Sunday, January 30, 2011

January 29, 2011

Makayla:  Today I finished reading Willie the Frog Prince by C.S. Adler.  It was about a boy named Willie who is not good at paying attention until a girl named Marla comes along and Willie works hard to impress her, then Marla has to move again and in one of her letters she calls him her frog prince.  This was a Fantastic book.


Andra:  I finished Somewhere in Germany by Stefanie Zweig.  Didn't love it.  Was a good story but I couldn't get into it.
Also finished Mac bible.  After reading it I  think that we will have our Mac fixed and maybe upgraded.

Onto Her by Laura Zigman
   

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

January 26, 2011

I watched the movie Nowhere in Africa today.  I love it when books have movies out, so I'm glad my first book had a movie.  It won best foreign film in 2002.  I somewhat liked the movie.  I definetly would recommend seeing the movie after this book.  It helped me understand the book better.  I did find that the movie left alot out so the two made a good pair.

January 25, 2011

I finished Nowhere in Africa today.  Didn't love the book.  I found it hard to read with so many other languages strewn throughout.  It is about a family that moves out of Germany during the war.  They emigrate to Africa and work on a farm until the war is over then they go back to Germany.  I give it a 3 out of 5.

I started Somewhere in Germany.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

January 22, 2011

Today we drove to Sterling for Harrison's basketball game.  I took my Internet for Dummies book to see if I could learn anything new.  Well I did.
I didn't know that you could write the Postmaster with questions regarding rejected mail.
Then just some tidbits about searching the web
* put double quotation marks (" ") around words you expect to see next to eachother
* put a plus sign (+) infront of a word that must appear
* put a minus sign (-) in front of a word that should not appear
* no space between the plus or minus and the word
* don't use and, or, and not

On our way home we read some of You Asked over 300 great questions and astounding answers.  Parents, this was a great book.  Perfect for road trips. It was awesome to hear all their answers to why they think things happen.  I truely was delighted in my children.

Harrison said "It's a good book, Usually people don't know how you live and stay alive until you read that book.  Why do people wake up?  The sun comes up and is bright and people feel happy when the sun is bright and when it's cold they don't want to wake up and their cranky"

Saturday, January 22, 2011

January 21, 2011

Today we went to trade our "picture books".  New books for me are Mac Upgrade and Repair Bible and The Internet for Dummys .  I'm in the computer section agghhh. 

Makayla and Harrison are onto Super Science Secrets and You Asked over 300 great questions and  astounding answers.

January 20, 2011

Makayla told her teacher that we were reading the library.  She asked her if it was okay if she read Willy the Frog Prince as her new chapter book.  Her teacher was delighted and agreed.

January 19,2011

I told Harrison to sit and read Makayla's space book for ten minutes while he was waiting to go to a basketball game with his dad.  He fussed about doing that, so I told him he needed to write down 5  facts and then he could get up. He started writing the facts and asked me if he could take the book to school. I told him that would be fine and he said, "because I'm suddenly interested."  He wrote his 5 facts and continued reading the book.  He said he wanted to go to the library and read all the books too.  Just what a mother wants to hear.  Thank goodness we dropped cable t.v. a year and a half ago.
 
I  started reading "The Atlas of Legendary Places" and found out some new and interesting things that I didnt know before. The Nile River is 4160 miles long. Wow!

The Rosetta Stone was found and helped decipher Egyptian heiroglyphics.  Who knew that's where the Rosetta Stone language course got its name.

Cappadocia--never heard of it. "It's 50 miles southeast of Ankara, Turkey and it is one of the mopst extraordinary places in the world.  It's soft rock known as tufa that has been naturally eroding into conical formations which for centuries have been hallowed out and used as  homes and churches by local inhabitants."

Serpent Mound in Ohio is quite interesting. 

I learned more about King Tut and started telling the kids.  They already knew all that and they started telling me more.  I was pretty impressed with how much they knew.

January 18, 2011

I read alot of books because I have a job that allows me to sit and read often (high school substitute teacher). I usually don't know what I want to read next.  So I end up walking up and down the aisles of the local library in search of the next perfect book. Then I got an idea, to read the library. Since having children, my memory isn't what it used to be and it seems to be getting worse. I thought it wouldn't hurt to learn some new things or for that matter relearn some. 
My personal rules before entering the library were to start at one end of the library and take the first book.  Then go to the other end and take the first book there too.  There would be no if, ands, or buts about it.  I would just have to take that book home and read it.  I decided that if  I got into it and didn't like it I could quit reading it and get the next book, but I had to at least try each book.
 That was until I arrived at section .0001 on Jan 18.  The very first book in the library was "How to Become a Consultant."  I picked it up and laughed.  I leafed through it and thought What use is this to me?  I thought about my friend Gloria's husband, Brad who is a consultant and went to school to be one.  I thought Well, I'll never start my own consulting business so what is the point?.  I broke my rule.  Then it got worse.  The next few books were about the X Files and Extra Terrestrials.  I have never been interested in Science fiction and knew I would be skipping those. I went to the 4th book titled "The Atlas of Legendary Places."  This book I took and went to the other side of the library.  This was the fiction side.  I decided to start with the Z authors.  The last book was "Somewhere in Germany" by Stefanie Zweig.  I took it.  I had my daughter, Makayla, with me and told her what I was doing and asked her if she would like to do the same thing in the children's section.  She is an avid reader and thought that it sounded like fun.  As we headed down the stairs I noticed that my Germany book was a sequel.  I ran back up and got the first book in the sequel titled "Nowhere in Africa" and headed back down.  Makayla's first book was "Willy the Frog Prince" by C.S Andler.  Her first book in the Science and Social Studies section was "Space Facts."  We checked out and went home.