The Multiple Personality Mom

As women, we often experience a wide range of emotions on any given day. To our husbands and children--and even to ourselves--these mood changes can seem like multiple personalities. You may meet some of your "other selves" in this encouraging, allegorical podcast.




This podcast (written last year for The Ultimate Homeschool Expo) is 19 minutes long. To listen, press play in the widget box, or click "visit my call" to download to Mp3.

Homeschool Apple Awards

I feel so blessed to be nominated again this year for the Homeschool Blog Awards.  Thank you!  In honor of the awards we decided to hold our own little awards ceremony today:  The Homeschool Apple Awards.

Four distinctive apples were chosen:  Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Gala and Honey Crisp.  Slices of each were sampled and a vote was taken.  Which apple would win?

Granny Smith and Golden Delicious tied.  Gala and Honey Crisp were eliminated, having garnered only one vote each.  A re-vote was taken.

Golden Delicious won, hands down!  Only Grandma voted for Granny Smith.

"My favorite apple won!!!  Mwaaa haaa haaa haaa haaaa.........."

Yes, this is just a bit of silliness.  But you should try it!  Our lunch conversation was lively and now I know what kind of apples to buy next time at the store!

File Folder Spelling

My nine year old dyslexic son has been making great strides in his spelling.  I like to use hands-on, kinesthetic methods as he works to learn his spelling words.  One of his favorite activities is File Folder Spelling.

He is given a stack of different colored alphabets, a file folder, his spelling list and some thumbnail pictures printed from a clipart program or *Google Images (one per spelling word).

First, he cuts out the letters he needs to spell the first word on the list.  Next, he glues them down.  He then finds the appropriate picture that goes with the spelling word, and he glues the picture down beside the spelled word.  This helps him to visualize both the spelling of the word and its meaning, which is very helpful for him.  Last, he writes the word out in his own hand.

You'll notice that the last word on this list is "the".  Words like these are the most difficult for dyslexics, who think in pictures.  This word no longer gives him trouble in reading or spelling, and I truly think it is because of exercises like this one, which help him to visualize a definition for this little word.  For this file folder, he had a picture of a group of stick people, and he circled one of them to represent "the".

*I always search for images myself.  It is incredible what a benign search of google images can pull up, so you would NEVER want to allow a child to search for images himself, even when your computer is set to "safe search".

Preparing Hearts for Christmas

Do you have a desire to start family devotions? Are you looking for some ways to turn your childrens' hearts toward the Lord during the upcoming holiday season? Please join me for a time of encouragement and practical tips on implementing family worship during this special time of year.

It's not too early to start planning for a meaningful Christmas season. In this podcast I share about what our family does during our Advent season devotions, with some encouragement for you and lots of practical ideas!

If you want to download this talk to Mp3 or burn it to CD, click "visit my call".  That will take you to the site which hosts the call.  To stream this call from your computer, just click the play button in the red widget box.

Latin in the Christian Trivium

Our oldest son is in his 6th year of Latin this year. He began with Prima Latina in 3rd grade, followed by Latina Christiana 1 and 2. These programs were great for a young Latin student, but it was hard to find a good option that would take him to the next level.

Enter Latin in the Christian Trivium. I can’t remember how we found this program, but I am so thankful that we did. It is systematic and thorough, rigorous but not overwhelming.

To read about the strengths of this excellent program, and information about the online class option, please see my review at The Curriculum Choice.

Educational Games Online

My children really enjoy it when I can find a great game online to supplement our history studies. Here are a few we like:



We learned how to play Senet when we studied Ancient Egypt. This online version teaches the rules of this ancient board game and lets you play against the computer.

Hounds and Jackals is another favorite board game from our Ancient Egypt studies. My boys love this game.

Even though we are long done with the Ancients, we come back to Senet and Hounds and Jackals occasionally just for fun.  

Egyptian Tomb is more involved than the previous two games. Kids get clues to solve a mystery by answering questions, doing simple map work, deciphering hieroglyphs and other exercises. There is some teaching about Egyptian gods and beliefs on this site. This site requires some reading ability. It's not too hard as the answers to most questions are provided somewhere on the site. It's a fun way to reinforce what you may already be learning about Ancient Egypt.

Last year when we studied the Mayans we played this online Mayan Ball game. It was also neat to watch this brief video re-enactment of a Mayan Ball game.


Jacobites the 1745 Rebellion begins with a very brief video, and poses the question, "Could you have done a better job if you were the leader of the Jacobites?" As kids read information and learn more about the people involved they are asked to make decisions. Some responses prompt video clips of battle re-enactments. Definitely click the "funky" button to view this in flash. It's much more interactive than the simple site.

Scottish Wars of Independence is an online board game. Kids spin and move around the board. Every square they land on opens up a fact file about this time period. Kids choose the 6 events they feel to be the most important and add them to a list. At the end of the game they find out whether they chose wisely or not.

Vikings in Scotland gives kids opportunities to answer questions to complete game tasks in "Build a longship" and "Build a longhouse". Some answers are provided on video clips (at least in the Flash site) for kids to watch after they answer. The more kids know, the faster their boat/longhouse is built. There is also another game on the site, where kids try and sail their longboat around a map, accomplishing various tasks along the way.

We really enjoy the viking board game Hnefetafl. This site provides English rules partway down the page, or click here to read the rules I wrote out (which may be easier to understand!) To play this game online, click on one of the boards displayed. Each one yields a slightly different variation of the game. Don't forget to click English on the board game page or you'll be playing in Danish.


BBC Schools has lots of games, including some games for Modern Times.

I like Scotland During the Second World War. My 2nd grader has played this and he enjoyed it. Kids pretend to be a spy, gathering information to help them progress through the game.

My kids have not played their WW1 game Trench Warfare yet, but I suspect they will like it. It does require quite a lot of reading, but you are able to choose which weapons you want to fight with and then see a cartoon video of the chosen weapon in action. Then you are briefed as to how well you did and why. This game doesn't teach much, other than the pros and cons of various battle tactics in WW1, but it will probably be a hit with boys.

I've heard great things about the BBC's Dance Mat Typing but my kids have not used this yet, either. Nevertheless, I wanted to try it out. And it's great! Seeing is believing. We will definitely be using this game.

My Audio School subscription give-away

Brenda at The Tie that Binds is holding a contest on her blog right now for a free one-year subscription to My Audio School.  Check it out to see how you can enter for a chance to win!

The Value of Copywork

Copywork is an important part of our school day.  My 2nd grade son is showing real improvement in his handwriting through the regular use of this tried and true method.  He is also starting to feel more comfortable writing sentences on his own.

I have found it to be an excellent method for our dyslexic son, too.  He doesn't have to think about how to spell a word or where a comma goes when he is doing copywork.  He can just carefully follow the model sentence provided.  His understanding of sentence mechanics and his spelling show dramatic improvement since I added copywork to his schedule.  Best of all, it gives him the opportunity to succeed on a language arts activity.  Copywork has not replaced our spelling program, but it gives me an additional opportunity each day to incorporate spelling work.

 

We do grammar lessons immediately following copywork.  First Language Lessons by Susan Wise Bauer is user-friendly and effective without being burdensome to my little guys.  We do a lot of the exercises orally, and incorporate some of the lessons into our copywork time by looking over the copied sentences to locate proper nouns, verbs, and other grammatical elements.  Since our copywork book was also written by Bauer, the two books fit seamlessly together.  One is great, but doing both at the same time is even more effective.   In about 20 minutes a day my boys are getting a grammar lesson, practicing their handwriting and sentence mechanics, and gaining facility with the English language.  Soon we'll finish book one and move from copywork into dictation.  I think the boys will be ready for it.  I can't wait!

To read more specifics about the materials we are using, Susan Wise Bauer's Writing with Ease, read my review on The Curriculum Choice.

Make Your Own Coat of Arms

We really enjoyed the book Make Your Own Coat of Arms by Catherine Daly-Weir.

The boys enjoyed using the enclosed stencil to make their own personal, realistic coat of arms.

Our preschooler thought this was so much fun, though he got as much marker on his arms and on the table as he did on his paper!

The book includes a lot of information about the meaning of various symbols, designs and colors.  Each boy was able to choose something that he felt represented him to personalize his shield.

The stencils enabled everyone to feel pleased with the quality of their work!

Highly Recommended!!

Building Loyalty Between Siblings

How do your children get along? There is hope! In this message, I share hope for the sibling relationship, and practical advice about living according to God's rules for relationships.

Bird Garden wins at State!

Here are our two birding boys, with some of their favorite plush birds. They use these birds to memorize field marks and bird calls.

I just have to share our exciting news! Our boys spent several months installing a Bird Garden in our side-yard. We were thrilled last spring when the project won first place in the Keep Our County Beautiful competition. That was quite an honor.

But we just heard that the county-wide organization submitted our project to the state level, and it won Second Place in the Keep Georgia Beautiful competition! We were shocked.

Thanks for letting me share our joy! You can read more about our Bird Garden project here. You can also find out more about how we got started with youth birding, including some of the techniques that Dawn (from Olive Plants blog) and I used to teach our boys, by reading this article about us on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.



Here are my boys and Dawn's boys at the Georgia Youth Birding Competition last spring.

Dawn has some excellent posts in her Birding 101 series, including Introduction to Birding, Know your Bird Parts, and Using a Field Guide.

Costumes for the Medieval Feast

It took a bit of doing to pull the costumes for this feast together. But it really wasn't too hard. My boys already had a good bit of what they needed in their costume bin.


Our oldest son has a Scottish William Wallace Claymore sword from Vision Forum that he wanted to wear to the feast. I give him a lot of credit, as he really got into his part. He wore a kilt and spoke in a Scottish accent all night.

Two of the boys needed pants for their knight outfits. I was able to find a pair of footless, gray woolen leggings at Goodwill for one of them, and the other boy wore a pair of gray baseball pants. I cut off all the beltloops and the pocket on the back. It looked a bit rough, but his tunic hung down over the top, so it didn't matter. Their hoods and shirts were things we've collected over the years. If your boys don't have a knight costume, put one on your shopping list this Christmas. These costumes are worn constantly, not only when we are studying the Middle Ages.

Our youngest son dressed as a squire. We had a perfect costume for it but he lost it a day or two before the feast. You know he had to wear it every day for a week, leading up to the feast! So when the time came, we had to grab something on the fly for his squire robe. He wasn't in it long...at the beginning of the feast, he was knighted and did a quick costume change. We pretended that the feast and the jousting tournament were in celebration of his knighting.



I was able to find a dress for myself in the prom section at Goodwill...for $5 I found a perfect Queen dress. The Lord must have put it there just for me. I was so excited when I found it! A long wig that I braided finished the look. The veil I was wearing was just a lace curtain valance that I tied around my pony tail in the back to conceal my own hair.

My husband was the hardest to costume. At 6'4" tall, it's hard enough to find clothes for him anyway! Goodwill to the rescue again. I bought a set of purple twin sized satin sheets that I adapted as a King costume. The flat sheet made a wonderful King's cape for him.



And I found a way to create some makeshift pantaloons by folding the fitted sheet in half lengthwise and wrapping it around his waist. I pinned it in the back like a skirt, with the elastic (fitted part) down near his knees. The loose fabric was then gathered at the knees and pinned again to make a kind of pantaloon. It wasn't ideal because it looked a little skirt-like (I did use extra pins to try and gather it in the middle to minimize this effect)...but it took just 5 minutes and he was a good sport about it. He wore shorts underneath (for comfort and modesty) and I think it fit the bill.

His sword was also from Vision Forum. They have many beautiful swords for sale. Each of our boys receives one as a special gift sometime during their 9th year, to commemorate the fact that he is half way grown.


Yet another use for my wig! I've worn it for Japanese Tea Party, 60s day (unbraided) and now Medieval Feast.


We could not find crowns, though! I went to several stores and no one had them. I'm so glad they didn't! One of the girls from the family who joined us figured out a way to create the crowns from scratch using beads and copper wire. I think they were beautiful, and her creativity was one of my favorite parts of the feast.

Recipes for the Medieval Feast

Menu:

Wassail
Selection of Cheeses
Bread
Potato and Leek Soup
Pheasant from the King's Forest (aka Roasted Chicken Legs)
Wild Boar (aka Ham)
apple tarts
gingerbread

Recipes:

For the wassail, we just used warmed apple cider. You could put some mulling spices in it if you want to.




Leek and Potato Soup

One bundle of leeks (about 1 cup diced)
One 16 oz. box of chicken broth
2 cups shredded hash brown potatoes or peeled, cubed potatoes
1/2 cup butter
one large onion, diced
1/2 cup flour
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste,
chives to garnish (optional)

Wash the leeks thoroughly. Cut off the green part of the leeks as well as the root end. Remove the outer layer. Dice the white part that remains. You are going to put it in a blender after it is cooked, so the leeks can just be rough chopped.

Boil the potatoes and leeks in the chicken broth until soft and tender. In a separate pan, melt the butter. Saute the onions in the butter until golden. Stir the flour into the onions and cook until bubbly, stirring constantly. Slowly add the milk to the flour and onion mixture, stirring to combine. Now add the onion mixture to the vegetables and broth, stirring well.

Pour contents of the pan into a blender and puree. You may need to work in batches. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add additional broth if the soup seems too thick or starchy.

Variation: This is my go-to cream of vegetable soup recipe. You can substitute broccoli, cauliflower, or other vegetables for the potatoes and leeks. I love this recipe!



Apple tarts

This recipe was a bit of a flop...I tried to make little apple tarts by cutting pie crust into rounds with a biscuit cutter and making tiny, hand-held pies. There was just too much crust for the amount of filling that could fit on a little round. If you want to make tarts, I suggest using a flakier pastry, such as puff pastry. Alternatively, use your favorite apple pie recipe, making it one day ahead of time so that it has time to firm up. If you aren't using plates or forks, you do NOT want an overly juicy pie!



Roasted Chicken Legs

Brush chicken legs with Olive Oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast on a baking pan in the oven at 400 F for 30 minutes. Before removing from the oven, broil for 2 minutes to brown the chicken legs. I found a wonderful roasted chicken leg recipe here.

Decorating for the Medieval Feast

We celebrated our Medieval Feast last night! Usually our feasts only involve our family, but we did something on a slightly larger scale this time. Another family joined in, as well as my dad.

The children from both families met earlier this week and prepared a program to present during the feast. It was wonderfully entertaining! A squire was knighted, and some of the guests shared news about Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, the Battle of Crecy, and other "current events". There was even a tournament involving archery, sword play and jousting.

To start the evening off, we set out some medieval games. Although chess and checkers were available, the young lords preferred our homemade version of the Viking game Hnefetafl. The boys didn't play for long, though. They were too enamored with their costumes, swords and shields to sit still playing games.

The children had the wonderful idea of using shields from the Dollar Tree to decorate the feasting hall. I used a strip of painters tape on the handle of each shield to attach them to the wall. It wasn't that strong, and a few of the shields did fall, but it was quick and easy and most of them stayed put.


In some cases it was easy to wrap the tape around the handle of the shield and a knob on the hutch or a hanging sconce, and this worked quite well. The painters tape was easily removed afterward with no marks. The shields were very lightweight and only cost $1 apiece. My boys will have fun playing with them now that our feast is over, and everyone loved our beautiful feasting hall!



I also took some battle axes that we had in our weapon bin and hung them, crossed, on a plate hanger that normally adorns our dining room wall.


My husband had a linen cloth with a knight on it, which he has been saving since he was a child. This was easily hung with more painters tape. I cut the strips to form a frame for the cloth, and we fancied it to be a medieval tapestry.



It is almost Halloween, so the Dollar Tree had some other decorations that were meant to be spooky but which I felt could double for this occasion. I bought one package of old, creepy bottle labels and applied one titled Ye Olde Spider Venom to a bottle of Barq's Root beer. Our Viking guest brought this with him to the feast. The boys thought someone should be sentenced to death-by-spider venom, but instead, we let the official cup bearer taste it for purity. It passed muster, so it was served.

When the cup bearer felt sick later that night (ostensibly from overindulging in Wild Boar), the King was quick to blame the spider venom. He immediately began searching for a replacement cup bearer in case the first one didn't pull through!


I also set some candles and a simple vining floral decoration on the head table as a centerpiece. The King sat in a very throne-like chair at the head of the table.

We used individual type-writer key letters to make the placecards. Part of the program was a brief discussion about Johann Gutenberg's wonderful "new" invention, the printing press, and a bit of bragging about how the King purchased a set of printed placecards just for this occasion.

I'll explain more about the menu in my next post, but for plates we purchased flat sandwich wraps to use as trenchers. Everyone got a knife and a spoon, and we assembled a collection of chunky mugs for our glassware.


To be authentic, we ate with our fingers and did not use napkins. I did put a dark-colored tablecloth on the table, and I confess to using it a few times to wipe my fingers.

I've got lots more to share about this wonderful feast which will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of our school year! Upcoming posts will include our recipes and how we pulled the costumes together.

The Blind Leading the Blind: a tutorial

Technology comes easy for some people. But not for me. Everything I know how to do on the computer has been hard fought and hard won, usually learned one baby step at a time.

That's why I am so excited--so ECSTATIC--that I learned how to make a linked thumbnail image for my blogs, and how to get the HTML code to appear below the image in a scroll box!! Ladies, I can't even figure out how to work the remote controls to turn my television on by myself. This is HUGE!

I've been searching for this very information for at least a year. I've tried to follow different people's instructions, but to no avail. So now that I have finally figured it out, I want to explain how I did it.

If nothing else, I can refer to this post next week when I want to do this again but can't remember what steps I took! Maybe some of you have been wondering how to do the same thing with your blogs. Believe me, if I learned how to do this, you can learn, too! My way is probably not the best way....any technical guru will most likely tell you that. But I don't know any technical gurus, and this is the way that worked for me.

By the way, I owe it all to two excellent tutorials I found. Smilemonsters actually convinced me that I could do this, and showed me how to build the linked image. Blogging Basics 101 taught me how to get the HTML code into a scroll box and how to fool the computer into not reading the code.

I'm still learning how to take an image and put text and graphics onto it. I've learned how to use photoshop just a bit, but I can't figure out how to download my doctored image to my computer. As I said, I'm learning by baby steps. So we'll save that lesson for another tutorial down the road.

Let's assume you've already got an image. In my case, a couple sweet friends each made me an image for two of my sites. I'm now trying to learn to make one myself for this blog.

Resizing the image to a thumbnail
If you are working in Photoshop, you can resize your image right there. Most thumbnail images should be around 125 x 125, give or take. Just upload your photo, click edit, then click resize, then click custom, and type your desired size into the boxes provided. When I do this, I can set one number and the other automatically re-adjusts. My image isn't a perfect square, so it doesn't come out a perfect 125 x 125. Again, I'm still learning here.

If you already have an image and you aren't using photoshop, you can resize your image right on your browser at Pixer.us. Just upload your image, click the resize button and drag the button to the size you want, then save the image to your computer.

Generating HTML code for your button
Now you need to generate HTML code for your image. You can do this at Photobucket. You'll need to upload the newly resized thumbnail. Then hover over the image, and you'll see a drop down menu appear below your image. One of the items will say "HTML". You want to copy that HTML code.

Getting the code onto your website
Next, go to the website where you want to put the image. If you are working in blogger, click on your layout, then Get a gadget, then HTML code. If you are on Wordpress, go into your Widgets and drag a text/HTML box over to the sidebar.

Here's where it gets messy. There is a way to put an example of this code right into this post, in such a way that you can read it but the computer ignores it. I can't figure that out. Here is a step by step of what to put in your widget box or gadget box. If you want something simple you can copy and paste, go to Heather's post at Smilebox and copy her code from there. If you do that, you can skip to the part where it says "Cleaning up the code".

Here are my instruction, though, in case you don't want to merely copy and paste, you want to BUILD it YOURSELF!

At the top of the HTML box, type this:

a href="Enter Website Here"

and enclose that phrase with a carat on either end so that you see < before the letter a and > after the second quotation mark.

Enter your web address where it says enter website here, making sure you put the complete http:// address, not just the name of your site.

The next part of your code begins with another < sign, placed immediately following your last > sign. After the < sign, write the letters img src="Enter photo HTML code here"


Put the HTML code for the image (which you generated at Photobucket) where it says Enter photo HTML code here.

To finish out this strand of code you'll need a backslash after the last quotation mark /

Then a double carat, backslash, letter a, end carat. The symbols look like this, but with no spaces in between
>

<

/

a

>


Cleaning up the code
All you techies, look away now (or laugh, whichever you prefer). Whenever I click "save" my code somehow morphs. If I go to my website, I see my beautiful, linked button image, but there is extra code beneath it. Code I did not build myself. And what's worse, my readers can see it, too! That's OK. You can fix it.

Once you've done the above step and clicked save, go to your website and check out your new badge. Is there an extra http:// address below your badge, or a repeat of some of the symbols you just typed? If there is, go back to the window where you just placed the code. You should be able to see at a glance where your "good" code ends and where the extra code (which the computer generated, but you didn't build) begins. Just delete that extra part. Save again and go back to your site. Check your button: does it look perfect? Click it, does it lead where it should? Great job!!

Get that code into a scroll box so people can grab your button
You want your friends to be able to easily put your button on their site, right? Up until now, I've been doing this the old fashioned way. I download the button image to my computer, then upload it again in Wordpress or Blogger as a linked image, typing in the web address myself. You can use this technique any time you want to put an image on your blog when the HTML code is not provided.

But you want to make it easy for your friends, right? It is so simple.

Just copy the code you used to make the image in the first place (after you've saved and cleaned up that extra http:// information). Paste it below the original code. If you publish it like this, it will just show up as two linked images. You want a way to make the second set of code appear as code, so someone can copy it. You just need to put something before and after that code so that the computer doesn't "read" the code and turn it into an image. I got this to work in my sidebar, but can't figure out how to make it work in a post.

So although I wish I could show you an exact example, I am not good enough for that yet. What you want to do is write the word textarea and enclose it in carats <> and put that at the beginning of your code. Then you'll want to write /textarea and enclose that in carats <> and put that at the end of your code.

Notice the part that goes after your code has a backslash in it...very important. When I put this before and after my code, it automatically created a scroll box for the code. What a bonus!

Don't forget to save what you've just done. Then go to your site and grab your new code. Test it out to make sure it works before you assume that it does. One time I forgot to add that all-important backslash and my HTML code box contained everything from my site's home page!

Happy Blogging!