When the Moon Hits Your Eyes

Observation is the heart of science. Beverly and David are very interested in observing everything. I watch them and I compare them to young adults, many of whom think science is boring or too hard. I hope I can keep my kids interested in the world around them. They are too young to develop and test hypothesis, but they are enjoying science through their senses!

We are using the literature we read as a framework for what we learn. So far we have read:

“He’s got the moon and the stars in His hands,” ~ Kadir Nelson, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”

“But — chicka chicka boom boom! Look, there’s a full moon.” ~ Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archanbault, “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom “

“Goodnight moon.” ~ Margaret Wise Brown, “Goodnight Moon”

“Sleep in my eyes
And stars in the skies
Moon on my bed
And dreams in my head
That’s what I’ll wear tonight.” ~ Nancy White Carlstrom, “Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?”

Do you know that the Jewish people have their own calendar? Ever since we received the Torah at Mount Sinai we have always counted time in our own, special, Jewish way… the moon tells us the time of the Jewish months and when all the Jewish holidays arrive. ~ Yaffa Ganz, “Follow the Moon: A Journey Through the Jewish Year.”

So, we have been observing the moon. And, Beverly and David are avid moon watchers. This is what I have done with the kids:

Moon Wheel Template available at Homeschool Share

This is Ron with the kids:

Guess who got the coolest parent award? If there is any doubt in your mind, it wasn’t me!

Falling in Love All Over Again

In the spring of 1994, I was a newly divorced woman on a mission. I was out to buy an electric weedeater. My ex-husband had always done the lawn and had a gas powered weedeater. The first nice day, when the grass had grown long enough to mow, I went out and mowed the lawn. I then went about the task of plowing down the grass that had grown along the fence line. I had confidence. I was sure I would be able to pull the cord to start the weedeater. My confidence was misplaced. I pulled and pulled and pulled and nothing – absolutely nothing happened. So, I did what any insane divorcee would do. I threw the weedeater as far as I could across the yard, stomped into the house and (without bathing or even changing out of my sweaty clothes) got into my sports utility vehicle and headed for Sears. The first store I went to didn’t have any electric weedeaters. No problem! I was in San Antonio; there are plenty of stores. I drove to another Sears. Once inside, I quickly found what I needed and made my purchase. I left intent on finishing the job I had started.

Life wasn’t to be that easy. When I got to my vehicle and turned the key nothing happened. Nothing! I was off work the entire day. There was nothing I had to look forward to other than doing yard work  in the Texas heat. Still, my problem seemed insurmountable. I had no one to call. No one who could have come to help me. I felt the aloneness of being single in a way I hadn’t before. I didn’t belong to anyone. I had a mini-emotional breakdown in my car. I sobbed for probably an hour before regaining a bit of common sense. I was in the Sears’ parking lot. I could see the Sears Tire and Auto Center from where I was sitting. I pulled myself together, swallowed my pride and walked my sweaty, tear-stained, snotty self to the counter and pleaded for help.

“Storge is the love within a family — whether it be parents and children, brothers and sisters in Christ, or most personally, the husband and wife bonded together in practical oneness that has its roots in Genesis 2:24.” Ed Wheat, MD and Gloria Okes Perkins, “Love Live for Every Married Couple”

On Friday, Marissa, David, Beverly and I left the house early. We are doing day care Friday morning during the women’s Bible study at the church again. It gives David and Beverly some time to play with kids their own age. It gives Marissa an opportunity to make some money and practice some important work skills. It gives the mom’s in our congregation an opportunity to attend a women’s Bible study. I help Marissa. She probably doesn’t really need my help anymore. But, when she is alone, she can’t even use the bathroom if she needs to. Besides, I have never been attracted to women’s Bible studies. I much prefer studying the Bible with my husband.

We left church and I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things we had run out of. I was in the store about 15 minutes. I returned to the van, turned the key and nothing – absolutely nothing. This time, I didn’t have all day and I wasn’t alone. I was in the car with three hungry kids. It was lunch time. It was almost nap time. The situation was eerily similar and I had worse consequences to face. Sears Tire and Automotive was no where in sight. But I didn’t shed even one tear. Because, my life is different. I belong to someone. I am not talking about a possessive, oppressive belonging. I am talking about emotional refuge and mutual trust. I knew that I could call Ron and he would do everything he could to come and save me. He truly was my Knight in Shining Armor. He is my you-and-me-against-the-world.

And, he is romantic. I turned 45 in July and I asked Ron for a cheap, reproduction radio and CD player. I wanted something that would play music but would not interfere with the sanctuary that I try to create in my home. I don’t like the looks of modern stereos. Anyway, instead he picked up this at an auction:

This photo doesn’t really do justice to this radio. Ron spent hours in the garage refinishing it. The kids have declared it, “Suave!” It is absolutely gorgeous! Then, Ron bought a small AM transmitter that I can connect to my computer and play whatever I have playing on my computer through the speakers. Actually I can tune every radio in the house into computer’s music. How fun is that? No wonder after 7-years of marriage, I still find my husband so very attractive.

Since we are on the topic of love, here are a couple of loving bears. Beverly and David are reading Jesse Bear What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom for our preschool. This is the back of the lapbook we are making. We are using this book to talk about how a family who loves each other acts.

    
Template available at Heart Bear Paper Craft

The dead car was only one of the annoying things that happened during my unexplained, unplanned blog break. Add a family cold, a five-year-old who has figured out how to use the computer mouse and that there are games and jigsaw puzzles on the computer and is demanding her own time on the computer and I have really had a dearth of computer time. The time I do have seems almost entirely devoted to finding resources for my young learners. Oh, and the weather has changed. It is too cold for after dinner garage time with Dad. My “free” evening time will not be happening again until it warms up. I am already trying to adjust my attitude about winter. Right now I am thinking it will be very, very long. I hope the kids like snow enough to spend some time outside. It has been cold and rainy and they are inside jumping off walls.

Apparently, things are going so well at our house that the kids now have to tattle about what their sibling might, maybe do instead of what they actually did. I cannot tell you how annoying I find this. I do wish Jesse Bear had siblings so that we could talk about tattling and trying to get other people in trouble.

On a completely unrelated topic: For those who lapbook, what kind of glue do you use? I have found that regular Elmer’s wrinkles the paper too much. We have switched to Elmer’s blue gel, which is way, way better. However, in large quantities, still cause the paper to wrinkle. Glue sticks didn’t cut the “permanent” bond test and our books were falling apart. I have used double sticky tape, but this isn’t really easy for the kids to use independently.

Goodnight Labouyi

Well, after spending two weeks Five-In-A-Rowing (FIAR) Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (I guess I am technically a ten-in-a-rower), we have moved on. The kids still insist on listening to the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video several times a day. Beverly can recognize about half her letters. We were driving to St. Cloud recently and she would say, “Look there’s a \k\,\s\!” or “There’s a \d\ David! Where’s a \b\ Beverly?” We will be working on the alphabet for a long time, but the story was beginning to bore mamma. Besides, the kid’s lapbooks didn’t have anymore room to paste and glue things.

I decided to start Goodnight Moon. We have been watching the moon all month looking for a full moon and then watching it shrink again. We started this because there is a full moon in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and in their He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands book. Besides, Rosh Hashanah begins with the new moon that is expected on September 29. The kids and I have been looking at pictures in the book Follow the Moon: A Journey Through the Jewish Year. It is too advanced to read to them right now, but David loves the pictures. He is especially thrilled with the shofar and goes around the house with his hand cupped to his mouth making horn noises. For our part, Marissa and I are studying the book of James to gain inspiration about how our Christian walk should look.

While looking for ideas for activities to do with the kids, I found this:

The struggle between parent and child that is the explicit subject of so many bedtime stories is, in “Goodnight Moon,” only implicit. Indeed, there’s no parent on the scene. The story begins with the little rabbit, drawn with wonderful flatness by Clement Hurd, already in bed. It is seven o’clock. A few pages later, according to the blue clock on the mantelpiece and the yellow clock on the bed table, it is seven-twenty. Then it is seven-thirty, then seven-forty. When the “good-nighting” begins, it is not clear who is doing the speaking. The moon is rising, yet the light grows dimmer. The clocks tick on—seven-fifty, eight o’clock.

A parent is bigger than a child, but still a person. He or she can be appealed to, as in “Bedtime for Frances,” or even tricked, as in “Good Night, Gorilla.” The arrangement in “Goodnight Moon” is completely uneven. Time moves forward, and the little bunny doesn’t stand a chance. Parent and child are, in this way, brought together, on tragic terms. You don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t want to die. But we both have to.  ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Talk about reading between the lines! But, it did make me start wondering about the characters in the story. Just who is the old lady whispering, “Hush?” I do hope my children don’t describe me like that some day. In Goodnight Moon the word ‘hush’ is supposed to rhyme with the line, “and a bowl full of mush.” My children have rewritten that part of the story, “A comb, and a brush, and a bowl full of labouyi!” Labouyi is Creole for porridge. No matter how long I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out how the author of the article in The New Yorker ever read that this children’s book is about not wanting to die. I do hope she doesn’t view the rest of life through such a morbid lens. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised though, the piece starts with this pleasant thought:

A book read to a toddler who, after running around the house all day, has had to be stuffed, quite literally, into his pajamas, may traffic in imaginative freedom and wonder, but it is still an instrument of control. I will read this to you, and then you will go to sleep. End of story.

Hmm? I just thought by reading my children bedtime stories I was creating structure and routine.

Besides being about death, the book Goodnight Moon, apparently, used to give the appearance that it promoted tobacco use? Well, actually, the photo of the illustrator showed him with a cigarette in his hand. The photo has been digitally altered so that the book is now once again safe to read to your children. Really, have we become so politically correct that we can’t portray people as they really and truly are? Does anyone believe that even one young person began smoking after seeing Clement Hurd brandishing a cigarette on the back of the bedtime story their parents read them? But, if HarperCollins had not removed the controversial cigarette, I wouldn’t have been able to read Karen Karbo response. “EXCELLENT start, HarperCollins, but why stop there?” And, I thought she was rather clever.

I haven’t scanned anything we did in our lapbook this week, but here are a few photos of the kids. They were learning ‘Hey Diddle Diddle.’ Yes, I realize David is wearing pajama bottoms and my tennis shoes in this photo. That is the outfit he picked out for himself this morning and as we hadn’t planned on going out anywhere I put his request in the not worth fighting over category.

Then when it was Beverly’s turn to be photographed, she wanted the shoes. There was a huge fight over the whole thing. But, as you can see from her feet and the big smile on her face, Beverly won!

Finally, I wanted to share the results of the kid’s out of school activities. Actually, I was just going to share David’s because I thought it was so cute. Beverly asked me to share hers too. Every night after dinner is finished the kids go in the garage to “travay (work) with Daddy.” They hammer pop cans flat. They have all the parts to an old exercise machine that they put together in various arrangements. I don’t know what else they do to occupy their time. I do know that they have a blast, I get about 90 minutes of uninterrupted time and they come in the house in need of a bath. So, tonight David came inside excited to show me his “valice.” That is what the kids call their backpacks. He made it all by himself with scraps of wood, nails and a hammer. He drove the nails himself and every single one is flush with the wood. He was carrying it like a purse.

Then, Beverly’s treasure — I am not sure what this is. I am sure that David is far better with a hammer than she is.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

First, I wanted to post a video follow-up from last week’s Family Prayer Book. Beverly and David are learning their prayers. They both can say the Shema in English. Sorry the video is so dark. I don’t have a video camera. I made this video on my camera and this was how it came out. I thought about doing it somewhere else with better lighting, but then decided not to. The kids did an awesome job.

This week we are Five-In-A-Rowing the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr., John Archambault, and illustrated by Lois Ehlert. Frankly, I wouldn’t have gotten all the hype around this book if I hadn’t heard it sung. My children love books they can sing. (In fact their favorite book is He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands marvelously illustrated by Kadir Nelson.)

You can sing Chicka Chicka Boom Boom in several different ways:

• My personal favorite. Okay, I like this one the best because it fits in my voice range.

• The kid’s favorite. And, I admit the one with the best, most fun graphics.

• Or, if you prefer. You can rap it ~

We are creating a lapbook. I can’t decide if I like lapbooking or not. There are not a lot of lapbooks for preschoolers available on the Internet. I have had to create my own. There is a lot of planning and work involved in deciding what you are going to do. I also like full page color sheets because the kids are just learning pencil control and coloring small details is difficult for them. So, I have put a page with a self-adhesive fastener to trap the kid’s full page art work in each of the two books we have done so far. But, what I do love about lap books is that they are easy to put away. We school on our dining room table and when school is over, I can stash the crayon caddy and the lapbooks quickly and have my dining room back.

To introduce the book and the coconut tree, we ate labouyi. I had to special order the star anise. The kids had been telling me to make this for weeks. I don’t know. I am not sure it was what they expected. Beverly told me the labouyi (porridge) in Haiti was better. I tried to give it to them warm, but they told me it was supposed to be fret (cold). I kept thinking about the movie Little Orphan Annie. Doesn’t Carol Burnett have a line that goes something like, “And, we’re not having hot mash for breakfast today. We’re having cold mash.” All the little girls groan their disgust. Whatever! David and Beverly both ate it and want me to make it again.

Random photos of our week:

The cover: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Paper Craft available on-line from DLTK’s Growing Together. I made my own letters. Beverly and I are using Writing Road to Reading to learn to write her lower case phonograms. Using that method, the letters a, c, d and f are all written by starting with your pencil in the same/similar position. Beverly can write all four letters. Both kids can match all four letters with the sound(s) they make. We are singing the primary sound the letter makes to the tune of Skip To My Lou.

David pasted these letters climbing up the coconut tree.

 Inside Flap: Long ago I purchased Little Bitty Baby Learns Hebrew and Little Bitty Baby Learn Greek. We used them to paste the kid’s names in Hebrew and Greek to the inside flap of their lapbook. The title of the page includes Creole phrases asking “What’s your name?” and “How are you called?” The English translation is in parenthesis. The kids have been practicing answering this common question.

Beverly has claimed the Hebrew letter lamed. Every time she sees it she squeals, “Lamed pou Beverly!”

Random photos of the younger kids hard at work:

I usually “do hair” on Saturday morning. I want Beverly to look nice for church on Sunday. But, this Saturday morning the whole family went to an open house and pancake feed at my husband’s work site. Then, Beverly was blessed to be able to go to an auction with her Dad. It was her first auction (usually David gets to go) and her first Daddy and me date. Those things were more important than hair looking beautiful. Monday Marissa had voice lessons. So, by Tuesday, her style was 11 days old and looking it. Our morning started by picking out her old braids. Isn’t she beautiful? Her hair looks short, but when you stretch it out, it is about 3 inches long.

Last, it was Crazy Hat Day at school today and no one told the teacher. This is just how Beverly and David showed up when I told them it was time for school.

Preschool at Shanan Conservatory

Okay, starting school three weeks earlier than the public school has been only somewhat successful. Some days there is a lot of structure and we do school. The schedule seems to be working. However, school was interupted to go to the county fair, get immunizations and finish summer. But, learning is happening.

For the little ones:

David and Beverly are working on their prayer books. They know “Blessed are You O Lord our God, King of the Universe who created day and night.” And, as they were learning this they began to learn about the schedule at our home. Here is Beverly’s craft and the first page of our “Family Prayer Book.”

The idea for this craft came from Homeschool Share. Rather than using symbols to show the kids their 24-hour day, I took photos of the kids sleeping, waking up, eating breakfast, doing school, eating lunch, napping, eating dinner, getting ready for bed. I cropped the photos to the size of the opening in the “I Spy A Circle” and printed them on sticker paper. With a little help David and Beverly put their photos in the right sequence. I had to remove the backing, and then they arranged their stickers in order. As you turn the dial, their is evening and morning occurring over and over, just as God created it. David can make it through a whole day in about 12 seconds while squealing what he is doing in each photo.

Beverly did a nice job of tracing the letters in the first part of our prayer. She is starting to learn good pencil control. She recognized the letters ‘B’ and ‘e.’ She was able to tell me the sound the letter made. And, when she traced her letters, she traced from left to right and top to bottom. I think she is developing good pre-reading skills.

As we learned this first section of our prayer, the kids studied the Creation Story. Marissa and I are studying Genesis during Bible study, so this fit well. They both can say Genesis 1:1. They had fun creating their own world with Shaving Cream Art. Uh, this was a little messy.

	I gave each child a cookie sheet that was half full of shaving cream. It is unscented; the cheapest stuff on the market.
Then I had each child put 4 or 5 drops of food color on the shaving cream. Because we were making a world, we used blue and green. You can use any color you want. If you are not on a budget, you can use ink refills for stamp pads. Food color is cheaper.
	Let the kids swirl the color together with a fork
Finally, lay a peice of cardstock on top of the shaving cream. The card stock picks up the random color. I used a mudding knife (the kind my husband uses when he is doing drywall) to remove the excess shaving cream. I cut their homemade patterned paper into the shape of a circle.

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David and Beverly had fun with glue sticks!

And the second page of our prayer book turned out just great! Here is David’s page. He has taken the world off and reglued it every single stinking day!

Well, my oven is preheated and I need to get dinner on. I will have to let you all know what is going on in High School at a later date, perhaps later tonight even. Bedtimes have started to drag out into an eternity. Luckily, it appears both children believe that Ron is the only one that knows how to tuck them in just right!