If the Weather Outside is Frightful

I've been listening to the forecast for tonight and tomorrow. Brrr. Not sure I'm ready for blizzardy type of snow. In light of the prediction, I thought I should remind everyone of the snow policy for home school assistance. If the Atlantic Public Schools cancel school, then there will be no home school assistance on that day. If there is a late start, I will also start late. So if you were scheduled to see me at 9:00, but school doesn't start till 10:00, I won't be there yet. We can either skip that week, or reschedule for later in the day, if I have an opening. When in doubt, give me a call:-)

To find out about school cancellations or late starts, listen to one of the local radio stations. KCCI out of Des Moines and WOWT in Omaha both list cancellations and late starts on their early morning broadcast between 6:00-7:00 am or on their websites.

Stay warm!

I'm Gonna Try This Again...

Ok, so I need my kids here with me at work to show me how to put that Advent Conspiracy video clip on my blog!!! Here is a link to the video in case you couldn't open it in my last post :-) I do know how to do that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Here are a couple of items I wanted to pass along.

First of all, I know some people love to shop on the day after Thanksgiving. Personally, there are a lot of things I would rather do than face a crowd of mad consumers. I may be persuaded to pick up a couple of things we really need, but I don't really want to get sucked into buying stuff just because it's on sale. Maybe I could look at the experience as an adventure in spreading cheer to grumpy shoppers. That could be fun :-) If you're more into staying home and shopping online, I got an email from www.currclick.com about their Black Friday giveaway. They will have some of their downloadable home school materials free on Friday only. So, I am planning on checking it out and thought some of you might want to as well.

Secondly, I thought I'd share a video clip from an organization called, Advent Conspiracy. My niece shared this with me and I thought some of you might appreciate it. They are all about spending less at Christmas, but giving more and worshiping more.



So, in light of that, I am going to be spending some of my time with your children in December doing some crafts that they could give to others as gifts. We will be wrapping up our fairy tale unit by writing some fractured fairy tales and may read a couple of Christmasey tales like The Elves and the Shoemaker, or The Little Match Girl. The rest of our time we will be making things! If you have any cute ideas or craft supplies to donate, let me know. When we resume in January we will be studying medieval times!

For Brown Bag, I will be reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson the first two Thursdays in December. I would like to take the last Brown Bag day (December 17) to do something like visit the nursing home or hospital caroling with the kids. If you have any other service oriented ideas, please pass them along!

Enjoy your families this weekend!

Operation Christmas Child

First of all, for those of you wondering if I am still planning of showing Cinderella tomorrow (Thursday Nov. 5) the answer is YES!!! My fever broke last night, so I will be officially fever free for over 24 hours by tomorrow morning. So, Cinderella, my room, 10:00 am!!

Secondly, I am so excited to be able to do another Operation Christmas Child event with the children. We have been doing this for 4 years now and I have even had children asking when we are going to do it. I love to see children who are thinking more of others than themselves :-) You are doing something right at home!

So, NEXT Thursday (Nov. 12) at 11:00 we will pack boxes for Operation Christmas Child. If you are new to this, please check out the link. I also have some brochures in my classroom you can look at. OCC is a ministry of Samaritan's Purse, which provides Christmas gifts to children all over the world who would not otherwise receive any gifts. Items are placed in a shoebox and collected at drop off centers around the US. You may either pack a shoebox as a family and bring it next Thursday, or you may donate items to be sent in boxes we will send as a group. Choose gifts for either a boy or a girl age 2-4. 5-9 or 10-14.

Some suggestions for gifts include; school supplies, small toys, hygiene items, hard candy, t-shirts, socks, ball caps, sunglasses, hair accessories etc. If you include something that needs batteries, please include extras. Do not send used or damaged items, war related toys such as guns or military figures. Also, no chocolate or other food, liquids, vitamins or breakable items.

Lastly, we will need to send $7 with each box to cover shipping, so if you feel led to help out with that, feel free. :-)

We will watch a short video clip about Operation Christmas Child before we pack the boxes. I will take photos of the children to send in the boxes and will give them the opportunity to write a short letter to the child who receives their box.

I look forward to doing this and as always, thanks for sharing your children with me!

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, a three year old little red haired girl sat on her mother's lap, staring at a black and white television. She was captivated by the music and mesmerized by the action of the 1965, made for television, Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. Her mother says that she hardly moved for two whole hours.

That little girl was me, and I still find myself singing, "In my own little corner in my own little room, I can be whatever I want to be..." and truth be told, dancing around the room with a broom in hand. Thirty-two years later in 1997, I was just as captivated by the re-make staring Brandi as Cinderella. The colorful costumes and sets were amazing and even now it would still be my go to comfort movie. (along with Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz... what can I say, I'm a kid at heart)

So far this year at Home School Connection, we have taken a closer look at several fairy tales. We've looked at Snow White and did a science experiment "poisoning apples" with bleach and rubbing alcohol. We've read Little Red Riding Hood and done projects ranging from using balloons to see how far a stomach can stretch to making puppets, maps of the forest and rewriting the story changing an element. We read my grandmother's 1941 edition of The Three Little Pigs and have seen the old Disney Silly Symphony, animated in the early 1930's. We have read The Three Pigs and the Scientific Wolf and learned all about simple machines. We've designed our own wolf catching machines and have compared and contrasted real wolves with fairy tale wolves.

Cinderella is next. There are so many ways to go and I have many fun activities planned. We will look at the original story and compare it to the many Cinderella stories from all over the world. I have some science experiments in mind. One looks at ashes and cinders and the chemistry of how things burn. Another takes a close look at pumpkins and their seeds. There are also a couple of others that we may not get to. If you are interested in doing any of these or related activities at home, let me know. I would be happy to share ideas!

I would also love to share Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (the 1997 version) with any of the kids who would like to see it. I will plan on showing it on Thursday November 5 from 10:00-12:00 in my classroom. I'll have some popcorn here and you can send a juice box or something else to drink with your children. This will take the place of Brown Bag and Books for that day.

But if your children come home singing, "Impossible, for a plain yellow pumpkin to become a gold carriage, impossible..." I'm sorry. :0)

Did You KNow?

Recently I had the opportunity to watch some of the Did You Know? videos. The original was called Shift Happens, and it along with the Did You Know? updates share statistics about our rapidly changing culture and the effects of technology upon our culture. Some of it is very interesting. For instance, it took radio 38 years to reach a target audience of 50 million. Television reached that same size audience in only 13 years. The internet reached 50 million people in only 4 years, the iPod did it in 3 years and Facebook...only 2 years.

We currently have 540,000 words in the English language. That's 5x as many as during Shakespeare's lifetime.

The amount of new technological information is doubling every two years. That means for a student going to school to get a 4 year degree in a technological field, the information you were learning would be outdated by the 3rd year of study.

While all of this is very interesting and certainly has relevance to how and what we teach students in this day and age, I think it's important to remember that while technology is changing at record breakneck speeds, some things don't really change at all.

I find myself thinking that there are some "most important things" that I need to teach my kids that will be relevant no matter how our society changes. It is my responsibility to purposefully and diligently teach my children my values and core beliefs, and to teach my children self-discipline. If I fail to teach my kids, they'll still learn values, but they won't be mine. They'll learn from the culture.

From an educational standpoint, I believe it's crucial to teach kids to be independent, creative thinkers and problem solvers. They need age appropriate practice solving problems and making decisions, and yes, using higher level thinking skills. It is true that we are preparing kids to work in jobs that have yet to be created and they will be functioning and communicating in a different type of world. But knowing that, it becomes even more important to prepare them for their futures as family leaders...mothers and fathers. When the family falls apart, then the whole fabric of our culture will follow and it won't matter how much technology we have.

Click on the links and watch the videos. Let me know what you think.

The Brothers Grimm

I can't believe how many tales the Grimm Brothers collected in their native Germany. Did you know that there are a total of 211 tales in the complete collection? They collected stories in a section of Germany now known as Fairy Tale Road. It goes from Hanau in south central Germany all the way to Bremen in northern Germany. There is a good website that shows the road and stops along the way, complete with pictures of the split timber houses popular in that area, and pictures of Sleeping Beauty's castle and Rapunzel's tower.

I've been reading quite a few of the tales in their original form in the collection. Some of them are a little darker than their Disney counterparts, but I've been amazed at the truth hidden within them. In Snow White, the evil queen finds out from her mirror that Snow White is fairer than she and this is how she is described;

This gave the queen a great shock, and she became yellow and green with envy, and from that hour her heart turned against Snow White, and she hated her. And envy and pride like ill weeds grew in her heart higher every day, until she had no peace day or night...

I was struck as I read that with how hatred grew in her heart. The truth that our actions reflect the condition of our heart is big as life in this story.

Last week I read Mother Hulda, a lesser know tale to 3 precious little girls. It has the classic step mother who loves her child but mistreats her step child. In the story, the hard working and kind step child is rewarded by another character (Mother Hulda) and the lazy child ends up being covered in sticky tar. As the story closed, one of the girls said to me, rather emphatically, "What that girl needs is a bath and some lovin'!" and her sister added, "Yeah, and mommy's should love all their kids the same!"

Wow! Out of the mouths of babes! I wasn't expecting so much truth out of these old tales. I can hardly wait to read another and see what other nuggets of truth I can find.

Thanks for sharing your kids with me. They are truly amazing people!