What's New at DonnaYoung.org in 2011

New at DY in 2011

Animals of the World Booklet

November 2011 - Art
Animals of the World is a printable 32 page booklet. The student is to list animals and draw them in each of the 4 page sections for each of the 7 continents.

Drawing Assignment Themes

November 2011 - Art
A list of 21 themes for drawing assignments.

Desk Size Planner: Dated Timer

November 2011 - Household
Basic Information: This is a timer for the desk-sized personal planner. The timer begins at 6 AM and ends at 9 PM. Each hour is divided into 15 minute increments. After 9 PM the remaining 3 lines are unlabeled.

Spider Computer Wallpaper at Blog

"Spiders on Rosemary"

Before the tornado killed my one and only AND best rosemary plant (ever) spiders hatched on the plant. I happened to be in the garden that day and took a few pictures. I made a couple of the pictures into computer wallpaper. For now, I'm using the first one, the one pictured here, on my computer.

New Set of Ruled Filler Paper - "Standard"

This is a new set of ruled filler paper. I call it standard filler paper because I used 3 standard rule sizes to measure the space between the lines. The sizes are wide rule, medium rule (college ruled), and narrow rule. To make this paper a genuine set, I made four styles of each rule - fully ruled, blank top, ruled on left side, and ruled on right side (with other side being blank).

Pictured here is the "Wide Rule" on Left Side.

2012 Half-Sized Household Planner

is ready for printing.

Drawing With Children Lessons, Improved

When I redo my website, like I have been doing this year, I try to improve parts of it. In this case, I improved the Drawing with Children overview and lesson plan pages. Lesson 2 is the most improved.

Family Boot Camp

Lost from the web site and blog, I bring you the family boot camp article, added back by request.

Add 4 Special Planners to The V Planner - "Hack-D"

I hacked the V planner to add "get by date function" planners. This page has instruction on how to do it yourself. Better yet, don't do it, just download the latest version of the V Planner -- which is V Planner DT, a new mysterious planner, only mysterious because I've not had time to talk about it.

Half-Sized Household Planner Calendars Updated

I finally remembered to update the calendars on this page. They were all about to expire. Now they are updated to the year 2013.

Ruled President Paper

I removed the old files that were on this page and replaced them with "ruled president paper." As you might guess from the title, the paper is ruled and includes a picture of an American president. The paper is available in two styles - 1. with no numbers and 2. with numbered rule.

51 New One Hundred Numbers Charts

On the page linked above, I added 51 new 100-number charts.

A lesson Plan for LifePac Electives Art Unit 4 - Perspective

The lesson plans that I wrote below are minimal lesson plans, I did not require additional resources, the lesson plans are written for the one workbook AOP Art Elective Unit 4. -You can add more classes and resources than listed. I have assigned 17 class-time drawings. I consider every drawing assignment listed below as necessary. Drawing is not a reading class, drawing is a hands-on class and while learning to draw, the student should have the benefit of actual class-time drawing. There are 25 class in all. Read More

V Planner V.2 Is Available and Help Files

May 22, 2011 -XLS Planners - in Homeschool Planner
V Planner V.2 is available. V Planner is an XLS file and requires a compatible program such as MS Excel. Access to the file is gained from YoungMinds 2011+. Links to V Planner new/updated help files: Videos, S-Sheet Overview by Columns, Planners, Reports.

"Surrounded by a Calendar" Row Planners Updated

May 22, 2011 -Homeschool Planners - Row
While getting the site-cd updated for the V Planner, I noticed the nifty "Surrounded by a Calendar" row planners were about to become outdated, so I made a whole lot of them - up to 2025 for the Site-Cd; you'll find a more modest amount online.

Lily of the Valley Desktop Wallpaper

Saturday, April 16, 2011 -Blog - in Life
A few days ago, I took a walk in the woods behind our home to see what was going on there. I came across some lily of the valley plants that were in bloom. ... Read More, download computer wallpaper

Homeschool XLS Term Dates Calculator

This item, the Homeschool XLS Term Dates Calculator, is an xls file that requires a spreadsheet program. With this file, go through 5 steps and on the 6th step, the calculator will return school term days.

ZB Handwriting Lessons

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - Handwriting - By Style
In the section Handwriting > By Styles there are 52 new cursive handwriting lessons in a style similar to Zaner-Bloser.

YoungMinds - Site CD-Rom

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 - YoungMinds
The site-cd, YoungMinds, is available for sale after having been unavailable because of our home repairs.

ZB Style Handwriting Worksheets

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - Handwriting
This is a new Manuscript Handwriting Set. The letter style is similar to Zaner-Bloser. There are over 500 worksheets & the handwriting rule is approximately 14 mm tall.

62 Handwriting Animations

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - Handwriting
DonnaYoung.org has 62 more manuscript handwriting animations. You can see them starting here: ZB Handwriting Animations. Includes both uppercase and lowercase.

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What's New with DY in 2011

Rotten Floors: The year 2011 brought many to new things to me personally. Some of the things were a distraction from working on this website. Early in the year, we were midway through home repairs to fix rotten joists and sub floors, and finally we had a new tile floor installed. This was a big job and it took almost 3 months. During the entire time, I had no access to my usual work space or work computer because my office was a part of the area being repaired. I managed to produce the ZB set on an old laptop that my sister gave to me last year. I was teased by the carpenters for typing aaa, bbb, ccc, ..etc..

Retirement: My husband retired this year.

Tornadoes: Later we were in the April 27th tornadoes. Several tornados went through our town that day from morning to night, some of them were very powerful. In our county, over 500 homes were damaged and of those, almost 300 were somewhere between unlivable to destroyed. Nine people in this county died. We had minor damage from a small tornado that passed through our neighborhood that was parallel to an EF4 tornado that was passing through at the same time nearby. Because our power had been out for hours from earlier tornados, we had no idea what was coming our way until just a minute before it came through when my husband's sister called us to tell us that a tornado was headed our way. We sat in the hall while it went by. We will never forget the sound of a tornado. It was loud and rhythmic - it sounded mechanical. We didn't hear the damage it was causing, all we could hear was the mechanical sound

The picture below shows a tree that was pushed over during the tornado. The tree trunk was 12.6 feet in circumference. A piece of the tree was dropped on our back fence about 100 feet away, denting it. This tree "just" missed our house. It was over the house and behind the house. Several branches were just inches, 2 or 3 inches, above the roof. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the white line that is the edge of our roof.

SMART Scholarship: Amid all the chaos my son became an awardee of this: SMART Scholarship.

DonnaYoung.org's New Web Site Design: At some point during the first quarter of the year, I redesigned my css framework that determines in what order the various page parts load and I tweaked the look of my website. As of today, August 25th, 2011, I have applied this new framework to around 2/3 of my web site. I have to redo each and every page individually. My goal was simple - I wanted the important parts of the pages to load first. The important parts are those parts that the visitor wants to see - the page content and the file links. I also needed to reign in the ugly fluid right column - to make it a fixed width, but I needed the content in the middle to remain fluid . I worked with those goals and finally succeeded. Maybe by the end of this year I will have the entire website converted to the new design. I need to finish because, like always, I have more plans for this web site that I'd like to work on.

New Computer: Even later (July) I finally replaced my old, yet working, 2003 computer with a new computer. I've not written anything about it yet except to a few friends, but it is quite a piece of work. Naturally, like my 2003 computer, my new computer did not come from a store shelf nor is it a name brand. I do not buy name brand computers for work. This is how I buy a computer - I choose a company that specializes in building computers, I look over the available options and research all of them. After researching everything, I make my choices and then it gets built.