Dolphin
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Posts posted by Dolphin
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A question before you buy something new; are you doing all of R&S? I was overwhelmed at the start (we are in 5th grade as there is no more FLL).
We do the lesson prep, then the oral drill.
I only assign evens or odds on the written part. If ds misses a lot we go over the other ones together.
We don't do the challenges and we only do the review at the end of the chapter.
We are not doing the writing lessons (bolded) as we already have a writing program.
Some wise women suggested this way and we have been doing pretty well with it since. It is not as fun as playing with lego, but it is not tedious and we both are learning a lot about grammar. We also mix in School house rock grammar songs when we are doing the oral drills :D.
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Hand slap to forehead.
I have to do that daily:D
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We ran into a problem using the 7th edition. He stumbled on the word "found" as there were very few synonyms that matched the meaning of the word in the sentence.
Try looking for find as found is the past tense.
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I have to go back and look, but this has been a learning experience for me, as I had never been taught to use a thesaurus. My father in law is here, and he pointed out that to find the words, you first need to look what tense they are in and then look for the present tense form of the word. ie..looked, you would look for look. We have been doing that since (and then making the word we look up into the correct tense.) and it has been working.
HTH
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Went on a hunt and found this article that might be useful for helping your VSL's with spelling too: http://www.visual-learners.com/support-files/challngtchr.pdf
I'll try to incorporate it with PZ.
Cool article, thank you for the link.
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We are on week 4 of PZ level B and are loving it also. I have two who are doing this level and my 6th grader is slightly ahead of my 8th grader. The best part is that no one cares! They're each doing their own thing. Awesome!
:001_smile:
October Review
We are still going progressing through Phonetic Zoo and still liking it.
We skipped Lesson 5 (personal spelling) as I just had not gotten organized with the school year at that point. The nice thing is, it comes around again. We are now on lesson 10, (personal spelling again). I pulled the spelling words primarily out of his grammar program. When he misspells a word that is there on the page for him, I figure that is a good word for the list. He is now on his 4th try with:
uncomfortable
attack
Israel's
enemies
blocks
rabbit
interesting
pictures
furiously
clothes
It is nice, as instead of getting mad that he spells a word wrong when it is front of him, I just write it on the list.
Spelling is taking about 5 minutes a day during this time, a little less independent as I have to read out the list and the spelling of the words. It is not to bad, I just listened to lesson 9 myself so that I could remember what to do, and we are plugging through.
We are both still happy with this program. I will update again in November.
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A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond.
Laura
and go to Paddington Station and find the Paddington statue. If you take the Heathrow express into London you come into Paddington Station.
Mary Poppins?.
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Then go to Kensington Gardens and find the statue that J.M. Barrie put there in the middle of the night. It's so neat!The 9 year old might enjoy a sherlock holmes.
I know it is a movie, but my kids love My Fair Lady and going to Covent Garden.
Harry Potter.
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My sister enjoyed books on tape at that age. She had to be doing something at the same time, not just reading. Now at almost 30, she loves to read. Just a thought.
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We are doing Mapping the world by heart. We are using the Equirectangular projection as I think it is the most logical for the program and will be the easiest for them to learn. From my point of view it is a hard enough skill and I like the reasons he had the map created.
We have the Mercator on the wall as that is the most commonly used in the US and I think they need to know how to read it and use it. We also have a small globe.
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Our kindy girl I am keeping very simple.
We are working on handwriting, HWT.
We are reading Bob books and Little Books from the library
Science, she is doing some experiments with big brother and watching the Magic school bus (PBS or the library)
We are doing miquon for math. But you could look at videos at education unboxed and khan academy for ideas on introducing Math (both free)
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AAS until they are ready for PZ, then switch.
This is working best for my family. My son is doing well with the auditory style of PZ. It won't work for all families.
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Got ya. I would suggest digging into the "topical" sections in the Annotations book as time permits. These sections IMO are quite good at breaking down the mathematics behind the basic operations in ways that make it easy to understand.
It is cool that you keep going knowing that your daughter loves it—even if it isn't something that comes naturally to you. Just stay open to the idea that it may yet "click" for you too :001_smile:
Bill
Thanks Bill, I am going to keep at it. Maybe teaching my kids will finally help me understand math. I will spend some more time in the topical sections. As long as she is progressing, I will keep trying.
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Have you all who "don't get it" read the First Grade Diary? For me there was "lightbulb moment" after lightbulb moment.
These days the Education Unboxed videos are a good way to see this style of teaching "in action," but I would not neglect reading the FGD.
Bill
Twice!:blushing: and the teacher's notes, and parts of the annotations. I really am that bad at math! I think I will get there, I am slow when it comes to math. If you want me to write you a 20 page paper on the significance of the color red in Jane Eyre I could whip that out in about 2 hours :D
Two weeks isn't that long. I guess I was more reacting to the idea that someone would do a curriculum they didn't get and that left their kid confused for months and months.no worries. I would not keep trying to understand it if my dd didn't love it.:D
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We do our morning prayer (we are episcopalian) This involves singing
then the calendar and talk about our plans for the day.
Then we do stretching and a little yoga (from yoga kids)
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But if you as the teacher don't get it and the kid doesn't get it, then after a trial, then why continue? I do think there's something special about Miquon, but it's not the only good (or even great) curriculum out there.
The Orange book is the only one that made me at all confused. Once we had gotten into it, I felt like it was mostly intuitive. Every once in awhile, I have to check that I understand something in the Annotations. And now that we're up to Yellow, I find I use the Annotations more because the teaching ideas are less intuitive to me, but the math seems mostly obvious.
I think I am confused as we are just starting Orange. I am hoping that I will understand it more as I go along.
In answer to the bolded. I don't get it. My dd5 on the other hand seems to be getting it. That is what confuses me. She loves it! It is her favorite subject and she is constantly asking to do it. She is easily spending an hour on math a day. She gets the things out on her own to play with again later in the day on some days.
We have been working on it for 2 weeks now. She is doing fractions, addition, multiples of numbers, patterns, etc... Just eating it up. I find it confusing in an amusing way that I am teaching a program that I feel totally lost it and the student seems to be excelling.
Most curriculums that I have used, after I read through them and get started, it usually clicks into place within the first week. With Miquon I am still waiting. I do feel better knowing that I am not the only one, and the replies here are giving me the confidence to keep stumbling forward in the dark:D
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so it's possible to teach miquon without getting it? how? we play around with the videos, but when it comes to the actual curric... *shrugs* *crickets*
We seem to be managing it.
This is interesting as we have recently started Miquon as supplementary math with my DS and he is not getting it at all. Someone mentioned deer in the headlights and that's exactly how I'd describe my DS while we're doing Miquon. I'm not sure if it's the way I'm teaching it as I don't really understand it either. I'll persevere with it for this book though and hopefully he'll get it eventually. We are also using Singapore Math and he totally gets it, but maybe it's because I get it and am able to explain it to him clearly.The deer in the headlights is me:lol:
We used the staircase of getting the baby to the mommy as a way to go up to 20 today, and she figured it out. Then we started some addition. I am copying the videos, and going through the first grade diary. I just still really don't know what on earth I am doing. So, it sounds like this might not go away?
I guess I am just going to provide the materials, give her some ideas, and then just let her explore and play?
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I would put him where he belongs in math and supplement with something that's specifically for word problems - probably Singapore's Challenging Word Problems. Start with grade one. We do them a year behind grade level.
No thoughts on language arts - we took a different route.
But for SOTW, I would just continue with it and go light on the Egyptians. If he's really had enough of them, just read the chapters and do the map activities and whatever else you're doing (the narrations, probably?) and then move on - no extra books or projects.
If you do the map activities for SOTW, I think that's plenty for geography. However, you could add in something workbooky like Evan-Moor's Daily Geography. Or some people may have some other suggestions.
:iagree:
If this is your first year, don't worry if you don't get to some things. Even SWB says to drop history and science and focus on the core subjects first.
We started in 3rd grade, and found lots of holes to fill in. I was trying to do it all and almost burned out.
Just focus on Math and Reading Comp these first few months. It is enough. Math took us 2 years to finally figure out. We finally have our math figured out (We use Teaching Textbooks as a spine with Life of Fred and Beast Academy on the side (as you have a son, I highly recommend LOF, my son is constantly laughing with that)) LOF also has word problems, it can be like one long word problem.
Also, what manipulatives do you have? Get some, and play. There is no point pushing ahead with Math. If your child does not get the basic add, subtract, and multiple forward, backward, and inside out he WILL struggle later. It is worth taking the time and catching that up.
We tried WWE/FLL our first year and it was too much. Now, 2 years later he is plugging through WWS and R&S grammar just fine. I got the MCT Grammar Island, and we just read through that a few times over the year. I found it was good to start looking at Grammar.
Take it slow, you can do it, just don't pile that plate to high, and do not be afraid to go back levels and fill in In the long run they will move ahead more quickly if they spent time getting solid in the basics.
Spend lots of time reading. Get either the Jim Trealease Read Aloud handbook or Honey for a child's heart from your library. They are both good about why and how to do read alouds with older kids.
Science, honestly can be on DVD from the library your first year. Magic School bus, Popular mechanics for kids, all sorts of other dvd's and different animals etc...
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First:
I would keep reminding myself that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Also, "Just keep swimming." I spent days chanting this to myself.
Second:
I see that your son is 8 and this is your first year (that is what I did too). He has been in school, so not only is all of this new to you, it is new to him too. You have probably changed every piece of curriculum. He spent 3 years getting used to one way everything is presented, and now has to learn new curriculum. The language, methodology, all different. You probably won't do that again. If spelling is a problem you will change spelling, Math not working, you change math. It won't be everything at once again.
Third:
It gets better if you push through. There were times the first year that were dismal. I kept discovering all of these holes in what he had been taught. Not only do you need to teach new things, you have to fix things, it is overwhelming.
The second year was not as bad, I had more confidence, and I could see that we had made some progress.
We are in year 3, I feel that I have finally hit my stride. I am better at picking what I use, and have a pretty good sense of humor when ever anything goes pear shape. I am sure there will times where it is not as rosy, but I am much more confident in the fact that I am a homeschooling mom. I even started my dd with kindy this year.
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I have a new plan for this year, now that the boxed set has come out, Miss. Frizzle will be my sub for the day next time I am sick:D
ETA: Paradox I think you posted while I was writing :-)
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KISS is another Grammar program that I have heard great things about (and it is free) We use R&S, but that is not secular. It does have all the rules/diagramming etc....
We are doing WWS this year, last year (our 2nd year and his 4th grade year) what we did was outlines in SOTW, and I had him start a journal. 1 complete sentence about his day, after Christmas we bumped it to two. Writing was one of his main problem areas when he left school. We spent the first year just on handwriting and copy work, and then transitioned to the outlines/journals. His confidence is up and he is doing well this year with WWS. Last year would not have worked for that.
Spelling, we are having a lot of success this year with Phonetic Zoo.
Best of luck. It took me 2 years to "undo" school from my ds. It was worth it though.
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We just started the IEW program with my kindy girl last Monday. She has already memorized the first 4 poems. She loves it. I got a portable CD player with headphones. I showed her how to use the cd player and she was off. I think she likes the independence of it. She then recites all the poems to me each day. She puts on a performance.
She is very proud of herself and is constantly asking people now if they would like to hear a poem. The first 3 were very short and easy, they get harder, but those first 3 let her know she could do them.
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I love what WWS is teaching my dd. I don't love every second of it, but I love the path we are on, what she is learning, and where we'll get to eventually . . . does that count as love?
Kinda like how I love brocolli? :D
:iagree:
Same way we love R&S Grammar. :D
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I had the same sort of moment with multiplication awhile back and posted about it here. FWIW, I am NOT a mathy person at all but have been singing Miquon's praises. It has worked wonders here and yes- I still feel "exposed" with it but my dd is definitely thriving.
Your blog is wonderful and one that I have poured over. I "get" why there is no nice teacher manual telling what to do when....but I still wish there was one. Exposed is a good word for it!
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That is a good point. I should probably point that out to him tomorrow. I'm thinking of trying it Rosie's way and starting out with two halves lined up under various rods. :D
I was surprised how fast she got half. Now 2 oranges plus a dark green, that she is having trouble with. I just went and watched a bunch more of Rosie's videos.
Beast Academy poll
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I also have a 5th grade son. He is still catching up with Math, so he finds BA easy at time and challenging at others.
:iagree:
I don't know what it will be like as they keep bringing out levels. So far BA looks like it has meat enough to be a core, but I think we will keep using it as a supplement with my younger just because it is "fun". If I used SM as our supplement and BA was our core there would be whining. Really, we will be doing 2 core programs, I label BA as "fun", it and LOF are the treats they get for doing their other math.
I just want to add that yes we are technically doing 3 math programs, but they are done slowly and over the course of year round schooling. Also at a variety of levels to fill in gaps. (not a supermom here:D)