Labels: fun, history, homeschool, links, teaching

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Labels: homeschool, KONOS, lesson-plans

Labels: blogging, links, news, photos, techie

Labels: bugs, Field-Trip-Foto-Friday, fun, homeschool, links, motherhood, nature, parenting, photos, science, teaching

Post Updated: 4/26/06!

I have been saving some of our favorite rock-related links and ideas from this unit to post... but quite honestly, I have not wanted to do it yet because we've been doing more academic workbook stuff lately than fun hands-on activities (shame on me). I'm working on getting out of my workbook rut and back into a KONOS hands-on fun routine. I go in spurts with getting to the fun stuff. I blame part of it on the fact that we've moved around so much since we began our school-year this year... from house to hotel to relatives' houses to apartment (from one state to another)... and with our new schedule changes (Tuesday and Wednesdays for weekends instead of Saturday/Sunday due to Daddy's work schedule), and me having to adjust from eating out every meal to cooking every meal... I've been having a hard time getting our permanent routine to STICK.

Kids really need routine. I think we adults need it almost as badly. So, with that in mind... I'm giving myself the go-ahead and writing this "ROCK POST" to inspire myself as much as I want it to inspire you. I need to get busy and finish this unit with a "BANG!" - since we are a bit behind schedule on our lesson plan calendar this year (understandably)... and we are eager to move on to Planets/Seasons/Solar System next!

This post will be especially helpful to those of you studying about Texas and Arkansas Rocks... since we have plenty of both and tons of links about them! Below are some great links that I have gathered while doing planning and research for this unit.

ROCK UNIT LINKS:

• Gem by Gem Gemstone Link (wonderful photographs and history on gems)


• Texas A&M College Virtual Geo Field Trip of the Texas Hill Country


• Pretty Hill Country Photos


• A favorite website: Travel Texas (virtual photo tours of the Texas)


• Enchanted Rock near Austin, TX


• State of Arkansas Geological Society (mailed us a geo map and brochures)


• Great Rock Lesson Plan Link


• Another website with lots of kid-related rock links


• Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas


• Awesome Rock and Mineral Photography Website (they shoot for magazines)


• HOLY COW, there's a lot of neat stuff on Enchanted Learning!


• A Rockhound's Favorite Website: US Geology


• Texas and Gulf Coast Geological Links Page


• Rocks for Kids (everything you ever wanted to know about rocks, I'm pretty sure it's there!)


• Rocks and Minerals Slideshow and Lesson Plans/Vocabulary


• Rock and Mineral Challenge

Rock Unit Activities we've done so far:

• Collected rocks locally


• Read lots of neat rock books from the library


• Gone rock climbing


• Learned about the rock formations in our state/general area (looked at a rock map of the state sent by the Geological Society)


• Looked at a multitude of gemstones online


• Learned that there's a beryl named after my daughter - "Morganite"!


• Mail some crystals we found to friends


• Rock Vocabulary Words


• Look through Enchanted Learning's extensive Rock section


• Learn and write rock Bible verses from our unit


• Identify as many of our rocks as we could, pick our favorites of each specimen and number/list them for display later


• Write about our favorite mineral/metal


• Find some rocks to paint (some dollar stores carry nice round river rocks) - paint rocks (great book on this "Painting on Rocks for Kids" by Lin Wellford - see link below)


• FIELD TRIP! Digging for crystals in Hot Springs, AR


• Requested that our friends and family mail us rocks from other states (map these as they come in)

Rock Unit Activities we plan to do still:

• Visit the Crater of Diamonds State Park (hopefully find a huge diamond and get rich)


• Use acid to clean crystals we've collected


• Meet up with a Geologist in Arkansas


• Classify our rocks by color, texture, luster, hardiness, cleavage, and streaks tests


• Group our rocks by igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary


• Make a rock display and number our favorite specimens to add to it


• Finish painting our rocks (great book on this "Painting on Rocks for Kids" by Lin Wellford - see link below... we're going to buy this one!)


• Finish our Rock Lapbook (that is turning out to be more of a scrapbook/notebook) and post a photo of it in this post!


• Post info on our two Rock Field trips on the blog's Field Trip Foto Friday series (some time in the future)

Rocks in our collection:

We have pyrite (fools gold), shale, sandstone, granite, limestone, flint, shale, quartz and calcite (amber colored - from Texas). We also have a few rocks we haven't identified yet. Kaden has a piece of pumace (volcanic rock full of holes and very light) from the pocket of his "stone-washed" jeans which is his treasured possession as well (pumace is the only rock that "floats"). Here in Arkansas, there is a ton of sandstone and shale, which is where we got most of those types. When shale is heated and pressurized the sedimentary rocks becomes a metamorphic rock called slate. It is so awesome to find slate layers in a mostly sandstone and shale hill... some of the slices of slate are as thin as paper and black as night (see photo below). The crystals we found yesterday at the Crystal mine in Hot Springs (tons of them) are covered with an orange chemical (iron) that must be removed to make the crystals white and clear. We're working on meeting up with a geologist to learn about this. I have a phone number of someone locally. Maybe we can go do it at HIS lab instead of at home. I'll come back at a later date and post the rocks and minerals we have received through the mail on this post as well. Of course, we also have "exotic" bags of rocks which have been polished from rock stores... many different colors, shapes, and sizes. Mommy even has a Brazilian Amethyst and a Garnet that I keep for Kaden and Morgan (birthstones). I miss our things in storage even more now, because Kaden and Morgan have a rock tumbler in a box somewhere in Texas which really would come in handy right now!




Rocks Across America Project
(Sent By Fellow Homeschoolers and Friends):

Amazonite from Morefield Mines - Amelia, VA
River Rock (? not sure what kind) - Lake Ontario, Canada
Gypsum -Wyoming, MI
Ton of Rocks (all types) - NC - not sure if these actually all came from NC (no labels or info)
Some kind of seashore conglomerate and grey sandstone - Atlantic Beach, FL
Rock and Mineral Set (10 numbered and identified rocks & minerals) - Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources
Granite, Agates, Quartz, and lovely rounded River Rocks (some of our favorites) - WA (Birch Bay)
Black Limestone with Quartz or Calcite veins- Lancaster County, PA



Rocks: Texas, Arkansas and beyond...


Texas is covered with a lot of limestone, but they also have petrified wood, iron ore, halite, aluminum, marble, sulfur and many other rocks. The Austin hill country is formed by beautiful rugged white limestone hills covered with cedars, twisted oaks, cactus and yucca plants. There are lots of ocean fossils from when the flood covered the earth in the hills surrounding Austin. We found lots of huge spiral shells that were completely fossilized and petrified rock animals when we went on a field trip to search for rocks there! There are also rock clam shells and pretty amber calcite crystals we have from that area. In the central farmlands, there is an abundance of iron ore and petrified wood. My son even has an arrow head from this area. Near the gulf coast there is black gumbo clay and on the beach, you can find seashells. I have heard of halite mines there and wanted to go to visit one, but we have not done that yet.

We took a trip to Hot Springs yesterday to dig crystals out of the ground. I'll have to post a separate post about our field trip and include some photographs later. It was really fun. The great thing about this unit is that the knowledge we gain will go with us forever... because it is one of our favorite things to do (collecting rocks) and we plan to continue it into the future. I can't wait to get the rest of our rocks in the mail from those who promised to send them. I'm expecting rocks from Ohio, Florida, Washington State, Tennessee, etc. We'll have fun mapping them together and seeing lots of interesting rocks we may have not seen before!

Happy rockhunting and homeschooling!

This post updated on 2/14/06.

Buzz Words: Homeschooling, Fun, Arkansas, Texas, Geology, Educational Links, Homeschool, Field Trips, Home School, KONOS, Teaching, Lesson Plans, Rocks, Children, Parenting

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I thought I would share some creative ideas on how to add vocabulary words into your KONOS or Unit studies. This topic comes up a lot in my email loop, and it has been helpful to me as well. We have not been really doing many fun things lately with vocabulary, and I'm looking forward to adding in some more of them going forward. So, maybe this post is as much about encouraging myself as you!

First of all, your kids are never too young to learn vocabulary. You would be surprised what they can learn and remember if you only give them a chance. My six barely seven year old does our big KONOS words. The words from our current unit are:

Sedimentary
Crystal
Specimen
Gem
Igneous
Mineral
Metamorphic
Cleavage
Solution
Fracture

We have always talked to our children like adults. It is so funny to hear them talking like big people back to us. We went on a field trip not long ago to rock climb (an Ozark foothill), and my daughter said to me, "This was ambitious." HA! She was six then. :) They don't always remember the vocabulary words, but it expands their minds and gives them "pegs" for later years to hang information on in their little brains.

Here are some vocabulary ideas that have been inspirational for me:

• Play lots of vocabulary games


• Write the words in shaving cream


• Paint the words and paint a picture with it


• Glue the words in beans


• Shuffle flash cards and see if they can match the definition to the word


• Have them write the words and look them up in the dictionary online or in the book


• Sing the words


• Use the words in a sentence


• Do a crossword puzzle with the words (see Puzzlemaker.com for easy printables)


• Put the words in ABC order


• Do copy work - copy the definition down beside the words.


• Write a pen pal letter and make them use all the words in the letter


• Cut the words out and let them do a collage with the words and pictures from magazines or their own drawings.

Vocabulary is as fun as you make it!


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Kaden says today at lunch:
“Mommy, when I grow up, I’m going to design a video game and you have the honor of being one of the main characters.”

Me:
“Oh really?”

Kaden:
“Yes.” He swallows a bit of tuna casserole. “You have a super power, too. When you look at someone in the game, you have green x-ray beams that go out from your eyes and fix on the other person’s eyes… and you scramble their brains and they are YOURS, they do your will.”

Me:
I Chuckle (Glad he didn’t make me a wicked witch, but this doesn’t sound much better).

Kaden:
“Yeah, and Daddy is a character in the game, too.”

Morgan:
She chimes in. “Yeah, and he FARTS on people!”

Kaden:
“No”, Kaden corrects her, “He distracts the other players by showing them his video games.”

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I discovered this little gem of a blog post at Ian's Messy Desk a while back:

In his classic book, The Time Trap, Alec Mackenzie identifies these 20 behaviors that lead to wasted time:

Management by Crisis
Telephone Interruptions
Inadequate Planning
Attempting Too Much
Drop-in Visitors
Ineffective Delegation
Personal Disorganization
Lack of Self Discipline
Inability to Say "No"
Procrastination
Meetings
Paper Work
Unfinished Tasks
Inadequate Staff
Socializing
Confused Authority
Poor Communication
Inadequate Controls
Incomplete Information
Travel

Labels: getting-it-done, homeschool, house, links, parenting, personal

Labels: house, links, motherhood, parenting, personal

Labels: blogging, bugs, nature, photos, science, Texas

Teach us to number our days aright, that we
may gain a heart of wisdom. - Psalm 90:12

Every day you waste is one you can never
make up. - George Allen

I am working on #1 today (limiting my computer time). I am especially trying to limit blog-related computer time, although I certainly am not giving up blogging. I have been really blessed by some of your comments and am glad that there are a few of you who are benefiting from my blogging habits... but I can pretty much say for certain that my kids don't benefit from it. Right now, they are writing in their prayer journals, and we are about to say our daily school prayer... so I wanted to cut and paste my resolutions for 2006 in this post for you to check out if you are interested. I hope you have made some concrete goals for yourself and your family, and that you are seeking God's blessing and strength to succeed in keeping them!

Sprittibee's 2006 Resolutions

LIMIT
Distractions steal your day. Time is short. The computer is my biggest distraction, since we don't really watch TV or have cable, and we usually only watch a few movies on DVD each week either as a family or for school purposes. I plan to time myself on the computer and keep from using it when I have not gotten the rest of my priorities taken care of first.

SIMPLIFY
I am a keeper of lists, a pack-rat, a collector of paperwork, a pile-maker. I tend to make lists a mile long and it never feel like I have accomplished anything. I need to work on making shorter lists, keeping less in my to-do stack, handling mail when it comes in and setting aside 20 minutes a day for paperwork instead of letting it pile up… and I need to work on DEALING with a pile/project every week so they don’t multiply and leave me feeling buried.

ORGANIZE
I need to work on a more user friendly way to keep school books, library books, schoolwork, graded papers, paperwork for my desk, bills, and supplies. It is hard rearranging after a move, especially into a tiny apartment. Part of this goal includes getting my storage unit moved closer to where we live and getting a larger unit so I can unload some of the junk in my dining room and living room that has no place to live in this small space. I want to get a tall thin dresser with drawers (maybe one of those stackable plastic drawers if I have to) and put our schoolwork in the drawers for the week… it would be nice to have a Monday-Friday drawer system with folders that had worksheets, craft supplies, books, etc. for each day gathered into one place. A thin bookshelf would do well for this also (with baskets for the days of the week). It would eliminate the wasted time that we spend in between each assignment gathering supplies from different places and rooms in the apartment.

PLAN
This is my big goal this year… to plan my school units well in advance and get my menus planned for each week in advance. I want to work on better methods of planning and get ahead of myself for a change. I tend to be the "ADD distracto-mom", and although we do enjoy many interesting tangents and spur of the moment field trips, it is so much more fluent when we plan our days well in advance. I am going to try and set aside a planning time each day and use at least 30 minutes to work on menu plans, lesson plans, family goal planning, academic goal projections for the kids, and planning my personal and my children’s character-training bible study course.

SCHEDULE
My biggest flaw, if you ask me, is sticking to a coherent schedule. I go through days when I wonder if it is even possible to be on a consistent time-schedule. With my husband’s work schedule shifting between evenings, mid-day, and mornings, it is especially difficult to get our family into a daily routine. I am not sure my lists and efforts are worth anything – except making me feel like I CAN NOT succeed in this area. I am going to put this foremost on my prayer list for 2006! Any ideas and tips that you use to help you in scheduling your time would be welcome in my comments section (especially if you are a stay-at-home homeschool mom with more than one kid and cook most of your meals in the home)!

PRIORITIZE
I wrote about this already this week, but I’m working on making God first in my daily walk (setting aside time for personal bible reading, prayer journaling, devotional reading, and talking with God), my family’s life (making sure we attend church regularly and on time and being involved in the ministry there), and in our homeschooling (doing our devotional reading, bible reading, bible memory and lessons, and prayer time FIRST before all other subjects each day).

EXERCISE
This is probably everyone’s goal, and it is probably the goal that most people will fail to achieve in 2006. Each year before, I’ve promised to get into some type of routine, and every year I have come up with an excuse why I can’t follow through. It makes it more difficult for me that my kids are watching me more closely than other moms who may not be around them all day – and my kids don’t have an active PE program at public school to benefit from physically. We haven’t had the money to join a gym, but this year, even if we still can’t afford to join a gym, I want to get involved in some type of sport with the kids… and make an effort to add more physical field trips (like our recent rock climbing experience) into our weekly school. I also want to stay in prayer about this so that God can open up doors for us to be more physically active as a family. Even if we walk to the grocery store or the park (which are both closer now than we’ve ever had them in the past), that would be something!

COMMUNICATE
Another goal I have for 2006 is to be more of a friend to my friends. We tend to let life tick by like the hands on a clock, and we don’t make time for the people we love the most in life. I want to make a chart with all the friends and family we love and make sure to write or call a few of them each week in 2006. I’m going to do a smaller version of this for my kids as well as part of their school curriculum for the rest of the school year. They each have pen pals, friends from the former cities we have lived in, and cousins that they can write to improve their writing and grammar skills.

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