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A couple of months ago, we rearranged almost all of the rooms in our house, changing two of our upstairs rooms into bedrooms. My husband no longer has a study (he’s okay with that — he doesn’t bring much work home with him), and each child now has their own room to clean, maintain, and house their treasures.

As soon as she moved in, my 9-year-old, Lillie, loved her new room, and she had some big plans. The room (my husband’s former study) was a neutral beige color with white trim. “Can we paint some shapes on the walls?”

We looked up some ideas online, and we decided large geometric shapes would look really good on those walls. Plus, I wouldn’t have to paint the entire wall again. “Okay,” I said, “but we’ll have to wait until we have a free day.” After spending a couple of weeks on the house, I had a lot of catching up to do on other things.

“Can I do it?” she asked. I thought for a moment. Why not? After all, it would save me some time. We’ve painted enough together that she knew just what to do. And it was just paint — we could repaint the walls again whenever she was ready.

“Sure,” I said. “Use the craft acrylics, and clean up when you’re done.”

Later that day, she called me upstairs to see her masterpiece. But instead of the large geometric shapes I had envisioned, the walls were covered in red, green, yellow, blue, and purple 1″-3″ polka dots. And Lillie couldn’t have been more proud.

“There are a couple of hidden shapes,” she said. “Can you find them? A purple triangle, a green triangle, a blue square…” Her bedroom walls were not only much more lively, but they were a puzzle she could share with friends as well.

As we raise our kids, we’ll probably question a lot of our decisions (I do!). But letting Lillie paint her own room is one I’m glad I made — the results have only been positive. She has a room she enjoys, and she built up her self-confidence in the process. What’s more, she inspired her younger brother who also moved into his own room — now his walls showcase stick figures having adventures!

About seven years ago, I worked in an after-school program at a local elementary school. The program was for children in third through fifth grades who were having trouble in some of their classes at school. During that time, the director of the program encouraged the teachers to read The Essential 55 by Ron Clark. I was very impressed with the book then, and after recently picking up another copy, I find I am still impressed today.

When he wrote the book, Ron Clark was a young teacher from North Carolina who had taught at some of the most difficult schools in the country, including one in Harlem, New York. The differences he made in the lives of his students earned him recognition as the Disney Teacher of the Year in 2001. Through his experiences in the classroom, he compiled the 55 rules found in this book. As I’m now re-reading through the rules with my children, we’re finding many that apply to our family.

55 rules? Isn’t that a lot? It is, but Clark’s students were able to memorize all 55, and by the end of the year they were following all the rules. Take a look at the 55, and see if there are some you’d like to use in your homeschool. Some of the rules we chose include:

• When responding to adults, say ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ or ‘No, Sir.’ Just nodding your head is not acceptable.

• Make eye contact with the person who is speaking to you.

• When someone wins a game or does something well, congratulate that person.

• Always say thank you when you are given something.

• If someone bumps you, even if it was not your fault, say “Excuse Me.”

• If you approach a door and someone is following you, hold open the door.

These sound like basic life skills and manners that our children should have, but we’ve realized that they are things my children don’t always do and things I tend to overlook. So…we’ve begun compiling our 55 rules — or however many we come up with in the end.

Do you need some rules for your classroom? Check out this book, and then go from there!

Once a week, a friend of mine organizes a special day for fellow homeschoolers she knows. It might be a science day, when we try a few experiments, or it might be a field trip to a bakery or nature park. Sometimes she hosts a holiday celebration. While my family isn’t to attend the event every week, we are usually able to attend the get-togethers held at her house. And this week, we all met for Pizza Day.

Every family that was able brought in some pizza dough, whether it was homemade or frozen or pre-made from the grocery store. Some of the dough was whole wheat while other dough had been mixed with parmesan cheese. We also brought along our favorite toppings: pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, feta cheese, pepperoni, sausage, bell peppers, hot peppers, mushrooms, onions, barbecue sauce, chicken, pineapple, coconut — if it sounded tasty, someone had brought it along.

Then came the best part. The tables were covered with baking pans coated with cooking spray, and the children got to work. First they decided which dough they would use, then they flattened it in the pan using either their hands or a roller. Then they chose their toppings. When the children were finished, they compared creations, and one by one the pans went into the oven.

Although everyone didn’t eat at the same time (there was a constant rotation of cooking sheets with pizzas on them going in and out of the oven), all enjoyed their personal pizzas and shared slices with each other. There was so much pizza, in fact, that we even took some of the extra home with us.

Pizza Day not only provided us with a great lunch, but it gave the kids some hands-on cooking experience and the moms time to visit. All in all, I’d say Pizza Day was a huge success!

This week, our kindergarteners and first graders at co-op read The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge by Hildegard Swift and Lynd Ward. The craft we did with this book took a little while to prepare, but it was a lot of fun that provided some good practice for their fine motor skills.

For the activity, the children created their own lighthouses using popsicle sticks. If you’d like to make a lighthouse with your child, here’s what you’ll need:

• 40 popsicle sticks cut in half, or 80 half-size sticks
• Red acrylic craft paint
• Paint Brush
• Paper towels
• Container with water (to clean the brushes)
• Newspaper
• White school glue
• Cardstock
• Something round (about 2 ” in diameter) to use as a pattern, such as jar lid
• Hot glue gun and glue stick
• Yellow paper or foam
• Scissors

If you are working with a lot of students (we have 11 in our class), you may want to do the first few steps yourself to save time. However, if you’re working with only your own children, you can show them how to complete each step themselves.

1. First, cover your table top or work area with newspaper.

2. Lay out the sticks on the paper. Using the red craft acrylics, paint one side of each popsicle sticks red. Allow the paint to dry (acrylic paints dry quickly, so if the paint isn’t very thick, a few minutes should be enough. You can also speed up the drying process by using a hair dryer).

3. If you are using whole sticks, you’ll need to cut them in half. Do this yourself, as it’s a difficult task for children. You can cut them in half with a large pair of scissors. Some of the sticks might split a little, but they can still be used.

4. Now, show your child how to “build” the lighthouse by placing two sticks parallel to each other on the paper, adding a drop of glue to each one, and then placing two more parallel sticks on the glue going in the opposite direction. Continue gluing and alternating the pairs until all of the sticks have been used.

5. To make the top of the lighthouse, draw a circle on the cardstock. Use the jar lid as a guide and trace around it. Cut out the circle. Then, cut one slit in the circle, going from the edge of the circle to the center. Stop cutting at the center of the circle.

6. At the slit, pull one of the straight edges you just cut under the other, forming a cone shape. Glue the edges with hot glue so that the glue dries quickly and the shape holds. Using the hot glue again, glue the edges of the cone to the top of the lighthouse.

7. To complete the lighthouse, cut a small circle from yellow cardstock or foam and glue it onto one side of the lighthouse as a “light.”

Our part of the country (the southeast) has had an unusually cold winter this year. Temperatures have dipped below the normal range almost every week since the first of January; we’ve had three snow/ice storms in the past two months when we usually only see one during the season. Is it any wonder that everyone in our home is looking forward to spring?

This past week we did a fun activity that helped put us in the mood even more. This simple craft is great for all ages, even moms.

Painted Flower Pots

What you’ll need:

• Small clay pots
• Potting soil
• Acrylic Craft Paints
• Smocks or Paint shirts
• Containers filled with water
• Paint Brushes
• Styrofoam plates
• Paper Towels
• Newspaper
• Seeds

Before you begin, cover your table top or painting area with newspaper, allowing for easy clean up. Have each student put on a paint smock or shirt; acrylic paints usually don’t come out of clothing.

Provide each student with a pot, a Styrofoam plate to use as a palette, paintbrushes, a container of water to clean the brushes, and a paper towel to dab the brushes on after they’ve been cleaned.

Tell the students that they will be painting their own designs on the pots. Before beginning, though, have them think about what they want to paint. Do they want to paint spots and stripes? Butterflies? Rainbows? Geometric shapes? Solid colors?

Now instruct the children to begin painting. Have them wash their brushes out when changing colors.

After the students have finished decorating the pots, allow the pots to dry for a few minutes. These acrylic paints dry quickly, so they won’t have to wait too long.

When the pots are dry, show the children how to fill them with potting soil. Provide them with two or three seeds (we used sunflower seeds), and show them how to plant them. A perfect opportunity to learn about the life cycle of plants!

Now add a little water and place the pot in a sunny location. Watch for the new life to push through — and enjoy the first signs of spring!

This weekend, I will be attending the second annual Write2Ignite! Writing Conference. This conference is for Christian authors who write for children, and I am really looking forward to it.  I know I’m going to come away from the conference encouraged and motivated, but besides all the good information I’m going to learn, one of the best parts about this conference is that I get to share it with my son.

The conference includes joint sessions and workshops for the adults, which focus on everything from writing short stories and magazine articles to developing young adult novels to submitting your work. Editors and authors will be featured speakers, and attendees can choose the workshops that interest them the most.

But the conference also offers a teen track for students in the seventh through the twelfth grades. The teens will attend their own workshops with Jonathan Friesen, author of the novel Jerk California. His goal for these classes is to increase the students’ passion for their writing, leaving them excited about their work and ready to tell their own stories. He’ll talk about characterization, tension, emotion, and dialog, providing the students with a lot of good instruction as they begin (or continue) to create their own stories.

My son John also attended the first conference, and he came back with journal pages full of ideas and a story he had just started writing. This time, he’s older, and I know he’ll glean even more from the classes. Not only is it a great schooling and learning opportunity, but what makes it so special, too, is that he’ll be taking the class with cousins, friends, and new acquaintances — a shared experience they can talk about later, and perhaps one that will help them encourage each other with their writing.

With all the busyness of life recently, I haven’t spent as much time reading as I should. It seems a little ironic that I’m too busy to read about time management.

However, I have read through the planning chapter of The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management by Hyrum W. Smith. Like the chapters before it, I have found this chapter to be very helpful as I try to get my days more under control. In it, the author provides a sample page from the Franklin Planner, the planning tool he helped create. He describes how he uses the daily pages to keep track of appointments, phone calls, and anything else he needs to remember.

Although I’d love to purchase that planner, it’s really not in our budget at this time, so I decided to make my own planner pages on the computer and make copies for my notebook. As I was doing so, my 13-year-old son came in and said, “Mom, I have so much homework to do for co-op.”

“What do you have to do?” I asked. He answered me with a long list of things he had to finish for his science and geography classes. He also had some scout projects that needed to be completed. That’s when I realized that he needed some planning pages too.

I pulled out some extra copies I had made and sat him down. “Okay,” I began, “this is where you list all the things you have to do. When you’re finished, bring it back to me, and I’ll show you how to prioritize them.” Within fifteen minutes, he had a written list with every assignment and a number by each one, indicating the order in which they needed to be accomplished. Then he got to work.

How easy that was to show him, and what a difference it made! Instead of scattered thoughts of having this and that to do, he had a concrete plan of what needed to be done and how he was going to do it. The day went smoothly, and he finished everything on time.

Having a plan really does work — for all ages!

This week, our first grade class read the story Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. Beautiful, rhythmic text describes a young girl’s night time adventure as she goes owling with her father. To go along with the story, we made our own owls using a few easy-to-find supplies.

To make this stuffed owl, you’ll need:

• Poly fiberfill
• A grey or brown tube sock
• Yellow felt
• Black felt
• Brown or tan felt
• Scissors
• Rubber band
• White glue or hot glue gun

To begin, cut off most of the ribbed portion of the sock, leaving about 1 – 1 1/2 inches.

Next, stuff the sock with the fiberfill. The heel of the sock will be the front of the owl, so make sure you stuff it full enough. Stop stuffing when you reach the remaining ribbed portion of the sock.

Now, tie off the sock by twisting the rubber band around it. The ribbed portion is the owl’s tail.

Next, take the ribbed top portion of the sock that you cut off. Cut it in half so you have two equal pieces. Glue one piece to each side of the owl with the ribbed side facing outward. These are the owl’s wings.

To create the owl’s face, cut a large bean-shaped piece from the brown or tan felt (use a different color than the sock). Glue it onto the stuffed toe of the sock, or the owl’s head.

Next, cut out two small circles from the back felt and two larger circles from the yellow. Glue one black circle onto each yellow circle, forming the eyes. Glue these onto the brown or tan face.

Finally, cut a small triangle from the yellow felt. Center this below the eyes and glue it to the face with one point going downward. This is the owl’s beak.

Give the glue plenty of time to dry — you can do this by telling your young student that it’s daytime, and the owl needs to sleep.

This week, our Five in a Row class read the book A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno. The story follows a little girl in Japan who receives a new pair of wooden clogs covered in beautiful red lacquer. After only a few days of wearing her new shoes, she decides to play a game with them with her friends, and one of her clogs cracks. Since her shoes are no longer pretty, she has to figure out a way to get her mother to buy her a new pair.

To go along with the story, we slightly improvised a craft found on EnchantedLearning.com. Though it took some preparation on my part, it was fun for the kids and easy to put together.

Hanging Japanese Koi Craft

On May 5, the people of Japan celebrate Children’s Day with the koinobori, or fish kites. These are actually windsocks shaped like a koi or carp. When the wind catches them, they appear to be swimming. For this craft, the children made their own fish kites.

What you’ll need:

• Construction paper or colored cardstock
• Glue sticks
• Stapler
• Circles cut from magazines or decorative scrapbook paper
• Markers or crayons
• Foil
• Crepe paper or streamers
• String or yarn
• Hole Punch

For our class of five and six year olds, I did the following before class:

Draw the shape of a fish on one piece of construction paper and cut it out. Use this shape as a template and draw and cut out two fish per child.  Older children could do this step by themselves.

Cut smaller circles from another type of paper — at least 10 per child. Enchanted Learning recommended using old magazines, but we had a lot of extra scrapbooking paper on hand, so I used that instead. I also cut a few from aluminum foil for a shiny addition. If you’re working with older children, they could do this by themselves as well.

Provide the students with two fish each. Have them glue the two pieces together. Staple the edges to hold it together.  Draw an eye on each side and color in the fins and tail with crayons or makers.

Next, choose some circles to use as scales. Glue the circles to both sides of the fish.

Punch a hole at the fish’s mouth and string the yarn though it. Tie it off at the fish’s mouth.

Finally, add the streamers to the tail by stapling them in place.

Enjoy your Japanese Koi Kite!

When my oldest son John (now 13) was small, my husband purchased the book The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. Although John was just starting his schooling years, I read through the book, and I really liked what I read. Since then, I’ve implemented some of the ideas the authors suggest. One of those ideas was to have every child complete at least two years of piano study.

We’ve done this with several goals in mind. One is that they learn to read music and understand what it means to play an instrument. Research shows that learning music  often helps students do better with math, so that was another benefit. I also wanted them to learn the self-discipline that would be required for practicing.

So far, three of my children have taken piano lessons. Here’s how it’s gone:

John started when he was only five, took a couple of years off, then started again. He does well with it, and though at times he wants to quit, I tell him he’s too far along to quit now. So, he’ll probably be working at it until he graduates.

Cassie took lessons for two years, then wanted to quit. There was a lot of sibling competition going on,  as she often compared herself to her brother who was both older and more experienced. She has since taken up the flute and is doing well with it. She now even wants to add piano back in again.

Lillie was very enthusiastic at first, but her enthusiasm quickly waned as she, too, began comparing herself to John. She has wanted to quit for quite some time, but I told her she had to finish two years. She did, though they were not a good two years of practice — more often that not she would try to get out of playing, and instead of learning self-discipline, she experienced Mom’s discipline. So, I added on one more year, hoping to end her piano career on a higher note (no pun intended).

Then…I talked with my older brother, an accomplished musician. And he gave me more to think about…

Every child, he said, should learn to play the piano. Of all the instruments, it’s the one that people who don’t make music a career tend to continue playing on into adulthood. It’s a skill you can always use, no matter what your occupation. You can play it at church, for holiday gatherings, for family sing-a-longs. You can play as your children dance around the room, or you can play for a friend’s wedding.

Besides, he continued, you never hear anyone say, “I wish I hadn’t learned to play the piano,” but you often hear people say, “I wish I had stuck with it.”

So now, I’m rethinking their piano lessons. Perhaps Lillie will have to continue on with them and keep practicing. And when she complains, I’ll tell her she can blame it on her uncle.