Father’s Day

Posted by Coral on June 25, 2009

I wish I could say that Jeff had as wonderful of a Father’s Day as my Mother’s Day was . However, we had a house full of sickies. R started it all, actually I think Burger K did, but that’s another story. I was still recovering from becoming dehydrated from hours of non-stop vomiting and other unmentionables ; followed by a visit to the ER Thursday night.  Jeff & P had thrown up Friday and Saturday. Thankfully, S never got it. My dear mom took R and S to her house on both Friday and Saturday.We were a bunch of sacks of potatoes, sitting around doing nothing on Father’s Day. 

My Mom, after staying in the ER with me, only getting a few hours sleep, then taking  my children home with her for 2 days; managed to make a wonderful chicken noodle soup with corn beard for our Father’s Day meal. It was very yummy, but not exactly the prime rib that the dads were expecting on that day. To top it off, the mini pc carrying case that I got Jeff was still way too big for his very tiny computer . Hopefully I can make this years up to him next year. He is such an awesome man, and he could care less about all this. However, I need some really good ideas for next year, if you have any let me know. His likes are -tech stuff, drum stuff, and golf stuff .

Benjamin Franklin

Posted by Coral on June 12, 2009

 

This was the next person in the Value Tales series that we are doing for history. I decided to do them chronologically. Christopher Columbus lived from 1451–1506, Ben Franklin lived from 1706–1790 ect… I just simply looked in the back of the book to find these dates.

Here’s what we did:

Day 1– Pg.7–21      

Day 2– Pg.22–31

Day 3–Pg.40–62

Day 4– (You can read whatever you didn’t get to) Make a piggy bank http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/benjamin%20crafts.html at the bottom of this link  

a lightning experiment  http://weathereye.kgan.com/cadet/lightning/experiment.html

or my girls asked if they could earn, and save money like Ben. So they did a few chores around the house that were not their usual chores, and I payed them. They also planned a lemonade stand, but we didn’t get to that.

Each day P did copy work from Ben’s famous quotes:

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

“Early to bed and early to rise, make a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

“He that cannot obey, cannot command.”

“Never leave till tomorrow that which you can do today.”

“Haste makes waste.”

“If you would be loved, love and be lovable.”

“The early bird gets the worm.”

 

Benjamin Franklin, thanks for the fun!

 

Creative Writing and Spelling

Posted by Coral on June 8, 2009

I’m stepping back into my childhood. As a 2^nd grader, I went to a great little Lutheran school. We moved, so I only went there for one year. However, a great memory I have is the Creative Writing assignments that Mrs. Gutter gave us. As a child I had a very active imagination, and it was a perfect outlet for me. So I decided to do the same thing with P (she also has an active imagination).

I take a plain lined spiral notebook. On one page I draw a shape of some kind. Using this shape as a starting point, P draws a picture. Example: (The S is the shape I drew.)

On the following page she writes a story, to go with her picture. I don’t require her to have good spelling or grammar in these. I just want her to concentrate on her thoughts, and getting them down on paper. I also don’t assign her any other Language Arts stuff on story day. I want her to have all the time she needs, without thinking about other work that needs to be done. She only writes a Creative Writing story, every other week on Mondays (I don’t want to overwhelm her). 

Later on I do go through her story and see what words she misspelled. I use these, along with words she has missed in other school work, as her Spelling list for that week and the next. The first week she writes these  words 3 times each, and writes a sentence for each. The next week she looks them up in the Dictionary. This helps a lot with spelling; since she has to concentrate on every letter of the word. We have a great Children’s Dictionary that she uses.

Macmillan Dictionary for Children

I enjoy seeing the improved spelling and grammar, in her stories. Along with Rod & Staff English 2, and some Copy Work (Scriptures or poems); we have a very nice Language Arts program. I’m glad I remembered Mrs. Gutter’s wonderful idea.