CHRISTEPHI

It's our 17th week of Adventures in U.S. History!  That means at the end of the week we'll officially be halfway done with our school year.  Sometimes I get a bit jealous of other families who are taking the summer off (though my pocketbook is relieved we're not trying to participate in all the summer festivities that are available!); sometimes I get caught up in the fun of planning the next year which for many of you starts in the fall; and sometimes I get tired of hitting the books especially when everyone is all hot and crabby.  But all in all I'm glad we're schooling over the summer and we are truly enjoying Adventures! This week I set Little Guy the task of sorting out my catch-all basket of pens, pencils, and markers.  Does anyone else ever despise the fact that writing utensils are round and tend to roll off of surfaces and onto the floor?  I am constantly picking up colored pencils and markers and crayons from the kitchen floor!  Confession: ...

This weekend Miss M decided she wanted to sew something.  I was elbow deep in a sewing project of my own, so I told her that if she wanted to sew, she would have to do it all by herself.  I set up my old sewing machine on a little table for her and answered her questions, but otherwise she did all the work herself! First, she picked a project from Sewing School . (affiliate link)   She choose the Get to Work Apron.  It's a cute tool apron that helps you carry your tools or supplies with you while you work.  Then she picked some fabric from my stash.  She cut out the paper pattern and traced it onto her fabric with a piece of chalk.  (We had to have a little talk about placing your pattern near the edge of the fabric and not smack-dab in the middle!) Then she cut out her pieces and pinned them together, right sides facing.  At that point I gave her a piece of plain white printer paper to practice sewing straight lines on. ...

"Mama, will you play a game with me?" I hear these words at least ten times every day.  Miss M  loves  games!  She'd rather play a game than do almost anything else. Our newest addition to our game collection is the Medieval History Memory Game from The Classical Historian . I'm sure you're familiar with the traditional format of the game of Memory.  You lay out tiles; one person turns over two tiles, hoping for a match; then it's the next person's turn.  The trick is to remember where the tiles you see are located so you can make more matches than your opponent(s). In this version of the game the tiles are pictures from medieval world history for the four major regions of the world: Arabia, the Far East, Europe, and the Americas.  The game helps your child become familiar with the important people, monuments, maps, artifacts, and symbols that they will encounter in their studies of medieval history. Medieval His...

We are nearly halfway through our Adventures in U.S. History!  This week we took a couple days off from learning about states to learn about Daniel Boone.  I wanted to make little coon skin caps for the kids (I remember doing that when I was a homeschool student way-back-when), but I didn't have either the time or materials on hand. We added another name of Jesus to our bulletin board: Immanuel, which means God With Us.  We had lots of fun learning the lyrics to O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and a long discussion about why Emmanuel is sometimes spelled with an I and sometimes with an E. The one thing I've added to our curriculum that's different than the recommendations from My Father's World is the CLE 2nd grade Bible program .  It is a walk through of the Old Testament (I intend to follow up with the New Testament in 3rd grade).  Since Adventures itself is already an adequate workload, we only do CLE Bible on Mondays and Thursdays.  We are enjoying it...

I'm so excited to announce that my new column at Homeschool Mosaics just launched today!  It's called Hands-On Homeschooling and will be focusing on hands-on learning activities for the preK and early elementary set. Stop by and say hi! (Psst! That picture of Miss M with muddy hands is a sneak peek of next month's column!)

As a child it never occurred to me to ask deep questions about life and God and the Universe. I was content to marvel at Nature and appreciate its beauty without asking many questions about how things worked or where they came from. So when my six-year-old comes asking questions like: "Why am I here? What am I here for? How do I know I am really me?" I'm completely flabbergasted! When she recently began asking questions about how we know there really is a God, I pulled out a brand new book from Apologia Press called How Do We Know God Is Really There? How Do We Know God Is Really There? Written by Melissa Cain Travis Illustrated by Christopher Voss Published by Apologia Press ISBN: 978-1-935495-96-3 Price: $16.00 Sample pages This wonderful book by Melissa Cain Travis is designed to answer the question of God's existence in a way even small children can understand. It is the first in a new series of picture books that will introduce kids to the answers to import...

We're back!  Did you miss us? We've been gone the past two weeks as we enjoyed a Late Spring Break, but now we're back and ready to go Adventuring! This week we journeyed through New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, and North Carolina.  We learned about cardinals, the nation's most popular bird, and about the Statue of Liberty. Miss M drew a cardinal and told a story about it. The mama cardinal told her baby to eat its birdseed cereal so she can be strong enough to fly.  But the baby snuck behind the mama and started to fly by herself. The mama was worried (see the "uh oh!" thought bubble?) that the baby would fall without assistance. We started our new math book, Singapore Math 2A.  Miss M does not like when she's instructed to do practice problems on a separate sheet of paper. She much prefers to do all her math in the workbook only.  It was only a dozen or so review problems over two different days…she...

Hubby and the kids are huge fans of King's Hawaiian rolls.  I was spoiled by homemade bread growing up, so I don't care for the processed taste/texture, but more than that, my pocketbook just can't take the hit on a regular basis! In order to make everyone happy, I embarked on a quest to find the perfect roll recipe.  It had to be sweet (very sweet, actually!) to please Hubby and soft to please the kids.  After quite a few tweaks and trial runs, I've settled on this as the perfect Hawaiian sweet roll recipe. Ingredients 1 cup milk 1 cup pineapple juice (can substitute pear or apple juice, or water for a less sweet roll) 3 large eggs 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt 1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter, slightly cooled 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 4 tablespoons wheat gluten 1/2 cup sugar (white or brown, we liked it both ways!) 3 teaspoons yeast (3 1/2 if planning to freeze the rolls before baking) I made mine in the bread machine (as usual), but you ...

It's important to teach our kids about fire safety in a way that empowers them and doesn't immobilize them.  To that end, I decided we'd have a mini fire-safety unit during our two week break.   At the beginning of the week I warned the kids that we were going to have a fire drill sometime that week and not to be too worried when I started shouting that the house was on fire and we needed to get out. I planned to catch them at a time when they were both in their bedroom playing together.  Then I'd go in, shut the door, and tell them there was a fire in the kitchen and we needed to get out, but we couldn't go through the hallway.  We talked about how to touch the door to see if it was safe and how to block the bottom with rags to keep out the smoke.  Then I showed them how to egress from their bedroom window.  The kids loved that! We talked about what to do if there wasn't an adult to help (throw pillows and blankets on the ground and jump...