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Michelle My Bell

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Posts posted by Michelle My Bell

    what are you doing to get ready for back to school?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    lol I have enjoyed reading everyone ones answers so far. Don't feel bad those of you who said they had a lot of laundry to do. I have Mnt. Saint Helen's and my washing machine works fine. lol

     

    Last year we joined a co-op and it turned out to be the most intense year of school ever. It was 35 minutes away and a required a ton of work from my kids and me. The end of the school year only got even more intense with a full blown Mock Trial, 2 Proms, A Senior Play (which I helped direct), a graduation ceremony and subsequent graduation party. Needless to say I got very little done around my home last year. We were all too busy. Then, when all this finally ended at the end of June, we were all too tired. So we are just now getting the house and laundry into shape.

     

    I am getting excited for back to school. My 3rd daughter is hitting middle school age so I'm making her a new school area that is quieter. I am going to redo a desk, make a pretty bulletin board and som sort of pretty, but practical book storage in our dining room.

     

    I'm actually a bit nervous that this upcoming year might get crazy even though we are not doing the co-op this year. My oldest and myself are both starting college. Just two classes for myself to start but more in January. I'm also looking into signing the kids up for YMCA classes for swimming or gymnastics. We will probably be joining American Heritage girls 2x a month and our local zoo club 1x a month. Then throw in various field trips and stuff.

    what are you doing to get ready for back to school?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I saw on another board that one mom spends the first week of back to school training her kids in new chores and refreshing her kids on their routines. She said it makes her whole year go more smoothly. Sounds like a neat idea. 

     

    I have a list for each room in my house that includes deep cleaning (dust in drawers, massive clutter build up, reorganize), fixing things (broken handles on drawers, noisy hinges, recaulking the tub) and even some decorating( painting walls, seeing curtains, moving furniture around). I generally don't have the time or energy to tackle these things during the school year.  I would also like to make menu and grocery shopping plans, and organize the kids school supplies. 

     

    Finally, I would like to start my 14th year of home education with some sort of fun day or tradition so please share if you do anything like that. After all, I still have 12 years left to make some new traditions.

    Share your favorite links to free homeschool stuff (forms, lesson plans, organization, etc...)

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    There is so much great stuff created by fellow homeschool moms on the net and others that it would be great if we all shared our favorite forms, tips, lesson plans, crafts to organize our rooms etc... Here are a few of mine...

     

    http://www.monarchroom.com/  She has some great tips for organizing binders for HOD users

     

    http://www.guesthollow.com/      Tons of free lesson plans by a fellow homeschool mom

     

    http://www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus/theme/     Magic School Bus by theme

     

    http://dep.disney.go.com/index.html     This site helps you find great educational videos by theme, grade, etc...

     

    http://martysahm.blogspot.com/2011/09/general-science-module-1-brief-history.html    Apologia General Science Users - Supplements

     

    http://www.teachlearnimagine.com/blog/the-ultimate-resource-activity-guide-to-story-of-the-world-vol-1/   Story of the World - Supplements

     

    http://unconsumption.tumblr.com/post/34717025786/diy-project-du-jour-shoe-box-toilet-paper     Simple project for organizing school supplies. 

     

    http://stephres.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/how-to-make-chair-pockets/     How to make Chair Pockets

     

    http://amblesideonline.org/charts/Y1_36wk_chart.pdf     Ambleside Online's Charts (I love the way they plan their terms lessons all on 1 sheet of paper. Useful for any homeschool. 

     

    If you needed a filler year for you 4th grader... What would you use

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    This next school year I am taking a break from HOD for my upcoming 4th grade daughter because I want to start her in Creation to Christ for 5th grade when her skills are more developed. She has already done the program before this one (Preparing Hearts) so I need to find some sort of filler program for next year. We are going to be focusing heavily on the 3 R's (thanks to the kindness of a friend who gifted me some great materials), and I am looking for something fun for things like science, history, music etc... Her younger brother, age 7 may sit in on her lessons. Any suggestions?

    What exactly a royal family does??

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I am really tired of hearing "the royal baby... Who cares?" Comments everywhere. What a dull world we would live in without things like princes and princesses. Doesn't every little girl want to be a princess and every boy a knight? I personally love that I can show my children pictures of real royalty living in our time. The way people talk about it, it seems we should have nothing but extremely useful things. Be gone with flower gardens, be gone with architecture and just build sensible square houses, be gone with pretty dresses and dress like the Amish.

     

    All that said, I don't think the royals are useless. They all participate in charities and giving back to the people in their own ways. They are very much about duty and consider it their job to do so. How are they any different than a sports hero (useless profession?) who do the same type of charitable work yet no one thinks they are useless? I don't know, I'm glad we have the royals with their long history. I wish as an American we had more than a couple hundred years to look back upon.

    The kid and separation

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I just want to throw in there I have been seperated for over two years now and have no plans to reconcile. That said, I very much worked towards doing the family thing and changing as little in my kids lives as possible. My ex is welcome to stop by whenever he likes and he always does holidays with us. He sometimes takes the kids by himself but so do I so I don't see that as visitation. I made it clear that I felt the kids needed one place to live so they don't go to his apartment to spend the night and ex agrees. My kids have done very well through this whole process this far. Neither of us have dated yet so well see how that goes whenever that happens. I will be extremely cautious how I handle that in the future. I have no idea where I'll even find omeone to date. lol

    How did I just find out about this? Great planning software - One Note

    in General Education Discussion Board

    Posted

    Love the video!!!

     

    BUT, how come I always feel like i'm the only person that "autohides" the dock?? I even switch the demo units in the store to hide it. I cannot deal with looking at it!! :lol: (i understand, it is a personal problem..... :D )

     

    I'm messing today with exporting from Growly, NoteTaker and CP Notebooks.

     

    I can't have DD easily write on PDFs in any of them - and I'm not sure how to transition to that. I'd rather have her using a tablet to write some answers instead of typing them all in.

     

    I think.

     

    I"m getting bogged down in details - but they make or break what I do and I do not want to redo what I finally type up.

     

    Heck, I do not like Evernote and I'm even trying that again! UGH. ACK.

     

    I hid my dock for the first few videos I made but then I decided this is not a professional quality video and I need to make them as quickly as possible to make it worth my time and effort. I need my dock easily accessible during the process and it was a pain pulling it up every time I needed to open something. The videos take about 5 minutes of my time to make and put in Growly Notes keeping it simple, so that is the route I took.  

     

    I have not yet figured out how my daughter will view the lesson plans. Do I finalize them or something so that they can't be edited? I don't like how if you click on the screen the editing boxes pop up. I want it to feel more complete. 

     

    Also, I don't understand how people are using the program to have their kids submit schoolwork. I would like to understand that better to see if it would be useful to me. 

    • Like 1

    How did I just find out about this? Great planning software - One Note

    in General Education Discussion Board

    Posted

    Wow Michelle, that is a really awesome idea for the videos. How did you do that with the audio? I have no idea how to do that on my computer. It takes me forever just to format and upload and save a video I do on my little camcorder so that might be way above my capabilities. I really like that idea though as we are starting R&S English this year and I can already see it will take a lot of my time.

     

     

    It is actually super easy if you have the right equipment. I have an imac that has Quicktime. Here is a short video that explains how to do it. I used my word-processing program for the writing and my computers internal microphone.

     

    How did I just find out about this? Great planning software - One Note

    in General Education Discussion Board

    Posted

    OK, so I have had a ton of fun working with Growly notes. I have started planning out my Rod and Staff Grammar lessons to make them more independent. I am making videos right on my computer by recording my computer screen and doing the oral drill. It will save me a ton of time during the school year and it will be saved for my other kids coming up. Here is a screen shot of the lesson plan page: 

     

    9m2.png

     

    And here is a sample video of my Oral Practice: 

     

    http://youtu.be/19WtCA6jFVo

    • Like 3

    How did I just find out about this? Great planning software - One Note

    in General Education Discussion Board

    Posted

    I sat down and created a OneNote notebook for our grammar curriculum. "The Blue Book of Grammar" I love how I have each weeks curriculum laid out with links to the grammar videos, a few silly videos like schoolhouse rock, online practice games to go with specific rules and some specific homonym practice drills and games from spellingcity.com. I'll be able to copy over weeky list to the kids notebooks and they can check it off when they are done. So excited!

    Could you take a screen shot of this? I'd like to see it. I am using Growly Notes because I don't have One Note. I just started messing with it yesterday. Does anyone know how to put in a video from YouTube that is not just a link but the actual video?

    • Like 2
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