Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Creative Writing for Kids

Nick, who is 12, hated writing until a few weeks ago. I was not really sure why he hated it because he was so good at it. After Kim told me about "story starters" I decided to try it myself. Basically, I would write the first few sentences of a story, creating a scenario. Then, the kids would go from there with their story. The first few ideas came pretty easily and the outcome was hilarious. All of my kids were writing very creative, very funny stories. And, out of the blue, Nick tells me that he LOVES writing!

Well, this week my own creativity for the story starters started to drop off. Apparently, so did Kim's. That must have sent her on the hunt for more ideas because she just sent me this link, which I love!

http://www.brucevanpatter.com/what_if_questions.php



One of these days soon, I WILL figure out how to put in a nice pretty link!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Modest swim wear

For once, a comfortable and modest suit that is pretty cute too. WARNING!!! These suits are in no way revealing! But who ever said we had to be exposed to have fun around the water. Why is it that people will walk around in public in a bikini but not their underwear? It is essentially the same thing.

http://www.swimmodest.com/

Friday, April 9, 2010

John Adams

We didn't used to particularly like John Adams until watching this movie, which you can check out at your local library:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_(TV_miniseries)

(sorry, I am no good at links.)

And we like this, too:

http://www.scmidnightflyer.com/adamsjohn.html

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Free Audiobooks for Children

http://librivox.org/childrens-literature/

A Thomas Jefferson Education

Because a lot of the neat stuff Kim sends me are from other people's blogs, of course those links will end up in this blog. This is one I am super excited about looking into. I actually had this book on my mind before Kim told me about it but just haven't gotten around to looking into it yet. If you do, PLEASE post a comment here telling me what you think of it.

http://www.design-your-homeschool.com/a-thomas-jefferson-education.html

Sunday, April 4, 2010

A Cool Site

Here is a cool site Kim has told me about a few times. That makes it worth sharing here. Good for homeschoolers and vegetarians.:)

http://vegsource.com/homeschool/

Thursday, April 1, 2010

"Your shoes are on the wrong feet."

I tried this today on a couple of kids that I am watching. They informed me immediately that they like it!

If you have a child having trouble getting the shoes on the correct feet try this:

Draw a smiley face on each shoe on the edge of the sole of the shoe where the arch is. When the smiley faces are smiling at each other the shoes are on the right feet.

My Friend Kim

I am pretty sure that my friend Kim is a parenting and homeschooling genius. She is about doing things smarter not harder, providing for yourself, helping kids learn, feeding your peeps healthy and yummy food and raising kids to be unique, responsible, contributing adults. She is like a lot of great parents I know but she has a way of distilling info and ideas to a short little tidbit that i can handle.

One reason for starting this blog is just to have a way to keep track of all of the little things she sends me or tells me. Most of the ideas that she has sent me are currently randomly stored in my email inbox. I told her to start a blog so that she could share with everyone but she scoffed at the idea. I told her, "Fine, then I will start a blog and take all the credit for myself!" She said, "Ok."

So here I am with a place to share all of Kim's great ideas with anyone who is interested.

I hope you enjoy Kim's ideas as much as I do.