Friday, January 29, 2010

Unit Week- Sound and the Underground Railroad







This has been our unit week. We studied sound and the Underground Railroad. Above are our many sound experiments, which came from books in our local library. We also did some cool work on Brain Pop that had some free educational movies about winter. For the Underground Railroad, we read a biography about Harriet Tubman and a history of slavery called North Star, which was almost too in depth. We didn't finish all of it, but the kids could recall in detail some of the stories of slaves escaping to freedom. We looked at quilt codes that the slaves would use to send secret messages about escape using a quilt hanging on the clothesline. Tera and Daniel did an exercise where they had to find secret places in our house to hide 10 slaves pretending they were abolitionists. I checked out an American Girl cookbook from the time of the Civil War. Tera saw sausage and gravy with biscuits recipes and started drooling. So on Thursday, Tera and Daniel helped make biscuits and gravy for lunch. Later that day, Tera and I made a pretzel recipe she found in her personal devotion book. When I do a unit study, sometimes I worry that the kids won't grasp vocabulary and use that vocabulary to answer questions about what we are studying. This time they did very well, but I attribute this to the great amount of reading aloud we did and the sometimes repetitious nature of the stories. It really cements it in the kid's brain. I really wasn't looking forward to this unit for some reason, but they did a lot of work this week and had great fun. Daniel is hooked on making the domino trains. He has been working on them for the past 3 days, ever since we used dominoes to explain how sound waves work. Now, we are waiting for the snow.


Underground Railroad Sites:
http://www.teachersfirst.com/share/ugrr/ozella.html
http://www.waynet.org/levicoffin/quiz/default.htm
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/j3.html

Snuggle Time



The past two days, Michael has been falling asleep on me for a little nap after lunch. Yesterday I took him up, but today I read to the kids for school while he slept on me. I am reminded to cherish the times they will fall asleep on you because they grow up all too fast. One day you are cradling them, the next they are taller than you. Cherish the moments of today!

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Life of the Party!



Daddy's such a good sport- wearing a pair of pipecleaner glasses and waving a paper palm tree. The life of the party let me tell you!

Look Who's Standing



A Winter Dusting



    


This is from a snow a few weeks ago- they had this much fun with a dusting. They'll have a blast with the forecasted 5 to 9 inches we are suppose to get Friday and Saturday. Hopefully the forecast is right, but I am sure they'll have fun no matter what we get.



A New Song

O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth.
Psalms 96:1
It's been almost a whole month since my last post, somehow I haven't felt much like blogging. Maybe I've been down, winter blahs, I don't know really. The past few days I've felt somehow let down, can't really put my finger on it. Burdened maybe... So much knowledge has come our way this past month- our fellow Haitians suffering (my husband's family is Haitian-so although none of his family are there- it is like family), Daniel is having eye surgery Tuesday for the second time in his life, Tera is awaiting some teeth extractions when we complete all Daniel's appointments, Monday Fun started, Unit Week and then two birthdays this month. All of these things aren't bad yet they can tax your spirit. I have always had a talent for singing probably before I could talk, if you ask my mom. When I have weeks or months like this, I forget to sing. One of things that brings me comfort gets forgotten. I can get lost in a song yet I let the circumstances push out one of the things that helps me most.
Don't we do that in other ways- let our circumstances push us away from God's comforting arms instead of into them where we should be. "I can do it all by myself"- we know from past experience this is so far from the truth. Why is it when we need to study the Scripture and pray the most (outside of a crisis) we don't? When we know that singing our praise to Him, puts it all into perspective, why don't we? I really don't know-but I've found my song again-and I'm going to sing it. Find your "song" today or maybe it's time for you to let Him give you a "new song".
"I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemy. The Lord is my Rock!"

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