Have a TWISTED Holiday

Website Troubles

Aplus, the company that hosts our website, has been at this for 30 hours. Our website is still not working properly and we want to apologize to everyone that is trying to reach us via the site. Use info@chasing4life.org as an address and please be patient. We are not getting solid answers from the company and we know that many of you are attempting to access the web site pages. So are we.

Safety First

While we all want Halloween to be just as scary as possible, there is no point in making it dangerous and there is no reason to make the danger REAL.

This blog is supposed to be about safety and preparedness, so with the Halloween holiday upon us, let’s get down to business.

Growing up, Halloween was one of those holidays that we did not always participate in. The family bounced back and forth between the history of Halloween and our religious beliefs so it was a pretty confusing time for me as a kid. By the time I became an adult, I had decided that I was going to celebrate Halloween like nobody had ever done before. I went to every haunted house, every maze, and went to several Halloween parties. As for my kids? I sent them out trick-or-treating with the biggest plastic pumpkins I could buy!

We cleaned up! We had candy for two years! A year later, while sitting around eating stale Bit-O-Honeys, I began to think about how irresponsible I had been all in the name of “celebrating”.

Parents of trick-or-treating kids can get so caught up in the fun themselves that they might forget some simple safety ideas that could save everyone some trouble. Here are some things to remember…

Know where your kids are at all times. Have you been watching the news? What a great night for child abductors, huh? Unattended kids distracted by mobs of other kids and adults, decorations and candy… they are quite a target. There has been some sad stories in the news lately, so know the route your kids are taking, accompany them if at all possible, or make sure they are in a group.

Make sure the costume is safe. Can your child safely look both ways before crossing the street with their mask on? Can they run in their costume? Defend themselves?

Know what activities your kids may be taking part in. I have some older kids that will not be trick-or-treating and I want to know WHERE they are going and WHO they are going with! As the father of several teenagers, I have figured out that the older the kid, the dumber decision.

Do not assume that the mall functions are safe. GO WITH YOUR KID.

Set a curfew. Make it very clear that you expect your child home at a set time. Any tardiness will indicate a problem so you can act quickly. Take a picture of your child in their costume before they leave the house so you have one should anything happen.

Explain to your children the difference between tricks and vandalism. Spooking people can be fun, but vandalism is not acceptable.

Think about the weather. Make sure that you do not sacrifice health for a cool costume. The forecast for 32 degrees has TOTALLY ruined my plans to go as a belly dancer.

Lastly, make sure your child has a flashlight with them.

Be safe, enjoy the holiday. Give out cool candy. Peeps left over from Easter are NOT acceptable.

They found Elizabeth today

The body of missing 9-year-old Elizabeth was found in a wooded area near Missouri's capital city today, two days after she was last seen walking from a neighbor's home. According to the latest news, the suspect is a juvenile.

The sheriff did not give any details on how Elizabeth died or about the juvenile in custody except to say that the person lived in the area west of Jefferson City and was older than the girl. Police said Elizabeth's body was found just before 3 p.m.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Olten family. Friends, please watch your kids. The world is becoming a very tough place to grow up.

For those of you with snow...

As adults we see snow as one of those things we dread. Sure it is pretty and can make for a very romantic Christmas Eve, but the bottom line is this: we have to shovel, get out the snowblower, scrape our car windows, drive through it to get to the store, and the worst part is that we have to find boots that go with our “adult clothes” that don’t make us look like the kid in the Malt-O-Meal commercial!

As a child, things are different. Not only can snow transform the landscape into a wonderland, but it can provide a lot of material for learning.

While most of the country does not have any snow yet, back in Nebraska we have plenty already! The snowflakes today are the size of baseballs!
While October is not the best time to discuss snow in most situations, it seems pretty appropriate for our little homeschool here today.

Today we may work on finding out where snow comes from. We will talk about how snow crystals are born in the clouds when water vapor freezes on a particle of dust, a floating bit of bacteria, or another solid material. Today’s snow is just more of yesterday’s rain that has gotten too cold!

We will talk about when cloud temperatures are at the freezing point or below, and there is an ample supply of moisture in the air, ice crystals form around a core particle. As water vapor condenses and freezes, the complex pattern of a snowflake is born, one molecule at a time. A snowflake's hexagonal shape is born at the atomic level. It is here that water molecules bond together into stable crystal structures.

With flakes this big, we will classify snow into six basic patterns called: Needles, columns, plates, columns capped with plates, dendrites, and stars. Each type is the result of different atmospheric and temperature conditions within the cloud. You can find out what each of these are by clicking on http://school.familyeducation.com/science/teaching-methods/37626.html?detoured=1

There are several ways you can “investigate” snow flakes.

What you'll need:
Viewing platform: black velvet, dark cloth, or black construction paper
Magnifying glass

Snowflakes are delicate creatures and their fine crystalline shape can vanish at the touch of warmth. You'll need to freeze your viewing surface (keep it in the fridge or outside in a cold dry area). If the snow is falling, just hold your platform aloft to catch a few flakes and view with your magnifying glass. You may need to wear a scarf over the mouth and nose to avoid melting the flakes with a warm breath.

Try photography. Years ago it was expensive to hand your kids a camera and have them blow through a $4 roll of film that cost $5 to develop, but now, with digital cameras, teaching and journaling can be fun! See how close you can get to take a picture! Can you capture the whole snow fall and then a single flake?

Keeping journals is a great way to interest any child in observation. My son amazed the filmmaker from Canada that was visiting a few weeks ago by explaining to him that he had journaled all of our regional weather for the last six months!
In your snow journal, keep 1. Date, time and amount of the snowfall 2. Temperature of the air and how it effects “snowball making” 3. The kinds of crystals you observe and if your are ambitious, 4. The weight unit of the snow. Use a small container such as a measuring cup and gather enough snow to fill the container without packing it. Use a ruler or knife to level the snow with the top of the container and weigh it on a postage scale. The idea is, after several “readings” to find that the higher the weight, the higher the water content, so make sure you keep the amounts of snow approximately the same each time. Taking measurements every few hours will allow your child to see how “heavy” the snowfall is. You may want to look back over your midday readings and evening readings to see if colder air effects snow weight!

Now, when all this has been done and your child has become a snow expert ready for the rest of winter, find their coat, gloves, hat, scarf and boots and go make snow angels!

Are you ready to RUMBLE???

If you have been to one of my presentations, you probably know I am into earthquakes. You can connect earth science with real life y simply going to https://sslearthquake.usgs.gov/ens/ and signing up for the USGS Earthquake notification service!
Each day you will get an email telling you where earthquakes occurred. You can set boundaries within the system so you only get US earthquakes. I just got one for a 1.8 in Missouri!
This is a great discussion starter, and fun to journal as you learn about earthquakes, The New Madrid Zone, the San Andreas Fault and how much of our terrain came to be the way it is!
The site has a lot more to offer than just this. It is a GREAT resource for teaching! Check out http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/ for all kinds of lesson ideas and activity ideas.

It's a fact!

I found a GREAT site filled with factoids and weather science stuff for today's homeschooling lesson! CLICK HERE to check it out!

Did you know one inch of rain over one square mile equals to 17.4 million gallons (66 million liters) of water?
Did you know that the weight of one inch of water over one square mile equals over 145 million pounds (66 million kg)?
Did you know 145 million pounds of water is almost 73,000 tons or the weight of 241 locomotives?
This is a lot of water held up by wind.

Clouds are made of trillions of tiny droplets of water (or when cold enough, ice crystals)!
There is so much water in the air that if it all fell as rain at the same time, it could fill enough buckets to reach from the earth to the sun 57 million times!

Here is something you can try...You can tell the temperature by counting the clicks a cricket makes in 15 seconds and adding 37!

Lilapsowhat?

Winter tornadoes are not as rare as you may think. Anyone with Lilapsophobia (the fear of tornadoes) certainly had something to be afraid of on February 5th and 6th, 2008. A series of massive tornadoes struck at least 5 Southern states (Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama) causing at least 52 deaths and 150 injuries. Do not forget the children of Oconto, Nebraska who had their Halloween trick-or-treating horribly interrupted by a tornado that swept through the center of town.
No time of year is entirely free from tornado risk. Like spring, fall is a transitional period when masses of warm and cool air are more likely to collide and create the thunderstorms that can trigger twisters. During summer, tornadoes can also form within hurricanes, which can turn a relatively benign outer arm of a hurricane into a locally devastating event.
Winter tornadoes can be particularly deadly, not because they're stronger, but because they tend to move faster.

Hot holidays

A week or so ago we talked a little about fire safety. With October being the month that we focus on fire safety, it is important that we remember to add this into our curriculums while we are thinking about it. Ever wonder why Fire Safety Month is in October?
In the next several weeks our homes will be cluttered with tons of flammable materials. From large Thanksgiving centerpieces full of dried flowers to Christmas lights and garland, the potential for a fire increases drastically in November and December! Add in wrapping paper and a live tree and POOF!

Homeschool Fire Safety Lesson Ideas

Fire safety lessons should include several layers of instruction, including helping children understand fires, how to prevent fires and how to react safely in case of a fire.

About Fire

It glows, dances, flickers and fascinates children, and teaching them about how fire works can help snare their interest in fire safety lessons. Ideas for learning about fire include:

• Studying the mechanics of combustion, including its chemical and thermal properties by testing materials before and after burning, as well as measuring the temperatures generated by fires
• Testing the combustibility of different household materials in a fireplace or barbecue grill, such as burning newspapers, cloth, Styrofoam and other items and comparing the smoke, smell, combustion speed and fire color
• Visiting a local fire house and learning what equipment firefighters use and what training they have to deal with fires
• Learning the composition of smoke and why it cannot be breathed
• Studying historical fires, both on a local and national scale, and learning how devastating a fire can be to real people
• Studying how fire can burn skin and what other bodily damage it can do

For more ideas on how to teach about fire and fire safety in the home, just CLICK HERE.

Weather Science Camp

The subject of holding a weather science camp has been brought up again this year. If this is something you would be interested in, we could use your help. Our thoughts are that we could create a one-day camp experience for elementary school age children with a focus on homeschooled children. While we have done camps before, this would be a large effort for us and in order to begin work on this project, we need your input.
In order to hold the camp, we would need a venue in your area and an idea of what your budget might be to enroll a child in such a camp.
Obviously shared costs will keep costs lower, and so we would love to see churches or home school associations or organizations take on booking a camp in their area.
We want your thoughts and input.
Please use the Chasing4Life contact page at www.Chasing4Life.org to send us your thoughts. Let us know about homeschool groups in your area, possible venues and how many homeschool families you are connected to. If you would like to volunteer at one of these camps, let us know that too!
We look forward to hearing from you!

Shaken, not stirred

With all the earthquakes in the news, what better time to teach your kids about earthquakes? I recently visited my old school and spoke about The New Madrid Zone and was amazed at how interested they were! Try visiting the USGS site for kids by clicking HERE and check out the games, activities and more!

There are TONS of links for teaching (watch the left hand menu) and make sure you incorporate a little TV time so you can make that connection between today's news and all these new resources!

Are you energetic?

It is a little more than halfway through October and I am tired. I have been in many states in the last 30 days and I am exhausted! I AM OUT OF ENERGY!

That reminds me.

October is Energy Month!


What is energy? Where do we get our energy? Have we always done this the same way? How much energy is OUR house using each month?


CLICK HERE for a great site where you can find out all tthe answers to these questions and you will also find activities for the whole family! Moms and Dads can find an energy calculator too!

Partly Cloudy

So here is today's weather lesson.
What do you know about clouds?
Can you recognize them?

Just click here.


When you are done, here's a simple song you can learn!

Clouds are Floating
(to the tune of Frere Jacques)
Clouds are floating, clouds are floating,
Up so high, up so high,
Floating up above us, floating up above us,
In the sky, in the sky.

Activate your kid's mind!

Greetings to all of our new friends in Mundelein!
As I promised to so many of you over the last week of this tour, here is the link and some information to the Edheads website.

Edheads will create unique, educational Web experiences designed to make hard-to-teach concepts understandable using the power and interactivity of the Internet. They have set a new standard for excellence by delivering in-depth content in a fresh, exciting style allowing your child to learn intuitively in an online environment.


I encourage you to spend some serious time on the site so that you can see all of the things it has to offer your homeschooled student.


I will be revisiting this site for you in this blog over the next few weeks to recommend specific activities as promised.


To discover Edheads for yourself CLICK HERE

Sorry, not interested.

I took a call today from a young mom doing her best to home school her kid. While some subjects seem to come easy, there are others that just seem too difficult to teach because she feels she is making "no connection" with her son.

Here's the most powerful way I have found to get that interest peaked and that attention span stretched beyond two minutes...

Let your child find a hobby.

Our daughter had the hardest time reading, in fact, reading was not a priority at all to her and of course, a lack of reading caused many problems in every subject. As she grew older, she bagen to show an interest in horses. The problem was solved. From field trips to 4H, from library books on horses, we finally had a means of incorporating her interest into what she needed to learn! It was exciting to watch her read books on horses, and of course, she eventually got her own horse. From there she learned math as she budgeted for tack, learned fractions as she figured out feed amounts, and even learned practical skills as we built a stable!

Now I realize that not everyone will go this extreme with a hobby, but it worked!

Take my son for example. He is a bright boy, but has little attention span for things that he deems "unneccesary". With a father that makes a living as a professional weather monitor and researcher, he wanted to grow up to be like dad. That was where we focused.

It is thrilling to watch as (at 7 years old) he can calculate the arrival of a storm based on wind speed and direction versus distance. calculating wind shear is not an easy task for a seasoned weather monitor, but Jon goes after it with a vengeance at only 7! Rainfall totals, average rainfalls, water temperatures all come from buoy readings he takes himself and I love watching him analyze weather systems.

Having trouble making that connection in certain subjects? Step away from the books for a moment and find what peaks their interest. Rockets. Dinosaurs. Dolls. Weather. Cars. It all holds a means to get them to read, learn math, explore science and more!

One book

Are you taking advantage of your local library and its programs?
For years now I have spoken at thousands of schools, but never have I seen the fruit that I have seen come from the local library systems. In the last few years our library tours have increased dramatically and I could not be happier. I know, it sounds “corny” to talk about the power of a book, but I really believe in it.
A few years ago I met a very unique and odd little man. He told me a crazy story of a book he had taken from his local library as a boy…
It turns out that the book was about lightning and Benjamin Franklin. After a few weeks, the librarian wanted her book back, but the book had become the most valuable possession the little 5th grader had ever held and so he held onto the book, taking odd jobs to pay the overdue fines.
The book grew. It grew inside the boy and became a part of his life; it became a source of inspiration and gnawed at his curiosity. As an adult in his 40’s the man became an inventor and created a one-of-a-kind lightning detection system that is in use worldwide. The system is used to protect critical infrastructural equipment and facilities, railroads, telecommunications towers, hospitals, fire departments, dispatch centers and schools.
One boy.
One library.
One book.
In this country we are always looking for the latest thing, but have we taken time to look for the oldest? It is hidden in your local library.
I imagine a world for my children that is much different than the one we live in now. I imagine a world with better tornado warning systems, with cleaner air and cleaner fuels… it could very well be that YOUR child is the one that will discover it in a book somewhere. An unfinished experiment ages old could be lurking on a shelf very close to your home.
Dig deep.

Success Stories

As I tour the nation, it is encouraging to receive letters of thanks and recommendation. It is that kind of encouragement that sometimes makes the difference between quitting and continuing when things are not so easy. It is for that reason that every once in a while, when we run across a family excelling in the homeschool world, that we will feature them here on this blog.
Jason and Andrea Soldini were married in 1994 and had their first child in 1996. They began homeschooling in 2001 with their oldest daughter. In 1999 they had another daughter and in 2008 they adopted a son.
Their site, http://www.homeschoolingbythebook.com/ is truly an amazing testament to what they have accomplished. Check out their online “store” run by their 10 and 12 year old children and make sure you browse through their incredible field trips under “adventures”!
Jason and Andrea have a new book available too!
The family is inspiring and their approach to homeschooling is absolutely exceptional.

Code Red Rover

With the theme this month focusing on Fire Safety, take a moment to check out CODE RED ROVER where you will find online games, information and some teaching materials for your kids this month!

CLICK HERE FOR CODE RED ROVER

There's a great activity booklet you can download right on the site and tips for parents and teachers!

This is a great site for finding tips on EVERYTHING you need to know about home safety and how to teach it to your little ones!

FIRE SAFETY WEBSITE

CLICK HERE for a great website with helpful fire safety tips and videos for your home!

FIRE!

Are you practicing fire safety at home? Trust me... a word from personal experience...you need to be doing this!

You know, October is Fire Prevention Month and at schools across the country, students are going through fire drills and having visits from local firefighters that teach them the basics about fire safety. Are you homeschooling? If so, this means that NOW is the time to make arrangements to stop by your local fire department with your kids. Have a firefighter walk them through the building and give them a field trip. Make sure that when you get home, you practice fire drills in the house.

Now, a few tips for you that I have found are effective in the home:

1. Sneak down the hall while the kids are doing their work and use a broom handle to set off your smoke alarm. Keep an eye on the clock and see how long it takes for them to get safely out of the house.

2. Now, wait until nightfall and simulate bedtime. Turn off the lights in the house (all of them) and hit that smoke alarm again. It is important that the kids understand that this is something they will have to do in the DARK.

3. Make sure they all go to the same place. Is it out by the mailbox? The neighbors porch? Across the street?

4. Give your kids a project. Have them make their own fire safety brochure or poster promoting what they have learned. Make sure they make at least two of these. Now, have your kids visit your nearest neighbors for a visit. Have the kids explain to the neighbors what they learned and have them give their new "promotional literature" to the neighbors. While you are there, make sure the neighbors know where you have chosen to meet outside YOUR house if fire ever strikes your family. This way, when the firefighters arrive, the neighbors can tell them where you SHOULD be so there are no firefighters needlessly searching your home for you!

Welcome

According to statistics, homeschooling in the United States has increased 74% in the last eight years. Why? I do not believe that it is because of a lack of faith in our public school systems as much as it is a growing desire to see MORE education and more focus on real issues that will eventually effect the home.
I have toured this country for many years teaching and presenting in thousands of schools and have addressed not only hundreds of thousands of school students but their very concerned parents.
Disaster preparedness is always an issue that raises more questions than it provides answers. How do I teach it to my children without frightening them? How do I deal with the tough issues after a disaster? Do I allow my kids to see the news of current disasters? How do I involve them in our planning?
I have found that the world of disaster preparedness is a wide world of educational opportunity filled with science, history, social science, mathmatics and literature.
It is through this new blog that we intend to provide those tips, stories and insights that we have shared as we toured. Stay tuned here for programs, guides and curriculum additions as well.