Ozark Ramblings

The approaching new year reminds us that change is inevitable.  Some folks are content to change calendars, but I took advantage of the bread from homeschooling to start a neg blog.  I’ve copied all the old posts over and all future posts will be available exclusively there.  Please join me at the new virtual home of Ozark Ramblings.

After three years of hard word, my Schnickelfritz earned his Gold Trail Award for Ranger Kids.  The presentation was made in front of the whole church.  Royal Rangers is a scouting program, like Boy Scouts, but run through churches.  In addition to learning to tie knots, he had to memorize scripture and hymns, learn the names of the books of the Bible, the 12 disciples, and more.    Fritz has now moved up to the Discovery Rangers and is tearing through merit badges on his way to the Gold Falcon.  At this level he needs to complete two Bible merits (each one is a five week study on a particular book) for each skill merit in order to advance.  We’ve been able to incorporate the work into our homeschool.  He just completed a Presidential study learning each president’s terms, home state, education, vice president, political party and two major events that occurred while they were in office.  He had to look up Bible verses on the topic of leadership and write a 300 word essay on his favorite president and how they displayed at least three of those leadership traits.  Wow!  I never assigned him anything that challenging in our history/English work before.

Well December has rolled around again…our burst of enthusiasm for a new school year has waned just as holiday activities and winter sports have kicked into high gear.  I don’t want to drop school work entirely and yet I’m ready for a break from the “heavy” stuff myself.  That’s when I like to pull out the educational games–there’s still learning going on (or at least refreshing old facts learned), but it’s all done in a spirit of fun.  It’s a perfect time to review a card game like Fractazmic.  This is from I See Cards, the same company that provided our Pyramath  game last year.

Fractazmic’s focus is on fractions, so instead of having symbol suits the cards are organized into tenths, twelfths, and sixteenths.   The fractions are reduced to their simplest terms (1/4 instead of 4/16) but you can still keep track of the fraction families by the colored border and the picture on the cards.   Tenths are green with a 1 liter water bottle, twelfths are blue with an egg carton, and sixteenths are red with  a magnified view of a ruler.  This was my one qualm with the picture choices: the magnified view focuses on half of the inch not the full inch. In the above example the grasshopper represents 4/16 or 1/4 of an inch but the picture itself looks like it’s taking up 1/2 of the space.  This made it a little confusing to my son who’s new to fractions.

The object of the basic game is to form “hands” by collecting cards of the same suit to equal one whole.  For students just learning their fractions, they can count the number of eggs, etc to make sure they have a full dozen or twelve/twelfths.  Once again, you have to keep in mind that the ruler suit represents sixteenths not eighths so you need to “fill” the ruler twice.  Players take turns drawing from the draw or discard piles (if you take a card from the discard pile you must use it in a hand immediately).  Schnickelfritz and I found that completing the final hand and going out was extremely long for a game with two players.  We developed our own rule that the final hand can be made up of different suits as long as it still totals one.  There are other game rules as well as samples of all the cards available at this website. 

Fractazmic, Pyramath, and Prime Bomb card games are available for $6.95 from the I See Cards website.   You can also try online versions of their games and possibly win a free deck.  Rather than an age range for this game, I would consider your child’s math skills–are they ready for fractions.

You can read what other Homeschool Crew Members think of Fractazmic by clicking here. 

Disclaimer: I recieved a free deck of Fractazmic cards for the purpose of completing this review.  There was no other compensation for my honest opinion.

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I’ve always had a passion for educating people about money.  My degree and business experience is in accounting.  When I would see all the errors on troop leader’s deposit slips or spend twenty minutes on the phone explaining to a camp counelor why her paycheck didn’t match the salary in her hire letter (taxes coming out), I always felt like our schools were really dropping the ball when it came to personal finance.  So I’m going to try and start a new series covering various money topics from earning to saving to keeping track of it all.

Today’s idea came from a very real conversation I had with the Toolman last week.  Our weekly paper had a $10 rebate  for the Sodastream, a device that allows you to make carbonated beverages in your own home.   The Toolman is a devout cola drinker and I am a kitchen gadget junkie so this seemed like a good fit.  We are however,  both recent graduates of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University so we needed to look at this from a financial side.  

Kohl’s has the Sodastream on sale for $89.99 and as luck would have it, they had just sent us a 30% off coupon.  Combined with the rebate the price of the Sodastream was down to  $52.99 (I’m not considering sales tax in any of my equations to keep things simpler).  The kit includes the machine, one carbonation canister, and one plastic liter bottle to hold to finished product.   The flavor syrups are on sale for $4.99, if I use my same 30 % coupon the cost comes down to $3.49.  Each bottle claims to make fifty 8 oz servings.  Now lets get to some math.  For any parents teaching math to their kids, this example with help them see the importance of including the units in their math equations: $/oz, oz/liter, etc.

50 X 8 oz =  400 oz

$3.49 / 400 oz =  $0.00873/oz

 That’s not the end of the cost for Sodastream soda though–the carbonation canister is a consumable product.  Kohl’s doesn’t sell the canisters separately so I needed to do some online research.  According to Sodastream.com, the canister to fit the Kohl’s model holds enough gas for 60 liters ( 1 liter = 33.814 ounces).   There are no retailers in my area participating in the canister exchange program so I would need to get my canisters directly from the company.   Just to get the price of the gas, I’m not going to worry about shipping costs right now.  Two exchanged canisters cost $29.99 (of course I only have one to exchange from the starter kit)  $29.99 .   120 liters X  33.814 ounces/liter = 4057.68 oz.

$29.99/4057.68 oz =  $.00739/oz

$.00739/oz + $0.00873/oz = $.01612/oz

A can of soda is 12 oz so the equivalent amount of Sodastream soda is 12 oz X $0.01612/oz = $.19339 or 19.4 cents per can

For comparison, we can buy a 24 case of Coca Cola for $6.98 or  (6.98/24=) 29.08 cents per can.  Yes,  the Sodastream is cheaper but you would need to drink 544 cans before you broke even after purchasing the machine in the first place.  If I weren’t able to get the syrup on sale that would raise the cost of a can’s worth of soda to 26.8 cents–practically the same as the can of Coke.

Bottom line for us, there are a lot easier ways to save money so the Sodastream won’t be under our Christmas tree this year.

It’s a tradition for us to go to Hermann in December, but this year there were a few changes.  First, the weather was MUCH warmer than in the past.  The temps reached the sixties, which doesn’t do much to put you in the holiday mood but it helps wonderfully when you’re outside learning about Lewis and Clark.  For the first time we skipped the school day for the Corp of Discovery re-enactors and visited on Saturday so we could take advantage of some other events in town: Kristkindl markt (arts and crafts) and Weihnachtsfest (German Christmas) at the Deutschheim historical site.    I suppose that a lot of folks picture a Dicken’s village when they get nostalgic about Christmas but think how much the Germans have contributed to our holiday traditions: an evergreen Christmas tree, gingerbread houses, nutcrackers, Advent calendars,  and carols like Silent Night.

Marbled Paper

Here’s an artisan making patterns with nails in the paint he’s just dripped into a dish of water.  Then he’ll lay paper on top to catch the paint and make the wonderful paper designs you see in the background.

O Tannenbaum

This house has been decorated to celebrate a 19th century German Christmas in Missouri.   As you can see hanging Christmas trees from the ceiling is not a new idea.  I can’t tell you why they did it although children will probably say to fit more presents underneath.

Making Rope

We also spent time with the Lewis & Clark campers.  I was surprised and saddened by the small turn out of visitors, especially on so warm a day.  I suppose they were all at the Christmas events.  It just meant more attention for Schnickelfritz from the interpretors.  I’ve always said the best teachers are enthusiastic about their subjects.  These folk are definately enthusiastic if they will take a weekend in December to camp out and share their knowledge with boys and girls. Here’s Fritz making a rope.

Starting a fire

 Fritz got to start two fires–one with this glass lens and one with flint & steel.  He’ll have to do both for his Royal Rangers merit badge someday so this was good exposure, but he was less than thrilled about holding combustible material in his hands.

Fife & Drum Corps

Okay, these guys don’t really fit in with a German Christmas or the Lewis & Clark Corps, but it was very entertaining to hear Jingle Bells and Hark the Herald Angels Sing performed by fife and drums.