Posted By Melissa on January 28, 2012
If you haven’t done so, I highly recommend reading whatever you read before your child came home again…after the fact. We’re in the middle of 7 weeks of homework for an upcoming training and I just reread a book that I’ve always believed in, The Connected Child: Bring hope and healing to your adoptive family
Posted By Melissa on January 24, 2012
One would think that having homeschooled children would mean less Valentine hassle. I did. Then I started counting how many we would need this year. Between preschool, Bible Study, Classical Conversations, and our field trip co-op party, I figured we’d need almost 100! For whatever reason, I’m adamantly against store bought cards, so I set out to find something creative that was easily reproducible that I hadn’t already used in the past.
Then I had this brilliant, AHA moment! It just so happens that I was simultaneously trying to think of a good assembly line project the three kids could do to learn about the Industrial Revolution. It also occurred to me that stencils and stamps were important to the Industrial Revolution because they allowed easier mass production.
Voila! Our creative Valentine idea was born.
I helped the big kids design a stamp or stencil. We used potatoes for stamps and a clean Chinese carryout container for our stencil paper.
Ty got pre-made stamps because that was easier and because we needed letters for our design.
Then we covered the table with newspaper and set to work. Ty stamped the initials for “Happy Valentine’s Day.” Mia traced her stencil, and lastly, PJ topped off the corners with red hearts.
In a little over an hour, we had 100 cards that were mostly finished!
We still need to go back and fill in the rest of the “Happy Valentine’s Day.” At the end, they will look like this.
The backs are blank for the kids to address and sign them.
Industrial Revolution lesson…check. Valentines…check. Two birds…one stone.
Posted By Melissa on January 18, 2012
Christian Kids Explore Chemistry
There are many ways to model atoms. We’re going to do the cookie models on page 67. Basically you bake a plain cookie and use 3 different candies (M&M’s suggested) to add protons, neutrons, and electrons.
On a side note: My favorite library book so far for explaining chemistry to kids is Basher Science: Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction
Posted By Melissa on January 17, 2012
This recipe happened sort of by accident. I had intended to make meatballs in my crock pot but misjudged how long it would take. They turned into this.
Ingredients:
1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. chopped raw maple flavored bacon (You could probably cook it first if you wanted it crispy for texture.)
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 eggs
1/4 cup onion flakes
2 TBSP minced garlic or 2 cloves pushed through a press
salt and pepper to taste
Posted By Melissa on January 13, 2012
Intro: Multimedia website or video
I thought this would be a fun week to explore Spanish culture a little since it’s a part of American culture. Check out the Scholastic plans here or here.
Lesson 5 and activity on Page 24 of Christian Kids Explore Chemistry
There is a pretty useful Powerpoint here.
Click here for more details on this semester’s science plan.
Posted By Melissa on January 7, 2012
January’s Christianity Today ran an article, “Open Arm, Closed Doors” (pages 15-17) that is just one of a slew of recent publications to bring attention to the dramatic decrease in international adoptions over the past few years. Usually such articles briefly mention that slow downs are due to new regulations that aim to crack down on child trafficking and corruption. However, they quickly brush that aside to highlight the agony of waiting parents (and sometimes the waiting kids). In fact, Holt is no longer accepting applications from families wanting to adopt from Ethiopia because it’s not fair that they will have “to wait and wait and wait.”
Enter one of my biggest pet peeves about international (or any) adoption conversations–any focus on the plight of waiting parents. While many would argue that they are really concerned about the kids caught in the middle, comments like the one by Holt’s Vice President that she’d “like to resume taking applications from prospective parents” cause me to wonder. Is she really concerned about the children or is she concerned that the slow down is bad for business? Whille, I’m sure agencies are genuinely concerned about the children, I’m concerned that their need to satisfy their clients (a.k.a., waiting parents) clouds their evualtion of the situation.
If we were really ONLY thinking about the children, improving their living situations, and finding them safe, permanent situations, then there would be much less focus (if any at all) on all the waiting families because…
…it’s not about us.
If we were really ONLY concerned for the children, we would not have blinders on to the dozens of other ways to address the global orphan crisis. We would more readily get out of our comfort zones to find solutions because…
…it’s not about us.
If the children really were the focus, we would not be whining about four year process times and our empty arms, we would be going and doing because…
…it’s not about us.
Why are we so narrow-minded to think that children have to come to us to get help? We yank thousands of kids every year out of their birth culture and away from any family and anything familiar but how many families even consider making an equivalent sacrifice and taking the family to the orphan instead of the other way around?
Lest you think me incredibly naive, let me clarify that I know there are no simple solutions. Additionally, I am not opposing international adoption. Instead I am challenging families
It’s not about us. It’s about whatever will give the most glory to God. It’s about restoring family relationships to orphans.
It can be about international adoption but it can also be about supporting foster care and domestic adoption in other countries, or supporting kids aging out, or relocating to another country to give a family to more orphans than you could support here, or training orphanage workers, or supporting communities to care for their own orphans, or supporting a family to keep their kids.
It just can’t be about us.
Posted By Melissa on January 7, 2012
I was recently asked, “How do you plan to create happiness for yourself in 2012?”
There are, of course, the cliche answers such as take time for myself, live in the moment, get my priorities straight, exercise more, tell corny jokes…you get the idea. But since I hate cliche answers, I kept thinking.
Then there was the Vitamin Water moment yesterday. I love Vitamin Water, but it’s much more expensive than normal water, and I usually can’t justify having it (unless it’s onsale at Costco and the Costco fairy delivers a case). So was the case (pun intended) twice over the past couple months so I’ve been living the high life. It occurred to me as I was driving down the road yesterday, savoring my Vitamin Water, that I may have to just start splurging for little things like Vitamin Water for the huge pay off of happiness.
So my answer could be, “Buy myself Vitamin Water.” Nope, too shallow. I kept thinking.
I realized that happy seems to be a shallow, fleeting emotion by my definition anyway. I am happy or unhappy on and off hundreds of times a day. I would like to think perhaps the question was getting more at a general state so I began to think, ”How do you plan to create joy and contentedness for yourself in 2012?”
Mmmm…much deeper. Service. I want to take the focus off of me, myself, and I (and my family) and be intentional about regularly going outside of our comfort zones to serve others. This will also require us to simplify. In order to have time to give away, we need to pare down on how much maintenance our lives need. This may mean giving away material things, clearing our schedule, and lowering perfectionistic expectations. So that’s the plan for 2012.
How do you plan to create happiness (or joy or contentedness) for yourself in 2012?
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Posted By Melissa on January 5, 2012
Intro: You have your pick–trusty YouTube or any of the 70+ videos found here.
I loosely picked activities around this lesson plan.
*Remember I’m not really following the memory work for science this semester. More on that and a more comprehensive Amazon widget are here.
Elements are explained on page 29 of Christian Kids Explore Chemistry
If you don’t have the book (or even if you do), there are a couple great experiment/activity books on the states of matter below.
Posted By Melissa on January 4, 2012
With my family here and his family there, we’ve always had to be intentional about how we split time for the holidays. Years ago we decided to do Thanksgiving in one state and Christmas in the other. Every year we switch which one we do where. Our families have been very gracious about “sharing” us and the system has worked well so far. Fortunately our current town also happens to be my hometown so we get to spend every other holiday or so at home. On years we are at home for Christmas, we try to journey north the week before or after. This year to accomodate the Grinch reading, we waited to travel until New Year’s weekend.
How does you handle holiday family juggling?
Time in CT usually means time with the cousins (or at least two of them)!
There aren’t any cousins on my side but there are 9 all together on Patrick’s side. My in laws welcomed 9 grandkids over just 5 years!
Besides hanging out with cousins, we took advantage of the wide selection of hockey equipment found in New England over B-more, visited Kringle and Yankee Candle factories, and ate lots of food. Can you say monkey bread?
It should also be noted here that we’re thankful for the wonderful guy who got PJ all geared up for hockey. He was even able to find a helmet to fit his head…even if we did have to pay twice as much.
Note to shoulder pad manufacturers: Please make the head opening a little bigger or provide snap openings or something.
Oh, we also took in a CT Whale game. It’s the most attuned the kids have every been. The Whale even won! See Ty’s victory violin?
He’s been taking his air violin everywhere these days 
