CHRISTEPHI

I love seeing these old sci fi books on my shelf. They were my dad's when he was a boy. I love that so many of the wild ideas the old sci fi writers came up with are now a reality with modern technology. I used to read these on Christmas vacation at my grandparents' farm. Maybe one year my kids will read them on Christmas break!

My little bookworm ran off to the stacks while I picked up the books I had on hold at the library.  We're never there very long, but she always comes home with a whole stack of books to read.

When you come across a book titled A Plague of Unicorns , it kind of makes you pause and wonder what on earth that could be about!  In that first autumn of Aelian's rule, when the golden apples were at their ripest, the battle lines were drawn--monks against unicorns.   It was never a fair fight.     Young James, the duke's son, asks too many questions. At least that's what everyone at Callendar Castle thinks after all but the last of his tutors quits and his uncle ships him off to be educated at Cranford Abbey.  Unfortunately, the once-beautiful abbey has problems of its own, including cracked walls, a leaking roof, and shattered stained glass windows.  Not to mention the pesky herd of unicorns that continues to enter the abbey's orchards and claim them as their own.   The only hope to save the abbey, it seems, is money raised by Abbot Aelian's golden apple cider, made from a recipe passed down in his family for genera...

Before we moved, we lived in a 900 sq. ft. duplex with a multipurpose kitchen that served as our cooking room, dining room, home office, and school room.  When we bought this house we added about half again as much living space.  The kids now get their own bedrooms and though the kitchen is smaller now, we gained a finished room in the basement that has been turned into a family room/school room! On one end of the room is a bright fluorescent light in the ceiling.  I positioned our table near it because it lends itself well to bookwork.  We all sit at this table when we need to fill out worksheets or write or draw or color.  There is built in storage behind the table that we use to corral all our school books for the year.  We haven't implemented workboxes since the move and might not since things have been working so smoothly for us so far this year. Hubby's treadmill is down there which is nice when it's bitter cold outside and one of the...

We love books.  (You probably know that by now.)  And my kids love to be read to while they eat lunch or play with clay or sit in the hammock chair on a gorgeous spring day.  One of the latest books we read together is Panama Girl by Ida (pronounced EE-duh) Freer. Panama Girl Written by Ida Freer ISBN: 978-1480076792 Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 156 pages This is a story about a 12-year-old girl named Surni from the Embera people in the Darien jungle of Panama.  As you read, you get a clear picture of life in the village and how the Embera have lived for generations by finding everything they need for food, clothing, shelter, and transportation in the jungle.  But change is coming to the jungle.  Visitors from Panama City are arriving with increasing frequency and Surni and her people must learn to adapt to new ideas, new technology, and new beliefs.  Surni herself faces many challenges and proves that she is a girl...

It's a new school year at Sycamore Hill Academy!  Miss M is now in 3rd grade and Little Guy is beginning the first of two years of kindergarten (K4 this year and a slightly more rigorous K5 next year). I found these cute printables via Pinterest  and we had a little photo shoot on our first day! We are starting each morning with My Daily Learning Notebooks from Confessions of a Homeschooler.   The PreK one for Little Guy and the cursive variant for Miss M.  This has been hugely popular!  Both kids have gotten started on them before I'm even ready to begin school most days! And they work together on the so sweetly, Miss M lending a hand to Little Guy and he hanging on her every word. I love it! Bible To start off our year, we systematically went through some important concepts: where the world came from, how it got to be the way it is now (the Fall), how different languages began, and the gospel is for all the peoples of the...

What is Ooka Island? Ooka Island is an adventurous computer game that teaches early literacy to kids from Pre-K to 2nd grade.  It's fun and engaging without making any sacrifices on the academic side of things. "Upon arrival on Ooka Island, children customize their own online avatar and embark on a compelling 3D hero-mission to save the Ooka Elves! As young learners follow the Ooka Island Adventure, they travel on their own unique path created by Ooka Island's READirect learning algorithm.  This ensures that they are on the fastest track to reading success!" A Bit of Backstory Ooka Island is based on the work of Dr. Kay MacPhee who developed a successful program for struggling and reluctant readers in the 1990s.  Her program, then known as SpellRead, was the subject of many intensive studies because of its effectiveness, but it was quite expensive.  It became an exclusive product for either the poorest of the poor (by way of government sub...

While it wasn't a bad week in our homeschool, it was a slightly disorganized and disjointed week.  We got everything done and had pretty good attitudes, but it just didn't feel like things ran smoothly.  Here are a few snippets of our week. Monday was a dreary, gloomy day.  In order to get some good light for reading, Miss M dragged her bean bag chair and giant teddy bear to the back door.  She sat there cozily reading a second Happy Hollisters book! Miss M's favorite way to learn a new memory verse is to write it on the white board and then erase a word at a time, reading it between each erasure and filling in the missing word. She gets so tickled when she gets towards the end and there are only a few words left. "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock" (Matthew 7:24). We learned about what it means that Jesus is our Rock and how we can build our lives on ...