The Art of the Catapult

Calling all pumpkin chuckers, wannabe marauders and tinkerers of all ages! Flinging things and playing at defending your own castle has never been more fun!

With some scrap wood, rope, hammer, nails, and this book build seven hstoric catapults including Ludgar the War Wolf, God's stone Thrower, Cabulus, and the Wild donkey - simple yet sophisticated hurling machines that rely on the fundamentals of math and physics using leveers, force, tension, and traction.

Through these exciting projects, the colorful history of siege warfare comes to life - the stories of Alexander the Great and the battle of Tyre; Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and the Thrid Crusade; pirate-turned-soldier John Crabbe and his ship-mounted catapults; and Edward I of England and his battle against the Scot at Stirling Castle. For the legions of Tolkien fans, budding backyard warriors, and engineering wizards, this book is a MUST-HAVE.

Of course this is not your typical "craft book", but it is definitely a manly type of book.

We were almost finished with our first catapult when it snowed. All we need to do is add the rubber tubing and we will be shooting snowballs with a catapult....pretty cool!!!

Read more about Art of the Catapult Here

Kerry

Backyard Ballistics

Backyard Ballistics is the perfect book for your son, husband or brother-in-law. All men (and most girls) find this a fascinating book with really, cool projects. Backyard Ballistics gives instructions on how to build a variety of projects (potato cannon, tennis ball mortars, Cincinnati fire kite...) the safety, physics and history behind that project. My son and husband made the potato cannon last Thanksgiving and now it is a hit at our holiday gatherings. In fact, we carried it to my parent's farm over Thanksgiving a few years ago so all the kids could fire off the potatoes. Some of the kids even tried catching the potatoes as well-wow! My son's next project is to begin selling kits to make projects in Backyard Ballistics.

Of course this is not your typical "craft book", but it is definitely a manly type of book. We have lots of dads wander into our booth just to buy this book. Some day we hope to offer a camp for boys to let them build some of the projects and teach the project's science & history.

What others say about Backyard Ballistics

Pleasing men of all ages!,

Being an avid potato gunner, I picked this book up at the local library, and after reading it over, I just had to to get it. The book will please everyone that is into building fun projects during the lazy summer days & will provide enjoyment for hours! The book goes into very good detail with each project & stresses safety as a key thing, which is good because the projects in this book can be somewhat dangeroeus ONLY if you don't follow instructions & use common sense. I recommended this book to anyone in need for a good project to work on or just for fun! Definitely on my top 10 list.

If you need a last minute gift for the men in your family, order Backyard Ballistics today! You can still receive it by Christmas!

Kerry

Cool Christmas Gifts for Boys

Just thought I'd let you know of some cool Christmas gifts for boys. My 12yo son makes and sells many of these products.

Marshmallow Shooter

Marshmallow Gun

Potato Cannon Kit

Backyard Ballistics

Art of the Catapult

Model Rockets

Heirloom Wooden Toys

Kerry

History Project - Lion, Witch & Wardrobe

This is part of TOS Unit Study Newsletter. Enjoy!

“Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.”

—The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, chapter one

Why Were the Children Away from Home?

During World War II, England was faced with war on its doorstep. The advent of fighter planes and bombers meant that civilians were not safe at home while soldiers fought England's enemies in France, Germany, and beyond, especially since part of the strategy of the German army was to attack civilians and thus weaken the morale of Germany's opponents. When England became engaged in the war, this danger was known, and heavy causalities were predicted among the civilian population, particularly in London. As the center of government and the most populous English city, London was often targeted for attack. Though the civilian loss of life was not as great as originally predicted, it was still quite heavy.

On September 1, 1939, two days before war was declared in England, efforts began to evacuate over 1 million children from London and the more populous areas of England. Many were sent to live with relatives or with foster families in the countryside, in Cornwall, and in Scotland. More than 16,000 were sent overseas, though some of these children died in enemy attacks en route. Despite the efforts at evacuation, the war took its ghastly toll. More than one in ten air raid victims were children under the age of 16. Official estimates place the child death toll during the war at 7,736. In addition, 7,622 were seriously wounded in the attacks. Including adults, more than 60,595 civilians were killed by enemy action in Great Britain during the war, with another 86,182 seriously injured.

The fictitious Pevensie children (Pevensie is Lucy, Susan, Edmund, and Peter's surname) were placed with an eccentric but wise professor who lived in a large house in the country. According to Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis himself harbored some children during the war effort. In fact, the Professor Digory character (who appears in several Narnian tales) shares many characteristics with Lewis himself.

The study of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe may be a good opportunity to learn more about the terrible events that surrounded World War II. Perhaps it will even give your children a new perspective on how thankful they should be for our present (though tenuous) level of security. The links below provide good starting places to learn more about the role of children in England during this terrible conflict. If you wish to see another film that depicts this, you may want to rent the recent film version of Five Children and It based on the fantasy classic by E. Nesbit. Though in the book version the children are not evacuated, the film adaptation makes use of this element as part of the plot and gives another touching portrait of the fears and discomforts that the evacuated children endured.

Internet Links:

The Evacuation of Children During World War II (lots of pictures—great site!)
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/war/evacuation.htm

The Children's War (a BBC site)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/yourlondon/1945/childrens_war.shtml

Excerpts from How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War
http://www.johndclare.net/wwii6b_blitz_longmate.htm

The Lion, Witch & Wardrobe - Movie

Our entire family watched The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe this past Friday night. We went with a bunch of my oldest's college friends (about 40) to the last showing Friday night.

Everyone in the family enjoyed it. For the most part, the movie followed the book and portrayed the characters well. C.S. Lewis is a marvelous storyteller and I had fun reliving the book. The only part I didn't like was changing the images that I had from reading the book. You know, it is hard to see things on a screen when you imagined them differently.

Be sure to make time in your holiday schedule to see this movie. It's a great family flick. If you have younger kids, they may be scared at times.

If you haven't read the book, you must read it soon. It is well worth it!

Kerry
Literature Classics

Marley's Ghost Notwithstanding

Exhortation from today.....

This is the third Lord’s Day of Advent, the year of our Lord, 2005.

We are not here today, marking the approach of Christmas, because the early Christians compromised with paganism. It is not the case that our fathers tried to sanitize some pagan celebration of the winter solstice. As it turns out, the Romans did not celebrate the solstice, and their Saturnalia was on a different day entirely. There was one brief abortive attempt by a pagan emperor to start celebrating the solstice (with a feast to the Unconquerable Sun), which was almost certainly a response to the Christian celebration of this day. This day is ours, so unbelievers may be cordially invited to keep their hands off it.

At the same time, unbelievers are invited to join us, first as interested observers, then as catechumens, and then as baptized Christians. How do we invite them? By wishing that they would have a merry Christmas. No "Seasons’ Greetings" for us. Away with "Happy Holidays" and "Holiday trees," And to Dickens’ attempt to turn this whole thing into a humanistic, feel good ghost story, a story which is all about a nebulous spirit of generosity and getting mysteriously unscrooged, we do say, "Bah, humbug!"

Without Christ, we have no Savior. If Jesus did not die, He could not have risen from the dead. If He did not rise from the dead, we are still in our sins, Marley’s ghost notwithstanding. If Jesus had not taken on a human body in the stunning event of the Incarnation, He could not have died. If He did not die and rise, we are still in our sins. Without this baby, we are all of us lost, and lost forever.

The war on Christmas is being conducted by those who want no reminders of the potency of this great event. We are here to remind the world that there is indeed, joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her king, and with a little less backchat.

from: Doug Wilson's blog

Kerry

Christmas & Sentimentalism

I forgot to post our exhortation from last week, so I'm posting last week's and this week's right now. These were given in our worship service at church.

This is the second Lord’s Day of Advent, the year of our Lord, 2005.

We must never forget that an essential part of the Christmas story is the stark reality of sin. We have already noted that our culture’s instinct of marking this holiday by giving gifts, giving lots of stuff, is an instinct that is sound at the base. This is a celebration of Incarnation, of material embodiment of the greatest Gift ever given. And so of course, we mark and celebrate this with lots of material stuff.

But all our cultural instincts are not quite so helpful. One of the less helpful traditions is the relegation of this entire story into a vat of sentimental goo. Feel good emotions are the order of the day, and those feel good emotions are detached from any sense of deliverance from sin. We forget that Rachel weeping for her slaughtered children is very much a part of the Christmas story—as much a part of it as the shepherds, and the angels, and the star, and the wise men. This is a story of the infants who were butchered by a tyrannical king, and the one infant who was spared in order to grow up and die for the sins of His people.

This story has death woven through it—the backdrop is death, and sin, and tyranny. We celebrate at this time, not because we live in a sentimentalist paradise where there has never any evil, but only gently falling snow and the sound of sleigh bells in the distance. We celebrate the birth of the one who overthrew the principalities and powers. This is not a holiday that commemorates the essential sweetness and goodness of man. It is a holiday that commemorates the beginning of the story of how it came about that death finally was killed, and how the warrior who did this great thing was spared in His infancy.

This is why the continued celebration of Christmas is a standing threat to the secularists who want to remove every vestige of it from the public square. I dare say they do. They understand it better than we do. Merry Christmas really means tyranny is dead.

from: Doug Wilson's Blog

Kerry

First Day of Snow

Last week we finally received enough snow for our kids to sled and

have tons of fun. Of course, we took of the day from schoolwork!!!

Since Steve works from our home, he joined us for sledding. Isn’t it

great to have freedom in your work. We all had a great time as a family,

sledding and checking out better places to “play” in the snow. Almost all

of the kids in town had the day off from school, too. My son met

friends in the neighborhood to sled down some “major” hills.

I started to wonder why homeschoolers don’t take off the first day

of snow. It is such a great memory that my kids will always have.

For me, making that memory is more important than doing one

more page in our Math workbook. The way I see it is this: If you

take off the first day of snow each year for 12 years of school,

your child misses 12 days of school. That’s 12 days out of 2100,

if you school about 175 days a year. I think every kid can miss a

few days in his school career, especially to make a memory of a

lifetime.

I know my kids will have memories for a lifetime . . . that of their

parents (& their dog”) sledding down the hills with them :-)

Kerry

Homeschool Curriculum