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August 11th, 2011
Whether you’ve been homeschooling for a while, are just starting out, or think you could never manage it - this book is for you! Marilyn Rockett offers a wealth of knowledge and ideas for balancing home, school, and family in the real world. In addition to the abundance of workable systems and solutions, she also features an array of encouraging Bible verses and other quotes throughout to support her ideas. The included CD-Rom in itself more than pays for the book, as it offers a bounty of helpful, printable files for your endless use. Health and school records, household chores and routines, student assignments and lesson planners, menu and project minders, field trip minder, test records and high school transcript files, and more! You have it all. It doesn’t matter whether you are organizationally challenged or could just use a few more tips to stay on the ball, you’ll love this book. HomeSchooling at the Speed of Life. It’s amazing. How do you possibly manage to keep up with the laundry, pay the bills, make the meals, and teach Latin, math, and science in a day? It may be a work-in-progress, but it is possible! Buy the book and find out!
August 8th, 2011
While my kids aren’t winning their wish of getting a pet seahorse (”thanks,” library book!), we have just finished up a super fun little study on seahorses after a few things fell into place nudging us in that direction. For instance, on our trip at the nature center, the kids came across a family of seahorse skeletons. Then, later that day, we returned home to find that Seahorses were the cover feature of this month’s issue of my daughter’s “Your Big Backyard” magazine. So, off our adventure began!
Beach in a bottle: Inspired by some craft shells I found at Hobby Lobby, we created our own little beach in a bottle, and it’s become a game as well. We filled small bottles with colored sand and shells (fun all in itself for the kids with spoons and funnels), adding one tiny seahorse. Now the kids can rotate the bottle and search through the sand to find the seahorse mixed with the shells.
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August 1st, 2011
Whoever said left-overs didn’t make for great lunch should be charged with fraud. There are many ways to put a creative spin on last night’s meal, especially when it comes to chicken. Here are two of our most recent (and most simple) examples of making good use of left-overs. When I pick up a whole fresh chicken, I usually buy two, as it’s cost effective and non-time-consuming to cook more than one at a time. One we eat for dinner, the second I save in the fridge and use for days after. With minimal effort, it goes into several types of meals. The possibilities are endless, with wraps, quesadilla, salads, soups, etc.
Chicken Caesar Salad Sandwiches: Toast up some bread, spread a little dressing on, and add the fresh romaine mixed up with some chicken and Parmesan. Serve with veggie of choice.
Chicken Drumsticks with a side of shells and cheese: Yum, need I say more?
Reclaim your leftovers! Your budget will thank you!
July 28th, 2011
The last few Fridays, we delighted in some day trips to the museums in Grand Rapids and with the area Nature Center. The value in these explorations and exposure to art, nature, and creative expression is priceless. I’m convinced it will instill a life-long appreciation from a young age when these opportunities are used to our advantage.
Recently, we fit in a morning trip to the Grand Rapids Art Museum with some of our homeschool friends. GRAM is featuring an excellent John Audubon exhibit on the second floor - there is a kids’ scavenger hunt they provide that automatically helps engage the kids in studying each painting up close. Love it! My daughter took in a lot as we evaluated what it was like when they didn’t have cameras to take a picture of the birds they observed outside. After a quick lunch, we strolled down the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum for the afternoon - always an awesome adventure. If you’ve never been to the GRCM, you don’t know what you are missing. Two floors of creative, imaginative, hands-on fun for kids of all ages, and they always have something new in store as well as the stand-by classic favorites.
The following Friday, we attended an amazing Geology Rocks! class at the Howard Christensen Nature Center. It was our second trip out there this month (see our trip for the JND here), and it was phenomenally amazing. The dedication and passion the volunteers have are beautiful, and the resources they have are great. We had one-on-one attention to the interests of my kids as they explored and discovered; it was a spectacular day of blissful education.
I always am amazed when I ask my children afterward what their favorite part of the day was. Not only is this giving them the opportunity to practice reflection and review, but it shows me how much they are taking in - it’s always more than I suspect they are at the time.
“Education is all a matter of building bridges.” -Ralph Ellison
July 22nd, 2011
These wraps make for a great appetizer or summer snack. My husband and kids love them. The scallions are fresh from our garden this year, but any green onion will do. Simply spread some cream cheese on sliced ham and wrap it around a small handful of scallions. It’s super easy and tasty.
July 19th, 2011
The Howard Christensen Nature Center in Kent City, Michigan, has had it’s share of funding ups and downs. It has closed and been re-owned multiple times over the years, most recently shutting it’s doors this last January due to lack of funding. Lucky for nature-lovers (and area homeschoolers!), they found a way to re-open in May and maintain management by a new independent non-profit group, Lily’s Frog Pad, Inc.
They featured a free Junior Naturalist Day for all ages on July 14, and we picked up a fellow homeschool friend to join us for an afternoon of adventure. It was a wonderful day. Their Red Pine Interpretive Center was filled with various stations of exploration. The kids got to move at their own pace for hours as they studied salamanders, bug specimen, animal exhibits, and more. They had great activities, such as using various tools like tweezers, staple removers, pliers, droppers, etc. meant to represent the different beaks and bills of various birds to pick up fish, worms and stuffed mice, and to break open seeds.
We signed up for some future classes and really look forward to returning soon. If you live anywhere near the area, I highly recommend spending a day there, even just to visit the amazing trails they have featured throughout the 135 acres, or to check out some of the fantastic educational programs they have lined up. It is an exciting blessing to have this establishment available to the public. It needs support from those who value environment, education and God’s design in nature to keep it alive for good. Read the rest of this entry »
July 14th, 2011
Inspired by watching the last shuttle launch over the weekend, we stocked up on library books and planned space travel activities to do with friends at the park. The best books we picked up were What Do Astronauts Do by Carmen Bredeson, World Book’s Human Space Exploration, and Exploring the Solar System; A History with 22 Activities by Mary Kay Carson. A lot of activities in the latter were a little on the bland side, except they did give a recipe for creating your own comet with kitchen ingredients, which we tried. In addition to making our meteorite, we dressed the kids up like little astronauts with tin-foil space suits and sponge space shoes. We made foam-paper-cup rockets and enjoyed launching a real rocket model that shot up over 500 feet in the sky and parachuted down. The kids had a blast, especially mixing up the comet/dry-ice concoction and yelling their countdown before chasing down the rocket after it started it’s descent back to earth.
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July 13th, 2011
My kids have been treasure hunting in the fields and woods with their grandma recently. My mom has a metal detector, and they’ve been unearthing random “junk” along with a few treasures (including some pre-buried items, like a Gold Dollar coin which subsequently sparked a new interest in Sacajawea for my daughter). Along with magnetism and electricity lessons, it has my kids excited about archaeology and is continuing their interest in fossils as well. Here are a couple great websites geared toward kids about archaeology. Archeology Facts- Dialogue for Kids, is a great resource, as well as Archaeology for Kids, which has loads of games and activities like Dirt Detective, sending a buried message, and more! As my kids get older, I plan to do more in-depth studies into archaeology as we study and learn all about Pompeii and other fascinating sites. The book Hands-on Archaeology: Real Life Activities for Kids is a wonderful resource I found and intend on using in a few years as we explore the science and adventure of underground discoveries.
July 12th, 2011
Jazz up some white flip-flops from the Dollar Store with some paint markers, puffy paint, and feather boa! My daughter and her friend had fun feathering these flip-flops during their recent sleepover. They painted them first with flowers and silly toe-spots. My son decorated some too; I cut up small, 1-inch strips of camouflage bandanna for his, and we tied it along the straps - about 4 strips to each side. For the girls’ pairs, we cut up the boa to fit along the straps and hot-glued it on.
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July 11th, 2011
Our garden broccoli is ready and gracing the table. Another health bonus? They say Broccoli is the New Means to Reduce Cancer. Aside from the homegrown vitamins and fiber we’re enjoying, broccoli has always been a favorite veggie of choice here. Like peas, it’s good raw, steamed, or mixed in pretty much any kind of pasta. Yum!
Note: because our garden is organic, we did get some of the cabbage loopers hanging out on the harvested broccoli. (They are sneaky little guys!) If you give the broccoli a short salt-water bath, they’ll all die off it.
