Kezia
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Posts posted by Kezia
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Ideally I wouldn’t change too much either but I have a 7 year old nephew coming over for summer days who does not entertain himself very well. He also does not read happily independently. He provides lots of interruptions. All of you folks with more than one kid homeschooling deserve a prize for organization and patience.
Also I am trying to use this light version to experiment with more block scheduling that includes more concentrated math/ science mon/wed/fri and history/ Language blocks on tues/thurs so we can incorporate ideally more writing and history/science output and projects across curriculum.
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15 minutes ago, LauraClark said:
We don't homeschool year round, but we take a very short break in the summer (5 weeks). My school kids are 9, 7, and 4. I'm reading almost daily with ds7 (because I'd like him to become a bit more fluent) and also ds9 (because he likes cuddle time). Ds4 and I are working on alphabet periodically, but not daily. I'll have to do a bit of review after a 5 week break, but it's not as bad as a normal several month break would be.
We do 6 weeks on and 1 week off but took all of December off, which was nice, but needed a slight review on the last math that was covered.
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6 minutes ago, wendyroo said:
Our situation is kind of unique in that DS-almost-10 has ABA therapy in the home every morning from 8 to 11:30. His therapy time is very structured and on task, so it only makes sense to have the other kids on a fairly structured routine in the mornings as well.
None of our read aloud times will change, so everyone will still spend a couple hours a day listening to literature, poetry, history, science and Spanish...in fact, many summers I end up reading aloud more than during the year because my kids don't do well with free time, so I use read alouds as a calming method when they become disregulated.
My 7, 9, and 12 year olds will continue to free read for several hours a day. My 5 year old is really getting into audiobooks, so she will listen for at least an hour a day.
The 5 and 7 year olds will spend a bit of time each day on phonics/literature, math, memorization and piano.
The 12 year old is going to continue WWS through the summer and has to work on math until he has finished Counting and Probability and Alcumus geometry. He will also maintain his Anki memorization and Spanish skills.
The 10 year old will continue his exact same schedule as always...because anything else would be a disaster of epic proportions.
On one hand, all this structure means my kids do a lot of school over the summer, but OTOH they have almost no screen time, so they still have plenty of time for free play, biking, etc. Also, "summer school" allows them to have relatively short days all school year which allows them to participate in a lot of extracurriculars. My 12 year old likes his Escape Room class, Comic Book Drawing club, playing board games with his Spanish tutor and his nature class where they build shelters and fires, forage, carve wood, etc. But he knows the "price" of those is working every summer week we are not on vacation.
My kid is 10 so he is closer in age to your two older kids. Thank you for sharing! It helps to see how others manage the summers.
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Maybe 30-40 min of math three times weekly so a much slower pace on the BA 5 spine, taking 4-6 weeks for one chapter and Daily Math (4 concept review questions) as well as speed drills. I have some zaccaro challenge math to mix in also. 30 min or so of science those three days as well.
2 days latin review vocab/ declensions (should take about 3 min), MCT practice town orally and caesars english (10 min), light spanish and an outsourced writing that should be able to be completed in 2 days about 30 min each day.
Does this sound too light for a summer?
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Can you tell me what your summer routine looks like?
We are schooling year round. I want a lighter routine that prevents back sliding in core subjects and still moves forward but at a leisurely pace. I am thinking maybe an hour a day along with 30 min of independent reading.
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10 hours ago, JenneinCA said:
Can jellyfish get pneumonia? (Answer: no, they don’t have lungs)
How do the zookeepers catch the ants for the anteater? (Answer: they don’t. Anteaters in zoos get pellets that look like dog food)
I would have guessed the zoo would keep ant colonies just for their ant eaters, lol.
Kids wonder about the craziest things.
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10 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:
Maybe he needs a more fun math program 😄 . Math can be really fun!!
ETA: so what did you decide about finding the area of a bean?? 😂
We use BA, the most fun looking math I have been able to find. His mind was blown with factorials and the huge number of variations of 20!. I don’t remember learning about permutations and combinations at all.
I told him that the area of a tiny rectangle that just fits the bean would be close enough. Well he thought an oval would be closer, so then asked how you figure the area of an oval. I had to google that.
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43 minutes ago, caffeineandbooks said:
What a great question! I love that he is wondering about stuff like that, even if he's not enjoying your formal math program.
We have a book called Family Math (https://www.amazon.com/Family-Math-Equals-Jean-Stenmark/dp/0912511060/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=family+math&qid=1619826869&sr=8-1) - and there are others in the series - that do explorations a bit like this. It de-emphasizes calculations, which makes it genuinely friendly for a family with kids at various levels, and lets kids explore concepts like area, perimeter, graphs, estimation with no pressure. I can't remember how old your son is, but if he's PK-2 you might also like the I Love Math series (out of print but readily available; this is one of them: https://www.amazon.com/How-Octopi-Pizza-Math-Love/dp/0809499509/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=pizza+math&qid=1619827025&sr=8-3).
He is 10 and I have been picking up more fun maths, I just got a few zaccaro books. I will check out family math. He likes math or he wouldn’t ask so many questions. He just doesn’t like the tedious workbooks. He asks a bunch of odd science questions too.
He has lots of ideas about time travel. So many questions. I don’t know the answer, kid let’s look it up. I guess you all call these things “rabbit trails”.
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And you found yourself looking up online or in books to find the answer?
I was asked how to find the area of a bean at lunch today.
It is usually math questions. It is a good thing he does not even like math, we already talk about it all day.
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I read The Hobbit as a kid and loved the humor then and again when I did it as a read aloud for my 9 year old, who also loved it.
I agree the hobbit movies were blah.Lord of the Rings I found to be a much more difficult read aloud. My kid wants to continue with two towers but I needed a break. So nice to know there are audible versions for when we continue 😉
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On 4/17/2021 at 7:06 AM, Not_a_Number said:
Do you need to actively teach things?
DD8 really likes Murderous Maths, but I tend to assume she isn’t learning much from it!!
Not really actively teach but just ensure that what he has learned is truly comprehended with depth, if that makes sense? In a fun way that he doesn’t see as normal math work but just life and how all the math he learns is applied in life? He wants to learns something new everyday. Well, I don’t think math is a subject that can be done that way, kid.
I am that insecure homeschooler who one day is amazed at his understanding and deep comprehension and thinks maybe we should move a little faster, but then the next day he says he can’t do a simple division problem. He is 10, too young for teen brain fog.
I have some of the above suggestions on the way (zaccaro and a murderous math) as well as Math a Human Endeavor.
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We do not like the LoF liver and mineshaft I bought as a just for fun review as a short break from BA between books.
The kid does not like LoF and I completely understand. I looked at samples, I swear I did. Some chapters are better than others but overall just nope. Likely going to skip to fractions and just do the bridges, not even read the story. I looked at the final bridge and I do not think he would struggle with it. I also have LoF decimals.
So knowing we hate LoF, what else could be recommended? I occasionally do some grocery store math that I made up that is practical and he sees as very useful and loves it. He loves HoE.
He is currently doing BA 5. I have thought about jousting armadillos, Mathematics a human endeavor could be used now, I know there are some key to supplements but they seem low on the fun meter.
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Amazon’s reviews on the $13 kits are not stellar. Just wondering if there are any good kits that are not immensely expensive.
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2 hours ago, 2_girls_mommy said:
So it has worked well for all of mine at this point.
Thank you for such a thorough review! Very helpful 😀
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I was just looking at the R&S reading which is separate from the well reviewed and much recommended English from R&S. I cannot seem to find many reviews on the reading.
Is anyone familiar with it?
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I kinda started 5th in January
Math- BA rest of 4 and 5, a little LoF liver and mineshaft (decimals and fractions) for review, HoE (once weekly) and R&S speed drills twice a week.
LA- MCT for grammar and some writing saving essay voyage for fall.
-alice, peter, and mole trilogy for literature as well as free choice otherwise
-CC fable + narrative as the main writing (as well as killgallon once weekly, we are reading through the most wonderful writing lessons ever) and TC over summer. I have R&S grade 5 and 6 as well. I really love the idea of writing across curriculum, but have not felt comfortable doing that yet.
- AAS 4-5 and then I would like to be done with formal spellingTyping- TGATB level 2
latin- started this week with latina christiana
spanish- spanish for children and duolingo
science- apologia A&P for 8 more weeks, downloaded a free science for light summer then in august start guest hollow physics and chemistry.
History- sotw volume 2-4 on cd listening in the car mostly. I wanted a fun world history run through then we will start US history from civil war to present.
art- currently in coop and I have draw snd write books and TGATB level 4 LA companion guide has some fun art we do.
handwriting- I have 2 prescript cursive books but suddenly decided that I will just require all writing to be in cursive so have not been pushing the formal handwriting
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4 hours ago, PeterPan said:
You might also look at Inspiration or Kidspiration software. They have app versions as well as desktop. They allow you to create maps of the material then hit a button to SHAZAM them into an outline and again SHAZAM into a word processing file which you can then export/email/whatever.
I used Inspiration extensively with my dd, including when she was doing WWS. He could create the points of there star in there, fill it in, convert, and write. He should be able to use tts (text to speech) with that as well.
Thank you! Mindwingconcepts does look interesting and is presented in a way that it seems most kids can easily relate to the concepts. I will also look into the inspiration software.
I figured I would be ridiculed for doing writing orally.
He can leave out key events in oral narrations about his day or what he did while at his cousins house, but that is remedied with more precise questions. He can orally narrate WWE 4 fine, I have not tried having him write any narrations out, yet. I did scribe a couple, they were fine.
We also do killgallon occassionally
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11 hours ago, PeterPan said:
Fwiw, his second sentence is so lovely, I think I would have rather read that then all the rest written possibly without heart and soul.
Perhaps try using a picture prompt for description? Has he recently been to the beach to have any thoughts on it?
It doesn't sound like the curriculum is particularly giving you the structure you want. SWB has very structured activities for creating descriptions in WWS1.
I think you may find criticizing/correcting his work only has the effect of shutting him down, not improving. If you wish to criticize *yourself* fine.
We had just read chapter 5 of PT the previous day. He came up with that one nice sentence all alone after I told him about the assignment. I praised that sentence he made all alone. It took him about 50 seconds of thought. So after he started with that, I expected more decent sentences to follow.
I try not to be too critical, but really feel it is not lack of knowledge, scaffolding, or tools in his toolbox, but he is just not wanting to put forth much effort. We were using a writing strands based curriculum writing twice a week, but he was writing very short pieces and not expanding. It was written to the student, he was not utilizing suggestions or following instructions to a ‘T’ and not growing with it. He also was not enthused about any of the exercises. So I read a lot and over the last two months have discussed and done a hodge podge of curriculum orally. Trying to move back toward putting pencil to paper.
I have the sample of WWS 1 and I do like the way it is set up. I have read so much about 5th grade being early to start it.
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7 hours ago, Shoes+Ships+SealingWax said:
1. Has he written paragraphs before? Does he have a firm grasp of what one *is* at this point, or is it still a very new idea?
He does know and understand what a paragraph is, he is just very brief and to the point. He sees this as a waste of his time and energy and his self proclaimed excellent descriptive skills.
2. What criteria do you have for a paragraph?
I reminded him that:
1) paragraphs generally have at least 3 full good sentences and include sentence variety
2) topic sentences
3) descriptive words that paint a picture
4) draw the reader in
I might have to add some more hard rules such as minimum number of sentences and a check for dead verbs/words.
Those are great questions to have him ask himself. I had not thought of them. Thanks!
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1 hour ago, domestic_engineer said:
@KeziaHere!!!! I found a place, thanks to Google:
Aha! Yes that is exactly it! Thank you!
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I have a 10 year old boy. We are doing paragraph town and I had him attempt a short writing exercise in the back of the the teacher’s manual. “Write two descriptive paragraphs being about a different topic, if about a lake, one paragraph might be about the natural surroundings and the other about the wildlife. Connect the two paragraphs with the appropriate words in the topic sentence of the second one.”
We did a dead words interactive writing journal months ago that should have eliminated “good”, the one sentence in the first paragraph is indeed descriptive, but really he needed a couple more of those good descriptive sentences in each paragraph.
This took TWO DAYS! The first draft (which I thought totally unnecessary) contained ... after listing a couple activities. I told him no ... in descriptive paragraphs and add more details. Add more description in the second paragraph, draw the reader in, make your reader say “I want to go to the beach, it sounds relaxing or exciting or fun.”
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Ah yes 50-60 dollars. I bought the curriculum used. It should be a downloadable pdf for suggested retail price of $12-13
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I bought the teacher guide and student reader used, but mainly was drawn to this history for the activity book, but I cannot find it anywhere. It says out of stock on the downloadable one on the bip website. RR says no longer made but I have it on my wishlist anyway. I have scoured the web for used or downloadable versions but cannot find just that anywhere. I know it comes with a download code when you buy it new....
Summer homeschool routines
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Ohh themed weeks! That is a good idea.