carrierocha
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Posts posted by carrierocha
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The chapters are relatively short, but certainly readable. There are two types of activities that this text calls labs. The first are what I'd call science-themed activities. Things like building models, making posters and other activities that help the student use and/or process the info they learned in new ways. The second are actual microscope labs. I mention those two types in case your student would be interested in the first type if not the second. The instructions are pretty clear and they are written with the intent that a student would/could follow them independently.
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My 6th grader reads Real Science Odyssey Bio 2 on her own. I love science so I do the labs wuth her, but the labs are written so the student could follow the instructions with minimal guidance. To me, that seems pretty open and go.
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A friend taught my kids art (I taught gets science) and she based drawing lessons on "Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain."
It teaches readers (or is geared towards adults) to draw what they see versus instructions like "now draw a circle, then put a line here."
Super, super, super valuable.
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I am a fan of Real Science Odyssey and am using their Bio 2 this year with my 6th grader and will have my 4th grader tag along.
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This is a little different take on geography, but if he would like to learn to draw certain maps of the world by heart I've always thought this looked amazing: http://ellenjmchenry.com/product/mapping-the-world-with-art-hard-copy-cd/
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For video and movie ideas I regularly search the Facebook group called "Homeschooling with Netflix." They share lots of ideas and they go beyond Netflix. I use the search function and look up key people or events that I might want to expand on via video.
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On 7/10/2018 at 4:22 AM, HomeAgain said:
You can do it!
My oldest loved middle school math. That was the time we incorporated more activities (like learning to make slide rules or applying it to other disciplines). I have a set of books on my shelf that were all used as supplements as well as several pdfs still. I can't wait to use them with the youngest. ?Can you please share the titles of the books on your shelf? Pretty please ?
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How about Excelerate Spanish? It is a DVD-based program.
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I used EE for elementary students this year. I am a science-minded mom and though the projects would be amazing and create a really strong, solid year of physics (we skipped the Chem sections because we did an entire year of Chem last year). All in all, EE was meh. I found some of the projects to be a whole lot of work for a little bit of result, especially when I could see a much easier way to teach the same concept (the glider plane is a great example of too much work for too little result).
I didn't find the text to be very strong. My best explanation for it is that the text is very wide, but not very deep. The program is trying to introduce a bazillion concepts in a single year and I didn't feel like it answered some of the questions my late elementary student had - like "well, WHY is it like that?" I wouldn't recommend it especially for the cost.
I wish we would have used Bite Sized Physics instead as it is much cheaper, has tons of hands on, but uses household stuff.
I had not heard of Conceptual Academy before your link, but maybe pair Bite Sized Physics with free videos instead. Just my two cents...
(PS - I started the year with Novare Physical Science because it was so highly reviewed as a meaty science book. My key take away is that traditional textbooks don't work well for us. We dropped Novare within 2 weeks. Even though I am a strong and active Christian, I also prefer my science materials to be more secular as I think God doesn't need us to force the connections between Him and His creation - they are pretty obvious imho. Novare felt like it forced a Christian worldview into the text that we didn't enjoy, but fewlt more pandered to as if we couldn't see that it is spectacular on our own without the author pointing it out.)-
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We have two levels of MEP in our house and yes, it is time consuming. A couple things - we almost always skip the 5th lesson in each unit since those are review and I work with my kids throughout the week so I am sure that they have the concepts. Then I only do select problems with my kids with a goal of condensing the remaining 4 lessons into 3 teaching sessions.
Here is how I condense:
I sit down in advance and look at the top of each lesson and see what is review, what is core and what is the extension topic for the lesson. I use that to judge where to focus - maybe 1-2 review questions, the bulk on the core stuff and then 1 extension question. When you read through the 4 lessons right together then it is easier for me to cherry pick the problems that I think encompass what we are trying to do. Typically the teacher leads a certain set of example problems, then the student pages have the kids do a similar type of problem on their own. Often we just do 1 of these and not both, unless it is something that we are working slowly through because retention is proving to be difficult.
We also tend to skip the full weeks of review as we will just add in more review problems if I think we need it.
FWIW - we typically take longer than a single school year to complete a level and I have decided that after my 6th grade daughter completes Y5 (midway through her 6th grade) then we'll try Art of Problem Solving's Pre-Algebra. When I decided to skip Y6 all together it gave me more room to slowly but surely cover all the rich topics MEP covers. -
http://www.progressivephonics.com/phonics-books/beginner-phonics-books are free. We read them on a Kindle.
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FWIW - We have only used the lower levels of MCT, but have used grammar, writing, poetry and vocab. In my experience the grammar books build slowly one upon the other with a decent amount of review from the year before. The writing books seem to assume that you have learned and internalized what was taught in the previous level as there is far less review and much more new material. Poetry is similar to grammar in that there is review in one level, but I really like that with poetry as I had even forgotten a lot of what we had learned the year before!
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As an adult I have read through one of Hakim's science books just for my own personal enrichment. It is not like a textbook exactly and I think that Apologia is a straight up textbook. I would think Hakim's would be a more interesting read, but in terms of activities or experiments, I cannot say. Can you ask the co-op tutor for a list of the labs they will be doing alongside the text to help you make a more informed choice?
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I have been thinking of a question similar to yours, but more along the lines of "what is the purpose of education?" for sometime. I wanted to understand for myself what I think the whole point of educating my kids is - whether at a homeschool or traditional school - so I could be intentional to pursue that purpose if it sparked any changes in our path.
I have been slowly (verrrrry slowly...) reading through Richard Gamble's "The Great Tradition." (Get it on Amazon). It is really challenging my thinking about what really is important to teach my kids.
In a nutshell, I want to raise kids who know things in a couple of categories:- Enough facts and figures across various disciplines to understand where we've come from and how the world around them works
- Communication and thinking skills (rhetorical skills really) that allow them to listen well, think clearly both about what others are saying and about their own individual ideas and articulate their ideas clearly
- Have an internalized sense of morality/ethics/character that anchors their thinking and communicating and pulls them into good things like a lifelong desire to learn because they value personal growth, for instance.
To accomplish these things I believe in casting a wide net with our subjects. We are history people, but we are also science and math people. We are intentional to enjoy whatever subject is in front of us because we want to have an ability to inform our thinking from various areas of study.
I found this recent article about people who have "too many interests" to spark some thoughts within me. It may be valuable to those reading this thread.-
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We use Tapestry of Grace and Hakim's books are a history spine for Upper Grammar level so grades 4-6ish. Tapestry offers ideas for other literature and texts that dig deeper than Hakim's books so we did most of those. We were able to download the audio of Hakim's books from our library and we would often listen over lunch or in the car and pause a lot to discuss.
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We enjoyed the text of The Elements, but I was very disappointed in the activities. We played a few games as supplements, but they were totally inadequate for actual science experiments as they were more games/crafts and videos versus hands on science.
I used activities The Elements as a guide for us as we walked through the periodic table then I found one experiment per element family for us to do. I mainly used the Royal Society of Chemsitry's website to find experiments. I bought elements and other not-typical-around-the-house stuff to enhance our study. All in all, it was a good year. We are McHenry fans who have planned to use Rocks & Dirt. We are using her linguistics ebook as a fun summer thing for my word-loving kids.
I got the Rocks & Dirt book as a freebie somewhere and just paged through it to find points that some might disagree with to help folks make informed decisions:- Coal: discussion that maybe coal wasn't all formed from peet coming from fresh water bogs. She explains that some evidence of salt water creatures have been found in coal.
- Shale: she brings up the process of fracking and explains that it is a controversial one. It seems from her writing that she doesn't agree that fracking is as safe as natural gas companies tell us.
- Limestone: she talks through two ways limestone could have been made. One is the more common idea of shells and then there is another theory that she explains. She spends several pages talking through various geologic perspectives ending with her bringing up something she calls "the dolomite problem."
- The earth's mantle: she makes a case that the earth's mantle is solid (it is bolded in the text).
- She does discuss fault lines and shifting earth as a cause for various mountain and other formations.
- Grand canyon: She makes this statement, "Notice the tiny Colorado River at the bottom. Geologists used to say that this river cut the canyon. Most now realize this is impossible. A river would have smoothed out the walls." (p. 101). But she does explain all the various layers, but without referencing timelines as to their formation. The discussion is centered around the various fossils, minerals and sediments that can be found in the various layers.
In her chapter dedicated to "Ideas about the Past" she starts off by differentiating between facts and inferences. Facts are observable, measurable things that can be repeated again and again. Inferences are "very educated guesses made by using facts." (p. 115)
In this same chapter she brings forth these ideas (this is not an exhaustive list):
- Seismology has given us data about where fault lines occur. She has drawn a map with fault lines
- GPS data has given us more info about the movement of the continents
- Fault lines cause some earthquakes, but since some earthquakes happen in the middle of the plates (she does talk about plates) then this cannot be the only reason there are earthquakes.
- She explains the history of the theory of plate tectonics and explains that it is the common theory printed in textbooks today. Then she asks, "are there any other theories?" Then explains another theory.
- She explains the common theory of earth being millions of years old including carbon dating and other facts used to make that inference. Then she gives a different perspective on why the earth might only be thousands of years old. (By this point my eyes were tired so I was pretty much skimming, but I did see her make a point about fossilized dinosaur DNA being found and some scientists don't think the DNA could be preserved for millions of years, but only for thousands of years.)
All in all, I still plan to use the book. I think it provides tons of stuff for a solid semester on geology and then we can combine a unit on astronomy to make an Earth Science year.
I am an old earth Christian, but am very willing to let my kids read different perspectives.
Things I like about the book:
- it really ties Chemistry into geology. I like that because this is a Logic Stage book and making those cross-discipline (so to speak) connections is important to me.
- I like that she presents some challenges to the common theories as it gives my kids something to think about, learn more about and I am always willing to engage their minds to help them develop their own ideas on these kinds of topics.
- It has a lot of visuals.
- She has a corresponding You Tube playlist with videos.
I will add in hands on things like looking at various samples of minerals under a microscope. I will buy some pre-made slides.
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Does she understand that a fraction is another way to communicate division? Much like multiplication is a "fast way" to add (9x3 is faster than 3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3) a fraction is a "fast way" or another way to divide.
1/12 is the same as dividing the whole into 12 parts. The bottom number tells you how many pieces to divide or split the whole thing into. The top number tells you how many pieces you want once they are split.
For simplifying we work with something like Cuissenaire rods or drawings like those rods. Asking lots of "which is more?" Questions as they will figure out that often they are equal.
If we are looking at 2/6 being the same as 1/3 I would make a concrete example with a number like 6. For 2/6...6 is divided into 6 pieces (the number on the bottom). How big is each piece then? 1 unit square (using Cuissenaire rods). So lay one 6 rod on the table with 6 ones on top. How many parts do you want (top number)? 2 (the top number of 2/6). So lift 2 of the squares up slightly.
Repeat with 1/3. Divide by 3. Take 1 piece. Which is more? They are the same.
I use MEP and it introduces fractions this way and neither of my kids have struggled because it is just another way to express division, which they already have learned.
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I vote for the plan that keeps them together somewhat.
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It starts as narration, but builds gently from there. It introduces literary concepts like anthropomorphism. It teaches students how to expand their summary and how to really, really boil something down to its essence of just a few sentences. It gives guided writing activities that springboard off the fable they are studying. For instance, they might write a few paragraphs of a fable like the lion and the mouse, but use different animals.
I found it helpful to look at samples of some of the higher levels so I could see where my student would be going. Even if you go with W&R you might find the samples on Memoria Press's website to be helpful including their video samples of how they teach from their books. I like the higher level video samples. Personally, I found it to be an impressive integration of writing and thinking that is perfectly suited for the rhetoric student, but foundational work is done in Fable and Narrative levels.-
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I don't quite understand your question. Are you asking something specific about Writing & Rhetoric or are you asking about the progymnasta? W&R follows the progymnasta, as does Memoria's Classical Composition.
The progymnasta is an approach to writing that starts the student on modifying existing text before they write free form from their own minds. It also builds level by level to sort of mix thinking and writing together.
I have used both W&R and Classical Composition as I am a believer in the progymnasta. W&R is easy enough to teach as you just follow right along. It is pretty well scripted and they even give sample writing responses so you can gauge whether your student seems to be in the ballpark.
If you have a specific question please clarify and I will try to help if I can. -
How about Ellen McHenry's Rocks and Dirt for geology??
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Life 1 is not enough for 5th grade. If I were to use it with a 5th grader, I would put my own supplements together based on the topic we were studying - anatomy or botany or whatever. I would look for books, but also find some extra activities -demonstrations and experiments - for the older one.
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Reflex Math worked well for one of my kids.
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We are doing "formal" literature for 6th grade next year. Formal in quotes because nothing in our homeschool feels very "formal" ?
We use Tapestry of Grace and literature is one thread in it. My daughter will have assigned books with two types of questions to answer - accountability questions that check that she read the text and thinking questions which promote, well, thinking ?
In addition, we are joining a virtual co-op too. It will be our first year with that, but in the weekly, one hour co-op a mom will lead a group discussion of the literature.
My daughter has been a voracious reader since kindergarten and we have talked about a lot of her books informally, but I have never required much from her in terms of literature study or formal Q and A as I just wanted her to love to read. Now that she's hit the logic stage I think it's time to develop her skills in thinking about and discussing great books.
Interact with history w/o writing essays?
in Logic Stage & Middle Grade Challenges
Posted
My daughter loves to make things and I did that making models of history-related things really cements stuff. We are on ancients and doing biology so this year she has made a replica Tabernacle including hand making all the altars and pieces, a cell model from oven bake clay and plaster, a Trojan Horse fit on top of a wagon.
Dioramas are another option or clay maps showing the land where history happened.
I know you didn't want crafts, but just wanted to mention more complicated models go beyond "babyish" crafts like color sheets and the like.