morosophe
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Posts posted by morosophe
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ETA: We also read this book about the Great Wall, lots of information, the pictures are black and white, but dd really enjoyed it.
That's the one Sonlight does in first grade, and :iagree:, it's pretty neat. Plus, your daughter could probably read it to you--the language is pretty simple and it's a fairly short book.
Here are a couple suggestions from All Through the Ages (which is a great resource if you're planning on doing a lot of this type of unit study, by the way):
Growing Up in Ancient China, by Ken Teague
Look What Came From China!, by Miles Harvey
Ancient Chinese Art: Art in History, by Jane Shuter. This is one that is meant for an older audience, but it does give suggestions for art products that you might be able to modify.
The only one for which I have personal experience, though, is the Great Wall of China book referenced above. That one's a keeper!
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I've been drooling over the Activity Bags books, but haven't yet ordered one. Still, it does seem the kind of thing you're looking for. I particularly like the fact that each bag can be picked up and put away out of my children's reach because, after all, my preschooler and his siblings make enough mess as it is! The price of the $15.00 e-book (for, say, Preschool Activities in a Bag Book 1) should be offset a little by the fact that the activities described are meant to cost $1.00 or less per bag.
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Should I get WWE for writing then instead? How many times a week do I do WWE? Is it copywork/dictation/narration overkill? (I also do narrations, copywork and dictation in History as well as the English programs PLL and ES.) Does he actually get to write something himself, or is it all copywork and dictation? In the sample WWE 3 I saw some grammar explained as well. Is this true as a whole?
Sorry for the questions bomb!
As someone who has Writing with Ease, let me answer a few of these questions:
Writing with Ease was written to coordinate with First Language Lessons, so the "grammar" components are meant to match up with that program.
I would highly recommend buying the "Instructor Text," NOT the workbooks, particularly if you already have copywork/dictation and narration set up for your other classes. Then you can just follow the instructions from the teacher's guide to make sure your copywork is long enough and to augment those narration passages for your son. (I.e., ask him questions about the passage if you're at level one, and then do the "What's one thing you remember?" or start working toward finding the main point at level two, etc.) Feel free to ignore the "grammar" suggestions in WWE and stick with the ones from Primary Language Lessons instead. (PLL has copywork, right?) It'll be a lot cheaper that way, and you will neither feel guilty about your son not getting some of the work done in one or more programs nor overload him with tedious work.
(A lot of people have pointed out that Ms. Bauer doesn't always follow her own recommendations for length, particularly for those narration passages. So, if a passage you've picked out is a little longer than suggested, don't worry about it.)
I did level one of WWE with just the instructor's text for the second half or so this year. For next year, since I'm dropping the other composition program I had been using, (extremely unsuccessfully, may I add, except for its copywork,) I've gotten the Level Two Workbook. I think it really all depends on the teacher, and for someone who likes adapting things to what they're reading already, or who is combining programs (as you appear to be), the instructor's text really is all you need.
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I would highly recommend 10 Days in the USA as a method for learning where states are. I've never played it, to be honest, but I have played and love 10 Days in Africa, the first game in this series, and i believe the game mechanics are identical.
For a little test of your children's knowledge of the geography, try playing the game without the board! (The board is a map and you don't actually move pieces on it, so this is quite possible.)
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After reading several posts here about people who never got e-books they had ordered from Nothing New Press, I grew a little worried that the screen I had gotten right away, which "apiligized" for a problem with the order, was all I would ever see from them. I grew more alarmed when I realized that the only way to contact the publisher was via e-mail. Ouch!
However, my husband (whose Paypal account I had used) got the All Through the Ages .pdf the next day. (That wasn't the e-mail address I'd put down in the blank on the order form, but at least somebody got it, and I guess it makes sense to send it to the e-mail address associated with the account that paid for it.)
And I've really been enjoying the book! What a neat resource.
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Mine was and still is. Check out Electronic Snap Circuits for some hands on stuff.
:iagree:Snap Circuits are the best! My son absolutely loves them. And you can get the starter set for around $20.00 from Amazon.
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Well, Sonlight supplements it with Usborne as the basis for its Cores B and C... Or there's the Calvert School set.
I think it all depends on what you want! I did Sonlight B this year, and had my son just do notebooking. Then again, he was in first grade.
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Oh, and check out this very well-done article. Yes, I know, it's not a field trip, but it is interesting and about archaeology in New Jersey. (Well, it does talk about a field trip... that costs $65.00 a person! Ack!)
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I did a little searching, and found these classes for your oldest. They could be useful, if you live close enough! Unfortunately, it looks like this calendar may be for last year. Who knows what may be available this year, particularly since the New Jersey State Museum Archaeology & Ethnology Collection is apparently closed for renovation.
I hope someone with more local knowledge and less Google-fu can help you!
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Wow, what an interesting thread! I had no notion of "constructivism" in math before I read this.
I have to say, I would never, never take the "constructivist" approach with my oldest son. He has not a creative bone in his body, and would resent being forced to do activities without a known goal and a road map for getting there. Meanwhile, he's loving his Math-U-See classes, as "boring" and traditional as I'm sure they'd be to other kids.
So, wouldn't part of the success or failure of constructivism (in math or elsewhere) depend on the student?
Also, isn't this the kind of thinking best left for the logic stage in the classical trivium?
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I would agree with the advice to pair it with a narrative history, particularly if your child gets as frustrated with Usborne as mine did. We do Sonlight, so the narrative history provided is A Child's History of the World, but anything that tells history as a story instead of as a gathering of discrete information may help--Story of the World would probably be fine, too. Then you look at Usborne for its pretty, pretty pictures, and some alternate "takes" on things, often with more (or very different) details.
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Mine is This one and doesn't have the black painted frame it's a simple aluminum frame.
Ooh, nice.
But wait, the reviews say that that one isn't magnetic.
Thanks anyway! At least you gave me another brand to check out, right?
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There's a free one at Homeschool Share. Had you found that yet?
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Too many moving or small parts, that's what. For instance, I started out with Saxon K for phonics. Aside from the slow progression (which was boring all of us) I lost patience with the stupid little letter tiles. I liked to have them available because it was fun to take them out and spell with them whenever we wanted. But they had a tendency to get swept of the table with an elbow and somehow they would crawl underneath the refrigerator.
Which is why I am still on the fence about AAS.:glare:
This is funny, because I knew exactly what you meant, and thought, "Does this mean that All About Spelling is off the table?"
For my part, I decided to go ahead and get AAS anyhow. I've got a cookie sheet (bought for $1 at a yard sale, after I'd made sure magnets will stick to it) and a card box (cost a bit more at an office supply store), and I just stick the whole thing on a high shelf. The cookie sheet is the kind with sides, and it holds everything with plenty to spare, and doesn't even hang over the front of the shelf much.
I'm hoping that all this will keep the set with out of the way of my younger two. Of course, we haven't actually started lessons yet. Who knows what'll happen then, right?
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This is what we did with Biblioplan (ancients), and it was one of our best school years ever. :)
Wonderful! I'm so glad to hear that! That really gives me hope that it will work.
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I bought a 2x3' whiteboard for $15 from target and it's a perfect size.
Do you happen to know the brand white board you bought? I would love to see if something like that is still available. I've looked at Target's website and can't find anything near that cheap. The closest I've found is this at Amazon, and it's $35.00. Ouch!
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You still haven't said what years you're interested in.
Here's a way to do it:
Go to the Sonlight Core you're interested in. For instance, here's Sonlight 3 Readers: http://www.sonlight.com/3RP.html
Click on the "Included Items" tab. This will give you a complete list of titles, but no other information. Print this out.
You may be worried about "doppelgangers" out there, i.e., books with the same title but very different contents. For instance, my sample list includes "Tornado," which could be one of hundreds of books, "Prairie School" and "Secret Valley." If you have a biography in the read-aloud list (although I think those are usually in history, unless you're including the history readings as read-alouds), those would be prime suspects, too, particularly if they only give the subjects' names. Note these books on your printed copy.
Or, you might be interested in the exact edition Sonlight has, if, for instance, you want those illustrations, too. (We checked out The Sword in the Tree when my son lost his copy for a few days, and I've got to say, the illustrations in the library copy were far superior.) Note any books you feel this way about.
Then click the "View Booklist with Descriptions" button at the top of the "Included Items" page. Go through the book list and see who actually wrote (and/or illustrated) the books you're concerned about. From my examples, I can see that Betsy Byars wrote Tornado, Avi wrote Prairie School, and Clyde Robert Bulla wrote Secret Valley. Wow, there sure is a lot of Bulla in Sonlight. Good thing I like him!
Now, write down those names on your list.
Of course, if you'd rather just have all the information at once, you could print out the whole Booklist with Descriptions page. You'd have to wade through advertisements for Sonlight and use up a whole lot more paper (not to mention colored ink, if you have a color printer and didn't print black and white) that way.
There, you're all done!
Edited to say: Clearly, these instructions could be adapted to cutting and pasting instead of printing, if you'd rather a list that you saved on your computer. I was just going for quick and dirty!
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Kindergarten for my children consists of one twenty-minute lesson in 100EZ Lessons each day. That is it. No spelling, no handwriting, no real phonics, no math, no history, no science...nothing. So far it has not hindered them from progressing at a normal pace once they begin 1st grade.
So your son is light-years ahead of where my home schooled children are after their kindergarten year :001_smile:. If you are asking for permission to stop the formal lessons for the summer and just spend a short time every day on reading (or whatever you feel is most important), then you have it. It won't hurt him one bit; in fact, it might even help by giving him some more time to mature before he is faced with 1st grade subjects. You can work on his fine motor skills (which is what is hindering his progress in handwriting, and is completely normal for a K'er, especially a boy) by doing arts and crafts...cutting, tracing, coloring...whatever interests him. Other than that, I would not worry about the rest of the subjects...he still has twelve full years to learn everything, no need to teach it all at the beginning :D.
:iagree:
I did a bit more than this--we did do Math-U-See Primer, because he loved it and because it's more about exposing your kids to math than about expecting them to really learn anything. More than that, we "rowed"--that is, we did the first two volumes of Five in a Row, which consists of reading the same book five times each week, and talking about a different aspect of the book (social studies/history, literature, art, math, and science are the categories) each time. I loved the homeschoolshare.com site, which has free lapbooking materials for each of the books, because my son really liked putting together lapbooks. But it was probably 20-30 minutes a day, and some (far too many) days it was dropped completely, because I was pregnant and just not up to "doing school." So far, my son hasn't seemed terribly "behind" in anything.
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Well, Sonlight has made some. :p
What levels are you interested in, and for what purpose? I've found lists on Amazon for the year I'm doing next. Just look for some of the items on whichever list you're interested in, and see if you can find an Amazon list entitled something close to what you want.
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Well, did he bawl his eyes out during the section he didn't like as my dd did? She only answered 4 questions in reading comprehension, and still managed to get in the 2nd stanine (we did online, so the results are in already). The amazing thing is that she did manage to compose herself and continue with the rest of the test, and even managed one section in the 9th stanine...in an area where I feel she's really shaky! I was expecting more tears, but she nailed it! :D
Halcyon, congrats on not passing the test anxiety along! Seems like I have, and I love tests. :svengo:
No, actually, although when we hit the part he didn't know (phonics as tested by the vowel sounds in the middle of a word), he knew he didn't know it and got kind of upset. And that was the first test we did!
He, too, rallied, and seemed to do well for the rest of his test.
(Hey, we're starting All About Spelling soon, so my son will learn what that whole thing was about. Plus, it isn't like he didn't know how to pronounce the words; he just didn't understand how to segment out the vowel sound. He did well enough on the reading comprehension and fill-in-the-blanks parts, anyhow. Errors there were more due to carelessness, I think. Just in case you were wondering why I don't seem to be worried about my son not knowing his phonics.)
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I just got back from posting my son's standardized test (CAT, by the way) at the post office. YAY!
The parts he knew fairly well, he liked; the parts he didn't know well, he didn't like; and he was sick of it by the end. About what I remember from taking them myself.
Note: Taking a standardized test is a state requirement, with the rules under which we're homeschooling. But he only has to "make" at least the fourth stanine, (better than 23% of those who normed the test,) so I think we'll be fine.
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Let us not panic! It is only about whether they are letters on their own right or simply a combination of letters. You still have to teach them as sounds; the only difference really is when it comes to looking words up in a dictionary because the order will be different, i.e., ch words will no longer come after all of the c words but within the c words after the ci combinations and so on and so forth.
I know nothing about Spanish, but this was kind of interesting to me, because something similar was done in English in alphabetical listings by last name, such as telephone books or deed book indices at the local courthouse. McLastnames used to be separated out from regular Lastnames as if Mc were a letter after M and before N. Now, whether because nobody felt like teaching computers that, or it's just an unnecessary complication in general, practically nobody does this. Although you can still sometimes find card dividers for a rolodex that will include the "Mc."
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This sounds reasonable to me. I would be pretty reluctant to switch a core subject unless I had a reason above. We haven't switched any of those. However, I wouldn't hesitate to switch curricula in an elective subject where switching wouldn't have many long-term academic or financial consequences. We're switching geography this year just because I didn't like last year's program.
To clarify: what do you mean by "core"? I mean, substituting what I've heard termed "skills-based" subjects for "core" subjects makes sense here. You don't want to switch math or grammar "mid-stream" willy-nilly, as it were, because they build on themselves but different programs have them building differently.
But something like literature, history, science, or Bible, which I would also consider core subjects, is okay to switch, particularly at the end of a semester or year, if your child seems bored with the old one or its simply run its course.
So, do you have a narrower definition of "core" than I do, or a good reason not to mess with "content-based" curricula either? (Beyond retreading the same old ground fifty times, I mean. That one is a mistake.)
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Just to annoy everybody here by recommending you pay for something:
I've finally decided to take the plunge and buy Nothing New Press's All Through the Ages, by Christine Miller. She took the booklists from Sonlight, among several other highly reputed homeschooling companies (such as Veritas Press and Beautiful Feet Books), and segregated them out by time period and location covered. (There's a historical timeline and a geography section.) The resultant bibliography is somewhat annotated, and is definitely segregated by preferred age of the reader. And hey, the e-book price is only $20.00 for the .pdf format, and it looks like it should transfer to Kindle fairly well. (There are no tables in the free samples, anyhow.)
[To talk about myself, so you know that I'm not just an advertisement shill: I have been using the Sonlight IGs--I did Core 1 (B) last year and am doing 2 © this coming year. However, as my .sig indicates, I'm currently planning to switch to Biblioplan after that to provide my weekly dose of accountability. Since the main weakness of Biblioplan seems to be its limited (if good) selection of literature, some of which can be hard to find, I figured I'd supplement it with recommendations from All Through the Ages.]
Newbie question!
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Check the sticky at the top of the page for a link to the abbreviations page that covers the vast majority of curriculum abbreviations.
"HS" is homeschool (although "HMSC" is apparently preferred on the list above, and my brain always translates "HS" as "high school" anyhow).
"DH" means "dear husband," "DS" means "dear son," and I'm sure you can guess what "DD" stands for. (Sometimes I wonder if I'm bowlderizing that first "D" though. Ah, well, we'll pretend it's always "dear." :p)
That should get you 90% of the way there, anyhow.