Book Review: Follow My Leader by James Garfield

Zach and I read this booktogether, my reading it aloud to him and then he chose to read it again himself. As I was reading, this was one of those where he always asked for another chapter, more. The book features, Jimmy, a typical preteen boy, who is blinded by an accident involving a peer. The rest of the book describes his journey through approximately the next year, as he struggles to deal with both the realities of being blind and the emotions surrounding it. So many children's books do not do adequate character development, and even kids can pick up on that. This character is very real, with realistic emotions, weaknesses, strengths and fears. The other characters, particularly his peers, are also fairly developed. Jimmy in the story receives a guide dog, which I understand would not actually occur in someone his age (that young is not allowed a trained guide dog). However, the story makes the event seem plausible and realistic. Topics explored included blindness, Braille language, guide dogs, how peers may treat a blind student and, a very big one, forgiveness and hatred, and what those feelings can do to a person if not adequately dealt with. These are big topics for little readers, but the book does an admirable job with them. The book is also a great discussion starter for going further in depth with any of those topics and more. We highly recommend it.

Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday

IMG_5215, originally uploaded by WeeBeaks.

My fairy baby girl, and the whole family, wish everyone a Happy Halloween (she is showing off her costume here). And we wish her a happy 2nd birthday. I can't believe it has gone so fast.

The Year of Miss Agnes - Review

Zach and I read the Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill as part of his core 1 Sonlight curriculum. Yet again Sonlight came through for us and picked a winner. Zach loved it, and I enjoyed reading it with him.

In the novel, our main character is a little girl growing up in a remote Alaskan Indian village. In the first pages, we see yet another teacher in their one-room schoolhouse has quit, but not before insulting the children and expressing her disgust at their culture and customs (such as eating lots of fish). There is apprehension as they wait to see who will be next to teach them. Fortunately, that "who" is Miss Agnes. She brings with her fresh ideas, shelves the old books and opens up a whole new world of thoughts and ideas to the children, inspiring not only the children but the parents to shift some of their ideas. A strong theme in the book is who needs school and how much, including teaching of the deaf, schooling beyond the basic (college) and attitudes towards schooling in a native culture. I won't spoil the ending for you, but suffice to say it leaves open a nice discussion and some thought. My son still likes to come up to me (weeks later) and discuss this novel.

Do *You* Doodle? Or Write? - Review and ideas

We absolutely love the Do You Doodle? series of coloring books in our house. It gives gray line drawings, or partial drawings, to get a little one started, but not complete pictures. So the pictures have to be completed, often in fun or creative ways. Then they can be colored. That is clearly a step up from the basic coloring books. And the themes are not just licensed characters or simple things, but really creative or fun activities, some making the kids think a bit and some just silly and fun, bringing forth a giggle or two. An example from this week in the book was a line drawing of a boy and the instructions to draw him covered in measles! Or a drawing of a boy in a large box or hole with instructions to draw a way for him to get out. My son, age 7, loves these.

This year we took it a step further though. As background, I have a wonderfully creative, sometimes silly little guy. He loves to tell magical, creative stories full of adventure. But when I ask him to write I'm lucky to get one dull sentence. Without adjectives or adverbs. As dull as he can possibly make it. Ninety-nine percent of writing prompts leave him cold. This year we have tried combining his Do You Doodle? book with his writing notebook with much better success. He can do as many Doodle pages as he wants. Then his assignment is to pick just one and write about his picture. He still has not become some amazing writer here, but I get a lot more detail from him, and some of his creative skill is coming out. Just a tad some days. More other days. But a huge improvement! So if you want some fun and creative writing prompts combined with art, give this book a try.

Exploring Ancient Greece and Greek Mythology

In our Sonlight core 1 right now we are deep into ancient Greece and Greek Mythology. What fun Zach and I have been having with this!

I actually got very lucky in that Zach picked up from the bookstore over the summer a fiction book that has a mythology theme, The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1), which is part of a series. He has since went on to read the next couple in the series, and loved those as well. If you have an advanced reader and are doing mythology, those may be very fun for you as well, to do a comparison of where the author got the characters, how much is "factual" (well, at least an accurate rendition of the mytho), and how much is Riordan's own imagination and expansion of the character and so forth.

In the free realm, the internet is, of course, full of facts, games, websites, "educational" material (some yes, some no) and everything else you could want about Greek Myths. I did some major searching last week for a few select sites for Zach to explore. He loves the computer, and loves games. I wanted to connect that love of the computer with some reinforcement with what we were learning. One site I found that I really liked for content and style, and Zach really liked for the fun factor was Adventures in Ancient Greece. It has too much content for me to list it all, but it had a god/goddess Greek/Roman name matching with what they oversaw, a nice map, exploration of different areas and a quiz at the end where Zach had great fun proving how much he knew, with no prompting by me to take the quiz. :)

And right now both boys (ages 7 and 4) are deeply engrossed in a mythology audio CD Greek Myths, thus giving me the time to write this post. LOL. We all love Jim Weiss. We have seen and heard him in person each year now for 3 or 4 years at the California Homeschool Network Family Expo in Ontario, California. He is such a fantastic storyteller, and we have purchased several of his CDs. I really can't recommmend them highly enough, highly educational and highly entertaining. Our minivan always has a few stashed, and usually one in the CD player.

Back to some more interactive schooling for Zach and I as his CD winds up, but I wanted to share these resources, as I benefit greatly from all the blogs and posts of other homeschoolers sharing tips and sites with me to make education really come alive for students.

My baby girl

My baby girl, originally uploaded by WeeBeaks.

Just a good picture I got of our baby girl today.

New outfit for me!

Whole outfit, originally uploaded by WeeBeaks.

Today I sewed for me for fall. I did McCall 5434, which has an asymmetrical hem wrap top and pull-on pants. I really like how those came out. The pattern also included a strange tube top for underneath. I skipped that, and instead made a camisole style top from Ottobre Woman magazine, issue 2/07, pattern #1, the tank top. I did lace edges instead of binding on the top for a cami look. We'll see how long a white top lasts with the kids, but for now I'm pleased.