Maximize your mornings!

"Do you feel like you work all day without getting anything significant done? Do you feel like you don’t have time for yourself - to pray, exercise and dream? Do you want to squeeze the most out of every day?

You can.

In fact, you can accomplish more in an hour than most people accomplish in an entire day."

That is the introduction to a free e-book I just read called Maximize Your Mornings. You can download it here:

http://www.inspiredtoaction.com/

So this morning I did something VERY unusual for me. I got up early. Now, on the few occasions in the past that I have managed to drag myself out of my cozy bed before my kids get up, our day has gone noticeably smoother. Noticeably. You'd think I'd do it all the time, wouldn't you?

Well, I am going to try.

And, in one of the great blessings of my life, God has given me wonderful friends to do this with me! We all emailed each other this morning to say we were up - it helps SO much to know you're not in it alone!

What I got accomplished:

• Prayed
• Read my devotional and Bible
• jumped on my mini-trampoline while listening to the New Testament on CD
• ate breakfast
• had my coffee
• emailed my friends to say I was up
• re-newed my husband's prescription
• laid out some work for the boys

And here's the best part!

This was the first paragraph I read in Our Daily Bread this morning:

"Alyssa, who is 6 and just learning to read, often saw her parents and grandparents reading their Bibles in the morning. Early one day, she woke up before everyone else. Grandma found her sitting on the couch, with her Bible and a devotional booklet on her lap. She wanted to follow the example of spending time with God at the beginning of the day."

Do you love it?!

Rainforest Dioramas

Look! Shoebox dioramas of the rainforest! Well, actually two diaper box dioramas and one shoebox diorama.

Z-Man's

(notice the humming bird suspended by a thread - what a great idea!)

Little Man's

Mine

These were so fun to make. We printed out a google image of the rainforest for the background, made some trees out of paper bags and wrapped green pipe cleaner vines around them and then printed and colored the animals from Jan Brett's wonderful book, The Umbrella.

She has an amazing web page with all the animals, vines, tree trunks, flowers, insects, etc. that you would need to print out and color to make a three foot by six foot mural. Since we don't have that kind of coloring stamina, we printed a smaller version and did the dioramas instead! You can print some at her site here:

http://www.janbrett.com/mural_umbrella/umbrella_mural.htm

or visit the main page for all kinds of activities and printables:

http://www.janbrett.com/

In other news, we took a little field trip to a local aquarium store and saw two piranhas from the Amazon! Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good photo of them but these rainforest parakeets were happy to pose for us:

Brazil and the Amazon Rainforest

Did you know that one third of the world's oxygen comes from the Amazon rainforest? Did you know that one quarter of the world's animal species live in the Amazon rainforest? Did you know that one third of Brazil's entire population lives in slums?

Well, I didn't. Learning along with your kids is a great (and humbling) benefit of homeschooling.

Z-Man cracking Brazil nuts with a hammer. I love the look on his face! Apparently, this is easier to do if you freeze the nuts for 24 hours before cracking. Who knew? It's probably easier if you use a handy-dandy device called a nut cracker too.

Fun with another rainforest food: cocoa! We tried it with and without a sweetener because I have a mean streak. No, no! Goodness, no. It was because it was a science experiment, after all. Naturally, we had to ingest the results. Edible science experiments: A Good Thing.

Both of these foods, along with natural remedies of the rainforest, are described in fascinating detail in this book:

Tomorrow I'll show you some of the resources we're using and show you our beautiful rainforest shoebox dioramas!

Final Exams were actually fun!

Z-Man took his first-ever final exam this semester. It's not what you might think. We did it "Charlotte Mason-style" even though our homeschooling style is really a combination of CM and unit studies and whatever else works. I guess that's eclectic.

The idea is to give the student a chance to show what they know, as opposed to what they don't.

Here are some of the questions:

• Label a map of Europe with everything you can remember.
• Tell what you know about: Galileo, Monet, Bach.
• Who was Corrie ten Boom? What do you remember about her?
• Read aloud for 5 minutes from The Adventure Bible.
• Sing one of the hymns we learned this semester.
• Choose a memory verse and recite it.

Z-Man dictated to me as I typed. Here's one of his answers:

Monet by Z-Man

Monet was an artist. A very great one, too. Though he didn’t think so. He painted water lillies sometimes. Of course, that was when he was older. When he was younger, he wasn’t very famous. He also went to war. He didn’t like that because he got sick. I’m not sure what kind of sickness it was but when the country (France) got back in war again, he went to England so that he wouldn’t have to fight and painted there.

Of course, when he was older, he was famous. When he got older, he got a lot of money so that he could buy a garden with a pond of lillies and a japanese bridge. Of course, probably most of you know about the japanese bridge. His wife, Camille, died and he remarried a woman named Alice.

But even though he wasn’t famous at one point, now people will pay thousands of dollars for one of his paintings. His style of painting was just dots of paint. Now you might think, “oh, that’s not a bright way of painting” but you are right when you step in close to the painting, but when you step back, you are wrong. When you step back, the dots make a picture!

He's a pretty funny kid.

The best part of this type of exam was that we really saw how much we had covered. It was actually quite encouraging for both of us.

For those with older students, here is a great example of this type of exam for high schoolers at Harmony Art Mom.

And now, on to South America!

Happy New Year!

A new nativity!

We own several nativity sets, each cherished for its own unique qualities.

This one was given to us early in our marriage and shares a place of honor on the sideboard with our Christmas cards.

This stained glass set was made by a talented friend and is beautiful with lights behind it.

And our new addition, created by Z-Man and displayed proudly on the mantel! I'm sure you could figure it out, but I thought I'd put titles in, just in case.

And didn't these paper nativity scenes turn out adorable? You can print one (use card stock) at Papertoys.com.

This week: baking, grocery shopping and hopefully some caroling! I hope you are all enjoying a blessed and peaceful Christmas season.

Christmas book science

Last week was a light week here, well, school-wise anyway. We always focus on Christmas-type studies for the two or three weeks prior to Christmas. Things that aren't directly related to our study I try to tweak to make them a little more festive (such as practicing cursive by writing a Christmas list.) I also found a great download of Christmas critical thinking pages - it was only $1.99 at Curriculum Click.

But mostly we just read and do fun stuff. Yesterday, we read this:

Well, not that exactly. We read it in english. The Christmas Train by Ivan Gantschev. Apparently it's out of print and if you wish to buy it through Amazon, it will cost you $252.68 (or $98.84 if you can read German). Wow. It's good, but not two-hundred-dollars-good. I'd check the library first.

ANYway, it's based on a true story (LOVE that!) of the author's aunt in Bulgaria who, as a child, bravely and selflessly made a signal fire of her own Christmas tree on Christmas eve to warn an oncoming train of a rock slide, saving all inside. Her father always said that if there was an obstruction on the tracks, make a signal fire 400 yards ahead of it. Z-Man realized that this is the equivalent of four football fields and we got talking about momentum and why it takes a train so long to stop. Aha! Sounds like a science experiment!

We made a ramp out of a table leaf and a "brake" out of an empty box at the end of the ramp. We sent our little tykes truck down the ramp and measured how far it pushed the box (32 inches). Then we added weight - 3 heavy bolts, one at a time. Each made our truck take a little farther to stop. The most impressive result, however, was when we added speed - starting our ramp on the kitchen chair instead of the small step stool. And, you guessed it, the high ramp (speed) and the three bolts (weight) sent our truck the farthest - almost seven feet before it stopped!

I'm so thankful that we found the Five in a Row curriculum when Z-Man was younger. This book isn't in it, but I credit FIAR with enabling me to find lessons in the other childrens books we read. Before we started FIAR, I just didn't think that way. Thank you, Lamberts!

A Sad Day

Our precious friends left today. They are moving to Idaho and that is a long, long way from here. They have been such a blessing to our family and we miss them terribly already.

Good bye, sweet friends!