David and Goliath

Old time classic movie, Orson Wells plays in this movie.
The story of the film is adapted from the Old Testament: The Philistines declare war on the Israelites and wrench the Arch of the Allience from them. Saul, the king of Israel, listens meanwhile to the words of the prophets who tell him that the new king will be a young shepard called David. But still David has to fight the enemy in form of their mighty giant Goliath

[youtube http://youtu.be/6OVoP6Aoabk width="460" height="355"]

Curriculum for Grammar

Easy Grammar by Wanda Phillips is one of my favorite grammar curricula. One thing I like most of all is that I really only need the teachers book because the student pages are also included in the book. I am permitted to copy the student pages. I put them in my own three ring binder usually a half year at a time.

This curriculum also includes unit reviews and tests, as well as, cumulative unit reviews and tests. She has included a few games in her book that are fun to play while learning. One such game is preposition bingo.

I love the fact that Easy Grammar begins with learning prepositions. The approach is somewhat ingenious. First your child learns the prepositions and their phrases and eliminate the prepositional phrases from a sentence. Afterwards, it becomes extremely easy to find the subject and verb, as well as, point out the other parts in sentence.

One of the biggest questions about Easy Grammar is, “Do I have to get the teachers book and the student workbook too?” The answer is no. The teacher’s books has the same material as the students book. To see what the books look like here is a quick video that shows the material. It’s not the best example but, it does show the books and how they are laid out.

[jbutton link="http://youtu.be/9a-PQyaAdcA"]Easy Grammar Curriculum[/jbutton]

Find a Saint Book, best Catholic Children Books

This video by a sister of St. Paul, does a wonderful job explaining some the saint books she likes and which books she started with on her journey to the Catholic faith.
The video quality isn’t the best but the content is was worth spreading on authors such as Louis de Wohl, and saints such as Maria Goretti, St. Therese, St. Bernadette and more.

Beware of history movies and documentaries reviewed

Not all history movies are created alike. History resources are losing their credibility.

Recently, a Catholic friend of mine was watching the History Channel. The History Channel is good, it’s a great source of history or is it? Historical events at the time of Jesus were being discuss when out of the blue a factual statement was made that (everybody’s knows kind of statement) that Mary was actually raped by a Roman Soldier. It stopped my friend dead in his tracks and he changed the channel. This was a knowledgeable Catholic adult watching the show. The sad part is that, there are many adults and impressionable children of all ages watch these shows that don’t know their faith facts and can be lured in by these untrue comments and statements. Thus furthering the viewers believe that it must be true because they just watched it on a credible station. I have seen more and more of this type of thing going on with the History Channel. So Please BEWARE, if you are a parent, I advise you if you watch this and shows like this on the History Channel, watch them with your child!

I am afraid it goes farther. Recently I received a PBS documentary DVD on the Rise of the Roman Empire, the First Century. Wow, what a mistake not to preview that one! For sometime during the first part of the dvd (I didn’t watch the rest) they spent discussing illict love affairs of ancient Roman women and showed ancienet images on walls depicting every sort of intimate position know to mankind! These were not just quick glimpes of a camera shot; the images were kept on the tv screen for some time before they moved on to another image in an even more provocitive position! Doing all this while reading seducing poetry from the time.

I began to wonder how long I would have to endured exposé of smut. How could this possibly be the meat and potatoes of critical information as to the Rise of the Roman Empire! I advise you if you have children, unless you want them to prematurely be subjected to very imtimate scenes and careless discussion of promescuity you will avoid this Movie like the plague! This is not the best resource for educating your children.

Advent 2010

Advent 2010 season is upon us again. If you haven’t seen this bunch of kids doing their advent adventure be sure to look them up. They are a great reminder to our children to keep in mind and not lose site of advent.

You will need to go to their website and subscribe to the email if you don’t want your children to miss one day of the fun filled adventures.

Bishop talks about Abraham Lincoln

fulton-j-sheen Bishop Fulton Sheen was one of the most dynamic speakers of his time in early media. He was called a Prophet in Our Times. And really, those same thought came to mind after listening to several of his talks. Most of you may be too young to remember listening to Bishop Sheen on the television. However, It is amazing how his messages are so appropriate even for today’s living.

I found a collection of his videos “A Life Worth Living” on Youtube under the “catholicclips” user. In particularly a video that surprised me. Here the bishop’s talk is on Abraham Lincoln! It is a three part video. You will really enjoy this video if your interested in the life of Honest Abe.

Lincoln and Sheen come from the same region in Illinois so it should be no surprise that Bishop Sheen is able to share things the average person doesn’t know about Lincoln’s life. Plus, Fulton Sheen was born in 1895, that’s just 30 short years from the untimely death of Lincoln. The stories of Lincoln and his family must have been common dinnertime conversation around those parts of Illinois during that era. As a Catholic, what could be better than the bishop sharing a bit of US history with us.

Fulton Sheen has several other videos you can listen to under user “CatholicClips” (I am not associated with this user.) If you don’t like going on youtube, you can click on this: my catholic homeschool videos link and see all three parts. The Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdQFf0Ybm0

Catholic Free Video Collection

You may want to check out my free video collection it includes many Catholic subjects and saints. Plus other educational videos all free.

Very Cool gift for kids who like science.

Do your kids like science or bugs? This link has the some really unique computer mice the glow. They have insects in them that were once alive.

Amazing and Beautiful Butterflies Buggy Computer Mouse

Locate videos on animals, oceans and more from National Geographic

Helping Children understand their Catholic Religion

The view the other videos in this series go to my video collection.

Building a Video Collection.

Sometimes when you home school it’s difficult to remember or keep track of where you saw a particular online history, religious, or some other type of educational video that you want to include with your studies.

Now that there are several different online video formats available for free online video watching it makes it easier and at the same time more difficult to incorporate videos into a lesson. Some video websites tend to scare me with what pops up after your children view the clip your interested in showing them. Or there is a video line up with anybodies guess what will be viewed.

You can view my Catholic homeschool oriented video collection here.

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