Sesame Street: Anderson Cooper Reports

Dane's Aunt Pat thinks that Anderson Cooper looks like Huyler when he's grown up. I see the Chinnock-y resemblance.

Sesame street doesn't allow embedding so you have to click here to watch it on Youtube.com

Setting Goals for the New Year

Setting Goals
By Tasha Chinnock

Every support group, convention speaker and home school book or blog I have ever gleaned from has emphasized the need to set goals for yourself. There are handy tools all over the internet to help you graph out your objectives and how you will achieve them. It is important not only to set new goals for each new school year, but to reinforce your goals and reasons for homeschooling every year. This way, when you get weary or frustrated, you have something to look back on and remember that you truly are achieving the things you set out to do from the very beginning. So, with that intent, I present to you our goals.

My Reasons for Teaching at Home:
· God’s word makes teaching these children my responsibility above anyone else’s.
· I want my kids to look at life from a Biblical perspective.
· I want them to have the benefits of one-on-one teaching.
· I love spending time with my kids and watching them learn new things.

My Goals for This Year:
· Have a well-organized school area
· Develop a realistic schedule
· Get the kids excited about reading
· By the end of their year, Ardara and Huyler should be reading easy readers on their own
· By the end of the year they should be adding, subtracting, telling place value, time, and counting money easily.
· Ardara and Huyler will be journaling regularly
· They will learn to understand and apply Biblical principles in their own lives.
· Augie should be saying his alphabet, recognizing letters and numbers 0-10.
· All three kids should have improved drawing skills.
· All three kids will be able to recognize different musical instruments.

My Most Important Goal:
· Spending lots of time with my kids, having lots of fun learning about the history of the world, the phenomenon of the Bible, the beauty of creation, the wonder of God’s grace and the potential they each have to become something great.

Augie's Preschool

Although he did a lot of school stuff with us last year, Augie is officially starting school this year. I have an advantage with Augie, because I kept records of everything I did with Huyler and Ardara in preschool, so I am ready to do much of the same things with him. The other really cool thing about My Father’s World is that the people who wrote the curriculums, Marie and David Hazel, have six kids of their own and homeschooled all of them at the same time. So, they know how difficult it can be to teach several different age groups from several unique curriculums. And this is especially true with a preschooler, who needs so much attention from mommy. So, a lot of the
activities in the First Grade curriculum are things that Augie can join us in. During the times when the bigger kids are doing reading and writing and math practice, I will have letter and number coloring or crafts for him to do, games for him to play, and some big floor puzzles for him to work on. He was really great last year about doing his work while I helped the older kids. The only thing that bothered him was not having his OWN workbook. So, this year I will make him his own bound workbook out of all the fun sheets I found online.
Augie will also get to join us for Hebrew lessons. I’m actually devising my own beginning Hebrew curriculum based on the concept that children learn to speak before they learn letters. So, I am making vocabulary flashcards and we will be learning nursery rhymes and counting and other early phrases in Hebrew before we start learning to read Hebrew, which is where other curriculums usually begin. I am encouraged in this by an Israeli man who goes to church with us, Ofer. He has agreed to spend some time helping the kids with
Hebrew!

Huyler and Ardara in 1st Grade

The First grade curriculum from My Father’s World is entitled “The Complete Bible Curriculum”, and it will take us through the whole Bible by the end of the year. The kids will have their own Bible Reader full of Bible stories they will read themselves, they will also learn about the history of the Bible through lots of great activities. Some of these include making their own scroll using their most careful “scroll writing” as well as a clay pot to keep it in, drawing a Bible Lands map, making a Bible times costume, measuring Noah’s ark in cubits, and keeping a timeline all year of every historical event we learn about, from creation to Christ’s return, including our own births.
Our math curriculum involves using shape pattern blocks, sorting, comparing greater and lesser, and of course addition and subtraction.
Our art program is Teaching Children to Draw using the Monart method, by Mona Brookes. The children begin by learning the 5 main shapes used in all images. Once they know this “code” they will learn to draw things more realistically. They will get plenty of practice, as they will be drawing pictures of every Bible story they read in a special Bible Notebook. They will also have sessions of art appreciation. Using a book designed for children, we will look at artistic masterpieces and discuss the details and style of the paintings. I’m excited about art because I may take on an additional pupil. Dane’s cousin Kim has asked me to tutor her son Matt in art!
Each Wednesday we will have Exploration Day, where we spend part of the day outside and try a new science experiment. On these days there will be no reading or math lessons.
We will also spend time regularly learning about music. We have a CD with Peter and the Wolf, Carnival of Animals, and a Child’s Guide to the Orchestra. We will color pictures of instruments as we listen.
It will be an adventure!

School Starts September 4th

I’m so excited for school to start! It has been
constantly occupying my thoughts for weeks. I was really blessed to find the 1st grade curriculum for My Father’s World on a home school classifieds web page for less than half the price. Last year, I was unable to afford the deluxe set with all the extra curricular activities, so I ended up trying to do them my self with only marginal luck (If you remember, our caterpillars never made a cocoon and we couldn’t find any ants in December). But this year, because I saved on the curriculum, I was able to find all the extra parts for the deluxe curriculum on Amazon.com. This is going to be a really fun year.
Most of the schools in our area are starting in early August, but we are giving ourselves a full 4 months of summer. It works out well, because, just like last year, our curriculum is only 160 days. That gives us plenty of time to finish by May including holidays. We’ve used our 4 months of summer well, though. Besides the Reading Reflex, which has been a super fun and easy way for the kids to learn phonograms, we have also gone to several movies in the park, cultivated an ant farm (successfully!), hiked and caught frogs at Willow Lake, hiked and done more bird watching (we saw a bald eagle!) at Lynx Lake, hiked up the trail at Humphrey’s Peak while Daddy got his surgery, took care of Daddy while he was incapacitated, attended Vacation Bible School at Robert Road Baptist Church where the theme was “Outrigger
Island”. They even taught us some Hawaiian — wiki wiki means quickly. And that is how we should choose to follow Jesus — wiki wiki! We took swimming lessons, read over 100 books from the library, got to know cousin Emmy, and added regularly to our blogs. Ardara and Huyler’s artistic talents continued to blossom. Huyler has completely conquered his articulation problem. And finally, all of us were able to say goodbye to Grandpa John before he moved to Heaven. It has been a full summer and we are thankful for all of it. Now, lets get schooling!

Sparks-A-Rama 2008

Contribute to Our 2008-2009 School Experience Early!

I mentioned in the Barometer that I was going to post a list of things we will need for next year. I am confident that we will have everything we need, so don't feel like I expect you to send us money or supplies. But if you want to, we would be very thankful!

• wide ruled, single subject notebooks
• pencils
• erasers
• crayons
• paints
• markers
• construction paper
• glue/glue sticks
• folders
• any other craft items

Ink Cartridges available at:

Carrot Ink

Our curriculum is available at:

My Father's World

We could also do our own shopping with gift cards from Office Max

Summing Up Our First Year

By Tasha Chinnock

This week as I looked through our files from the year, I was really amazed at all we have done and all we have learned. Looking back at the work the kids did in that first week, I couldn’t believe my eyes at how much better their writing, their reading, their coordination and their comprehension has gotten. They started out preschoolers, and they are ready for first grade. But the greatest success I think we achieved this year is that all three kids LOVE school. When I told them that we were done with school for the summer I expected to get cheers of excitement, but instead, all I got were questions. “Will we ever do school again?”, “Why can’t we just have school all summer?”, “Can we start first grade next week?”
Another thing that really surprises me is that I did it! I believed them when they told me that I could, but I didn’t ever think it would be easy, fun, exciting—in short, it’s my favorite thing in my present life. I’m not exaggerating. If I could spend my whole day doing school with the kids and my whole evening preparing for the next day’s class, I would be totally happy. I love telling Dane everything we did when he gets home from work. I love showing off our projects to people who come over. I love telling my girlfriends, who aren’t sure they want to undertake a life of home schooling, about all the interesting things we get to do and make and see and read. I love watching Huyler and Ardara’s mouths work through a word, and being able to almost SEE the wheels turning inside their heads. I love to see the light come on in their eyes when they understand something they have struggled to understand. I love to see their pride in remembering something they learned a week or a month before. I love thinking of a way that “just might work” to help them learn something and having it WORK. But finding out that I am an adequate kindergarten teacher isn’t even the best part.
The most valuable thing that I am gaining from teaching my kids at home is a relationship with them. I feel like I understand them and know them so much better now than I did 8 months ago. I have learned how their minds and hearts process things. I have been astounded by their wisdom and sincerity. At the beginning of the year I was baffled by Huyler’s lack of attention, his difficulty in listening and responding to adults, and his apprehensive approach to learning. Now I see that he needed more structure, attention, and reassurance to succeed. He has gotten that through our school routine, through his Awanas club, and through the one-on-one time I could spend teaching him. He is no longer afraid to try or the possibility that he might fail, because he knows that I am here to help him if he makes a mistake and that he can learn anything if he keeps trying. In spite of all the warnings I got from well-meaning friends that “Boys learn slower than girls do”, he is learning to read faster than Ardara, and his hand-writing is almost as neat as hers when he takes his time and tries. Then there is Ardara. She is so smart, I wondered if she would be bored by the pace we would need to take for Huyler’s best interest, or feel left out because I gave him more attention. But what I found was that Ardara loves to help Huyler learn. She rejoices with him when he gets answers right. Her artistic side just takes over while I help him through an exercise, so pretty much every worksheet she did this year is covered in doodles. In the areas where Huyler catches on more quickly, we often find ourselves waiting for Ardara to finish her intricate coloring of the pictures on the page before she is ready to move on to the next thing. One area where Ardara has improved a lot this year is her ability to accept criticism. At the beginning of the year she would literally get furious with me if she got an answer wrong, drew a letter backwards, or missed a number in counting. She was just devastated to be told she did something wrong. I was able to adjust my approach to correcting her so that it was more encouraging and gentle. But I also just sat down and talked to her about learning being a process where we are expected to make mistakes in order to learn from them. I explained that if I never showed her a mistake, she would keep making it all her life. But because she hated to see a red mark on her page, it would always stick in her mind and keep her from making the same mistake again. My other concern was August—how would I be able to keep an eye on him, to teach him anything, while I was working with Huyler and Ardara? I was delighted to see how much of the kindergarten curriculum interested him. He didn’t care as much for the worksheets, but he loved the experiments, stories, bible lessons and crafts. When we would come to a part that was over his head, he would just quietly go to the book shelf and get a dry-erase book or a puzzle or something else that he enjoyed and sit on the floor by my feet working on it. He was hardly ever a distraction, and what is more, he seemed to pick up a lot of what Huyler and Ardara were learning, so that he now knows the sounds of all the letters and can match capitals and lowercase much of the time.
In summing up, I guess the whole point I am trying to make is that our year was a greater success than I even thought possible. I can’t wait for next year—in fact, I’m not. We have lessons planned out for the whole summer (see pg. 3 “Reading Reflex”). I’m so thankful that I have the privilege of teaching my own children. And I’m so thankful for all the positive support all of you have shown me. Your participation and encouragement have gone a long way and I hope you will continue to enjoy being a part of the Chinnock Education Experience.

The Reading Reflex

I gave the kids a reading placement test, and they did very well. Ardara is at a 97% for 1st grade reading, while Huyler is at 86%. But this book really got me excited about the methods it uses and why they are so successful. So we have already started doing this and plan to do it throughout the summer to give the kids a head start on first grade reading. They may just pass up the first grade level and keep going!

You can read all about this program at Read America's web page.

Y is for Yellow

The final week of the My Father’s World curriculum was a study of color. We learned about primary and secondary colors and the colors of the visible spectrum. I used the acrostic name, “ROY G BIV”, that Mr. Bunch taught me to help them learn the 7 colors of the rainbow. We learned about prisms, and reflection/absorption of light. We learned about tinting and shading. It was a full, fun week. For an outing, we took a camera and drove to the park, taking pictures of different colored items. Then we came home, printed out the pictures and made a rainbow out of all the things we had photographed. One day we made a Rainbow Stick, which is much like a Rainstick, but more colorful. We used a paper towel tube, tons of toothpicks, and a handful of lentils. We painted the tube the colors of the visible spectrum, and then we poked the toothpicks through every-which-way and taped shut the ends with beans inside. Then we covered the pointy tips of all the toothpicks with hot glue “raindrops”. For the finishing touch, we glued cotton ball clouds on each end to cover up the tape. When we tilt the stick back and forth, it sounds like rain gently falling. We also found two books of children’s poetry—one entirely describing colors, and the other describing seasons (including spring and rainbows). Since our Bible lesson was “Thank you God, for this beautiful world” we decided to write poems about things in nature. You can read the kids’ poems on their blogs. Huyler's Blog / Ardara's Blog I was surprised at their chosen subjects. On the last day of school we made a rainbow dessert with every color of Jell-O (in the proper order of course!) and a whipped cream cloud on top! Hooray!

Q is for Quail

Quail week was actually more of a bird week. But we did learn about quail specifically, too. Our Bible lesson was from Numbers 11 when the people of Israel grumbled and God sent so much quail to them that they ate their fill and then got very sick. Some of them even died. The sad part was, they weren’t starving, they had the food that God was providing for them. They just weren’t content and thankful. So, this was an important lesson for our kids to learn, especially right now when we are trusting the Lord daily for our needs. And they really have been showing contentment and thankfulness for every blessing. During this week we got to take a field trip to Lynx Lake to have a bird watching and feather collecting hike. We saw loons and ducks and some little songbirds. We listened carefully to the songs they sang, drew pictures of everything we saw, and walked very quietly down the path. We had hoped to see the eagle that lives around there, but he wasn’t around. Ardara was a real scout and found the first feather AND a bird nest. Huyler led us off the main trail, closer to the water and found a nesting spot for ducks with TONS of feathers. We really hit the jackpot! We also played a game where you roll a ball to someone in the circle and they have to think of a type of bird before rolling it to someone else. We learned about the Dodo bird—pretty interesting stuff—and we made waterproof “feathers” by rubbing paper feathers with olive oil and then watching water bead off instead of soaking in.

V is for Vegetable

For our week on vegetables we started off learning what a vegetable is. A vegetable can be any part of a plant that is edible—the root, the stem, the leaves, the seeds or the flowers. Some vegetables are fruits! We made a diagram of three different kinds of vegetables which showed all the different parts of the plants. It included carrots, celery and tomatoes. We used lentils to make our own sprouts. We couldn’t believe how fast they grew! And they tasted great on sandwiches, in salads and even in our cold soup! They were crunchy with a nutty flavor. We also had a couple of avocado pits that we tried to sprout. No luck. I have to say, we have tried this several times over the years and I have never been able to get one to sprout. I looked up instructions on line and it still didn’t work. What am I doing wrong? Another fun activity we tried was dying with vegetables, using directions sent to us at Easter time by Grammy Sally. We used red cabbage, beets, turmeric, black tea, blackberries and spinach to die squares of white fabric. We sewed them together into a quilt. Some of the vegetables worked better than others. It was a lot of fun! We checked out a kids’ vegetarian cookbook, chose some yummy sounding recipes out of it, and went to the grocery store armed with a shopping list. The kids found each item, identified its price, weighed it, and helped me calculate the price! Then we went home and made a delicious vegetarian dinner of avocado soup (with lentil sprouts), Greek tomato and feta salad, spanakopita and baklava. It was so delicious. Daddy was very impressed. And we all learned a very important lesson—God gives us everything we need. He gives us plants for food, and he gives the plants all the water, sunlight and nutrients they need to grow. He even invented pollination and other amazing ways that plants continue to reproduce!

The Rubber Band Band

We taped the kids trying to sing "This Land is Your Land" with rubber band guitars way back in August, before we started our official curriculum. Since I just figured out how to retrieve these videos, I am posting it now!

Huyler's Bridge Crossing

We went to Lynx Lake the other day for a bird watching assignment. (More on that later) I took this video of Huyler doing a trick I did long ago at the Redwood Forrest. I'm pretty sure our old home movies have a clip of me doing this. I remember thinking I was hot stuff! My phone only takes 30 second clips though, I guess, so it cut off me telling the story to Huyler.

The 100 Party!!!

Our 100th day of school we added the last number to our 100 chart and the last straw to the cup! Then we each contributed 100 of something to the festivities—Sticker collection books from Mom, marbles from Augie,
colored tissue paper from Ardara, and poker chips from Huyler. We divvied up 100 cereal balls and 100 mini marshmallows and got to work on a 100-piece puzzle!

Well, we can count to 100 now, can you?

Star Student Awards and the Red Goblet

"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in the power of your hand to do so.”
- Prov. 3:27

When the school year started off, I had the great idea to fill a treasure box with little prizes, like you get at the doctor’s office, to motivate the kids to pay attention, work hard and be “Star Students”. This lasted the whole first semester. The only problem was that their focus was SO intent on the star student awards that it was a horrible disaster when they didn’t actually earn the award. They would have a fidgety, complaining day of school and then expect the award at the end of the day. But it was really too much when they started complaining about their awards not being good enough and fighting over who should get what, etc. I did away with the Star Student Award Box, and told them I expected them to perform well out of their own desire to learn instead of the desire for a prize. Amazingly, it worked! But I missed having a way to really honor their achievements. Then I read about an old custom called the Red Plate, where a red plate is placed at someone’s dinner setting when they have any achievement to honor. Since we already have red dinnerware, I chose a red plastic goblet from the seasonal patio section at the grocery store. It has been fun to put it at someone’s dinner plate and have everyone guessing WHY they got it. It also has them going out of their way to be extra helpful for me! Even Daddy got the Red Goblet the other day for getting out his bike, his bike pump and the kids’ bikes and just riding around our lane with the kids for a couple of hours while I got some quiet time!

X is for FoX

For the week on Foxes we spent a lot of time reading fables. We did learn about actual foxes too, but I think our main reason for studying foxes was to learn that God’s Word makes us wiser than our enemies. The fox in old fables is always crafty and sly, just like we are told the devil is. The only way to get wisdom that overcomes the lies of the Devil is to read God’s Word. Because /X/ is the final sound in the word fox, rather than the beginning sound, we used that as an opportunity to learn more about rhyming. We played some rhyming games and wrote poetry. We also talked about how the letter X doesn’t make the sound /ehcks/ but just the sound /cks/. This is why there are so few words that start with x, and when they do, it sounds more like /z/ than /x/. We took careful notice of words like “exercise” and “excited” that seem to start with the /x/ sound, but actually start with the short /e/ sound, just like “elephant” did. For fun fox activities, we sang “A-hunting we will go” marching in a circle, Elmer Fudd style, and when we came to the part that says, “We’ll catch a fox inside a box, and then we’ll let him go” we would catch one person, like you do in London Bridges, and then let them go. We also made a comparison chart of dogs and foxes, to see how they are different (one is wild and the other one is tame, etc.) We gathered pictures of animals and classified them by different habitats they live in. We tried to make up our own fox fable that would teach a good lesson. Make sure to visit Ardara and Huyler's blogs to read the kids’ own fables. A really easy memory verse to learn for this chapter, was Psalm 119:98 “Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.”

F is for Frog

Frogs are always a fun subject. Huyler was disappointed that we didn’t dissect a frog. (I’m saving that for Junior High years at least!) Instead we studied about the life cycle of a frog. Eggs, tadpoles, froglets and frogs. We learned about different kinds of frogs, like poison dart frogs, goliath frogs, bullfrogs, dwarf frogs and tree frogs. We learned how they eat with long, sticky tongues, how they breathe through their mouth and through their skin. We learned that they have to stay damp to be able to breathe through their skin. We learned about their diet of bugs and minnows. We learned about the different sounds that different frogs make, from chirping to croaking, and how this attracts a mate for the frogs. We found some funny frog jokes (see the back page). And we wrote a story book. We modeled it from the old classic “Over In The Meadow”. But ours is called “Over In The Pond”. We had to come up with pond animals and rhymes that would fit and still be sort of accurate about the various animals. It took us a whole school day just to do five! Here is a slide show of it.

We also made our own “FROG FACT BOOKS” where we illustrated several facts we had learned about frogs.

Our lesson to learn from frogs is to use our tongues wisely. Just as a frog waits until the exact right moment to snap up bugs, we should wait and consider how to use our tongues the best we can.

B is for Butterfly

The first week of March was on butterflies. We learned about the life cycle of a butterfly. We acted out their life cycle by hiding under a plastic box for “egg”, crawling on a green blanket on our bellies for “caterpillar”, wrapping up in a blanket for “chrysalis” and then wearing wings made from grocery sacks for “butterfly”. We did crafts showing the four stages of their life cycle, and we learned all about what they eat, how long they live and so forth. We learned about tropical butterflies, their different wing shapes and patterns, their mimicry, and their predators. I ordered a dozen butterfly eggs from a butterfly farm in Florida. They hatched and the caterpillars wouldn’t eat anything I had for them! So they all died. So, we went hiking in the Watson Woods Riparian Habitat and found another caterpillar. He was lethargic, but did eat and poop regularly. We waited for him to make a chrysalis and become a butterfly. We named him “Blackout” because he is black and the butterflies we saw in the Watson Woods were also mostly black. But now we think perhaps he is a grub. Oops! We also drew pictures of Monarch Butterflies, trying to get the markings just right.
Our Bible lesson for this week was from the teaching on regeneration in the New testament. “God can make me new” became our motto with verses like “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come!” 2 Cor. 5:17

Rare Mummified Dinosaur Uncovered

I think its funny that in spite of the evidence that this dinosaur was covered rapidly (hello, think major flooding) to create its fossilized skin, the scientists INSIST it is 65 million years old. When will they learn?

Rare mummified dinosaur uncovered
Duckbilled Edmontosaurus covered by fossilized skin that is as hard as iron
By Blake Nicholson
The Associated Press
updated 8:06 a.m. MT, Tues., March. 18, 2008

BISMARCK, North Dakota - Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all.
Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb.
"This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh," said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Manchester University in England, a member of the international team researching Dakota.
"This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter."
Animal tissue typically decomposes quickly after death. Researchers say Dakota must have been buried rapidly and in just the right environment for the skin to be preserved.
"The process of decay was overtaken by that of fossilization, preserving many of the soft-tissue structures," Manning said.
read the whole article here

School Outings

We went to the library one day and did our studies in a study room while Daddy worked at home. Convenient!

Alex did his science fair project on Diamonds and we got to go to the fair. It set our minds a reeling.

We got to go to the Phoenix Zoo on the Saturday after we finished wild animals. Zebras, kangaroos, elephants... but no penguins.

Why Tax Credits Are Wrong for Homeschoolers

by Valorie Delp

Qualified educators currently can claim $250 on qualified purchases from the IRS. Most homeschoolers spend at least that on curriculum per year so why not give us a $250 tax credit too? I could use that money!

Who Defines a Home Educator?

I think I'm pretty safe on this one. You see, I'm sure I'm a home educator. I have curriculum. I have paperwork. I have my little teacher's card from HSLDA and most reasonable businesses give me their teacher discount. New York State requires so much paperwork that I can use any of the paperwork that I turn in to 'prove' that I'm teaching.

My friends in Connecticut or New Jersey though, they don't have any requirements. What would they use to prove that they're home educators? Their child's portfolios? And what about my unschooling friends? Because their educational philosophy disagrees with mine--do they not count as home educators?

The first problem with accepting tax credits is that it necessarily means that the government must define who is a home educator and who is not. Do you really want that? It would likely mean federalized paper work, specific type of record keeping, and a set course of instruction. . .which brings me to my next point. To be honest, I don't see how the federal government could possibly require more paperwork than I already do, but most homeschoolers in other states could not say the same thing. Chances are good that if you're reading this, a tax credit would increase your paperwork, and probably substantially.

Who Defines What Qualified Expenses Are?

Having the government define what my qualified expenses are for home schooling makes me squeamish to be honest. I don't want the government involved in my home schooling--period. While I'm sure I could prove I'm a home educator I'm less sure that my curriculum would be approved, as it's decidedly Christian. And people who use Bob Jones or Abeka….they could forget about being approved, as that curriculum is all from one view point. Do you want government approved curriculum? If you do, you might want to consider sending your kids to public school. That's fine by me. . .it's your choice. But I don't want the government letting me know whether or not phonics is okay and what I'm allowed to teach in science.

And let's talk about other 'curricular' items. I know a family who decided to put a chicken coop in their backyard. I can see how that's home schooling. . .do they get a tax credit for that or does that not count? What about my kids' classes that they take at the Y? Do those count? Those are on their IHIPs. And again, our unschooling friends who don't use any curriculum. What could their qualified expenses be?

Accepting the tax credit means that the federal government will have to define who is a home educator and what is a qualified expense. It might not seem that complicated on the outset. But remember that it's the state government, and not the federal government that currently decides on state education laws. Shifting the power to define who we are and what we teach will not only increase government control in home schools, but it could easily infringe on the rights of parents to teach their own children at home. I know personally, I cannot support increased government involvement in home schooling and so I'm happy to forgo a tax credit.

Special Request

I mentioned in the Barometer that I have started some speech therapy with Huyler. Let me explain. Huyler has been an avid finger sucker since he was a baby. He still is. We have tried to break the habit, but to no avail. Anyway, it seems like Huyler’s inability to say his /R/ sounds may be partially due to this habit. But now Augie, who has never sucked his fingers, is having the same problem! Is he learning it from Huyler? I don’t really know! So, I hunted around a little to try to find some speech therapy techniques to use in helping him say it properly. There wasn’t a whole lot available without spending lots of money. I found some articles on teaching English as a second language to Japanese people, who often confuse /R/ and /L/ sounds. I’m using that information to try to teach him the proper tongue position for /R/, but the problem is, he doesn’t confuse it with /L/, but with /W/. I know this is a really common speech impediment, so there must be something more specific to his needs out there. I thought I would just ask each of you to keep your eyes peeled for materials, articles or techniques that could help us out. You got to feel for the kid, when he can’t even pronounce his own name properly!

More Precious Than Silver

Here are Huyler and Ardara singing along with Satellite Soul on "More Precious Than Silver". Again, I looked up the signs for the words on ASLpro.com so there may be a better way to do the song in sign, but I love how much heart the kids put into this. Maybe some day they will be able to tell a deaf person about the Lord from learning all these signs.

J is for Jewels

For our week on Jewels, we started off by learning about Jewels—how they are formed, how they are mined, and how they are cut to catch light so they will sparkle. We learned about some interesting things like the work of a “lapidary”, the UN warning against buying “blood diamonds” used to fund wars, and about making synthetic diamonds in a laboratory. According to Alex’s science fair project, they are now making diamonds out of peanut butter! We also got to see a real emerald, a real garnet, and a real opal that Grandpa Mark sent us. One day, we examined my diamond ring, and looked for the tiny flaw in it with a magnifying glass. Huyler found it but Ardara had to be shown. We read a book called “A Cache of Jewels” to learn about collective nouns, or words that describe a collection of things (school of fish, kindle of kittens, etc.) We also used little jewels to do some of the math worksheets that Grandpa John passed on to us from his horde of teaching materials (notice the collective noun). We made jewel necklaces out of colored straws. We made crowns out of foil. And most importantly we made rock candy! Our parallel lesson was that Jesus is more valuable than anything else. Our next post will be a video of the kids signing “More Precious Than Silver” and doing the sign language with it. One more rare rock we read about this week was meteors /meteorites.

R is for Rock

I think we had the most contributions ever for the next two lessons. Grandpa Mark sent us the most awesome rock collection. We can’t wait to show it off to the boy next door who keeps his rock collection in a used pizza box. We also loved the presentation that Uncle Ammon sent about different kinds of rocks and how they are formed. It went perfectly with what we learned from library books and our curriculum. We spent our first day looking at these great collections, and read a book called “The Magic School bus Goes to the Middle of the Earth” in which we learned a bit more about how rocks are formed—from magma, heat, pressure and time, just like Ammon said! The second day, we went outside and collected rocks of our own. We tried to find varied shapes, sizes, textures and colors. Then we came inside and sorted them by color, by size, by texture, etc. The next day, we went back through them and sorted them by metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous. We also tried to grow our own crystal garden using salt, water and liquid bluing on sponges. I don’t know what we did wrong, but instead of growing up, like I have seen them do, they spread far and wide, all over the outside of the dish, the tray it was sitting on and even a little on the window sill! Yikes! But they did grow…

We also checked out a DVD of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with Pat Boone. Classic.
Our lesson from the Bible was to “build our lives on the Rock,” Jesus Christ. We read the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. We even tried building with blocks on a big rock and in the soft dirt next to it and then flooding the houses with a whoosh of water. Sure enough, the house that wasn’t on the rock toppled and the house on the rock stood firm. We learned about builders using a “plumb line” to build their house, and using the same parable, we decided that the plumb line we follow for our lives should be God’s Word.

STOLEN!

Imagine our excitement when Monday morning we read the headlines of the huge art heist in Switzerland! The four paintings stolen at gunpoint were by Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh and Monet and were worth over $163 million!!! We looked up pictures of them online. One of them we had already looked at in our Impressionism lesson on Friday. We sure do hope they catch those bad guys before those paintings are sold on the black market or damaged!

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But things really got out of hand when we finished our week on J is for Jewels and saw an article about a jewel heist! We are afraid to study anything else of value, for fear that there is some connection between our studies and the thefts. Could Ardara and Huyler be high-profile cat-burglars on the sly?????

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Impressionism

During our first week of February we learned about Impressionist art. We read a book about artists like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Cassatt and Van Gogh. We learned how they used broad brush-strokes, varied textures of paint and modern themes to create the impression of something, rather than a realistic image of the subject. Since this was also our week on Kangaroos, we read a book called “Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing”. So, our most contemporary experience was the idea of animals getting all tangled up or inconvenienced by their clothing. This birthed the concept for our art project. We decided to do a painting of an animal having some difficulty with an item of clothing, and to paint it in an Impressionist style. Ardara painted a monkey trying to wear overalls, but the strap was caught on a branch, so he couldn’t swing free. Huyler painted a bunny trying to get into a shirt (in the lower right). All the swipes and slashes across the page show the struggle this little bunny has had getting into a blouse that is much too big.

Z is for Zebra

Zebra week was just too fun. We learned about these ungulates (members of the horse family) from several library books. We were surprised at how big the plains zebras get—actually measuring 6 feet high at the shoulder! We looked at a picture of a zebra and drew the stripes on a blank zebra as closely as possible to the markings we observed. Then we painted tall, brown grass in front of them and saw how the stripes could be good camouflage for a zebra. This tied in our biblical lesson for the week, “I can’t hide anything from God.” We read Psalm 139, Psalm 33:13 and Hebrews 4:13 as some examples of how much God sees. We are so glad to know that our outer hurts and our inner feelings are all just as important to God, and he sees it all as plain as day, even if we keep it a secret from other people. We took a break on the 13th to make Valentines using some fun craft ideas from Anika. Then on Thursday, we went back to the concept of continents and countries. We practiced naming all seven continents and all 4 oceans. Then we made an awesome mural of Africa with pictures of many wild animals that are exclusive to Africa. We looked in an encyclopedia to figure out what part of the continent they would be found on. Like our ocean mural, this took a lot of work, but was also very fun and gratifying! Some other fun games we played were hide and seek and Wild Animal 20 questions, which Ardara is now addicted to. And we finished off the week and our entire wild animal section with a surprise trip to the Phoenix Zoo! See our School Outings post for photos.