Keep track of reading by Mark My Time Giveaway

During the Elementary school days of 5th grade and under my girls had to keep track of how many minutes they read out of school for various reason. Several years they competed in City-wide reading programs. Their class and school won several times with the most minutes read. Other times they had to read x amount of minutes to earn class rewards. I always encouraged them to keep track of their own minutes. This promotes responsibility and independence. It is also great for math. You have to teach about how each second turns into a minute and how each minute turns into an hour. I love how math and reading are used together.

When we started homeschooling I carried over the "read for x amount of minutes" each day. They had a log sheet where they wrote down their time as well as what book and how many pages read. This is our 4th year homeschooling and we no longer use the "read for x amount of minutes" log sheet. All three of my girls are independent readers. They have been for many years. The log was used to make sure that they gave time to reading each day. They have established early reading habits and now that habit doesn't need timed.

The joy of homeschooling is that you can read a novel for 1 hour during the school day if you choose to do so. You can go to the Library for hours at a time instead of 15 minutes once a week. Reading is like learning to ride a bicycle. With books, you start when you are young by your parents reading to you, giving you board books to look at, and books on CD to listen to during play time. This is done over and over. Your parents, siblings, teachers still read to you but you pick up the books on your own and start the reading CD on your own. Before you know it, you are saying the words in the book by memory and by word recognition. You still make up stories by looking at the picture. A time comes where you begin reading all the words around you including the ones from out the window of the car. Over time you still love being read to and still need to be read to but you begin reading to others. This is the time your training wheels get sold in the garage sale or passed down to a younger sibling.

It all starts at the beginning. Take time to foster reading habits with your children. Find out what the school is doing and carry that over into your home. If you homeschool make that a big part of your day.

If you have a kiddo who doesn't like to read then help her find a book on a subject she enjoys. If she loves dogs then find her books on dogs to read. If she loves cartoons then find books on cartoons. Does she love telling jokes? Give her new material by finding joke books. Our policy was that reading had to be done daily. Set a timer for 5 minutes and read. Then increase the timer to 10 minutes. Over time the timer will be forgotten but the reading is being done. That again goes with the learning to ride a bike analogy. The biggest thing you can do as a parent is to make sure you are reading too! Kids follow your lead. It takes time but it will happen.

I'm offering a MARK MY TIME Timer for a giveaway in our Tweet For Literacy giveaway!
Click to get details!

Tweet For Literacy Giveaway Prize Pack 1 WINNER

@sixcents_aw You've won the 1st prize pack from #Tweet4Lit. Please DM me your email addy to @LindaThieman within 3 days to accept! Congrats!

Prize Package One
A Guardian Angel Publishing Gift Pack ($55 Value) with the following titles:
Jamie's Dream by Susan Berger and Christopher Corbin
Color Me Happy! by Sally M. Harris (autographed)
A Horse of Course by Shari Lyle-Soffe (autographed)
Earthquake by Susan Berger
The Sum of Our Parts: No Bones About It by Bill Kirk
Plus, Aurora of the Northern Lights by Holly Hardin (autographed -- an $18.95 value), the delightful Christmas-themed picture book by one of our Tweet for Literacy sponsors.

Click here to see Prize Package Two and enter to win!

Tweet For Literacy Giveaway Prize Pack 1

Our Motto: “The family that reads together has a lot of fun!” Our goal is to empower children and teens, especially girls, who are so often overlooked. We also seek to teach tolerance and self-acceptance through reading and through family interaction.

The Tweet for Literacy Giveaway is a campaign designed to raise awareness of the importance of involving the whole family in a child’s reading activities. Tweet for Literacy will be giving away literacy-related prizes every two days throughout the month of November in honor of National Family Literacy Month. Help a child to read, and let the fun begin!

How to Enter the Tweet for Literacy Giveaways
Step 1: Follow our 7 sponsors on Twitter. This step is required. We will all follow you back!

http://twitter.com/susieqtpies (ME!!!)
http://twitter.com/lindathieman
http://twitter.com/ccmalandrinos
http://twitter.com/cafeofdreams
http://twitter.com/hollyhardin
http://twitter.com/sherikayehoff
http://twitter.com/nicole_odell

Step 2: Re-tweet (RT) any post about the giveaway. Use the hashtag #Tweet4Lit on each RT. Be sure to add the bit.ly URL link for this contest page.
Sample Entry Re-tweets (use these or use your own just make sure you include hashtag #Tweet4Lit and link to my blog http://bit.ly/tCSIM)

RT @susieqtpies Tweet for Literacy is giving away 12 prize sets and a grand prize thru Nov Enter here http://bit.ly/tCSIM #Tweet4Lit

Step 3: That’s it! See the Official Rules below.

Prize Package One (winner picked Nov. 8th 6pm CT)
A Guardian Angel Publishing Gift Pack ($55 Value) with the following titles:
Jamie's Dream by Susan Berger and Christopher Corbin
Color Me Happy! by Sally M. Harris (autographed)
A Horse of Course by Shari Lyle-Soffe (autographed)
Earthquake by Susan Berger
The Sum of Our Parts: No Bones About It by Bill Kirk
Plus, Aurora of the Northern Lights by Holly Hardin (autographed -- an $18.95 value), the delightful Christmas-themed picture book by one of our Tweet for Literacy sponsors.

Check back here daily as we will continue to update the list of prizes.
Official Rules
You can re-enter as many times as you like. Prizes are awarded every 2 days starting on November 8. First day to enter is November 6, 2009. Last day to enter is November 30. A prize package will be awarded on each even day of the month. Each prize package will be a set of items that are literacy related. See below for specific information on prizes.

The name of the winner will be selected at random and will be drawn at approximately 6pm CT. The winner will have 3 days to respond. If we don’t hear from the winner, we will select another winner for that prize package. We will notify our 13 winners by Direct Message (DM) on Twitter.

Whereas you can enter as often as you like, if you are not following all 7 sponsors on Twitter, which will be verified, your entries will be disqualified. All entries that comply with the above rules will be valid for each drawing, including the Grand Prize. The Grand Prize will be awarded on December 1, 2009.

Open to residents of the U.S. only. Must be 18 years old to enter.

If you have any questions or comments about the giveaway, please contact Linda Thieman at blog (at) katieandkimble (dot) com.

Twitter Twub: #tweet4lit

Twitter Twub: #tweet4lit

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5 Tips to Help Your Child Develop Natural Gifts

Five Tips to Help Your Child Develop Their Natural Gifts
By Rafe Esquith

Author of Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World

It'd be nice if there was a secret I could tell you about how to instantly make your kids more successful in school and life. But there is no magic pill, only that old stand-by, hard work. And the funny thing about that is, you can't force kids to work hard. I suppose you could try, but I've rarely seen anything useful come from kids whose parents had to hold their noses to the grindstone. If there's something close to a secret, perhaps it's this: Kids work hard when they want to work hard, and this happens only when are motivated to do so by some positive internal goal, and not by fear or because they are worried about disappointing others. They work hard because they value hard work. Instilling kids with values like this is the first step the long road to real success.

But that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do to make this happen. Here are five ways to put your kids on the path to extraordinary:

Toot Your Own Horn. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you I sound like a broken record when it comes to spreading the gospel of music education. Put simply, every child should play an instrument, and parents should make whatever sacrifices are necessary to put a flute, trumpet, guitar, or tuba in their kid's hands. I don't have room here to list all the valuable skills that playing music can help develop, but one of the most important is the ability to listen to others: to make great music, a child must learn to pay attention to what others are playing. Doing so improves focus and teaches a valuable lesson about collaboration.

Be the Example. We've probably all seen a parent yelling at her kids to be quiet and perhaps chuckled to ourselves about the mixed signals sent by this gesture. It seems like an easy lesson: for kids to understand why things are important, you have to be consistent. But this isn't just situational advice. Kids mirror parents and adults in far more depth than we often realize. They internalize our values by watching what we do, which is why it's essential that we live the way we want them to live. We can stress the importance of being on time until we're blue in the face, but if we're constantly late to pick them up from school, that's what they're going to remember.

Great Books are Great for a Reason. Kids have two backpacks: the physical one they carry their books in, and the mental backpack where they store all the lessons and experiences they'll use to help make decisions. A paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird won't take up much room in the first one, but the wisdom contained within this book can be carried in the mental backpack for a lifetime. There are lessons here about choosing generosity over selfishness, making the right choice even when it's the difficult one, and standing up for your beliefs. I also recommend Thornton Wilder's fantastic play Our Town, and anything by Shakespeare (important note: kids are never too young for Shakespeare). A kid with a library card has the world at her fingertips, and when parents read with her, they can serve as map to help make sense of that world.

Do Unto Others. Volunteering is a great way to build character and teach values while making an important contribution to the community. Working at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, visiting an elderly person at a retirement home on a regular basis, or planting trees and helping to beautify your town are all great ways to help kids learn about the importance of selflessness and humility. I know several families who volunteer together on a holiday schedule: on each day off, they pick a different activity and spend a few hours volunteering together. This way, parents get to be the example, reinforcing the positive message.

Patience, My Dears. In today's on-demand world, kids are taught that anything worth having can be had instantly. This is an incredibly bad lesson, and parents must work to counteract this by instilling kids with patience and focus -- the skills that will let them buckle down to achieve the truly great things that invariably take much time and effort. I've found that gardening is an excellent choice when it comes to teaching patience. Kids see that reaching their goal is a slow process, one that requires dedicated care and attention at every phase. And since they get to watch their garden grow as they tend to it, they learn that the real pleasure is in the process (though ripe tomatoes are certainly also a pleasure, and tasty!).

You may have noticed that most of these "success" tips don't have anything to do with school. That's because making kids extraordinary people is the first step toward making them extraordinary students. All follows from values and character, and in working to instill these, you'll create kids that you -- and the rest of the community and country -- can be proud of.

©2009 Rafe Esquith, author of Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World

Author Bio
Rafe Esquith, author of Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World, has taught at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles for twenty-four years. He is the only teacher to have been awarded the president's National Medal of the Arts. His many other honors and awards include the American Teacher Award, Parents magazine's As You Grow Award, Oprah Winfrey's Use Your Life Award, and People magazine's Heroes Among Us Award. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Barbara Tong.

For more information, please visit www.hobartshakespeareans.or

Pumpkin and Ghost Brownies

This week I saw a really cute recipe for Pumpkin colored brownies on The Frugal Girls.com. I posted the link to share with my Facebook friends. Some pointed out that that was a lot of added coloring! My Facebook friend, Lisa, over at Retro Housewive Goes Green said "Having asthma I can't do yellow dye #5 and I seem to have issues with blue dyes. Plus they are linked to all kinds of health issues (lots are banned in other countries). She gave me a link to find natural dyes over at the Natural Candy Store.

I do understand about all the dye. These homemade pumpkins really do look yummy?Again these belong to The Frugal Girls.com so click picture to visit!

My daughter and I decided for school that we would make some. We chose to do GHOST so not to use all the food coloring. She also wanted to make pumpkins and decided to just use the white butter cream frosting on them too!

Here is our quick recipe makeover:

*Make your favorite brownies into a 9 X 13 pan.

*When cooled use your cookie cutters. Try to fit each piece in tight to not waste any brownies! We were able to get 12 cut-outs.

*We made buttercream frosting. Do this while the brownies are cooling. You can also buy frosting.

*Once cooled and cut out then frost and EAT! We do not like gobs of frosting so we lightly frosted ours.

Wordless Wednesday

Need more Wordless Wednesday? Got to 5 Minutes for Mom or MomDot to link up!

CurrClick offers Online Guitar Lessons

Million Minute Family Challenge update

Are you in the Million Minute Family Challenge?
120,211 total minutes for the challenge! Our CrAzY gAmErS group has logged 3,025 minutes and in 10th place so far!

Million Minute Family Challenge is to provide a simple but fun way for family and friends to enjoy the benefits of board games. The challenge runs from Sept. 1st- December 31st. This is their 9th year! It isn't too late to join in the fun! Just go get your family/group registered! Every minute counts!

What do you need to do? Minimum they are wanting every team to commit to playing a game for at least 20 minutes between September and December and record their time on the website. How can we reach 1 million minutes? They figure if 1,000 families, groups or organizations X 50 states X 20 minutes of game play = 1 million minutes!



We play a lot of games! My husband is a huge player and keeps records and does reviews on Board Game Geek under the name Malacandra!
 

One of our favorite family games in September was FORMULA MOTOR RACING.  This game is known as one of the quickest-playing auto racing games.  I guess that is why I like this game. Within 15-20 minutes you can play one game.  As a family we usually play 3 in a row.  We love the bright multi-colored cars, awesome game board, 12-sided die and quick and easy rules.  The playing cards that you draw tell your move.  Each player gets two cars of the same color and control them for the game.  On your turn you play one card, draw one card.  This card can be used directly for your car to move up or use it to move, shift other cards forward and backward.  The really cool thing to do is move up another car with your car moving up with it.  


We've played this game with ages 8 and up. Fun and fast!


Here are some pictures of our games!

Can you Limerick?

Limerick
(This was posted on The Homeschool Messenger's : Language Diary)

In Caught ya! #29 William Waggish whispered another one of his inimitable limericks. We learned that limericks were invented in 12-century China as a marching ditty for the army.

The form is 5 lines. The first 2 lines and the last line are to have 8 syllables & rhyme and the 3 & 4 lines are to rhyme with 5 syllables. (Information and instructions from Caught Ya!).

We also learned through Wikipedia that the limerick was made popular by:

Edward Lear in his first Book of Nonsense (1845) and a later work (1872) on the same theme. Lear wrote 212 limericks, mostly nonsense verse. It was customary at the time for limericks to accompany an absurd illustration of the same subject, and for the final line of the limerick to be a kind of conclusion, usually a variant of the first line ending in the same word.

(Lear's limericks were often typeset in three or four lines, according to the space available under the accompanying picture.)

The girls got a chance to write their own limerick!
*******************************
My teacher said to write this trick,
But I never knew what to pick.
So I thought and thought,
Unsure what'd be taught
And now I have this limerick.
******************************
On this white canvas I shall paint,
With colors that will try to taint,
Colors I can say,
Will be used today,
While I use this canvas to paint.
*****************************
Thanks girls you did great!

Now it is your turn! Can you do it? Post one for fun! Teach it to your kiddos and come back here and post!

Subway Random Acts of Fitness For Kids

Subway has a new promo going called Random Acts of Fitness For Kids! They are wanting to help teachers to get their kids fit!!

If you are a teacher/home-educator, you can request a free Get Fit for the Fun of It! Kit from Subway. They will send you health and fitness information! Sign up HERE!!!

While you are there check out their Classroom news and Activities links!

Banned Books Awareness Week

(I posted this on The Homeschool Reading Diary)

I never realized that there were "banned" books until I was in 11th grade. My Lit teacher told us that we were going to read classical books that were not on the banned list but we could read books on the banned list on our own outside of class! I asked after class what were "banned" books because I had no clue! I would have loved to have had access to the Internet at that time because I would have Googled "banned books."
I just heard that there is Banned Books Awareness Week, September 26- October 3. This is what Half Price Books has to say about this week: Speak freely. Write candidly. Read endlessly. Celebrate your First Amendment rights during Banned Books Awareness Week, September 26 - October 3. And remember that Half Price Books buys and sells anything ever printed or recorded, including banned and challenged books. We applaud the courageous authors who open our eyes to controversial topics.

Here is a list of the top 100 banned books as listed by 100bannedbooks .

1. 1984 by George Orwell

2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) by Mark Twain

3. Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

4. Age of Reason by Thomas Paine

5. Andersonville (1955) by MacKinlay Kantor

6. Animal Farm by George Orwell

7. 1001 Arabian Nights by Geraldine McCaughrean

8. As I Lay Dying (1932) by William Faulkner

9. The Bastard by John Jakes

10. Beloved by Toni Morrison

11. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

12. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya

13. Blubber by Judy Blume

14. Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

15. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

16. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

17. Call of the Wild by Jack London

18. Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce

19. Candide by Voltaire

20. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

21. Carrie by Stephen King

22. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

23. Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger

24. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

25. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

26. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

27. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

28. Color Purple by Alice Walker

29. Confessions by JeanbyJacques Rousseau

30. Christine by Stephen King

31. Cujo by Stephen King

32. Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen

33. Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite

34. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck

35. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

36. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

37. Decameron by Boccaccio

38. Dubliners by James Joyce

39. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

40. Fallen Angels by Walter Myers

41. Fanny Hill by John Cleland

42. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

43. Forever by Judy Blume

44. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

45. The Goats by Brock Cole

46. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

47. Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck

48. Grendel by John Champlin Gardner

49. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

50. Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

51. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

52. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

53. Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

54. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

55. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman

56. House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

57. Howl by Allen Ginsberg

58. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

59. I Have to Go by Robert Munsch

60. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

61. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

62. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

63. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

64. King Lear by William Shakespeare

65. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

66. The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks

67. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

68. Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov

69. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

70. Lysistrata by Aristophanes

71. Macbeth by William Shakespeare

72. Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

73. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

74. Monk by Matthew Lewis

75. Native Son by Richard Wright

76. Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad

77. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

78. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

79. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

80. Ordinary People by Judith Guest

81. Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin

82. Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective

83. Portnoy's Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth

84. Private Parts by Howard Stern

85. Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

86. Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

87. Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

88. Separate Peace by John Knowles

89. Silas Marner by George Eliot

90. SlaughterhousebyFive by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

91. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

92. Sons & Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

93. The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman

94. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

95. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

96. Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

97. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

98. Ulysses by James Joyce

99. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

100. Wrinkle in Time byMadeleine L'Engle

I found a great site that goes into why books are banned. Go to Delete Censorship for more information. Some books stay on the list. Others get added or deleted over time.

Motivation to ban a book stems from an individual feeling that their family values, religion, political views and or minority rights are being threatened. From there they just gather supporters and up it climbs the chain to get it banned. If you don't like the book for whatever reason then don't read it. Simple as that. FYI- The Harry Potter Books are the #1 most challenged books of the 21st century!


My opinion is that as a mother there might be books that I do not want my children to read. I do not feel a need to impose that on every child in America. As I looked over this list I see may books my daughters have already read. Some of the books on the list we are reading for High School Literature! This is something we will be discussing as we read and study together.