Outer Space Lesson Plans

March 30, 2011

This Outer Space unit was out of this world!

Many thanks to:

Jolanthe for her Astronaut Preschool Pack

Carisa for her Solar System Learning Pack

Totally Tots for lots and lots of other ideas

and the Space Pack from Musings of Me

I divided the two-week unit in the following way:

Monday – Tuesday: Take Off! Rockets and Astronauts

Wednesday: First Stop: The Moon

Thursday: The Moon

Friday: The Sun

Monday – Tuesday: Stars and Constellations

Wednesday – Friday: The Planets

We enjoyed several of NASA’s Our World video clips.

(Vivienne recommends the clip about the astronauts having to exercise in order to prevent muscle atrophy.)

We used many ideas from Eye on the Sky and this NASA site, too.

We also enjoyed The Magic School Bus: The Secrets of Space project pack and read The Magic School Bus Chapter Book: Space Explorers.

You’ll find most (if not all) of these ideas and printables inside of those links.

Build a Rocket Game

 

We sang “Five Little Astronauts” every morning.

The girls loved poking the astronauts into the Styrofoam moon…. for two weeks… it never grew old!

Spaceship USA (made out of an orange juice bottle!)

ABC Matching

Making Craters!

Oreo Cookie Phases of the Moon

How Big is the Sun? 1 dot = 1 earth

109 dots later…

Conclusion: The Sun is very, very big. We are very, very small.

The girls enjoyed making random constellations and creating myths to explain the shape. (We spent hours with our library books that explained the stories behind the stars. Vivienne, especially, found these fascinating. What a delight to walk out on the front porch at night and find those stories above our heads.)


Of course, the unit wouldn’t be complete without a super-fun sensory tub!

Big hits: 3-D Planets in a Tube and the Safari LTD Space Toob. Everything else I found at our surprisingly-space-focused Dollar Store!

 

 

Posted in All Posts, Early Elementary Education | 7 Comments

(Photo found through google…)

The year was 1990.

I was in sixth grade.

P.E. class was an awkward mess of polyester gym shorts and high-top sneakers left over from the eighties. Our teacher, Mr. Zook, divided the year into units: the scooter unit, the basketball unit, the Presidential Fitness Award unit, and so on. My two favorites were the gymnastics and the parachute units.

During the gymnastics unit, Mr. Zook set up a “Wild Jungle” obstacle course that we would navigate, getting rope-burn from the “Enchanted Swinging Vines,” waddling across the parallel bar “Bridge of Danger,” and leaping clumsily over “Big Bertha,” a foreboding elephant made out of a mounting horse and several red tumbling mats. In broad daylight, we wise sixth graders would have seen this exercise as insultingly immature, but Mr. Zook was no fool and he dimmed the lights, transforming a make-shift obstacle course into a truly wild jungle.

However, the wild jungle wasn’t nearly as enchanting as the parachute unit! We glowed with anticipation the day the large silky parachute lay across the gymnasium floor. With Mr. Zook’s “okay,” we’d circle the parachute, grab two handfuls of silk and listen for his instructions.

“On the count of three, let’s raise our arms to the sky!” The parachute would rise above our heads and we’d look up at its silky underbelly, giggling at the secrecy we felt by standing under its shadow.

Then, “Shake your hands up and down!” The parachute would jiggle and ripple above our heads as we worked together to create sheer magic. Even the most sophisticated sixth graders fell into the enchantment of the jiggling parachute.

“Now, on the count of three, pull the edge of the parachute down to the ground. One, two, three!” As the silk slapped against the air, we’d pull our small section down, squatting on the gym floor, admiring the beautiful silky dome we’d just created together. This was unity.

This was beauty.

That year, the temptation was simply too much for me. I gently released my fists-full of fabric, stepped back, and took a running leap into the middle of the billowing dome.

Freeze Frame: Picture sweet little side-pony-tailed Laura in polyester blue gym shorts suspended in mid-air; feet kicked back, arms joyfully raised to the sky, head thrown back in anticipation.

Unfreeze, and hear my sweet little knees smash into the hardwood floor as the parachute implodes under my body. One look at my face would tell you that I had just learned a very valuable lesson: that everything that looks like a fluffy billowing pillow, isn’t a fluffy billowing pillow.

***

“…test everything; hold fast to that which is good.” 1 Thess. 5:21

Posted in All Posts, Character Training, Healthy Living | 1 Comment

When I taught composition classes at Penn State University, I was shocked by the students’ inability to write. Not that I was some writing-genius at the time, but I was the instructor of the course and knew what to look for in collegiate writing. My only conclusion was that they were sorely under-prepared in high school. A few years later, I taught at a local high school and realized that weak writing skills and lazy habits were already firmly in place.  Though I buckled down and did my best to undo bad habits and build upon good ones (oh, how those students whined and whined at the time, but thanked me later!), I realized that the best situation is to build solid writing skills from the time a child is born!

That’s why I love Susan Wise Bauer. She has arrived at the same conclusion and offers such intelligent and simply ways to establish a firm foundation for any child to write with confidence and grace. Her Writing With Ease curriculum is simple, brilliant, and effective. I wish I could have taught this curriculum at the University, or at the high school! Because of my students’ poor preparation, I would have taken them all back to Square 1: Narration, Copywork, and Dictation. I wouldn’t have asked them for an original thought for weeks into the semester.

When I began reading the introduction to the Writing With Ease curriculum, I was so excited to have found such a smart soul-mate! I even read various paragraphs aloud to Ryan.  We particularly appreciated her analysis of “why writing programs fail”. Wise Bauer asserts that people “hate to write” because they have never been taught the foreign language of writing.

“There’s a central problem with the write-more-and-you’ll-get-better method. It treats writing as though it were analogous to speech: the more deeply you’re immersed in it, the more competent you’ll become.

But writing is essentially unlike speaking. Children have an instinctual, inborn desire to speak. Any child who is developing normally will learn to speak if spoken to. The more a child talks, the better her verbal skills become.

Children don’t have that same innate drive to write.”

Wise Bauer explains that students struggle with writer’s block and stubborn writing-resentment because they’ve never been taught the rules and conventions of the written language; they’ve never developed confidence in the basics, so they quiver with insecurity when required to record their abstract thoughts on paper. Just imagine if we were never taught the basics of the Chinese language, and then were asked to express our thoughts – in Chinese – about Taoism vs. Christianity? I’d get writer’s-block, wouldn’t you?

Susan writes, “I have become convinced that most writing instruction is fundamentally flawed because children are never taught the most basic skill of writing, the skill on which everything rests: how to put words on paper.

Young writers need time to learn the conventions of their new language. They need to become fluent in it before they can use it to express new ideas.”

Writing With Ease is a four-year curriculum that may be used in the first four years of elementary school, or at any point in a student’s education.

I am so grateful to begin education with this understanding. This Fall, Vivienne and I will begin Year 1 of the curriculum, which consists entirely of narration, copywork, and dictation. Wise Bauer has selected lovely portions of classical children’s literature to acquaint students with proper writing conventions. After some solid instruction, the child begins using his own narration for copywork, a first step towards writing original sentences. The exercises are simple and consistent, using literature to learn the finest writing conventions so that the student may, someday, harness all of his creative thoughts and happily write well.

Posted in All Posts, Early Elementary Education | 2 Comments

A close friend of mine is preparing to get married sometime soon and she is concerned about all of the cooking.

She asked for my advice, thinking that I’d say, “Oh, it’s a piece of cake!”

But my smile faded and I said, “Honestly, food has been an uphill battle for me.”

It’s not easy to plan meals, prepare meals, and do it all over again (and again, and again, and again) when I just don’t have a natural interest in the art. I have friends who honestly think about recipes when they are driving down the street, or hanging the laundry; and who – wow – get lost in recipe land when they have time to surf the web. Not me. In fact, I never think about food unless I have to. (And unless I’m pregnant and need chocolate, of course.) Since the beginning of our marriage, I’ve invested my share of stress into trying to create healthy, delicious, and inexpensive foods (a near-impossible undertaking, I’m sure of it!). The entire journey has been sheer. hard. work.

Once we had children, food became even more complicated. You know how those little ones start out with no teeth (what to do? what to do?) and then, even once they start to sprout teeth, children can’t shred lettuce for a good seven years! And the snacks! Ugh. Snacks.If I have any gray hair, it’s because of snacks. (I’ve seen photos of children munching “Ants on a Log” happily, not gagging on the celery strings or turning their noses up at the raisins, but I’m convinced that these are posed pictures, taken to perpetuate a myth. This is the one healthy snack all of the healthy-snack-writers like to cheer us up with, “Don’t forget! There’s always Ants on a Log!” However, this has never worked in my home. Never.)

I’ve always planned the week’s meals on Sunday afternoon. That’s my weekly time to spread the newspaper out in front of me, study the circulars and the coupons, page through my recipe books, and hyperventilate. For years, my Day of Rest has had an eye-sore of two restless hours: meal planning.

Over time, I’ve had to accommodate my disabilities, search for solutions, and implement ideas that will make this never-ending job more pleasurable. I’ve learned a thing or two. No, I’m not I’m enthusiastically surfing the web for recipe ideas yet, but I’m content with my job in our home, and I’ve finagled some lifestyle changes that have added to my peace of mind and our over-all happiness.

So, this list is for my newly wed friend and any one else out there who is hungry for some help, concerning food.

1. Surrender to the reality that food requires time. Lots and lots of time.

This has been my biggest milestone.

For several years, I resented the fact that food preparation (the planning, the buying, the cooking, the cleaning) took so much time. Back in the day, I spent this time reading books, running, wandering in the woods, and thinking deep thoughts! But in order to establish some sort of peace with food, I have had to resign myself to the fact that, because food preparation is my job, I must make some mental space for thoughts of food. Then, I had to make some actual time for food preparation – especially if we aim to eat healthy and inexpensively. Lots of chopping; lots of mixing. Once I stopped wrestling with this (and skimping on it), I admitted that investing my mental and physical time on food was a beautiful and necessary change for the well-being of my family. This has brought me lots of peace where there was none.

2. Be as healthy as possible without being as healthy as possible.

For years, we were gluten-free and near-dairy-free. (Hard. Work. ‘Explains my bitterness, doesn’t it?) I’ve been more happy since I’ve calmed down a bit. We make healthy choices when we can, but I’ve decided to relax a bit.

For example, 3 months ago, I bought a loaf of white bread because we were having a slew of children over for lunch. My girls poked at the loaf with wide-eyes: what is this, Mommy? After making edible PB&J sandwiches for the first time in my motherhood, I’m convinced that a loaf of regular old bread is just what the doctor ordered every now and then. And so cheap! And so easy to chew!

Until very recently, I broke my back (and our budget) buying natural, organic, and recycled snacks. And then, one wonderful day, Ryan said, “Is this really worth it? You get so stressed out about snacks and they are so expensive. Our children are very healthy. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have a tub of cheese puffs sitting around every once in a while.” That week during my shopping trip, I entered the regular snack aisle for the first time in a loooong time. I panicked. I sweat. I honestly almost cried. I didn’t know how to pick up a box of regular crackers because I had spent so long believing that they were evil. Truly, I almost passed onto an Oreo Display Shelf. But I chose something, shoved it in my cart, and ran towards the check-out line before I could change my mind. As it turns out, this was a healthy change for me. Since then, we haven’t gone nuts with the junky snacks, but we have saved money and sanity.

3. Plan a weekly menu and stick to it. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Even after I had my dinner plans down-pat, I was still feeling the stress of food. As it turns out, breakfast and lunch were taking their toll on my nerves, too. So, I began adding them to my weekly meal plan. I don’t prepare anything fancy for either of those meals, but I love having a plan – and the ingredients on hand.

I place my meal plan on the refrigerator so that I can remember to thaw meat, cut veggies, or bake bread before 5:30, when Ryan calls and says he is on his way home. If I don’t have the meal in front of my face all day long, I honestly forget about it.

4. Work up to 4 weeks worth of meals.

I revamp this list seasonally and appreciate both the variety and the regularity of meals that I know. For years, I was trying something new every night. Not good for me. Now, I have embraced the beauty of “Mom’s good old standby’s.” Once I have a recipe that really works for 90% of the members of our family, I keep it. It becomes “Mom’s Meatloaf” or “Mom’s Cinnamon Rolls”. I can make the same thing week after week in the name of “Creating Memories for My Children To Return Home To Year after Year after Year.”

5. Find one or two sources of recipes that work for you, and become a faithful friend.

Lots of folks like the Pioneer Woman. I, personally, have found great success following Janelle at Comfy in the Kitchen. Her recipes are easy, inexpensive, and delicious. She offers enough healthy recipes that protect my guilt-o-meter. I trust her implicitly and am always pleased. (In fact, her grandmother’s spaghetti sauce has become my very own “Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce”; Thank you, Grandmother Comfy!)

* Now it’s your turn: What are your tips for making peace with the demands of feeding a family?

Posted in All Posts, Healthy Living, Motherhood | 17 Comments

A while ago, I posted our curriculum plans for “first grade”. On paper, this year was definitely “first grade” for Vivienne – first grade reading, first grade math, you name it. HOWEVER, we learned something important: everyone in the whole wide world groups children according to grade level and not age, so our sweet 5 year old would technically be bumped up with the 6 and 7 year old’s in all other activities. Until, of course, she begins her second grade work this Spring, at which time she’d join the great-big 7 and 8 year old’s… all the while, she’s very much just a five year old with many, many “just five year old” ways.

So, we decided to call this year Kindergarten, regardless of how far ahead or behind she may be of the typical “Kindergartner”. It finally dawned on me, that our entire homeschooling life will operate on this principle: she will always be working at her personal pace, and we can’t keep shifting her “grade level” to match what she is – or isn’t – achieving academically.

It only took her a few days to reverse the habit of saying “I’m in first grade!” To saying (for one more year), “I’m in Kindergarten!” just as she is. It hasn’t fazed her one bit. This way, she is with the Kindergartners in Sunday School – exactly where she should be. Sure, she is probably reading more fluently than some of them, but they are probably accomplishing other things that she still needs to learn. I’d much rather her stay with her appropriate age-level, than be rushed ahead.

Down the road, I do not want her to think she is in 11th grade, begging to hang out with the 11th graders because she is “doing some 11th grade work”, but is only 14 or 15 years old. At that point, she will just be a sweet little ninth grader, thank you very much.

SO, we take a deep breath and learn a valuable homeschooling lesson that you probably knew all along and were praying I’d understand before too long. Thanks for the prayers. We got it! :)

Posted in All Posts, Early Elementary Education, Kindergarten | 8 Comments

Recently, a reader asked about The Phonics Museum, which I used with Vivienne last year and this year.

I’ve been thinking about updating you about this curriculum, so here are my thoughts now that we are almost finished with the entire program:

It is a beautiful curriculum. I truly love the depth of art-appreciation as well as the historical appreciation that it birthed in Vivienne. She loves the “Lady of the Sea” – Queen Elizabeth – and brightens up whenever she sees her photo. She begged to read In the Shadow of Death every day because she fell in love with the story: a young Christian girl who helps victims of the Black Plague.  The primers are not your typical early readers, but I’m convinced that they were the best resource for our oldest daughter. I will reevaluate with each child: Lia may not take to them as well as Vivienne did, I don’t know yet.

I’ve read comments online of many people who don’t prefer the primers because of their difficulty, content, or writing style. Vivienne begs to read them because they are actually meaty, and she has always dragged through the fluffy early-readers I’ve picked up from the library or bookstores. (Lia, however, may be thrilled to learn to read with Dora or a pretty pony. Only time will tell.)

Concerning the writing style of the primers: The first year of primers do have awkward wording that needs to be explained to the early reader.  The awkward wording, however, is necessary to offer substantial content with the limited phonics skills. I don’t mind this at all; in fact, it has allowed for me to explain many, many things as we read and has expanded Vivienne’s vocabulary and poetic abilities.

What I won’t use the second time around is the same form of hand-writing that is taught in the workbooks. The form that Phonics Museum uses is lovely; your child’s writing will look gorgeous, but it is not compatible with any other supplemental workbook or worksheets you may use. Of course, I’ll still use the gorgeous worksheets, but will teach Lia the Zaner-Bloser method of handwriting from the beginning, which is much more versatile with other educational materials. (I switched Vivienne to the Zaner-Bloser method this year and wish I had started her with this program last year!)

I also found that the first grade spelling lists are too difficult for Vivienne at this point. Yes, she could memorize them if we spent lots of time on them, but each list is packed with various phonics rules, instead of drilling one or two, at the most. It was just too over-whelming (for me, anyway), and I decided that our time is better spent reading more.  After the first spelling quiz, we picked up Susan Wise Bauer’s suggested Spelling Workout A, and have been breezing through it; Viv has mastered everything seemlessly and is loving spelling. Just what I wanted. (Her mother is much happier, too.) Next year, we’ll begin the All About Spelling program, which works back through the same phonics rules.

Any other questions??

Posted in Early Elementary Education | 6 Comments

Some time has passed since I’ve written about the stillbirth of our daughter. At the time, I wrote some serious and reflective words. And now, I feel the freedom and passion to write some not-as-serious, but kind-of-important words. You might find them insensitive or inappropriate, but I think any woman would appreciate the insight you’ll have in your back pocket after reading this post!

I have thought about this post every day for the past 8 months, because I couldn’t wait to tell you to gently help your friends who experience miscarriage or stillbirth not to color their hair immediately afterward! If she does color her hair, it might only add to her depression.

You see, I dyed my hair right after delivering our baby. And I wish I hadn’t. It turned into a nightmare that wouldn’t end.

My body felt deathly, my hair was falling out, my emotions were out of control, and my heart was broken. One day, I just wanted to feel pretty again, so I thought that high-lighting my hair would give me a little lift, ya know? Well, if I would have expressed my intentions aloud to anyone, I might have gotten some good feedback, like “DON’T DO IT!” but I boldly slathered on the medium blond mix and watched as my hair turned bright, carrot orange.

Then, I tried to correct the carrot, and gasped as my hair turned lime green.

With my thin hair, now orange-and-green-striped, I finally trudged into the salon, where the stylist looked at me with wide-eyes and explained that women should never dye their hair when they have been emotionally or hormonally stressed, because hair reacts in crazy, unpredictable ways. “Oh,” I replied glumly, as she painted on the necessary blue dye to counter-act the orange.

She was able to offer a temporary fix that washed out in a few days. (She refused to use real dye.) Nonetheless, every follicle on my head was already fried.

Not the “pretty” I was going for when I first started out.

My hair continued to fall out for a little while, but, boy-oh-boy, it held onto that red color with all of the determination in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I love red-heads! I’m just not meant to be one of them!

When I became pregnant again, my hair started thickening up and growing back. (Praise be to God! Truly!) So now, I have that little baby-hair bang that surrounds a forehead and never lays quite right. My color is gradually returning to its natural state.

But my heart is holding onto this fervent plea: if you are close enough to a woman who is enduring an emotional or hormonal crisis, figure out some amazing way to encourage her not to spontaneously color her hair. Find ways to tell her that she’s beautiful just the way she is, even as her body ages more rapidly through the stress and strain of life. Pleasant words are healing to the body and soul. A box (or two) of hair dye is not.

 

* Many thanks to those of you who really did minister countless pleasant words to me during my suffering. I am certain that you upheld me greatly! Who knows what I would have resorted to without you! You should not, in any way, feel responsible for my naivete. Or for my hair!

Posted in Healthy Living, Motherhood, Stillbirth: Remembering Juliette Abigail | 3 Comments

“We honor and obey our parents in the Lord with a respectful attitude.”

We enjoyed Week 3 of Clay Clarkson’s devotional, Our 24 Family Ways .

Through the week, we talked about ways in which to honor one another, as well as ways in which to obey our parents. We brushed up on our “Obedience Is” song, continued to learn “Trust and Obey,” and sang the good old stand-by “O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E” together.

To get “Family Fun Night” rolling, we colored in the week’s coloring page. This was fun! To apply our Family Way, I told the girls what to do each step of the way, and they answered with a joyful, “Yes, Mom!” For example, I’d say, “Find a blue crayon, and color in the Father’s pants.” Then, “Place your picture on the kitchen floor and color in the Mother’s apron.” Then, “Choose your favorite color, take it with you to the bottom step, and color in the flowers.” “Carry your picture on your head to the art table and color in all the shoes with the same color marker.” They LOVED when I told them to grab some crayons and finish the picture out on the sunny porch.

 

The evening wrapped up with Dr. Seuss Night at our sweet local library!

Posted in Family Fun Friday!, Our 24 Family Ways | 1 Comment

Our (17) New Arrivals!

March 17, 2011

Early in the morning, the post office called and told us that we had a very important package awaiting us.

The girls scurried out of bed to the sound of 17 chicks peeping! We’re hoping this amounts to 15 hens and 2 roosters. I’m already praying for the development of their nice, gentle personalities and healthy, egg-producing bodies.

We had all of the supplies ready to go, and welcomed them into their temporary home – and nice, warm brooding box – in the basement.

Ryan did so much research and learned to round off the corners of a large sturdy box, so that they don’t huddle into a corner and smoosh each other. He also found out what to feed them; when to change the water; and how to monitor the temperature of the brooding light. We made a molasses-water mixture to give them an extra boost after their journey from Ohio. They seemed to enjoy that and fluffled right up! Of all the websites that he’s researched, Ryan recommends My Pet Chicken.

Every chicken expert we know says the same thing: “Chickens are easy!” So far, so good. (Especially when the farmer does all the work, and the farmer’s wife just looks on admiringly.) We’ll keep you posted about how “easy” they are for the pure novice, and will take suggestions for the way in which we prepare our very first eggs. (Scrambled? Souffle? Classic hard-boiled??)

Posted in Early Elementary Education, Farm Life | 10 Comments

This week, I settled down to read and savor Ann’s post, Lamb Mothers and Amazing Grace.

I think she’s right.

Enjoy.

Posted in Motherhood | 1 Comment