Not Friday; Got Fragments

Just a  few programming notes for those passing by.

Taking Puppy and company to see the Disney on Ice production, Dare to Dream in Rosemont today.  Here's a little I See the Light to get us in the Tangled mood.  I'll be back tomorrow with a review.

COH is at Janice Campbell this week.  She has a nice Wintery Mix all ready for you.  My HSBA page is one of the many articles available. 

Friday Fragments - Promotional Considerations

It is Friday Fragment time again.  This week's fragments all seem to be self promoting.  Oh well, if I were a true narcissist wouldn't tie them all up in one post, I would write them all out separately.

Fragment 1

If you don't follow my vlog Dave Out Loud. (and at this point no one does) you are missing gems like this . . .





Fragment 2

I have just created a resource for quality home school blogs.  It  takes all 20 Homeschool Blog Awards (HSBA) categories and features the winner in each category.  I also go behind the scenes and say who I voted for in each category and why as well as sharing a sample post form all 20 winners that I think gives us a good glimpse of their work.

Fragment 3.

Mine is apparently not the only resource throwing bouquets to home school bloggers.  It seem that one of those bouquets was even thrown my way.



Yes Teacher Certification Degrees dot com did a fantastic job compiling 100 Homeschooling blogs and a few honorable mentions.  Here is what they said about HSD:

Dave is the “Home School Dad”, White Sox fan and movie buff whose sense of humor shows in creative nicknames and occasional rants; wife Amy adds her voice as a guest contributor to this lively blog filled with ideas for budget-friendly family fun, reports on Lego robotics action and a fresh perspective from the homeschool front.


Occasional rants! I wonder what they mean by that.  Well, I never.   They have a lot of nerve.

Fragment 4.

Speaking of Robotics . . .

The State Robotics Tournament is tomorrow and Saturday.  Unlike last year, Spider Droid's team will not be participating.  They did great at their regional.  Just not great enough to be one of the 3 teams from a field nearing 20 to make it. 

Here are  some pics from the regional. 

Well those are all the fragments I have for today.  For more Friday Fragments click here.

Turtle Cake is Best a HSD Rewind (Sort of)

This post was originally aired in 2010 in November.  It has been one of my most popular posts over the past 2 years.  Somehow, it has been in draft status for a while.  This is probaly from  back when I was trying to clear out all the kid's real names and put in their blog names. 

Since the post was in draft it did not count in my post count.  So this old post is actually # 600.  600 posts and I even brought a cake!



Spider Droid's Cub Scout Pack had a cake walk Friday Tonight. Each Cub Scout was to design and help make a cake according to a theme. I did not tell Spider Droid all the themes. There was an "other" theme which meant decorate the cake any way you want. I neglected to mention that one to Him. Otherwise it would have been A Star Wars Cake all the way. There is a limit to how much Star Wars stuff a guy can take, so I said nothing.


One of the themes was wildlife and SD decided to make a cake based on his favorite animal, the turtle. Here is how it turned out.

While Amy and I helped with some of the baking and decorating, SD was involved in every part of the process.

For each The scoutmaster announced 3 scouts in and asked them to come to the front. At that point, you knew they were in the top 3 but not what place.

When we entered the cake I heard many positive comments about the turtle cake and since some of those same people were judges I was not surprised that his name was called for the top 3.

But this did surprise me . . .

First Prize!!! Congratulations, SD! When it comes to having good ideas and implementing them, I guess you take the cake!

Meanwhile back in 2012 - Spider Droid is no longer doing scouts but he still likes turtles. 

I promised that I would wrap up the HSBA today.  If you check out my pages you will see a HSBA 2011 page. In it I have revealed all my voting for the awards and also highlighted all the winning blogs and shared a sample post from each. 

Carrnival of Homeschooling at Time For Learning

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is being hosted at The Home School Online Blog of Time For Learning Dot Net.

The Theme is the oganized hmeschool.  They have included my review of War Horse as well as some other great posts.   I am looking forward to getting organized and reading as many posts as I can.

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For the past few weeks, I have been featuting each of the 20 winning blogs from the 2011 HSBA Awards.  I am finishing that up today,with the winner in the Thrifty Homeschool  category.  So if you want to talk to that winner, who you gonna call?  That's right, Econobusters.  Here is a  sample post.

In my next post, I will wrap up all this HSBA talk with a special announcement.

Extreme Makeover Joplin Edition

We have been watching Extreme Makeover since the show began. We watch almost every episode on Hulu. The series finale was especially poignant since it took place in Joplin, Mo where Charlie and I spent an awesome week this summer.

In fact, we were there for thee same reason EMHD was to help rebuild Joplin after the Tornadoes last May.

It was a great episode.  If you did not see it you can do so right here right now.

Part I




Part II



The featured HSBA winner today is in the category Best Home School Mom.  The winner is  A Jewish Homeschool Blog.  It is a fascinating blog and I really like this recent Sample Post.

Friday Fragments

Hi.  It's Thursday night which means it's time for Friday Fragments.  The part of the show where Larry sings a silly song.  I think I might be mixing up my segments, a little. 

Lots O Fragments today.  So let's get to them . . .

Fragment, the first one

First of all, for the past while I have been featuring the 20 winners of the 2011 HSBA (Home School Blog Awards) here at the old blogstead.  Generally I have been doing this at the end of my posts.  For reasons that are too long and too boring (mostly too boring) to go into now, I am going to share two different winners in this here post.

In the category of Best New Home School Blog the HSBA goes to Doorposts of your Home.  Today's post on Honoring one another was so good, I decided share it here as a sample post.

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Fragment, the next one


My wife and I have been married for almost 14 years.  We have had the same bed for that long and it was time for a new one.  We had a Verlo and we loved it.  So last Saturday we got a new one.  Last Friday in preparing for a new bed I was clearing out some stuff in the bed room and found a really cool picture frame that a friend of my wife's had made for her and for whatever reason we had never put up.  It needed a small amount of repair after years of non use.  Here it is in use on the wall above our computer.

Fragment, The obligatory Puppyism


Sometimes puppy's explanation of her puppyisms are more amusing than the puppyisms themselves.  Take this conversation that took place at the dishwasher after yesterday's lunch. 

Puppy: Dad I'm full to the tip.

Me: Full to the tip?

Puppy:  I'm full to the tip, not even an inch is left.


Fragment, The penultimate one

I bought a new Ipod Touch a few weeks ago and have been using it quite a bit.  One thing that is both good and bad is the amount of pictures you can take in such a short time.  Amy took all these pics of Puppy on the horse at Meijer.  It was like a regular photo shoot.

Can this be the last one please?!!!?

Fragment, The Porky Pig One (That's All Folks)

Well not quite all.  I have one more HSBA winner to bring to the light of Dave. 

That winner is Confessions of A Homeschooler.  This blog has been a staple of my sidebar for sometime now.  It won in the Best Design Category.  This sample post about A Family Mission Statement is very good.

That's it that's all the fragments I have at present. 

Head back to Half Past Kissing Time for more Friday Fragments.

The Best Christmas Gift Ever

Time once again for Thursday

@ Self Sagacity

Here are my two questions:

Question 1

What is the best Christmas present you ever received?

This year I received this book.

You might not be able to tell by the cover.  But this book is probably the best give I ever received. 

Here is what, the folks at Amazon call, a look inside.



That is my son reading and as I have mentioned in other posts, my son has really struggled learning to read.  This year he has made a series of breakthroughs and thus, this Christmas was able to read the entire book and my wife recorded it as a keepsake for me.  As I type this, I am beginning to cry.  I am so thankful to God that our hard work is paying off and thankful for a wife who loves us so much that she wanted to commemorate our achievement.

Question 2

What is your favorite part of your favorite season?

I think I like all 4 seasons of the year pretty much equally.  I certainly have my favorite part of each season.  For winter, it has to be what is scheduled for this evening.  Snow, and plenty of it.  I especially love sledding with the kids. 

Those are my 2 questions.  I am looking forward to your answers.
To see other people's questions or participate yourself, click here.

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This post's  featured HSBA blog is Handbook of Nature Study winner in the Best Homeschool Nature/Field Trip category.  I really like the look and feel of this blog.  It is the home of an outddor carnival that I want to look into more deeply in the future.  I really enjoyed this sample post.

Mid Week Music Break

I have made it clear that my Puppy loves the music of J.J. Heller.  I thought I'd give you a chance to find out for yourself how good she is.  Here she is with What love really means, the song that Puppy fell in love with.

What Love Really Means (Single)

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The HSBA winning blog for Best Group Blog was TOS Homeschool Crew.  This blog continues to provide excellent product reviews as this sample post attests.

Alasandra's Homeschool Blog: Carnival of Homeschooling the Gemstone Edition

Alasandra's Homeschool Blog: Carnival of Homeschooling the Gemstone Edition

This is a gem of an edition. Sorry, I could not resist.
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The HSBA winning blog I am featuring today is My Angels and Autism winner of best Special Needs Blog. This is a moving blog, but also very practical and insightful. I really enjoyed this Sample Post from last month.

Election Year Coverage

2012 is an election year ,so I thought this might be a good time to teach about the presidents of United States.   I am doing it a little differently instead of going in chronological order I decided to study the presidents as their birthdays come matter fact you know that today January 9 is Richard Nixon's birthday?

Saturday, January 7 was Millard Fillmore's birthday.  Today, we studied Millard Fillmore's presidency as part of school, and tomorrow we will study Richard Nixon.

In addition to Nixon and Fillmore, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and William McKinley were also born in the month of January.   January isn't the month with the most presidents.   That distinction belongs to  October, which has six.   At least one President has been born in each month.  June and  September only have one. 


Here's a little bit more about the details of this teaching plan.

 Preparation

Each Month

Get books out from library for the Presidents with birthdays in the next month.

I also start blog posts about each President scheduled to post in our Izola Becker Home School Blog on their birthday.  Here is the post for Millard Fillmore. 

Prior to Weeks with Birthdays

I will review the materials about the President and decide if I want to do some special project.  This week,  we started one of the 2 time lines we will be constructing.   More on those in a bit. 

Presentation


Each day on the President's birthday or school day closest to the birthday, I will give a short lesson about the President.  I will have the students prepare a fact sheet.  Later in the week, We will update the blog posts with more information. I will also have each of my kids who blog write a post each month with some facts about the Presidents born that month. 

Today I cut 10 feet from a roll of paper and had Bunny Girl  divide it into 10 inch sections.  For those playing at home, that ends up in 12 sections, 1 for each month of the year.  Tomorrow or the next day we will take the fact sheets for Nixon and Fillmore and assemble them on the January section of the roll.  After the election, we will construct a more traditional timeline with the Presidents in chronological order. 

Note: I did not realize until Today, that Nixon's birthday was today.  For some reason when I looked at it yesterday, I thought I read the 19th.  Otherwise, we would have studied Fillmore last Friday and Nixon on his birthday.

This is just a supplement to our curriculum. We are not studying American History at present.  We just began Part II of Mystery of History today as well.  I will try to post about that a little later this week.

Before I am history.  Let me tell you of our HSBA featured blog.  The category is Best Teen Blog.  The Blog formerly known as Umbrella Girl won this year.  This is a very enjoyable, fun to look at blog.  The photos are excellent, as is this sample post about taking excellent photos.

Dave Out Loud Relocated

Sunday's Cool: A Link Up and A Look Ahead

A Link Up: I am going to say something, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way.  I hate Word Press.  I have tried on several occasions to use Word Press blogs, even taught a blogging class using a Word Press platform.  They are about as easy to use, as Millard Fillmore is easy to rate as one of the top 3 presidents ever.  No offense to Millard Fillmore, in fact more on him tomorrow.

But back to my disdain for all things Word Press.  The latest debacle came a few months ago, when I tried to start a vlog, called Dave Out Loud.  I had a Word Press account with the nickname DaveOutLoud, so I thought using Word Press might be a good idea.

Big Mistake. Huge.

It took me almost an hour every time I posted to just put a video from my You Tube account on the blog.  Yesterday, I finally stopped the madnes, and started a Dave Out Loud Vlog here at Blogger.

Here is yesterday's innuagral post.  In the next few weeks I will be rerunning the videos I posted at the previous platform.  Which, as it turns out, won't take an hour for all 8 episodes, let alone 1. 

A Look Ahead:  Tomorrow, I will be posting about a special project we will be doing at school this year regarding American Presidential History.  This is one of the reasons, I had Millard Fillmore on the brain earlier.  Not exactly what else I will be blogging about this week.  It seems like it will be a rather eventful week, so I should have plenty of material.

HSBA Award Profile

Today's category: Best Homeschool Vlog

One reason why I started a vlog is to compete in this category next year.  This year's winner, Women Living Well does so much more than vlog.  Here is a sample post with an encouraging video about involving your family in your misistry.

Six Word Weather Report

They call this Winter? Yeah Right!



For more 6 word Saturday click here.

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Time to get back to my HSBA winner wrap up.  Today's category: Best Current Events. Opinions and Politics Blog.  Winecup Christian Academy won in this category for very good reason.  The pieces I read about bullying,  test taking  and  the perils of public education were well thought out and excellently reasoned.  Here is a sample post  from February 2011.

1 3 12 = 6

I recently  received an e-mail from Henry Cate and he says that the home school carnival has been going on for six years.   Since I am a host of the carnival, he has asked me to include a post for the upcoming anniversary and also to invite you, my readers, to do so as well.   After reviewing the guidelines, send  your post by  e-mail to CarnivalOfHomeschooling@gmail.com.  If you would like to participate, you should  do so by January 2, 2012, at 6 PM.   Now I just need to come up with a post by then!

My HSBA profile is on the winner of Best Nitty Gritty Homeschooler.  So You Call Yourself a Homeschooler is a fantastic blog that goes the extra mile.  Here is a Sample Post from Thanksgving 2011.

From my mouth to your eyes

This is kind of amazing for me. Here I am, laying down ready to sleep, and I think , "Hey, I haven't really posted on my blog for a while." So, I grab my new Christmas gift, an I pod touch and simply start talking. Cool. I've talked before, what's different about today? Well I'll tell you what's different, I am using the Dragon voice recognition app. It is typing everything I say.

The past few days since Christmas, we have gone on our annual library week. It has turned out to be more screaming and yelling week. This is really a problem for our family, because I love screaming but hate yelling and Amy loves yelling (and Cheetos) but can't stand screaming. The goal is more libraries tomorrow and Friday sans the screaming and without the yelling.

Typing not talking here. In the future, I will not broadcast (pun intended) what methodology I used to bring these posts to life.

Have not forgotten about HSBA spotlight. The winner this year of best encourager was the Home Scholar. The thing I like about this blog is that the encouragement found within is practical and pragmatic. Here is a sample post.

Thursday 2 Questions @ Self Sagacity

I am not participating in Thursday 2 Questions. But that doesn't mean you can't check it out.

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Here's a puppyism that I heard at math today:

8 + 3, I don't need to use the number line, I can use my brain.

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HSBA Featured Winner

Ana Braga-Henebry's Journal - Best Super Homeschooler.

This is really a super homeschool blog.  It's interesting, informative, personal and loaded with variety.

Here is a Sample Post.

A Picture is worth 200 Posts

Click here for more Wordless Wednesday

Speaking of Wordless,my HSBA spotlight blog is Mothership Adventures who won for best pictures.  They travel the country in an r.v which is cool enough.  The pictures are fantastic.  Here is a sample post.

As the title indicated, this is my 200th post with pictures in it. 

Carnival of Homeschooling at Teach Beside Me

This weeks COH is up at Teach Beside Me. They have included my post on what happens at a FLL scrimmage in their mix.  Spider Droid's FLL tournament is Saturday. Here is a video that was at Why Home School  posted last month that shows a table run.

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Renee Abramowitz of School Sparks sent me a copy of her new e-book Christmas Worksheets For Santa's Little Helpers.

Here is  an page from the e-book with Christmas sight words.

Puppy and I are going to have fun doing many of these worksheets in the days to come.  Feel free to go to Renee's site and explore the many fine worksheets she has there and download the book for yourself.  Did I mention it was free?

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Best Variety is the featured category of my HSBA recap today.  The winner was Heartkeeper Common Room, a blog I have appreciated for a long time now.  This post does have an eclectic mix which I hope you will enjoy.  Here is a Sample Post.

Next Time: Obligatory Christmas Tree Post

Thanks Swimming!

I love t-shirts and would love to have one that says "I brake for symmetry".

I am always looking for book ends to catalog my life .  One such moment of symmetry appeared to me when our family was picking up my oldest niece in South Bend to bring her back to the Chicago area for Thanksgiving.  I invited our niece to go swimming with us in our hotel.  This was on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving.  I realized that my younger sister had invited our niece as well as our family to go swimming with her 2 days after Thanksgiving.  So I', thinking swimming, Thanksgiving, swimming and it came to me, Thankswimming.

Here's A Recap . . .

Thankswimming Day 1

 

Then after drying off,

leaving the hotel,

inspecting the dorm,

Catching The Muppet Premiere,

 

Eating,

and waiting

for the tryptophan to kick in.

We were ready for . . .

 Thankswimming Day 2

This summer, my older kids started going off the diving board.  The problem was, every time I tried to take a picture of them, I would get this . . .

and then this . . .

This year, no doubt due to the miracle that is Thankswimming, I got this . . .

and this . . .



and even this . . .

All this  while Puppy paddled.

In short Thankswimming

made a big splash!

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Today's featured HSBA category is Best Homemaking or Recipes Blog.  This years winner, The Happy Lil' Homemaker seems to have a lot of great recipes like the one I saw today fro Spritz Cookies.  I was surprised that they didn't have any Thankswimming recipes.  Although this  Sample Post does look delectable.

Sunday's Cool HOF Edition

Sunday's Cool!
A Link Up and A Look Ahead

A Link Up: Crazy Uncle Dave's sports blog had some exciting Ron Santo news this week.  I hope you enjoy 1 down 2 to go.

A look Ahead: Another busy week in real life life that will culminate with Spider Droid's Robotics tournament.  Here on the blogosphere will be busy as well with some posts featuring the carnivals and meme's I participate in.  I will also continue featuring HSBA winners at the end of each post.

For instance, today we will look at the Laugh With Us Blog which was the winner of funniest home school blog.  As another blog, that gets it's bread   and butter from quoting family member's crazy sayings, I must say I heartily approve.  Here is a sample post. 

Next Time:Thankswimming

Six Word Saturday @ Show My Face Dot Com

Starting today, for the next week I will feature posts for all the meme's and carnivals I participate in, whether I have a horse in the race, or not.

I do have 6 words today they are . . .

Why I bring books to Library.

The reason I do this is because I am a chronic over-packer. I always bring along more things than I could possibly accomplish. Today, I brought 3 books that  I am supposed to be reviewing for this blog. I will probably not get to any of them, since that was not the purpose of this trip to the library. Come to think of it, neither was making this post, so I best be going. Before I do let me tell you about my HSBA featured blog. Today's category is . . .

Best Homeschool Methods Blog.

The winner was 1+1+1=1

Aside from the mathematically challenged title, this is an excellent blog which I generally carry around somewhere in my sidebar.  If you are looking for fun preschool home school ideas, this is definitely the blog for you. 

Click here for a sample post, and click here for more 6 Word Saturday.

Next Time: Santa comes early for Santo?