If Walls Could Talk...

My favorite kids story is Virginia Lee Burton's "The Little House". It's about a house, with human feelings, telling what she's seen in her lifetime. My favorite things to take pictures of are old houses, rundown and abandoned preferably. See, the creative writer in me imagines who lived in them, what was their life like...things like that. Imagine if these walls could talk...what would they say they've seen?

Looking Back...

Dog...Gone

Very sad around here today. Lots of tears and lots of me trying to figure out how to make the kids, particulary Jack feel a little better. He's taking this very hard. After 3 years, we finally had to give our dog Tucker away. Never was there a better dog. Jackson and Tucker have been like two peas in a pod since day one and I knew when this day would come it would be rough. I know he feels like he's lost his best friend. He went with Jody last nite to hand him over to a wonderful elderly woman who was needing a good watch dog as well as a companion. She has lots of room for him to run , a grandson who just lost his dog , and he wont' have to stay penned up like he did here in our neighborhood. This does not console us, however. Jody said that last nite was the roughest, hardest thing he's ever been through. Jack said his goodbyes, which was good, but Jody said it took everything in him not to tell the lady we'd changed our mind. But we know, we hope, Tucker will be better off. Gosh, this is a dog and it shouldn't be this hard. Jack wanted to know if when he got grown if he could go back and get him...boy this is rough. He has spent the morning on the couch crying and looking at a picture of him and Tucker, saying how he'll never see him again. I hate to see him hurt like this. My heart is heavy this morning. I know it may sound strange to pray about this but I have prayed that God will ease this pain...yes, I think God cares even about our dog troubles.
I'm reminded that loss is as much a part of life as gain and that loving something (especially for a kid) is important even if the loss of that loved thing brings us pain. Hard life lesson...

Olivia's BDAY

Tyler...Plain and Simple.

Friday...

What We're Into...

So glad that nicer weather has been popping up. Makes me want to actually do something! In school, the kids are still studying the Human Body...it's gonna take awhile at the pace I'm going. We're studying the five senses right now.

Here's the books we've used since the last post...

Your Skin and Mine

What is Hearing?

WHat is Sight?

What is Taste?

What is Touch?

What is Smell?

Used these printables for our dry erase human body notebook... Just scroll and click to the body part you're studying and you can find label diagrams plus videos and quizzes and activities.

http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/htbw_main_page.html

How the Body Works Eye

How the Body Works Nose

How the Body Works Ears
How the Body Works Skin

Here are the websites I came across that we've used...

University of Manchester Brain and Senses Site: Has neat videos and quizzes about the eyes, ears, tongue etc...

Neuroscience for Kids : Senses Experiments So many easy good experiments and activities...

Here's our finished Beaded Neuron Projects...the link to it is in THIS POST

For History, we're doing Ancient Civilizations. The kids have done Ancient Egypt and , I'll tell you, it's captured their imaginations and interest like nothing I've ever seen. They are just fascinated with it and, to tell you the truth, I have learned so much I never knew. We recently subscribed to NetFlix and it's been awesome not to have to run to the library for a history or science documentary. My kids are visual learners and have never been prone to sitting around quietly while I read to them, so if I can find a quality dvd then I use that. I wish my kiddos liked to be read to, but right now they have the attention spans of a gnat.

I found a great book on Answers in Genesis that I am going to begin reading since it's free online. It's called Unwrapping the Pharoahs and I have the utmost confidence in the material and resources Ken Ham and his ministry put out there. Other than Genesis and Creation and Noah, the account of the Exodus and the timeline is probably scrutinized and attacked more than any other biblical account of history. And people, if you can't defend Genesis and the time of the Exodus then you can't expect people to believe John 3 : 16. I have always been hungry to find a biblical view of the history of the Exodus that used secular evidence...always wondered if there was any proof outside of God's word (which is enough for me, but sadly not for the majority) to support the account of the Children of Israel and their time in Egypt.

But leaving Egypt, we've turned our attentions to Ancient Greece, but it doesn't seem to be captivating them as much, so I'm gonna not overload them and do a few more necessary things with it and then move onto Ancient China, which I think will be more appealing to them. No sense in beatin a dead horse.

If you're interested in an indepth unit of Ancient Greece and, well, most anything, my friend turned me onto Lesson Pathways. This is a great site that takes all the planning out of unit studies and lesson plans. And for those with multiple students on different levels, it allows you to track and assign pathways to each individual student...pretty neato! It's truly awesome and I highly recommend it!

In closing here's some more pics of the kids taken with the "good"camera...

Have a blessed day!