Homeschooling May 15th

We did reading lesson, ReadyWriter, Calculadder, readers, quick math review, and history (SOTW and SOTR).

Now I've got to call my friend and see if we are going over there today. And fix lunch!

Later!

Susannah

http://scientificsonline.com/default.asp

Some things are expensive and others seem fairly inexpensive and FUN looking! I am even thinking about getting the "hand boilers" for DH for Father's Day!!!

We just hung on by a thread this weekend. I am SO ready for school to be out and us to get to "fun schooling". DS7 asked me if he could be homeschooled next year!!! I said why do you ask and he said I don't wanna rush around every morning, I want to get up on my own. Well, I like that argument also!!!!

All kinds of thoughts running around in my head.....

Jana

This is for Vonnie...I ran across this last night and it looks wonderful!

http://www.starfall.com/

You can teach your child to read right online! Neato!

Another site I found about notebooking:

http://www.notebooking.org/

ETA: I looked at Starfall and it's great! I'm about to show it to J.D. I'm becoming more and more convinced that one could homeschool for almost nothing using the Internet.

Susannah, that link is very, very cool. I love the short vowel songs, although they are now stuck in my head, especially short E.
I also wanted to tell you that we do D'Nelian too. I found that it really helped reduce lower case letter confusion (b/d especially)and eased the transition to cursive. I use the StartWrite program to make handwriting practice, well worth the $40 because then you can connect their handwriting practice to anything meaningful to them, like their own names other personalized info when they are little, spelling words or vocabulary that has to do with science they are studying when they are older. It has cursive too, so lasts for a long time. I also like the Draw Write Now books, they seem to help make kids more confident at representational drawing, which for some reason so many children think is all art is about. I wish we lived closer so we could share materials.

Lynn, I have no clue how to link, but I'll try to go look it up so I can link to StartWrite and a few others and put them in the weblink homeschooling section.

Today DS13 visited our public school to see if he wants to go there in the fall. I'm totally fine with whatever he decides, and he is struggling with it. He visited the 8th grade, and his impression is that everything they did he already has done. Keep in mind this is the end of the school year, and he would be in 8th grade next year. He did really like the social aspect though, so he is trying to decide if the boredom is worth the fun.

DD4 did two pages of initial consonant sounds sheets and two pages of matching groups of objects with their numeral. We are about to read Swamp Angel, a fun tall tale.

OK, gotta go read.
Bye,
-Jo

I love how easy it is to add a weblink! Even a techno-idiot like me can do it.

I tossed a few links in the homeschool section, and will try to do a few a week as long as they hold out.

Read with DD today and did some letter sound games in the van on the way home. Also taught her a song from Scotland.

DS13 was quite disappointed with the academic level at the school when he visited. He wants to go present to the school administration a plan to get grade skipped. I know they will say no, but I want him to try anyway if he wants to. If they do say no he is 90% sure he wants to homeschool next year. We'll see.
Have a good one all,
-Jo

Jo, it really sounds like DS has a sensible head on his shoulders and knows what he wants. That should give you a really good feeling!!

Kerri.

You guys have already given me some valuable info; I'm making a locally hosted web page that Josie and Lou can use to do their "schoolwork."

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

it's ok, it's just me being stupid and editing it all wrong so I ended up not submitting. Will go back and try later.

Meantime, I found this, whilst trying to put together a joint presentation with DH for a European hub office of his current company. It's a geography game... the bit I saw is obviously Europe, but there could well be more to the site... no time to check now, but didn't want to lose this, and I can't bookmark it since this is my SIL's computer!

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/puzzle_eur.htm

will try the link thing another time, with my brain switched on!

Kerri.

We did some homeschooling yesterday, but I limited the math to the Calculadder drill. I'm coming around to the idea of just drilling math facts over the summer until they are automatic. That's what seems to slow down our other math learning.

They want to do history, so I'll keep doing that until we catch up with our friends. In fact, I'll just make it bedtime reading, now that we have finished...DA DA DA DUMMMMM!...The Lord of the Rings trilogy! That's right...we read all the way to "Well, I'm back" last night.

Now they are allowed to watch the animated movie, which just came via Netflix two days ago. (I wouldn't let them see the movie 'til we'd finished the book.) There's a second animated film, but it was really, really bad so I wouldn't let them see it at all. (This one is the sequel to "The Hobbit.")

Okay so, summer plans:

*Calculadder drills
*SOTW I and II
*Story of the Romans
*Cursive practice (DD9)
*D'Nealian practice (DD7)
*Natural Science--based on their interests (turtles, lizards and other reptiles?)--drawing animal pictures using Draw Write Now--notebooking?
*Reading aloud

It looks like a lot, but it's mostly reading aloud. The only table work would be the math drills (2 min.), handwriting (5-15 min.), and possibly notebooking their interests.

Okay, I feel better now.

Off to Flybabies.

(P.S. My kids beg to do starfall.com.)

Okay, we have been listening to a couple of the used Audio Memory tapes I picked up at the convention, and...I can name all the state capitals on the northern, southern and eastern borders of the YOO-nited States! (Still working on the middles.) I give it two thumbs up.

The songs are a little goofy, I guess, but they do help you remember. I haven't seen any results with my kids yet. I'm resorting to repetition there. We'll see. I have a feeling looking at a map (even a blank one) would help keep it straight and we don't have the booklets that go with the tapes. Once I have the songs completely memorized, I can probably quiz them on the fly with a map of my own.

Just thought I'd post a review.

Found 'em on Enchanted Learning! Here's a fun car activity. I hope mine don't get car sick. I can't do this sort of thing in the car, but maybe they can.

A downloadable U.S. "puzzle":

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/puzzle_us.htm

just trying to fill some space here so Susannah doesn't feel she's talking to herself and stop talking - I know I like to read along if nothing else.

my sole contribution to homeschooling my kids today has been to grab some videos on the way home after eating Pizza Hut for dinner. Bad mommy!

actually not really true... DD started a little game in the car, which she tells us can also be played in Chinese (then she demonstrated, but DS and I fell asleep!). Very simple word game... pick a word, then the next person has to find a word which starts with the ending letter of the previous word - the Chinese version was more complicated I can assure you! We decided to place a limit on it... you could choose only animals or living things perhaps, depending on the age of the children. We chose nouns for the first round. Be warned - don't start this game unless you know a LOT of words beginning with E!! We were going to move the next game to verbs but got home too quick.

there were some other teaching moments - they happen all the time here - but unlike other impending school holidays I've got nothing planned for this one, and the kids finish on Thursday!! No books, no toys, and deteriorating eyesight which limits television and computer time!!! I really hope our departure doesn't drag till later in June as is beginning to look possible.

Kerri.

Where are you planning to go? I must have missed that in an earlier thread. Hope you get off sooner rather than later.

I've heard of the word game in English, and I can't even begin to imagine how one plays it in Chinese. How does Chinese spelling work? I thought the characters represented syllables and words rather than individual letters.

Well, we did:
*Two reading lessons with Elias
*ReadyWriter (boys)
*Calculadder (girls)--both girls finished the whole sheet in under two minutes! Now, if they can just do it neatly...
*Handwriting: "O" words for Olivia; Cursive chart for Anna Kate, and also practice writing her name
*Readers--once we finish these, I'm taking a break until fall.
*Language: Finding direct quotations in the Little Red Hen; introducing indirect quotations; copywork
*History: SOTW--Julius Caesar and the pirates; SOTR--Cincinnatus, the farmer hero
*Geography: Found Cincinnati, OH on the U.S. map.

Actually, we're just doing the stuff that I enjoy. It's more fun this way.

The next three weeks are packed with more than humanly possible. Just this week we have a final baseball game of the season, a band concert, and the marathon. Funschooling will propbably be pretty abbreviated through the middle of June.

Yesterday DD and I made scones; they were really good. Too good.

Now she's sound asleep, as she has been since 4:30, she's wiped out from all this crazy running around. Yuck.

Susannah, what is calculadder? Or did I totally miss that?

That's about it, for now.

Bye,
-Jo

for anyone who may have missed this, and wondering what on earth I'm talking about (where have you been!?!?!?) - we're about to move back to the UK. Well ok, only I'm moving back. Everyone else is just moving there. It's been a long time coming, and it has completely taken over my life, but I guess it may not have popped up in conversation outside of my two main threads. Supposed to be sometime in June, except we don't even have flights yet - long story. DH tried resigning and then spent the next 6wks being offered a job in the UK by the same company, one he wanted years ago, but gave up waiting for. I *think* that's now going to happen, or leastways the boss seems to be in favour and there's only the disgruntled head financial honcho to pacify and even he was grudgingly impressed with the figures in DH's presentation yesterday, but still wants more detail. If he'd made his requests very specific before he'd have had the damn numbers. He's really just looking for reasons not to spend any money on this - a European central office, which will be the first regional office outside of Asia, and quite a coup for DH. He's been pushing for this for I don't know how many years. Now he resigns and they suddenly decide it's time! But they dragged their feet on it...

You're right about the Chinese Susannah - each character is one word or part of a word. In the Chinese version of the game each person comes up with a two part word (ie. two characters) and the second character is the first character of the next person's answer. Believe me when I say it's bloody hard!! One could also do a slightly simplified version based on the pinyin, or romanised spelling. That way you don't have to worry about the character being right, only the sound being the same, which gives you a wider choice, and doesn't require that all players should be able to know the characters (especially when you're doing it verbally in the car!). In that instance one could have 'da xiang' (elephant) and 'xiang jiao' (banana), but that wouldn't work for the first version because the characters for xiang are different in each example, as are the tones, but that's really more information than you need!

Scones ARE definitely educational... maths and home economics and a hundred other things all rolled into one Jo... The whole point of it, as opposed to regular school is that you don't need to beat yourself up if you take the day off! Or the week, or the month... Kids are always learning anyway - you can't stop them. If you're bothered think up some games for in the car (that don't even require pencil and paper!) and you'll feel like maybe you've achieved something while you were getting to your other activities. Those things work really well as family things too I've noticed - lower expectations and more fun than if you're actively trying to *teach* something.

Kerri.

We have become addicted to mancala in our house! We've had it a year or two and I have never worked out the rules properly, but today I did and we can't put it down! We played it all day. Apart from a game of Scrabble that's all we've done all day in the name of homeschooling, tut tut.

On Sunday however, I took DS13 and his friend to a country fair at a nearby country park. It was so cool! We saw a demonstration of ploughing with shire horses and a man behind them holding the plough the old way, and a police dog demonstration. There was someone there with about a dozen different owls. We were able to see them really closely and even touch some of them. There were lots of stalls and I managed to get myself signed up for blood donation and Neghbourhood Watch, not sure how that happened! The part the boys liked best was when we went on an hour long guided walk of the area, being shown all the major places of interest in an unsolved murder case from 1846 (with much grisly description!). We were led around by people in period costume, including an 1840s London policeman. Great fun. This week DS is going to research the case on the internet and from my local history books.

I feel like we've actually done something this week! Oh and last week we watched a great tv programme about the brazil nut tree. Did you know that if the surrounding rainforst is damaged the brazil nut tree won't produce nuts anymore? It's all to do with it depending on the surrounding ecosystem. Fascinating.

Anyway, back to the mancala.

We did CalcuLadder drills today. Elias did ReadyWriter and his reading lesson. Then I worked upstairs in the girls' room getting it ready for painting.

Honey, that country fair sounded like great fun! I hope to do with chess what you have done with mancala. LOL! I doubt I'll discover any chess addicts around here, though.

P.S. The link to the CalcuLadder page is here:

http://www.providenceproject.com/tour/pages/math.htm

I just can't get my head around chess at all, Susannah! DS13 plays though, he taught himself on the computer. You have reminded me I ought to invite some of his chess playing homeschool friends over for a chess morning, or something. Thanks

Today DS did a couple of hours of Maths. I just had to correct my typing - first I typed 'a couple of hours of oaths' ) He's gone off to dogsit for my brother for a couple of hours this afternoon, he has his reading book with him. He's finished 1984 and has gone on to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books. Bit of a contrast there! Next up we have Brave New World and Lord of the Flies, I am planning to get the study guides for them.

I can't wait for him to get back to play mancala Ooh, I wonder if they have it online?

DD mentioned this morning that she wanted to learn! Good luck to her - definitely not from me. And I have in mind to pick up a particular game here for you Honey (no, not mahjongg - I ditched our set because DH hates it, but maybe he can teach you and your DS and drag me in to make up an occasional four)... but I can't seem to find a set with sensible instructions. I did recently find a site online with the history of just about every traditional game going... I was looking up another local game - carrom, which is becoming very popular in the UK now apparently. Their first championship was in time for the Golden Jubilee! Didn't find instructions for the game I was planning t pick up though. Might just get you a set anyway and either you can have fun looking up the rules yourself, or you can twist DH's arm to write you down the rules!!!

About the only educational thing going on around here in the next few weeks will be how many ways children can amuse themselves with paper and a few pencils!! Everything else will be packed, and DD had her last day of school today; DS is tomorrow.

meanwhile I'm getting an education in how to tessellate... I may never wanna see another box again as long as I live. And any future moves with be done with professionals. Actually I bet it won't, because we'll have to unpack this whole lot to find stuff, then when we move into our own place from rental we'll need to do it again, and since there won't be any furniture I can bet I'll end up doing it myself and renting a smallish van. buggrit...

still, for the greater good... and WAY OT!

Kerri.

DS7 and DS41/2 love playing it. We have this set that tells them on each pawn what that pawn can do. Very helpful when they are learning. I know very little but hope to learn more this summer!

Honey, my girlfriend loves mancala. We are looking for a set around here for the summer!

2 more days!!!!!!!!!!!!! and then school is out!

Jana

Jana you could always get really creative and make a set with the boys! I saw instructions for that somewhere....here it is

http://www.kidsdomain.com/craft/mancala.html

We had great success starting our kids with just the pawns and king and queen. Once they have those pieces mastered we added the others, from the outside in, one pair at a time. It really worked well and now they are way better than DH and me! It's also nice that way because the games go much more quickly, which is good for shorter attention spans.

I just got my order for a bunch of Usborne books, and I am so pumped for summer!

I did consider Kerri's suggestion to look at history, so I got the book of Greek Myths along with the book on Ancient Greece. Should make a challenging companion to summer Bible study!

DD6 is really excited for our summer school. She calls going out to play on our swingset "recess" and going to the beach or children's museum a "field trip." Love it! Still, will try very hard to take it slow so we don't burn out. Of course, she is adamant that we have "music class" every day. (Which we try to do now anyway.)

Wish I could teach DD6 chess! She is interested, and they were supposed to do it in her gifted class this spring, but I guess it didn't happen. I am not the one to teach her -- it is a way of thinking that I just am not good at! Same with mancala, although at least I can make a respectable showing. Very humbling for a PhD smarty-pants like myself to fail so miserably at games like chess, mancala, Go (cool japanese game), etc., esp. when others around me do so well!

Shaun
"Home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks."
   -- G. K. Chesterton

I suck at chess. I can't even beat DH at Scrabble, which really bites considering how poorly he speaks compared to me. He wins on points, not the elegance of his word choice! The only game I can strategise on and beat him almost every time is Uno, which is rather sad. And of course I can thrash him at Trivial Pursuit because he has a typical Singaorean level of general knowledge. Actually he's better than most by a long way, but he can only watch in awe at the amount of totally useless information my mother and I can keep in our brains, and then he gets to understand why we struggle with normal daily functions!!!

I'll bet DD loves those myths Shaun - they are really fun, and surprisingly useful as a foundation for general knowledge in so many areas. Keep up with her while she's enthusiastic, but if she tapers off, just let it go, but comment that since she's not really in the mood there's no point in doing stuff that's meant to be fun. That way you won't cause yourself trouble with her giving up whenever she gets bored!!

younger kids really do LOVE 'playing' school... a friend and I played a very complicated school with our soft toys for a year or more... we had exercise books and reading programmes and all sorts. I remember a writing exercise involving a passage from a Noddy book!! Mine are just starting their first day proper of school holidays and they're all burnt out... DH says that I should give them something to do, which isn't wrong, but schoolwork isn't it right now. Maybe in another week or so, but right now they need to be bored and wild for a bit (if I can survive it for a few days). DD has already said she wants to find out which parts of the UK curriculum she isn't familiar with, especially for maths, but also for English and science. We've also agreed that we probably should get her multiplication tables memorised properly (she's still trying to count them on her fingers) before she starts school in September. DS is kind of going back 6mths, starting primry school from the first year again, so I don't foresee any difficulties for him. He needs a challenge or two, but not necessarily in the area of writing. He'd be the perfect candidate for the Charlotte Mason style narration, because he's so full of creativity and stories, but his handwriting is atrocious, and if he has to write whole sentences he tends to end up getting quite a few of his letters backwards, missing stuff out... his spelling is quite good - verbally! But he lacks focus (interest) in writing at the moment. When it becomes an important vehicle for something he loves it will be easier.

which reminds me, I read recently that a few schools in the UK have recently decided to teach children only using computers, then move on to handwriting when they're older because it take a fraction of the time once their fine motor skills are more developed. Sounds sensible, but I wonder whether they'll find more of the kids needing glasses earlier.

I've just had porridge for breakfast (DS' breakfast and half of DD's breakfast in fact) so I'm feeling quite pumped at the moment. Better get thinking quick, because it looks like we might have to be here till after 22nd June. I can't quite imagine how I'm going to keep them happy once the internet goes as well as the books... it's not like they can run around outside all day!

hang in Jana... nearly there...

Kerri.

it occurred to me while i was thinking about what materials I have left unpacked, that one of the things was a slim book of mental arithmetic sums which I had my parents buy for DD. Shaun, and everyone else really... mental arithmetic is really useful, and kids don't really get taught it. They go straight from pencil and paper to calculators. How often do you really use either in a grocery store or when you normally use maths?? The little book I have is very cheap and contains the four basic mathematical functions, sometimes mixed, sometimes not. DD isn't really so hot on the multiplication yet, an I haven't used it as much as I should, but for anyone looking for supplements to curret maths programmes I'd highly recommend giving it a try. The advantage is that kids don't have to write anything either, which is great for younger ones who struggle with getting the numbers onto paper neatly. You could make up you own sums if you can't find a book, but they need to be fairly rapid fire, so I wouldn't suggest you try t off the top of your head. Write a load down first - say twenty or so.

That's gonna be the way DD learns her muliplication tables properly!

Kerri.

Summer is upon us, as most know, we do public school, and add "fun" school during the school year. But Shaun dubbed as "home-school lite", is what we do in the summer. This is my first real year with 4 learners! As the twins are now devouring information.
Our goals for summer:
Eric (8)enters 4th in fall
increase his vocabulary, to help him in Accelerated Reader~he slipped under the radar in his reading this year, and did not advance at all. He treaded water. He is "above" his school year, but not move up.
challenge in his math~found a Christian perspective math book for his grade, and he is totally into it..It explains God's order and the order of math...his brain latched right to it
writting strands to help his imagination on paper~I think it was Jo? who had beginning strands before, if you have a link for those...we are doing the jar and 5 minutes now, and they spark his speaking, now we are putting on paper!
Gabriel (thinks homeschool is not fun) but does it for computer time! ha ha (6)Enters 1st in fall
his handwritting is very sloppy, and he wants to do cursive, he must improve his d'nealian first
math, am going to try the programs listed for him and start multiplication
Time to the minute
Twins (5) Enter Kinder fall
they are both reading and know the letters, but strengthen their skills
spacial skills(?) over/under etc
beginning math
time to the hour and 1/2

I am using an old typing program, called Read, Write and Type, and it is level adjustable, and all 4 are doing it.

My main problem is 4 children, who are in "look I did it stage", I have 3 areas, now that I seperate, computer is in another room. But how, and what do Ya'll do to alleviate the mass confusion!

We do chores after breakfast and then right into school! We only do about an hour or two a day (including each 1/2 on puter), cause the pool opens at noon! ha ha gotta get PE and recess too! lol

Your websites are so incrediable to me....and as to cost, we have been very lucky so far, and found all our curriculum either on-line or used at thrift stores. But we are certified homeschoolers...but I love it!

The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket~Maxine

I'm glad you are posting! I don't have advice for Chaos, I just wade through it. LOL! Sometimes I can keep the girls busy with copywork while I work with 5yo, but very little of our work is "assignable," I have to read it all.

We're doing D'Nealian too! Anna Kate (9) is only just starting cursive. Neither girl has been a strong writer.

We did CalcuLadder drill just before lunch and I sent them outside to play. Their numbers are becoming more legible! This really works! I increased the drill time to 3 minutes and that helped a lot. Did reading lesson and history last night before bedtime. The girls slept downstairs because I was painting late in their room.

Better go!

Love,

Susannah

Can it be?

Yesterday was very light...ReadyWriter, CalcuLadder, Language lesson with dictation. Today I did two reading lessons with Elias to catch him up. He did ReadyWriter (he wanted to go back to Level 1 for a while) and J.D. later did one, too. The girls did their CalcuLadder drill and I promised them we would move up a level tomorrow. Then we read from SOTR about the decemvirs and did a Draw-Write-Now page in their books. They both chose to draw lizards. Anna Kate wrote a whole page about the anole, of her own accord! Of course, I had to spell half the words for her.

Speaking of spelling, I never got the Spelling Power I ordered. I wonder if the order ever went through. I need to get that and start reading through it.

Later!

Susannah

The kids, my mother and I went and picked up 114 ears from some friends that raise corn. The farmer talked to the boys about what the worms do, how to "feel" wether it is good or not. Then we came home and husked it, blanched it, took some off the cob and froze it. DS7 was very interested in the patterns the kernels made. It was a fun learning day all around!

Jana

I've done that before, worms and all. Did you know if you drop a worm in a little jar of dirt, it'll immediately dig down and form a brown pupa? We tried it. They transform into moths. We looked up what type they are, but I can't remember now. You are sooo lucky to be stocked up on sweet corn! It's a lot of work, though, isn't it?

I meant to mention ealier that as I was reading this morning I came across 2 Cor. 2:14, and was amazed to learn that Paul was using a Roman triumphal procession as a metaphor! We had just read about triumphal processions in Story of the Romans, including the slave who whispered in the conqueror's ear, "Remember, you are only a man." Paul in this passage refers to the incense that was burned along the streets during a triumph. So, I showed it to the girls this morning, explaining that Paul was a Roman citizen, and *that* led to a discussion of then-Saul on the road to Damascus, etc. So, that was educational too.