My Scripture Ponderings

Who doesn't love Captain Moroni from the Book of Mormon.  I sure do.  It is amazing to me that every time I read the Book of Mormon I can learn something new and relevant to my life at the time that I am reading it.  I have had this post on my mind for a long time, so, it's about time I post it. 

" In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives and our children-and he fastened it on the end of a pole." (Alma 46:12)

This scripture has been so relevant to me during these elections that we just experienced.  I have worried and prayed for our kids and our freedom and I feel that things might be going in the right direction.  We'll see because our leader isn't exactly a virtuous person, but I feel that we have a chance at preserving our freedom and strengthening our country. 

As I read about captain Moroni a recurring theme stands out to me.  He is constantly trying to strengthen his cities.  He builds walls and creates armor to protect his people.  He could be angry and go fight the Lamanites, but he sees it necessary to strengthen his people from within. 

I've been thinking about this in my own home. 





How am I strengthening my home and my children so that they can be prepared for the temptations that they will face?

There is a motto in the business world that I love.  It goes like this, "Prior Planning Provides Possible Perfect Outcome."  Another thing my grandpa used to tell us was, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

I love to plan.. Sometimes too much. ... I also have to realize that...

I can only control what I do and not what anyone else does. 

When I am strong, my home is strong.  

There is a lady named Donna Goff,  www.mentoringourown.com,  She feels it is her mission to strengthen Moms and help them simplify their lives so that they can homeschool and lead their kids on a good path. I was stressed out...I decided to listen to her webinar one day.  She really hit a string with me and all of a sudden what she was saying made sense.  I needed to do more little things each day instead of letting them pile up.  I needed to create better habits for myself and let my kids watch me have better habits.

I once heard from another Mom that I admire, that it's like Mom's are in a box with their kids. Unless the Mom gets out of the box with the kids and pushes the box, the box isn't going to go anywhere, it's only going to stay in place.

Donna Goff invited me to join her in a 90 day challenge on ditching the stress.  So, I decided to take this challenge.

She has a 7 point plan on what we need to do each day to feel fulfilled and put our needs as Mom's first and not get overwhelmed with life.  Here is the list:

1. Pray, read Scriptures
2. Get ready for the day
3. Get a great breakfast, dinner prep and dishes
4. Put one load of laundry to wash, dry and fold by the end of the day
5. Homeschool
6. 30 minute Power Clean
7. Exercise

I have a little card that I posted on my fridge to remind me of my goals.  Some days I don't get to everything but that's OK.  But, I can honestly say that I am less stressed, I don't have dishes piling up and laundry piling up.  It is amazing!!! As I've been reading my scriptures in the morning, the kids will run and grab their scriptures, everyone wants to read with Mom.  I can definitely see areas that I needed to change so that I would be less stressed. One thing Donna stresses is to set the timer to 30 min. for cleaning and stick to it.  Sometimes, I tend to want to finish everything in one day.  I'm trying to stick to only 30 minutes so that I have more time to enjoy my kids. 

In Conclusion...

If Momma' ain't happy ain't nobody happy!!
I invite all to ditch the stress focus on a few areas that are piling up in your lives and address them little by little each day and watch as your home turns into a happier, lovelier place.




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My Horse Loving Daughter


This little girl loves horses.  She has read every single book about horses and is dying to do horseback riding lessons. 


We just found a great book.  I love to read to my kids and I love to find a good story.  It's one of my favorite things. 

Elise and I have read Black Beauty together and Little House on the Prairie and so many others.  This time we read "Misty of Chincoteague", it was such a good book.  Definitely a true classic.

This book takes place on the east coast on the island of Chincoteague.  Every year on the island of Chincoteague there is a Pony Penning Day, a day where people from the island buy wild horses.  Two kids in this story Paul and Maureen have their hearts set on this horse that is as wild as can be.  They call her the Phantom. They save up their money so that they can buy this horse.  Paul decides to go with the group of men to catch the Phantom.  Everyone thinks it is impossible to catch the Phantom, but Paul proves them wrong.  In the process of catching the Phantom he discovers that she has a foal.  He names the foal Misty and ends up rounding up the two horses to bring them back for Pony Penning day.  I won't ruin the end of the story, but we loved it.  It is truly a story for a horse loving girl like my girl.


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Here's a Fun Book

We have a project based co-op that we started this year.  It has been so much fun.  This year my friend Tiffany Mcduffey  planned a fun project on the elections.  We read this book with our families and the kids all got to run for president.  We had debates, the kids wrote a persuasive essay on why they think they should be president, the kids created commercials, we learned about the branches of the government and finally at the end everyone voted for president.  It was a lot of fun.  Tiffany even planned on electoral votes so when we voted for president they won specific states and got to see that California had the most electoral votes.  It was a great time.

The elections this year were probably the most stressful I've ever experienced.  My kids got really into them and this book helped us understand a lot.  It's about a kid who decides to run for president and wins.  It was a fun read and we got to experience and discuss all the hard work that goes into running for president.  My kids all decided that they never want to run for president. 
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CRAZY KIDS!!

Sometimes I like to just take pictures of my crazy, fun sometimes exhausting kids.  I love them so much, but life can get crazy.  These are a few pictures to show how crazy and fun life can be with 5 beautiful children. 














This is Sophie and Sammy.  I caught them in the bathroom doing this and was about to get mad at them, but decided.  they need a picture.  I'm glad I did, because I want to remember the craziness as well as the good times.

T



These are some pictures that I just found on my camera.  This shows the personality of my little Jayden and his sister.  They are best friends and have so much fun together.  I just love watching them play.
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Geology is Really Cool!!

So, I'm going to back up a little and do a little summary of what has happened in our lives in the past few months.

First, I'm going to tell you about this awesome unit study that we did.  I was at Thanksgiving Point in Utah walking through the gift shop looking at all of these amazing rocks.  I thought, I need to do a Unit Study with my kids on Geology.  I had this big plan unfolding and so many ideas coming to mind. 

With the Family School from Latterday Learning they have their subjects organized into units.  I saw the one on geology and thought, "This will be perfect". We had so much fun, we learned about the faults of the earth, the layers of the earth, tsunamis, earthquakes, how mountains are formed and finally about rocks. Even my 3 year old goes around looking at rocks calling them igneous or granite.  It was so much fun. 

As part of our unit study we do a celebration at the end.  For this I searched mines in our area.  I'm not from here, so I didn't know what I would find.  But, Lo and behold Nevada isn't called "The Silver State" for nothing.  There are tons of old silver mines. 

I told my kids we are going to an old silver mine.  It was called the Chollar mine.  An old couple that ran it thought it was fun to take my kids into this mine under ground.  My kids were scared, and so was I.  The tour guide at one point turned off the lights so that we could see how dark it was under the earth.  This was traumatic.  But, when we came out of this mine, we had a new appreciation for gold and silver and how much work goes into getting these things.  The workers had to work in sometimes 130-150 degree temperatures and then go into the ice room to cool off every hour.  I can't even imagine having to do this.  They didn't see the sunlight for days at a time.  It seemed surreal that people had to experience this to get these minerals from the earth. 

Then I remembered reading a book by Gerald Lund called "The Undaunted".  In this book it starts out describing the situation of families where kids had to work in coal mines in England from the time they were 6 years old.  Sometimes they would die because of how intense the work was.  I showed my kids videos of these kids working in mines and they felt really lucky for not having to work in mines and that they have the opportunity to go to school, even though we homeschool.  This was a great lesson and something I felt was important to realize. 

Finally, we did our presentations to share with our family.  We invited our cousins over to our house and each of the kids chose a rock or mineral to research.  This was actually quite fascinating.  I'm going to tell you a little about each presentation.



 Sophie did her presentation on opals.  She is 3 but always wants to be involved in everything and she loves to talk.  I showed her  her birthstone which is an opal.  She loved that the opal looked like a rainbow. 



J



Jayden chose to do his presentation on granite.  I helped him and we found some interesting facts about granite.  We found that it comes from The Rocky Mountains and Yosemite and other mountains.  In SLC, Utah we found that there is a granite vault where the LDS church stores all of it's information and records.  This is high security and it was pretty interesting to Jayden.  Also, we saw how the Salt Lake temple was made of granite brought down from the mountains and it took 40 years to build because of how much work it was to build the temple.  They also had to restart the building of the temple because they discovered that the foundation wasn't strong enough.  That was 2 years after they had already begun.  How devastating that must have been.  This was so interesting and fun to do.  I have a new appreciation for granite after this project.

Elise found out that one of her birthstones is Alexandrite.  She was very excited for this beautiful stone.  She found that this was discovered in the Ural mountains in Russia, and named after Alexander the first.  They thought that this was a different stone that had been mined in that area, but soon discovered that this stone changes colors.  So, they gave this stone a new name after the king of Russia.  She also says that she wants her wedding ring to be made out of Alexandrite. 









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Our Famous Inventor Science Club

I've been wanting to share a club that I created for my oldest son when we began homeschooling.  This son was really into science.  When I would ask him what he wanted to learn about, he would light up and say "science!!".  So, I began to think what I could create for him in order to fulfill this desire.  This is what I came up with.  It was extremely fun and interesting. 
Hope you like it.  I will also share some of our field trips that we attended and some projects that we created. 

This is my basic outline of our book club:

Science Book Club
Host: Jocelyn Vance
For kids ages 8-12
Exact dates and places TBA.
Also, a really good book to have on hand is called, “The New Way Things Work”, by David Macaulay it really explains the inventions in great detail. I'll put page numbers to that book in reference to the books that we will be studying as well.

September: “Archimedes and the Door of Science”, Jeanne Bendick, ( “The New Way Things Work”, p.22-27. 374 (levers) (pulleys) p. 54-55)
Inventions include: Archimedes' Screw (idea behind levers, pulleys and propellers in modern science) He also invented war machines for King Hiero and eventually used by Alexander the Great. Scientific terms include: gravity, density, mass, volume, buoyancy, displacement and hydrostatics

We will get together around 2nd week in September to discuss book and perform several science experiments performed by Archimedes. As well as create mini models of war machines created by Archimedes.



Second Week in October: Field Trip (TBA) Possibly small airport in Sparks to see propellers on airplanes






We did it!! We went on our first field trip to a small airport here in town.  It was so much fun!!  The owners of the airport allowed the kids to sit in the cockpit of the small airplanes.  They explained all of the components of the airplanes to the kids and handed out coloring booklets for the kids to take home.  We discussed how the propellors function as a screw all because of Archimedes.  It was a hit!!



Last Week in October: “Along Came Galileo”, Jeanne Bendick ( “The New Way Things Work”(pendulum clocks, p.42), (telescopes, p.186-189)
Inventions include: Pendulums, The Law of Accelerated Motion, The law of Parabolic Fall, Speed

Telescopes and Space Studies.

We will meet to discuss solar system at time of Galileo and now. We will create mini solar system.

Second Week in November: Field trip to Planetarium

We did it!! We attended a field trip to our local planetarium and got to watch "Attack of the Space Pirates". 


First Week in January: “Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia”, Margaret Cousins ( “The New Way Things Work”, electricity, p.386, conductors, p. 262-263), steam power p. 158-159, 380)
Introduction to Electricity and Automation
We will be getting together 2nd week in January to discuss book and create a lightning conductor.
Last Week in January: Field Trip TBA possible newspaper office to see how newspapers are printed because Benjamin Franklin owned a printing press.
Second Week in February: “ The Story of Thomas Alva Edison” Margaret Cousins ( “The New Way Things Work”, batteries p.268-269, 386), camera lenses, p. 198-207, 383) modern TV p.242-247)
Inventions include: electric light bulb, phonograph, moving picture and hundreds of other inventions.

We will be getting together to discuss difference between modern moving pictures and those created by Thomas Edison.
We will experiment with light bulb and electricity. Record results in Science Notebook


Last Week in February: Each child will choose an invention by Thomas Edison and write a report to share as well as provide a sample of invention or experiment to share with group.


Second Week in March: Field Trip to TV station (TBA).

Last Week in March: “Albert Einstein, Young Thinker”, Marie Hammontree (Childhood of Famous Americans) ( “The New Way Things Work” hot air balloons, p. 104-105, jet engines
p. 160-161)
We will get together to discuss inventions and ideas made by Albert Einstein. Discuss atom bomb
Perform mentos explosion experiment as a group to simulate atomic bomb.


Second Week in April: “ Marie Curie's Search for Radium”, Beverly Birch and Christian Birmingham ( “The New Way Things Work”, X-rays p. 296-297, 388)
We will get together to discuss Marie Curie's discoveries including radium and X-Rays.
Scientific terms; radioactive, ray, x-ray, radiation and electrometer
Perform a science experiment together as a group, test water content of food before and after heating and record results in science notebook.

Last Week in April: Field Trip (possibly to doctors office to discuss X rays or have an Xray technician present to group)
We did it!! We attended a field trip to our local hospital.  We received a tour of the children's hospital and the kids were allowed to see a cat scan room.  We discussed how Marie Curie discovered radium and made it possible for x-rays to be performed.  It was a great experience. 

Third Week in May: Final Presentations
Choose a famous inventor to present to group. Wright Brothers (air Planes), Jacques Montgolfier (Hot Air Balloons), etc. (Choose from “The Picture History of Great Inventors” by Gillian Clements)

Each child will research on specific inventor and present to group along with a visual aid.






 There you have it.  Our science book club.  I had all these great ideas, and they didn't all work out exactly as I had planned, but we had a great time and that's what is most important. 








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What have we been up to lately??

We've been busy this last week, but really this last month.  We've been studying about geology, we've learned about the tectonic plates, earthquakes, mines, fossils, crystals , different kinds of rocks and so much more.  I never even realized how much fun geology could be.  I have had tons of fun, and hopefully my kids have had fun as well.  So here are some pictures of what we've been doing.

Crystal Garden, made with ammonia, salt and liquid bluing.

Hiking up at Galena Creek

Hiking with our cousins that just moved here

Elise and Mylie hiking

Dallins first take at photography

I really like this picture

The forest is so amazing and peaceful

Jayden reading to Sammy and Sophie.  The amazing thing since our house has become a house of learning is that the little kids love books more than toys.  They read and read for hours.  I love it.

Uncovering homemade fossils

MY THOUGHTS ON PATTERNS AND CRYSTALS

We had an amazing family school lesson on crystals that I wanted to share.  We learned about molecules and how in crystals they repeat over and over in a pattern and eventually form a beautiful crystal. 
We saw this with our crystal garden.

We observed a salt crystal under a microscope. 
We then experimented by adding ammonia and liquid bluing to the salt and watched it grow and grow into a beautiful crystal garden.  We added food coloring to make it even more amazing.

I explained to the kids that just like crystals when we develop good patterns in our lives we can grow and grow into beautiful crystals.

This helped me ponder what patterns in my life are helping me to grow into a beautiful crystal.  I realized that as I study the scriptures daily, exercise and read from good books, that these things are helping me grow into the crystal that I hope to become. 

I listened to this talk last week by Bishop Christopher Waddell, entitled, A Pattern for Peace.


In this talk he explains 3 things that we can do to establish a pattern for peace.  This went right along with my thoughts that I'd been pondering after having this lesson on crystals.  It amazed me how the Lord teaches in patterns and truly we can observe this in nature and the way that we learn lessons in life. 

Bishop Waddell said that  as we search the scriptures, listen and walk with Christ each day we will come closer and closer to Christ and have that peace in our lives that comes from the Power of Christ.  I loved this talk and the lessons that I learned. I'm so grateful to be able to learn and ponder with my kids.  It has been an amazing journey.  Hooray for Family School!!!






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