Death by Sugar

A couple of weeks ago my friend J. put a picture up on her Facebook wall that was truly inspiring.  It was of a dessert she made for her son's birthday.  My teenage son took one look at it and decided it would be perfect for his birthday as well.  So, we thought we'd document the decadence in case you'd like to try it for your next big celebration.  

As with most perfect things, this dessert is poetic in it's simplicity.  Just 4 ingredients- all of which you can buy ready made if you want to.

1. Chocolate chip cookie dough
2. Oreos (double stuffed is the only way to go)
3. Brownie mix.
4. Marshmallow cream (or is it creme??)  There's no milk in it at any rate.

We're a milk-free household due to a severe allergy in our family so we opted to make homemade chocolate chip cookie dough and a brownie mix that doesn't use milk.

First you line a 9X9 inch pan with waxed paper.  You could be really careful about it and get it all nice and pretty or you could just shove it in the pan like I did.  Next, spread the cookie dough into the bottom of the pan.  I cut the dough into slices and arranged them on the bottom and then squished it all around until there were no holes and it went all the way to the sides.

Now open the package of Oreos and eat two to make sure they aren't stale.  You might want to try another one just to be sure.  Once you're positive they aren't stale place them in the pan in a nice neat pattern.  If you're a bit creatively uptight like I am you will be very satisfied that they make 4 perfect rows of four- a square!  Everyone knows the squareroot of 16 is 4 and here you have your proof.  If you're into unschooling you could call it a day for math.  (Just kidding- really.  Unschoolers are misunderstood.)  I digress.

Now you're ready to put your brownie mix on top of the cookie/oreo concoction you've got going.  Smile.  This is going to be great.

Bake it all for 30 minutes.  Cool and frost with the marshmallow creme.

Put it in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve it.  Take a butter knife and poke around the sides to loosen the waxed paper and then pull the whole cake out by the paper.  Peal the paper off and put the cake on a plate.   As soon as you take the cake out of the fridge the marsmallow creme will start to run down the sides so hurry up and get your camera out if you want to take a picture of the layers.  Use your biggest knife to cut it into slices. 

 Sing to your special birthday person and enjoy.  If you have neighbors you like you could share with them.  Or not.  My husband declared that his heart was beating super fast after eating this.  I'd like to think it was just because we're still so in love after all these years.  Could be the sugar though.

Try it and let me know how it turns out!

Hoarders and Vacuums

I don't watch much TV but the other day I ran across a program  about the lives of hoarders that completely drew me in.  Over the years I've read articles about the occasional New York spinster found dead in her apartment underneath piles of newspapers she collected.  One story that stuck out in my mind was about a man who died in his stuff but no one found him for three years because no one cared enough to check on him.  These incidents were anomalies, I assumed.  Surely, no one was really living this way.  Apparently, I was wrong.  According to the show, it is estimated that about 15 million people are completely encased in their posessions.  Many of them are not hermits or spinsters but have spouses, children, friends and co-workers.

The first time I watched one of these shows I sat there with my mouth wide open for the entire hour.  I just couldn't get over the amount of stuff these people had accumulated.  More shocking was the quality of the stuff.  Most of it was worthless trash.  Empty wrappers, old magazines, used items that were outdated or broken, all piled shoulder high.  These folks went to incredible lengths to move from one room to another, making little paths and climbing over their posessions.   Some of them had entire sections of their houses that were inaccessible.  One man ironically had to climb out of his fire escape and back in another window to get upstairs in his house because the stairway was impassable.  Important areas like kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms had lost their functionality.  The hoarders were washing their dishes in the tub, eating with plates on their laps in front of the TV and sleeping in makeshift chairs or on the corners of bare mattresses while fleas, flies, roaches, mice and rats ran rampant throughout the house.

I must admit, my first reaction was one of disgust.  How could people allow themselves to get to this point?  I thought that compared to these homes, my piles of clutter made me seem like a minimalist from IKEA.  After this initial smug response, however,  my senses got ahold of me and I realized that these are real people, living in real houses, with an enormous amount of stuff and hurt.  It also dawned on me that at the heart of this disfunction was a feeling of utter emptiness and despair.  All hope and meaning were lost for these folks.  They felt unloved and helpless even when surrounded by friends, co-workers and family members who DID care.

Each of these shows follows a common pattern: they identify the hoarder, highlight their disfunctional lifestyle, identify past trauma and hurt as causes and then offer help to the hoarder change their life patterns and responses to the stress or grief that originally set off this behavior.  Hoarding is a very complicated problem and I don't have the medical background to analyze all of the causes and effects.  I can only see that the outcome of hoarding is the destruction of homes and more importantly, souls.  None of the hoarders I've watched claims to have peace.  They may say that they are comfortable with the filth, deception, disorganization, ludicrous work-arounds and constant aquisition of things but they never say they have peace.  All they say is that they feel compelled to obtain and hold on to stuff.  They are prisoners of their posessions.

This bring me to the root of it all: hopelessness and the search for meaning.  The desperate attempt to obliterate the emptiness and futility of life under piles of stuff.   Blaise Pascal said “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”  The hoarder is an explicit example of this but I am really no different than he.  At one time in my life I had a God-shaped void  as well.  I filled it with other things- not nearly so obvious as the hoarders I've seen but no less futile.  Left unchecked my quest to find hope where there was no hope could have led me down a path of destruction that would have been very obvious to others- like hoarding, substance abuse or materialism, exercise, eating, shopping, watching TV, improper relationships, any number of meaningless roads that lead to destruction.   In the end, the only lasting peace I found was in Jesus.  


Since I started thinking through my emotions about what I was witnessing on these hoarding shows, my heart has softened to these folks.   I see them as people who need what we all need: redemption, hope, peace and meaning for life.    There are not enough dump trucks in the world to haul away the sin we all bear.  No amount of human impetus and  effort can make a person's soul clean for all of eternity.  There's not a therapist in the world who can untangle all of the hurt and disfunction in the heart of men.   These things are found and freely given away for free in the only One who can fill up our hearts and set us free: Jesus Christ. 

How to Make the Mother of All Home School History Timelines

The New and Improved MOAHHT Timeline is 37.3 feet long.

            We are in our third year studying World History.  Two years ago we started with creation, traipsed through Ancient Mesopotamia, Assyria, Greece and Rome.  The next year we moved on to the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation.  And now we have finally landed at the age of Revolutions, Enlightenment, World Wars and Post Modernism.  I have to admit that I have never had so much fun learning about history.  Everyone says that you learn exponentially more when you have to teach a subject and that is definitely true.  I’m pretty sure I was paying about as much attention as anyone else in high school and college when I took world history but somehow I had some gaping holes in my over-all big picture.  I’ve been gradually patching those up as I prepare for our history lessons.  There is nothing like taking your time and really getting into it to help put everything into perspective. 

            When I started homeschooling, I read that lots of home school families make a history timeline and add to it over the years.  I thought that it was a brilliant idea and decided to make my own.  We happened to have a huge cardboard box left over from something so I cut it up  and made a 22 foot long timeline which we have been using faithfully to record the Trojan war, Francis Bacon, the Roman Empire, Bach et. all.    I can’t tell you how helpful it has been to have a visual reminder of when things happened to help keep it straight in my mind.  I know the kids are enjoying it too.  They’re making lots of connections and having those “Aha!” moments that are so exciting when you home school. When you see that 2012 is 20 feet away from Ancient Egypt you get an idea of how long people have been around- and how short American History is compared to World History.  

The other day I looked at our timeline and started thinking that although it was loved- a la Linus blanket,  it was really a bit junior varsity.  It’s made of plain old brown cardboard and every two weeks we  fold it  up and stick in the closet.  It's looking a big raggedy.     Plus, I am a selectively organized person (only a few choice areas of my life are organized) and it was bugging me that the timeline was hard to read and not categorized. Charles Wesley, The Rococo Period in Art and The Seven Years war were all in there together.    

Humble and Jumbled.

Ye Olde Timeline coming in at 22 feet.

Of course, I could buy a timeline ready to go off the internet but that would just be too easy.  I really wanted it to correspond with what we are learning.   Plus, I wanted to have the visual impact of seeing how far away those ancient dates really are and I didn't want to have to squint too much.    

So, I did what I tend to do and set out to improve the timeline.  Everything can be improved.  :) What I’ve got now is the Mother of All History Timelines and although still probably not considered pro, I think it is at least more varsity than my old one.  Certainly more organized and easy to read.  I have found it very helpful to be able to look at one thread of Science history and another one of Music and Art, Religion, etc. We are already having blast adding stuff to it.  It is 37 feet long and made of 16 pieces of poster board.  I know, where in the world do we keep it?  Well, we’re pulling it out when we work on it every couple of weeks and I keep it in a  cardboard folder that easily hides behind one of our doors.  This was actually the packaging I bought the poster board in.

Storing the timeline- notice the gecko (school mascot).

I’ve separated each sheet into 6 sections: Religion and Philosophy, Literature/ Theater, History and Politics, Science, Music and Art, Eras and Epochs.  Not all of the sheets have the same increments of time but it gives a general idea.  If you gave even weight to all the dates you'd have a timeline that wraps around the block.  

So, how can you make one of these nifty timelines for your very own?  It’s your lucky day!  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  I just happen to have written down the instructions.

5,000 years of World History in 37.3 feet

You will need:

16 sheets of poster board 22”x 28”

A pencil

A yardstick

Markers: black, blue, red, purple

This is a bit time consuming but you can take a few days and work on it or have your kids help you. 

1. On each sheet: Number in the right hand corner 1-16.

2.  On 15 sheets: Draw a horizontal line (divide the sheet in half) with black marker at 11” to form the timeline.  Then divide those halves into thirds by drawing horizontal lines with pencil at 3 ½” , 7 ½ “, 15” and 18 1/2”.   This isn’t exactly even but it is easy to measure and it’s close enough for me.  You will have 6 sections.

Dividing your sheets into 6 sections.

3.     Here’s an overview of what you will be doing:  These will be the headings for your sheets.  You can either hand write them or type them up and print them.  Cut them out and glue them to the tops of the sheets  in order ( See picture). 

a.     Sheet #1 AD 3000-AD 2500 (500 years) 2 ½”=50 years

b.      Sheet #2 AD 2500-AD 1800 (500 years) 2 ½”=50 years

c.       Sheet #3 AD 1100-AD 400 (500 years) 2 ½”=50 years

d.      Sheet #4 AD 400- 300 BC (700 years) 1”= 25 years

e.      Sheet #5 300 BC-1000 BC (700 years) 1”= 25 years

f.       Sheet #6 1000 BC -1300 BC (300 years) 2 3/8 “= 25 years

g.      Sheet #7 1300’s (100 years) 1”= 25 years

h.      Sheet #8 1400’s(100 years) 1”= 25 years

i.        Sheet #9 1500’s (100 years) 1”= 25 years

j.        Sheet #10 1600’s(100 years) 1”= 25 years

k.      Sheet #11 1700’s(100 years) 1”= 25 years

l.        Sheet #12 1800-1850 (50 years) 2 ¾”= 5 years

m.    Sheet #13 1850-1900 (50 years) 2 ¾”= 5 years

n.      Sheet #14 1900-1950 (50 years) 2 ¾”= 5 years

o.      Sheet #15 1950-2020 (70 years) 2”= 5 years

Add Titles to Your Sheets

3.   For all sheets:

a.     Mark 100’s in red.

b.     Mark 50’s in purple.

c.      Mark 10’s in blue.

d.     Mark 5’s in black.

4.  On the sheet you have left over (this is sheet #1) draw a vertical line at 7" to start recording history around 3000 BC.  I put a little jagged green line to note the fact that there’s some undetermined amount of time between when we start recording history with Adam and Eve and the year 3000.  At 7 ½” mark the year 3,000 in red marker (you might want to do all of this in pencil first and then go back over with a marker in case you make mistakes.) Then mark every 2 ½ inches.  (2 ½ “=50 years on this sheet.) Remember to count “backwards” since you are working in BC.

Sheet #1 is a little different.

6.  Make your Categories.  Copy these into a Word Document, use a bold font that is about 1/4 of and inch tall.  Make 16 copies of this list.  Cut them out and paste them onto each sheet (on the left hand side) in this order:  

Religion and Philosophy 

Literature and Theater 

History and Politics 

Science 

Music and Art 

Eras and Epochs

From Sheet #1

7.  Now you are ready to mark each sheet in pencil according to the measurements in # 3.  Put the dates below the lines (in pencil) making them about 1/4 of an inch tall.  Each sheet starts with the same number with which the last left off.  Go back over the numbers in marker following the color scheme in #4. Remember that on Sheet #5 which is AD 400-300 BC you will reverse the direction you are counting.  (See picture).  You can make a year 0 even though there is no such thing- or you can put

AD 1 and 1 BC on the same line.  There are actually 9 years between AD 5 and 5 BC.

Sheet #5 The birth of Jesus.

Start where the last sheet left off.

The 1700's

8.  Now, for the fun part.  Decide what you want to put on your timeline.  Just start wherever you are in your studies at the moment and don't worry about filling in the rest of the stuff.  This is a timeline you can work on for years.  

Make a list of all of the people, events and eras you want on the timeline for each chapter of your book.  Start a powerpoint file and add each of these items on your list to the presentation.  Then find pictures to go with the captions.  The pictures and captions should be small- maybe 1" wide by 1 1/2 " high.  You could add text to a document and have your kids search for appropriate pictures.

Be sure to include the date on each picture so you will now where to put it on the timeline.  For people, we usually try to pinpoint a special event in their lives like when they wrote a certain piece of literature or when they invented something and pin them to their claim to fame.  For other people who have too many claims to count, we just  pin them to the time period in their life when we feel they were most influential.  This is usually toward the second half of their life.   You are the boss of your timeline. 

9.  The Eras and Epochs section is used for any long period of time you would like to note during history that doesn't fit into your other categories or that would make things messier if you added it to a certain category.  For instance, there are many artists and musicians you could add to the mid 1700's so that section will probably be filled with pictures.  Use Eras and Epochs at the bottom of your sheet to denote the Baroque period in art and music.

Adding Eras and Epocs

10.  Don't forget to add yourself!  Add everyone in your family and other important ancestors or family events.

11.  Have fun and let me know how your timeline works out!

Keeping a Home School Gradebook

For me, the two most time consuming aspects of homeschooling are preparation and gradekeeping.  For younger students it is a little easier to keep track of grades but Middle and High School start to get complicated.

I've recently started using the free version of  Jupiter grades which has been a huge help in keeping track of everything and making sure there are no mistakes.  Jupiter used to be called Snap Grades and is used widely by public and private schools.  It is very secure and is completely online based. You can set up weighted grades and print report cards directly from the site.   Here are some pointers about setting up a gradebook with Jupiter.

1.  The first thing you need to do is set up an account on Jupiter Grades.

2. Next, you will set up a separate class for each student.  There will obviously only be one student per class unless you have twins or children who are in the same class.  I named all of my clases with the grade first and the name of the class second.  For instance, 9th Physics.  That way, I can easily see which class goes with each student.  So, at the top of my page I have 14 classes showing because each student has 7 classes.

3. Next, go to to Set Up> Grading Options and set up your grading periods, grade scale and how all of the grades should be weighted.  For example, Tests 50%, Quizzes 25% and Reports 25%.  You will probably have a different set up for each class.  Some classes might have a participation or assignment grade (daily work).

4  You might want to set up a time every week or two to log grades into Jupiter Grades so you aren't left during the last week of the grading period scurrying around trying to get it all done.  I have my kids record their grades every day in every subject next to their assignments for that day so all of the grades are in one place for each child.

5. To print Grades, go to Print > Report Cards.  You can choose to print just that quarter or the whole semester, or the whole year.  You can also decide whether you want number grades to show or just letter grades.  For high school, it would be better to have number grades listed with letter grades.  You can also have it calculate a GPA.

6. Watch the tutorials for other tips.

How do you keep grades for your home schooled students?  I'd love to hear your ideas.