morosophe
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Posts posted by morosophe
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I have to admit, I am a person who is almost allergic to textbooks. I hate them. Hate them, hate them, hate them.
Except for when it comes to grammar, apparently. The first time I checked out Rod & Staff's grammar series, (which starts with their second-grade text Preparing to Build,) I knew this was exactly what I wanted. I even told my husband that I was pathetically excited over a very textbooky textbook.
Sadly, in my opinion, grammar is meant to be kind of boring. Once you get up to diagramming sentences, it can get a lot more fun. (I agree with a previous poster's son on that point.) Despite the success of Schoolhouse Rock for pounding some beginning grammar knowledge into a child's head, however, the best way to really learn about it is to do the boring exercises. Therefore, in my opinion, a grammar might as well be complete if it has to be boring. (As long as it's not completely boring. :p)
And Rod & Staff seems to be exactly what I want to use for my child. It lets me take a short time each day to cover a topic. It allows my child to read about it along with me. This is important to me because my child appears to be a visual learner, so oral grammar approaches such as First Language Lessons would be a complete flop for him. It is well-organized enough that if my son wanted to go back for a refresher course on whatever he'd forgotten from a previous lesson, it would be fairly easy to find. And it provides plenty of exercises. (In fact, it provides so many exercises that I feel perfectly justified only requiring my son to do a certain amount unless he's struggling with whatever concept is being taught.)
Now, since my son is a visual learner, I'm sure the black and white will be a disappointment to him. But that's where I'm glad I'm a homeschooler--like many others here have done, I'm planning on using a whiteboard for the exercises, and will probably play with different colored pens to do different things. (For instance, I might have him write with a different color instead of underlining something, or cross wrong things out with the red marker, like any good proofreader has fun doing.) That way, I hope that the "fun" of grammar will be essentially linked to the actual subject matter: understanding words and how they properly work together to communicate information.
Plus, I got both student's book and teacher edition at the local used homeschooling store for a combined total of $7.00. That sturdy binding really does make a difference!
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We are starting in 1st this coming year. However, I wish I had started in Kindy so I could have a year of American History in 4th grade without messing up the cycle. I think I'm going to try to squeeze the first cycle into 3 years in order to still do this.
Couldn't you just focus on the American history portion of things in the third and fourth years of the cycle? Then you'd be covering American history in third and fourth grades, with international history only covered as it impacts America. You could try doing the history of the whole world in your second swing around the cycle. That's sort of what Sonlight does in cores 3 and 4 (now D and E). You could switch to another spine from SOTW to focus on American history, or just read what you think are the pertinent chapters in 3 and 4.
I'm not a SOTW user, though, so I might be missing something here.
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Well, Christine over at Core Foundations has a schedule for Botany on her Math and Science page that's five days a week, with the fifth day almost always being a review of the chapter, for a total of eighteen weeks of classes. Would that work?
Unfortunately, it looks like her Astronomy schedule would be even less easy to adapt.
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Yes, I actually plan to have my son start taking sermon notes soon. I have a page that I saw at my DH's grandparents' church and I asked one of the ladies there (a homeschooling mom :D) for an electronic copy. It starts out pretty easy - marking certain words that you hear during the sermon (like putting a tick for each time you hear the word "God"), and then later in the page there is a spot for writing a short summary (narration) on what the sermon was about. It had various things on it, so it was fairly flexible for the age of the kid. I haven't used it yet, as DS has been writing phobic, but that is starting to change recently.
Oooh, wow! That sounds really neat!
Our church provides coloring sheets (drawn by the pastor's daughter) with a verse from or related to the sermon passage most weeks for the younger children, which is really nice. For kids who are reading and writing, there is a little booklet (much like a bulletin) each week, with the passage being preached about, T/F questions from the sermon, and a blank page for outlining. That isn't quite as helpful for keeping them paying attention as what you just described sounds like, though. I'll have to see if I can figure out words that will be used a lot in a particular sermon and write them at the top of his outline page. Then he can have fun listening for them!
I also found this online, which could be a good thing to bring along when he's a little further along on his writing.
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As far as whether you can pass him from WWE1, I would say yes, because he can do the narrations if he reads them himself. In WWE3 and 4, I believe, the child starts reading the passages themselves. I think WWE1 and 2 are probably oral because not all first and second graders can read at the level of the passages, though I could be wrong. :tongue_smilie:
My son is like yours - better if he reads it himself (though surprisingly, FLL worked fine for him... we are switching to R&S for next year though). I did try letting him read the WWE passages himself, but then I thought about it some more... If getting details from listening is a weakness, I'd like to strengthen that aspect of him as well as I can. He may learn best by reading, but if we can strenghten those listening skills, that will be helpful when he gets to college and has to listen to a lecture (though of course he can take notes during college, which does bring in the visual aspect again). So we've been doing WWE1 as written now, and we also do narrations (with leading questions) in other subjects as well. We use Egermeier's Bible Story Book for our Bible reading every morning, and it has questions in the back - woohoo! Then we write a narration. He's getting a lot better about picking up the details when listening because we have practiced this skill. Is visual still going to be the better way for him to learn? Sure. But now he won't be limited to that method.
We're a little ways off from WWE2, so I don't know how well the dictations will go. We do dictation in AAS, and I've been surprised that he can remember those sentences with me saying them only once, so maybe the WWE skills have helped already, or maybe his listening skills are good enough to handle one sentence. I'm not too frightened by WWE2 in the early weeks. I'm terrified of 3 and 4. :lol:
Btw, I've been thinking recently that *I* need to do WWE dictation. When writing down my son's narrations, I have a really hard time keeping up. Even though it's only 2-3 sentences, it takes me a while to write. I may have to switch to typing his narrations. If I can't keep up with a first grader's 2-3 sentence narration, how am I going to handle it in another year when he's able to think up more elaborate sentences? :confused:
Thank you, this was a very helpful response.
I admit that I am anxious to press on to WWE2 because I want to start him working on getting the "main point" of a passage. That is a very useful skill that will help him a lot in his other classes, too, just like learning from listening. May I point out that it is usually considered perfectly reasonable to take notes at lectures, sermons, etc., much earlier (and later) than college? In fact, it is somewhat respectful to the speaker, since it means that you think what he said was so worthy of remembering that you're writing it down! (I just kept myself from going off on a long digression about cultural experiences being different when I realized I'm wandering far afield here. See, my son isn't the only one who still needs to learn about the main point of a piece of writing!)
Honestly, from what people are saying, I'm thinking that I may continue with the narration/outlining part of WWE but drop--or at least decrease in frequency--the long dictations in third and fourth grade. Or I could switch to IEW, I guess.
To remove a random rant, like my little "oral versus written culture" one of last night, and in fact very related, on the subject of IEW. While I may have had fun writing it, it really doesn't belong on the thread. If you still want to read it, I posted it on my blog.
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Get Ready, Get Set, Go for the Code? Or, if your child has already learned all his letter sounds, you could move on to Explode the Code.
A lot of people don't like this resource, though. The art is a little different, I'll admit.
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You could always check out Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, which is a very well-known piece and seems to be available on Youtube, for instance. Carnegie Hall has even based a flash game on it, apparently. I have no idea if that would be helpful or not, actually.
This little flash game is fun, though. It lets you take away particular instruments and add them back. There are four styles of songs, presumably with the appropriate instrument groups.
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Well, you could always check out your local library. Mine has a variety of "follow the steps to draw" resources in the juvenile nonfiction section. If your library uses Dewey Decimal Classification (most public libraries do), check the juvenile section for 743, Drawing and drawings by subject. My local library is particularly well-stocked at 743.6, Drawing animals.
That way you can cycle through a number of books and he can try his favorite drawings in each of them. If he shows a preference for a particular book, see if it is available cheaply--www.addall.com is a good place to look for used books when Amazon has failed you.
Or just look up "How to draw" on Google, if you have a decent internet connection. There seem to be loads of free tutorials. If you change your search engine to Google Images, you'll see a lot of final products to start from. Be careful, though: some of these seem to be created by manga fans, and the subject matter may be far more adult than you desire for your son. It would be better for you to find the tutorial and check it out before letting your son have at it. In other words, the usual internet caveats definitely apply.
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Well, askPauline, linking is the sincerest form of internet flattery, so I hope you feel appreciated. I'm glad you were around to help out a lot more than I can with my poor Google-fu!
I will say that I don't actually see a link in your post. Did it get eaten?
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Have you found this website on portfolios? It seems very clear and complete on Pennsylvania requirements. And here is an example it gives!
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Hmm. I ran into the same issue with Rebecca. I chose to continue reading the passage to her to work on her listening skills. Trust me, they need the work. She'd have an easier time answering the questions if I just let her read the passage herself, but she has learned from doing WWE as written. It took time, patience, and work. But we've been successful.
Yeah, but I think my son gets plenty of practice at listening. I read all of his devotions and history to him. My husband or I read his read-alouds to him. (We have been letting him read these over our shoulders, too, though.) He hears sermons every week at church, although we're actually still working on the "paying attention in the first place instead of daydreaming" part of church. (Of course, sometimes I'm working on the "paying attention instead of making lists in my head/daydreaming/falling asleep" part of worship myself.)
I will admit that I am myself a fairly auditory learner. I think. Actually, I have no idea. Growing up, the way I really cemented something into my head for tests was to retype the notes I'd taken during class, which may be either visual or kinesthetic but doesn't sound much like auditory. I did repeat French words to myself for my French class, instead of just reading them, though. And to truly appreciate a poem (remember, English major), I think it usually demands to be read aloud, especially to an appreciative audience.
My husband, sadly, is not an appreciative audience. He has trouble following a poem well enough when I say one to appreciate it. (Poor, poor man, he's having to listen to Gerard Manley Hopkins here, not Ogden Nash. Okay, so Ogden Nash, too, but he doesn't have much trouble following that.) He usually reads Shakespeare plays before we watch them, so that he can follow what's happening in a play and appreciate that. Clearly, a visual learner.
And since when should that be a weakness in writing? There's been a lot going on lately about literate culture versus oral culture. Ms. Bauer even posted a fascinating article on her blog about it, the main points of which I agree with wholeheartedly. And yet, my husband holds a job in a traditionally highly "literate" culture field, where he has to be able to follow very long and complex arguments as a work trait, and he does very well at it. (He's a system administrator, so maybe "arguments" should be replaced with "variables" or something. Potayto, potahto.) How different is this from being able to hold a long thought in your head as you put it down? Or the important details in a passage?
If I sound like I have a particular axe to grind here, I don't, really. I just realized this week that my son is a pretty visual learner, when he was quoting large sections of the book he'd only read once. I think I'm still reeling from that realization. No wonder! No wonder: he likes workbooks, he enjoys reading over my shoulder (more than as just new reader greed), he did better with memory verses once I started putting them up on the wall. And it's a good thing I got Rod & Staff grammar, since First Language Lessons would be a total washout for him!
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And in Book Five, Draw Write Now introduces proportions (of the human face and body) and has more complicated drawings and longer copywork to go with it. Book Eight gives the basics of copying (maps, in particular) using a grid for help. All the books show how to start with basic shapes and end up with pictures, although they get more difficult and sophisticated as they go along.
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...again. But not exactly the same question from this post.
My son is in first grade and seems to be a very visual learner. We did Week 36 of Writing with Ease, Year One this week. The first narration he completely flunked--he didn't seem to remember anything.
The second narration I allowed him to look over my shoulder while I was reading, covering up the questions and answers after the passage. Then I made him move away from me and asked the questions. He got all but one correct, which is a passing grade, according to Ms. Bauer.
So, should my son be moving on or not? I think I'm actually just leveling the playing field so he's even with the auditory learners by allowing him to look over my shoulder while I'm reading the text. It's not like he's getting any more time with the text than they are--his reading skill is approximately equal with my reading-out-loud skill, at the moment. I know, I know, being able to learn by hearing is an important life skill--but that's not the one these lessons claim to be teaching. They claim to be teaching composition. What do you think?
(I must admit, the replies in that earlier thread I linked really, really irked me. Keeping a thought in your head is a very different skill than being able to follow a long sentence someone else is saying. I never did dictation growing up in my life, and I managed to maintain a high enough GPA in a writing-intensive major--English--to graduate cum laude. As for dictation, why not have the student read the sentence to you the first time? That would help put it in the head of the visual learner. Then he can work on keeping it there, just like the auditory learners have to. What to do for those poor kinesthetics, I have no idea.)
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I would agree with the recommendation for Artistic Pursuits. It's very much about exposure to famous artists and artwork (of many different kinds), talking about what makes an artist and the basic building blocks of art (line, shape, color, etc.), and about letting kids "play" with various media. For a child like your daughter, it could be very nurturing without stifling anything.
My son hates it. I have to drag him into lessons, even with the watercolor crayons (which are his favorite medium so far). I got Draw Write Now, with its step-by-step art instruction, and he has loved it. Some of us need a base for our creativity to build on, that's all. (My best artwork has been cross-stitch, which is such paint-by-number "art" that it's completely ridiculous. Still, I can feel proud of having made it myself!)
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This may not count, but what came in my mind was The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. It may be a murder mystery but her books are hardly gory. The main problem would be (spoiler alert!!) that while it is narrated by the murderer, you don't know that until the end of the book (true Agatha Christie style), so it may not work for what you're looking for. I believe it is the only of her books like that.
See, that's why I didn't give the title of either one of hers that I was thinking of! (Well, plus, I can't remember one of the titles. :p) If you start out knowing the story is from the murderer's point of view, it actually ruins the way the text is supposed to work. Of course, that doesn't mean they don't have rereading potential, but it's like telling people about "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane. It doesn't really help this discussion much anyhow, because it's not like the narrator is presenting himself as the antagonist.
I could make an argument that Julius Caesar's main character is Brutus, who is the person who works against the protagonist, Caesar, which is the definition of antagonist I'm more familiar with. Similarly, the movie The Fugitive spends equal amounts of time on Dr. Richard Kimble and the team of U. S. Marshalls led by Sam Gerard, who is his main antagonist, although definitely not the villain.
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You are the first person that I've heard say you hated it and you still do...I dont' want that to be my kids, but how do you discern the difference between true dislike and laziness?
Alison
I can't answer that question, but I can tell you when it was cemented in my head that we better keep on with my son's piano lessons. It was when he played the simple version of "Ode to Joy" for what felt like the millionth time. And then did it without the sheet music, showing off to my parents. All completely unprompted. Sometimes he drags his feet, or hates a particular piece, but my son usually enjoys a piece once he's learned it.
I did have to prompt him more to practice when he was starting out, but I only made it so that he had to play through two (fairly short) songs, or something like that, before he was allowed to go do something else--I never made it time based. I have horrific memories of sitting down at the piano and staring longingly at the clock, because my grandma insisted I had to practice for an hour a day--when my only piece of music was a Schaum number that consisted of one note played by the right hand for three-quarters of the song!
I also don't restrict him from playing old pieces whenever he wants to. He still plays Ode to Joy occasionally, and I have gotten so sick of Boombiyada, or however it's spelled. However, I don't have younger siblings competing with him for time on the piano, or getting distracted from their studies by his playing, since his next oldest sibling is three and a half. (He's also very left-handed, so if he plays an instrument, it's certainly not going to be the piano!)
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And Schoolhouse Rock is available on CD. You can listen to it on long car trips (a trip into town qualifies as "long" around here) or put the kids to bed with it (we put our kids to bed with music all the time), and it'll cement those songs into their memory.
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I can't think of any for kids except The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.
For an older crowd, you could argue that C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces is exactly that.
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I had forgotten about Biblioplan. Why do you think it's less useful for those with one? It might be the ticket for me, since the planning is done & I can decide which books to use or not use. Since money is an issue as well.
Well, you don't have to worry about coordinating several children together, which is supposed to be one of the strengths of Biblioplan and makes it cheaper per child, is all I'm saying. Then again, you could use it as a base for when he swings around again in high school, if you decide to do that.
As for cheaper, have you checked out All Through the Ages? It is a bibliography (with quite a few annotations) of books from several major homeschool catalogs (such as Beautiful Feet, Sonlight, and Veritas Press). It categorizes them by time period or geographical location and reading level. Check out the free samples at the website. The e-book version is only $20.00 (which, I know, is more money...), but it might make finding the right level reader for a particular period at your local library easier. (It also tells you what list each book came from, so you know where to get it if you do decide to purchase.)
A classical curriculum set up like SL would be so nice.So, a curriculum that does the four-year historical cycle with a Christian/missionary emphasis, provides everything, and plans it out for you on the calendar? Are those the parts you like?
If so, I agree with you. I'd like to add that it specifically lines up those four-year cycles so that you can take several kids through at once. But I don't want to pay two hundred or so dollars to Tapestries of Grace! (Anyhow, Tapestries of Grace is far too intimidating for me. I'd feel like I was constantly "behind" somehow, or get lazy and do the bare minimum. I need accountability, too, I guess.)
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The first ever Bill Nye episode featured the principles of flight. You could see if you could find that one (hint: it does seem to be available online for free, although I'm not about to speculate as to how legally).
Janice Van Cleave also demonstrates some of the science behind airplanes, and invites your child to try for himself. (Honestly, I didn't actually watch the video, but it looks like that's what it's supposed to do.)
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Well, that is a stumper. Here's a unit study on airplanes, including "aerodynamic forces" from Hands of a Child through Currclick for 2nd to 7th grade, though. Maybe it'll help?
Meanwhile, have fun cutting out and putting together a free biplane from The Toymaker.
Both these resources were found through Homeschool Share's page on The Glorious Flight.
Edited to say: Oh, and welcome to The Well-Trained Mind! I finally registered a few weeks ago just so that I could post a response to someone who was having trouble getting to a particular page using Linux instead of Window, to say that I could do it on my Ubuntu. Apparently, it was like an alcoholic having "just one drink" (or me having "just one cookie") because I've moved up to "Worker Bee" status awfully quickly!
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There are several book series that are based on popular songs (as opposed to made up songs that are ridiculous). For instance, the series Faber Piano Adventures has supplemental books of songs at various piano levels in the popular, favorites, kids' songs, classics, jazz & blues, rock 'n roll, ragtime & marches, hymns, Christmas, and Jewish genres.
That's the series my son's piano teacher uses, and my son loves it! In fact, he is playing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" at a recital tonight. It's head and shoulders above the Schaum books I used growing up, with their endless "exercises" and oddly dissonant songs (even when you were playing them right). You get a children's version of "Ode to Joy" by the end of the first book. Plus, its theory is far, far beyond everything I ever learned--by the second set of books! (In fact, my son is working "behind" on the theory in the separate Theory Book, since he's only seven and we don't want to frustrate him. He's really learning his scales, though.)
Which doesn't actually answer your question at all, but I couldn't resist a quick plug for this product.
Edited to say: And, by learning his scales, I did not mean practicing boring scale exercises, I meant learning his KEYS, like "G major," and the usual chords (I, IV, and V7), and so forth. He can easily transpose from C to G and vice versa, now. (Which, admittedly, is apparently not all that hard. I never learned to do it, though.
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Wow, there aren't even reviews at homeschoolreviews.com.
Here's a very, very lengthy and enthusiastic blog post by someone else who was also somewhat stymied by the lack of information on the website and reviews elsewhere. It even includes an interview with the blogger's daughter, who was the student using it. It also has excerpts from and links to other reviews. It might help you make your decision.
(And at least you got a response on this thread, right?)
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Thank you for all your replies, so far! I admit that the reason I'm attracted to AAR for dd is that it is all planned out. I'm having a baby in September and I think having something fun I can do with just her that is all laid out for me would keep her from feeling lost in the shuffle. I've looked at other "K" programs and by the time I bought all of the required books (I don't want to have to rely on the library too much), it seems to be even more than AAR. And from what I've read, AAR is more than just learning letter sounds.
I do realize I "could" put all this together myself with cheap/free resources, but I honestly don't know if I want to. :tongue_smilie:But, still... it's a lot of money!
That's why I directed you to those couple of sites; they both do a pretty thorough job of the planning. On the other hand, there's so much *work* involved in them! To be fair, that's probably an issue for the AAR prereading stuff, too. As I said before, I have trouble enough with my three kids that I keep sending my preschoolers off to the local preschool several mornings a week just for the breathing room! (Or maybe it's just that I'm lazy. 3-4 is a very difficult age, but you've already gotten past that with your daughter.)
And afa AAS goes, I've specifically had it recommended to me for my ds in another thread. :confused: I was not taught with phonics, so I need a lot of hand-holding when it comes to teaching it. Plus, I expect I'll be using it with dd soon, too, especially if we continue with the AAR program (oh how I wish I could see level 1... I think that would make this decision much easier!).
Decisions, decisions....
I do have Level 1, and I think it does plenty of hand-holding. That's part of why I like it, too!
Hey, I'm the one that picked Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons because it was cheap, it holds your hand every step of the way... and I had literally checked it out for free from the library to see what it involved.
Mystery of History & Story of the World
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I own neither resource (yet), so I can only tell you what I've heard.
The major strength of The Mystery of History series, from what I can tell, is that it is explicitly and blatantly Christian. It places Christ at the center of history, and includes the events narrated in the Old Testament to a much larger extent than The Story of the World does. However, The Story of the World is not anti-Christian at all, from what I've read of it.
Also, The Mystery of History apparently schedules things out somewhat, including projects and suggesting additional readings much like the Activity Books do for The Story of the World. Some people really prefer what they find in The Mystery of History in this respect, for various reasons.
Other strengths and weaknesses, I'm sure you'll be able to hear from those that actually own the resources.