tex-hess.com

Summer is almost at an end

Rachel — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:33:47 +0000

I went ahead and took the summer off from blogging. It was pretty crazy for a while and so I decided to drop updating this blog. But now that our school year has almost started I decided to go ahead and start updating again.

We start school on Monday or Tuesday. Robert has off on Monday so we’ll see what we end up doing. The past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to get organized for school. I’ve been making lesson plans, ordering books, and trying to organize our school space(s). This is what the bookshelf by the computer looks like. This is some of the curriculum I’ve been going over and planning for this new year with.

It’s been driving us crazy. Robert hates the mess and I’m pulling out my hair just looking at it all. Two kids now. I don’t know how everyone else does it. Although I suppose it helps that for now, Caleb is only somewhat doing two subjects. Math and some letters. But I think all the planning for Kaelee is done now. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with Caleb. Three math programs is a little much.

June 24: The Homeschool Mother’s Journal

Rachel — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:07:27 +0000

In my life this week: I’m trying to get back in the swing of things. Last week, Kaelee and I were at girls’ camp for our church. I didn’t have much to do, but I enjoyed it. Especially because I had a/c.

In our homeschool this week: I received a “sample” of Susan Wise Bauer’s Writing With Style. I say sample because it’s a huge portion of what the book will end up being. It’s for 5th grade so I think it’ll be too easy for Kaelee. I haven’t looked through all of it, just the first 3 weeks, but those three weeks are only doing one level outlining. So far it seems to be like Classical Writing: Homer, but not so mind boggling. It’s laid out so much easier to understand. I’m hoping I could use it, but make it more difficult as it goes along.

ETA: you can get a sample of the book here.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing: this week, thankfully nothing. Actually one of Kaelee’s friends spent the night Wednesday night. I’m just glad it wasn’t all 5 girls like it was supposed to be.

Questions/thoughts I have: Whether or not the writing stuff I have is enough. I now understand why some people but all the writing programs out there. I may end up ordering a couple more. I’m going to try to hold off until I see how Kaelee’s doing with Meaningful Composition.

Things I’m working on: the chemistry schedule for next year. I’d planned on using Ellen McHenry’s two chemistry programs and some experiments. So I ordered them, but then found RS4K’s 2nd level on clearance, so I bought that as well. So now I have to pull it all together.

Rachel — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:25:39 +0000

Is the new cool thing on the internet. And yeah, you’ve got to really look at the “next big thing” sometimes and think about whether or not you would use it, but really. I.love.pinterest. It’s such a great place to find anything and everything. And it’s visual. Which I think is what makes it better than some previous bookmark sites. I have a delicious account and it’s great to keep track of all those sites you come across that you want to keep in mind, just in case, but without pictures you have to rely on descriptions. Not with pinterest. You see the pics in all their glory. It’s a great site and I have invites if anyone wants one.

Check me out here.

Making relish

Rachel — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:20:28 +0000

A neighbor came over and gave my mom a bag of cucumbers because she had lots in her garden. Well my mom was going out of town, so she gave them to me. They sat on my counter until my mom came back and then I made pickles. There were so many cucumbers, I really didn’t know what to do with all of them. I ended up making 4 pints of whole dill pickles, 18 pints of sliced dill pickles, and 3 pints of relish. The dill pickles were very easy. I just followed the recipe on the pickling seasoning mix. The relish was another story. I had no recipe for that and was rather lost as to what to do. I finally decided to make sweet relish rather than dill relish, because it’s what I prefer. After a lot of googling, I made this recipe. It was really easy and didn’t require a lot of time. My two main requirements. My food processor quite a few years ago and I rarely use one so I’ve never replaced it. But I didn’t want to chop up a couple of pounds of cucumbers, so I used my mini processor. It took a lot of batches, but it did it very quickly. Pickles require a few weeks after canning to let them set and pickle the cucumber. I haven’t tried the sliced or whole dill pickles, but I needed some relish for tuna salad the other day, so I opened one of my relish jars. Wow. I loved it. Not so sweet that it’s unappetizing, but definitely sweet enough that it’s yummy.

Photo taken and edited with the hipstamatic app. I just got it and I’m loving playing around with it. The actual relish looks like the first one. No neon-colored, nuclear-waste relish in this house!

Using WordPress, add ons

Rachel — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:54:44 +0000

These are the different ways I’ve changed wordpress, like plugins or coding. I’ve used different things in the past, but for now this is what I use. Plugins can be installed on the dashboard by Plugins—>Add New. I’m putting the exact name as listed so you can search for it, if you like. Some of them are self-explanatory.

AJAX Comment Preview Supposedly doesn’t work with my version, yet it still seems to be.

Akismet Spam blocker. If you don’t use akismet, using something. Or two or three.

Block-Spam-By-Math-Reloaded Blocks bots.

Broken Link Checker

Dashboard Notepad

Download Manager

Easy Gravatars

Exclude Pages from Navigation

Flickr Gallery One of my two galleries, I don’t pay for Flickr so I’m limited in space as to what I can have there.

Maintenance Mode If you want to take down your site temporarily while you work on it, this is the plugin to use.

NextGEN Gallery My other gallery

Print Friendly and PDF Allows a post to be cleaned up and printed or saved to pdf. They also have a browser plugin. I love it and use it a lot on other websites.

TGN Embed everything

Theme Test Drive You’ll need to mess around with coding for a while until your site is ready to go live. Because of this I use the theme test drive plugin. It means I can make changes without messing up the actual site too much.

WordPress Database Backup Sends you a email with your database backup.

One of the most important coding changes I think is this one:

.post img{
max-width:500px !important;
width:expression(this.width > 500 ? 500:true);
height:auto;
}

This keeps the pictures under 500 pixels so they don’t overlap your sidebars. I really hate looking at someone’s site and their pics are all over the place. I also make NextGen automatically resize pics when I upload them to 800×600. Redundant, yes, but it’s covered.

I didn’t go over making tags or tab images for your theme, but if you’ve done the header then the difficult part is over. Making a tag is usually as simple as selecting a font and typing whatever you want as the tag to read. If you’re looking for more than the fonts that come with your computer, check out kevinandamanda or misstiina. They both offer free handwritten style fonts. Of course, there’s more options like Dafont or 1001FreeFonts. There’s also sites you can pay for fonts, such as Lettering Delights, ScrapNFonts, Fonts, or MyFonts.

Once you’ve made your header and tags, you need to finish installing your pictures on to wordpress. I find it’s easier to store all my images in a folder outside of my theme. This way when you update your theme, you don’t lose your pictures. So find a folder, ie http://www.yourhost.com/wordpress/imagefolder. So upload all the images you made, as well as your background image and dividers, to your image folder. Then you just have to call for them with the complete url instead of a short, name-only url.

A lot of what I do use I find just by googling. If you have an idea of what you want on your blog, just google it or ask at the wordpress user forums. Most people have no problem helping you out. Me included.

Top 4 homeschool needs

Rachel — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:15:33 +0000

Things I couldn’t do without while homeschooling:

The Well-Trained Mind book/forum/blog. I first heard Susan Wise Bauer speak in 2000/2001. I was visiting my sister in Austin when she mentioned she was going to a homeschool convention. Robert & I had been considering homeschooling our kids so I went along with my sister. I was blown away by SWB’s talk. Her method was exactly what I wanted and had been looking for. I bought her book and haven’t looked back. There’s lots of good things in other methods, but I always come back to classical schooling. It’s what I want to give my children for a well rounded education.
Rainbow Resource. There are lots of other places to buy curriculum, but I always return to RR. Amazon gets a lot of my money because I’m a prime member and I try to buy from the publisher if possible, but most of my homeschool money is spent at RR. Yes, it may be a super store, but it’s a homeschool super store.
Google RSS feeder. I love reading along to what other people are doing in their schools. I find lots of information and support on blogs. These are the sites I currently subscribe too.
Donna Young. She has such great printables that it makes it easier to plan. Even when I make my own forms or use a program, I still find myself looking at her site to help myself plan.

This was going to be a top 5 list, but I couldn’t figure out a number 5. Of course, there’s lots of other stuff out there, but these are the ones I return to over and over again.

What about you? What are your homeschool “needs”?

The reason for homeschooling

Rachel — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 02:28:07 +0000

is this:

Kaelee has been using Life of Fred (which I think is a wonderful program), but for whatever reason, it just wasn’t working. We’ve stopped and back tracked already once so far and she thought she needed to do it again. Instead, I decided to go *way* back and cover some of the prealgebra basics. Before LoF we used Singapore. I think it’s a wonderful program, but I’m not sure why it didn’t click with her. Maybe we should have gone all the way through 6 and then done LoF Fractions & Decimal & Percents. I thought she had covered enough to go into the LoF books, but apparently not. So we’re back to the basics. She’s zooming through them and doing well. She’s even had a few “ah ha!” moments. So it’s been worthwhile. I don’t know if we’ll finish the book or just get to the point where she thinks she can go back to algebra, but f or now, we’re reviewing. And that’s why you homeschool. So that when your child needs a little extra help, it’s possible to give it. Without it overwhelming the child.

June 10: Homeschool Mother’s Journal

Rachel — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:12:43 +0000

In my life this week…

I’ve been weaning Oliver. Not fun. But hopefully, it’ll be done soon. I’m also moving around the boy’s bedroom with the intention of getting both of them in there soon.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

Visiting the in-laws this weekend.

My favorite thing this week was…

I flipped dishes chores with Kaelee. She’s now washing them. My fingers have been cracked and bleeding for months now and I can’t get them to heal. So she’s washing now.

Things I’m working on…

Clothes. Lots of clothes. The pile of clean clothes is taking over my life/house. I tell myself that at least they are clean, but it still is a clothes monster.

I’m reading…

Paletas. I got it from the library on Overdrive for iPad.

I’m praying for…

That this summer will go well. We have a pretty busy summer and I’m praying for peace and patience.

I’m cooking…

Jam. Lots and lots of jam. Strawberries are just too cheap right now. Less than $1.50. So I made some freezer jam. And then decided to make some cooked jam. And we ate or gave away most of that within a week. So I made a lot more this week. Like somewhere around 20 pints. Some of it didn’t set up and I’ll have to fix that. But it’s very yummy.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

I was braiding Kaelee’s hair and Caleb insisited that I do his as well. But he wanted a row of spikes on top of his head. Boys. Even when they’re being “girly”, they are still a boy.

Linking up at The Homeschool Chick.

Using blogger themes, sidebar tags

Rachel — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:22:01 +0000

So I talked about my theme of choice, Atahualpa, last time. This time we’re going to get those sidebar tags installed. I think it’s the sidebar tags that really make blogger shine. They are what make a blog look different.

After making Atahualpa active or previewing it with the plugin go to Appearance—>Widgets.

You’ll need to do the following steps for every sidebar widget you wish to have a tag on. I’m going to use the Akismet widget on the left sidebar. Remember the name of the widget.

Now go to your website and view the source by right clicking. You can see in the screen capture that the Akismet widget is not “prettied up” so I can show you how it normally looks.

Search for “akismet”. It may show a few different options. You’ll eventually find the div widget titled akismet. The most important part is the id of the widget. In this case it is akismet.

Now go back to your wordpress dashboard. The Atahualpa theme has it’s own menu under Appearance so go to Appearance—>Themes—>Atahualpa Theme Options setting.

The Atahualpa Theme has a lot of options available. The place where the changes are going to be made right now is Various Content Items—>Add HTML/CSS Inserts.

You want to go way down to the bottom to CSS Inserts. The code I use to put nice sidebar tag image headers is:

div#IDHERE div.widget-title h3{
display: block;
width: 200px;
height: 75px;
text-indent: -9999px;
background-image: url('http://www.yoursite.com/wordpress/imagefolder/image.png');
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: center center;
}

Just copy and paste and then make changes. You’ll need to change the IDHERE and the part inside the url (‘here’). You may also need to change the height and width to suit your tags. Now go and do that for every tag you made and you’ll website will look lovely. Activate your theme and you should be ready to go. And this code should work with any theme.

Linked up with House of Hepworth.

June Photo Challenge

Rachel — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:33:00 +0000

I saw A Feathered Nest link up to this and thought it would be a good idea. So I started to do it, but then didn’t upload my pics so here’s June 1-6 all in one post.

Self-Portrait (Ignore my jammies)

Favorite Shoes (Got these on the island after my other favorite pair-Land’s End Treckers- got too wet to walk in. They’re maybe made for outdoor, but not walking in the water.)

I love how Caleb’s hands are almost not babyish now. Makes me sad to see him losing that baby fat.

Clouds. We actually had them. The entire sky was filled with them and they were beautiful

Breakfast. I had none. Oops

Books.