My Home

The dishes may not all be done,

And dirty socks may be in one

Or two spots that they shouldn’t be,

But what is all of that to me

When a little girl has set up Tea?

The garden has a few more weeds

Than probably the produce needs,

And possibly a bug at play,

But they will last another day

When a boy of mine needs to pray.

I’m not a fashion model, and

I don’t wear diamonds on my hand,

Or pretty baubles in my ear,

But I am making time to hear

The trials of my husband dear.

The company that comes to call

May needs look down so not to fall,

And step around a thing or two,

But if they care to kick off shoes,

A listening ear and tea will do.

I’m not a perfect housekeep, or

The type to get it done and more,

Sometimes I find my house, it seems

Much better in my waking dreams,

But home is what the heart esteems.

So I will focus on the best,

A little work, a little rest,

And time for all who come aboard,

Time of prayer to hear my Lord,

And love, the everlasting cord.

Looking for Reviewers - Free New York History Curriculum Offer!

Here in New York, we've just officially finished the new "school year."  Our state's regulations give us from July 1 through June 30th as a school year.  So, now that we're through with one year, it's time to think about what we'll teach for the next!

I'm hoping to get my New York State History curriculum out to as many people as possible for this school year, so I've decided to give away some free copies to people who would review it for me on Currclick and/or their blog.

I'm very excited to be able to offer this curriculum, and also to find out what people think of it!  Writing it and getting it published has been a little like having a child, and now I want to see what it will do in the "big wide world."

If you are interested, you can see the curriculum here.

Available now at Currclick!

  Included in the PDF is a link to a website which has more resources, including a printable word document for reading out loud, and a store where many of the recommended books can be purchased.

I would also appreciate it if you would share this offer with your friends and blog readers!  Happy reading!

Woo hoo! I'm an Author!

I am sooooo excited!  My curriculum finally went up for sale at Currclick!  It was a bit of a process, because I missed some aspects of the application somehow the first time around, but when I hadn't heard anything for a while, I contacted the publishing department, and a very nice and patient lady named Leah e-mailed me through everything step by step!  So, you can now buy "The History and Geography of New York State:  A Literature-based Guide" by Robin L. Wheatley at Currclick!  I also now have an "official" publisher's account, with an "official" logo:

What do you think?  I spent most of the morning trying to design this thing.  Pictures are NOT my forte!

So, now all I need is for people to buy it, and to leave a review if possible!  

Actually, it's a huge relief, and also a bit of a let-down to have this finally done.  It's been hours and years of work, but I kind of feel like one of my kids grew up and moved out on their own!  I'm actually thinking of starting another curriculum for "For Love of Books" to publish (heehee), this time about music.  What do you think?

So I Did It!

I'm kind of flying around with butterflies inside and out today.  I finally decided on a way to publish my New York State curriculum, and took the plunge.  I sent the PDF in to a company called CurrClick last night.  Now I just have to wait and see if they will accept it.  If so, they will publish and sell it for me, and I will get royalties.

Please, if you think about it, pray for me today!  I don't know when I'll hear back from them, and I'm having a bit of trouble focusing right at the moment.  Which is probably why I'm writing a blog post instead of getting dressed.  Well, at least the kids had breakfast this morning!  If they don't accept it, I understand that they will give me feedback so that I can make some changes and resubmit.  They may not accept it if they have a whole bunch of things just like it, but I looked at the site a little and didn't see anything quite like what I've written, so I'm hoping that's not the case.

Okay, I've got that off my chest (for now) so I think I'll try to get dressed now, and get the kids ready to play the ant math game that's on the schedule for today :)  Have a good one!

Blog Holiday

Hello, everyone.  I'm writing to tell you this will be my last post for a while.  Because of things that have been going on here, I haven't been able to be on very often lately.  The good thing is I've found more time to do other things, and to connect with real people!  So, I am planning to take a social media "fast."  I'll still be available by e-mail, because I have people I need to communicate with in that way.  However, I won't be writing or reading any blog posts, or looking at Facebook or Twitter.  I'm going to try to do this until January, so I will now wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! - Robin

Using a Curriculum

I have come to the conclusion that I am very bad at using a programmed curriculum.  I really tried, last year, and we actually managed to get through the year using an all-inclusive curriculum.  It was a great idea at first.  It was actually the kind of curriculum I would have made up, myself.  Language arts, history, geography and science were all tied in together.  The problem came when it came time to actually implement it, every day, for 180 days.  Some of it worked well.  However, the writing portions proved to be too much for my meticulous boy.  He writes very well, but it takes him a while because he is extremely concerned in making it look perfect.  I'm not sure how much of this to dissuade him about.  Obviously, tracing over the letters until they are all exactly the same thickness of line is a little out there, but wanting it to look neat and correct can't be a bad thing.  So, we skipped some of the writing.  Then, there were the extra activities which looked great, but we didn't have time to do.  By the end of the year, we were down to reading the books and doing maybe one other activity a day, if that.  We had more days of curriculum left than we had days in the school year, because some days had been used up for co-op or field trips.  I don't really think it's necessary to add days over the 180 required, so we sort of sped through the last part.

So, we managed to finish the school year, and actually learned something in the process.  My plan for next year is to use curricula for math and grammar, and to read a lot of books about early America up through the Revolutionary War and the beginning of the U.S. Government.  Oh, and to use some of the science kits we have collected, and learn about the 50 states.

My next problem is Vacation Bible School.  A friend and I are organizing this for our church this year.  They haven't had a VBS in the past few years, so we are starting from scratch.  So, of course, we purchased a curriculum.  The problem is, we didn't like most of it once we got it.  So, we are starting over using the basic outline, but adding in and taking away at will.  So, back to having problems with packaged curricula!

I am still working on my own curriculum of New York State.  I have written and revised, and have lately been adding more sections.  I originally wrote the book and activity list for my son to do, and much of the information was centered around our section of New York, because we could see things first hand.  So, I'm trying to add in some other information, which involves reading even more books, as I don't want to include any that I haven't seen, myself.  The good thing is that it should be a well-rounded curriculum when it is finished.  I am hoping it will be useful to people, and will not overwhelm them with too many options.  We didn't even manage to do everything on my list in one year.  In fact, as I'm researching more for the curriculum, I have been going over it with Rory.  I don't think that learning about your state has to be done all at once.  In fact, we should keep learning about everything throughout our lives.

That is one of the best things I've found about Homeschooling.  I can learn alongside my kids.  Yes, I graduated from high school and college, but learning does not stop when you get a degree.  My grandmother used to say "You can learn something new every day," and I believe her.  I want my kids to know the joy of learning throughout their lives, and what better way to teach them, than to lead by example?  So, I'll go on planning and tweaking and learning, and using a curriculum when it works for us.  Hopefully, we will all learn in the process!

To Everything There Is A Season...

And a time for every purpose under Heaven...

So says the song, and the chapter in Ecclesiastes.  I am having a hard time remembering that when it says, for example, "A time to be born, and a time to die," it does not mean you have to do both at the same time.  I have been struggling with so many things, lately, from how to find time to write, to how to keep my house clean, to how to teach my kids, to how to put in a zipper (but that's another story!).  It seems as there is never enough time to do it all.  If I write an article, it usually means that I have stayed up far too late, and/or neglected other things in my life.  Actually, if I stay up too late, I neglect things the next day because I am too tired to do them!  So, I'm having to learn about life's seasons, and I'm trying to decipher which season I am in, now.

As I look back, I realize that my life has been broken into sections, or seasons.  I also realize that things have happened in just that order for a reason.  I can see God's hand guiding me, and giving and withholding things as needed.  At the time, this was frustrating.  I especially think of the time it took us to have our two children.  It seemed like we had to wait forever, wondering if we would ever conceive.  But, as I think of other things that were going on at that time, I have to marvel at God's timing.

When we were trying to have Rory, I was working a somewhat physically demanding job which required driving all over the county and lugging musical instruments around, including a very heavy keyboard.  This was a part-time music therapy position, which was combined with a part-time case manager position.  I was also training for my black belt in Tae Kwon Do, after taking classes for ten years.  I don't know why I thought this was the best time to be pregnant, but God obviously had better plans than I.  First, the music therapy position was eliminated because of lack of funding.  I was upset!  How could they do that?  But, it turned me into a full-time case manager, a much less strenuous job.  Then, shortly after I earned my black belt, we found out we were expecting.  I was able to keep attending TKD classes until I was about seven months along, and was still able to teach the "pee-wee" class, but was not worried about training hard, and was allowed to modify anything I had to because of my pregnancy.  Did God know what he was doing?  Of course!  Looking back, I can see how everything fell into place so that Rory was born exactly when he should have been.

Fast forward a few years, and we were again trying to conceive.  Just as we started, we had a major structural problem with our house, which necessitated months of repair and construction.  I was getting so impatient that we didn't seem able to have another child!  But, the major construction was finished just before Lily was born, giving us an extra room just when we needed it.  I was able to give up my babysitting job, which was helping to pay for the work.  Rory was finishing Pre-K then, and started kindergarten a few months later.  As we got to the end of the first grading period, we realized that the local school was not working out for him.  I found out that he wasn't required to attend kindergarten, so we pulled him out.  That began our foray into homeschooling.  If I hadn't had a small infant at that time, I probably would have gone back to work when he started school, and we would have had a hard time making a decision like that.

So, here I am, trying to fit too many things into too small a space again.  (Okay, that's probably a metaphor born from sitting here at my messy desk, but it works!).  My challenge, now, is to recognize which season I am in, and stop fretting about the other things.  I have to remember that God knows my needs, and my family's needs, and even my friend's and acquaintance's needs, and He knows how they all fit together.  I can only see my little slice of the pie, and I'm a bit puzzled about the filling at the moment.  So, I'm reminding myself to give it to God, and let Him take care of piecing the puzzle together.  I know that everything will get done in His time.

From the Schoolhouse

Schoolhouse by morsephoto, photobucket

I'm in a homeschool kind of mood, today, so I figured I would share some of the posts from Schoolhouse at Glen Hill.  This is a blog I started recently which only focuses on homeschooling.

One of the first posts was School at Our House.  I decided to post a bunch of pictures depicting our better times at homeschooling.  It's funny, as I look back at it, because most of the pictures aren't about doing worksheets or listening to the teacher (me) talk.  These are things most of us associate with school, but when I think back on the last couple years, these are not the things that leap out to me as being important.


Probably in the back of my mind, I was thinking of this when I wrote Next Year's Curriculum.  I am trying to save money, and didn't want to purchase a lot of materials for next year, so I started scrounging around the house to see what I could find.  I've enjoyed this year's curriculum, but I am ready for a change.  It has been a little stressful for me to have to fit in certain activities on certain days.  As a result, I'm going back to designing my own, like I did for first grade.  Incidentally, I am working on developing the first grade curriculum on New York State into an elementary/middle-school aged curriculum to sell.  I'll keep you posted!


The last post I'd like to share was something that helps to explain why we have continued homeschooling.  When we started, it was more of a reaction to the difficulty my son was having at school, but as I've become more aware of the public schools' agendas, I am beginning to have different reasons.  What's Happening in Our Schools? includes a link to an article about occult influence in the schools today.  It's kind of frightening to think that our kids are taught that everything is okay, except Christianity.  "Things that make you go -HMM!"


Well, there you have it.  I hope you enjoy the posts!  

Games and Activities For Teaching Musical Tempo to Young Children

Tempo, or speed, is one of the building blocks of music. Activities and games can help pre-school and elementary-aged children learn to recognize it.

Young children tend to respond to different types of music in different ways. If you have spent time with babies or toddlers, you have probably seen them relax to the soothing sounds of their mothers' lullabies, or bounce and wave their arms to a song with a fast rock beat. They are innately feeling the tempo of the music. The following cross-curricular games and activities can help children to recapture this feeling, and begin to understand it cognitively.

What is Tempo?

When teaching music to children, it is best to use the proper terminology. Even if they are years away from learning to play an instrument or read music, using the correct terms when they are young will increase their understanding later. Tempo refers to the speed of a song or musical composition. When writing music, composers sometimes use a metronome marking to communicate the tempo of the song. Alternately, they may use Italian words (adagio, allegro, presto), or English words (slowly, fast rock beat). It is fun for children to learn the meaning of these words.

Using a Metronome

A metronome is a machine which measures beats per minute. You may have the old-fashioned type, which has a weighted stick that swings back and forth, or one of the newer electronic ones. Children love to use these, adjusting them to make the ticks go faster and slower. In metronome markings (M.M.), quarter note = 60 means that there are 60 beats in a minute, or one beat each second. M.M. 40 would therefore be slower, and M.M. 100 would be faster. Traditional march beat is M.M. 120, or two beats per second. If you do not have a metronome available, you can use a clock with a second hand, or a timer which ticks seconds.

Movement Activities

Moving to music is one of the easiest ways to learn to recognize tempo. The following activities can be done while listening to music or making your own music. As the children gain experience, introduce music that speeds up or slows down during the song.

Clapping hands, stomping feet, or playing rhythm instruments along with a song help children to feel the beat.

Marching and dancing use the whole body to feel the tempo. Make sure to give the children direction, however. If they are dancing freely, they may or may not be paying attention to the tempo of the song. Demonstrate the steps you want them to do, and then dance along with them.

Ask the children to move at different speeds - using descriptive words, or even metronome markings as the basis. Try using the Italian words instead. If you don't know the proper words, some of them are written on metronomes, or you can get an inexpensive music dictionary.

Children's games such as "Ring Around the Rosie" or "Motorboat, Motorboat" help children to move in tempo. "Motorboat" is especially good, as the circle goes faster as the game goes on.

Language Activities

Some language arts activities lend themselves well to learning about tempo.

Poetry reading - from Mother Goose to Shakespeare's Sonnets, poetry has its own sense of rhythm. Reading poetry aloud to children helps them to connect feeling to the words.

Try saying words in ways that describe their meanings (i.e. "quick!-quick!" and "sloooow").

Have the children act out a particularly exciting or sorrowful part of a story, using their movements to help show the mood. Point out the connections to emotions and tempo.

Art Activities

Engaging in artistic pursuits while listening to music can help children focus on different elements of the music.

Have the children draw a picture. This works well with instrumental music. Note if their hands are moving slowly when the music is slow, and quicker when the music speeds up. Ask the children to explain their drawings when they are done.

Instead of drawing, you can have the children mold something out of clay while listening to music.

Children enjoy making their own instruments. Have them decorate an oatmeal box or coffee can for a drum, or make shakers from empty plastic bottles filled with rice or beans. Cut one-inch dowels into ten or twelve inch lengths, and have them paint them. Use the hand-made instruments for some of the previous activities.

Games and cross-curricular activities can enhance your children's understanding of music. They can also help children who are reluctant to learn, by associating music with another activity they enjoy. Refer to the article "Teaching Music to Your Children" for more information about musical elements your children should know.


Copyright Robin Wheatley

originally published at Suite101

Turning the Corner

This has been a rather stressful week for me.  I've been glued to the forums at Suite101, trying to decipher what was happening.  It turned out to be an odd time to join the site, since the rug was seemingly pulled out from under it less than a week after I started there.  Yesterday we got the first real feedback from the administration, and there are going to be changes made.  They are going to be eliminating some articles and some writers.  I have no idea, this early into things, which articles and writers those may be, so I have no idea if I'm one or not.  I guess we'll just have to see.  Until then, I'm going to go forward on a couple other things I've been working on.

• First, I need to finish my History and Geography of New York curriculum.  I am almost done - I have about 2 1/2 sections left to write.  Then I have to figure out how to publish and market it.  
• I also need to work more on my Music in the Homeschool website.  Maybe I can figure out how to include adds on it, and make a little money there.  It is finally showing up in the search engines a little, so that is a good sign.
• I am going to take the story that I wrote for the story contest and expand on it.  Rory was really excited about it and wanted to know more about the people in the story, so I think I could make it into a book.  Of course, I would then have to figure out how to publish and market it (sigh).
• I'm searching the Bible right now for the prayers of Jesus, as a study to learn how to pray better myself.  Possibly I could make it into a bible study.
• If I stay at Suite101, I will have to see what kind of articles they are requiring, and figure out how to write them.

I still have to clean my house, grocery shop, do laundry, take care of my family and homeschool my son, so I'm not too sure how fast all of this is going to get done, but I am going to give it a whirl.  At least I have a plan, and I've told someone else, so now I have to do it, right?

Progress

Here is an update on my recent posts:

Desk - almost clean - have to put away one DVD - "Franklin Camps Out" (Lily's), one pair of "WEDNESDAY" panties (also Lily's), and one birthday card (Mike's).  Oh, and one pencil (probably mine).

Suite101 - 3 articles, 190 pageviews, 54 cents (odd thing, here - one of my articles shows up a page behind my blog post about it, and another a page behind a "news" site which printed half of my article).

Adsense - 23 page impressions, 0.00 dollars

Story - This one wasn't in a post, but I entered a story writing contest in December.  The winners were announced today - not me - so if anyone knows what I can do with a 1,210 word story, let me know!  Rory was just as happy, because then we can "keep" the story, and read it whenever we want!

School - Rory got all of his schoolwork done before lunch, so we went to Friendly's, and he got to spend the rest of his birthday money at Walmart (a lego set, of course!)

Lily's Hair - Lily actually wanted to buy hair bands at the store.  She was rather perturbed that she couldn't wear them before we paid for them.  She really wanted the purple one.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print - hey, it could end up on a news site, if "Teaching Music To Your Children" did!

My New Education

One of my grandmother's favorite sayings was:  "You learn something new every day."  Well, I think she was right, because this old dog has learned some new tricks in the past few days.

Up until recently, my internet experience was basically checking e-mail about once a month.  I started this blog and joined Facebook about a year ago, and started my website a few months ago.  At that point, I had sort of learned what HTML is (it's a code way of writing on the internet which uses symbols for punctuation, paragraphs, fonts, etc.)  I can't read it, but, oh well. In fact, in High School, when computers were young, and the WWW wasn't invented yet, I thought that computers were going to take over the world, and avoided them like the plague.  Now, I'm sure they're taking over the world and are almost there, but that's another story.

I joined Suite101 as a writer a couple of weeks ago, and as of this morning have made 54 cents, but I have gained more than money.  I really think I've learned something new everyday!  Here is my new Internet Writing notebook:

• Search Engine:  That thing you type into to find 2 million articles on how to brush your teeth.  Examples include Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
• SEO:  Search Engine Optimization - writing so that search engines will be able to find your article, using things such as - 
• Keywords:  Word phrases that people would be likely to search for.  You can apparently put these into the title, headings, first paragraph, and picture captions.  Some people put them all over, and use the same one over and over.  This is supposed to make you more visible to search engines.
• Scraped:  Somebody stole your article and put it on another website, where you won't get any royalties.
• Adwords:  Ads that a company places around your article which may someday make you some money if somebody actually reads them.
• Revenue Share:  Money you will hopefully get from people clicking on the ads (hence the 54 cents).
• Content Farm:  A company which looks for the most-searched subjects and then gets people to write articles about them in order to get money.   - Company business, here - In the past week, Suite101 has been called a content farm.  I know I'm new, but I don't really see it.  I have not been told what to  write about, and I don't believe anyone else on Suite has, either.  It is a very diverse magazine, and people write about things they are interested in or passionate about.  I think people use different levels of SEO to try to get their articles seen, some maybe trying to find out which articles will show better, but this is an individual decision.  Suite is actually very accommodating, and seem happy to let you write about anything you'd like.  They do edit the articles to make sure they are in the proper format and don't have mistakes and things, but that's all.
• Pageviews:  Something you get obsessed about, because you want people to read your article.
• Algorithm:  The way a search engine sets up their search - what they look for in articles, which sites they look at articles from, and a million other variables that I have absolutely understanding of.  This seems to make a difference in which page of the search your article will appear on, the ones being deemed best or most important supposedly showing first.

That's all I can get out of my wee little head this morning, but I can tell you this has been an amazing couple of weeks, and my brain is quite tangled.  If I have made any mistakes or left things out, please tell me, and I will include them in another post!  I may need help here to get a good grade!  Now, back to obsessing over my pageviews.

Oh - and if you want to share this post, please copy the URL and direct people here, so that I can get revenue.  Don't scrape it!  This has been a public service message.  Thank you.

Ups and Downs in the World Wide Web

If you've been reading my blog, you know that I recently started writing for Suite101.  I have so far submitted three articles.  Well, I started reading some of the forums today, and found that Google has apparently changed the way they set up their search pages, and now Suite101 articles are not getting on the pages as much.  This is a curiosity for me at this time, as I was not really counting on this to pay the mortgage, but there are some writers who are taking a horrible hit.  Writers are paid a percentage of the advertising money which is brought in from the ads around their article.  If their articles are not seen, they don't get paid.  I tried personally searching for my articles on Google, and they were much farther back than they were a few days ago.  The funny thing is that when I tried on Bing, they were on the first page.

So, this has been quite an experiment.  I think I will hold off writing any more until this gets ironed out a bit!  I'm also trying a counter-experiment.  I had never considered "monetizing" this blog before, but I'm going to do it now just to see if I get more than 47 cents in a week and a half.  It's also using Google ads, so we'll see which one Google finds more relevant.

My Second Article

Teaching Music to Your Children

So I haven't made any money yet on the first article, but I figured I would submit another one while I was on a roll.  So, here it is if anyone would like to read it!  I hope that it will help people who are not musicians themselves, but would like to give their children a good start in music.

I'm Published!

How to Design Your Own Homeschool Curriculum

Good morning, everyone! I wanted to let you know that I am a published author! I was accepted as a writer for Suite101, an online source for articles of all sorts. I submitted my first article last night, and it was accepted and published! I don't know if I'll make any money, because it works on royalties based on the ads around the article, but I am hopeful that this may be a way I can do some work from home. Anyway, I enjoy writing, and it was rather fun. It's kind of exciting to see something you've written published like this! So, as you can see, it is called "How to Design Your Own Homeschool Curriculum." This is actually something I've done, and I am working on making the curriculum I used for Rory last year into a book to sell. In the meantime, though, pray that this article will do well flying around on the web!