Giveaway Winner!

First, thank you for all your wonderful feedback. Over the next few weeks I will begin to implement some changes, as well as continue trying to catch up. Now onto the winner.....Congratulations jamie lea! I will contact you within 24 hours and you will have 48 hours from then to get back to me. Congratulations and thank you again.

Giveaway: Free magazine subscription

***THIS IS A STICKY POST. IT WILL APPEAR AT THE TOP UNTIL THE GIVEAWAY ENDS. NEW POSTS ARE BEING POSTED BELOW.***

As promised, I am hosting my first giveaway and I even have one prize for each of my 3 blogs (Homeschool Unit Studies, The Happy Wife, and Things I Love). The prize is the same for all 3 blogs: a one-year subscription to the magazine of your choice from Ladies Home Journal, Fitness, Siempre Mujer (written in Spanish) and Parents magazine. The contest will run from now until November 8th. I will use random.org to choose a winner and the winner will be posted here. If contact information is provided or I can reach you through your blog/profile, I will also e-mail the winner. The winner will have 48 hours to contact me with their information or a new winner will be chosen at that time.
How to enter:
1)Leave me a comment with a piece of constructive criticism, positive or negative (I can take it, I promise) about this blog.
After doing #1, you may also enter by doing the following:
2)Blog about the giveaway and leave a new comment, separate from #1, that includes the URL to the blog posting. If you are not a blogger, tell your friends and when they enter, have them put your name down as the person who referred them here.
3)Subscribe to my feed and leave another separate comment telling me you did so.
4)TUESDAY BONUS ENTRY-go vote and come back and post that you did so. I will only accept entries on Tuesday for this bonus entry and it is being awarded on the honor code. If you say you voted, I will trust that you did. Please do not post who/how you voted, just that you did.

Good luck to all!!!

Think About It Thursday: Election

- Imagine you are running for President of the world. Write a paper describing the three issues you will spend the most time working on and what your ideas are for correcting these issues.

- Design a campaign slogan and poster for yourself for any public office.

- Write a letter of thanks to President George W. Bush for the work he has done the past 8 years. and/or Write a letter to President-elect Barack Obama congratulating him and telling him what your most important concerns are.

- Write an advertisement to encourage others to vote.

Worldly Wednesday: Barack Obama

We will study a little about our next president this week.

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. After he graduated from college (Columbia University), he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1985. In 1991, he graduated from Harvard Law School. While he was at Harvard, Barack Obama was the first African-American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review.

He married his wife, Michelle (Robinson), in 1992 and they have 2 daughters together, Malia and Sasha. Until they move into the White House, they reside in south Chicago.

Prior to being elected as a US Senator for Illinois, Barack Obama has served as a leader in the Illinois state Senate, a community organizer and a civil rights attorney. He was elected to the US Senate in 2004 and served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Veterans Affairs Committee, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Barack Obama was elected as the 44th US President on November 4, 2008 and will be sworn into office on January 20, 2009.

Time Travel Tuesday: Elections

I am so far behind this week and I apologize. Here is what I am doing for election history:

- Today, a presidential candidate (vocabulary word) chooses their vice-presidential running mate, but in the first four US elections (1789, 1792, 1796, and 1800), the president was the person who received the most votes and the vice-president was whoever received the second highest number of votes.

- The mainstream political parties today are Democrat and Republican. Past presidential political parties include Whig, Federalist, and Union. Learn about one of the politcal parties listed (Democrat, Republican, Whig, Federalist, or Union) and write a paragraph summarizing their political beliefs.

- 2 women have run for vice-president on a major political ticket. Geraldine Ferraro ran with Walter Mondale in 1984 on the Democratic ticket and Sarah Palin ran with John McCain in 2008 on the Republican ticket. 2008 was the first time a woman stood a real chance at being a presidential candidate on a major political ticket when Hillary Clinton campaigned in the Democratic primary.

- Barack Obama is the first African-American to run for preisdent on a major political ticket and the first to be elected president (2008).

Math Monday (on Wednesday): The US Election Process

As yesterday was Election Day, I have chosen to study the election process this week.

Graphing

- (Due to the personal nature of elections) Think of 2 or 3 people you would like to see run for president and then poll your friends and family to see which of them they would like to see as president. Make a pie graph showing your results.

- In 21 states, John McCain received the majority (vocabulary word) of the votes and Barack Obama received the majority of the votes in 27 states (as of right now, 2 states are still processing results). Make a bar graph showing these results.


Word Problems

- Barack Obama won the US presidential election with 63,858,695 votes. John McCain had 56,376,354 votes. How many more votes did President-elect (vocabulary word) Obama have?

- (If you are interested in teaching about the electoral college, these would be good lead ins.) John McCain received 163 electoral votes and Barack Obama received 349. How many more electoral votes did Barack Obama receive?

- It takes 270 electoral votes to win the US presidency. How many more electoral votes did John McCain need? How many "extra" electoral votes did Barack Obama receive?

Scouting Sunday (on Monday): Eat Right, Stay Healthy Brownine Girl Scout Try-It

I am still trying to both catch up and fight off an antibiotic-resistant double ear infection so posts may be delayed for a little while longer.

With all the candy and not-so-healthy foods available at Halloween, I decided to try to balance it a little with a badge for eating healthy. Here are the activities we will do.

1)The Foods We Eat: We will start this activity with a game about the USDA food pyramid. We will also discuss how ingredients are listed on food labels from the highest percentage to the lowest percentage and we will discuss the various names that are used for sugars (corn syrup, fructose, glucose, etc). We will look at various food labels and study the nutrients (vitamins, minerals) that are in the foods. Then we will put together everything we learned and choose from several food packages, which are the healthiest for us.

2)Smart Shopper: The kids will be directed to make up a list of foods that we eat through the week. We will then discuss the list and go shopping together. Each child will also be planning one entire meal for the family, based on the food pyramid, and will help prepare it. Here are some websites with kid-friendly recipes: Cooking with Kids, AllRecipes.com, and Family Fun. There are also several great kid-friendly cookbooks available as well: Everything Kids' Cookbook: From Mac ' N Cheese to Double Chocolate Chip Cookies-All You Need to Have Some Finger Lickin' Fun (Everything Kids Series), New Junior Cookbook (Better Homes & Gardens Test Kitchen), and Disney's Family Cookbook: Irresistible Recipes for You and Your Kids.

3)Dairy Foods: We will make a list of dairy foods and then gather together several of them (different cheeses, yogurt, ice cream, milk, etc) for an at-home taste test. We will also have a "yogurt making" day where we take plain yogurt and mix in a variety of different "toppings" (fruit, cereals, nuts, etc) and see which we like the best. There are milk alergies in our extended family and in at least one girl in our troop so we will not do the dairy taste test with the troop, but we will discuss the alternatives (tofu, rice milk, soy milk, other soy products, etc) and put together a taste test of these for the troop.

4)Food People: You really are "what you eat" and to reinforce this concept, we will make "people" out of pictures of the various foods we eat. The Brownie Try-It book says these pictures can be hand drawn or cut from magazines. we have an abundance of magazines, especially food-related ones, so that is where we will get our pictures from.

Science Saturday: Halloween

Since Halloween is over I will post some post-Halloween science ideas, but here is a whole bunch of fun science activities for next Halloween.

- Have the children sort and classify their candy. They can chose how to classify them or you can (chocolate/non-chocolate, by brand, wrapper color, candy color, etc).

- Have the kids start an observation journal and have them write daily as to what is happening as their pumpkin rots.

- Have the kids add up the calories/fat grams/sugar grams of the candy they will eat in one day or all the candy they received total.

- This is a great time for a nutrition lesson and a lesson on moderation.

- Make stained glass cookies with the hard candies (crush them first). You can use your own sugar cookie recipe.

- Make a pumpkin pie with the jack-o-lantern (assuming it was cut recently) or try this Walnut Pumpkin Pie.