One Homeschool Chat parent last Friday asked for some websites that she could incorporated in their studies this year. Already she and her daughter have joined one of the local presidential campaigns, which is a great way to get a first-hand look at politics in action.

Here are some sites that would be useful for a Civics Unit Study.

NationsStates was a favorite of ours several years ago and I was glad to see that it was still up and running. NationStates is a simulation game where you build a nation and run that nation according to your own political beliefs. Do you want to be a benevolent dictator? Or maybe create a totally democatratic nation. The choice is yours! The novel Jennifer Government by Max Barry inspired this game. I wanted to read this book when we played the game previously and now I have added it to my wish list on PaperbackSwap. Check out NationStates. I will bet you have as much fun as we did creating your own nation!

Congress for Kids
Interactive experience designed to help you learn about the foundation of our federal government and how its actions affect you.

Post from Jurisdynamics blog. Constitutional curiosities: a 21-question scavenger hunt. This is definitely for older students. If you or your teen likes scavenger hunts and/or research, this looks fun.

Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
If maps are your thing, or your child is very visually-oriented, this is a cool site!

The BBHQ Great American Civics Quiz
Even though the site is “Baby Boomers Headquarters” the quiz is great for anyone.

PBS The Democracy Project
Be President for a Day, Step inside the Voting Booth.

HistoryCentral.com’s United States Presidential Elections. Learn about every Presidential Election. They are currently the 2008 election and the site is updated daily. So a great way to keep track of whom is winning where.

Project Vote Smart
Find your local representative, learn his voting record. Be an informed voter.

If you would like links to the official parties and other government websites, visit my article Using Computers as You Homeschool. While this was written a few years ago, detailing how my children used computers and the Internet in their homeschooling (unschooling), the links are all still great links and you might even like the article!

Happy Voting!

The topic of the day ended up being books. Crystal wanted to know what books we had found to be essential over the years for our homeschool library. She asked for books we could not live without, books that we loved and/or books that had great pictures. Since this was Crystal’s topic, we geared it towards the age of her children, twelve and under, but I think we slipped a few in that would be for older children too. And a few webpages and other resources were brought up also. Here are the recommends that were mentioned today:

Fiction

• Anything by Tamora Pierce
• The Book That Jack Wrote by Jon Scieszka
• Cheaper By The Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr.
• The Wrinkle in Time series by Madeline L’Engle
• Bryan Jacques Redwall books
• Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
• My Father’s Dragon (& its sequels) by Ruth Stiles Gannett
• The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt
• Wolf Story by William McCleery and Warren Chappell
• My Side of the Mountain and others by Jean Craighead George
• Books by Elizabeth George Speare
• Hatchett and others by Gary Paulsen
• Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles
• Books by Beverly Cleary
• The Secret of Nimh
• The Borrowers
• Love Among the Walnuts by Jean Ferris

Non-Fiction

• Eyewitness Books
• World Book Encyclopedia

Math

• Anything by Theoni Pappas
• Anything by Marilyn Burns
• How Math Works by Carol Volderman
• Reader’s Digest How Math Works”
• Math On Call, A Mathematics Handbook ISBN: 0-669-45770-1

Science

• The Way Things Work by David McCauley
• Growing Up With Science Encyclopedia
• Reader’s Digest How Science Works
• Reader’s Digest How The Universe Works

History

• Timeline from Sonlight
• Timeline stickers
• Joy Hakim’s History of US series

Economics

• The Richard Maybury series

English

• Words on the Vine by Claudia Vurnakes

Poetry

• Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Classics

• Treasure Island
• Peter Pan
• Swiss Family Robinson
• Tales from Arabian Nights
• Uncle Remus
• Aesop’s Fables
• Don Quixote
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales
• The Three Musketeers
• The Hobbit by Tolkein
• C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series
• Misty of Chincoteague by Margeurite Henry
• Charlotte’s Web
• Shakespeare

Other Resources

• Sonlight’sReading Lists
• Chinaberry’s catalog
• Comic Book Creator
• GameMaker’s Apprentice software
• Storybook Weaver software
• The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease

And finally, this blog was mentioned for it’s July 12th post of veggie art: Altogether too happy

I do like traveling, though. I always have. There is something about hitting the road with a long trip planned that is just very exciting and also relaxing at the same time. One of the things I enjoy most about traveling is seeing all the different place names and trying to figure out why they were given that particular name. Some are named for people, some are Indian names, some are named to remind immigrants of places in their homeland, and some seem to be descriptive names, but it is not always clear which is which. For instance the Elk River in Tennessee. Now I am pretty sure there are no elk in southern Tennessee and that there were no elk there two hundred years ago when the river was named. So did someone think they saw an elk? Or was that someone’s last name? Or did Elk just sound similar to what the Indians called that river and so the settlers called it Elk?

Then there is the Cumberland River that runs through Nashville. Why is it called Cumberland and just what is the origin of the word cumberland? I am going to have to look that one up because it has intrigued me all day long.

Clarksville (Tennessee) is an easy one. It was named for General George Rogers Clark, a frontier fighter and Revolutionary War hero. He was also the older brother of William Clark, of Lewis & Clark fame.

Now Paducah (Kentucky) is another one that I will have to look up. I imagine it is an Indian derivation, but I would love to know for sure.

Just a few of the thoughts that absorbed my mind today as we drove the many miles. And best of all, David is now home and we all get to enjoy his company for a week! And then next Sunday make the same trek all over again!

So, he has to purchase books for three classes: Japanese, Calculus and Chemistry. The full list price at the bookstore for all three classes totals $433.10. If he buys used from the bookstore (assuming they are still available used), it would cost $292. After spending an hour on E-bay and Amazon this morning, I can get several for less, although surprisingly the Japanese books are cheapest at the campus bookstore. If I buy some online and the Japanese at the campus bookstore, the total could be around $260, and most of those online were brand new. So that’s a fair savings.

I would love to see the list of books that David will be using for his World Cultures class. He brought home from Orientation the first book for that class, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. I have had that book on my “too read” list for over a year. I’ve already read one of his books to the boys and have another here on my shelf to read next. I’m willing to bet that David’s World Cultures class will be a very interesting one.

This morning someone posted on one of the high school homeschool e-mail lists a request for “the” book that we think each high school student should read. And also which book we read as a high school student had the most lasting impact. She wants to create a “must read” book list for her high school student.

If I had to name one book that made the most impact upon me as a high school student, it would have to be The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But if I had to name one author, it would be Leon Uris. I think his books did more for my understanding of history, especially history over the past 100-150 years, than any history class I ever took, and I did enjoy all my history classes.

As an adult, there is one book that I think all adults should read before they have children of their own or work with children in any capacity. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Maybe adults would view children differently, treat them differently, if this was required reading.

I’ve always thought book lists were fun. A list of books someone has read can tell you a lot about that person. So can the books they own. The first thing I do upon visiting someone is look over their bookshelves (hopefully they have some!). I think the books there, or the absence thereof, tells you a lot about the household.

Yesterday we actually got back to reading our world history book, “The Outline of History” by H. G. Wells. It seems like we’ve been working on the final chapter for months! I read for about an hour yesterday and we’re down to the last three pages. Hopefully we can finish it today. Then we can pick back up the Richard Maybury book(s) I want to cover this summer before David goes off to Evansville.

Darn J. K. Rowling and her announcement yesterday about her next (and final) Harry Potter book. Here she hasn’t even gotten it all written and she’s already telling us that two characters (main characters!) will die in the final book. And her wording was such that it certainly seems possible that Harry could be one of those. Something to the effect that no one else can write more books in the future about Harry if he dies in the last book. So whom will she kill off? My boys speculate that it will be Ron and Hermoine. Surely she wouldn’t kill them off? More likely Hagrid and maybe … maybe … oh, I can’t even begin to guess! I only know that I’ll be extremely saddened when the series ends. And hopeful that Rowling will write more. Although topping the HP series would likely not be possible. And certainly she doesn’t need the income! It would just be interesting to see what other areas her writing brain might find appealing to write about.

I named my first blog “The Writing Well” and I almost named this one the same. Here’s the very first entry from “The Writing Well:”

March 1, 2003

Why “The Writing Well” you ask? Because I am a well of writing that needs priming. I know I have writing ideas and material just waiting to be brought to the surface, waiting to be put on paper, but for some reason they are just not coming to the surface.

When I was a young girl, my grandmother’s home was the most magical place. Even though it has been over fifteen years since I was last there, I can still smell and almost taste the unique perfume of Grammy’s house: molasses cookies, fresh wildflowers, and that musty, damp smell that comes from a house that is closed up all winter. Outside her flowerbeds were in colorful bloom, the grass always needed mowing, the maple trees spun their helicopter seeds, and the profusion of lilacs scented the air for weeks.

What I remember the most, though, was the water well and its pump, an area conversely fraught with danger and delight, fear and fulfillment. The well pump was on a small shady knoll. As I would walk up the path to the well, I had to be careful not to slip on the moss covered stones that surrounded the well’s wooden platform. Even more dangerous to me, though, was the possibility of snakes. On any day there could be several snakes enjoying the cool shade and dampness of the well platform. They were nothing more than green garter snakes, but for a child petrified of any snake they might as well have been boa constrictors or rattlesnakes. The mere sight of them would cause me to freeze with fright, back away slowly, and run for the house. And the next time around I would be doubly apprehensive about going to the well. And yet, go I would, because there was nothing better on a hot summer day than a drink of cold well water!

Some days, though, the water didn’t come simply by moving the pump handle up and down. It needed priming, which meant that I had to go back down the slippery stone path, keeping an eagle eye out for snakes, get a glass of water from Grammy’s house, make my way back to the well, and then pour the water down the pump while moving the pump handle up and down. If I was lucky, one glass of water would do the trick and I’d cup my hands to catch the cool, sweet water. If not, I would have to run back inside and get another glass of water and prime it again!

You might wonder why I didn’t just drink the water from the house instead of going through all that effort to get the well water. After all, it was the very same water! As a child, though, I knew there was a difference. The well water from the pump was sweeter and colder, more refreshing. Or maybe it was just that the danger and excitement, the sense of accomplishment, made the water taste sweeter and feel colder.

My writing needs priming … a few common words trickling down the well to get the steady flow of cool, sweet words flowing again. Ahhh …how welcome that would be!

We’ll see if this blog fulfills it’s purpose better than my first effort. Quite honestly, I’ve not written much in the past couple of years other than lots of e-mails. Maybe I should spend less of my energy on the homeschool e-mail lists and more on my own writing!