Special Connection Homeschool

I keep a grocery list on my fridge and write down things as I run out of them so I don't forget to buy them at the store. I never realized that my daughter picked up on what we were doing until one day I found this on my list. There are other times I have found pancaks , straws and other various things my daughter uses. If we run out of, or low on, something, she lets me know by leaving it on the list. Well, this was my realization that Gess was ready for some more responsibility, so we have been working on letting her do her own shopping at the store. By doing her own shopping I do not mean that we let her spend her own money, I have already been letting her do that. What we have started to do now is to break up part of the shopping list (unless I am only going to pick up a few things then she gets the whole thing) and give it to her to be in charge of. For instance today I made the following list: Then as we shopped for them Gess would put them in the cart and then mark th...

On January 6, 2011 Congress read the Constitution of the United States aloud on the House floor. This is actually the first time this has ever been done in history! While that amazes me, I certainly wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to teach Gess about both Congress and the Constitution. CSPAN of course is the television network that carries the House proceedings live. CSPAN2 carries the Senate. For those who are like us and do not have cable or Satellite Television, you can find CSPAN streaming live on the internet on their Live Video Feed page. This is where we tuned in to watch the House read the Constitution on the House floor. Before it came on we discussed the three branches of government and I tried to explain to her what the House of Representatives was. We then talked about the Constitution and how it is the document that governs our country and ensures our freedoms. I had Gess read the preamble on her own before they began, and then we followed along as ...

BiblePlan.org I am so proud of Gess. She read through the entire New Testament last year! I posted about us attempting this in my New Year Project blog last year. Well, I wanted to tell you that we did it! I also thought I would share how we accomplished our goal. At bibleplan.org you can sign up for several different Bible reading plans and they email you the passage you are to read for that day. In order to read the New Testament in a year you only have to read one chapter a day, and only on weekdays. So Gess and I would start our school morning off reading a Bible passage. We also used the Readability tool that I mentioned before. I noticed that Gess would not read books where the print was small and I have had a hard time finding a bible in which she can both see the text and not get lost. For now, Readability on the computer has been the best way for her to read it. Readability is nice because it not only increases the font size, but also takes away all the other dis...