Thursday Two Questions, already?

I can't believe it's been a week since I posted last. I am at least 3 posts behind. I have 2 book reviews I need to write and I want to talk about the oh, so excellent Home School Conference I attended over the weekend.

Well a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. It actually now starts with an I-phone. They have an app for that. But since I don't have an I-phone I'll go with the single step approach. I liked participating in Self Sagacity's Two Questions Thursday last week I thought I'd give it a shot again. I'll have to put off the book reviews and the conference comments (That sounds like a kind of Celestial Season Tea) until next time.

The book I am going to review if I ever get to it is Laura Ingall's Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie. I love reading these books to my family as they really give good perspective to things. For instance in Wilder's the Long Winter which preceded Little Town, Pa and Ma make the following observations on "new" technology. . .

"If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of a light," ma considered. "We didn't lack for light when I was a girl, before this new fangled kerosene was ever heard of.”

That's so," said pa. These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves - they're good things to have but the trouble is, folks get to depending on.

What's most telling is 3 of the 4 items mentioned are basically obsolete in Western Culture. Trains are still around but nowhere near what they were 150 years ago.

This brings me to my first question: What new technology do you have the most trouble living without?

My next question also stems from a book I am eventually going to review. The book called the Lost Art of Reading is an essay about the state of the book. The paper, ink, binding variety.

My question is this. Do you have a nook or Kindle or other e-reader or do you read books the old fashioned way or do you just not read books?

Those are my questions. For other peoples questions click here.

Next Time: Little Town Review. (Yes, I know I have been saying that for awhile.)

Thursday Two Questions

I am trying out a new meme today. Called Two Questions Thursday. The basic gist (The central thought, the common idea, - It.s one of Spider droids vocabulary words). is that you ask 2 questions and your readers and those linking to you from the meme answer those questions. The meme is hosted @ Self Sagacity.

When I first started blogging I participated in Mnoga (Russian for many) Memes. I even hosted one for awhile after the original owner decided to let it go. Recently I participate in them less and less. I occasionally will post @ Friday Fragments or Six Word Saturday but it's definitely not an every week affair.

My two questions today are about memes.

1) How come the majority of memes start the day before? For instance here I am asking my two questions for Thursday on a Wednesday. Considering the relative ease on most platforms of predating your material. It is not hard to time your post to begin at midnight the day of your meme.

2) When not participating in a meme for the week, do you still read it? I faithfully submitted over 25 Works for me Wednesday submissions before I finally realized that hints from Heloise is just not my bag. I really enjoyed reading all the hints but noticed that once I stopped being a contributor I also stopped being a regular reader.

So those are my questions and I am sticking to them. To join in answer my questions as a comment and then click here for more questions.

Next Time: Little Review of the Prairie

Bribe your kids? Get on board!

Our kids are passionate about some of the same things we are passionate about. Amy and I love books and libraries, and so do the kids. Amy and I love going swimming at the local pool, and so do the kids. This is good because, otherwise, we'd have to get a babysitter while Amy and I played Marco Polo with other people's kids.

One thing our kids have not shared our passion about, is jumping off the diving board. Amy and I love jumping and diving off the diving board. Before we were married we would sometimes take her cousins swimming and be the only people over 14 in line for the diving boards. Our kids do have strong emotions abut going off the board: fear and dread. Puppy is still not ready for such an adventure. But the bigs are excellent swimmers and love spending hour after precious hour in and under the water.

So yesterday, I paired irresistible forces, Bunny's love for money, and Spider Droid's pathological need to do whatever his sister does, with an immovable object: fear of going off the diving board. I offered Bunny $5 American to jump off the board. I also offered it to Spider Droid, but knew it would have no impact unless I could get Bunny to budge. You should have seen the internal argument that her face betrayed. Five dollars....sink to the bottom of the pool. Buying what I want....not living long enough to buy what I want. (You get the idea.)

Finally, she decided my offer was too lucrative to pass up. She waited in line, climbed up onto the diving board, and jumped in. She didn't sink and swam right to the ladder. When she got out, she went back in line again. And guess who was behind her....Spider Droid.

Spider Droid waited in line, climbed up the ladder, climbed down the ladder, waited in line again, climbed up the ladder, and finally jumped in the water. He also did not sink. Nor did anyone sink the next dozen or so times the three of us jumped off the board.

You see, I knew that they would love the diving board if they tried it and I was right. I just needed to find a motivation strong enough for them to get over their fear. Each kid is motivated differently. Five dollars alone would never have been sufficient to get Spider Droid on the board. Don't get me wrong, he'll take the money. But he could not resist trying something that his sister said was fun.

So call it what you will: bribery, knowing your kids' triggers, speaking their love language, or just giving them an offer they can't refuse. Seeing my kids love something that I love and that we as a family can love together, wasn't exactly priceless, but worth a whole more than 10 measly bucks.

Next Time: Little Town Review

Raising the Bar on Fractions

Visual learners I love them! I married one, but I am not one. I am pretty sure the girls are visual learners. Spider Droid is very good auditory and a good kinesthetic learner.

The Hershey's Milk Chocolate Fraction Book is a great tool for the auditory, visual and kinesthetic crowd. Especially if you provide your own chocolate.

We used our own chocolate bars and placed them over each page of the book.

The kids took turns reading the book, placing the chocolate and even taking the pictures I am sharing here.

I like these pages because it gives a strong reinforcement that 12 twelfths is the same as one whole.

We really weren't able to stack the pieces exactly like in the book. But the kids got the idea.

Note: To put chocolate on each page as we did, you will need at least 3 candy bars.

The idea of addition and subtraction of fractions is very tangible with manipulatives. And Hershey's makes for a very tasty manipulative.

We split them up after the lesson and there was even some left behind for me.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is at Why Homeschool this week. Click here to check out all the fine entries in the Memorial Day Edition.

Next Time: Bribing your kids? Get on board.

Sunday's Cool: Dead Mice

Sunday’s Cool

A Link Up & A Look Ahead.

A Link Up: Spider Droid is our featured blogger today. A recent visit to a local prairie yielded two posts. I hope you enjoy Dead mouse on the prairie and Questions for a dead mouse.

Speaking of Spider Droid, he mowed the lawn for the first time this weekend unless you count this.

I was thinking it would still be a few more years before he would be up to the task. But he has been bugging me for days to let him try to mow. So even though he’s just 9, I’m thinking when someone wants to mow your lawn. you say yes!

A Look Ahead: This is going to be a short week school wise with Memorial Day tomorrow and me away at the home school convention on Thursday and Friday. If the weather ever gets slightly summerish we will get a pool pass and do some swimming. Blog wise, I will be putting up a post tomorrow about a fractions lesson we did last week. I hope to post it just in time to submit it to the Carnival of Homeschooling.

Memorial Day weekend also marks the start of my summer reading season. Each summer I try to read at least 10 books and review them. Besides reading for just myself, I also spend time reading to the entire family. We just finished Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder the American Frontier author (not to be confused with Laura Impala Wildebeest the African Savannah author). I will post a review in the days to come.

When I hosted the Carnival of Homeschooling earlier this month I mentioned a contest Circle of Moms was holding to pick the top 25 homeschooling blogs. The voting has been closed for some weeks now and I have decided to feature the top 25 blogs in a sidebar here. Mine are not listed in the order of votes received, (for that info click here) but rather by most recently published. 5 of the top 25 vote getter's were already appearing here, I hope you enjoy them all. Well that’s it for today’s edition. Thanks for stopping by.

Next Time: Raising the Bar on Fractions.