BlogShare: Joy in the Journey

While hunting around for this and that, and bunny trailing along as I usually do, I stumbled across Joy in Our Journey blog site.

My main notes so far are the great downloads she shares for planning our homeschool year...and her great shares on using The Mystery of History volumes in our schooling.  MOH 2 is one of the resources we will draw from this year, so this is a perfect find for us.

Contenders of the Faith & Keepers at Home Clubs

We did the Boy Scout thing when our eldest son was young. We went through the first several levels of Girl Scouts with our eldest daughter was young.  They are fine programs and have served well for their years of existence.  We don't exactly line up with some of the common teachings that underscore so many of the groups these days, so we went in search of something else we could do as a family. 
Are you familiar with the Keepers Clubs? Here's a great description via Timberdoodle:

Contenders for Boys, Keepers for Girls

Contenders for the Faith is for your sons ages 6 to 16. It provides guidelines for 89 different skills, each an important component to preparing our sons to be godly men.

Keepers at Home is typically for daughters 6 - 14, but with guidelines for over 100 different skills, some older daughters will continue to find their handbooks quite useful. Because there are no real age limitations, older children are free to participate. 

Family Life, Nature, Homemaking, Crafts, Leadership, Sports...

Each handbook is organized according to topic; Family Life, Nature, Homemaking, Crafts, Leadership, Sports and others, with outlines of what Keepers of the Faith has felt were the minimum requirements to master that skill. You, of course, may wish to modify their list by adding to or removing some of the requirements. There are some how-to's included, although for crafts in particular, you will want to augment the handbook; there is just not enough space to teach it all. 

Some of the topics for the girls are camping, fire safety, home decorating, organization, sign language and scheduling. 

The Contender's manual follows the same format adding additional practical skills, with more scope and complexity for the older boys. Topics include organization, foreign language, fishing and small engine repair. 

Follows Traditional Guidelines of Masculine and Feminine Behavior

The skills for each book follow the traditional guidelines of masculine and feminine behavior. We will make no apologies for that, but merely suggest that if you feel your son or daughter should acquire proficiencies not traditionally ascribed to boys or girls, teach them. These handbooks should in no way limit what your children learn, but instead, they will free you up from thinking through the steps of each skill. If you would like to mix and match from both books, you will not be prevented from doing so. 

Achievement Pins Available

For children that complete the requirements, top quality pins are available directly from Keepers of the Faith. More information is included with each handbook. Of course, pins are not a necessary requirement to use this program; you can acknowledge your child's achievement in any other fashion. And yes, boys can earn pins from the girl's handbook and visa versa. 

I have gone through several of the Keepers at Home and Contenders of the Faith projects with the children. We discovered these great programs many years ago and have enjoyed their skill lessons since. They fit our family quite nicely, and encourage and support the skills we want to teach. The 'curriculum' has been a great addition to our homeschooling over the years.

The website for Keepers of the Faith has all the information you need to get your children started with Keepers at Home or Contenders of the Faith. There are groups gathering everywhere holding organized Keepers meetings, after school programs, church youth, etc.  The program is also perfect for a family to do as an individual unit as well. The site has so many tips, information, lesson plans, forms and more that will help you along. With all of the skills presented, you will have more than enough to keep you busy throughout the years you work the program.

We are starting back up here. Not sure if we will make a simple vest for each child or a plain sash. We may go for a family banner to showcase our badges as they are earned.

Science Week 5: Soil Makers, molds and yeasts

Remember the story of Joshua and the elders of Israel meeting with the ragged, dusty men on a long journey? These men tricked Joshua, saying they had traveled so far...look at our ragged clothing, our worn out shoes, our moldy bread...though in truth, they had begun their mere 20 mile, 3 day journey with ragged clothing, battered shoes, and moldy bread.

• Fungi do not have chlorophyll and cannot carry on photosynthesis. Fungi obtain their food in two ways and are classified according to this characteristic. 
• One fungi group known as saprophytes, feeds on dead plants and animals. (There's a nice entry on fungus in general here at Encyclopedia Brittanica online).  Without saprophytes, every tree, plant and animal that has ever died would still be here, except those parts eaten by scavengers. They years would pass and the dead materials would simply pile up. Forests would be clogged, soil buried, and no new life would develop. 

Characteristics of Saprophytes:

• Saprophytes have no leaves, stems and roots.
• They have no leaves mean they have no chlorophyll that plays a vital role in the process of photosynthesis and so they do not manufacture their own food.
• They are heterotrophic.
• They derive their energy from a saprophytic or a parasitic existence.
• They are mostly unicellular
• They are amoeboid
• They are filamentous.
• They reproduce by sexual or asexual spore formation or simply by division.

Therefore, Saprophytes have to necessarily depend on rotten plants for their food.

• Without saprophytes, no new soil would develop. God designed saprophytes to change the animal and plant matter into carbon dioxide and simple materials that help build new soil. This process provided by the saprophytes completes the food chain (food chain notes at Enchanted Learning...some notes and an online game at Sheppard Software...an online food chain game at EcoKids).   
• Green leaved plants are usually the beginning of the food chain, and fungi are the final link in the chain.
• Bacteria, molds, and yeasts are all fungi. Bacteria are the smallest fungi and cannot be seen by the naked eye. Some fungi multiply by tiny spores that are present everywhere. 
• mold on oranges is commonly a blue and green powder composed of large numbers of spores, any of these can start a new colony of mold.
• First discovered by a medical student, Ernest Duchesne, and then re-discovered in 1929 by Alexander Fleming (as an antibiotic) and identified it as a relative of the fungus found on oranges. During World War II, doctors worked with Fleming and from the mold he discovered, developed the antibiotic called penicillin.  
• Yeasts are common, one-celled fungi living mostly on sugar solutions, making alcohol and carbon dioxide in a process called fermentation.  
• Yeast from the store are cells held together in a starchy material. They will not multiply when cool and dry, but will ferment when damp and warm.  Bubbles of carbon dioxide that develop when the yeast begins to grow, lift your bread dough and make it light. The carbon dioxide and alcohol are lost in the baking process.
• Vinegar results from the action of both yeasts and bacteria. Fermentation occurs when the yeasts change the sugar into cider to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Vinegar bacteria and oxygen in the air then turn the alcohol to vinegar.