As a bit of a treat from having just completed some Greek grammar we decided to make
the phases of the moon with Oreos.
The earth was made from an upturned gluten free jammy wheel on which Ronan drew the continents and coloured in the sea. We have some great food colouring felt pens for just such an occasion.
The sun was made from a gluten free custard cream. Then the Oreos were taken apart and the cream cut to size and the phases marked and laid down in the right place in relation to the earth and sun.
Avila got to eat the world and the sun but I didn’t let Ronan and Heleyna eat 2/3rds of a packet of Oreos. I’m not that bad a mother…yet.
Next plan to make DNA sequence out of mini marshmallows and red liquorice straws.
Meanwhile I discovered that the water I was cooking purple sprouting broccoli in for dinner that night, went purple. So I saved some in test tubes to see if it makes good universal indicator.
Yes, I know, that’s so horribly home ed of me.
There’s some free science lessons here. I haven’t had a chance to look them over properly yet so can’t vouch for them but you could see what you think.
I do want to have a go at THIS LESSON where the children can build DNA with liquorice straws and marshmallows.
It isn’t quite Friday, but here’s a freebie for those of you who want a more physical hands on approach to the elements. Ive made this set of Bohr diagrams. You can use three different beans to make the elements. We use black beans/turtle beans as electrons, mung beans (green) as neutrons and red beans/adzuki as protons but you can use whatever best suits you.
LITERATURE and READING NOTEBOOKING PAGES that I made are up at That Resource Site. I have included some covers of books we are or have used to get y’all started. Just cut out the covers and stick them in the boxes or get your children to draw the book cover if that works better for you.
I have only a couple of lines for each book to help encourage the “Don’t make me write!” children in our families. It will hopefully encourage even young ones to keep a record of the books they love and hate.
You might also like my 19th Century timeline notebook. I’m presently working on a 14th century timeline which covers especially the events around the mother’s of Europe SS Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena.
This Youtube video gives an excellent story view of the Cristeros in 1920s Mexico. It’s a part of history I know nothing about and the tellers of the history here admit it an astonishing story that has been forgotten. A new film is being made For The Greater Glory. This vid is great for teens (I personally wouldn’t show it to my younger ones as the violence is obvious and worse because it really happened).
For more audio books you might like a recent find of mine, Cover to Cover where Ron Hansen’s book Atticus is presently being read. Can’t tell you anything about this book as I’ve never read it – and haven’t listened to it yet either. I note that Cover to Cover has a Library section which is being updated.
Patrick Madrid does a complete set of talks following his useful little book Pope fiction debunking the silly black legends and other crud that has been spread about the papacy over the years.
Free lesson help
We are using the Classical Academic Press Latin and Greek. They have Head Adventure Land as a free resource to back the lessons up, but I reckon you could use some of the resources whether or not you use the books.
FREE from ME
My latest Freebie is up on Kalei’s Thatrescourcesite Blog which is a notebook timeline of the 19th Century. I am hoping to make other century notebooks as time goes on.
I have a free bible software that I use, but apparently the owner doesn’t like being linked to. Not sure why. Anyway what I would really love to have is a free Catholic Bible software. Although by searching about I’ve found some good Catholic add-ons for the software I have, it’s been a mighty faff to load ‘em.
If anyone knows of a good, easy to use, well laid out software that’s free or very cheap let me know (Logos is out of my league I’m afraid).
Anyway get yourselves a good translation and have a go at the lesson pack. I’ve included journal/note/prayer sheets for most pages and some lapbook mini’s. I hope it will be a good family one suitable for a mixed age group.
Kalei has posted my quick flashcard set of all the Catholic Rites I could find. There are way more than I’d realised. At some point I do hope to get back to the Rites and try and put something together about some of the saints from each Rite – if possible. As we have been learning about St. Josaphat via Ronan’s English from Seton book, perhaps I will start with him. Anyway, that’s for later.
Check out a new contributer to Kalei’s site as well. She looks set to have some excellent resources for your delectation.
What with the new translation of the Mass with the new translation of the Creed, I thought I’d make a little lesson to go with it all. So I wrote one about the historical context and events of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.
Now, I must admit there may be typos in the lesson as I’ve been rather foggy lately. Please forgive them if they are there.
I have also updated the lesson pack on the Via Dolorosa. Some of the text boxes had blacked out so I took out all the colour and this time they should work. Let me or Kalei know if there are further problems with it.
Kalei has posted my little lesson on Dr. Alois Alzheimer which I recommend for older home edders. It is a “little” lesson which is a small insight into a very large subject. I would like to find the time to delve into it further, but with term just starting I can’t promise anything right now.
When doing my research for this lesson I found someone wrote that the doctor was “sentimental” about his Catholic faith. Looking at the man’s life however, I think he was faithful not sentimental about his faith. It must have been the faith of Alzheimer and his fellow Catholic doctor as they worked so hard to turn around the whole system of how patients with mental illness were treated. I had not realised until reading up on Alois Alzheimer that he was a leading light in the humane treatment of those with mental illness.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the lesson. Some of the discussion questions are hard, but I know home educated youngsters like a challenge.
It is often said that great minds think alike – and fools seldom differ, but there’s something telepathic about how Kalei and I have both been busy making science freebies this week!
If that’s not enough Kalei has very generously put forward the chance to win a $50 Amazon.com voucher to spend on those extra bits for the busy homeschool. God and join the competition and see what happens
And can I just add an invitation on behalf of Kalie. You will see when you visit That Resource Site that she has an area for “friends” where those of us who can offer resources have our own page designed for us. If you have stuff to share do let her know. It’s a lovely idea that parents can share their talents and interests so that others get to keep to a budget.
If you remember that I did a post on how to remember the Ten Commandments. There’s a quick sheet HERE to help understand how the Our Father, Decalogue and Beatitudes all work together. I need to write some follow up on this – but I will wait until I am actually awake to do so.
Final freebie for today is this bloomin’ marvellous site The Catholic Laboratory. The podcasts are excellent. I have them on my Kindle and am listening to them all. (It could take a while). I have a long standing interest in Catholic scientists, especially as so many moon craters are named after Jesuits- so this is quite a find.
With all those frugal freebies for your use, I have a story of milk to tell you.
Unlike the Promised Land, Britain is not flowing with milk and honey. It’s more like bills and debt. Ordinary good hard working people are finding life very tough at the moment.
We have our milk delivered in the traditional way – by the milk man. If we run out (as does happen) we do the cheapo thing and buy some from Tescos. However, Tescos is a massive and badly behaved corporation that we are not that fond of. It is very important to keep local people employed and this means keeping the local businesses supported. However it is more expensive to have milk from the milk man than the supermarket and we’re trying to be frugal here aren’t we?
Well, it seems to me that being frugal should come with a caveat – that is, not at someone else’s expense. So. When the man who helps run the local dairy farm came to our door and said his brother’s farm is at risk because Kraft, who now own Cadbury’s have cancelled the massive milk order, I was willing for him to be our new milk man. His milk is just a little cheaper as well so that’s great. I also wondered if we could arrange a Home Ed trip to the farm to see the very cows whose milk we are drinking now. All seems great doesn’t it?
So I paid the other milk man and explained I was going with the local farm milk. It turns out that he is self-employed in a franchise rather than employed as I assumed. Ouch! He is past retirement age but has to work as he is still supporting his family.
The outcome is I now have two milkmen. It does mean that our milk bill will be a bit more – but not so much it will add to the debt so hey. It is vitally important to keep our communities alive and help people keep above water. Anyway, I am a distributist and what kind of distributist wants cheap milk anyway? So, be frugal where you can, but get your milk from a milkman.
There is huge ignorance and confusion about the nature of the pesitshood. But then there is huge confusion about spiritual matters over all.
It is a real shame that we have given up our understanding and embraced a terribly narrow view that all reality is material. For people my age, the confusion was taught to us, and I think, it is largely thanks to the internet that people like me have had access to authentic teaching. Anyway, have a look and see what you think.
Don’t forget to have a look at the other stuff Kalei puts up and leave her a message of encouragement.
Kalei has kindly posted my latest freebies. I’ve made a straight forward set of cards of the Greek alphabet, lover case, upper case and letter names. I recommend using them to learn the alphabet and to separate consanants and vowels. If you print up more than one copy you can spell some basic Greek words as well, or use the sounds to make English words with Greek letters such as delta, omicron, gamma for dog. Here’s a good alphabet lesson
We are using these cards alongside Songschool Greek. I am quite taken with the amount of free stuff Classical Academic Press offer to help with the childre’s learning. We have only just started the Songschool Greek, but it’s good so far. I hope to make some follow on cards for making Greek words to spell out.
On Music. I have been teaching the children music in various ways for some time. We have been using Classicsforkids for some time. It’s an extremely good quality free resource. Alongside that Ronan was learning basic recorder tunes with the Usborne Very Easy Recorder Tune book. After that I signed up for a year of Kinderbach which was really good for the girls and reasonable for Ronan, although he was finding he was a little too old for a lot of it. Still, it was a good basic start to music, notes, paino/keyboard and rythmn, and I do recommend it. I found the lack of classical music in the lessons a bit sad, but we made up for that with ClassicsforKids.
By the time the year’s subscription was up with Kinderbach we had worked through every lesson in the six levels presently available and I was a bit stuck for what to do next. I noticed that Seton Homeschool had started to carry Adventus Musical Adventures and I decided to check them out. We loved the two weeks free trial which allowed us to have a look around all the programs. So I signed up for the months sub for the online.
Each lesson has a rythmn practice session (in the vid, Ronan is helping Heleyna with hers) which is very important in getting music right. It’s something I always found horribly difficult as an O’level Music student; so much so in fact, I remember my teacher rather pointedly asking me if I couldn’t count to 4! LOL poor man! All three of the younger ones are their mother’s children – where counting and clapping rythmns are quite a challenge. So, I made the music cards to help them practice. You can make up sentences of your own to make a 4/4 clapping game.
The other reason to write about Grace is that she was home educated. She received her excellent education from her parents at a time before compulsory education acts had been brought in throughtout Britain. I have been reading some books about the 19th century (Grace’s era) and came across the same figures for literacy pre-compulsory education, that Gatto quotes; it was over 90% in Britain (having risen exponentially from around 1830 for some reason) and had dropped by nearly 60% by the First World War. Shcoking figures.
Anyway, I digress. The story of Grace Darling and her rescue and care for the survivors of a steamship wreckage just off the Farne Islands, is well worth knowing. Enjoy
Also look at the amazing amount of resources Kalei herself has produced. She works very hard to make all these free resources available to the rest of us.
There is also these very good audio lectures via Sonitus Sanctus from Ave Maria Uni. I like hearing in depth studies from people who really do know the subject on which they speak. I highly recommend Rosalind Moss. Her conversion story is an amazing journey from her Jewish roots, through Messianic Judiasism to Evangelicalism (pretty anti-Catholic end) through to entering the Catholic Church is well worth hearing. I always remember with some astonishment how her pastor at her evangelical church warned her against reading the Early Church Fathers because he knew that would make her Catholic! If he knew that – what was he doing?
Her astonishment when her brother David took her to Mass for the first time because it was so Jewish is a touching reminder of where we Christians have really come from.
Lent is fast approaching (Ash Wednesday 9th March) so I have written this booklet as a study and lapbook pack. [click on the picture to go to link]. It’s available at That Resource Site and on my page there.
There are 72 pages with blank sheets so you can print the whole thing back to back. [If you prefer to only print the lapbook pages that should work fine too].
click pic for link
Via Dolorosa means road of sorrows and I decided to begin with the importance of Mary’s Fiat at the Annunciation and move onto the sorrowful mysteries from the Seven Sorrows chaplet and then through to Holy Week which I have written up one day at a time. Hope you find it useful.
I have also done a Little Lesson for children to learn the Our Father in Latin.
I have coloured the cards to help visual learners.
I note that K has placed it under Montessori catagory and actually I think that’s about right. It does have that sort of method, so it should suit kinesetic learners too. Have fun.
I found this set of free audio that has a treasure trove of Gatto talks done all over the place. (There’s also the Ken Robinson Audio about the destruction of creativity in schools). Now, I have to admit I have been very cautious about whether I was a “fan” of Gatto or not. He is well-loved in home education and homeschooling circles, but I have discovered one or two heroes of home ed are not that heroic when you get to listen to or read what they actually have to say.
Teacher of the Year one more than one occation.
I haven’t listened to all these Audio files yet, but so far I am truly impressed. He speaks as someone who really has learned some history. I was particularly pleased to hear him speak with complete accuracy on Calvin and Darwin.
One of the ways I discern whether I can trust someone on what they say about stuff I don’t know about, is how they handle the stuff I do know about. Gatto is a massive breath of fresh air, not only because he does know history but because he is quite happy to speak about things that are cultural no nos. I love his courage and strength of character.
The other free audio I have found is HOMESCHOOL AUDIO. I haven’t listened to all of them but I do really recommend the last one about DARE. I was surprised to hear Dr William Coulson whom I wrote about three years ago. He worked with Rogers and Maslow and brought about the damaging and frankly ludicrous “how does it feel for you?” revolution. I first came across Dr Coulson when I heard his Mea Culpa on his role in the therapeutic nightmare of Rogarian Therapy. As it happens Rogers and Maslow both repented of their deeds; which is good, but I am saddened that despite this, in far too many places the damage continues to be done.
Plenty to listen to there. I wonder how many people who still think school is the way to educate children would bother to hear what Gatto and Coulson have to say. In the book I’m reading at the moment Socrates Meets Jesus there is a moment where Socrates is discussing the question of being open minded. He asks how someone can decide to be open or closed minded about a subject without having first listened to the arguments on the subject. It’s a good question. If we don’t hear the reasons for and against schools and compulsory education, how will we know which is true? And let’s be sure about one thing the truth of this matter is vitally important because it effects the lives of every single child and family living under this system.
There are days when I want to hear someone talking about the stuff of my life. Unfornunately I ama bit weird, so not many radio shows or online shows have much to say to me about my life. I do like to listen to Dr Ray when I’m cleaning or sorting the washing, but the biggest chunk of my life is about home educating and so it was good to find some podcasts and MP3s on that sbject.
HOMESCHOOL.COM has a lot of podcasts for Christian homeschoolers. I have listened to a couple and they are ok. There are some great pionters for those just starting out and some I haven’t heard yet that look aimed at the old’uns like me
If you are going to listen to Regina Doman’s “No Matter What Happens, Blessed be His Name,” have tissues on hand. Even though I am sure most of us already know her story, it is heartbreaking hearing her speak so bravely and positively about it. She offers excellent advice on how to cope and support others when tragedy happens.
Her workshop with teens is well worth listening to. I’m going to get Iona to hear it too as it will be very useful to her.
There’s more good Dayton MP3s HERE . So you have plenty to keep your home education life happy.
Check out my friend Kalei’s new blogsite with recipes for busy homeschool families. If you have some recipes, why not send them to her for the blog. You can catch the latest recipes on the right sidebar of her Resource blog.
She has also posted my latest Little Lesson, to continue my forensic science history theme. This one is on the history of Facial Reconstruction. Hope you like it.
A few nights ago one of the older ones was flicking through channels on the TV when he caught a part of a programme where Milgram’s experiment was being repeated. We didn’t see why the experiment was being done but the results were very disturbing. You see, over all, the results were much the same as the ones Milgram got back in the 1960′s.
One woman in the new experiment already knew about Milgram and so pulled out- knowing what would be asked of her.
None of the other subjects had heard of this very famous and very important experiment made in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials.
There are vast amounts of knowledge and events out there that we can teach our children about, or they can learn on their own. But it seems to me there are some thing they need to know. Even schools recognise that World War II was an historical event that should be taught. Sadly what they teach is often far to narrow and wishy washy. But how the concentration camps came to happen is surely a good question, and if someone has a good answer that forewarns, surely we need to know about it.
The experiment consists of subjects who are called “teacher” and two actors who are “the learner” and the “Guy in the white coat in charge of the experiment.” The Learner is put in another room and the Teacher is told that he or she is to give electric shocks to the learner whenever they get an answer wrong. The shocks range from 15 volts which is sharp to 450 volts which kills. The panel is clearly labelled.
The subject-teacher could not see the learner but could hear him screaming. Even though many subjects became more and more uncomfortable with the process if the man in the white coat said they had to continue they did.
I really think that if we understand Milgram’s experiment it will help us step back in times when we might be pressured by someone whose authority is not necessarily valid, and make sure we are in fact doing what is right.
Of course that means getting rid of all the “how does it feel for you, follow your heart, it’s all relative” rubbish and actually accept that some things are right, and some things – such as electrocuting people is by its nature wrong.
I’ve written a lesson for older children on Milgram’s experiment (opens pdf). It probably needs a follow on about genuine authority and obedience.
It’s the feast of the Epiphany today and for Latin Rite Catholics and most other Christians this is the 12th and last day of Christmas. However some Latin Rite Catholics like to keep Christmas until the Feast of the Presentation in February.
For our Eastern Rite brethren and most Orthodox Christians Christmas Day is tomorrow.
Christmas and Easter have had different dates since the beginning I believe.
Epiphany comes from the Greek word “epiphania” which means ‘manifestation’ or ‘appearance’. If I was a good HE mum I would have had the children writing out the Greek word today – but I’m not and I didn’t.
I do like to tell them the traditional story of the men coming from Babylon/Chaldea, which is now Iraq and travelling after the star to seek the baby King of the Jews.
Matthew tells us they came and brought gifts of gold, Francincence and myrrh, so the tradition began that there were three magi – one for each gift. Nevertheless we don’t know how many came and I heard once that some Russian stories have as many as 12 magi.
In Italy they remember the old story of Befana and so we have the Story of Old Befana by good ol’ Tomie dePaola. If you are interested in this book just click on the book in my left sidebar and check it out at Amazon or shop around.
MORE FREEBIES on offer.
I am still producing freebies. Check out That Resource Site blog very regularly to get them, or if it’s easier you can check out my page on their site, but don’t miss out on the great and growing amount of resources That Resource Family offer; it’s all free but remember they are living off one wage, so if you can donate, please do so
I’ve added shopping list and budget pages and borrowed books and resources pages that a couple of families have requested.
I have decided not to rush into the new term. This week there’s medical appts to get through, so I think it will be reading and music and not a lot else.
Reading the real stories of how these sciences were developed is more interesting that most of the murder and whodoneit tales you can read or watch on TV.
The history of science and the people who made the history is a massive subject. This is just a little lesson in a tiny corner of it. Enjoy.
I have also made some Thank You cards in both ordinary and primary lined formats.
Please keep an eye out on That Resource Site and blog as they are working on revamping the site. Just about everything made available on their sites are made by one home educating mother, working her socks off for our benifit.
Keep an eye on my Little Lessons page too as I am hoping to have more resources to offer soon.
I’m going to try and do some Frugal Friday posts- whether freebies or cheapies or some ideas for keeping the debt collectors at bay.
Today’s are Freebies. THIS WEBSITE offers quite a few free downloads and games for children learning Greek, Latin and Spanish using the books from Classical Acedemic Press. We haven’t any of their books yet, but I hope we can get some soon. Even so the free colouring books for Greek and Latin vocab are useful and I think fit in reasonably well with Linney’s Latin and his free MP3s and KidsGreek which is also free.
While we are on the subject of languages I recomment free British Sign Language Stories, which is just a lovely site.
Just as interest I noticed that Latin is to be part of the Baccalaureate . It must have mentioned in the White Paper. Latin and Greek are both classical languages that open up a whole world of linguistic understanding and history. Also it’s just fun for the children.
Meanwhile I discovered that the water I was cooking purple sprouting broccoli in for dinner that night, went purple. So I saved some in test tubes to see if it makes good universal indicator.
Free Audio Books
