School For Us

Last night I started reading a great book called The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. The book was written by a Carnegie Mellon University professor as he was dying from pancreatic cancer. I'm sure I'll have more to share about this book as I've been writing down lots of quotes! But, for now, I'd like to share one of them.
"...growing up, I thought there were two types of families:
1) Those who needed a dictionary to get through dinner.
2) Those who didn't.

Wow! First of all, my husband is usually gone during dinner time, so we are usually talking or doing our own thing - not having deep conversations that need dictionaries! We do sometimes watch CNN Student News and discuss that, though. But, when we're at my mom's house, the dictionary comes out fairly often - just like when we were kids! Often, it is to see how to pronounce a word (as my mom often pronounces words differently than we do, but her way is always there, too!). Now, more often, we grab a computer or iPad to check something out.

Growing up, I have fond memories of two dictionaries...

The first was the one we used at home. It was big and reddish brown and well used. The word "dictionary" was indented on the cover and, for some reason, my dad had taken white-out and filled in some of the letters. Anyway, my siblings and I would often have friends over and we loved to play games. One of our favorite was Fictionary. Basically, whoever is 'it' finds a word in the dictionary that no one knows. Then, they write down the correct definition on a slip of paper while the other people write down a bogus definition. "It" then reads all of the definitions and everyone votes for what definition they think is correct. Points are given for creating a definition someone else votes for, voting for the correct definition, and for choosing a word that no one is able to pick the correct definition for. Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of the game and point system that we used.

The second dictionary that I have fond memories of was called Big Bertha. Big Bertha was HUGE and sat on a podium in my 6th grade classroom. In fact, I don't think any of us sixth graders could have picked 'her' up! At least, that's what my 11-year-old brain remembers. Whenever we asked about a word in class, Mr Irvin would tell us to "go check Big Bertha!"


As an aside, I learned that Mr Irvin died several years ago. He couldn't have been very old... maybe in his 60's? Anyway, I really enjoyed him as a teacher. We had just moved from Kansas to Oklahoma and it was my first experience adjusting to my new life. Mr Irvin made the (strange) decision to read the book Congo to us that year. As I looked for the book to post a photo, I realized it was written by Michael Crichton and that it was a new book at the time. Anyway, the book is SCARY!!! It's about gorillas who have gone kind of crazy and are bashing people's heads in. But, we LOVED IT!!! He'd read a little each day and we couldn't wait for more. And, in fact, I think I'll read it to Alex at the start of next year! She loves scary books and movies.

One last thought... I've been reading a lot of books lately in just one or two days. It's fun! And, I'm glad I have the time. But, there is also something special about being immersed in a book for days... just getting little pieces at a time and having to wait for more. I think they become more a part of your life that way. What do you think?

I watched session 1 of a Yale Open Course today. It is a free course titled "France Since 1871" and it is taught by Professor John Merriman. Although the video itself is a little choppy, I am finding the professor quite enjoyable and am looking forward to learning about France. There are 24 lectures and the class reads six books and watches three films. I thought this would be a great way to prepare for our trip to France this summer.


The first lecture was mostly about what to expect in the course. At the conclusion, though, the professor read a poem by Brecht that he said highly influenced him to become a history teacher. The poem is "A Worker Reads History."

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.
So many questions.

Alex has to read a lot of books this school year (wow!) and she has to fill in this chart that tells what genre each book is. Well, I was having a little trouble telling the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasty. But, I found this neat site that I found very helpful at the BookNutsReadingClub. I wanted to have it here to look back at and maybe some of you will find it useful, too!

Some people believe in ghosts. Others don't. In a small city in Timberland, called Millstone, where I live, everyone does.

This is the start of Alex's NaNoWriMo novel. I love it! She's writing a novel with NaNoWriMo. Are you familiar with it? It's something I'd seen off & on the past few years, but we've never tried. Now, at school, Alex is writing a novel along with all of the students in 6th grade.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and it is an annual project held every November. You can find out more on their website.

Free Techonology pointed me to a neat site by Lerner:

What do Jumbo, P. T. Barnum's famous elephant, and Huck Finn, the famous character by Mark Twain, have in common? A year: 1885. That was the year that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in the United States. And, that was the year that Jumbo was sadly hit by a train and died.

This week, one of Alex's assignments in her ancient history class was to write a news report about a certain subject, Pegasus, which must include an interview and a commercial. Her topic was Pegasus and I loved her commercial - Medusa's Hair Salon! Anyway, she is still polishing her story, but while she wrote I decided to write my own news piece.

In Alex's online American history class, we are using A History of Us series by Joy Hakim. Last week, we read about both P. T. Barnum and about Mark Twain. I decided to use those two stories for my newscast. I think this is a GREAT way for students to show what they've learned about a subject. Just another alternative to taking a multiple choice test! (And, a much better alternative in my opinion.)

I found a more detailed version of the story online. It is from the archives of the New York Times and it is titled "The Great Jumbo Killed." So, here's my store:

Mary: Hello. I’m Mary Pachyderm and today is September 16, 1885. Welcome to tonight’s edition of the 10 o’clock news on channel 7.

Mary: We start out with some very sad news. Jumbo, the famous elephant of the Barnum, Bailey & Hutchinson circus, died late last night. The circus was in Ontario, Canada for a one day performance. While the performance was still going on, the 31 elephants were being loaded onto their train cars. All had been loaded except for Jumbo and the drawf clown elephant, Tom Thumb. Jumbo’s keeper, Scotty, was walking the two pachyderms down the track to their car when he noticed a train approaching. Scotty is joining us live from Ontario.


Mary: Scotty, thank you for joining us. I know this must be really hard for you.

Scotty: Thanks, Mary. It has been a hard day for all of us at the circus. Jumbo was a wonderful elephant and he will be missed.

Mary: Scotty, could you tell us what happened?

Scotty: Yes. I was walking Jumbo and Tom Thumb down the track towards their car. We had been told that it was safe to load the elephants and that there wouldn’t be any train along for 30 minutes. All of a sudden, I saw the headlights of a locomotive coming towards us! And, I heard the engineeer whistle 3 times for breaks. He must have seen us, too.

So, I urged Jumbo to hurry up and he started running down the track. I ran alongside him, but it was no use. The train couldn’t stop and it hit Tom Thumb and then hit Jumbo. When it hit Jumbo, the train stopped and a couple of the cars came off the tracks.

Mary: How were the elephants after they were hit?

Scotty: Well, Tom Thumb was thrown into a ditch. Jumbo was stuck next to the train. He wasn’t doing very well. He seemed determined and several hundred men worked using ropes to try to get him up off the track. But, after about 15 minutes, he passed away. We were all distraught and had to continue our work to get him off the tracks.

Mary: Were you able to get him off the tracks?

Scotty: Yes. It was a lot of work, but we were able to get him off the tracks.

Mary: Thank you so much for joining us. The whole country is in mourning over the loss of Jumbo.

Scotty: Thank you.

Mary: We’ll be back after a short commercial break.

COMMERCIAL:
Did you follow the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? Have you been waiting for Mark Twain’s newest book to hit the bookshelves? Well, you don’t have to wait any longer.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is here! This book was first published back in February, but sold out all over the country in just 3 days. This time, the publisher has printed up over 40,000 books! And so you can get your own copy today!

In Huck Finn, Huck and Tom are now rich! But, Huck’s drunken, abusive father, Pap, shows up and takes him away to live in a cabin. Pap locks Huck up, but Huck escapes and elaborately fakes his own death. Then, he sets off down the river. Of course, this is just the beinning of Huck’s adventures. You’ll have to get your own copy to find out more.

Adventures of Hucklberry Finn. Buy it today!

Mary: We are happy to announce that Tom Thumb, the drawf elephant who was injured in the accident that claimed Jumbo’s life, is doing well. His leg was set and he is expected to make a full recovery. Also, the Smithsonian Institute is expected to arrive this evening. They will take Jumbo’s skin and skeleton to preserve it. The skin will be donated to Tufft’s College. The skeleton will be displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Alex is currently taking an online writing class through home2teach. Each week she has grammar, spelling, typing, and a writing assignment. We just completed 3 weeks and, so far, it is going pretty well. She is learning in all 4 areas, learning to hand things in on a deadline, and learning to be more independent as the teacher doesn't want me to correct her work - she wants to catch the errors herself so she sees where Alex needs help..

This week, her teacher sent back her assignment for edits (they always have you edit your work to improve it) asking her to capitalize Chihuahua. I wasn't sure why and I happened to be on the phone with my brother and he told me it was because they were named for a place - Chihuahua, Mexico.

I just hadn't thought that one through very well! This is one of our capitaliation rules: "Capitalize words derived from proper nouns." So, for example, "I must take English and math." So, because Chihuahua is derived from a proper noun, we should capitalize it!

Here are a few other dog breeds you would capitalize under this rule:

• Chihuahua - from Chihuahua, Mexico
• Great Pyrenees - mountain range in central Europe
• German Shepherd - from Germany
• Maltese - the island of Malta
• Labrador - province of Canada
• Jack Russell - named after a person - a dog breeder
• Saint Bernard- from the place, St. Bernard Pass, which was named after a monk
• Doberman - named after a German tax collector and dog breeder, Herr Louis Doberman. According to Purina's site, "Herr Louis was a night watchman as well as a dog-catcher and tax collector and needed the ultimate protection dog to accompany him on his rounds. Thus he spent 60 years in his native town of Apolda, in the state of Thueringen, South Central Germany, working on the perfect dog for personal protection."

Today I substituted in one of my daughter's classes. The class is using Story of the World and this week's chapter was about Ancient Africa and included 2 stories about Anansi the Spider.

As I was preparing for this class, I found a site called Story Cove. You need to register, but this site is FREE! They have online cartoon videos of various stories, including a handful of Anansi stories. The stories are sorted by continent, with most of the stories come from Africa and Asia.

The site includes an area for kids to print off coloring pages, mazes, etc. And, it has free LESSON PLANS! Though the plans are mostly for kids in grades PreK-3rd, I found they worked well for my class of 4th & 5th graders. And, the kids REALLY enjoyed the videos! (We ended up watching 4.)

After doing some mapwork of Africa, we watched the video of Anansi & the Pot of Beans. Using the Lesson Plan, we covered:

• similes
• friendly letters
• cause & effect
• acrostic poems

Here's another sample of lessons from Anansi & Turtle Go To Dinner:

• cooking
• verbs
• fact vs. opinion
• proverbs
• onomatopoeia 

It's a great site I've never heard of before, so I thought I'd spread the word. Check it out!

We are using various things for spelling this year. Our spelling list comes from: a curriculum, Alex's misspelled words, and words we are using in other subjects. This week, we started using a wonderful FREE program called Spelling City. The teacher (aka mom) types in the spelling words and then the student (or mom) has several choices: you can pick "teach me", "play a game", or "test me."

We don't care that much for the "teach me" part, but it could be useful. They basically say and spell the word for you. The "test me" part is pretty straight forward. But, what Alex is really enjoying is the "play a game" section.

I have been having Alex use the "alphabetize" section to practice, well, putting things in alphabetical order! We have both enjoyed Hang Mouse - if you mess up too many times, the cat will catch your tail! (We had to do it once, just to see what would happen!) Today, we played Crossword. There are a few glitches in it (the words kind of touch each other), but it still works. And, I love how this program comes up with its own sentences! So far, we haven't seen any problems. (And, several of the programs are printable.)

So, I'm not sure how long it will be until the novelty wears off, but for now Spelling City is making spelling fun in our house!

Someone told me about the Spelling Connections website today. It has 3 areas: Word Sort (Spellign & Thinking), Complete the Sentence (Spelling & Reading), and Proofreading (Spelling & Writing). Each area covers grades 1st through 8th and has 34 problems per grade.

For example, on Word Sort, Grade 1 Unit 1 has you sort words as to whether they rhyme with "fan" or "bad." Grade 8 Unit 5 has a list of about 20 fairly long words (like repertoire and overture) which you are to sort as to "adjective" or "noun."

For Complete the Sentence Grade 1 Unit 1, you are to fill in words in a sentence like "It is (an) elm tree." Grade 8 Unit 1 has sentences like " There was a (shortage) of copper so the government made fewer pennies."

And, for proofreading, you actually drag the correct proofreading marks to the part of a sentence or paragraph to be corrected. You must also correct the spelling if the error is a spelling error.

I think we're going to try this website tomorrow, so I thought I'd pass it along!

Oh, I just noticed a 4th part to the website. A spelling bee which is also by grade! You listen to the word and then they use the word in a sentence and then you spell it.

This weekend, we decided to make a bunny hutch to decorate our table for Easter. Alexandra even added a pool to the backyard.


The kit came with 3 bunnies, but only one of ours survived. I really liked this kit (I just saw some more at Target today), because the hutch is already put together! At Christmas, we had a really hard time putting together our gingerbread house. And, decorating it is the best part anyway!


We've also been working on a free lapbook from Homeschool Share using The Legend of the Easter Egg. It's kind of like a FIAR (Five in a Row) study.

On Monday, we did the language arts section - we read a poem about dying Easter eggs, worked on learning some vocabulary words from the book (like "bedlam" and "pelt"), and talked about similes. We had never discussed similies before and had fun doing a worksheet from this website and then had more fun making up funny similes during lunch.

Today, we did the geography component of the lapbook. We talked about faberge eggs and looked at photos of the eggs we'd made 2.5 years ago when Alexandra was only 4! And, we located Russia, Moscow, and St. Petersburg (where the eggs were made) on a map.

Tomorrow we plan on doing some neat science experiments and there is still more to do! And, there are recipes listed which we will probably do this weekend.

And, on Thursday or Friday we will discuss the real meaning of Easter - Jesus and His death and resurrection. The lapbook includes a Bible verse to memorize, a little book to discuss Good Friday and Easter Sunday, another to discuss the meaning of the bread and wine for communion, and one about the symbolism of the Easter Egg.

We are really enjoying these lapbooks from Homeschool Share and can't wait to do Rechenka's Eggs next week! The study includes more details of the geography of Russia, explains oviparous animal, has Russian recipes, and much more! And, Alexandra has a whole list of lapbooks she'd like to do after that.

My friend over at Martin Zoo sent us some links to some fun Language Arts games.

Power Proofreading is a great site for proofreading - looking for missed capital letters, question marks, etc. It has activities for grades 1-8.

Punctuation Paintball is a fun punctuation game.

Plural Play is a fun game about creating plurals.

And Noun Explorer covers correctly spelled plurals and abbreviations.

Have fun learning!

Today we talked about poetry including AABB rhyming patterns, couplets, stanzas, and quatrains (4 lines of poetry with a rhyming pattern.) Then, we had fun completing our own poems. (The starter lines we were given are in green- our lines are in blue.) Alexandra wanted to write more and more! I think we'll have to try some more poetry this week. Hope you enjoy them! (I found the idea for this lesson at the Baltimore Curriculum Project.)


In winter I get up at night.
My hair is messy - what a sight!
The humidity in the summer I hate.
All day my hair ain't looking great.



Cookies are my favorite snack.
While I eat I smack, smack, smack.
Each flavor is so very sweet,
But chocolate chip cannot be beat.

My sister sits on them without one care.
I said, "Mom, it's just not fair!"
"Don't worry dear," my mother said.
"Cookies are hidden under my bed!"

Lately, I've been leaning more towards a Charlotte Mason type of education. So, we've dictated a few times in the past few weeks. I'm wanting to make it a daily practice.

Today, I started reading from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. I read the first story today, which was a great length - just 3 pages. I loved Alexandra's dictation! She was even using some exact words, like "ill-tempered woman." :-)

Here's her story (I used a tape recorder then played it back to type it up.):

King Alfred and the Cakes

One day, King Alfred had a big army. Then, suddenly a bigger army came. They, the other army besides King Alfred’s, was winning.

And so, the next day he was in the woodcutter’s house and she said, “I must go out. Would you watch my cakes for me?”

He said, “Yes, ma’m.”

And, she went. He also did not know how he could watch these any more. He stopped thinking about the cakes and started thinking about how he could get his army back.

Later, when the woodcutter came back, she was furious! I once heard that she even hit him by a stick, but I find it very hard to believe - such an ill-tempered lady.

I do not know whether he had supper or no supper, but I do know that she said, “You lazy! You just want supper! You don’t want a job. You just want to have supper!”

So, I’m not sure if he got sent to his room without one single bite of supper or got one big, yummy supper.

The End

While studying Greece, I learned that Aesop was supposed to have been from Greece. So, we are going to read some of Aesop fables. Last night, I read "The Fox and the Crow." Alexandra said she knew that story as she has it on a story tape. She wanted to tell me the story, so I said, "Let me type it!"

Here is Alexandra's version of "The Fox & the Crow"

Once upon a time, there was a lovely young crow & a big, mean, mouth-watering fox.

Once they were sitting. The crow had a piece of cheese in her beak. She was sitting by a tree and a fox was right by her.

Right when she saw him, she flew up! And, then, out came the fox’s words. They were, “Oh, young little crow, I would like you to sing your most beautiful note. I’ve seen many crows before and none have came up to so black feathers and shiny black eyes.” And, then, he finally asked her, “Please, oh please won’t you sing me one beautiful note!”

The crow was so startled with these words that she opened her beak to sing & two things horrible happened. The cheese fell out of her mouth right by the fox & she made a loud “squawk!” It was horrible.

Then the fox said, “Thank you little crow. I knew that something beautiful and something I loved would come out of your mouth.” And in one gulp he swallowed the piece of cheese.

And then the young crow lied down and thought how silly she was.

The End