2008 Christmas Letter

Christmas Shopping

Jaden asleep in the van while we wait for everyone to come out of Pennys.

We left home after lunch to finish up our last Christmas Shopping. Waiting on paychecks had caused us to wait longer than usual to finish up our Christmas shopping.

Normally, I begin buying things here and there beginning in about September, so that I don't spend a lot all at once. This didn't happen since Rod has been unemployed.
I feel oddly unprepared for Christmas. Then we have had this nutty winter weather. I have always wanted a white Christmas. A couple of times we have gotten white thanksgivings, but not a white Christmas. Not that I can remember anyway.

Since today is the first really driveable day since all of this has begun, we thought we would go finish things up. Needless to say, its been a headache. Stores are out of things we should be able to buy. Traffic is almost intolerable. It took us over a half of an hour just to get to the mall in Burlington. Normally its just over five minutes!

Cranky kids. Julia won't follow or listen in the store. In the cart she goes. Crying ensues. Jaden wasn't being his noisy self. I asked if he was feeling ok. He says yes. Then I felt his forehead, the boy has a fever!

We finished at target. Went to cold stone for a treat. We all just needed something.... I had an old gift card for cold stone, so it meant good treat at no cost. The heater was broken in the store. Cold outside, cold inside and cold ice cream.

Home next to the real fireplace soundsHood about now!

Got us all loaded up after cookies and oreo and chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Rod loves peanut butter and ice cream. Good thing they are a good combo! Got Jaden tylenol for his fever.

One more stop at pennys. Need a couple of things for my dad. I didn't really want to take everyone in after target. Jaden didn't want to go in either. I have rod my list. So we are sitting in the car, and I'm texting in a blog on my blackberry. Technology has come so far....

Jaden has my coat, heater is on high and the poor little guy is sound asleep.

Well I guess that's all for now. I'm thinking rod and the other kids should soon be done. And then we will be headed home! Tonight we put up the fake tree, normally we do real ones. And I guess ill wrap a couple of presents.

Happy Shopping to you!

South Family Adoption

This morning rod and I and the kids ventured out in the snow, with chains, to go to the Mount Vernon courthouse!

Bobby and Cindy south were officially adopted today! We all had tears in our eyes...

We were there, the Souths, the Dahls, Grandma and Grandpa. I felt priviledged to witness a real adoption, of kids I have grown to love.

How the lord must feel seeing children adopted into a good home. It must be something like when we are adopted into Gods family!

Congratulations Bobby & Cindy SOUTH!

Zindra

Trying out blogging by phone

Times Tales Review

Teaching my kids times tables is something that up until now I have left to text books.

Recently, I introduced Times Tales by Trigger Memory Systems into our homeschool curriculum.

Previously, Josiah, my 10 year old, could do multiplication, but it was not easy or quickly for him. He also has very little experience with division. Jedediah, my 7 year old, has had little or no exposure to multiplication or division.


Times Tales is a program that uses a mnemonic method, or memory triggers (like stories & pictures), to help students remember the seemingly unrelated information of Multiplication and Division.

It comes with an instruction manual, flash cards, a game, worksheets and a flip chart. The flip chart is a series of little stories that each go with a drawing, consisting of memory triggers. The instruction manual is a companion to the flip chart that is easy to use.

I followed the instructions from the manual. They each did a pretest (wanted to compare before and after results). We read through the stories a couple of times, and the boys then retold the stories with the picture prompts. Then, we practiced with the flashcards and later had them take the test.

Josiah, the older, who has had plenty of exposure to multiplication went from 13/16 pretest to 16/16 post test.

What I was really quite surprised by was how my 7 year old son Jedediah responded to the Times Tales system. Before Times Tales he had little or no exposure to multiplication. Jedediah went from from 3/16 on the pretest to 13/16 on the posttest. Now that's quite an improvement!

For Jedediah the memory triggers really worked for him. While working on his test, when he was stuck, instead of helping him with the answers, I asked him to think about the stories that we have read and told him that that would help him answer the questions. It really works!

For $29.95 I would recommend Times Tales to a friend who is looking for a painless way to introduce multiplication and division to their children. The pictures are fun and the stories are simple, and easy to remember, which I think is the key. Even a young elementary student could remember the stories.

What I really like about this system is that the students are learning without realizing that they are learning!

I would recommend this to homeschoolers or families with children with learning disabilities. It is a program that I will use with all four of my children!

Click HERE to see a sample lesson at the Times Tales/Trigger Memory Systems website.

Childhood days....

This morning we were all sitting around after breakfast. Jedediah was sitting on Rod's lap working in a workbook that he needed moderate help with. Jaden was sitting on mine and Josiah was sitting next to me on the couch. (Julia must be growing because she was still in bed sleeping!)

Today was also a snow day. Two nights before we had received a good dump of snow, but that was over the weekend. So this monday morning was here and that sparked a conversation about how they did things when we were kids/when you go to school/not homeschooled.

Josiah was very interested as Rod and I talked about things like when we were kids, we had to listen to the radio on snowy mornings to see if we were going to school at all or if there was going to be a late start. He was amazed. Probably mostly because we don't listen to the radio. I also told him that in some places like Seattle you can watch it on the news. Instead of my kids getting a "late start" today they got a "regular" day of homeschooling....

Well that got us off on the childhood days stories (starting to feel like my dad!) and we talked about growing up without Cable Tv and internet. That there used to be HUGE satalite dishes for tv (like there is that one big smiley face one on the way to the Puyallup fair) instead of small ones like they use for direct tv.

I mentioned the that I went to Clearlake, that I remember the year, when I was about 10 when the school got 4 computers. I seem to remember that they were Mac's but maybe they were IBM's. I remember thinking that in a school as big as ours, that I would never get a turn on one. And I didn't, at least not on those ones. I finally got to use computers when we got a computer lab, but I believe that I didn't really get to use those until I went to Cascade in the 6th or 7th grade. But BOY, it was a big deal that our school got computers!

And there was NO internet. We didn't even own computers. Even the tv we had when I was young was black and white and it rolled. I won our first real tv at Clearlake in some sort of drawing. I believe I got my picture in the paper. (Wouldn't that be fun to find). That was the first tv we had that really worked well. Sometime later we got a color tv, but I don't remember that exactly. We had 4 channels Channel 5, Channel 5, Channel 12 and sometimes Channel 13. Not a gazillion that is available today. And if you didn't like what was on you turned the tv off.

We watched specific programs, like Wild Omaha (?) and Disney every single sunday night. According to Rod they were on at 5 pm and 6pm perspectively. I didn't like it when Disney did live concerts instead of cartoons or movies. If you wanted to watch cartoons, you had to watch them before school or on Saturday mornings (the only morning you had to sleep in). Rod got up for cartoons on saturday mornings, I on the other hand did not. shocking there, huh? And the Wide World of Sports was on on Saturdays. That's when you watched ice skating or whatever sports was on like golf. That was the only sports show, it wasn't like you had a choice.

Now, in our home, we own 4 working computers. The same amount of computers that the entire grade school had for over 200 students (or however many kids). Our kids play on them or do school on them daily. Life has changed!

On the topic of internet & computers. My first computer was a MAC. I think it had 4mbs of ram (not gigs). It was a darling thing that I absolutely loved. I wish that Mac's had become mainstream about 10 years sooner, or I'd still own one. I remember Mom & I went into the building that I believe is not the licensing dept. on college way to buy it. It was a boxy thing, but the reason I like it, was that the monitor wasn't attached to the hard drive like the older mac's.

So- that if the monitor broke, I could just get another monitor, not have to send the whole thing off to get fixed. My favorite computer game was Lemmings. I wish they would come out with a comparable version today. It would still be my favorite game. Rod used to sit and play it while I did my homework from Western. I can still see him sitting there at my desk playing, while I sat on my bed studying. (Nowadays, I sit by my computer while he does his schoolwork at his - in some ways not much has changed!)

Time4Learning.com Review

Are you looking for a educational yet fun way to supplement your kid's homeschooling? Something with feedback for parents as well as for students?

Time4Learning.com has a fantastic online supplemental learning program. It's for grades Pre-K thru Middle School aged kids.

We used it with each of our four kids. My kids LOVED this program! (That would be with an emphasis of caps, underscore and an exclamation point!) Each one of them enjoyed it for different reasons:

Julia, pre-k, loved the painting.

Jaden, grade K, loved the Playground online games.

Jedediah, grade 2, loved the clickable online stories. (Best ever clickable online readers I've seen as yet. Each word is clickable and read to the student on demand!) His reading improved dramatically from this one feature of this program!

Josiah, grade 4, loved the story writing feature available at the end of each unit. The printouts of the great little stories he created through Time4Learning have been printed out and are a part of his school notebook for this year!

How does it work? Parents set up a login for each of their kids. During which time they let Time4Learning know which grade level the student is at. Creating for each child a personalized learning program. Then students login and use the program.

Time4Learning provides instant feedback for both student and parent. A check mark appears in top of finished levels. For parents there's a progress review sheet available for you to check to see if your student is understanding the course work. Feedback is provided in percentages (80% of 100%).

The Playground is where Time4Learning.com has fun yet educational online games. There is a neat timer feature for the Playground, so that students can only play for so many minutes (set by parent) each day.

What's it cost? Approximately $20 per student per month. So, for my four kids it would run about $80 a month. So, for our family it's cost prohibitive. Yet, if you have one child that needs some extra time with instant feedback, I would definitely recommend this program!

For the support side of things, they have an informational blog as well as a parent forum where you can ask other parents using Time4Learning.com questions about the program. And from personal experience, they have great email customer service!

A Note from the Nelson Family....2008

A Note from the Nelson Family...2008

This year has been a good but trying year. Most everyone knows that the Verizon store in Burlington closed, so Rod lost his job this last summer. Him being unemployed has affected our life pretty dramatically, although, we can say that the Lord really has met our needs throughout the last six months, and given me some peace about the whole situation.

Rod is going back to school at the local community college, to get a certificate in Graphic Design - something he is interested in. Hopefully, by the time he’s done, the job market will be looking up!

The kids are terrific. They’ve been doing swimming lessons off and on during the year where they are all doing fantastic. It appears that swim team may soon be in our future, at least for Josiah.

Josiah - 10 broke his right ring finger this year playing with a friend. It has healed well. He did fantastic during baseball season, where he got to be on the All Star team.

Jedediah - 7 played soccer this fall where he especially loved being the goal keeper.

Jaden - 6 is learning and growing and really excelling in schoolwork this year.

Julia - 3 (my baby is 3!) has completely changed our home! 2 words: Pink & Ponytail. She’s finally potty trained.... So we are done potty training! Yay!

I’ve been doing lots of community service through our homeschool co-op locally and nationally. Locally, I do our monthly newsletter and nationally, I have been doing the e-zine. Both of the projects are fun and challenging, keeping me occupied. Rod’s also been teaching classes at the co-op and we also lead the homeschool teen group.

Lately, it’s been cool and we’ve been spending part of our evenings in front of the fire, reading the Chronicles of Narnia series to the kids - which they are really enjoying. Merry Christmas from the Nelsons!