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.

The Muppets: A Review

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.