Beautifully Poor

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The Tunnels  by  Greg Mitchell  brings light into a dark time in history, one I knew little about. We all know about WWII and Hitler, but what about the aftermath on Germany? I know for myself, I never was taught much about the Berlin Wall and I never researched it. Sadly, all I knew about it was that it was taken down. History shouldn't be forgotten if you ask me and I was very intrigued with this book, just by the cover. Greg Mitchell  does an amazing job with the research that went into writing  The Tunnels   . Do you like pictures in books? This has a small section in the middle with pictures of this piece of history. I love how it puts faces to names and places in the book itself. It makes it come more alive. One of my favorite parts about the book itself is that none of it is made up. It says in the very beginning that it is created from historical records and people who participated in the events or actually witnessed them. Now that is a non...

By Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14609082 To many of us, St Patrick's Day is a day of celebrating all things green and drinking...a LOT. Green beer, green hair, green clothes; the list goes on. But does anyone really know who Saint Patrick was? What is his story? Today for school I decided to find out, because sadly, I had no clue. Here is what I found: Saint Patrick was a slave, starting in the year 395 AD at the age of 16, and it lasted for 6 years until the Lord set him free. This part of the story is very intriguing, because he was a young man who had been introduced to Christianity by his grandfather but never took it serious, until he was in the bonds of slavery. He grew close to God out there in the fields with his sheep, talking to Him in his loneliness and in the midst of all the pain. He came from a wealthy family of a tax collector so had never known want until he was captured by the Irish and enslaved by ...

I am always looking for fun things to do around the city, whether it be cultural, educational or just plain fun. One of the most recent Fun and Educational things I have found is  Kidcreate Studio   - not just any art studio, but somewhere that children can express themselves through their own creations. My son and I participated in a Thanksgiving Craft Party class and had so much fun! The kids made their own clay turkey - just in time for Thanksgiving - as well as some Goo Gunk, which was a fun science lesson. The class was led by Kendra, along with her helper Linnea. Upon walking in, the atmosphere was bright and happy. Kendra was extremely welcoming to the parents and their kids, which is a great way to set any environment for learning. She started us off by having the kids sit on a mat while she went over the simple and easy to follow rules of the class and introduced us to Ferdinand, her clay turkey (who was just adorable!). As an ode to Thanksgiving, sh...

One of our favorite things this year in the homeschooling world is our group, Field Trip Friday. We have done a few cool things already with our group, but so far our favorite was visiting Carlson's Llovable Llama Farm . Located in Waconia, MN, it is just West of the Twin Cities and was well worth the drive! As you can see in the above picture, Benjamin thoroughly enjoyed himself. We started off with an info session with proud owner and operator Rick Carlson. I have never heard someone so passionate about what they do and the love he has for each and every Llama he owns. I cannot remember the exact amount of years Rick and Joan have been doing this, but it has been for quite some time. The Llama's and Alpaca's on their farm are very well taken care of and extremely friendly. One interesting fact we learned was that they make good guard animals. Who knew that Llama's would go after a bear if necessary to protect what they are put in charge ...

When I started this homeschooling adventure I really had no idea what I was in for. I still wonder if the decision I made is the correct one, but will keep pressing on as I feel it is right for him and will be the best for him in regards to education. For those that do this with multiple children, kudos. It can be hectic and last week between work and homeschooling along with the normal duties of a housewife, I thought I was going to go crazy! It really was a fun experience though and by the end of the week we were getting the hang of balancing work and school and Benjamin was flying through the work I had for him. So Friday night when I was preparing this week's homework I wanted to try to make it a little more challenging so we started working on plurals in phonics as well as reading and comprehension. It looks so good on paper! Then today came. Monday. The dreaded first day of the week. After a wonderful family weekend of catching up on housework and exploring Minneap...

Just like most of you, school started today in our home! This is my first year homeschooling and first day EVER homeschooling so today was slightly scary for both of us! It turned out much better than I expected. As you can see from the top picture, Benjamin was pretty unamused this morning with the whole gig of a picture but by the end of the day he was much better at understanding what was going on. At 4 years old the whole concept of school let alone homeschool is kind of far off, especially for him. Since we moved to Minnesota February of 2014 he has been home with me as I taught him preschool. We had bad experiences with the public school system back in Michigan and it broke my heart to hear my 3 year old say he wasn't good enough. Not the outlook I EVER want my child to have about himself.  This year I made the choice to homeschool because he isn't old enough for public school (his birthday being in November and the cutoff is September 1st) and I wanted to kn...

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