Candy Bar Salad - Making Disaster Delicious

I just have to share a recipe. It's so simple and so yummy and just what we needed today to go with our cheap cardboard-flavored pizza. You see, my house is--literally--a disaster area. 

This is what happens when your dishwasher leaks slowly enough that you don't know it's happening, but with enough water that it damages everything in your kitchen, and even the floors in your dining room.

I currently have no kitchen sink or counters, but still have some hungry teen-aged boys to feed. I also have some trees loaded with apples needing eaten or preserved, so I'm trying to consume a lot of apples in simple ways, but with some variety so we don't get totally sick of eating apples. I made this with a plastic knife and spoon, sitting outside at my aluminum foil-covered picnic table.

Candy Bar Salad

10 medium apples, cored and cut up in bite-sized pieces

1 container of whipped topping

2 regular Snickers bars, chopped into little pieces

Mix it all together and enjoy. (Disposable bowls for me right now!) Perfect for an autumn lunch!

Seeds

RED!

Oh, how I love autumn! I appreciate each season for every individual delight and couldn't live without any one of them, but I do have an especial fondness for autumn. 

I also love the color red. Just as I like every season, I also like every color; there isn't a color that doesn't have a time and place where it is just right and a delight to my senses, but I do find red speaking to me quite often.

So, the perfect way to welcome and celebrate the official arrival of autumn was to get out in the mountain foliage bursting with both red leaves and red fish. The return of the salmon is always an awesome sight!

Teach Your Children!

The Celebration on the Family continues for just a few more days. I am the guest blogger today at We Talk of Christ We Rejoice in Christ.  Hop on over there to read 

"Goodly Parents Teach."

Fun with U.S. Geography

In between our larger units of Early American History (Pre-Columbus through Constitution) and United States History (Constitution through Present Day) we are doing a unit on United States Geography. 

We began by memorizing the names of the states in alphabetical order with the song "Fifty Nifty" until everyone could just sit down and quickly write out all the states alphabetically. 

Then we watched this beautiful video. I thought the narration a bit hokey and lacking, and I wish they'd have done their map segments better, but the real value of this video is the breathtaking views of vastly different parts of the nation. Of course, it doesn't show everything, but there is a good variety and it really was beautiful.

After watching the video I gave everyone two blank maps of the United States (with state lines drawn) and we did a little pretest to see how many states they could label. The goal is obviously to be able to correctly and entirely fill in a map at the end of the unit. The other map was for them to color in every state they have visited. We've been blessed to be able to travel to quite a bit of the country, so it was fun for them to see just how many of the states they have been to.

I have a few different wooden and jigsaw puzzles of the United States, so those have been pulled out and done and referenced often throughout the unit.

The games were and are a big hit. Sequence is a fun game with a strategic component to it and the States & Capitals version lends itself to helping kids learn their state capitals at the same time. I made a rule that when playing a card, the state and capital must be said aloud for reinforcement.

The biggest hit and most favorite activity of all is the game Scrambled States of America. I cannot say enough good things about this game. My kids are playing it all the time and can't get enough of it. Not only does this game help with geography, it also reinforces things like directions, vowels, syllables, attention to detail, and requires quick thinking all while being crazy fun.

An indispensable resource, I think, is Audio Memory's States & Capitals Songs CD. Music really sticks with you and makes it so much easier to memorize things. I have some very musical kids and they love challenging themselves with the quiz songs to see if they can get their geography right. Because they'd played the games and gotten familiar with states and capitals, this reinforced those while giving them a place to put them geographically on a map and a way to memorize locations. 

One more tool for reinforcement and matching was Penguin Hop at Arcademics.

The kids are each also creating a notebook of U.S. geography. 

Book 5 of Draw. Write. Now. works on handwriting and drawing skills while teaching the order in which the continent was settled and states formed, while giving a little history, too.

I like Evan Moor's "Maps of the USA" for focusing on each individual state's geography and basic state information as well as giving regional maps of climates, time zones, etc. The kids color the maps, look up how the flags, state birds and flowers should be colored, and also look up current populations since this was published in 2004.

Then, because my family just loves hidden pictures, we also have a page of them for every state. The items to find are all things that are important to or culturally significant to each state.

Also for each state, every child reads the pages in some compilation books we have (Scholastic's Atlas of the United States, Wish You Were Here - Emily's Guide to the 50 States, and National Geographic Picture Atlas of the Fifty States) and makes a list of 10 facts unique to that state that they learned in the reading.

As you can see, I've used several resources, some of which seem to overlap. I've done that on purpose. Encountering the same information in multiple places in a variety of formats is great reinforcement, yet it keeps it from getting too boring, and helps kids make connections. It also caters to different learning styles. Except for playing games together, this unit is largely an independent one that the kids have enjoyed working through systematically.

Family IS Real Life

I hope you've been reading and enjoying all the wonderful articles on The Family: A Proclamation to the World as much as I have. Even as passionate as I have always been about it, I am learning from others' thoughts and finding new things to think about through the the Celebration this year. 

The above quote comes from one of my favorites so far, "How Memorizing the Family Proclamation Helped our Family". If you haven't read it yet, now's a good time. I also really needed "When to Give Your Spouse a Break..." and relished in the testimony and teaching of a righteous man and father in "The Need for Apostles and the Family Proclamation Today."  

If you haven't been able to keep up with these daily doses of goodness, take a little down time (or use some of your personal study time) to get acquainted with some of these inspiring articles.

While I Was an Ugly Duckling

H.P. Paull's 1872 English translation of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling" concludes with the now beautiful swan saying,

"I never dreamed of such happiness as this, 

while I was an ugly duckling."

The loneliness and heartbreak of before was gone once this creature came to know who and what he really was. I've been thinking about this today as I began a literature unit with my children on the works of Hans Christian Andersen. I can't help but correlate it to the happiness, healing, and purpose that comes when one knows, above all else, that he or she is a beloved and eternal Child of God, created in the image of Heavenly Parents, possessing a divine nature and enormous potential. That knowledge changes everything. 

I've also been considering this phrase in relation to the realm of education. "The Ugly Duckling" is in many ways autobiographical. Hans Christian was very different from those around him and was often rejected in his personal life. No one today would say that he wasn't born to write stories, yet he was miserable as a student and had difficulties in his education:  he was a poor speller, was treated badly, and educators actually discouraged him from writing. Not surprisingly, however, it was exactly those things that he was not--stiff and artificially formal in his writing like the Victorians would have demanded--that made his stories so universal and wonderful. His was a unique voice and genius. He was not the ugly duckling his educators might have believed, but a beautiful creature who, thankfully, discovered who he was, spread his wings, and soared through the stories he gave the world. How often in today's approach to children and education do we confuse ducks and swans (and hens, robins, chickadees) and shame them for what they are not and hold them back from discovering who they are? How often do we work against them instead of with them?

Of course, I can't discuss "The Ugly Duckling" without also stopping to think of how I treat others. Was there a time that I labeled someone, made assumptions at first glance? Was there a time that I only saw what was on the outside, or didn't value someone for who they are? And that brings me to a most profound quote by C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory that I return to again and again to remind myself to be careful, because no one should ever feel like an ugly duckling.

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."

Celebrate the Family!

It's that time of year again... time to Celebrate the Family!

Keep tabs on the following blogs for the next couple of weeks for great articles on strengthening and celebrating families:

Cranial Hiccups

We Talk of Christ We Rejoice in Christ

A Thing Called Love

One of the guest posts will be by yours truly, and I'll be reading all the others right along with you.

New this year is #ILovetheFamilyProclamation.  See an example here.

Happy 20th Anniversary

of the

Proclamation on the Family!

A Human Master and Example

I am so impressed with Jake Weidmann and cannot wait to introduce him to my children next week when we begin the next phase of "Make the most of yourself..." The videos below are inspiring!

I have been lamenting the demise of handwriting in schools for a while now and even in our homeschool no argument I've given thus far has spurred all of my children to believe it necessary. If this guy doesn't inspire them, nothing will! Mostly my arguments have centered on handwriting being a "language." After all, if you know nothing of handwriting you can't read Grandma's letters, or anything in your family history papers that isn't an official document. And I think it a terrible travesty if one cannot read the Declaration of Independence--one of the greatest things penned in the history of the world--in its original form. But some of my children have been certain they will never need that skill and thus think it a waste of time to develop it. Jake has compelling reasons for every child to learn handwriting. 

I've also been arguing more and more frequently against the mechanising of people. While I do love my washing machine and dishwasher, and I'm obviously finding a (hopefully) good use for a computer, I mostly adhere to the adage, "When you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something from the man." We are human beings and shouldn't be reduced to informational texts (no thanks, Common Core) but should relish in the creativity, honesty, and humanity of excellent literature; and while there are many useful blessings of technology, it should never replace the face to face, real human touch. Again, Jake's example of mastering a human skill is breathtaking.

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.

No machine can do the work

of one extraordinary man."

-Elbert Hubbard-

Hatchet Covers and Eternal Potential

What's keeping you from doing and being your best?  Here's the next part of our kickoff:

Strive

Strive - make great efforts to achieve or obtain something

I used this video as a follow up to yesterday's kickoff of our homeschool theme for the year.

"This Life" - First Day of Homeschool

Even though my teens started their LDS Seminary and a couple of other classes at the high school over a week ago, today was the first day of the new homeschool year at our house. 

The theme I decided on for this year is a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote that I've always loved on a Mary Engelbreit print I have hanging in my house.

"Make the most of yourself ...for that is all there is of you."

To introduce that theme today, we watched the following video.

That amazing song was written and performed by a young man, Nick Neel, for the 2015 LDS Mutual Theme Album (which you can download here). Here is Nick, and the story behind the song, which we read and discussed today.

“This Life” is about living up to our potential and not wasting life on trivial pursuits.
It’s a reminder I needed. For a long time, I found ways to do the least amount of work for the greatest amount of “reward” in the moment, but in the long run, I was really hurting myself and limiting the chances I could have. 

Music moves me more than anything, so I decided to write this song to help me with my own problems and hopefully help others with the same problems because, like the song says, “Life is just a matter of time.” 

Ranking up in video games, burying our heads in our phones, or updating our social status take time away from the good we can do. Instead, we should use this time to help others and improve ourselves. 

Make Every Second Count 

Near the beginning of the song, there is the line “Let’s make every second count.”
I pause a little before the word make to draw attention to this line. It is the essence of the song and something that we all can do a little better at. I’m not saying we need to spend every waking moment serving in some great way, but we do need to take time to help others. We also need to take time to improve ourselves so we can be prepared and ready to help others. There are many ways of doing that. Studying scriptures, focusing on school, and attending church are ways, but making friends and doing fun things that help you grow are just as important. 

We Have Everything We Need 

Another line I really like is “If we use what we’ve been given, we’re promised so much more.” 

What we’ve been given, whatever that may be, is exactly what we need to accomplish what we are meant to do here. 

For example, Joseph Smith had the determination to press forward and build something that many others would be too afraid to build. 

Nephi had the creativity to build a bow and arrow from scratch to obtain food and press forward in the wilderness with his family. 

These traits are often overlooked, but through these examples we can see that when we use “what we’ve been given,” great things can happen. 

A Mission Only You Can Do 

Regardless of your talents or abilities, whatever you have or can do is exactly what you need to bring people unto Christ and fulfill the mission that only you can do. If you take the time to cultivate these skills and let them grow, you will be able to use them to help Heavenly Father’s kingdom grow. 

When we see Him again we will be able to say that we didn’t waste our time. We stood up and spent our time in “this life” being His hands. We can look Him in the face and say, “I did my best!”