plansrme
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Posts posted by plansrme
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The guide (or maybe the 3-d map book itself) recommends that you photocopy the map parts onto card stock. The copyright allows you to copy as many as you need for your own family or classroom, so you could buy one book and make 2 copies if both kids can do the maps.
Terri
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I'm using this now with a 2nd grader and a 4th grader by age. The 4th grader is doing a whole bunch of other stuff more appropriate to her academic grade and mainly just listens to the read-alouds but does her own things to match the WP schedule.
The 2nd grader loves the "crafts." They are primarily of 4 types. First, there is a 3-D map book. The kid colors the map, cuts out these little figures (say, of Viking ships), cuts a slit in the map (I cut the slit with nail scissors) and makes the Viking ships move from Norway to Greenland to Newfoundland. I know, that wasn't a good explanation, but they're quite simple once you've done the first one. I do very little of the actual craft--just help with the explanation.
The second book from which projects are drawn has similar types of activities--the child colors and constructs a log cabin or a carriage or some such. Again, other than explaining what she's doing, I don't do much.
There is a third book from which occasional, more complicated crafts are pulled. They're only scheduled every 3 weeks or so, and they're really not that bad. For example, when studying Native American cultures and reading Birchbark House (we're not doing NA focus, either), she constructed a model of a wigwam out of mud, leaves, bark, etc., over a plastic bowl.
Finally, the Make Your Own History Pages will often have an activity for the child, but it's never a craft-more like a drawing. For example, the MYOH page this week described Robert Fulton and instructed the child to find a picture of a steamship and draw it here.
I, too, dislike crafts, but these have been a great compromise for us.
As for Catholics, I've seen nothing anti-Catholic. We don't use the Bible study portion, so we've only come across one non-secular item: a biography from CLE (I think) of Jebediah Smith. He does interact with priests in Spanish missions in California, but there have been no anti-Catholic sentiments. I was raised Catholic, so I expected there to be some snide remarks thrown in, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Hope that helps--we've been really pleased with AS I and are using AS II next year.
Terri
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My 7 yo also just hit this in Singapore 3A. It seems to help when I write out the steps on a whiteboard for her: 1. Divide. 2. Multiple. 3. Subtract. 4. "Wheeee!" The "wheee" is the next number rapelling down. She knows to repeat the steps until she runs out of digits to go "whee" (her favorite part). I also drew a "Q" (for "quotient") sitting in a chair on the top line to remind her that all quotients, but only quotients, sit on the top line. She's very visual, so she does much better when she keeps a whiteboard with the 4 steps and a picture of the Q in a chair. She also does most of the actual problems on a separate small whiteboard--easier to make the numbers big enough, I suppose.
I like the repeated subtraction method someone noted above--think I'll try that also to cement in her mind what she's doing.
Terri
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My 2nd grader (1st year HS) complained one day, "Mommy, I thought we would be learning more about the Bible in homeschool." Feeling about "this big," I quickly researched Bible curricula and ordered R&S reading for her. She enjoys it, learns a lot, the price is great, and it's so refreshing to order from Rod & Staff--I love calling and having a real live person answer the phone.
Terri
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This is our first year HS. My 4th grader (by age) had had almost no grammar in her private school but, on the other hand, she is academically very gifted. I started her in 5th grade R&S, and it has been a breeze for her. This is the lowest grade level of anything she's in this year, and it has been, by far, her easiest subject. She has, however, learned and retained so much from this program.
If your child has a good grasp of basic grammar, I wouldn't hesitate to skip an earlier level of R&S to start at 5th grade to get her on grade level. R&S seems very grade-level appropriate to me.
Terri
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This is usually available only in a version that includes all 3 of the Nurse Matilda books, on which the Nanny McPhee movie was based, but my m/d book club just read the first one of the 3. We all loved it.
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If you're going to attach your squares to other squares, you essentially have to work with a bunch of triangles. Triangles are notoriously difficult to connect properly, but if you can get someone at a quilting store to demonstrate "Thangles" for you, they'll save you many headaches. I'll bet you could figure out how to make your pattern with Thangles. Thangles are just paper pieces that you use as a guide to sewing your squares so they make perfect triangles. It's hard to describe how they work, but they're a great help.
Terri
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My daughter is 7, almost 8. This is our first year of homeschooling. She reads fluently but has real trouble when asked to derive anything that isn't set out explicitly in the text. For example, she read a paragraph yesterday about how an Indian woman saved Lewis and Clark by telling her chief (whose warriors wanted to kill them all) that she had been kidnapped as a young girl by some Blackfeet Indians and then sold to some white men who were kind to her. The woman tells her chief that these men are like those white men who were kind to me, so "do them no hurt." I asked my daughter, "What did the woman do to save Lewis and Clark?" No idea. She read it again, silently, knowing in advance what the question was. Her sister read it to her (I was driving). Still no idea, apparently because the text didn't say, "This lady saved Lewis & Clark by...." We later discussed what a "border dispute" was. I explained, again, what a border is and defined "dispute." Still, she had no idea how to put the definitions of border and dispute together to come up with a definition of border dispute.
These are not isolated instances, just the most recent. So my question is whether this gap in her abstract thinking is normal for a 2nd grader or whether we need to be setting up an appointment with an educational psychologist. Other possibly pertinent information: she excels in math, could go pro at "Memory," is left-handed, never reads for pleasure and was adopted from China at 15 mos.
Thanks,
Terri
Schoolhouse Rock - do kids still like this?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Now I'll have "I'm just a bill, yes, I'm only a bill. . ." running through my head. All. Day. Long. Thanks for that.:o
Terri