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morosophe

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Everything posted by morosophe

  1. WWS (Writing with Skill) hasn't been added to either of the homeschool abbreviation lists yet. Nor has it been covered on this thread, although someone asked about it here. Although I guess it has been now!
  2. For abbreviations and acronyms you don't get, check here and here first. If you can't find it there, (as WWS wasn't--probably because it's still fairly new) ask what it is on this thread. I spent a lot of time on that link when I first started out on these boards. I still have to check it occasionally!
  3. I checked out Cathy Duffy's 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum so many times that I ended up buying my own copy. I think the first few chapters are invaluable for a new homeschooler: she goes through the different "schools" of homeschooling (Charlotte Mason, classical, unit studies, etc.), and different styles of teaching and learning. She manages to keep it comprehensible and simple, though, unlike the loads of homeschooling books I've checked out that I've returned mostly unread. And then, of course, her curriculum reviews can help a homeschooler learn what's out there. The other thing I checked out from my library was Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I ended up buying this program, too. I might make a different choice now, but honestly, it taught my oldest son to read and my second is progressing along pretty swiftly. Since I'm using All About Spelling as my spelling program, I'm not all that worried about them missing out on phonics instruction.
  4. Or, if you want a short but challenging poem to remember fondly for the rest of his life, try Carl Sandburg's "Fog": The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
  5. Wow, I was just about to suggest this, for much the same reasons! Here's another one that you may decide is or is not particularly appropriate for your child: Everybody Says by Dorothy Aldis Everybody says I look just like my mother. Everybody says I'm the image of Aunt Bee. Everybody says My nose is like my father's But I want to look like ME!
  6. Check out Dr. Wright's Kitchen Table Math for loads of helpful games and game suggestions. (Incidentally, he likes Rack-O, too!)
  7. Have you cross-posted this to the Special Needs Board? There might be even more experienced people there that could speak about this! (Certainly far more experienced than I.) Since this is the curriculum board, let's talk about curriculum for a minute. There are two types of "subjects": skills and content. Skills subjects, such as math, reading (i.e., decoding), writing, grammar, and spelling, need to be built up level by level on a strong foundation. (Did I miss any?) These are the subjects are most likely to actually be somewhat useful at a "grade level." Even for these, however, there are a lot of resources that don't teach at a grade level. As mentioned above, Math-U-See goes by letters of the Greek alphabet, and the idea is that each level should be mastered before tackling the next, not that so much should be covered in a year. (This is what I use, as well, although I am sure there are many other math examples out there.) Many people disagree with even touching on grammar beyond the most basic levels until at least junior high. Some people start spelling in first, some in third; some would disagree with me categorizing it as a "skills" subject altogether, since they find it more beneficial to work with the actual words a student misspells than to try to deal with a systematic phonetic or "word family" approach; and, for one example, All About Spelling deals with "levels," not grades, presumably on the same principles as those listed for Math-U-See above. As for reading and writing: according to your post, those seems to lie at the heart of your son's struggles because of his vision, and you are satisfied with what you're using to work on those. I'm certainly not qualified to speak to them! (I'm not even sure I phrased that right at all. I told you I have no experience in these things!) Other subjects--Bible, science, history, literature, vocabulary, art, etc.--are content subjects, and you will find many, many curriculum programs that offer these at a variety of levels. Unit study approaches, classical education approaches, and just plain "mastery" approaches (instead of spiral ones, which will tend to be grade-level-bound) should allow you to teach your son without there being much disparity at all between his "grade level" and his learning materials. You really can focus on, Are you doing the best job you can do?, which is what we all should be worrying about anyhow, right? Plus, you could use some of them for your daughter, as well, particularly if they offer options for, say, writing projects, so that your children wouldn't be directly measuring themselves by each other. (I'm actually pretty sure you knew all this about skills and content, since your post directly addressed grammar and math. Just in case, however, I thought I'd write it out. Maybe, some day in the far distant future, somebody reading the ancient archives could potentially be helped by it. To a much-needed nap, if nothing else.)
  8. Well, there's always the How to Report on Books series, from Evan-Moor. I'm not quite sure what age range you're looking for, since you objected to another resource on the grounds that it's for first to third graders, but this series goes up to sixth grade, at least. It does recommend particular books to introduce a concept, but, from my experiences with the first and second grade level workbook, none of the books is particularly difficult to get from the library, nor particularly hard to replace with anything else appropriate. On the other hand, these are very, very basic, and I don't think they would necessarily cover everything on your list. The fifth- to sixth-grade book does cover setting and symbolism, at least. Or, you could head on over to Susan Wise Bauer's handout from a workshop on this to see what she suggested.
  9. I don't think this is exactly what you're asking for, but Progressive Phonics has ball-and-stick writing activity sheets that go with their little books. You have to register, but it's free.
  10. It looked like Writing Tales had an annual sale every year around the end of April/beginning of May. Despite the fact that I've been frantically checking for the last week, there's been no trace of it. Did I miss the sale, or did they just not have it this year? I am extremely interested, since I think this is what I want to do with my son for third grade. Thanks!
  11. I really can't find daily lesson plans for two-year-olds anywhere. Probably because two year olds have a tendency to break that sort of system, pronto! However, if you really want some guidance to make your own, you can check the forms over at 1+1+1=1 or Homeschool Creations. If you're interested in workboxes as an organizing principle, you could check out SpellOutLoud over at Squidoo. Actually, you might want to check this anyhow, since it has loads of wonderful links, including many I have listed below. Or, you could try a different activity bag (or equivalent) for each day of the week, swapping one or two out per week. Getting a few books out from the library every month or so to supplement wouldn't hurt anything. For activity bags, check out 1+1+1=1's listing, or the one at Homeschool Share. Jenn over at Delicious Ambiguity used to have a really cool list of idea submissions, but her Linky subscription expired, so it's not there any more. You can still see what she's posted herself, though! Similarly, No Time for Flashcards has loads of activities posted. Or, you could pay money for the actual book. My two-year-old's favorite activity involves what I call "puffballs" and your local craft store calls "pom poms." I got a bag of assorted colors in large, grabbed an empty margarine tub, cut circles the size of dimes in the lid, and now my son has fun stuffing the puffballs into the tub. I also have three colored baskets that match some of the pompoms, and he can sort out those three colors into the correct baskets. I guess he could also move onto moving them from bowl to bowl with a plastic spoon, but so far that sounds a little delicate for him. (My son is a typical, meaning "no fine motor skills," boy.) All of this I think I got from Delicious Ambiguity, except for the colored baskets, which came three for a dollar at the dollar store. (It was total Also, more free stuff for when your child reaches three: Bible and Rhyme, from Hubbard's Cupboard. Unlike all my other suggestions, this one actually is a lesson plan. Progressive Phonics
  12. The Cricket in Times Square, by George Selden. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. A Bear Called Paddington, by Michael Bond. The Story of Dr. Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O'Brian. The 101 Dalmatians, by Dodie Smith. The Incredible Journey, by Shelia Burnford. Actually, I'm not sure the animals do talk in either of the latter two of these stories, but they're certainly front and center! (You'll notice the movie versions usually do have them talking.) (Your daughter still seems a little young for Redwall by Brian Jacques, but it's another one to consider, if she's particularly precocious or fond of fantasy.) I hope this gets you started--or, rather, keeps you going for a while.
  13. Isn't it? Absolutely! "Self-help" and "inspirational" books can be horrible this way. Sometimes I've wondered if the original author ever even reread anything, or just typed it out in a NaNoWriMo rush and self-published it. Anytime you can cut verbiage without losing content or emotional appeal, your work is all the better. I certainly can't deny that!
  14. And boy, did you do such a better job editing than I did! I actually have to take a little bit of issue with this, although I love the rest of your list. It all depends upon how something is repetitive. Repetition can be a poetic or rhetorical technique, also known as anaphora; like other poetic techniques, it can be used profitably in prose, as well. In ancient oral cultures, repetition was used a lot for mnemonic reasons, and I don't think anyone can deny that the pieces we have from, say, Homer still qualify as "good" or even "great," by your definition. So, to clarify: it depends why the repetition is there and what effect it has, whether it makes for bad literature. I'll finish with an example of one of the most famous and stirring uses of anaphora in the modern day: "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." (Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, June 4, 1940) (copied straight from http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/anaphora.htm, where the italics were added to highlight the phrase being repeated. The other fascinating thing about this passage is that it's mostly in good, solid, short, if choppy, Anglo-Saxon words; you can almost feel your teeth baring as you speak it. That final phrase, indicating what is being rejected, is of smoothly-flowing French origin. Sorry, the lit major in me comes out sometimes!)
  15. Or here's my much longer version of the already-worked problem. Just in case someone likes to see steps. :p (I actually did this on my notepad, just for fun, and before seeing the answer given above.) 2/3 is 20 more 1/4 2/3 = 8/12; 1/4 = 3/12 So, 2/3-1/4 = 5/12 5/12 of the total is 20 5/12x = 20 5x = 20*12 = 240 x = 240/5 = 48 (As you can see, I wasn't even using a calculator.) To prove it: 2/3 of 48 is 32 1/4 of 48 is 12 2/3 is 20 more than 1/4
  16. :iagree: That last bit (the part you bolded) was tongue-in-cheek. Of course, children need to be taught company manners as well as their school lessons, and that they can't always talk the same way to everyone. That's the more serious take on that quote.
  17. Having finished with Sonlight Cores B and C, I'm going with Biblioplan for the next couple of years. I've got younger kids coming up, and I really don't want to try to coordinate Sonlight cores for them. Plus, I love how Biblioplan gives you choices on spines, so that, when we circle back around, my oldest won't have heard all the reading already. (Although we really did love CHOW!)
  18. As a lit major, I am finding far too many things to say. Since I doubt you really want a ten-page discourse, I'll try to give you my simple answer. Here's what determines whether a piece of literature is "good": What is it communicating, and how well does it communicate it? For nonfiction, this could be, how well does it present its evidence or make its case? For fiction, however, the question usually becomes, how well does the piece draw the reader in? This quickly leads to the question everybody seems to hear when thinking of "good literature": Did you like it? Note that this is not actually the same question. There have been several books that I have *hated* that I have had to concede were "well-written." Often, this has been a problem with the reader (i.e., me); sometimes, it's because the answer to question #1 up there has been unsatisfactory to me. Funny how much easier it is to dislike something when you fundamentally disagree with it, no matter how technically perfect it is. Similarly, guilty pleasures, like, say, most "beach reading"--romance novels; Tom Clancy; Nancy Drew, or Hardy Boys for the kids; the other varied descendants of the "pulp novel"--are not usually considered good, no matter how much they are liked.* However, the definition of an engaging author is that readers are engaged: they want to learn what happens to the characters, or read more about the setting, or enjoy the use of language, etc. And that's usually the kind of thing people discuss when talking about "good literature." Unfortunately, this is also where there's the most disputation: what is liked in literature, or in any art, varies from person to person, as people have been pointing out since the dawn of time. (Do you prefer the proverb, "For each mouth, a different soup," or "A different man, a different taste," or "De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum"?) But when you have found reading something to be a profitable use of your time and agree with it enough that you think others should read it; when you are able to eagerly recommend a book (or poem, or movie, etc.) to a friend with a clear conscience; then, what you are really saying is: This is good literature. I agree with what it says, and I love how it says it. Or, as my lit profs might hunt me up for forgetting if I didn't include: It raises some important questions. It still has me pondering it. (Because otherwise, it could sound like you'd have to fully understand a piece of art to find it "good," and nothing is further from the truth. By the way, this is one of my husband's criteria for good movies: if he dismissed it years ago, but still catches himself occasionally pondering it, it means that it engaged him way more than he had realized.) And when a lot of different people can agree, despite their different tastes, that something is good and should be read by others, that's usually agreed to be as close to an objective opinion as we can get as to how good something is. (Hey, this is where the "beach reading" above falls down: What does your father think of Danielle Steele? Have you ever tried rereading Nancy Drew as an adult? Blech!) And when even more people agree that something is good by liking it over a long period of time, it's even more likely that not only is the piece engaging, it speaks to some fundamental truths (whether asking questions or answering them) of human existence. This is what we refer to as "classics." So, in modern day parlance, if something gets four stars from 450 reviewers on Amazon, and it has loads of editions with copyright dates ranging over decades, it's pretty much a surefire winner. Now, the whole "Good" versus "Great" debate--I'll leave that to others. :p *Note that some items in genres of the type I would consider "beach reading" have managed to appeal to more readers than those of that genre and even stay popular over time, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (a member of the "Gothic Romance" school of pre-pulp fiction) or Raymond Chandler's works.
  19. I know I'm going to get in trouble for this one, but IEW. If you want to know why, see the rant at my blog for why this one "underwhelms" me at first, second, and third glance. Of course, I do not own it, nor have I tried it, which is very much the point of this thread, right?
  20. Well, here's a site that might be helpful: Shakespeare is Elementary. It includes a list of recommended plays, and another one with supplementary materials, along with lots of cool ideas. I have to say, their recommendation to start with A Midsummer Night's Dream makes lots of sense to me. You could also check out Jim Weiss' album, which has A Midsummer Night's Dream and Taming of the Shrew. I can't actually think of any good Shakespeare movies appropriate to children, although you might want to check out the older movies, such as those with Laurence Olivier or Orson Welles. (The website linked above recommends some BBC Productions ones, along with Shakespeare--The Animated Tales.) I love the Henry V and Much Ado directed by Kenneth Branagh, but I don't know that they're particularly appropriate for first- and third-graders. (The links are to the parental advisory pages on IMDB. Frankly, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with my oldest son, in second grade, watching Henry V. Then again, violence doesn't seem to bother him that much, not that I let him watch it beyond Star Wars.) I hope this helps a little.
  21. I've been somewhat interested in Workboxes (or whatever they're called) for a while. When I saw that Joann's had the Iris Scrapbooking Cart on sale for $40.00--well over half off--I couldn't resist getting a couple, particularly when I saw the coupon for free shipping. (You can also check out your local Joann's.) But this sale ends at midnight today, so if anybody else is interested, act quick! NOTE: This cart does not have drawers with pulls; instead, each "drawer" is a separate snap-top (or "snapt-top") box for holding scrapbooking supplies. Still, I think it will work for us.
  22. :iagree:as well. You can also read some of Duffy's curriculum reviews at her site, but not her general introduction to homeschooling styles, which was so very helpful. Secondly, RELAX. All you really need in kindergarten is phonics and some sort of introduction to math, and maybe a little more to get your child into "doing school." Personally, I used Five in a Row (and plan to do so again for my next child); it covers one picture book a week, so you can't exactly call it rigorous! First grade is plenty early to start more systematic schooling. (I also second the advice to start out with an "all-inclusive" homeschooling option in first grade to gain confidence, but Sonlight is my idea of "inclusive," where it clearly isn't for the original poster. Oh, well.) If the idea of using a book-based unit study like Five in a Row for kindergarten appeals to you, you may want to check out Homeschool Share, particularly their Level 2 Unit Studies. Go ahead and check out Homeschool Share anyhow--the Workboxables page may be of interest to your non-oldest child(ren); there's lots of free activities to keep younger ones engaged with minimum supervision from Mom. You could also check out the Tot Books & Tot Packs from 1+1+1=1 for more cool preschooler freebies, and stick around to see what they offer for your kindergartener, as well. By the way, I echo the advice to check things out at curriculum fairs. If you have a local used curriculum store, try going there, too. You could even put your location up on your profile, and maybe get some more useful advice--I can tell you that one of two statewide homeschool conventions is coming up in a week and a half for my state, and that the vendor hall and used curriculum sale are free, but since the chances of you living near Glen Allen, Virginia, are pretty tiny, that's not actually much of a help. Finally, once you are ready to purchase homeschool supplies, check out Amazon (as if you couldn't figure that out yourself). Another extremely helpful seller--if you're in the states, that is--is RainbowResource.com. When you want to buy new, their prices often beat Amazon, and they have free shipping as well, as long as you order $150.00 worth of stuff. (If you can't make that $150.00, just think; you're doing way better at saving money than I ever have! I've easily made that limit every year.)
  23. I'm doing Astronomy with my oldest son, along with the junior notebook, and it's pitched just perfectly for him. We started it halfway through his second grade year, though. I would recommend checking out Pandia Press's science for children with a shorter attention span. We just did the "Try Before You Buy" "Life" and "Earth and Space" for my son in first grade. Then again, I'm not much of a science-lover, so what do I know? I have to say, though, that Science is Simple book really does look good.
  24. Is composition (writing) an important aspect of one or more of those other subjects (such as grammar) for your sixth-grader? That's the only obvious gap I can see. Then again, I was studying to be an English teacher in college, until I decided that I really didn't want to teach. :glare:
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