Coming out of Vacation Mode

Took a bit of a blogging vacation over the last few months. I was more than busy with getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas and enjoying time with the family.

But having gotten Pocketful of Pinecones for Christmas, I'm thinking that I would really like to have more detailed recollections of the year to look back on. I suppose that makes it one of my New Year resolutions to be a more frequent blogger.

Saints Ornaments

If you like the idea of a Jesse Tree, you might also like the cool Saints ornaments for Advent from Under Her Starry Mantle. I especially like the idea that I might be able to make these using stuff from my scrapbooking stash. She also has O Antiphon ornaments for the later days of December.

This would also be a cool activity for studying the Middle Ages, with its emphasis on the rise of the Catholic church.

This combination of chipboard letters and color images is a good technique for other holidays and studies. For example, I have a page a week Japanese art calendar that would yield good images. A bird calendar would provide good images for ornaments that also helped in identification.

h/t Paper Dali

Homeschooling Links

Over a couple years of blogging and a few more years of homeschooling, I've collected an awful lot of cool links for teacher's guides, experiments, lapbooks and other homeschool goodies. I decided that it might be nice to collect them into a big index.

Art

Deep Space Sparkle Art Lessons

50 Ways to Use Museum Postcards

Maths and Islamic Art

Jainism: Art & Design

Bible/Christianity

Readings for Advent

Jesse Tree Devotions

Geography

Australian Alps Teaching Guide
Northern Territory (Australia) for Kids
Northern Territory (Australia) for Teachers
Northern Territory (Australia) Junior Ranger Newsletters
Kakadu (Australia) Visitors' Guide
Uluru Visitors' Guide


Hawaii
Unit Study for Hawaii

History

Debunking Myths of September 11th
Historic Paper Dolls (possibly suitable for timelines)
Edo Period Japan
Young Indiana Jones lesson plans
List of Historical Fiction by Era
National Mythology Exam

Japan
Geography of Japan, especially Kanagawa prefecture and Kanto Plain
Nature Activities in Japan
Rice link collection
Edo Period Japan (for use with The Master Puppeteer)
Buddhism: Art & Design

Languages

North American Computational Linguistics - includes practice problems

National Latin Exam

Exploratory Latin Exam

Math



Nature

Birds of Yokosuka Naval Base
Nature Activities in Japan
Rice Link collection
Zoo Activity Packs: Ft Wayne Zoo
Northern Territory Junior Ranger Newsletter (Australia)



Reading

Librivox: Free Audiobooks
Activities tied to books by Tammy Yee


Science

Forensic Entomology: What the Blowfly Saw
Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Entomology in action
Debunking Myths of September 11th
The Space Place: NASA activities for kids
Zoo Activity Packs: Ft Wayne Zoo
Bottle Biology science experiments
USGS: Earthquakes for Kids
Science Project Ideas for Kids
Color Matters for Kids


Scouting

Songs for Scouts to Sing
NASA activities for scouts


Writing

Creative writing example: Brooklyn Suprehero Supply Co.
Kids' Novel Writing Club


I only made it back to September 2008, so more links are coming, especially nature and Hawaii related stuff. Interesting to see what interested me a year or so ago. And sad to note the resources that I'd stumbled upon and then forgot that I'd found when we were studying Asia.

Judgemental Christian Homeschoolers

Successful Homeschooling has a lovely article about (not) being a judgemental Christian homeschooler that is worth checking out.

I've been on the receiving end of patient and kind love from some of my homeschool mentors, including a couple times when a friend met me at the curb as I dropped of kids with no notice.

While I fear that God will give me opportunities to practice up, I am hoping that I will grow into such a gracefilled example.

Christmas Carnival of Homeschooling

The lastest Carnival of Homeschooling is up at The Homeschool Post with some fun and encouraging posts.

I'm taking the Christmas holidays to retool some of what we're doing. I'm hoping that a short break will make the changes easier than if I tried to just make incremental changes. Almost every carnival gives me some ideas to ponder and try to incorporate.

This post about the automatic first response to homeschooling at A Tings Thinking Corner is a good one.

Jesse Tree Ornaments

I've been slow off the block in using the Jesse Tree ornaments that I made last year. One thing that I forgot was that we didn't bring our little tabletop tree with us to Japan. So I need to come up with something to pin the ornaments to for display.

This just isn't the year for doing a lot of holiday crafting, with scout events over the next week and then family visiting. So I won't be making any special tree or calendar background out of felt. But I am thinking that pinning them to a table runner may work just as well and I certainly have plenty of those.

I did really enjoy making the Jesse Tree ornaments last year. I found that the consideration that I gave to picking the images and making each one was its own form of advent meditation. Some ideas for Jesse Tree advent ornaments. Links to completed Jesse Trees.