12 Days

Woah! Too cool!

Ice Storm

Yesterday we were hit by a big ice storm. It has caused a lot of problems, needless to say. We were very blessed. We went 1 1/2 hours yesterday without power, and again today for the same amount of time. I know a lot of folks are still waiting for their power to come back on. The ice is melting quickly around here. These pictures were taken yesterday.







Even with the bad effects, the ice on the tree branches is extremely beautiful. I can't help just staring at it. The sound of tree branches breaking is not a lovely sound, though. I am going to research the best trees for resisting breakage, both in wind and in ice. Hubby says we will lose one for sure, perhaps two. I want to plant more in the spring or we'll be tree-less in a few years!

Gift Idea: Hot Tang Tea Mix (with labels)

My 6-year-old, Junior, is making his own Christmas presents. One of the most popular requests is Hot Tang Tea Mix. This is also called Orange Spiced Tea and Russian Tea, our family just prefers to call it Tang Tea.

This is pretty easy for a little one to measure and stir up. You don't really need exact amounts, so kids can do this without a lot of hands-on from you.

Hot Tang Tea Mix

2 c. powdered Tang

1/2 c. powdered instant tea

1/4 c. lemonade

1 1/4 c. sugar

dash salt

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. cloves

Mix everything together in a large bowl. To make tea, add 2 heaping teaspoons to one cup of hot water. Adjust to taste.

Hot Tang Tea is a great drink for wintertime. If you feel a little stuffy and have a scratchy, dry throat, the combination of hot water, cloves, and the tart orange taste are just perfect.

Just for you, I have included a printable recipe and some labels for your gifts. Everyone loves it, and it looks really nice in a clear jar.

This year for Christmas, let's stop focusing on others

That sounds pretty weird, huh? That was just to get your attention, of course, but read on, and trust me that there's a good point to this.

I’ll tell you a true Christmas story, from a few years ago. I only tell it because many of you have had a similar story, so you can relate. I was working in the Physical Therapy department of a middle-sized hospital. We decided to do an outreach project one Christmas. It was easy to find someone who needed help, as you might expect, since we were at a hospital already. On the hospital campus was a small inpatient drug and alcohol rehab for women with young children. Women could check into this clinic and their children could stay with them while they were being treated. The kids were safe, fed, and cared for, but the moms were not able to get presents for their children. So we decided to “adopt” the center, providing toys and clothes for the little ones, and even a stocking of personal care items for the moms. We would throw a little party for them one day close to Christmas and just generally show them a good time.

The day of the party arrived. As many of us as could be spared went over bearing sacks of gifts, cookies, veggies and dip, and every good thing. We sang carols with the kids and everything was great. Until the gifts were passed out, that is. Our well-organized event that could have been so picturesque, turned sour quickly. One child got something better than someone’s child…another child did not get the specific thing on his list. Now mind you, the complaining was all from the mothers. I do not think any of the children were upset, at least during the party while we were there. However, it’s a well-known fact that almost anything delightful can be spoiled for a child when the adults start whining themselves. We all walked back a little older and more jaded than before.

I’m just telling that story as an example of how you can have this great idea in your head of something wonderful that you are going to do. People are going to be happy and grateful, their lives will improve, and the littlest one will stand up and say, “God bless us, every one!” That’s not always the case, and though sometimes you will get that scenario, I would bet that much of the time, something similar to the above happens.

So that’s why I say to get the focus off of others this Christmas. Put you focus on Christ and what He has done. Please do something for someone else if at all possible. But do it “…as working for the Lord.” Out of your gratitude for God’s gift of Jesus, and not merely for the joy on the face of another human. Keep your eyes open for those special moments, where you see the light in a child’s eye, or a tear on an older person’s cheek. Those are rich blessings, but they are a “fringe benefit” of service.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Colossians 3:23-24 (NIV)

Update - Vintage Christmas Music

I found a couple more sites for the free stuff. Now I am having to wait in line, because a lot of these free file hosting sites limit you a bit. Oh well, it’s worth it!

Free Christmas Music Today they have a link to “Rhodes Christmas” which is a Christmas album all played on a Fender Rhodes piano. The Fender Rhodes is an electric piano that was used a lot in the 60s and 70s. My husband tells me it is coming back “in style.” Well, that’s a good thing. There is something so warm about it, even if it is electric. Think about the theme to “Taxi.” That was on a Rhodes, and Richard Carpenter often played a Rhodes. So there you go. If you love Christmas music, you are probably a Carpenters fan, right?

Way Cool Music Hey, here is a bunch of Disney music! Cute stuff for kids.

Making Mini-Offices

This year we switched from using school desks to working at the kitchen table. I know a lot of homeschoolers never think of using school desks, but it was helpful at first to have a chair that fit the child. If we tried using the table, Peanut would sprawl and slump and just generally be uncomfortable. But the desks were an eyesore, there was no out-of-the-way place to put them, and they tended to catch all the clutter that the kids didn’t want to put away. So we gave them to another family, and now we are at the kitchen table. We have some storage bins that will turn upside down for footrests for both kids. I use the rubber-y shelf liner for a non-slip surface so they don’t kick them around. Too much.

The other problem I had to solve was that we were able to use number lines and alphabet strips on the desks, and we can’t really use those on the kitchen table.

While searching the Internet, I found some ideas that classroom teachers are using to help their students. They call them “mini-offices,” and they are simply a little study corral with the needed information posted inside. They are made out of 2 or 3 file folders.You can put just about anything on these corrals. I decided to put a number line, a small handwriting chart, a 100s chart, a chart showing different coins, and a chart that illustrates how to tell time. I tried to make a chart listing some common words that my kids might use in their writing, but it was too cumbersome.

The kids like having these. We personalized them by letting them pick some of the contents, as well as the color. We had three color choices in the package of file folders we had purchased. Kids could also decorate the outside of their folders.

The best websites we found for mini-offices are at Busy Teacher’s Café and at Teaching Heart. Both have instructions and printables that you can choose and print out for your mini-office.

Vintage Christmas Music

I knew the whole thing by heart. What I didn't remember was that it was really not so great!

Some people get tired of the satellite-feed Christmas music often heard on the radio these days. I know I do. Yet long before Thanksgiving, I had tuned my XM radio to the only Christmas channel that was on-air at the time. I can’t help it, I just love Christmas music! But it didn’t take long for them to start overplaying certain annoying songs. (I think I have often mentioned “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” as one of the top offenders!) That is why I’m glad I found FaLaLaLaLa.com. This is a blog that devotes every December to a list of 25 songs that the author has found on old LPs that have not been republished on CD. The songs are doled out one-per-day like treats in an advent calendar. He usually highlights the album that the song came from as well. Each year, after the countdown is over, you have a complete collection of songs so you can burn your own CD. He even has cover art for your new disc! Last year I was fortunate that they even had uploaded an album that I remebered very well from childhood. It was the only kids' Christmas album my brother and I had, and we had listened to it hundreds of times. It was quite a rush, finding that crazy thing again. I sat at my compter and listened to it. I knew the whole thing by heart. What I didn't remember was that it was really not so great! But still, sweet memories!

Since FaLaLaLaLa.com, I have found a few more blogs that have the vintage Christmas albums that round out the season a little more. There are:
Ernie (not Bert)
Music You (Possibly) Won’t Hear Anyplace Else
Check the Cool Wax
A Christmas Yuleblog-- *This one is new to me, I just found it last night, so I haven't tried it yet.

All offer free music just for the downloading. I have added plenty to my mp3 player over the past couple of years. Great stuff. I will caution that you have to be one that enjoys music that leans toward the easy listening sound, because that is mostly what you will find. At least at the blogs I have listed. Does anyone know of any more?

Making a Chicken Mummy - Part 1

We decided to do a chicken mummy this year while studying about ancient Egypt. I read a few of the "recipes" online, but I decided to go with the directions found in the activity book that goes along with The Story of the World.

We used lots of gallon-sized baggies, gloves, rubbing alcohol, lots of paper towels, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and of course a chicken. To make the baggie stand up, I clipped it inside and ice cream bucket with clothespins. We found we needed a lot more salt, and some more baking soda and baking powder for the later stages, but this amount was a good start.

The chicken is a small Rock Cornish Hen that we got in the freezer section of the store and thawed in the refrigerator for a couple of days. A small chicken takes less salt and stuff. We named her "Henshepsut" after Hatshepsut, who was the first female pharaoh. (I voted for "TutenkahmHen," but I was outvoted!)

To start with, we rinsed Henshepsut very well, finishing up with rubbing alcohol. Then we dried her with paper towels, inside and out.


Then we mixed two containers of table salt with 1/2 box of baking soda and 1/2 can of baking powder. This is supposed to be close to the natron that the ancient Egyptians would have used.


We put some of this mixture in a plastic zipper bag, put the chicken in upside down and filled the cavity with the salt mixture. Then we poured the rest of the salt mixture in around her. We zipped the bag and put it inside a second bag with her name written on it. This part is important later on.


To change to fresh salt, we put on gloves, take Henshepsut out of the old salt mixture and dust her off. We have always have to push the salt out of the inside cavity because it becomes moist and clumps up in there a bit. Then we put her in a new bag and follow the same procedure that we did at first, filling her up with more salt and pouring salt all over her. Last, we always double bag, using the outside bag with her name on it.

Once, I almost threw her away, thinking I was disposing of the bag of old salt. Luckily, I realized it in plenty of time. So that is why it is important to have the one bag with her name on it. She is always kept in that bag, and you make sure not to throw it away.

We started out changing the salt mixture every day. After 5 days, we went to every other day because the salt was not getting all that moist. Now we are changing every five or six days. On one website, we read that the smell was very bad, but that must have been because they were not changing the salt often enough. Henshepsut has never had a stinky smell. She has a kind of "greasy chicken" smell, but it is not strong, and she smells more like leftovers than anything.

We have not finished our "mummification" process yet. We will update when we are finished. We are preparing some oil that is full of cinnamon and cloves, and it smells great. We'll rub that in, and wrap her up in cloth bandages. We need to make her a little sarcophagus too.

Please leave a comment if you've done a "mummy" project like this! Or if you're just thinking about it...

Bookshelf cleanout

It gives me a lift just to see it looking orderly.

Before we started school this year, we had moved furniture around so that I could use both of my livingroom bookshelves for the school area. Everything had been moved into them, but I didn't really have a good system yet, and it wasn't organized. I had everything handy, it just didn't look right.

Monday I got some time to clean out the shelves and put things back nice and tidy. I started off with this:

Most of my shelves are adjustable. The shelf that is about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom is stationary, and it is very sturdy. That is a good place to put heavy, hardback books. The adjustable shelves are decent, but they are held up by little brass pegs, so they are fine for paperbacks and smaller books.

I do not have a system for classifying my books, really. That is why it works well for me to just arrange them by size. It really does look nicer that way. I just divided them up into heavy vs. lightweight books. The "grown-up" books are on the right side bookshelf, and the books we use for school are on the left side. It works out that most of the books I pull in and out during a regular day are on the same shelf.

I have found that it does look neater to pull all the books out to the front of the shelf, even if they are narrow and can be pushed back. That way the spines are all even. That is easier said than done, so I wait until I am putting things back at the end of the school day. That seems like a lot of trouble, but it is a little thing that makes a huge difference in the way the shelf looks.


Here is a picture of what it looked like three hours later. Three hours, but I didn't work on it the whole time, since I had a baby to take care of!


If you look closely at the lower right corner, you will see my little helper checking it out. Get out of there, you little mess!

There is one little part that needs to be finished. The kids DVDs and CDs are still out of order, and they might need to be moved. The DVDs are pretty secure from baby brother, but the CDs fall right out of the cases when he gets a hold of them!

Our school area is part of the kitchen, and it is very visible to the rest of the living area of the house. It gives me a lift just to see it looking orderly.

Math for "right-brained" learners

I love my eight-year-old. She is very artistic, creative, and has a great imagination. But it is very hard to get math across to her. It seems as if she makes things too hard. She will understand the general lesson, but when it comes to working the problems, she has so much trouble getting through it. I feel like she just freezes sometimes.

I know she needs to drill some of these addition facts, but she tenses up whenever I mention it. She is very worried if I try to give her a time limit, but I know that her dependence on a number line is going to make math harder for her later on.

Last spring at our local homeschool convention, we had a chance to hear from Dianne Craft. I missed her talk about right-brained learners, but I snagged a handout. There was my sweet little girl, all described in black and white on the page. I went over to her table and got a copy of a lecture that she had done about right-brained learners. She was selling a set of flashcards to teach multiplication to right-brained kids. I did not buy it because frankly, I didn’t want to think about multiplication until we got past the obstacle of addition and subtraction!

One day this past summer, I found a couple of books on Amazon. They are called Addition the Fun Way, and Times Tables the Fun Way. They are written by Judy Liautaud. Dianne Craft says on her website that, “Right brainers learn anything easier when emotion, color, or stories are added to the learning method.” These books fit that description perfectly.

We have not tried the Times Tables book yet. The addition book is going so well, I want to give that a chance to take hold. I can tell you that she is enjoying the new way of doing math. The speed isn’t quite there yet, we’ve been doing this such a short time. But she is changing her attitude and is much more relaxed about math. She wants to do it, and has fun telling me the story that goes along with each addition problem I give her.