Letters from Home – Page 232 – A blog by Angela Ross

Top 5 Educational Resources Day 3:The Scriptures

We celebrated completing the Book of Mormon as a family November 2008

I’m not listing our top 5 educational resources in any particular order, but if I were, the Scriptures would be the most important.

This post has been hard for me to pull together in my mind because I don’t want to come across as sounding preachy or self righteous. So, I will just share a few of my favorite quotes from our church leaders to give you “the vision” or the goal behind our scripture study and memorization and then I will tell you about our daily devotional.

“It is desirable that our children should learn to memorize important passages; such that will leave a strong impression upon their lives; scriptural passages that they will use as their guiding star; scriptural passages that will help to form convictions in their minds of right and wrong; scriptural passages that will bring conviction to their hearts.” (Elder Joseph M Tanner, April 1901 General Conference)

“In the future, infrequent family scripture study may be inadequate to arm our children with the virtue necessary to withstand the moral decay of the environment in which they will live. Where in the world will the children learn chastity, integrity, honesty, and basic human decency if not at home?

“These values will, of course, be reinforced at church, but parental teaching is more constant. In my opinion, the teaching, rearing, and training of children requires more intelligence, intuitive understanding, humility, strength, wisdom, spirituality, perseverance, and hard work than any other challenge we might have in life. This is especially so when moral foundations of honor an decency are eroding around us. To have successful homes, values must be taught, and there must be rules, there must be standards, and there must be absolutes.” (James E. Faust, “The Greatest Challenge in the World- Good Parenting, Ensign, Nov 1990, p.33)

So, this is what we do. It’s not always perfect, but we try.

Scripture study at our house begins at 9:00 a.m.
It takes about 15 minutes. We read from the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and the Doctrine and Covenants. Right now our family is reading the Doctrine and Covenants.
After we read, we pray.
Then we sing scripture songs (I make up tunes to scripture verses and we sing to learn the verses) This week we are learning Ephesians 4:11-14.
We sing a patriotic song
We say the Pledge of Allegiance
We each pick a name of a family member out of a box and we try to be a good Samaritan to that person all day.
The kids have personal scripture study during the day as part of their homework. I give them charts to fill in to show their progress. Here is a chart I made to color as we read the New Testament.

Pretty basic stuff, but scripture study really works to glue our family together in faith.

Top 5 Educational Resources Day 2: Learning Through History Magazine

Learning Through History Magazine is another Favorite Educational Resource we use.

History is a really important part of our curriculum. We use The Story of the World series as a general text. The kids learn to outline, summarize, and make conclusions about history as they write, write, write about history. Anyone who has read our monthly Homeschool magazine, The Sahuarita Saga knows that our kids spend a lot of time writing about history.

Beyond the writing and map work and timelines that we create, I ask the kids to do history projects. This is where Learning Through History Magazine comes in. Each magazine focuses on a major historical movement. I buy the back issues that I want. I think they are around $6. They have activities for children in preschool through high school. There are articles about people, technology, politics, and fashion. There are art projects, primary source documents to study and essay questions and ideas for further study. The magazines are black and white and have no advertisements.

We take 2-3 weeks to work on each history project. We do a couple of big history projects each year. This year we are studying modern history (1850-1900s). For World War I, I used the Great War issue and assigned Paige and Daniel to come up with projects using this magazine. Daniel chose to write about planes and tanks. He studied the events leading up to the US deciding to join the war and summarized them in a paper. Paige found an article about Choctaw Indian code talkers and wrote a research paper about them. She also thought the War Propaganda article was interesting and spent a lot of time on the internet, looking over propaganda posters and then she wrote an essay contrasting opposing views about the use of war propaganda. To finish their WWI projects, the kids wrote a trivia game about about WWI and we watched Sergeant York.

Next year as we study ancient history, I will order the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine magazines to supplement what we learn in our history text.

Learningthroughhistory.com is where you can order these magazines and a lot of other fun history stuff.

History in textbooks is lame. A project approach to history just rocks.

Top 5 Educational Resources Day 1: SCBF Series

This week I will share five of my favorite educational resources.

My first pick is the Shakespeare Can Be Fun! Series. I mentioned this series in my last post. I am truly inspired by this author, Lois Burdett. After spending an hour reading her version of Hamlet, written in couplets and including the more famous lines from Shakespeare, I was hooked. I’m going to buy the whole series. My kids love the books that I have ordered so far.

Something charming about this series is the author integrates writings from 3rd-4th graders in the text and the book is fully illustrated by children. She is an amazing educator, helping the children with their writing and reading comprehension skills.

I wrote the author last week asking for permission to do a stage performance of Burdett’s play, Hamlet for Kids!. Today I opened my e-mail to find her most warm, kind response. Not only did she take the time to personally write to me, she was personable and passionate about helping children to write well. She’s Canadian and now that’s my favorite country next to the good old USA. I would love to have her come down here and do a workshop. Please look into buying one of these wonderful books because you heard from me how FABULOUS they are.

You really ought to click on your link to amazon.com and get ordering. She’s got a huge selection of titles!

Stay tuned for more of my Favorite Educational Resources from our 2008-2009 school year.

April 23

Paige and Daniel went to Raytheon’s Career Day. Richard signed them up for mini-classes on different kinds of engineering and took them to lunch in the cafeteria. Paige liked the software engineering demonstration (they had a robot) best. Daniel liked the electrical engineering and the robot, too. I am glad Raytheon opened their doors and prepared these classes for the kids.

After the Career Day, we raced over to our homeschool geography bee. We were too late to really do much, but Timothy was able to present his geography project: he sang This Land is Your Land. All the children joined in at the chorus and I felt like Maria von Trapp on the guitar.

Daniel then went to a book club discussion about The Wright 3 at the Billings’s house. Last week they played with pentominoes and worked on codes. This week, they learned about fibonacci sequences and “magic” triangles in nature and in classical architecture. (That last sentence I copied and pasted from Amy Billings’s e-mail, since I don’t know anything about that stuff.)

We didn’t have a normal school day, but I think I can say the kids were well-taught all day. Last night was the first night in a very long time that our family has been together in the evening. We sat and talked for hours in our family room. Everyone was happy. I made a turkey dinner and enjoyed the sleepy full feeling as I listened to the kids tell me about their day. Paige is looking forward to braces (that’s another trip we made earlier this week) and Daniel told us baseball stories. I talked about the Town Council elections that are driving me crazy. Richard told us about a discussion he had on the way home from work. Mark got tired of waiting for someone to put him to bed and we found him snuggled in his crib, sound asleep. Timothy nearly drifted off to sleep, snuggled up on the couch, listening to us.

Paige and Daniel are looking forward to performing Hamlet this summer. I found this series, Shakespeare Can Be Fun! that is written in couplets, uses some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, but is much simpler for children. I’m totaly inspired by this series. I can just see the boys getting into the sword fighting and poisoning and hopping into a grave. I can just see Paige and a friend acting like crazy Ophelia and the guilty queen. Now, I just need to enlist 5 or 6 children to join us. Costumes, props, etc. will be a great summer project.

Timothy’s shiner

A giant ant did this to Timothy. I’m not kidding. It was one of those big playground toys. He stood up beneath it, not realizing he’s grown 6 inches in the last 2 weeks (or so). He says it hurts. We’ve never had a black eye here at the Presidio. Am I stupid for posting a picture of my child thus bruised for all the world to see? Probably.

Perspective

I learned today that a friend our age, a father of 3, passed away after a battle with cancer. His name was David and he was a really good person. His goal was to baptize his son before he passed away, and he made it, which tells you the kind of man he was.

Here is a recent photo of Richard and me. I wish I had more photos of the two of us. Kiss your husbands an extra time today and remember not to take them for granted. 2008-12-31-christmas-wedding-trip-0244

Take me out to the ballgame!

Baseball is in full swing for Daniel and Timothy. Daniel’s game tonight was one of his best yet. He hit a double that landed between the left and center fielders. He also got to pitch for an inning and struck out one batter. He doesn’t aspire to be pitcher, but it’s fun all the same. His dream position is second base. Here are a few photos from tonight.

Fielding a grounder

Pitcher taking the signal

Winds up

Cocked

Delivers the pitch!

Strike three, he’s out!

Easter 2009

This was our Easter. The kids decorated eggs after church. We then invited the Dedmone family from across the street to our house for ham, potatoes, asparagus, pineapple, homemade rolls & apple crisp. The Dedmones stayed for a long while so we had a good visit.

Sun in the eyes and wind in the face doesn’t make certain people very happy. But really, we were joyful and looking forward to the candy at home…

Timothy and Daniel sang and Paige accompanied them on the piano for sacrament meeting. They did great! It was the last musical number that I assigned in my previous calling. I was a nervous wreck, hoping the short song would be “enough” to satisfy the heavy expectations for an Easter song. I started to get teary when the first person complimented the kids, I was so relieved! As church progressed, Richard and I received so many compliments that I think I’ll turn over doing music in church entirely to my kids. It’s a lot less work for me but I still get all the glory.

Good boys

I love working on Cub Scout stuff with Daniel. Daniel made brownies and mashed potatoes for our family tonight. Richard came home sick from work, so we fed him dinner in bed. Timothy kept him company.

Shannan on my mind

This is my brother Joe and his wife Shannan at the temple last week. They have adopted three children in the past year and a half or so. Their youngest baby, Ammon was sealed to them last week. Shannan has been sick for a long time and is losing a lot of weight. Gall bladder surgery hasn’t helped. She’s hospitalized today. I want to run to them and help. I hope I can. For now, I pray and wait for answers like everyone else who loves her.

Post Edit: 4/19/09 Shannan’s diagnosis is: GIARDIA! At least now the doctors can treat it.