I’m Back But I’m Not the Same: My Mission Trip to China

10 Posts in 10 Days turned into 3 Posts in 3 Days.

The days leading up to my departure for China were full of last-minute drug store runs and moments of freaking out about what I was about to do. I didn’t know on February 20 I would be leaving for China in less than 3 months.

February 21 came and I read an email referencing this post on our adoption agency’s blog. They had an urgent need for more team members for an upcoming mission trip. Our agency has a mission-sending aim in addition to helping families adopt children from several countries including China, where we found four of our children waiting for a family!

I read the excerpt from the blog post in that email and it was like I knew. I didn’t really dismiss the prompting I felt, but I did wonder how in the world would I go to China and the logistics of all of it. I sent an email that night to the email link not really knowing for sure who would receive it. As it turns out, a lady, who had followed our journey to our first daughter in 2008 and is an adoptive parent herself, is now working for our adoption agency to coordinate all the China mission trips. She emailed me back that evening with answers to two specific questions I asked.

In her email back to me, two things she said stood out:

The purpose of this trip is simply to serve wherever we are needed in this orphanage.  Because we have not been able to work in this specific orphanage, we are not exactly sure what the needs are of this orphanage.

We will need to decide if this trip is a GO or not in the next week, or less.

OK. Breathe I told myself. A week or less? Serve where needed. I can definitely do that I thought, though the emotions and depth of that service proved to be one of the hardest and most rewarding five days of my life thus far. Continue reading

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10 Posts in 10 Days: How Does Your Garden Grow?

When we bought this place last Spring, we were working day and night to renovate the kids’ bedrooms, the mudroom, finish out the totally unfinished basement, and make a library out of a really lackluster room at the end of our long ranch house. We longed for the day we could really use the garden plots that were already here and had been used for many years by the previous owners.

Well, Spring has sprung and the gardens are planted!

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10 Posts in 10 Days: 5 + 2 + 2 + 4 = 10

Right?

Actually, no, it doesn’t.

Since early March, we have added 13 new chicks and young hens to our flock. Our children are learning about the stages of life for a chicken in the real world. I hope to one day hatch chicks here on our little farm. Maybe next year when these chicks are one-year-old layers.

IMG_8929Sadly, we have lost three of our new chicks *apparently.* Two are definitely not coming back.

The third one … she was missing last night when we had to close up the henhouse. We don’t know what type of hen she is/was, but she is/was totally white and the other hens were really mean to her, which could be why she is gone. They never accepted her, which made us all sad and little mad too. Continue reading

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10 Posts in 10 Days: Hands-On School

I realize my blog is really neglected at the moment. It isn’t that I don’t want to write or that I don’t have anything about which to write. It might be that I don’t seem to be able to hold my eyelids open any longer by the time I get a blank page up on my blog late at night. It certainly isn’t that I don’t have any photos I need to upload.

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We have all of the math wrap-ups. They make a great math tub activity. They are self-checking and all attached together, which makes losing parts of them virtually impossible.

Nonetheless. I want this to be a record, or rather a journal of sorts, of our pursuits in learning and just life in general.

I decided I would challenge myself to write 10 posts in 10 days. I make no promises, but what follows is my first installment: Hands-On School. Continue reading

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On Our Table

I have so many photos that I haven’t posted, so I was thinking of a photo dump. Then I thought it would be more fun to have a theme for the photo dump, so here are some views of our tables taken since January up until this past week!

On the coffee table

The best-ever souvenir purchased on Disney property: a $7.95, 750-piece puzzle.

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On the hard-rock maple table in our library

The iPad with The Story of Us: The Dust Bowl on it

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Five Free and Frugal Ideas for Your Classroom

Here’s five free and frugal ideas you can use for educational pursuits today!

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1. REPURPOSE plastic pieces leftover from broken or partially misplaced games.

Use them for new game markers for:

  • homemade or TpT games (like the ones in my store)
  • sorting
  • matching
  • counting
  • one-to-one correspondence

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2. ACCESS tumblebooks.com to read and/or listen to thousands of FREE books with audio and highlighted text.

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  • You can sort by type of book, age, reading level, etc.
  • If you have an account with your local library, be sure to ask if they have a tumblebooks account. We are able to access it completely FREE with our library’s code!
  • This site is formatted to work on tablet devices as well as your laptop!

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3. TRY simple scientific experiments with your students!

They can be done with items you DEFINITELY have on hand and will DEFINITELY inspire your students to seek out even more LEARNING opportunities!

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  • A review of the Commutative Property with four glasses of water, two with a smaller but equal amount and two with a larger but equal amount.
  • Does it matter if you add the glass with the lesser amount of water to the glass with the larger amount OR if you add the glass with the larger amount to the glass with the lesser amount?
  • No it doesn’t! Whether you add 4 + 6 for instance or 6 + 4, you still get 10!
  • Try it especially if your students are struggling to understand why the two amounts are in fact equal no matter which way you add them up!

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  • All you need for this experiment is MAGNETS of various sizes and objects to test whether they are magnetic or not!
  • If you have them, brass brads are the MOST FUN, especially with a large and very attractive magnet!
  • Challenge your students to see how many they can pick up with just one magnet!

4. GO OUTSIDE and explore in nature.

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Whether you can find a nearby creek or just a nearby tree or field to explore, get outside and see what you can discover with your students! The world is our classroom!

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5. SAVE PAPER and packaging you find in products you buy.

It has so many uses, not to mention it doesn’t end up in the trash or recycling bin quite yet!

  • Paper piecing: you might notice the chicken pictures in the picture below. They were created with scrap papers including another piece of brown paper that was salvaged from packaging!
  • The history projects on the top of the shelves in the picture below were also saved from the round file! They were intended to be the back of some cubeical shelves, but my Dad made me real wood back instead. These very sturdy (but still paper) boards were the perfect size for 2nd grade history projects!

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Here is a close-up shot of one of the projects in progress!

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  • Instant mural! (this paper below that our children turned into a mural of space “and other things” was wadded up as padding in a package of books I ordered.

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These ideas are free and frugal, yet they are sure to enrich the education of those you teach! If you have some more ideas, PLEASE do SHARE in the comments!

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Another Post About My Desk

How is that for a hook?

Yes I have rearranged my desk again. Actually, I never really arranged it. Until now. It has looked like this … well usually messier … than this. For nine months.

Not bad for nearly one year since we purchased our new home, and nine months since we moved in. Mind you, things weren’t finished when we moved in (and still aren’t), but the library was a top priority and was *mostly* finished.

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But my desk. That is another story. The word piles comes to my mind. A fairly accurate description actually. Workspace would definitely not be an accurate description of my desk these last nine months.

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