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Clear Creek

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Everything posted by Clear Creek

  1. Each year I have specific academic goals for my children (i.e. learn how to read, learn +/- facts through the 12's, etc.) and curriculum is just a tool I use to teach those specific things. I think there is a distinct difference between having set goals that curriculum is used to reach, and having the goal of teaching through a curriculum. If my goal is for my 1st grader to do every lesson in her math book, at the end of the year it is possible for me to have met that goal without her having learned every concept in the book. But if my goal is for her to learn place value, +/- facts through the 12's, master simple word problems, etc., I can evaluate throughout the year whether the curriculum is helpful in teaching those skills or if I need to find another tool to supplement or replace it. That is why I change curriculum. That is also why I have been happy with almost all of my first choices in curriculum (I can count on two fingers how many I have dropped in 4 years of home schooling). Since I am the teacher, not the curriculum, I adapt the material to each of my children. I sometimes look longingly at other curriculum, but I would just be buying something new out of boredom, not because I think it is better than what I am currently using...and I don't have money to throw around just because I am bored. Though I will admit to a slight bit of jealousy of those that can! :lol: To sum it up, I think that most curriculum will work with most children (barring LD's), so find something that you can use to teach and your children will enjoy learning with and go for it. Do you need every line scripted in order for you to teach or do you just want a general guideline of lessons? Do your children enjoy learning as much as they can from books or are they more "just the facts, please"? Do your children draw pictures to go along with every story they read and cut out paper dolls or find lego men to act out the stories? All of these questions can help you narrow down which curriculum to choose (at least at the elementary level).
  2. Ok, I will be the lone voice of dissent here...I really like the Artpacs, and if used all the way through each year they progressively teach art skills. The first grade one starts off with cutting and pasting, but by no means is it all that it teaches - it also teaches coloring vividly or lightly, coloring evenly, simple drawings, mosaics, and drawing facial expressions. By third grade the lessons include drawing, shading, watercolor painting, and drawing facial features proportionately and in the correct area of the face. I can't compare Artpacs to any of the more expensive programs since I haven't used them, but I am very happy with the results and my kids have enjoyed using them. They aren't fancy, but they can be somewhat independently used (I usually have to go over the instructions with my kids) and the price can't be beat! :lol:
  3. This is what worked for all three of mine (and the child I used to babysit full-time). As soon as they realized the underwear did not hold it in when they peed, they chose to go in the potty instead of all over their legs/feet/toys.
  4. I have not yet read The Glass Castle, but I just finished reading her other book, Half Broke Horses. Glass Castle is supposed to be Jeannette's own memoir, and Half Broke Horses was a biography of Jeannette's grandmother's life. Based on my introduction to Jeannette's parents in Half Broke Horses I can guess that her father was an alcoholic and her mother inherited extremely poor parenting skills from her own mother. It sounds like a pessimistic beginning, but since Jeannette grows up to go to college and become a published author I would guess that the faculty at the University of Akron are hoping that it inspires those students who come from less than fortunate circumstances to strive for better, and for those students who did not grow up under such circumstances to develop compassion and understanding for those who did. I plan on having my children read Half Broke Horses when they study American history in high school since it gives a very realistic picture of life in the southwest during the depression. I may have them read The Glass Castle as well, depending on what I think of it after I have read it. Just because my children have not grown up dirt poor or with an alcoholic for a parent does not mean that I want to shield them from those that have. Christ has called for us to be his hands and feet to those that are in need, so I plan on making sure my kids are well acquainted with those they are called to care for.
  5. Have you looked at A Trip Around the World? It has basic info about the countries, recipes, flag and country templates that can be colored, interesting facts, language facts (numbers, common words, etc.), suggested classroom activities (easily adapted for homeschool), lists of books for further reading, and activities like word searches. We started this school year using GTG as the spine for our geography studies and ended up just using this book and activities from Enchanted Learning.
  6. I did Aesop for one semester with my 3rd grader and I wouldn't say that it was overwhelming or time consuming, it just wasn't teaching anything. I could not for the life of me figure out how outlining and then re-writing a fable was going to teach how to properly write sentences, much less paragraphs. I guess it was supposed to happen by having the child imitate good writing, but it was not carrying over into other assignments. My daughter would outline the fable perfectly with a three level outline and then re-write it following that outline, but outside that class she couldn't cohesively string three written sentences together on one single topic. I looked ahead in the Aesop book and it looked like we would continue to do the same thing for the rest of the year, so we stopped using it. We had great success with the writing assignments in R&S - my daughter can now not only string together three cohesive sentences on one topic, she even has a topic sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. Apparently that was the goal I had in mind at the beginning of the year, so I am satisfied. :001_smile:
  7. I just graduated with my BA in Psych last October...I did the last two years online with Columbia College. It is a real college with an awesome online degree program for non-traditional students. They are really good about accepting transfer credits, and they even evaluated my Army service and gave me credits for some of my Army training. It is not a diploma mill or fluff program, either...they are real college courses that take a lot of hard work to pass, much less get an "A". It is a private college, so it isn't cheap, but it wasn't nearly as expensive as some of the other schools I considered, lol!
  8. I think that sounds like an excellent plan...I use MM the same way with R&S, and it works very well. My 3rd grader doesn't even realize that it is a second math curriculum; she calls it "puzzle math" and gets excited on the days she gets to do it! :lol:
  9. ...today I threw my daughter's CW Aesop book in the trash! I kept the instructor's books, of course; I can sell them :001_smile:. But we are no longer plugging along aimlessly, no goal in sight and no rhyme or reason for doing what we were doing. I could not see how outlining and re-writing stories would improve my daughter's writing, and I could not explain to her why she needed to continue to do a seemingly pointless exercise. And we were only in Aesop A, we still had B to go through! I liked the concept of learning through imitation, but it didn't seem to be happening. Heck, I wasn't sure what she was even supposed to be learning!:lol: So we are going to just stick with R&S for writing, and I ordered Killgallon's Sentence Composing for Elementary School to use next year. My thoughts were put into words in the intro of the Killgallon book: What I read confirmed what I had been feeling...that learning the process of writing begins with something a lot smaller than an entire fable! For me to teach the beginning stages of writing, I need something that explains clearly how to organize a paragraph (R&S) and how to correctly write the sentences that make up that paragraph (R&S and Killgallon). So, for the time being, that will be the sum of my writing instruction (outside of the usual narration and dictation, of course).
  10. The beauty of homeschooling is that we don't have to do things the way it is done in a typical school. My 1st grader's reading lesson each day looks nothing like that! We look over the new words for each lesson and discuss the phonics rules when necessary (almost all of the new words follow previously taught phonics rules; "father" and "mother" are the only exceptions that I can recall). Next she reads the title, and then the story. We have a short discussion on the story, and then we do the workbook lesson for the day. Some of it she writes, some of it we do orally. All together it takes about 20 minutes, which I don't think is an unreasonably long time. The phonics lesson is separate and unrelated. We discuss the lesson and do the workbook...some orally, some written. She reads the new words along the edge of the page, then we flip to the previous day's lesson and see how many words she can read in one minute. After that is two short sentences (4 or 5 words) of dictation. The entire lesson can be done in 20 minutes. Math and penmanship take another combined 20 minutes, which means that all the lessons in the skill areas can be done in one hour each day. Depending on the amount of dawdling, of course :lol:
  11. Oh yes, I forgot about the math blacklines...I actually use a lot of them for Kindergarten! The count & write, dot-to-dot, and before and after numbers are perfect for K! But the blacklines aren't really necessary for 1st grade; if your child has trouble with a concept (like time, money, or measurement) there are plenty of free worksheets available on the web.
  12. Sorry, I can't talk you out of it, LOL; I am using it for a second time and still absolutely love it! I can tell you not to bother with the phrase and vocabulary flash cards...the words can easily be taught phonetically and don't need to be taught by sight. But the rest of it...penmanship, phonics, reading, math, art, music...LOVE it!!! Oh, and the reading workbooks are essential, but the reading worksheets are just busy work - except for unit 4, which is a simple drawing lesson accompanied by a line of copywork. If you don't already have something for copywork you can buy it, but otherwise it really isn't necessary. The TM for phonics/reading is essential, otherwise you aren't getting the entire lesson...especially when you get to the last two units of phonics which include two sentences for dictation every day.
  13. I used 100EZ with my two older children in their K year and followed up with Rod & Staff phonics in 1st and 2nd grade. I don't know if it is the same with other people's children, but for my two, learning to read (letters have sounds, putting the sounds together to make words) and phonics (rules for how the different sounds are made) were two different skills. The phonics lessons really helped my oldest gain the ability to correctly sound out unfamiliar words and improved her spelling immensely, and I am seeing the same benefits with my 1st grader as well.
  14. Two more things I would add that are not books/curriculum, but are necessary for my sanity and success are chocolate and coffee!
  15. This is why I use Artpacs...this non-artistic mom can hand the sheet to my art-loving children each week and they not only learn skills that I don't have, but they learn things I never would have thought of! And my oldest is only in third grade, lol, which shows the level of artistic talent that I have! :lol:
  16. My 3rd grader is just like you described - she is constantly looking over to see what the 1st grader is working on. I think I have to remind her a thousand times a day to keep her eyes on her own paper! :lol: Anyway, the only thing I have found that helps is to set a timer with the time I think necessary to complete a subject so that she gets her work done in a timely manner - the motivation to beat the timer is very strong, especially since the penalty for not completing her work before the timer is to finish that subject in the afternoon while her sister is doing something fun like playing with barbies or watching a movie! I have also threatened to pull out her old 1st grade stuff and erase the pages and have her do the work again if she is that interested in it :tongue_smilie:.
  17. I do not have a 7 year old boy, but if I ask my 6 and 8 year old girls the review questions after reading them an entire chapter I am usually met by blank stares. Instead, after I read a section (not a chapter) I ask them one question. At this point I am more concerned with them remembering something from the reading than with grasping the main point. For example, what did they find the most interesting? Or, what was one thing they would have liked to have seen? This way they don't forget the topic in the first section before hearing two or three more sections (that often cover a completely different topic), and it provides a starter for discussion on that section, which is where the real understanding seems to come from. This is when I also try to cover something visually, whether by discussing the coloring page that they were working on during the reading, or by looking stuff up on the internet. And after all of this, they have usually forgotten everything two weeks later. :lol: I just try to remind myself that this first go-round through history is just for exposure and enjoyment.
  18. My toddler uses toddler toothpaste, and he recently went through two tubes waaay too quickly. Then one day I snuck up on the bathroom and found my two older children eating it straight from the tube! :lol: Apparently the stuff tastes like candy! Needless to say, I keep it where they don't have access to it anymore.
  19. I was homeschooled Pre-K through 6th grade. 1. I liked being able to go outside and ride my bike when my schoolwork was finished for the day - while the public schooled kids were still in school :) 2. We schooled year-round so that we could take time off whenever we wanted throughout the school year, and I was very jealous of my public schooled friends who had the ENTIRE summer off every year. It just didn't seem fair to me. 3. No, I don't feel like I missed out on any "socialization". There were plenty of opportunities for kids to tease me or make fun of me at dance class, on my paper route, at the park, etc., lol! Some kid even beat me up and took my candy money when I was walking to the corner store one morning! Oh, and we belonged to a homeschool group and went on field trips and were very active in our church, so I had plenty of opportunity for positive socialization as well :) 4. Yes, even though I swore I would never homeschool my own children. I was bullied and ostracized for the first four years of public school, and I blamed it on being homeschooled (I am very much an introvert). Then I gave birth to my first child and realized that people can be born an introvert :tongue_smilie:! I was bullied because the kids at my school were idiots, which would not have changed if I had started school earlier. I would have just been bullied sooner. That's not my only reason for homeschooling (the public schools in my area of TX are terrible), but it made me reconsider the idea. 5. I wish my Mom had been able to find ANYTHING besides Abeka :ack2:. It worked (the first two years I was in public school was all review for me), but I still shudder when I see the books and it really burned my poor Mom out. 6. I have several younger siblings who were also homeschooled, and I honestly have no idea how they would answer these questions. Homeschooling is not something we ever talk about. I have a very close relationship with all of them, and they know I homeschool, but they have never made any comments about it one way or another.
  20. We are in Unit 2 of R&S 3 ourselves. I would not back up to grade 2 since the topics are presented in pretty much the same way, just slower. If you need to split up lessons into two days (giving the oral review both days) that is an option, or do the lesson one day and then the worksheet the next. My vote would be to review the lesson throughout the day in your normal life. For example, if it is the difference between common and proper nouns that she is struggling with, point out nouns and discuss whether they are common or proper nouns. If it is pronouns that are causing problems, stop using them and ask her what pronoun you should have used instead (i.e. if her name was Sarah, say "Sarah, please get Sarah's jacket off the couch" and then ask which pronoun would have been better to use instead of saying "Sarah's"). I have had to do this on occasion to help the lessons stick with my 3rd grader.
  21. No, I do not assign any reading for my 3rd grader. She loves to read, so if a topic catches her attention she will search out reading material at the library or a friend's house on that subject. If my younger children don't have the same love of reading, though, I will assign some, but I am satisfied with the amount and variety of reading my oldest does.
  22. My 1st grader definitely does not want to spend any more time than necessary doing anything school-related, but my 3rd grader does enjoy spending time on the extras...although there are several things (like poetry) that we don't ever seem to be able to fit in. So I guess my answer is no, I don't know that we can ever fit in all the extras, but as the kids get older they will find the time to fit them in according to the level of their interest.
  23. Was it Easy Simulations: Pioneers? (I hope the link works, it is my first attempt :blushing:, my apologies if it doesn't!) I remember that post, and I added the game to my Amazon wishlist; if this isn't it, then I am :bigear:
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