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A Time for Thanksgiving

11/28/2013

Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Here are some resources to help your family think about why we celebrate Thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims were willing to sacrifice everything for the freedom to worship God as they believed.

As we enjoy a great feast with friends and loved ones, let’s take time to give thanks to God, to retell the story of the Pilgrims and the incredible price they paid, and to recommit ourselves to pay the price to be true in our day.

Read

Watch

Plimoth Plantation Virtual Field Trips
The Story of Thanksgiving
William Bradford for Kids
Squanto, the Legendary Friend of the Pilgrims
Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving
Let’s Learn about the Mayflower
The Mayflower Story
A Thanksgiving Message from Ronald Reagan
It's a Wonderful Life (about gratitude, but not about Thanksgiving)

Work together to prepare your Thanksgiving feast and to clean up afterwards.
Do something nice for a military family and tell them how thankful you are for them.
Make or draw "We Are Thankful for You" posters or pictures and deliver them to friends and neighbors. Kids love to make it an anonymous surprise. Tape the picture to the front door or on the windshield of a car, ring the doorbell, and run.
Take pictures of things you are thankful for and make a "Gratitude Scrapbook."
The Pilgrims and Indians had friendly competitions. You could participate in the local Turkey Trot, play games like catch, football, horseshoes, or frisbee golf.
Make Pilgrim Hats and Indian Headdresses for the kids.
Do the Five Kernels of Corn activity.
Make a Gratitude Craft.
Do some Plimoth.org: Just for Kids Activities.
Do some Apples4theTeacher.com Activities.
Choose an activity from the William Bradford Resource and Activity Book.

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Common Core: The Obamacare of Education

11/27/2013

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By Janice Shaw Crouse

At least a dozen states are now delaying or rethinking their implementation of the new Common Core educational standards, as opposition from parents and teachers grows. No wonder: Initially, teachers thought Common Core was just another educational fad destined to soon be replaced by the next new idea. But they've found instead that Common Core is an educational track that parallels the Obamacare: both are designed to “fundamentally transform” America, both were conjured up out of audacious incompetence, both are products of ideological thinking rather than experience and common sense, and both are guaranteed to produce disastrous consequences.

Like Obamacare, Common Core was forced onto the public as a naked federal government takeover. Common Core usurps state and local governments, based on the dubious idea that the local rubes can’t be trusted to understand and meet the needs of their own children. Common Core was developed without state legislative involvement or authority, without involvement of curriculum or content specialists, and it was never voted on by anybody. Instead, it began with progressive educational insiders in Washington, D.C., was developed by Achieve, Inc., a group of progressive education reformers, shaped by commercial vendor NCS Pearson, Inc., and funded primarily by Bill and Melinda Gates through numerous foundations, organizations, and coalitions. At the last minute, two D.C.-based trade associations, the National Governors Association and the Council of State School Officers, were brought in to give the appearance of local and state involvement. Common Core has been implemented primarily through billions in federal “bribes,” because states had to accede to it in order to receive “Race to the Top” grants or waivers for “No Child Left Behind.”

This federal takeover of education is yet another instance of Washington elites expanding the scope, size, and reach of the federal government and its bloated, wasteful, imperious, and very often incompetent bureaucracy. So what that three federal laws prohibit the federal government from setting the education curriculum of the various states? So what that any reasonable common sense reading of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights leads to the conclusion that the power to set education standards is reserved to the states? So what if they ignore their oath to uphold the Constitution? Yet, Common Core cannot be changed by state legislatures or state school boards, nor can taxpayers or parents have a voice in the local schools under Common Core; instead, these “standards” were forced onto local schools before any details were known (remember “we have to pass the bill to know what is in the bill”?) and without state legislative approval or public hearings.

Some experts on the validation committee ultimately refused to sign off on the English and Math standards — one gave the English standards a “D” grade and another called the Math standards a “joke.” Critics say both English and Math Common Core Standards teach “empty skill sets” and claim they require only about a 7th grade level education for high school graduation. Others report that students won’t learn the necessary literary and cultural foundations for authentic education or for success in college. Instead, some experts say that the goal is to produce “workers,” not “educated, thinking citizens.” The “lessons” in Common Core peddle propaganda, even in grammar exercises and math problems. Parents are reporting disinformation, distortion, and disparagement of American capitalism, exceptionalism, and opportunity. In short, Common Core appears to be as much about indoctrination as it is about educating our youth and providing them the skills needed for both informed citizenship and productive careers. “Informational texts” (actually leftist political essays or comics) replace “creative or classic literature.”

As we learn more about Common Core, we find it’s very intrusive: high-tech data tracking will make private personal data available to any “researcher” who claims to have an “audit or evaluation” goal. Massive databases, containing as many as 400 data points about each student, will track children’s individual and family information from preschool through career.

The cost of this fundamental transformation of American education is exorbitant, $16 billlion, with numerous open-ended, unfunded mandates for things like professional development, testing, and new, high-tech instructional materials. This will, of course, be paid by state and local districts, with costs dwarfing any “Race to the Top” grants that were awarded for adopting the Common Core standards. And, naturally, these estimates won’t begin to touch the actual costs when all — slush funds for politically-favored vendors, paybacks, fraud — is said and done.

Already, 45 states, D.C., and four U.S. territories have built educational curricula based on Common Core. But, as reality is coming to light, some states are withdrawing, and others are refusing to participate. More and more teachers are speaking out about the unrealistic and unfinished nature of Common Core; national education commentators are weighing in on the classroom havoc around the country. Meanwhile, the federal government is aggressively pushing to add Common Core standards for science and social studies.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan dismisses criticism of Common Core, complaining that “white suburban moms” oppose new standards because they want to continue believing that their underperforming children are brilliant — injecting the same race and class conflict that is being used so mendaciously to try to squelch criticism of Obamacare.

Sadly, the train wreck that Common Core is generating in our education system, like Obamacare in the nation’s health care system, amounts to severe and lasting damage that will take years to reverse.

Janice Shaw Crouse, a speechwriter for the first President Bush, is the
author of Children at Risk and Marriage Matters.

This article was originally published on The American Spectator.
It is shared here with permission.

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The Mayflower Compact

11/21/2013

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The pilgrims who settled in America loved and honored God. They tried to govern their lives in a way that pleased Him.

Their character and faith was evident in all they did, even in the governing documents they created.

Here is a short video about The Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of their community.

"This day, before we came to harbour, observing some not well affected to unity and concord, but gave some appearance of faction, it was thought good there should be an association and agreement, that we should combine together in one body and to submit to such government and governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose, and set our hands to this that follows, word for word." ~William Bradford

The Mayflower Compact

"In the name of God, Amen.

"We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&.

"Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid;

"And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

"In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620."

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What Does the Mayflower Compact Tell Us?

The Pilgrims created their governing document "in the name of God." God is very important to them. They want to govern their lives in a way that is pleasing to HIm.

They are loyal subjects of King James.

Their purpose for leaving their homes and sailing across the ocean to form a new colony in Virginia is to glorify God, to advance the Christian faith, and to honor their King and country.

They are forming a government to keep order, stay alive, and to fulfill their stated purposes.

This document gives them the power to form the laws, rules, and offices needed for the good of the colony.

As leaders of the government, they promise submission and obedience to the people.

The Gettysburg Address

11/19/2013

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150 years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln gave one of the most important speeches in American history.

The Gettysburg Address lasts less than three minutes, but it is known as one of the most influential speeches ever given.

At a time of great turmoil, division, and suffering, President Lincoln’s words were healing and unifying. They invite all to give increased devotion to “a new birth of freedom."

Here are two very different renditions of the Gettysburg Address. They are both great and you can watch them both in a little more than five minutes.

The first one shows meaningful pictures that give context for the speech.

The second one is super cool for moms to watch. A two-year-old boy recites the address from memory. If we use our time well, our children are capable of happily learning and remembering much more than we realize. If we help them, they can carry our heritage in their minds and hearts.

The Gettysburg Address

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

~Abraham Lincoln

Photo: Lincoln presents the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet
Painted by: Francis Bicknell Carpenter in 1864

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Do You Trust Barack Obama to Control Your Healthcare?

11/14/2013

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President Obama has plans for your healthcare.

That many progressives, including Obama, are hoping Obamacare is a preliminary step to a single payer system is painfully obvious.

Here is Obama in his own words.

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A Time for Thanksgiving

Common Core: The Obamacare of Education

By Janice Shaw Crouse

The Mayflower Compact

The Gettysburg Address

Do You Trust Barack Obama to Control Your Healthcare?

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