Superfly
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Posts posted by Superfly
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Thank you for sharing. We just got our dvd in the mail yesterday and will start using it with DD8 tomorrow. I hope our results are just as good! This last year of math has been a struggle.
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During the week I usually allow only educational tv/computer time. Once they have completeted their lessons, they are allowed as much educational computer time as they want. DH and I butt heads on this issue, so they occassionally play minecraft, terraria or lego wii games with dad in the evening. I try to limit recreational electronics to Sunday after chores are done, but unforunately I don't always get my way. :glare:
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Our grade level is kind of mixed up, but DD will officially be 3rd grade in the fall. Here is what I have planned:
Bible: Bible Foundations NT
Latin: GSWL & either SSL or Prima Latina...I have both so I will figure it out later
Math: Finish TT3 then Saxon 5/4. Plus Miquon math labs for review and LOF mixed in our read alouds. Daily Word Problems
Spanish: GSWS & SOS elementary Spanish, misc. DVDs
LA: Finish LLATL yellow then start FLL 3/WWE2(we weren't ready for these this year), Beginning Word Roots, Pictures in Cursive
Reading: leveled readers 3/week. Plus 30min/day free reading...mostly chapter books like Magic Tree House
Logic: Mix of games and worksheets covering analogies, deductive reasoning, and spatial/visual skills.
History: SOTW 3 & AG, The Light & the Glory and From Sea to Shining Sea for American history.
Geography: Daily Geog, Scrambled States of America game, Geopuzzle - world
Science: Christian Kids Chemistry and Apologia Zoology 1, Burgess Bird Book.
Literature: tons of read alouds that go along with our history/science
Art: Come Look With Me, Draw & Write History, Drawing Textbook
I just ordered most of our curriculum. I can't wait to start going through everything and planning!
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I really like the Drawing Textbook. It has simple step-by-step instructions that teach real drawing skills. The lessons are simple enough for all ages.
http://rainbowresource.com/product/sku/002584/529f22fa5c967dffbddbc720
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What have you used and liked? I'm looking for a quality set that isn't too difficult for elementary kids to put together, but that includes enough durable pieces that I won't have to buy a more advanced set for highschool. I'd like to keep it under $50 if possible.
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Wish I'd found earlier:
Recipe for Reading/Touchphonics
Miquon
Apologia Elementary
Loved from the start:
SOTW
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I really enjoy the Apologia for reading, but I think RSO is better for experiments. I love that RSO is pretty much an "open and go" curriculum as long as you have the materials on hand. I rarely have to go out and buy things for it. RSO does have reading suggestions in it. I really enjoy both so much that I couldn't decide myself. We are currently doing RSO Earth&Space and Apologia Astronomy together. So I guess I say do both! Next year we will be doing Zoology 1 as our main science and chemistry 1x a week.
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We are doing a sort of WTM/CM hybrid. I just started taking CM to heart several months ago so we are still in the process of figuring it all out. This is what our days look like now:
We eat breakfast together and then have tea while we read our daily devotions. Then we move to the couch for read alouds. I have a large basket full of living books for all subjects. We usually spend about 45-60min reading. Then we move to the classroom for formal subjects. My girls have LD, so we do a full phonics program which does take a bit longer than CM would recommend. DD8 has a checklist and she works independently doing short lessons. We are doing Miquon and Daily Word Problems for math. We have a large wall calendar and we go over the date, weather, etc. together. I help DD5 do Language Lessons for Little Ones, speech, and Developing the Early Learner activities while her sister works on her own. DD8 is doing LLATL yellow(short and sweet), Daily Geography, and handwriting. Then she does silent reading until lunchtime. After lunch I let them have free time read or to play games, legos or other manipulatives. Then we get together on the couch and read aloud either our history or science, depending on the day. We are doing Apologia Astronomy with REAL Science Earth and Space and Story of the World 2 for history. I usually throw in some other living books that go with our topic. Then we do a hands on activity/experiment. A couple days a week we add on Latin. After that we go outside and enjoy! We have a good size garden out back and birds living out front so they have plenty of opportunity to observe. If it is raining we do painting/crafts indoors(DD8 is really into her knitting loom), and we listen to classical music.
This spring we have plans to do nature study at our local nature center and they have family astronomy lessons at the wilderness preserve. I also have several art books on the way that I can't wait to use!
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My kids favorites are phonics "go fish" with diagraph cards, Sum Swamp, Camp game, and The Ladybug Game. The also really like blokus, but it isn't really educational...more logic I guess.
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I also love British period pieces. One of my favorites is The Forsyte Saga. I think it is also from Masterpiece Theater.
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Thank you all for the feedback. I'm checking out all the links. I have been trying to move towards CM for most subjects and I love the idea of doing living math. I tend to stress myself out with all the formal curriculum. I'm trying to relax and use the curriculum as a resource instead of being a slave to it. I know I can do this...I just need to take a deep breath and relax. :tongue_smilie:
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You might want to look into Miquon. At the very least, pick up the First Grade Diary. Sometimes I feel like doing Miquon is doing math on your own...and the FGD is full of good ideas to introduce topics and types of problems.
I don't have any experience with Miquon, but it does look similar to how I would like to teach the concepts. From looking at the workbooks online it seems I would need to go all the way back to the beginning? I guess this is part of my frustration with the idea of trying to switch to another curriculum. I don't want DD to feel like she is starting over again. I just want her to love math again instead of groaning at the mention of it. Since the books are so cheap I may just pick one up to give it a try.
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Wondering if anyone just does math on their own without a curriculum in the lower grades? Has it worked for you?
I've just completely had it with trying to find a "fit" for DD that won't leave gaps. We started out with Saxon 1 and 2 and they worked okay, but DD started getting bored halfway through 2(and so did I). I switched to R&S. This helped me to realize that DD had a huge deficiency in math fact recall. I much prefer the R&S way of memorizing, but it doesn't have all the other stuff that I think Saxon is better with. So I started combining the two. I just started homeschooling my youngest, and now I don't have that much time to spend with ODD. DD loves the math on time4learning, so I was thinking of just "doing math", and letting her use time4learning to fill in the gaps. I love math and know I can come up with a lot of math activities and games. I just fear I will miss something and regret it later. I guess I'm just fishing for other's who may have experience in doing it on their own.
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Thanks for sharing! This is our first year celebrating the feast days, and I have been looking for things to do with my girls. Now I just need to find a color printer.
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BJU Music - I didn't realize this was intended for professional classroom music instructors since it is sold as a homeschool curriculum. I am NOT a music person, so we will be replacing it with some type of music appreciation eventually.
Prima Latina - After viewing the first lesson I decided that memorizing a whole new phonetic system would be way too confusing for my struggling reader. We switched to Power-glide Latin and are really liking it as an introduction. Hopefully DD will be ready for Prima Latina next year.
Everything else has been good or great. I am still tweaking somethings, but I think we are getting pretty close to hitting our groove.
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I live in Minnesota right now, and it is beautiful. However, it's hard to see the beauty of nature when you have mosquitos biting your eyeballs. I'm thinking of maybe getting some of those outfits beekeepers wear for dd and I next summer. :tongue_smilie:
Or just bathe in industrial strength repellent. It's funny I barely remember all the misquitos, but I can still remember the smell of thr dead frogs and nightcrawlers that covered the street in spring.
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I also love the idea of CM, but I'm not sure I can put it in to practice either. I've tried to inspire my oldest with great ideas, but she is totally not getting it. She reminds me of Pinocchio...great intentions to behave, but she has no desire to follow through. So far child training has only left me more frustrated because CM inspired me to set the bar a little higher.
I'm with you on the nature study too. We live in an area where it was 108 all summer and it hasn't rained in our neighborhood in over a year. Anyone up for studying dead trees and dying birds??? We did find a dead snake dried up and stuck to our dead lawn. :tongue_smilie:
I grew up in MN, so I have all these great memories of ponds, lakes, frogs, bunnies, and walking to the nearby farm. I used to spend whole afternoons sitting in our willowtree having tea parties. I wish I could give that same gift to my girls, but we don't plan on moving any time soon.
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This is where I make my big confession...
...I bought my daughter a couple of school uniform skirts the last time I hit the thrift store. :blushing:
In my defense, she absolutely refuses to wear pants, and these sturdy khaki skirts with built-in shorts are the closest possible dress equivalent to jeans. She has decided that the pleats make them feminine enough. But yeah. There are the people who homeschool in their pajamas, and then there's my kid in her school uniform skirt.
My girls wear uniform skirts and polos. :blush:
We all have ADHD and I've learned over the last 3yrs that we need a lot of structure/routine. The uniforms make the mornings go quickly, and they prevent the girls from changing clothes 4 times to be fashionable. Plus we are on a tight budget and they are very economical. Plus they are super stinking cute!
I would say we do school at home. Since we have special needs our curriculum and classroom is tailored to those needs. Instead of a schedule we stick to a routine. I also have an agenda for the week and we check off as we go.
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Do you remember the name of the doco? Thanks
Dragons or Dinosaurs: Creation or Evolution
It used to be available on netflix streaming. Now it is only available on DVD.
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I don't think it is anything new, but I recently saw a documentary about this topic. Supposedly there is a lot of archaeological evidence of cultural belief in fire-breathing dinos in the form of drawings/sculptures from cultures all over the world. Similar to the common thread of a flood story among unrelated cultures world-wide.
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When I started HSing my oldest I bought some school anthologies and workbooks. They have wonderful pictures, but when I sat down and tried to plan lessons with them it became clear they were sub-standard. The stories use too many sight words. The workbooks are mostly busy work and very scattered.
What we are doing now is using a combination of leveled readers and some old anthologies from the 80s. The reading level progresses with the phonics rules. For comprehension I write narration questions for the week, and I use the text for dictation work as well. sometimes I will stop her and ask her questions throughout the selection if I didn't have time to write out questions. Here is a link to my blog that shows what we use: http://dcuniversehs.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-new-love.html
I know many people are able to use regular literature for their children once they are reading, and then they just use a study guide for comprehension. My DD has dyslexia so she isn't able to dive right into regular literature yet. We save those for read alouds.
If you do decide to go with schoolbooks, I think Open Court has higher quality selections. You can find many reading anthologies on Ebay.
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They sound very similar to my 2nd grader. My DD is ADHD though. She can't seem to follow even the most simple instructions, even for things she wants to do(like play minecraft). She also isn't able to do her work unless I literally stare at her page as she does it and intervene as soon as she starts to do the problems incorrectly. I notice she will self-correct if I'm looking at her work, but if I even move to the other end of the table to help her sister, then she will do the whole page wrong. Or she will just stare into space. So here are some things that have helped us:
1. Jumping jacks before we start, or if DD starts to loose attention
2. ball seat - the bouncing makes me insane, but it does help her get her work done
3. ask lots of questions to make sure they understand or have them recite the instructions - this may take several repetitions
4. cut down on things that promote short attention. We got rid of regular tv with all the commercials and only watch videos now. We also try to monitor how "hyper" the shows are they watch during the school week.
5. cut out as many environmental distractions as possible like other siblings or running appliances/electronics. I have DD face away from the window otherwise I will lose her everytime a car drives by or the wind blows.
6. Take breaks often and have them do something physical during those breaks.
7. Try making activities more kinestetic if you think that my be their learning style. I put up a whiteboard at DD's height and have her do much of her math and copywork while standing at the board.
Many times I have thought about sending DD back to school, but I think school would have her falling even further behind. It is just completely opposite of how she learns. So my advice would be to not give up. Keep trying to "figure" them out and discover how they learn. In our case, it turned our DD needed reading glasses for tracking issues as well. Keep trying different curriculum if you think that may be the problem. Try not to show them when you are upset (I know it's hard!!! I'm guilty of blowing a few gaskets). Some kids feed off our reactions to them. I used to teach in-home preschool and have found that accross the board, most children's behavior gets worse when they get a rise. I hope this helps. Good luck!
:grouphug:
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We just started Power-glide Spanish and are looking for a computer based program to go with it. I was looking at K12 and Switched on Schoolhouse and noticed that BOTH have titles from Power-glide chapters. Do all of these have the same content? Are K12 and SOS the same program, or do they just both use some of the Power-glide content? So confused. Please help! Thanks!
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:thumbup:
I don't have any recommendations for pockets, but I just wanted to say that I love the Beginning Geography too! It's exactly what I was looking for.
Feeling deprived
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Do you have any used/half-price books stores in your area? When I feel that way I always hit the clearance books and get my homeschool "fix." I'm always amazed at what I can score for $5. So far this month I found like new miquon books for $1 each and LLATL TMs for $2 each. Yesterday I picked up a Latina Christiana set for $15. :) I'm a curriculum addict too. My shelves are overflowing, and now I need to find another bookshelf on craigslist.