Sam Morse Presentation - Challenge B

The first 10 weeks of Science this year consists of presentations on Famous Scientists.

Queue Sam Morse.

One of his descendants was a neighbor of ours growing up in Ohio. He was a fighter pilot in the A.F. with a picture of good ol' Sam proudly displayed amongst the family photos. 

When I asked Dr. Dh if he had ever made a telegraph machine, or could, he was confident. He is a scientist at heart.

 So, one fine Saturday afternoon found Flower and Dad in the front yard with an odd assortment of stuff, measuring, cutting, crafting, drilling, honing and doing electronic things. (yes, I am the wordsmith, not the scientist).

The end result was not one, but two telegraph machines that "talked" to each other. 

After Flower's great presentation on Samuel Morse, she tapped out:

Cutest telegraph operator in the west.

Challenge B, and best Dad ever, for the win! 

d

@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

LuLaRoe Review and Give Away!

KB is guest posting for me today. Her sweet bambino, Samwise is on the move, and LuLaRoe have been her go-to style since he made his entrance  a few short months ago.

Now let’s talk Lularoe! What is all the fuss about? If you haven’t gone out on the limb and spent the twenty-five something dollars on a pair of these leggings yet, go ahead and give them a shot, sister! Or if you’ve seen all those give aways and “legging loops” put your name in, girl! Totally worth it!

Pre-pregnancy I was an all-jeans kind of girl. I had two pairs of yoga pants, for running and bed. But you wouldn’t catch me dead just bumming around in them at home! Not once, never… not unless I didn’t have a pair of clean jeans and that was nearly impossible as I owned probably ten pairs!

Now fast forward to during pregnancy and post-partum. Are there maternity jeans? Why yes, yes there are. Do they last until you fit into “regular” jeans. For the most part, they do. An investment that I highly recommend, if you’re a jeans type of gal. 

However, jeans on post-partum still-healing mommy just is not comfortable for me. Unless they are slip on jean-leggings or something along those lines - zippers and button jeans are currently either to large or too small, too tight or too… Name something. No fun! Hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, falling down or stuffed in a rough material that literally attracts dirt and spit up is not what I call enjoyable.

My husband took me shopping for jeans several times to no avail. Nothing fits the same, and the only jeans that worked are still maternity – although the bands do slowly slip off throughout the day. Maybe this is just me still embracing my post pregnancy body… However I have found some wonderful jean substitutes!

In a last ditch effort, I put my name in for a couple of Lularoe “legging loops” and other give aways. Shocklingy, I lucked out and won a free pair of grey heathered leggings and three different styles of shirt from the loop.

The leggings came in a purple packing envelope. In the envelope was a thank you note for participating, a piece of candy, business card and then the Lularoe packaged leggings. They were crisp, they definitely were soft and I couldn’t wait to wear them!

The next day I wore my heather grey leggings with an oversized, nursing friendly top. Let me tell you OH MY!! “Buttery soft” really doesn’t do the softness of these leggings justice. And no, I am not over exaggerating. Yes, you can get “soft leggings anywhere…” But you can’t get butter-soft leggings that don’t pull, tear, cover everything, hold up and look clean despite baby spit up! It wiped right off! They haven’t caught on anything yet, they wash beautifully, and the Tall and Curvy fit my tall and curvy post partum frame. If I wanted, I could easily wear heals, or my tennis shoes with my new black legging purchase.

 I’m not one to buy into fads, but this is definitely a popular brand for a reason… and just look at the variety of patterns. There are some crazy prints that I really don’t understand. However, there are some other truly beautiful prints out there (and no I’m not referencing the ice cream cone or doughnut prints).

The shirts are equally soft, comfortable and nursing friendly! Very post-partum friendly, easy to wash, adorable patterns! So much fun!

In Conclusion, well worth the very little investment I put forth J And I will be happy to purchase from them!

Interested in trying product, but not willing to bite the bullet financially? Host a facebook pop-up, or put your name in for a give away J I assure you, it will be worth it!

Check out my hostess page on Facebook: Lovely Leggings PopUp. Send a request to join and KB will accept within an hour. 

To enter the give-away, join the page and leave a comment on the FaceBook page, telling us which LuLaRoe you love! Winner will receive a free pair of leggings! 

@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

Challenge B Tools of the Trade

Challenge B Community Day is always a highlight of our week. 

Part of my prep is to have supplies at the ready for each of my 4 tables (we have a full and fun class of 12 this year!). I have four Dollar store bins that I put on each table. While I go into class with a clear plan for the day, we are always ready for the unexpected!

Included in each bin are games- scrabble tiles, dice, Logic Bingo, a pack of cards and a Board Slam card - the games are laminated. We don't use all of the games every week, but if we find ourselves with time on our hands, we are prepared. 

Also included, file folders, turned into time lines, mini-white-boards and markers. The kids do math, grammar, games and logic on the white boards. 

Laminated sheets- one with the 5 Common Topics and the 5 Cannons of Rhetoric, along with "Using the 5 Common Topics in Math Discussion." We use these weekly. 

Small, mini notebooks, that we also use weekly. These are our "Collect, Connect, Compose," notebooks. We spend the last 15 minutes of every Community Day on this, and share with each other. It's been a great wrap-up to our day! 

ad gloriam Dei! 

A Day in the Life of Challenge B

We just wrapped up our 7th week of Challenge B. We are working hard and having a blast. This past week the kids wrote a Persuasive Essay to read-out loud, presented info and an experiment on Michael Faraday and electromagnetism and had a mini-debate on Gun Control. Add in Latin, Logic, Math and pizza for lunch (thanks to our amazing Foundations families) and it was a full and fabulous day. 

I heard recently that CC is a "cheat"on "true" classical education. To that I say, "Posh!" I've done it alone and in community with CC and in the upper levels, it can't be beat. The kids learn so much by wrestling with difficult subject, talking about them, having an audience and  weekly accountability. We are being refined and honed as a group, learning an immense amount, sharing each other's burdens and laughing so hard we cry. It's rich and wonderful. I am blessed to be a part of it. 

Science – we are currently doing the History of Science. The kids present on a Scientist and their work every week. Because our Challenge A community has only 3 kids, B has 12, we often send some of our kids to their class. It’s win for everyone- “B” kids revel in the “good old days” and “A” kids get a chance to see what they’ll be doing in the future. This week, we shared with the Foundations kids, because it was electromagnetism and they have magnets coming up in Science, so win-win for everyone! 

Latin- We chant forms every week together. I often ask the kids to chant  forms individually, without looking. Assess to bless. The kids who know it love to show their prowess and it’s another way for the kids who don’t yet know the forms to to hear it and know that they can. We are doing daily diagramming and sentence patterns almost weekly. I usually assign sentences by table and then the tables present their sentences to the class. Not everyone in our class really understands diagramming and that’s o.k. We are learning together and gaining information as we go. We are using Chart A from Essentials and refer to it weekly. For me, diagramming has really been the key to translating Latin well. Without the diagramming, I often translate the meaning incorrectly, or get confused, even if I have the declensions translated correctly. Latin Scrabble and Latin bees often show up weekly.

Logic- I have the kids go to the board and create a Square of Opposition very quickly, at the same time they are creating a Square of Opposition individually on their white boards at their own tables. We drill vocab, we create syllogisms together. I love Logic- Can't wait for more formal debate in Challenge 1!

Debate- Current Events this year has been challenging to say the least. The kids are super loving how CE has turned into a simple debate. This has been one strand where every one shines! This is where the larger lap boards comes in very handy. 

In the Math strand I present a topic from Saxon and then 3 kids use  a 5 Common Topics sheet to lead a Math Discussion. More experience practicing presentation skills, and the kids are learning that even if they don't initially understand the Math problem, they can probably break it down to the point of knowing something about it. 5 Common Topics to the rescue once again! 

Expo and Comp- this week the kids read their Persuasive Essays on Little Britches. As a class we loved this book. We talked about it, quoted from it and several of the kids have already started on the sequels. Writing and Reading are my thing, so this strand is always one of my favorites. Love watching the kids gain so much confidence in how to write well and with style. Love knowing that they can be moved and changed by works of great literature. 

http://i1297.photobucket.com/albums/ag30/Lisa_Nehring/siggywithflower_zps2ffa66ba.png @Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

Little Britches- Father and I Were Ranchers - Review

Ralph Moody was one of the last frontiersmen, with little to no formal education. As a life- long autodidact, he enrolled in a writing class at the age of 50 and was inspired to write, "Little Britches."

I'm glad he did!

The boys have read it, but this time around we read it out loud (hey, you are never too old for a Read- Aloud!). Boy-howdy, I love this book. It's a good old-fashioned, how the west was won read. There is excitement, adventure and real-life heroism involved, along with a whole lot of love and respect for the important things. The relationship between Little Britches and the Dad is central to the story, and the lessons Ralph learns at the side of his dying father are worth taking  note of. This is the kind of book that makes you laugh out-loud, get choked up, reminisce about grandparents and life when the world, or America at least, was young, and long for "simpler" times. Times when 8 year old boys learned how to stay atop bucking steeds, or ride for miles over open prairie to confess to the "local" sheriff that they came by a pheasant in a manner that might be illegal. It's a brilliant piece of Americana. A fine children's book- absolutely! A terrific historical read, full of wisdom and truth, for readers of all ages- total win!

"Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest."

"You know, a man's life is a lot like a boat. If he keeps his sail set right it doesn't make too much difference which way the wind blows or which way the current flows. If he knows where he wants to go and keeps his sail trimmed carefully he'll come into the right port. But if he forgets to watch his sail till the current catches him broadside he's pretty apt to smash up on the rocks."

http://i1297.photobucket.com/albums/ag30/Lisa_Nehring/siggywithflower_zps2ffa66ba.png @Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

Morning Symposium; Gotta Have It

I wrote several weeks ago about how we were going to instill a Morning Symposium into our day. Are we doing it? Yes. Are we loving it. Totally!

Flower was, shall we say, very skeptical about us actually doing Morning Symposium with regularity. So, I set the alarm on my phone for 9 a.m. When the alarm goes off,  everything stops- work, chores, breakfast, free reading, etc and we gather in the living room for Morning Symposium.

We do our Bible Study first. We are using The Story of Christianity from Memoria Press. The text is a book by the same title, written by David Hart. It is a fascinating read, a sweeping scope of the history of the Christian church, with enough detail and unique information in it to keep even my history saturated children mesmerized. The study guide by MP is, as always, excellent, thorough and thought provoking.

Next up is the History of Art: Creation to Contemporary by Veritas Press, with Art Cards. Yes, we love it. The cards are excellent quality, with great details, the text is fun and tons of review, and interesting inclusions, like artists spotlights. We aren't working too hard on memorizing the cards, but we are doing regular review and learning them all the same.

Memoria Press First and Second Form Latin forms are next. We are using Henle for Latin and the charts are a perfect fit. We do everything we are familiar with, taking about 10 minutes a day.

We recently added in our Literature selection for Challenge B- right now we are reading Little Britches. Love it. And we are doing Latin and Logic flash cards too.

Flower and I continue our time by going over Logic drill cards, too.

The kids were worried they weren't going to be able to complete their "regular" studies if we took an hour each morning together, but we are all loving the connection and quality time together so much that, as you can see, we are adding to our morning routine. Have we missed some days? Yes, but  only those days that 1 or all of us have left the house for some reason (like today, Cub is working for a friend). But if we are all home together, someone is pushing to do Symposium. It's that good.

Even thought Cub is now 16 and Flower is 13, they still create with Legos or sketch while I read, as has been our standard for years.

Morning Symposium; it's been the best addition to our year thus far. As anyone with older kids knows, it's the connection time that often suffers as our kids get older and more involved with academics and outside activities. This time has offered us connection, community and the academic inquiry into subjects that we love and are challenged by.

Do you have a Morning Symposium? If so, what do you include?


@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

Keep Walkin'

Flower shared this with me this afternoon.

@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

Challenge, Challenge, Challenge

I have seriously been too busy to blog; partly because our area Classical Conversation's Challenge program has started for the year and we had barely recovered from our crazy busy summer.

Last year in June we had 8 Challenge kiddos and started in the fall with 18. This year we added another Challenge program, for a total  26 kids and 3 Directors in 3 different Challenge programs.

CHALLENGE A

CHALLENGE B

CHALLENGE II

Everyone is seriously happy to be together again, for another awesome year of hard work, great friendships and tons of fun.