Hannah's Assignment continued

Last week I gave Hannah the assignment of taking pictures of fall and I thought she did a great job.  She enjoyed it so much that she asked to take pictures around our neighborhood so here they are -

She is turning into quite the photo bug.

I have collected some more links that will help you enhance your holidays.

Crayola  has some things at this site for Thanksgiving.

Kraft  has some decorating ideas for Christmas.
Kraft will also donate 10 meals for every free e-card you send from this site.

Lesson Plans page has a lot of lesson plans for Thanksgiving.

About.com has 100 gift ideas at this site.

I confessed to be a Disney fan a few posts ago.  Here you print out some cute Disney decortions for your Thanksgiving Table.

And last but not least I get current events articles and questions from this site.  Hannah is really learning alot about a variety of things.  I don't use it everyday but it is a good start for current events.  And of course all of these are FREE sites.

Take One by Karen Kingsbury

See my review here

This and That

Today is a day of learning.  Not just for Hannah but for myself as well.  I have to take a test for work on passing medication.  Luckily it is open book.  Tonight is our last session on our Study of Esther.  I will miss getting together with other women and learning with and from them.

On this day Ellis Island stopped being the main way most immigrants came to America.  Here is an interactive study about Ellis Island.

How well do you know you Pilgrim and Colony history?  At this site you can find out if what you think is true or just a myth.

Last but not least  if you don't mind reading of of the computer Amazon is offering their Kindle Reader for free for the PC. The Link is here

Hannah's assignment

Hannah's Assignment yesterday was to take my camera and go outside and take pictures of Fall.
Here is what she came up with.

Maybe she should pursue Photography?

Veterans Day

Veterans Day is another holiday that has kind of gone by the way side except for the post office and banks.  There was a segment on the news this morning were a group of students at a local school that were making cards for people in the armed forces .  I thought that this was a good idea.  I subscribe to Taste of Home magazine and they have  a site here about people sending baked goods to deployed trooops.
Annie has a page on Veterans which has links to various branches of the military. (Annie has pages for alot of holiday's .  A good starting point for any kind of study).
The Thifty Diva blog has a link to a free download of military band music.  12 songs in all.  It does require that you download Amazons downloader but if they do what they did last year and offer a free song everyday in December it is so worth it.  The Thifty Diva blog is a great blog to follow as they have links all the time to various free or coupons things.   

Movies

This past weekend My husband , Myself and our two daughters went to see Disney's Christmas Carol.  It was very good and was very close to the original story by Dickens so if you were planning to do a study on the novella this holiday I highly recommend seeing the movie.  I do caution though it is scary in parts and young children may be frightened.  It definately was not given the usual Disney treatment.  Here is a review by Focus on the Family's Plugged In.  I receive this newsletter everyweek in my e-mail and find it very helpful.

Disney also released their movie Up on Dvd this week.  We really enjoyed this movie and have added it to our collection.  It is a pixar film so the animation is great. (I forgot to mention that the animation in Christmas Carol was very realistic.  My Husband even commented that at times it was hard to tell that it was animation).  Here is the review from Plugged In.  

The story of a Toilet

On Friday our oldest daughter dropped the top of the toilet tank on the toilet and broke it.

Luckily Dave was able to come home this weekend and we spent the day Saturday working on the task of replacing the toilet.

First Dave had to remove the toilet.  Thanks to the internet and Home Depot website we had step by step instructions on how to accomplish this.

First the tank had to be removed.

next was the removal of the bowl.

plug the hole so those nasty sewer gases don't escape (some escaped anyway and the smell wasn't too pleasant.

 

Removal of the wax ring. 

Next was a trip to Home Depot but we stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch.

While we were at Home Depot we decided since we already had the toilet out tha maybe we should do some much needed repairs on the floor.  So we picked out our toilet then picked out some sub flooring.

We then had the nice man at Home Depot help us put our wood in the trunk ( after it was cut so it would fit).

Measure a gazillion times

and cut once

now back to installing the toilet

time out for some fun.  popping bubble wrap.

check the handy dandy instructions we got from Home Depot website.

We got the toilet with everything included.

final touch

a job well down .  What was suppose to take about 3 hours for a novice took about 10 hours for us!!

A Christmas Carol

Ever since my oldest was old enough that I thought that he could read A Christmas Carol I have made it our literature selection for December.  With the new Disney coming out today I thought it was even more prudent that we continue the tradition. I try to add something different in our studies.  So the links I have are all about this subject.

Wired for books has an audio presentation of the novella.

This  is just a little poem that combines A Christmas Carol with a little of Poe"s The Raven.

Here is a Grammar unit with questions, vocabulary and grammer lessons.

This study guide has analysis of each of the staves and a couple of test yourself quizzes

Here  you can order a Bible study based on the novella.

This page has most of the links I have already listed but does contain a link to a vocabulary pdf file and has some ideas for creative writing.

I am looking forward to seeing thew movie and studying this great story!! 

More Thanksgiving sites

I decided to make this post about more Thanksgiving sites that I have been getting info about in my e-mail.

This Site  is a about a Mohawk Iroquois Village.

I am going to be starting this next site next week with Hannah.  Painted Pilgims is a little unti study on different paintings of the Pilgrims.  It looks like a pretty good study for art.

Another site that I might start next week is this one.  It also uses paintings for the study but these are primary sources found in the Library of Congress.

Only three weeks till Thanksgiving so its time to start those Thanksgiving studies if you already haven't.

Cold

It is a brisk fall morning here in Pa.  I will say that although the cold is not my favorite I do like the change of color with the leaves changing and the beauty of the snow when it falls. 

I got an e-mail in my box this morning offering 30 days of Thanksgiving ideas.  I do think that Thanksgiving is kind of glossed over so I think this is a good site get some ideas of ways to bring thanks-giving back to your children.  Here is the site.   

Hubby is on His way to Canada

And that means we will not be able to speak to each other until probably Friday (unless there is an emergancy) because the cell phone rates are way to high.  I will probably want to talk to him several times over that time.  We regularly text each other every day and usually talk at least every other day but nothing makes me want to talk to him more than when I know I can't. 

The weather here in south east Pa has turned a bit on the chilly side but according to the weatherman this morning it will be warmer this weekend and for the first time in several weeks it is not supppose to rain. Yeah!!!

here is a short study on the First Thanksgiving.  It has discussion questions to go along with it.

This is a full American History Curriculmn. I think I will be using this next year .    

Old Shoolhouse Freebie

The old schoolhouse magatzine is offering a great freebie.  It is a Holiday edition of their great magazine.  Here  is the link.  Enjoy

You've Got Mail

I am an e-mail junkie.  I get 100's of e-mails a day.  I belong to all kinds of e-mail groups.  Homeschol groups, recipe, groups , Disney groups ( yes I am a Disney fan), weight loss groups, crafts groups to name a few.  Recently I went through and unscribed to a bunch of the groups that I didn't read and went to web only on ones that are really seasonal only like the Christmas groups.  I also have my saved e-mails divided into several different folders.  I will occasionally go through them and delete abunch.  Even with my abundance of e-mails I have used only 3% of my space.  I can't imagine how many e-mails a person would have to get to use up even 50% of their space.  Yesterday I went through some of my recipe emails and delted a few and strted using the online recipe boxes that some of the sites make available ( that is another hobby of mine collecting recpes).


This site has some teaching material for teaching Geography.  Although I haven't used it the material looks interesting.