|
||||
RSSBack Issue: March, 2009It is for freedom we’ve been set freePosted March 27th, 2009 by Jen in family life, religion, the ranch11 Comments »
This is a verse that came my way today from two different sources. I don’t know what it means to you, but I wanted to share it with you. Part of it for me means being FREE and available for all God has for me. No eye has seen or mind can comprehend what God has prepared for those who love Him. And none of it is fully available when we are not free. So, I’ll be meditating on what this means for me and how I can obtain further freedom…from fear, exhaustion, unbelief, and anything else that I struggle with. That’s my little JoJo in the photo exercising her freedom! Without a care and full of the joy of living, she pedals into the wind like a newly released balloon reaching for the skies. Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, Christianity, God, freedom in Christ, Galations, Bible  Expressive Social StudiesPosted March 25th, 2009 by Jen in education, features8 Comments » Oh boy, I’ll have to make this a quick post, but I hope to come back to this subject another time when I can deal with it more in depth. For now, here’s a short list of some methods I’ve had great success with in regards to bringing some life to the history and social studies lessons. I vary the method I use to add interest, and only do one of these at a time. 1. Act it out. As I read aloud the lesson from our textbook, I have my students stand at their desk and create motions to go along with the words. If we are studying about Alexander the Great crossing a vast desert on his way to conquer another nation, I’ve seen students galloping on their horses, brandishing swords, or taking a victory stance. A word of caution–if you don’t want this to get too out of hand, let your students know ahead of time what the boundaries are. After dealing with kids racing around the room, falling to the floor with gasps and spasms as they “die,” and engaging in hand-to-hand combat, I had to make some rules! Extra points went to groups who acted silently (so as to hear the teacher), stayed behind their desks, and if they must die, they do so with a minimum of fanfare. Just sayin’. 2. Group skits. This is a modification of number 1 above. Instead of each student acting individually, I assign sections of the text to groups of 3-4 students (about 1-2 pages per group) and give them 15-20 minutes to come up with a skit to represent their section. This is not meant to be an extended project, and must be accomplished within that timeframe. Each group has up to five minutes to present their skit, so with about five groups of students, this fills the social studies period. Twenty minutes to read their section and prepare the skit, plus 25 minutes of group presentations – 45 minutes. Much more fun than just reading and filling out a worksheet. And truly, the retention is miles beyond the traditional approach. A note on the skits–visit with each group as they are preparing, and point out the main ideas that should make it into their skit. They will need some guidance o this, especially if they are new to this activity. Names of characters should be stated, location and date should be made known. As your students become familiar with what you require, the quality of their skits really improves. 3. Poetry. From prose to poetry is the goal here. When we go the poetry route, we read the chapter aloud, then I offer a poem starter to get the kids in the right frame of mind. I’ve been requiring just six lines of poetry for now, because this is a more difficult one for my kids. As they become more comfortable with this method, I would expect my students to write eight lines for every page of the lesson. Let’s try a quick lesson here. Go the the Alexander the Great wikipedia page and read the intro. Write six lines of poetry. Here’s my poem, done in less than five minutes.
It’s amazing how much you have to examine the words and think about synonyms to turn prose into poetry. I think this is a method I will continue to explore! 4. Jeopardy! Who doesn’t love a good game? We read the lesson aloud to get the big picture. Then break into groups of three or four students each. Each student must write at least three Jeopardy questions, which are then submitted to me to choose from. Sometimes, to get good coverage, I will assign groups the pages their questions must come from. I also typically have them label their questions Easy, Medium, or Difficult. On the whiteboard, I draw a modified Jeopardy game board, with group names and points. We play a simplified version of the TV game show. Some other ideas for teachers to explore…reader’s theatre, songs, puppet shows. The bottom line for me is this: how can I engage my students in a subject that is typically called “boring” by a huge number of young people? I know how critical it is to know our history – how else can we know ourselves? History is anything but boring! If you have some great ideas for spicing up the social studies, let me know. And do you have an Alexander the Great poem for me? Technorati Tags: education, history lesson ideas, creative social studies, teaching boy and shovelPosted March 23rd, 2009 by Jen in family life, the ranch5 Comments »
A little boy must have a shovel or two to be truly happy, I think! What is it about digging that brings such satisfaction and sense of adventure?
Have you noticed a fascination with upturning the earth in your own children? When you were a child, did you love to dig? Is it a child’s version of going out west or shooting to the moon, or any other unknown horizon to be explored? Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood memories, family, children’s shovels Inspired Book Reports: Lapbooking Where the Red Fern GrowsPosted March 17th, 2009 by Jen in book reviews, education, features11 Comments » A fun, creative way to do book reports–it’s called a lapbook, or a folder full of mini-books to organize the main ideas and story elements of literature. The lapbook can be the whole book report for younger to middle ages, or a tool for gathering information as the student reads before he writes a formal report for upper grades. I’d like to show you an example of a lapbook for Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I created this for my 6th grade students, and they are loving it. What I like most about the lapbook is the myriad of options available–all sizes, colors, shapes, and topics, all to be worked out according to the book and limited only by your imagination. As a logistical note, I chose to make the entire lapbook right upfront, rather than make one mini book at a time, because with the way I set this up, the students are adding a bit to almost every mini book each day. You’ll need to gather two manila folders per child as well as the pre-printed templates which I’ll reference below (just follow the links). I would set aside two class sessions of 30-45 minutes each to set up the entire lapbook. Start with a letter size manila folder. Open it up, and fold each flap into the middle and crease. And because I wanted an extra pocket in the back, I taped up the sides of a second manila folder and glued it to the back of the first folder. Here is what the lapbook looks like from the front:
I picked three main characters from Where the Red Fern Grows – Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann, and as we read the book together in class, I prompt the students to stop and make notes on 3×5 notecards when they learn something new or important about each character. The 3×5 notecard must be folded in half or cut to fit into this pocket. Here are examples of student entries on their character cards:
Here is the link to the template for the pockets. Open up the lapbook and you’ll discover a treasure of little books:
I’ll start on the left inside flap. There is an Author mini-book, called a rectangle petal book. On the four outside flaps I wrote the words birth, early childhood, writing, and my one regret. Under each of these flaps, the students are to write a sentence or two about Wilson Rawls on that subject. I handed out this study guide for Where the Red Fern Grows which includes information for several of the mini-books, including this author mini-book. By the way, Wilson Rawls’ one regret was that his father died before Wilson could show him a copy of his book. Under the author book is “the Ozarks” mini-book (the hexagon mini simple fold book), which in a traditional book report would be the setting. In this little space, the students will share details such as how the Ozarks are a highland region, and in Where the Red Fern Grows, the part of the Ozarks described is in the northeastern section of Oklahoma. Thick forests of oak, hickory, pine, and maple, caves, mountain streams, and abundant wildlife should all be mentioned. The wheel book under the Ozarks book is for Sequence of Events. It is divided into eight sections, and meant for students to think hard about boiling down the main events of the book into just a few steps. For example, the first event listed could be The adult Billy has a flashback to his childhood after rescuing a redbone hound. The second event could be Billy works hard for two years and earns money to buy his hounds. Right away you probably noticed the bright, multi-colored layered book called Chapter Summaries. We made these out of colored construction paper following these easy instructions. This is where the students record a few concise sentences about each chapter as they go, touching on the main action, thus creating an entire summary of the book by the time they have completed the last chapter. I cut off a smaller section of the original layered book and used it for the skinnier multi-colored layered book to the right called Fave Quotes and Phrases. I encouraged my students to be on the lookout for figurative, expressive language, for which Wilson Rawls is famous, fun plays on words, or thought-provoking quotes. Examples that made it into some student’s lapbook are:
Under the chapter summaries is a Daily Journal, made using the same method as the chapter summary mini-book, except with plain paper. I typically give a writing prompt for this exercise, and here is an example of the prompt I wrote for Ch. 9:
The Book Report mini-book in the center of the lapbook is the most simple of them all. It’s a basic flap-book, and here is what’s under the cover – a place to record the nuts and bolts of the book: title, author, illustrator, publication date, setting, main character, and what I thought of the book. Directly under the Book Report mini-book are two index card accordion books (very easy!). It’s hard to make out the writing, but they say Vocabulary Words. Listed here are words from each chapter the students may not be familiar with and should know. As you pull open the index card, there is a place for the student to write the words I’ve assigned, as well as their own personal list. Here is the word list from chapters 1-7 as an example: allot v. to parcel out A lapbook on Where the Red Fern Grows would not be complete without a mini-book on the coon! At the top right of the inside of the lapbook folder you’ll see the Raccoon flip-flap book. As you lift the cover of this mini-book, you’ll find three flaps to label, and under each flap the kids will write a description. For the coon book, the three labels I chose were Description, Behavior, and Eating Habits. Another pocket is under the Raccoon book, labeled Spiritual Truths. Where the Red Fern Grows is chock full of biblical and moral truths and opportunities for spiritual growth. For example, after reading chapter 3 and learning how persistently Billy works for two years to earn the money for his hounds, students could write Proverbs 14:23 on an index card: In hard work there is always something gained, but idle talk leads only to poverty. The final mini-book I’ve included in the lapbook for Where the Red Fern Grows is a must–a redbone coon hound book, and I chose the template of a T-book. Inside the flaps of this book are a square in the center for a picture of a redbone coon hound, and three other flaps for information about the breed. The study guide I mentioned earlier has a nice section on the redbone hound. A word on attaching the mini-books to the base folder: Students either glued them down or stapled them. What happens if a student fills her journal and needs more room? She would pull off the mini-book, place it in the folder which is glued to the back of the lapbook, and make a new journal to affix into the lapbook. If you think you have wordy kids on your hands who will fill up their little books, think about attaching the mini-books with velcro for easy removal. The folder is also the depository where the student will empty out her pockets when they are full (the character cards and spiritual truth cards) to make room for more. How does the teacher grade a lapbook? I periodically check on each student, walking about the room and inspecting a bit of each student’s book every day we use it, to ensure they are keeping on top of it. I also invite volunteers to share what they have written, which they enjoy tremendously. When we are finished with Where the Red Fern Grows, I will collect each student’s lapbook and grade each mini-book on a simple scale, giving an overall grade of up to 100%. The breakdown of points is as follows: All mini-books except the Chapter Summaries and Daily Journal receive up to 5 points each, and the Chapter Summaries and Daily Journal receive up to 20 points each. That’s about it! I hope you were able to follow this lengthy description of a lapbook, and if you have any questions or ideas for improvements, please let me know. Where the Red Fern Grows is a fabulous book for a project like this, and is a book that should not be missed, whether you lapbook it or not.
Technorati Tags: book reports, education, lapbooks, literary log, mini books, Where the Red Fern Grows Happy 80th, MomPosted March 15th, 2009 by Jen in family life, poetry, the ranch11 Comments »
Here she is making her way down our driveway with a few of the kids this week, who love to go for walks with Grandma. Or be walked, as you can see a blue leash dangling by LIttle L’s legs, which he had attached to his belt loop for Grandma to “walk him.” She now limits herself to the long driveway for fear of getting lost in the forest. I must say, I do feel quite proud that our sometimes scraggly junipers qualify as a forest. This poem she wrote over 50 years ago fits this scene and the future in heaven she looks forward to: AN OLD FAMILIAR STREET Will I suddenly find myself walking Will heaven be the earth again, Will flowers be even sweeter then? Will that day surely come I don’t have any profound thoughts to write this morning in honor of my mother’s 80th birthday, just a few random memories from childhood:
Happy Birthday, Mom! The Masters and the ClassicsPosted March 8th, 2009 by Jen in arts & crafts, education, features12 Comments » “Get your journals ready,” I tell my 6th grade students every morning. From 8:00 to 8:10 a.m. most school days, I have a short piece of classical music on queue in the CD player, along with a work of art from one of the masters displayed on the music stand at the front on the classroom. I feel that this beginning part of our day is perhaps the most important thing I do. I had to work hard to squeeze it in, because if you work for a school, you know that your schedule is very tight with all the other subject requirements and content you are obliged to cover in a given year. But the beauty this brings to my classroom is worth every bit of effort. Music feeds the soul, and art, well, a good long look at a masterpiece could be the equivalent of reading a 300 page classic novel. I have to make clear that this 10-15 minute art/music journal time is meant to be a broad overview to simply expose kids to the greatest works of art and music of all time. I figure that by the end of the school year, they will have been introduced to more masterpieces than most adults ever will be familiar with. On the whiteboard, there is a section on the left side reserved for the daily journal questions. In bold letters I write “Look” with little eyeballs in the o’s, followed by the title of the painting and the journal question. Below this I draw an ear icon next to the word “Listen,” along with the title of the musical piece and a query. Writing prompts help them to get started and stir up ideas. Here are a few examples of how it works: Day 1: LOOK: The Dancing Couple, by Jan Steen, 1663. Journal Question: Jan Steen loved to paint life “as it is,” and used painting as storytelling. What details of this painting tell you that Steen captured daily life with all its messiness? (My students noticed broken eggshells strewn on the floor, a stray spoon, turned over containers, and a general chaotic, merry feeling.) LISTEN: Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), from Classical Kids, Mr. Bach Comes to Call. Journal Question: A fugue is when you have have more than one musical line going on at once, and they all use the same theme. It’s called imitative counterpoint. Bach is the prime example of the fugue. Can you hear the themes? (I will generally have the kids write in their own words what a fugue is for this journal entry, otherwise it would simply be a yes or no answer.) ***** Notice that the above painter and musician come from generally the same time period. I like pairing them like this. Even better is pairing the artist and the musician from the same country and time period, and aligning this with your history curriculum. Day 2: LOOK: Red Boats in Argenteuil, by Claude Monet, 1875 Journal Question: Pure black is rarely used by the impressionist painters. Monet would instead combine several colors to achieve the appearance of black: blues, greens and reds. What color are the shadows in this painting?
Journal Question: Write down each character and the musical instrument that corresponds to it. Which is your favorite? ***** One of my proudest moments came earlier this year, just after the Super Bowl, actually. During the Super Bowl, a cute Coke commercial was aired, the one with the insects in a meadow who steal away with the sleeping guy’s Coca Cola. The entire commercial is set to just one sound, with no voices: the music from Peter and the Wolf. It was Peter’s theme, the most recognized piece of the composition. That Monday, I asked my kids if any of them watched the Super Bowl and noticed the Coke commercial. A few of them made me jump for joy – Yes! they chimed in–it was Peter and the Wolf! A few parents even noted to me how surprised they were when their children recognized the tune. This small incident highlighted for me why I do what I do. Now, I’d like to share some resources that make this art/music series possible and mostly FREE. I don’t have a written program I follow at this point, but I hope to develop one to make this much easier for teachers to replicate, along with journal questions for each piece. For now, I gather materials as I go, and decide about a week ahead of time what to present, trying to align this with our history/social studies units. Here’s a short list to get you started. 1. National Gallery of Art. Most folks are unaware that the National Gallery of Art has a free lending program. This has been invaluable to me! So far, almost all of my art, with the exception of some books I own, has come from this fabulous program. Most teaching packets come with a teachers guide, a CD of images, slides, and large color study prints. I sign up online for the programs I want, NGA ships them right to me at no cost, and I’m responsible only for the cost of returning them media mail. Can’t beat this. If you don’t have a slide projector, look for one. Or just use the large prints. If you are fortunate enough to have a projector for your computer, you certainly have an easy job! Some of my favorite teaching packets so far have been: Painting in the Dutch Golden Age 2. Your local public library. This has been the source of nearly all my classical music for kids. If you have a collection built up already, you’re in luck. The most difficult part of the music for me was coming up with journal questions. I loved the classical kids CDs that incorporated a story with the music, because this made the journaling so much easier for the kids. This way, my questions can also be about details from the composer’s life, which are typically included in these CDs, or questions about the storyline if it’s an opera or ballet. Here are my favorites: Famous Composers, written by Darren Henley, read by Marin Alsop.
More Famous Composers, written by Darren Henley, read by Marin Alsop.
Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, by Stephen Simon and narrated by Yadu.
The Story of Swan Lake, by Tchaikovsky, from Maestro Classics.
I hope you’ve been encouraged today to devote some teaching time to the classics of art and music. Just a few minutes a day, with consistency, will achieve more than you can imagine. Some of you may have some other great resources to add to my short list – if so, let me know about them! Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education. Plato The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle
Technorati Tags: art education, music education, classical music, the master painters, journaling Parakeet MoralityPosted March 7th, 2009 by Jen in family life, politics/world news, religion11 Comments » How parakeet breeding led me to thoughts on a great moral issue: I stopped in the pet store yesterday to get some grit for the birds, to aid their digestion. While there, the kids reminded me of one of their pressing concerns. We have a boy and girl parakeet, and the kids keep wondering if they will have babies. My son begged for a nest to place in the bird cage, just in case. My daughter’s mind was filled with the wonder of baby keets. The store clerk discouraged all of this. She and I had just finished a discussion about how to work with our birds to turn them into friendly, tame, sit-on-your-finger kind of birds. She pointed out that once parakeets have babies, they will not be tame pets. They will be extremely protective of their brood and you can forget about a sweet housebroken budgie. I was fuzzy on some issues. What if they mate without all the nice trappings of a brooding box and comfy nest, and the girl lays her eggs on the bottom of the cage? Just throw them out, said the clerk. Take the eggs away, she’ll forget all about them, and she won’t lay any more eggs after a while. Do not encourage breeding, she said, by not putting a nesting area in the cage. Then you’ll get to keep the birds as pets to pamper and cuddle and train. I couldn’t help thinking about how to dispose of those eggs without the children having a meltdown. Would I flush them down the toilet? Would I toss them out the window? Offer them to someone with a pet snake? Ah, well, they are just parakeet eggs, and the snakes need to eat. Okay, so the only way for the parakeets to care enough about human companionship instead of protecting their clutch is to prevent them from breeding, and take away their eggs when they do happen to lay them. For some reason, my mind made a leap this morning, a shocking leap to connect with a great moral issue that I think of often. Abortion. Here is the connection I made. I wondered if the taking away of a human mother’s baby-in-utero, abortion, has the same effect (the “taming” of humans), and if there is perhaps an underlying societal motivation (from the left) for wanting women and couples to not “breed.” A motivation similar to the parakeet issue: are women and families more easily manipulated and pliable when they don’t have the “mother bear” syndrome, the innate and fierce drive a mother has to look out for the best interest of her baby? A new mother, of course, will be less interested in say, political issues of whether murderous criminals should be spared the death penalty or whether women should have the “right to choose,” than she will be in the immediate care of her newborn, how to feed and nurture him, and don’t you dare harm my baby. Does it seems plausible that childless people will be more loyal to the state than to the family? I’m making a leap here, but there is some shifting of interests that occurs when your eggs are stolen away and you’re encouraged to forget about them, be you parakeet or person.
Technorati Tags: abortion, parakeet breeding Aunt Beth~in springPosted March 3rd, 2009 by Jen in family life, religion9 Comments » My Aunt Beth died yesterday. There is something about death that leaves one so introspective. I wanted to immediately fly back to Michigan and be with family, but Aunt Beth had requested a spring memorial. She apparently didn’t want people flying in from all over the country in the midst of a frigid Michigan winter. Early March in Michigan is not always nice. Everyone told me, no, don’t come now, wait ’til spring, it’s what she wanted. I had to set aside this immediacy I felt and go with reason. She wanted us to gather in the cemetery in late spring, with green grass and lovely blooms. As I thought about Aunt Beth, it made such sense. She was the essence of spring. I don’t know why exactly I feel that way, but maybe it was her smile, her warmth, her innocence, her youthful spirit. Aunt Beth was my mom’s oldest sister, and at age 84, it seems a natural time to die. She held onto life until the 23rd Psalm was read to her, then she passed into glory. My cousin who gave me the details of the moment said to make sure my mom knew that Beth was not in pain and was surrounded by loved ones. And she said, “Jenny, be danged sure that when that time comes for your mom, you have her favorite scripture on hand!” Tonight I made my mom her favorite meal – bean burritos – and stopped at the library for some good books for her. I had been so worried about how she would handle this. She’s surprised me. Very calm, taking everything in stride. I asked her last night to tell me about a fond memory she had of her sister Beth. She spoke of the joy of riding her bike, with her brother Doug, over to Beth’s house. Aunt Beth was five years older than my mom, and married young, maybe 18 or 19 years old. My mom would have been 13 or 14 at the time, and I thought how sweet of her big sister, with a new home and new husband, to be welcoming to her young siblings, so much so that her little sister still remembers that bit of hospitality about 67 years later. At the library tonight, I picked out a book for myself as well. I chose A Year in Provence, a chronicle of an English couple that escape the rat race of life and head to the south of France. I guess it’s no surprise that I was drawn to this story just now. I was reading this last year, and only got as far as August (each chapter is a month of the year), and have been wanting to finish it. As I said, death leaves one introspective, and I’m thinking about life and love and meaning. I suppose Provence symbolizes those things for me. Plus I remembered that this book made me laugh until I cried more than once. Until spring and until Provence… Technorati Tags: death, family, France, A Year in Provence Richard Wurmbrand MoviePosted March 1st, 2009 by Jen in education, persecuted church, religion5 Comments » I saw this over at Challies, and love this kind of feature. It’s the story of Richard Wurmbrand, and is the latest in the Torchlighters Heroes of the Faith series (perfect for ages 8-12).
Richard Wurmbrand spent 14 years in Communist imprisonment in his homeland of Romania, suffering horrific torture for his Christian faith. Wurmbrand later became the founder of the The Voice of the Martyrs. He tells his shocking story in his book Tortured for Christ. This DVD from Torchlighters also includes a one-hour documentary that Challies liked even better than the animated feature. His wife Sabina also has an amazing story, told in her autobiography, The Pastor’s Wife.
Technorati Tags: Christianity, Voice of the Martyrs, communism, Richard Wurmbrand, Romania |
Search
|
|||
As you can see, your child or student can decorate the front cover and also include some mini-books. I chose to affix three pockets for what I call “character cards.”
My mother is now officially an octogenarian. I pray the 80s will bring her peace, grace, beauty, and good health.
