We have learned some things about tadpoles that we didn’t realize before. They like to eat stuff that is floating at the top of the water. I have been experimenting with boiling lettuce. I found that if I overcooked it, the lettuce sank to the bottom. If I barely cooked it, the lettuce floated, and the tadpoles gathered around it and on it and were very happy with their little “lily pads”.
They like to eat things that are floating at the top of the water. They’re not interested in eating anything that’s down at the bottom of the water. I even put some lettuce in that wasn’t cooked at all. It floated really well, and they have all been hanging out on it like it’s a big flotilla.
But I’m not sure that they’re eating the lettuce. I don’t know if it’s too hard for them to eat, but when I soften it, the lettuce sinks. So I’m considering having Anna go get some moss to put in my beautiful, clear-ish water aquarium.
You can enlarge each of the photos by clicking on them. Then you will be able to see more details of our cute, developing tadpoles.
I had a harder time getting pictures of the swirls on their bellies today. They have been hanging from the lettuce most of the time instead of swimming around or looking out the sides of the tank. And my camera has a hard time figuring out how to focus in at the angle that they are hanging and being right at the surface of the water instead of swimming in it.
This picture shows that their bodies are developing and starting to look more lumpy and frog-shaped.
Abby wanted to paint, so I told her to paint a picture of tadpoles. I thought it came out pretty nice. She even painted smiles on their faces. Very colorful tadpoles, aren’t they?
You know how I love Nature Study. Well, I told the kids to be on the lookout for tadpoles. We live in a subdivision, and the only ponds here have alligators in them (!), but I was hopeful that somehow they would find tadpoles for me. I had read a blog post last year at In Lieu of Preschool about how they raised tadpoles.
One day, Shawn and Anna returned from a walk and said that they had seen a bunch of tadpoles in some muddy water-filled ruts. I got excited and asked them to bring me some. Yesterday, they were headed out for a walk, so I gave them an old container and asked them to bring me some tadpoles. They did!
I raised tadpoles when I taught first grade in public school when I still lived at home. I was able to get fresh pond water and moss for them regularly. I just kept them in a big bucket of my dad’s. We watched them develop all the way into frogs that hopped around all over the place. My class loved it!
Here I wasn’t sure how much moss or pond water I would be able to get, so I did what Genny at In Lieu of Preschool did. I went to the pet store and got supplies and asked a few questions.
We went to Petco and got an aquarium called a Pet Keeper and some rocks and water conditioner to make tap water safe. We added some of our pretty blue glass beads and some seashells. Then I put them all together, put the water conditioner in and put the tadpoles in their new home.
We have 8 tadpoles!
From Genny’s post I found out that they can eat boiled lettuce, so that is what we’ve been feeding them.
They seem to like to eat upside down!
When I first saw this guy belly-up I was afraid that he was dead. But then I found out that he likes to eat that way.
One unusual thing that we noticed about our tadpoles is that they have a spiral on their bellies.
You can see this one’s spiral tummy and his mouth.
On some of them you can see the beginning of back legs. They just look like little nubs right now.
They like to swim together.
The whole family is enjoying watching the tadpoles swim around. It will get even more exciting as we see them develop legs and change into frogs. We have a lid for our Pet Keeper so that when they do get their hopping legs, we will be able to keep them contained for a little while before we release them.
I also have a lapbook about Amphibians from A Journey Through Learning that we are going to be working through in the next few weeks.
Take a peek at what happened here in the last few hours. I call this Family Schooling.
Kelsey determined that she would make dinner for all of us tonight. She kept the menu a secret so that it would be a surprise. She wanted to celebrate a couple of different things, which I will expound on later in this post. She enlisted the help of the twins. They made noodles for our dinner. They followed the directions in the cookbook and made the dough for the noodles. Then Kelsey rolled out the dough and cut up the noodles.
Kelsey cut potatoes for mashed potatoes.
Abby worked on her My Little Pony worksheets that I printed from 1+1+1=1.
Anna did her Math on Khan Academy online.
Brotherly love
Morgan eating overnight oats that Kelsey prepared for him the night before. She makes these for several of us. She customizes them to our tastes. Morgan’s was Chocolate Peanut Crunch. He says it was heavenly.
Mine was Chocolate, Banana, Peanut Butter with sliced Walnut. It was delicious, and the texture was divine.
I read a story by George MacDonald to the older kids. It was called “Little Daylight”. It was a very interesting, intriguing fairy tale that kept our attention and made us all ponder the value of compassion and the rewards of good character and integrity. It also reinforced the concept that good always triumphs over evil.
The story came from this book by George MacDonald:
And now it’s dinner time! Here is Kelsey’s surprise dinner.
By faith, we are celebrating Gary’s new job. We are seeing some movement with more recruiters calling about better positions than he has been considered for before. And he has been getting some divine inspiration and guidance to help him in his job search.
My only contribution to the dinner – Hot Fudge Pudding Cake – one of my specialties!
The other thing that we are celebrating – the thing that is near and dear to Kelsey’s heart – is that she was able to afford an exclusive 3DS XL that will only be produced once. And she got it during a time of “financial famine” for us.
We are so grateful for Kelsey and the way that she blesses our family. We are rejoicing with her over the acquisition of this special item that was the desire of her heart.
I hope you enjoyed this little peek into today’s adventure in Family Schooling.
This post was shared with the Weekly Wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
I just read a book that was written by a homeschooled girl. Her name is Hope Auer, and she is a gifted author. I wondered if she could come up with a fresh view of the story of the Israelites in Egypt that would give me any fresh insights, since I have read this story about a million times.
Well, she did! Moses and Aaron were barely mentioned, but in this story, Hope shows the impact of their words and actions on the Egyptian people and the Israelites. She also did a good job of depicting what may have been happening in Pharaoh’s family and in the palace.
The main character is a 12 year old girl named Jarah who is struggling with doubts about her core beliefs. Her father believes in Yahweh and that He is moving on their behalf to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Her mother doesn’t believe in Yahweh, but has turned to the Egyptian gods.
The conflict between the beliefs of her parents causes her confusion, and she watches to see what will happen next throughout the story to help her decide which belief is true.
Jarah is a likable, believable character. She loves her family and is concerned about the things that are going on in each of their lives.
Her father teaches the family the truth about Yahweh while remaining respectful toward his wife.
The rest of the family, except for the oldest sister, tend to lean toward what their father believes, and there is much love and tenderness among them.
There are several story lines that are just waiting to be developed, and that’s a good thing because this book is the first of a three-part series that Hope Auer is writing called The Promised Land series for Great Waters Press.
There is mild romance, but it is family-friendly, and the author presents it as a natural part of growing up, with whole families involved in making decisions and children asking for parents’ advice and permission in these matters.
Jarah’s doubts are similar to what many young people experience around the age of 12, and this story may help them to sort through their own doubts and beliefs and solidify what they believe in as they ponder how God is working in their own lives even when it seems like more bad than good things are happening.
As I read this story I was impacted by the glimpse into life as a slave in Egypt. I identified with Jarah’s family as they felt frustrated at having to please the Egyptians and obey their every whim no matter how difficult or inconvenient or even impossible their demand was. They lived under the constant threat of being beaten or punished.
Even those who were favored by the queen still had no control over their own lives. One of the Israelites who was a personal maid to the queen couldn’t marry the man of her choice. She was going to be forced to marry an Egyptian who worked in the palace.
Moses and Aaron talked to Pharaoh, and he made working conditions even harder for them. The Israelites were not happy with Moses.
The Israelites were not allowed to carry weapons of any kind.
The way the author described the Plagues made me realize just how awful they were to live through. The Egyptians really suffered, but the Hebrews weren’t touched unless they were in the city of Rameses while the plague was happening. Many times the Plagues gave the Hebrews a reprieve from their hard labor. Sometimes their work was called off because they couldn’t do their work as long as there was no water because the Nile had been turned to blood or there were so many frogs or flies, nobody could even function. Or all the cows were dead, so there was no need to take care of them anymore. Or the Egyptians were in so much pain from boils they couldn’t tell anybody what to do.
Some ascribed to the Egyptian gods what Yahweh was actually doing. They said the Egyptian gods were angry and sending the plagues. Or the Egyptian gods were under attack. Or the gods knew the Egyptians were wrong and were punishing them.
An aspect that Hope Auer brought out in her story was the way that the plagues attacked certain gods and sacred things in particular.
For instance,
The Nile was turned to blood – The Nile was considered sacred.
The plague of frogs – The goddess Heget had the head of a frog – she represented fertility and resurrection and frogs were considered sacred because they came from the Nile
The plagues of lice and flies – Insects were considered sacred.
The cattle died – Cattle were considered sacred.
The plague of boils – The goddess Bast was thought to give joy, health and healing and protection against contagious diseases.
The plague of locusts – Locusts were considered sacred.
The thick darkness – The Egyptians feared darkness and their main god was the sun god, Ra, who gave them light.
The death of the firstborn son – Avenged the Hebrew boys that had been murdered by previous Pharaohs.
It was a very interesting story, and I enjoyed reading it. I even learned some things and thought more deeply about some aspects of the Exodus story than I had before.
Young people would enjoy this book and get good exposure to the culture and times of the story of the Exodus. It is a good way to make the Bible come alive. It would make a good read-aloud for the family, too.
Math has always been my weakest subject. I took Advanced Math in high school, but it was VERY challenging. My dad wanted me to be an engineer, so I took classes that would prepare me for that, but when I really thought about it during my Senior year, I realized that I would be a miserable engineer – in all respects of the word “miserable”.
I even made good grades in Math, but the amount of work and time it took, and the level of difficulty and stress it put on me showed me that I would not be happy as an engineer or in any occupation that involved lots of Math.
But enough about me.
What about you?
Are you Math-challenged, too?
What do we do about Math in homeschooling when it is such a difficult subject for us?
I have found some things that have worked for us.
(I am also still searching for good resources for some of my kids because they are all different, and some of them are actually good at Math and enjoy it! 🙂 )
I will share what I have done through the years, and what we are doing now to try to keep Math instruction matched up with what each kid needs.
I teach the basics of counting, 1-to-1 correspondence, addition and subtraction, and such beginning Math concepts, through real-life activities. When a child shows that he understands these concepts I get him his first Math workbook. I get workbooks from Walmart or wherever they sell the School Zone books or other books like that. A new, important concept I have learned about teaching Math is to stress that Math shows us the awesome power of God to hold all things together in the universe so that the operations and Math facts that we have discovered are always true all the time. 1+1 always equals 2, because God holds all things constant, and He keeps even quantities from changing. If you want to learn more about teaching Math biblically, go to Christian Perspective website.
I get workbooks that are right at their level. I don’t try to stretch them because I don’t have the time or energy to try to make them understand something that they’re not ready to learn yet.
I have them go page by page through the book. The books are good at presenting the concepts in a way that my children have been able to understand without any help from me, for the most part.
They work through the books on their own, and I check from time to time to see where they’re at. They know to come to me if they get stuck on something. I check their work every week or every couple of days. The goal is to check it every day and give them feedback right away, but realistically, I don’t get to it every day.
As they get older, I try to get a feel for their Math ability and interest level. I look around for books or online curriculum or computer programs that match the learning style of that child.
In the past, we have used Math-U-See, A Beka (only for Shawn in First and Second Grade because someone gave us the books), Teaching Textbooks, some regular Math books like public schools use, some other software, some Critical Thinking books for my Math lover, and lots of manipulatives. They have also played Math games on the computer like Math Blaster and Clue Finders.
Recently, we have started using Khan Academy online Math classes. It is free, and it has a reward system, and it keeps track of progress, and it does a good job of teaching new concepts. So I have two of my older students working through the Pre-algebra and Algebra courses using Khan Academy.
As you can see, we have used lots of different Math curricula using different teaching styles. We have had some of the books given to us, some of it I won in giveaways online, and a lot of it is not consumable so I can use it for more than one child. We have not really spent too much money on curriculum, in general, through the years, even though we have so many children. The Lord always provides.
I do periodic checks with each child to see where they are, and to make sure that they are making progress and not stuck. I ask them how the program is working for them, if they like it, if it is easy for them to use, if they like the way it teaches, the way it is laid out, etc.
Many times along the way, I have done mini-lessons with a child who is struggling with a particular skill or concept.
The post I wrote about “Teaching Math When It’s Not Your First Language” showed how the Spirit led us to approach Algebra in the case of one of my older children. She learned so much in a short period of time that I was shocked. She learned the basics of Algebra in about an hour. She is proceeding quite well with Khan Academy and has learned higher Math concepts in a quick and easy way. I sit with her sometimes and explain some things while the online teacher is teaching in the video. If she has problems, she comes to me and asks me to do this. She has learned about exponents, in much depth, and is moving on to simplifying radicals, also known as square roots and other roots of numbers.
Now another of my students is using Khan Academy, too. It seems to be working well for both of them.
Another mini-lesson that I wanted to share, so that you can see how the Holy Spirit will lead you even in something as seemingly insignificant or unspiritual as Math, involved teaching about fractions.
My son came to me and said that he was having trouble understanding operations with fractions. He was trying to learn them from his Math-U-See book.
I suddenly thought of the way that a socket set is used for tightening and loosening different sizes of nuts, bolts and other fasteners. They are marked based on the fraction of the 1 inch socket, which is 1 inch in diameter. So we brought the socket set in and looked closely at how they were marked and compared them to each other. We saw the relationships between the sizes of the 3/4″ and the 1/2″ and the 5/8″ and the 7/16″, etc. We looked at how we could add some of them together to equal another fraction.
When I showed him a whole list of equivalent fractions, I saw a light come on.
I wrote 1/2 = 2/4 = 3/6 = 4/8 = 5/10 and then he kept it going on. He continued with 6/12 = 7/14 = 8/16 = 9/18 = 10/20. And he was very excited about it!
Then we did some work with adding and subtracting fractions.
It seemed to be a breakthrough in his understanding of fractions. He learned Fractions in about an hour!
Now they’re not such a mystery to him.
To recap, here are some ways to teach Math to multiple students in an individualized way that capitalizes on their learning styles:
Teach the basics as young ones show readiness.
Make sure to teach them that Math works because God holds the universe together perfectly and consistently, and it’s because of Him that we can quantify and write laws and devise operations and symbols that stand for operations with numbers and they are always true no matter what, throughout the ages.
Get a basic Math book for counting, one-to-one correspondence, beginning addition up to 10 or 12 and either teach subtraction after addition or simultaneously (whatever seems to make sense to the child).
The first book I usually get is a First grade level book.
Match the books or materials to the learning style of each student.
As they get older, let the kids help make the decision and communicate with you about the type of curriculum they like the best and learn from the best.
Teach mini-lessons along the way as needed. Use real-life materials and situations to help him understand a difficult concept or one he’s struggling with.
Stay in touch with them about their progress. Set a goal for how many times a week you intend to check their work. Try to keep them moving along through their book or program. Make sure that they know to come to you if they get stuck.
If you don’t have a good understanding of Math yourself, find something online that will help explain or find a person who could act as a tutor. One of your older children might be able to help with this.
Here are two really good links that show how you can teach Math in real-life ways. Wait until the child really wants or needs to know it.
This is a very interesting TED video:
This is a really good blog post about teaching all the Math a kid will need in 20 hours all together:
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Mother and Child
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
