelves as opposed to a whole wall that was practically full floor to ceiling. 

I was very disappointed at the lack of selection.  But somehow I still managed to make it out of there with about 50 books (reference, novels, picture books, phonics readers.)

I love shopping for free books!

You've got to be Brave to homeschool...

This morning Primus had a wonderful revelation.  Quite out of nowhere she suddenly exclaimed, "Mom!  Merida is homeschooled!  She had to learn all those things from her mom at home."