Confessions of a Homeschooler, you are my newest featured blogger!
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09 December 2009
Some Great Ideas
I was just clicking around this afternoon, taking a short break from working on my Christmas gifts, and I ran across a blog called Confessions of a Homeschooler, and she's got some outstanding ideas for Christmas crafts in her most recent posts! Edible Christmas trees, which are extremely cute, a "stained glass" Jesus craft, and a whole bunch of J activities, centered around Baby Jesus. There are some very adorable ideas that she's generously shared for free. This is definitely a site that's going in my blogroll so that I can return regularly for more ideas!
Confessions of a Homeschooler, you are my newest featured blogger!
Please feel free to grab a button from the sidebar.
Confessions of a Homeschooler, you are my newest featured blogger!
Please feel free to grab a button from the sidebar.
Sling Giveaway!
11th Heaven's Homemaking Haven is giving away a gorgeous Hotslings baby carrier!
To enter click HERE.
I've never used a hotsling, though Mommy9 says she loves them. I can say that slings are a lifesaver! I used a Mobywrap with my first, and plan to do it again with all future children we have. Babywearing is the best.
To enter click HERE.
I've never used a hotsling, though Mommy9 says she loves them. I can say that slings are a lifesaver! I used a Mobywrap with my first, and plan to do it again with all future children we have. Babywearing is the best.
08 December 2009
In My Home
Do not trade your birthright as a mother for some bauble of passing value. Let your first interest be in your home. The baby you hold in your arms will grow quickly as the sunrise and sunset of the rushing days.-Gordon B. Hinckley (emphasis added)
Trish, of Mommyx12, has some beautiful thoughts about Mothering, and about the joys that are only to be found in the home. She quotes Michelle of She Looketh Well:
He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters . . . In returning to Me and resting in Me you shall be saved in quietness and trusting confidence shall be your strength . . . Come to Me all you who are weary, I will cause you to rest.
No, I don’t believe Jesus is behind this crazy pace. Am I willing to listen to the Voice of my Good Shepherd instead of the voice in my head, or the the voice of our culture?
And then she adds this wisdom of her own:
I have gotten into the habit to actually whisper a prayer each day and ask the Lord to bless my eyes to see and my heart to feel the joys and happiness that can only be found within the walls of my own home.
What a wonderful idea! I need to start doing that.
Thanks, Trish.
06 December 2009
Thought This Was Interesting
Policies restricting food and liquid intake [during labor] date from an era when laboring women were routinely given general anesthesia and risked aspirating food into the lungs. Modern anesthetic techniques have virtually eliminated this risk, which is further reduced by the fact that only a tiny minority of laboring women, even among those who deliver via cesarean section, actually receive general anesthesia. ...
Elizabeth Allemann, MD [said,] “Women deserve to be fully informed about what the evidence actually shows, and it’s time that the medical profession abandoned policies based on the outdated and paternalistic idea that patients should play no role whatsoever in the decision-making process.” -The Big Push For Midwives press release
Read more...
The commentary above comes in response to a recent statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which uses phrases like "may be allowed to quench their thirst" and "women are not allowed to eat." Part of the Big Push's objection is to the paternalistic nature of such language: this is not words used by people who see themselves as a hired consultant, adviser, and emergency safety net. This is something said by people who think they have a right to order women around. The other objection is that this recommendation is not supported by research.
I'm currently reading The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer, and she has a lot to say about how the "nothing by mouth" rules stack up next to the research. Chapter 4 is all about this topic, but I'll pull out some of the highlights.
In the 1940's, back in the days when general anesthetics were administered through opaque masks, doctors began forbidding food to patients undergoing surgery because they realized that vomiting and inhaling food particles into the lungs (aspiration) was a grave and often fatal complication to surgery. Since laboring women during this time were usually heavily drugged and often had general anesthesia even for vaginal births, doctors extended the policy to childbirth. On on grounds whatever, and despite knowing that clear liquids empty rapidly from the stomach, the ban included drinking too. Thus, nothing by mouth... became standard practice before surgery and during labor.
Today, changes in anesthetic and obstetric practice have made aspiration a vanishingly rare event. Less than 2 per 1,000,000 pregnant women in the United States between 1988 and 1990 died of any anesthesia-related complication - not just aspiration - during delivery. ... Nonetheless [nothing by mouth] in labor remains the norm at many hospitals. ...
To begin with, eating and drinking in labor are safe. In three large U.S. studies totaling seventy-eight thousand women in labor who ate and drank freely, there was not one case of aspiration. The anesthesia-related maternal mortality rate in England and Wales, where oral intake in labor is usual, is identical to the rate in the United States, where it is not. ...
Why then the strenuous objections to oral intake and the insistence on routine IVs? What we have, once again, is an obstetric belief system that defines childbirth as a medical-surgical event. Eating and drinking do not fit this model. IVs do. ...
In addition to being a direction that arose in circumstances that no longer exist, Goer goes on to point out that forbidding food and drink during labor not only makes the process of labor unnecessarily unpleasant, it may pose some risks to the baby as well:
Hunger and thirst cause considerable discomfort. ... In addition, during pregnancy, starvation causes a faster, sharper drop-off in blood sugar levels, and an earlier switch to metabolizing body fat. Vigorous exercise - in this case, labor - accelerates this process. This is a problem when women fast in labor because metabolizing fat produces ketones. In animal studies, ketones have been shown to cross into fetal circulation, making the fetal blood more acidic (acidosis). Acidosis is a symptom of fetal distress... (Pages 75-79)
Really makes that statement from the ACOG sound a lot less generous, doesn't it?
05 December 2009
Weekly Wrap-up
We didn't "wrap-up" last week because while we did a little in the beginning of the week, school wasn't really the focus. We still did some fun things that count as school. For instance, we played UNO with Grandpa on Thanksgiving day. At home, Mom counts this as Math. At Grandpa's, well, nobody was thinking of anything but having fun!
This week started out strong, but got a little bit exciting toward the end. But it's been a good week nonetheless.
Monday, we did pretty well. We put up our tree, we did some work on Monkey's letter books - T, M, and N. This time, I gave him pictures and he cut, identified the right book, and glued them in more or less by himself. I grabbed a Christmas gift I'm working on and did that while he worked. We also read a few more pages in Through the Looking Glass.
Tuesday, we went out and got some good nature study in, as well as a library trip.
Wednesday, I have no idea what we did. I just can't remember.
But I remember Thursday! Thursday was the day my friend came over for a bit while she labored with her first baby (the hospital was full, and she wasn't that close yet), and I ended up going to the hospital with her and her husband to help them out while she gave birth!
He had a bit of a rough start: the cord was wrapped around his neck, he was facing the side (not the bottom), and he was "waving" - that is, his hand was by his face. So he spent his first few minutes getting worked over on the warmer.
They got him pinked up, and Daddy got to finish cutting the cord. He's doing just fine now. When I spoke to Mommy this afternoon she said that little R. is finally getting the hang of nursing, and they expect to be home Sunday morning.
R. actually came very early on Friday morning, and I was out of sorts after doing counter-pressure for about 10 hours, into the wee hours, and then staying a little longer while they got R. sorted out because he had some lingering breathing irregularities, so Friday was also not a school day. But we got to go visit and hold the baby!
03 December 2009
Classical Homeschool Carnival #4
Welcome to the December 3, 2009 edition of the Classical Homeschooling Carnival! Around here Thanksgiving is just behind us, and Christmas just ahead, and it's a good time for a bit of inspiration to get through the holidays.
Paige at Elemental Science presents History Project: Building a Castle, in which she shares how they added a hands-on element to their study of medieval castles.
Molly shares her hands-on, kinesthetic methods of teaching spelling with File Folder Spelling posted at Counter-cultural School.
Ritsumei shares a few thoughts on learning Latin and other languages in Learning Latin, Among Other Things at Baby Steps. She also is hosting a giveaway for SpellQuizzer software, with entries due by Dec. 11.
Kristiana shares the accomplishments they had in spite of sickness in Weekly Report 15 « La Scuola d'Argento posted at La Scuola d'Argento. In spite of not feeling well, it looks like their family had a great time with some cranberry activities in connection with their reading of Cranberry Thanksgiving.
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
Classical Homeschooling Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
02 December 2009
Learning Latin, Among Other Things
No, I'm not doing it yet, but it is on the agenda for when Monkey gets bigger. It's a large and rather foreign project, so I like to read about it. I like to see what I can learn from other people's experience. Andgela, over at Walls of Books, has a great article about Latin in the Grammar stage, and references another article, this one from Memoria Press that also looked really good.
Memoria Press has an interesting idea: learn just grammar first. This strikes me as sort of backwards, but when I think about the difficulties I have had with learning Japanese, it begins to make sense. I studied Japanese in college, and since then have wanted to "finish" learning the language, but have struggled to merely keep up what I learned in the first place. Several times I've set myself vocabulary learning tasks to help my fluency. It's never worked very well. But the idea presented in these two articles seems to be that the vocabulary is pretty useless without a context to put it in, and that context is embodied in the language's grammar.
In terms of Latin, Angela has a number of suggestions for what to do in the grammar stage: teach the kids to love it through exposure in music and sayings. Have them begin the memory work that will lay the grammatical foundation for later work. Ask them to memorize scripture. All these things make a great deal of sense to me, now that I think about them, and are ideas that would translate well into other language learning.
Memoria Press has an interesting idea: learn just grammar first. This strikes me as sort of backwards, but when I think about the difficulties I have had with learning Japanese, it begins to make sense. I studied Japanese in college, and since then have wanted to "finish" learning the language, but have struggled to merely keep up what I learned in the first place. Several times I've set myself vocabulary learning tasks to help my fluency. It's never worked very well. But the idea presented in these two articles seems to be that the vocabulary is pretty useless without a context to put it in, and that context is embodied in the language's grammar.
In terms of Latin, Angela has a number of suggestions for what to do in the grammar stage: teach the kids to love it through exposure in music and sayings. Have them begin the memory work that will lay the grammatical foundation for later work. Ask them to memorize scripture. All these things make a great deal of sense to me, now that I think about them, and are ideas that would translate well into other language learning.
01 December 2009
Giveaway and Review: SpellQuizzer
The Review
SpellQuizzer is a downloadable spelling program that helps kids (and adults!) learn their spelling and vocabulary words. They contacted me last month and asked if I would be interested in reviewing their product, and gave me a complementary copy to look over. This is the first time that somebody came to me for this sort of thing! As it turns out, I really like SpellQuizzer, and think it'd be a fabulous addition to either a public or homeschool education.
So, the idea with SpellQuizzer is that you take an inexpensive microphone and automate the spelling practice. You make your list, which doesn't take long. Then you practice. It's easy and quick and painless. When I finish the list, it offers to re-do the ones I missed, and when Ifinally get them all right, it offers to scramble them up and let me have another go at the list. It's very efficient. In addition, each word on all the lists go into a database, with their recordings and hints, and you can create new lists from that database.
I don't actually have a microphone, which turns out to be just fine too, though it's not quite as easy. You, the list maker, have to think harder about the print "hints" you give, rather than just saying the word into your microphone. However, I was able to download a Latin-based word list designed for spelling bee preparation, and it had the recordings. It worked out very nicely, because although nearly all the words on the spelling bee list were ones I thought it would be good to practice, there was 144 of them on the list and it took too long to get through. 15-20 is much more workable, and it's not hard to break it into that size of chunks. (Though it did take a minute to figure out how to do it.) So I can use that database to create new lists using the words, with their recordings, after I download.
In addition to doing spelling lists, this program is flexible enough to do a couple of other things too: one the website talks about is vocabulary learning. You put in the definition, the student gives the word. I didn't test extensively, but it looks like SpellQuizzer also can handle special characters, so you could probably use it for foreign language study as well, as long as it uses a Latin alphabet. It didn't like the Japanese I put in, but the little bit of Spanish I tried went just fine.
The SpellQuizzer web site has pre-made downloadable spelling lists that you can download and use with the program. They've got message boards, though those look pretty new, but given time they may develop into a nice list-swapping resource.
The Giveaway
The gentleman that developed the software, Dan Hite, has graciously offered a free SpellQuizzer registration key for one lucky winner! Here's how you qualify:
1. Post to your blog about this giveaway and review. Do this before Dec. 11, 2009.
2. Come back and leave me a link to your post in the comments.
If you would like, you can use the following code for your post. Just copy and paste.
It will look like this:
SpellQuizzer software works with any spelling program, whether homeschool or public. Click to enter Ritsumei's giveaway on Baby Steps for a chance to win SpellQuizzer!
SpellQuizzer is a downloadable spelling program that helps kids (and adults!) learn their spelling and vocabulary words. They contacted me last month and asked if I would be interested in reviewing their product, and gave me a complementary copy to look over. This is the first time that somebody came to me for this sort of thing! As it turns out, I really like SpellQuizzer, and think it'd be a fabulous addition to either a public or homeschool education.
So, the idea with SpellQuizzer is that you take an inexpensive microphone and automate the spelling practice. You make your list, which doesn't take long. Then you practice. It's easy and quick and painless. When I finish the list, it offers to re-do the ones I missed, and when I
I don't actually have a microphone, which turns out to be just fine too, though it's not quite as easy. You, the list maker, have to think harder about the print "hints" you give, rather than just saying the word into your microphone. However, I was able to download a Latin-based word list designed for spelling bee preparation, and it had the recordings. It worked out very nicely, because although nearly all the words on the spelling bee list were ones I thought it would be good to practice, there was 144 of them on the list and it took too long to get through. 15-20 is much more workable, and it's not hard to break it into that size of chunks. (Though it did take a minute to figure out how to do it.) So I can use that database to create new lists using the words, with their recordings, after I download.
In addition to doing spelling lists, this program is flexible enough to do a couple of other things too: one the website talks about is vocabulary learning. You put in the definition, the student gives the word. I didn't test extensively, but it looks like SpellQuizzer also can handle special characters, so you could probably use it for foreign language study as well, as long as it uses a Latin alphabet. It didn't like the Japanese I put in, but the little bit of Spanish I tried went just fine.
The SpellQuizzer web site has pre-made downloadable spelling lists that you can download and use with the program. They've got message boards, though those look pretty new, but given time they may develop into a nice list-swapping resource.
The Giveaway
The gentleman that developed the software, Dan Hite, has graciously offered a free SpellQuizzer registration key for one lucky winner! Here's how you qualify:
1. Post to your blog about this giveaway and review. Do this before Dec. 11, 2009.
2. Come back and leave me a link to your post in the comments.
If you would like, you can use the following code for your post. Just copy and paste.
It will look like this:
SpellQuizzer software works with any spelling program, whether homeschool or public. Click to enter Ritsumei's giveaway on Baby Steps for a chance to win SpellQuizzer!
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