a 12 year old boy's tribute to a CM education

At sixteen days short of turning the big 13, this morning, my most dramatic son said to me, "Mom, did you read that e-mail I sent you? I think you'll laugh." He and his brother who are only 13 months apart have been playing with this online program making movies...
choose the genre, the actors, the setting, choose background music, and then type out the script.  Pretty fun, huh?!

Growing impatient, "Mom, I can't wait for you to read the e-mail, I made it just for you!" Javen sang out in his most winsome tone.
Could I resist? Here's what I found in my inbox that made me laugh out loud:




It's also available HERE.

Einstein: "Hello, my hairy friend. When was the last time you looked at the dictionary?"

Harry: "What's a dictionary?"

Einstein: "Hast thou not heard of the great thing called Education, poor soul?
[begins to swing his hips, adding a most delectable spin...]

I've watched it again and again, and laughed. every. single. time... and I can't help it if I am still a little teary.

little bloggers.

So, I've been away awhile. But I've not been far... just a click away, here at my kids' new blog!

You'll definitely want to take a peek!



They've both posted about their recent jungle river trip with their dad, and there are quite a few pictures with a Peruvian flavor courtesy of Oma :)

I've been so busy with holidays and entertaining guests and visiting tourist attractions that I completely forgot to even mention it here... until now!

So please feel free to pop over and leave them a comment, they'd be THRILLED! ;)

Free e-books of interest

As for that Weekly Planning post that is pending, I have it all written up, I promise, but it's pretty late now tonight, and my beloved awaits, so I'm off to bed.  I'll get it up here in the next few days.  I've really been enjoying blogging daily at my personal blog A Pilgrim's Project.  This weekend I put together a whopper of a post about the kids' trip with Micah up the river.  It was a nature study enthusiast's dream.  Pop over there to see some of the pictures.  I'll be posting some of the pictures of things they found in the next weeks.

But for today, I've found a couple of AWESOME links today for freebies that I just have to share...

HomeschoolFreebieOfTheDay.com is offering the following e-book divided up over the next week (you have to go there each day in order to get the whole book):

THE GIANT HANDBOOK OF NATURE STUDY

This is Anna Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study - THE book for Nature study!

This is a HUGE (940 pages) and absolutely wonderful
teaching guide full of hundreds of nature study lessons, 
activities and discussion questions. It is a complete
multi-year nature study curriculum that you can use
for years to come. It is so big (over 100 megs in size)
we had to divide it into six manageable ebooks for you.

And I found through a link my friend Jimmie had put up, these cool web books FREE ONLINE!  There is a whole series of these "You Wouldn't Want to be a..." books by David Salariya.  I saw this series of books in a bookstore here in Peru in Spanish and ALMOST bought the one called, You Wouldn't Want to Be an Inca Mummy!: A One-Way Journey You'd Rather Not Make because it looked like so much fun.  I may have to go back and see if they're still there when we get back to civilization in March.  Until then, I'm thinking we're going to explore the FREE ones online!  I'm excited. I don't even care if they are TWADDLE!  So there.  :)

Here's the one I found in Spanish. I thought would make a fun one to have around the house here for guests and such.

Oh and just for fun, I found an article that is great support of homeschooling and socialization...

Despite what many might believe, a vast majority of home-schooled children say they have plenty of opportunities for socialization with other children and, as adults, come to excel in all measured areas of adult life, according to a new study.

READ MORE

Kids Communicate

As we live far away from family and friends, my kids need to maintain relationships over long distances. I've recently downloaded a tool that I think will make the time that they are online with their grandparents, family and friends more fun and personalized.

Go have a look, check out if it's something that your family could use.
It's Skype for kids! Skypito

It's fun. The interface is really kid-friendly.
It's safe. Parents approve a list of people their kids can call/chat with.
It's free. Skype to skype calls are free!
(that means when we call someone else with Skype to their skype account it doesn't cost a thing!)

From the website:

Skypito is the world's first safe Internet chatting solution for kids, created in cooperation with Skype. It was designed to mimic the Skype application but created specifically for younger users, ages 2-14.

The idea behind Skypito appeared when we noticed that a safe chat and online communication tool for kids was missing from today's market. Being a company that focuses on family-friendly technology we felt it was our calling to make one.

Skypito was funded exclusively by EasyBits, and it can be enjoyed free of charge by children all over the world.

Have fun!
Amy

It's Turn off your TV week

April 24 - 30 is Turn off your TV week - did you know there was such thing? - did you know there is even a website for this? (click the previous link) Is anyone doing this? What do you do instead to fill time? How much TV do you normally watch in your family? Here's an interesting anti-tv site: http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/ Here's a site that says the "grass-roots" campaign won't make a difference: http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/3694/buzz-on-turn-off-tune-out?fr=fp-buzz-title I think we should have a national turn off the computer week! Yikes, maybe civilization as we know it would come to an end! Okay, I'll settle for a once-a-month computer fast! ;) Amy

Thursday, April 27, 2006 - TV

Posted by homelearnin (66.141.254.241)

We don't watch TV, except the 700 Club at 2 p.m. each day if we're home - great news and features. We don't have cable. We have 2 computers set up in the family room, which are used most the time and 1 computer not on internet in the rec room. A computer fast at least once a month sounds good. jill

Thursday, April 27, 2006 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Anonymous (4.152.75.108)

I saw that I had a new friend and am SO EXCITED to read your blog! I can't wait to keep up with all that's goin' on! (((((HUGS))))) sandi

Thursday, April 27, 2006 - All we have is Bob Jones HomeSat

Posted by FivelittleZarcones (75.4.27.248)

If we turn the TV off- we stop schooling. We did away with "regular" TV some years ago (I can't remember how many)- I just remember my oldest (now 12) was very young and I was even finding most commercials offensive- so my husband and I decided it was easier to turn it off than to constantly screen it. Enjoyed your commentary- thanks for visiting me :) Monique

Thursday, April 27, 2006 - Untitled Comment

Posted by mistresninos (71.104.21.176)

I turn off my tv every day...sometimes several times a day. ;-) I wish my dh and I were on the same plain for this. He thinks anything is fine and I want to throw the tv out. :-D We're working on it. We used to have no tv. Now that was when life was fun. We played games every night after dinner. *sigh* the good old days. As for the computer...yes, the world would end as we know it. Shoot, we couldn't even go out to eat because none of the cashiers would be able to make change without one. hehehe