"So please, oh please, we beg, we pray....."

"So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

 Then fill the shelves with lots of books,

Ignoring all the dirty looks,

The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,

And children hitting you with sticks –

 Fear not, because we promise you

That, in about a week or two

Of having nothing else to do,

They’ll now begin to feel the need

Of having something good to read."

--Roald Dahl

 These are just our living room walls....

Yarn along.....

From Ginny, the founder of "Yarn Along"~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a single photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! ~ It's all about slippers this week....slippers for the little feet that run around on our chilly floors during the winter. I have finished Gracie's. Hers are the bright pink variegated yarn ( she also has a pair for her doll) Luke's are camouflage (no doll slippers ;-) Kimmy's are on the needles. I use this easy pattern for kids slippers and the charity slippers I make.School is back in session and I'm reading a lot of "polar region" books. Books about penguins and Antarctica and polar bears and the North Pole.

Shadows of Society Hill is the read aloud I am reading to Mark and Grace for history. It is an American Girl Mystery book. It is set in Post Civil War times and is keeping us all on the edge of our seats.

I decided to take part in the "Take a Chance reading Challenge". Hopefully it will keep me on track to enjoy some "grown-up" books throughout the year.

The first challenge I took was the Random Bestseller pick. Go to Random.org and, using the True Random Number Generator, enter the number 1950 for the min. and 2010 for the max. and then hit generate. Then go to this site and find the year that Random.org generated for you and click on it. Then find the bestseller list for the week that would contain your birthday for that year. Choose one of the bestsellers from the list that comes up, read it and write about it.

I got the year 1994 and number one on the list for the date of my birthday was Pope John Paul II's book Crossing the Threshold of Hope. I was very excited to see this at the top of the list. I plan on using it during my quiet prayer time in the morning for this month

Another book on the list for 1994 was The Lottery Winner by Mary Higgins Clark (my favorite "for fun" author). I read this before, probably in 1994, and am looking forward to starting it...and once I start a Mary Higgins Clark book I usually finish it that same day..(sorry kids and house).

I posted a Yarn Along post last week....you can check it out over here.

Mama's Kiss: By-Jane Yolen

Mama's Kiss........Jane Yolen has such a wonderful history of writing some of our favorite books, I knew we would have a winner when this was on the "new book shelf" at our library this past week. Review: When Mama throws her curly-headed little girl a handful of kisses, "Most land right, but one kiss misses. / Mama says she'll throw another, / It sails off toward Baby Brother." This begins a peregrination that takes that wayward kiss through the neighborhood, into the woods and back (via "a runner's hair" - Papa, the reader sees) to the little girl it was meant for, spreading affection wherever it lands. Yolen's meter never falters, providing a rollicking counterpoint to Baxter's drolly energetic cartoon vignettes, the winged-lipped kiss tying all visually together. Sweet - but not saccharine - good-hearted fun. (Picture book. 3-6) (Kirkus Reviews)

This review from Amazon is exactly what I would write if I was a critic with a gift for words.

As happens around this house when everyone least expects it, I came up with some silly ideas as I read this book aloud.First I got out the lipstick and firmly smacked a lovely lipstick kiss on everyone's cheek-(except Mark, who at 8, is to0 manly for this silliness.)
Everyone then took turns putting the lipstick on and then kissed our new poster, which is now proudly displayed for all to enjoy.
We even got Daddy to add to the fun-at the total dismay of the 8 year old boy, who now seems to doubt his father's masculinity.

It doesn't take much to entertain us around here-or add to the memories.

Author Fiesta-Jim Arnosky for the littlest

While the older kids are enjoying the nature study that Jim Arnosky encourages, my littlest kids have been enjoying the many books written for our youngest students.Here is a list of Jim Arnosky's books that are suitable for the toddlers among us.

We have been enjoying Crinkleroot's Animals That Every Child Should Know books. Sadly, these books are out of print, but many library systems have them available.
To make this book a little more hands on for Luke and Kimberly, I searched through our animal bucket and found most of the animals featured in the book. We were missing a few of the animals, so I searched around the house and found pictures of the missing mammals.
We looked at the page and named the animal in the book and then looked for the matching animal among the pictures and toys I had set out. During this time we also made the animal's sound and crawled around and acted like the creature.
This also served as a good lesson in taking turns. Something that has to be learned, and learned, and learned. There is nothing worse than a 2 and 3 year old diving on top of each other as they moo like a cow!

Author Fiesta-Tough Boris

Thanks to the Author Fiesta and Mem Fox, it has been all about pirates around here lately.

Tough Boris by Mem Fox

From Publisher Weekly: "Boris the pirate is as mean, greedy and scary as they come. But when his parrot dies, he mourns like anyone else."

This book naturally led to a full pirate study. I found this set of pirates at Michael's craft store. They have been played with constantly.

We also studied about a real pirate-Blackbeard. We read the book Blackbeard's Last Fight, and enjoyed it as a family, although some of us weren't really thrilled with the graphic depiction of Blackbeard's demise. This is to serve as a warning to folks with sensitive children, my kids thought it was gross and "cool".

Homeschool Share has some wonderful activies to do about Blackbeard and pirates. We didn't make a lapbook, but instead, we will be adding our pirate activities to our Author Fiesta binder.

We watched this fun classic Disney movie. Everyone enjoyed it!
We now have foamie pirates decorating out fridge, and we are all good at pirate talking, "argggg, matey!"
I was very surprised at the amount of piratey stuff there is out there. This is one topic that we have never gotten into deeply, but I now have a feeling that it is a subject that we will be revisiting often.

Toddler "School"

Kimberly's all-time favorite book right now is Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?

She will listen to this story over and over again.

So, I decided to make a "school" activity to go along with this story for Luke and Kim.
I found these real cute printables at the kidzclub website. They are real big on this site, but my husband knew how to make them a reasonable size. (I, on the other hand, don't not have this amazing knowledge.) I printed the smaller pictures and then laminated them.
Kim and Luke's birthdays are this week, and they are turning 2 and 3, but this activity really got their attention. They enjoyed following the story and putting the pictures in the correct order, and even Kimberly could do it. They are also learning to take turns, this seems to be a bigger challenge than putting the pictures in order.

They did this three times in a row and then I put it away. We will show Daddy when he gets home, and then we will save it for "toddler school time."

We have blasted off into outer space!

We have been looking upward, into the heavens, and learning about this glorious universe that God has created for us.

This unit is basically for my primary level kids. Mark-8 and Grace-6.

I have posted some of the things we are doing and have done, but I am also looking for you folks to offer any suggestions you might have to enhance our study.

We are all really enjoying this one!

We have been reading factual books to start our study off--learning the basic facts of astronomy. A few weeks ago I purchased this game and after just a little study into our space unit, I am very pleased that both little kids have fun, and success playing this game. It is the perfect learning level for my kindergarter and second grader. It also leads to more exploration as we play the game and learn new facts.

I bought this mobile kit. I haven't opened it yet, since I will use it for our "grand finale" project. Hopefully, it won't be too hard, and the kids themselves will be able to acheive nice results.
Here are a few of our "fact" books that we have been using. I have a couple more requested from my local library such as First Space Encyclopedia-a DK book. Of course, we have also been using a lot of resources from the internet, especially Enchanted Learning, from which I have found a lot of elements for our lapbook.
I have also been having fun searching for space related fiction picture books. If you know of any, please leave a comment. These are so fun. We have been learning to pick out fact from fiction, and been learning about how fun it is to use our imaginations. I want the kids to try and write a outer space story together next week.

And now, the beginnings of Our Space Lapbook.

Many of the elements that we have included in our lapbook came from the website, Space Lapbook on Squidoo. If the ideas didn't come directly from this site, they came from links that were included on this site.

We did make an accordian fold booklet about the phases of the moon. I copied pictures out of the book The Moon to use for this element.

One of the things that everyone enjoyed was finding out what they would weigh on other planets. I found this at Enchanted Learning's Zoom Astonomy ( a wonderful resource.)

The moon phases flip book has also been a big hit. I found it at this site.

I still have more ideas for this lapbook. One important element is the Homeschool share unit about the book Maria's Comet. I am still waiting for this book to arrive from the library.

I am also looking for suggestions as to what else to include in this study. I would love to hear some comments.

Dr. Seuss-part 1

We have started our Dr. Seuss unit and have been having a lot of fun with it. Of course, this is all due to the upcoming Seussical the Musical.

We began our journey by learning about Ted Geisel, the boy who became Dr. Seuss.

I found this wonderful book at the library, The Boy on Fairfield Street. This biography begins, "Once upon a time, there lived a boy who feasted on books and was wild about animals." It is a beautifully illustrated book that was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone aged 6 and up. It seemed to especially attract the teenagers.

We learned the Dr. Seuss grew up three blocks from the library and six blocks from the zoo, and with this beginning, Ted Geisel began his unique style of art and literature.

The first story we delved into was Yertle the Turtle. We discussed how many a Dr. Seuss' books have morals, lessons that everyone can learn from.

We made a poster, and everyone discussed the moral of this story. This was very insightful, it made me realize how thoughtful even my youngest kids are, but my favorite had to be,"if you burp, good things might happen."

We went on to tongue twisters next, with the book Fox on Socks. I do need to tell you where I found these wonderful books and stuffed animals. They came from Kohls. The books and animals are only $5.00 each and 100 percent of the net profits of these go to helping children in our community. You can learn about them at Kohls Cares for Kids.

Everyone enjoyed twisting their tongues around this book.

The project we did to go along with this book was making our own tongue twister book. We used a Cat in the Hat template that I found here. I found many sites with tongue twisters on-line, and we made books that we are learning to read and say.(Daddy seems to be the best at tongue twisters-I am terrible at them.)

We will be back soon with more Dr. Seuss fun!

What We've Read

As we were walking down the apple trail, I came across this book in our Sonlight box of books. Knowing that I would find a treasure within the covers, I dug out the Sonlight study guide to accompany it and was very pleasantly suprised at the enjoyment all age groups got from this book. The Apple and the Arrow by Mary and Conrad Buff.

Set in the time when Switzerland was trying to free itself from Austria, the classic story of William Tell went much deeper than the traditional story of a boy with an apple on his head. We were encourged by this book to discuss freedom, liberty and being true to ourselves and our beliefs, no matter what the risks.

The one thing that touched me deeply was the trust everyone had in God and also the trust they had in Our Blessed Virgin Mary that was sprinkled throughout the book.

It was truly a book about good overcoming evil, and everyone here enjoyed listening to it. If a 5 and 7 year old don't want you to stop reading a book like this, and teenagers listen from the other room and come in to comment occasionally, it is certainly a book worth reading. Again and Again.

A New Bookcase

I love this new/used shelf/bookcase. I have put it in the kitchen, near the dining room table where we do schoolwork. I think I will use it for the library books.

It also is on wheels and has a lower shelf on the wall side too. I put games and puzzles on that side which we use often, but I need out of the baby's sight.

(I got this today, so I don't really know what the wrong date is doing on the front of the picture?)

An Artistic Day

Last night we enjoyed the book Painting the Wind , so today I thought that we would paint our own wind. I am not particularly blessed with any painting ability, but I think it is important to expose my children to different types of art. This book described still life, landscape painting, and portrait painting. Mark and Grace enjoyed it alot, and they looked forward to our own "painting the wind" today. Here are results.

Gracie painted a very nice tree in the wind, with apples.

Mark's painting looked just like a tree in the wind, but being a 7 year old boy, his painting turned into a lumberjack(the brown guy on the left) chopping the nicely bent tree down.

I like my trees, my most artistic ever, but I am having a hard time seeing any wind here.
Next, we made very patriotic frisbees for Memorial Day. We found the idea in the book, Star-Spangled Crafts, by Kathy Ross.

They are very colorful, and very messy to make. I guarantee that we will be finding patriotic sequins, stars, and glitter for many days to come.

Barnes and Noble

This week Barnes and Noble is having a 25% discount on anything for homeschoolers. Some people do know the Barnes and Noble is my "happiest place on earth", and if your husband takes you there and tells you to get whatever you want, and then takes you to Red Lobster--well I guess then, that you are in HEAVEN!!

Catch My Breath Monday

Today was a nice, quiet day to catch our breath after the preparation and celebration of Holy

Week and Easter. We did manage to get a lot of picking up done around here, plus laundry. (I think about 6 or 7 loads). The dog had his first vet appointment and everything was just fine with him. The 3 Holy Cross students had play practice all day and Patrick had the day off of work, so he spent the day with friends shooting clay pigeons.

We did want to share our rosary making mission with everyone. We make rosaries for the missions through Our Lady's Rosary Makers and send them around the world to missions we find at the Lewis Rosary Parts (http://www.rosaryparts.com/ ) web site. We have sent them to Tanzania, Kenya, India and Mexico.

Grace and I also made a book about eggs today. It came out very nice. She practiced and proudly read it all to her daddy this evening.