Ramblings...

Here is what you need to survive with no power:

Large bottles of water

A candle addiction

LED lanterns and a few flashlights

A gas grill with a full propane tank

An almost empty fridge

Random canned good items

A good breeze

Board games

Ingenuity and an Imagination

We made it through Typhoon Songda with plenty of stories to tell the grandkids one day.

Don’t forget Giveaway #1!! The click is winding down for it.

Our walls are concerte and all the doors are metal so we can use the paint anywhere outside!

Once done with your outdoor fun, you can store it in an airtight container *just add water if it begins to dry out*.

Plan this activity to coincide with an upcoming rainy day, and Mother Nature will clean off your sidewalk/patio for you!

Copyright(c)2011 Rayven Holmes

I mentioned a few times here that we do SpiralScouts at home, I’ve even discussed starting a Circle *we currently have a Hearth due to it just being our family taking part*. We have various badges we are working towards, but the main ones are part of the Wheel Of The Year series, which requires learning about the Pagan Sabbats.

I wasn’t 100% sure as to how to tackle teaching the boys the Sabbats, and so I went searching online for things to help teach them. I came across a few books online through Amazon, but they were clearly for parents who were Pagan/Wiccan and raising their children as such. Which doesn’t work for us, so I formulated a plan. I knew what I wanted, I knew what I wanted to get out of it, so I just went ahead and made it myself.

The Waldorf Homeschooling Method mentions “Main Lesson or Good Books”, but these are something to be made by the child as a way to keep track of their work. The “books” I made could be seen as similar since they will hold work the kids will do *or have done*, but they already hold the knowledge I want them to learn *hence the name Knowledge Books*, and they were made by me, not the boys. If we update them *which depends on them being affective first off* then I’ll probably let the boys take over in the creating department.

I set off making the first Wheel of the Year book, and as I was doing it, it hit me that I could do the same thing with our winter holidays as well. This would allow for all the information to be in one spot, and the boys will have something lightweight, full of info, and readily available as we work through the December holidays. So after I got through the knowledge books for the Wheel of the Year, I tackled the winter holidays.

I’m really considering making other ones for the other holidays that take place throughout the year, possibly one that focuses on patriotic holidays *The 4th, Flag Day, Memorial Day, and Veteran’s Day*, then one for the other holidays that are scattered throughout the year. Put I’ll see how this work for us. So you want to see what they look like? Ok here you go!


Each “book” is made out of a 3-pronged folder in the boys’ favorite colors. All images were acquired though a simple search of online images. I would just plug in what I was looking for “Wheel of the Year”, “Santa Claus”, etc., and then scan through the results until I found images that I liked.

Wheel Of The Year Knowledge Books



Winter Holidays Knowledge Books

On the inside of each book are markers so we can easily find the holiday we are covering.


They will most likely be temporary since they are just post-it markers and aren’t built for a lot of pulling, over even general wear and tear. Not sure just yet what I will use on the ends as tabs, any ideas are welcomed though!


For each holiday there is an image that ties into the holiday glued onto cardstock, and then on the back of the cardstock I glued a little write-up of the history for each holiday. I found the histories doing a basic search, the Pagan Sabbats info came from Proud To Be Pagan, and the Christmas info in particular came from the History Channel website *LOVE that channel and their website*.


The images for the Sabbats books were found online, they were images from a calendar dating back to around 2007. They were perfect for the book and I’m so glad I found them.


On the inside of the Sabbats books I placed another Wheel of the Year image since it mentions the various names that the Sabbats go by.


I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out, the next goal for these "books" is to fill them with activities the boys can do to further their knowledge. The “books” took a couple of weeks to finish, due to running out of some supplies *the sheet protectors, card stock, and glue sticks*, as well as having a mile long list of other things I needed to accomplish at the same time. But, all in all the project was fairly easy.


Curious as to where I’ll be getting some of the things I will be filling these “books” with?


Well there is Pooka Pages, which I used to discuss Mabon back in September. There is tons of stuff there that is all kid based and makes learning about the Sabbats fun. Proud To Be Pagan KIDS has some fun useful stuff like recipes, which we will probably do and then add pictures of our creations to our “books” along with the recipes for future reference.

As for the winter holidays, I’ll probably use Enchanted Learning printouts, the library, and various things (printouts, activities, recipes, crafts, books, etc.) I’ve collected over the past few years since discussing winter holidays is a yearly thing in our home. The only holiday that has me stumped is HumanLight. It is fairly new, but it is a Humanist holiday and more inline with our family’s beliefs and practices. So I wanted to teach the boys about it, and potentially have it be a holiday we actively take part in. But finding things to go with it is proving difficult. I guess I’ll just have to be a bit creative on that one.


So for more information you can checkout the following sites:

Pooka Pages

Proud To Be Pagan, and for the KIDS

History Of Christmas

History of Hanukkah

Kwanzaa Official Website

Humanlight Official Website

Copyright(c)2010 Rayven Holmes

For this month in our science learning we are covering the Earth’s structure, some simple plate tectonics, as well as some features *like volcanoes, mountains, etc.*, and of course earthquakes. During our co-op activities we discussed Earthquake safety and how earthquakes happen.

We also did a fun little experiment I’m going to share with you all. It’s really simple, but tons of fun to do.

First gather your supplies.

You will need:

(These are what connect your marshmallows in your building(s), I highly recommend the toothpicks that are round with the pointy ends. I was only able to get my hands on the flat squared ones, they get the job done, but I think the sharper ones would have worked easier with less breakage.)

Paper towels

(You will build your buildings on these, it allows for easier clean-up, and ensures you don’t pick up whatever is on the top of the table if you happen to be working somewhere other than your home or the home of a friend. A sheet long enough to catch the building if it falls should suffice (about 2-3 sheets long)).

And lastly, Two Tables (The tables will create your fault line, and of course your earthquake *with a little help*).

Now that you have your supplies let the kids loose to create whatever kind of building they want. The goal is to try and build something that could withstand an earthquake.

Once everyone has put the final touches on their marshmallow buildings, set up your “town”. Then make sure everything else is removed from the table especially any breakables. Have everyone step back and then begin the EARTHQUAKE. Moving the tables back and forth against each other did the trick, and my arms got a little workout in the process so it was all good.

After the earthquake assess who still has a building and who is literally picking up the pieces. With an older crowd you can then go into why they think certain buildings were able to withstand the earthquake. *What was different about the way they made their buildings compared to other buildings, how close were they to the fault line? Did any of the buildings closest to the fault line withstand the earthquake? If they did why do you think they did? And so on*.

For a younger group we found they enjoyed clean up the most. Either way it was all good fun, and the kids got to see first hand what happens to buildings in an earthquake. While all of these kids have lived through a number of quakes here, it is a completely different experience when you are creating it in a classroom and when your bedroom is shaking.

I think it is safe to say they preferred the marshmallow building quake more.

*Just a heads up for those with smaller children: We found it necessary to monitor the little ones while they were taking apart/eating their buildings, since the squared toothpicks were easily breakable they would break in the marshmallows upon dismantling. And of course kids being kids, they still attempted to eat them without looking first. Both mommies got sticky fingers from toothpick removable, but thankfully no one ate any toothpick pieces. Just something you should be on the lookout for if you do this activity with smaller children. And another reason I highly recommend trying this with the sharper/stronger toothpicks. *

Copyright(C) 2010 Rayven Holmes

As part of my tweaking last week I redid our learning poster. I got the idea for a learning poster from Brightly Beaming Resources, but haven’t stuck to it very well. Hopefully with these changes I can actually stick to it. The poster was originally designed to go with Brightly Beaming’s Prep Curriculum, but I wasn’t really feeling it. I did like having a letter to focus on weekly, as well as the shape/color/number learning. I just needed to do it in a way that works for us.

So here is the original poster:




And here is the revised one:



I’ve gotten rid of the weekly theme, vocabulary word, and nursery rhyme. Instead of those we have our weekly poem, and our monthly virtue. Along with the virtue there is a weekly quote, the quote won’t always tie into the virtue, instead it would act more as food for thought. This learning poster will be for both boys to use as well *unlike the previous learning poster*.

I’ve dropped the letter of the week and have made a phonics section. It will feature a weekly letter for Child #2, but we will be focusing on the letter sound as well. I found these awesome phonics cards at our base bookstore. On the front they have the letter *upper and lower case* along with a picture of items that have that letter sound, then on the back there is a list of words with that sound as well.

For Child #1 I’m using the combination cards, which also feature words on the back that he has to read to me each day. To further help Child #2 learn the letter sounds and recognize words I’ve also added the words to a small dry erase board. He reads them with us every morning to help him hear the weekly sound in the words, and of course get a jump on the reading process.

I use to do this with Child #1 as well, we kept the small board on our front door, and before we left the house we would read the words. The words would either have the same letter sound or they would belong together some how *like family members, or rooms in a house, etc.*.

Also on the board is a math section. I’m going to alternate every week between numbers, colors, and shapes for Child #2. For Child #1 I made sheets with addition and subtraction facts on them, and he has to read a new sheet everyday.

So far the poster is working out great. The boys enjoy doing each piece, and Child #1 really loves reading the words with his brother. He gets to help his little brother learn while showing off what he is capable of doing, and while they are busy at work with their learning poster I can actually get breakfast cooked. It’s great!

I mentioned previously that we are learning about ancient Egypt in history. In order to keep with my full immersion in the time period idea, we *more like I* made traditional Egyptian kilts for the boys to wear. They will wear these *as well as some Egyptian style jewelry* on our Egyptian day, but I thought today would be a great day to make them and discuss traditional Egyptian clothing.

Now traditionally Child #1 and Child #2 wouldn’t wear clothing, since Egyptian children didn’t wear clothing. Of course while they might enjoy this, I prefer they actually wear something instead of running around with their manhood hanging out.





So to start the Egyptian kilts we pulled out some old sheer curtains that are no longer useful, due to our move and the windows being much larger than the ones at our previous house. Child #2 ran around with one on his head while saying he was a ghost, meanwhile Child #1 gathered the rest of our supplies *tape measurer, scissors, and a pencil*.

After getting all the supplies in order we had to cut the large piece of fabric down to 36x18.

Then we had to cut off 6 inches from one side to use as an apron after the kilt was finished. Afterwards, I warped the fabric around Child #1 to ensure that there wasn’t too much extra fabric. Once we did the test fit, I pulled it off and finished up the kilt.

I measured 6 inches in on both sides, then I cut up the sides in a curve shape *not that great of a curve…but it’s close enough*.

I was reading the other day over at Finding the Fantastic in Everyday Learning about making a homeschooling crest. I thought to myself for a minute should I do it…and then before I knew it my mind was racing with ideas. So of course I did it. First I had to decide on a mascot. What would best fit our family? I figured it would be pointless to ask the boys to make this decision since, they will one day realize that Spongebob and Anpanman really aren’t as cool as they are to them now. So what would stick with us as a mascot? Well I decided on dragons. My husband has collected dragon statues/figurines for years. They fill our bedroom, and a lot of the items we purchase if there is a dragon option we are going to get that one.

So it made sense for our homeschooling crest to have them, since if we had the money *and the space* they would be EVERYWHERE in *and outside* our home. The boys love them as well, so it was a win/win situation. After deciding which mascot we would have, I plugged in “dragon crest”, found a template, and set off altering it to fit our needs. I left the dragons red from the template, since they looked cool, and worked well with what was floating around in my head. Then I made the black background, the blue oval which got rid of a lot of extra little details from the template that didn’t work with my wanted end result.

Then there was the shield to fill in, after tweaking the colors, making sure the basic outline and colors worked I added an Earth to the center of the shield since the world is literally our classroom. Afterwards I added our school name: Holmes Schooling *it’s on everything we have that is school related because back when I was thinking of a school name I thought how clever our name is close to homeschooling…and we are homeschooling*. Corny? Perhaps, but it was the only thing I could think of, and it’s pretty simple, self explanatory; and most importantly we like it.

After all that I had to find our motto…it was pretty easy to come up with “It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey” I think that sums up our life in more ways than one. I picked Japanese as the language for our motto, because we reached the decision to homeschool once we got to this country. I had been thinking about homeschooling before we left, but The Spouse wasn’t for it. It wasn’t until we got here that he came on board and we officially started our homeschooling journey. So this country is very important to us, on so many levels as well.

Finally, I thought the shield needed a little something else, so I added the Latin words for Live, Laugh, Love. That put the final touches on our homeschooling crest. It symbolizes us to the fullest, at the top is our family name, the name that shows we are a unit. Our name is flanked by the mythical creatures we enjoy, whose power we find alluring and mysterious. We balance our nomadic world traveling lifestyle with laughter and lots of love. And lastly we embrace the journey that we are on, because it is what will continue to shape us for the rest of our lives.

Like our crest? Want one of your own? Well head over to Finding the Fantastic in Everyday Learning to find out the how-to’s on homeschooling crest! Once you have your crest made then you can head over to CafePress and upload your image. From there you can have it put on t-shits, coffee mugs, thermal cups, tote bags, you name it and you can put it there!

All homeschoolers are accustomed to DIY *Do-It-Yourself* projects at some point in time. They tend to be cheaper, easier, and just as affective.

Well this week I did a little DIY project, which was very successful. All I needed was a piece of printer paper, some crayons, and our Sweet Treats Counters.

I took the paper and made patterns in some of the colors represented in our Sweet Treats Counters.

Then I let Child #2 at it. First by sorting the colors, then having fun with his patterns.

Quick, Easy, and Free. What more could a homeschooler ask for?!