macmacmoo
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Posts posted by macmacmoo
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On 3/2/2024 at 6:43 PM, AnneGG said:
I’ve used a ton of lit guides. They all had pros and cons, some were more academic and some were more cross curricula/ unit studies. This year, I bought a reading comprehension kit on TPT that can be used with any book. It’s perfect, and no worksheets. It’s all task cards/discussion prompts. I also bought a literary elements pack.
FWIW We have used CLE Reading and I liked it. My son tolerated it.
@AnneGG What is the name of the TPT kit?
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I have four. We have done everyone all together and everyone separate and all the variations in between. Depends on season of life.
the year my husbad was deployed and the kids were 3-12 we did winter promise sea and sky.
We need a “morning basket” we have to have some sort of coming together else the only time anyone talks or interacts with someone else is meals. Sometime our read aloud basket is history driven, or a premade booklist bundle or some years it’s just a collection of books that had a specific kid in mind when I added it to the basket but it’s all beneficial to the everyone else.
I found when comparing schedules it helped to compare when their youngest was the same age as my youngest or their oldest was the same age as my oldest.
so this was when we had a newborn, 3, 6, and 9 and husband was deployed
7:30 nurse
8:00 brush teeth, get dress what up any kid who isn’t awake yet
8:30 breakfast
9:00 morning shuffle: clean off table, bigs empty dishwasher, start load of laundry, sweep kitchen
9:30 baby nap, phonics/handwriting and math with 6 year old, 9 year old educational apps, 3 year old play
10:00 lesson with 9 year old: grammar, math and reading, 9 screen time
11:30 nurse. 12 gets screen time
noon lunch prep
12:30 lunch
1 clean kitchen
1:30 to 3:30 quiet time aka leave mommy alone
3:30 nurse
4:00 kids outside (neighbor kids were home from school. Back when they still came out to play)
5:00 dinner prep6:00 dinner and clean up
7:00 baby bath
7:30 nurse,kids brush teeth and get ready for bed
8 read to 6 year old, check on 12 year old, read to 3 year till he fell asleep
9 shower
this is when eldest was 12 and youngest was 3 and hubby was also deployed
9:00 breakfast
10-1 I worked one on one for an hour three kids on their 3rs or what ever they needed me for. the rest had study hall a menu of independent work they could pick from.
1p—4 prep, lunch, tidy the house
4-6 two hour rotation. I picked four rooms and four activities and they cycle between them. Aka no kid was in the same room as another aka they can’t get in trouble for fighting. (Screen time in tv room, read on their bed, crafts on the kitchen table, movement in the basement) thirty minutes in each room then rotate. Because they all wanted their full 30 mins on screens things ran rather smoothly.
6pm one on one lessons with kid who didn’t get lessons earlier7 dinner
8 one on one fun time with a kid or whole family activity
9:00 sea and sky
10:00 bath, brush, book, bed
both schedules the kids only got thirty minutes of screen in the first it was a reward for finishing their one on one lesson with me and the later was part of their two hour rotation. We have since loosen up on screens and looking back I wish we could have kept it to thirty minutes a day. (Husband is the weakest link lol)
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Here is a frog and toad unit study: https://wilkinsonnest.com/frog---toad.html
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24 minutes ago, kbutton said:
Ages of kids? ages are 6, 9, 12, 15
Coordinated or not? mostly, though their scissor skills aren't the best
More artsy (free form), or more crafty (follow directions for an end result or learn a specific skill like crochet)? a little of both I suppose
I would stock with those factors in mind.
Good tools are nice, and you can always buy the consumable stuff when a specific project comes up if they are more inclined to craft.
If they are inclined to explore and be more free form, half supplies and half tools.
My box would not willingly contain glitter, lol!!! no glitter in the house lol.
If coordination is an issue, I would include more pre-cut items (unless they respond to skill building with these kinds of projects).
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long version: We have too much stuff. But I'm currently in a mindset that I know our time is at a premium and honestly we rarely do arts and crafts. The co-op the kids go to once a week has an hour called flex lab where they rotate through strewing all sorts of craft supplies so i know just because we no longer have it they will still have some level of access to it. Help me pair down what we have.
short version: If you could only have a bankers box worth of craft supplies, what would you fill it with?
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Youngest is 6. I feel like such a slacker with her compared to what I did with the olders.
But life dynamics have changed, not only is she one or four competing for my time I now have a part time job so my time is super limited.
I started her on Phonics Pathways last week, I have explode the code pulled out for her and the All about readers. We worked started through Barefoot Meanderings Handwriting lessons through literature for beginner readers back in the spring but took a break from it during the summer, need to start it up again.
still haven’t decided what I want to do for math. I think because i don’t have much time I want to use my one on one time with her to focus on only math facts. I have the whole math facts that stick series but I’m not sure that’s the route I want to take. She chooses to play prodigy/Boddle as her fun screens so she is getting all the other math stuff presented.
it’s really funny: it was pulling teeth to get the olders to watch letter factory and such when they were younger but she just gobbles it up and asks for more. He favorite show is number blocks. Really wish that had been around for the olders.
she sometimes joins the middles for group read aloud: we are reading through life of fred, American history using the Memoria press simply classical three book list, and the child’s introduction to books.
in the car she gets story of the world and lyrical science.
co-op she is doing a Waldorf numbers class, a science class, and a makers class.
written all out she actually has a pretty well rounded kindergarten lined up. Just need to be consistent with my one on one lessons.
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simplex spelling apps
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1 hour ago, Lori D. said:
Here's one that is very BROAD and GENERAL for the AVERAGE student. Adapt as is needed:
Overview of LA/English Skills by GradeThank you, Lori! That was exactly what I was looking for!
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I'm looking for a road map? checklist? skill tree? for language arts. There are so many pieces to language arts: reading, composition, vocabulary, grammar, it feels like it goes on and on. My husband is getting more involved with our homeschool, and would like a skills tree. Something that spells out all the different parts and the steps that build upon each other needed to learn the skill. I tried searching the forums but didn't have much luck looking for specifically what I was looking for. But i did come across
which I liked how the steps were listed out. If you know of any other threads that listed out skills step by step or know of any resources you could point me in the direction of I would greatly appreciate it.
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I have four kids. I could not do rotate by subject. I need to work with one kid and do all their one on one things, and then move on to the next kid. I call the time I'm working with any kid study hall hours. If it's study hall and they aren't working one on one with me it's basically anything goes as long as it's not fun screens. There is some assigned reading, maybe one or two specific assignments but it has a rather unschool sort of feel.
One on One lessons i have a milk crate for each kid. It's filled with all sorts of things. I have three or four things I hit daily and the rest is what every strikes my mood. A math something, a reading something, a composition something,
Ours day is something like this:
Breakfast and morning chores
an hour with second oldest kid
an hour with second youngest kid
make lunch, eat lunch, clean up (I read from our group read aloud during lunch: currently doing build your library 😎
an hour with youngest
an hour with eldest
clean the house
free time
make dinner, eat dinner, clean up
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I have been partner reading the Magic Tree House books with my eight year old. We enjoyed that it covered all sorts of topics but there was the common thread of kids. He went from really struggling to get through them to being able to read them solo with ease. Is there any other book series that covers different topics with a high reading level for us to partner read?
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I have the elementary one. Most of the entries are secular but you do have some entries that say things like "tell about a Bible verse or passage that comes
to mind when you read this book. Why does it?" or "If you could meet the main character. . . How would you encourage this character’s faith? What would you tell him or her about God?"-
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I personally was disappointed with the ADE templates. It help you create an ideal framework, but there wasn't much support in how to populate the plan. I didn't remember it last night, but between ADE templates and cmplenary.com Charlotte Mason your way, i preferred the Plenary one more.
The challenge is always figuring out how much depth? how much breath? How much time? How often? How much individually? How much as a group? You create this amazing master plan and nothing puzzles into the format you want. you've found the perfect world history but its scheduled to be four days a week and you only have allotted one day a week. So do you then just take all the available resources and puzzle them into something? and back and forth.
I've spent many years and who knows how much money trying to find the perfect solution/ puzzling and have given up. While it's still a chaotic mess, just accepting that it's going to be a chaotic mess nothing is going to line up right, has been rather freeing.
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I have the ADE curriculum templates. They are good if you are a Charlotte Mason purist but we are not. So while I pull them out and play with them each year nothing really plans out from it.
As much as i use the curriculum templates, I also glean a lot of ideas and framework from looking at samples of other Charlotte Mason curriculum schedules. I've learn to look past precisely what they are scheduling and just look at the framework of how much and how often.
I like looking at Barefoot Meanderings samples for their wayfarer curriculum http://barefootmeandering.com/site/wayfarers/ I seek inspiration from it when I'm leaning towards doing more things together as a group.
I like looking at the one week samples from charlottemasonphilippines.com.
My favorite resource is Minimalism Homeschooling with a Charlotte mason Education. I got it off Etsy for $6, but it looks like it's no longer being sold. There's an e-mail address in the file. If you are interested send me a PM and I can give you their e-mail address and hopefully you can buy a copy.
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I work for a Pace provider, basically someone who is allowed to use the Learning RX curriculum without having to be a Learning RX franchise.
We use the Gibson Test as the pre and post assessment, I think the assessments are fairly accurate but I think many kids score lower in auditory processing than they may actually be at. Since it’s a teach to test sort of thing their post test scores are always higher.
I would say what we do is like vision therapy in the sense that most kids don’t need it, but for those who need it, it’s life changing.
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They are doing metronome work at brain training.
they set it to 120 beats per minute and do things based on every other beat… would be the same as working at 60 non but have the extra beat makes it seem faster.
they work at tempo so the coach will say something and expect the answer on the beat, or read a paragraph or down a list kn the beat. If they answer correctly but not on beat they’ll say good but on the beat and repeat till they are on the beat. Staying on beat seems more important than right answers but either way they repeat till it right and flows correctly.
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Eldest will be 15 this fall. He did the Gibson test at a local cognitive brain train center.
working memory - 59 percentile
auditory memory - 21 percentile
visual memory - 99
visual processing - 60
logic-reasoning - 19
processing speed - 1
auditory processing - 27
word attack - 56
We will see how he does with the brain training. But what curriculum recommendations or what to focus on home school wise? We tried lots of things in middle school and I now understand why nothing really worked. My husband works, I work part time in the evening. We have three other kids that I'm also homeschooling. What should I focus my time helping him school wise and what can he do. Input versus output, what would reasonable for a high school course be?
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Eldest will be 15 this fall. He did the Gibson test at a local cognitive brain train center.
working memory - 59 percentile
auditory memory - 21 percentile
visual memory - 99
visual processing - 60
logic-reasoning - 19
processing speed - 1
auditory processing - 27
word attack - 56
We will see how he does with the brain training. But what curriculum recommendations or what to focus on home school wise? We tried lots of things in middle school and I now understand why nothing really worked. My husband works, I work part time in the evening. We have three other kids that I'm also homeschooling. What should I focus my time helping him school wise and what can he do. Input versus output, what would reasonable for a high school course be?
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I’ve got four kids.
we have study hall hours from 9 to 4 with lunch and recess tossed somewhere in there
I spend about an hour with each kid one on one. A little less than a hour for the elementary and a little longer than an hour with my middle and high schooler.
Study hall is basically just no fun screens. They each have a checklist of things I want them to do independently but once those are done they are free to “unschool”
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We were in the beta. We have it and use it. It’s 12 stages. First 5 stages are super duper short with maybe 4 assignments in a level. Stage 6 is when it starts ramping up, it has 37 assignments.
we use the pdf the first year and then bought the hard copies.
using the PDFs help us developed some good habits. I didn’t make my kids hand wrote theirs, they typed. I had the write out the assignment“write 10 sentences in the sentence pattern #11. Write one 1232323 paragraph using at least one sentence pattern #11”
and then underneath that have them write out what a 1232323 paragraph was and then what the sentence variation was so they didn’t have to “flip” through the pdf as much.
I find it dry and forced. But my kids like how straightforward it is.
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I need to put the "read to mom" book on auto pilot. I use to pick out the books making sure they were of interest and of the right level for Thing 1 and Thing 2. But I have really bad decision fatigue right now and the thought of doing that for Thing 3 and 4 seems unlikely. My husband suggested I just have them read what I had the older ones read, but I guess I have amnesia because I can't remember what they read to me.
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1 hour ago, wendyroo said:
My 8th grader is very much a STEM student, but has little interest in biology. For him, my goal is giving him a ton of choice, offering options that are deep and interesting, and making sure to cover the fundamentals of an expected high school bio class.
For the spine of his bio course, I am actually using this Teachers Pay Teachers resource which are General Biology End of Course Review Notes. The goal is for him to have filled in the whole review packet by the end of the year. But how he learns the information is largely up to him. I am requiring him to watch the Crash Course Biology videos and the Great Courses Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: How Life Works (he will also answer all the questions in the Guidebook). He can match up his review pages to the topics in those videos (I think of this as one aspect of the learning) and fill in everything he learns as he watches. He will have to seek out any information he has still not found.
Then, with the required topics and concepts covered, I am giving him a lot of freedom in how he fills the rest of his hours. I am requiring at least 6 labs (and one lab report) - but offering him a lot of options to choose from. I am requiring at least 2 living books - but offering a lot of options (from Build Your Library 10). And he can fill any additional hours with over a dozen other Great Courses series about different aspects of biology.
Bottom line, I don't know exactly what his biology course will end up looking like. He will have definitely covered the basics (many of which he already knows just from years of exposure to science). He will have experience writing a lab report. He will be exposed to interesting science trade books in the hopes that he will keep reading, learning and enjoying science long past his school days. And he will have delved into the aspects of biology that he finds most interesting in case they pique his curiosity and he finds he wants to learn more.
I love this idea. I think it's because it now puts the planning on him, instead of me having to plot out and make sure I included everything.
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1 hour ago, lewelma said:
I can write more later, but from my point of view, output is for skill building not for assessment. So I decided what skills my kids needed to master, had output to match those skills, evaluated them throughout highschool to see if they were learning the skills, and then increased or decreased the output for future classes depending on how well they were learning the skills.
Skills I thought were important (I'm sure I had more but this is what comes to mind). My older wanted to be a mathematician/scientist, my younger had dysgraphia, both of which had a huge impact on output.
Research paper writing/ response papers/ short persuasive pieces etc - My older did about 3 essays per year in total (I divvied them up between his classes), and it was enough. My younger had/has dysgraphia so he and I wrote together for 2.5 hours, 5 days a week, year round for all 4 years of highschool. This created a LOT of output which I distributed across geography, history, development economics, city planning, English, etc.
Time pressured essay test - my older boy did this for 2 weeks in 11th and 2 weeks in 12th grade, for a total of 20ish 1-hour essays for practice and then the exam. My younger could not do this in highschool because of the dysgraphia (he just wasn't ready), so I taught him when he was in his first year of university for about 2 weeks about 2 hours per day (during study leave).
Science Labs - my older did big science fair projects up to 8th grade, so didn't need much in the way of labs even though he wanted to be a scientist. He did one big 2-week long lab in physics and one in biology (30 hours each), 3 all-day chemistry labs (so around 18 hours). I can go into detail on these if you want. I wrote them up carefully in my course descriptions, and no one cared that they were not the USA style of weekly labs. My younger did not need much in the way of labs, so he did a 2 all-day chemistry lab, and that was it. He may regret this as he has 3 big lab classes this year and may have to put in extra work.
Math proofs - Older boy wanted desperately to do math proofs, so I made space in his schedule and he did 2 a week for 4 years (I did consider this writing, which is why he could learn to write well with so little traditional 'essay' work). Younger boy did none because he didn't need them or want to do them.
Memorizing - I had both boys do organic chemistry. If that doesn't teach it, nothing will. lol
This is just an example of how I decided on output. Education for me is about learning, not about assessing or ticking boxes. So I did it my way. So far so good. University for both boys has been a success.
Ruth in NZ
I love this shift in thought on what output can be used for. I look forward to anything additional you add 🙂
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3 hours ago, 8filltheheart said:
In terms of creating your own courses, definitely. I do it all of the time. In terms of output, I want them to remember. So, Cornell type notes from videos or reading is sufficient output on a daily basis for history and some days in science. I teach across curriculum, so writing assignments come from other subjects. So, history essays or science essays are interspersed amg lit essays.
For the Cornell note did they hand write or any use any sort of assistive technology. We are at the point where I'm weighing the note taking option, with lecture/video he is working so hard to take the notes that he isn't able to pay attention to what is being said if that makes any sense.
I need help figuring out 10th grade
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
9th grade was a hot mess
the biggest thing that went wrong was I had an had to pick up an evening part time job and between the four kids there is 10.5 hours of therapies a week between speech and OT and while there is some overlap I’m out of the house shuttling kids here and there.
my last day is may first and some of the kids are graduating some therapies so hopefully that helps but I’m at a loss on what to doing for 10th grade for my eldest.
so a look at 9th grade
Math: we had signed him up for algebra 1 through open tent starting in august. Class was great. Executive function skills was a disaster. Class met Tuesday and Thursday, homework was due Monday and Wednesday nights and it was a real struggle for him to get it done and turned it. We ended up dropping. Switched to Denison algebra. It’s getting done. He is doing well so we will do the next level when he is done with algebra
language arts. I dropped the ball. We started Writing our world which is a high school level curriculum based on writing revolution, but we only got a little bit in.
animation: once a week live on-line class. He spent hours working on the assignments… sort of he spent a lot of time coming up with ideas but then get frustrated he didn’t have enough time to do his idea. Overall he is doing well but he isn’t thrilled to do 2d animation. We found a 3D modeling and animation class for over the summer but beyond that I’m not sure.
information technology: he started the year wanting to make a video game. The class has been very good in helping him figure out what part of video game making he likes. He does not like programming/coding. He really likes doing more the graphics. Pixel art is his love. He want to do level 2 next year.
fall co-op classes
Physics: co-op offered a non calculus based physics class. Labs at co-op and on-line zoom once a week. He dropped the on-line class part and one did the lab class for half the year. While non-calculus his math skills weren’t high enough.
world geography part 1. She assigned enough homework that it could count as a full credit but he only did 50% of the readings
Trojan war through Minecraft. We learned kiddo has a major case of FOMO. The Minecraft server was open for a few hours over the weekend and he would be on there every minute hoping someone else would get on. I did have him listen to the great course series on the Iliad but I don’t think it will count as much of a credit
Spring co-op classes
studio art he is loving this class. He is learning so much.
world geography part 2 once again not doing all the readings.
logic and Sherlock Holmes he listened to a good number of the Sherlock Holmes books.
He was diagnosed with Dyslexia two months ago. A recommendation in the report was to get him use to adaptive technology. Instead of reading books he should listen to them. And use speech to text for writing and use text to speech to help proof read what he wrote. I haven’t quiet figure out how to incorporate this.
he gets really bad anxiety if he feels rushed or lacking in time. He has bad time management.
A part of me want to give him something like Memoria press. A very straightforward do this things and you’re done. But well Memoria press isn’t exactly dyslexia friendly, I’ve got a vague idea how to adapt it but I’m not completely sure.
but something so straightforward feels like it would destroy what little love of learning he has.
But to figure out something that is more hands on or had more videos or audio feel like it would add more time to get stuff done.
when he was tested for dyslexia the lady said he writes nice strong sentences but can’t write a paragraph or essay. Reading is like some weird logic puzzle to him. He knows and understands just enough to answer the comprehension questions but he didn’t get there by reading. He has a strong vocabulary but can’t tell you a definition of a word.
Looking towards 10 grade
math: continue what we are doing
langauge art: grammar and paragraphs and essays and literature but I’m not sure with what
history: American history maybe?
science: no idea
foreign language: sign language???
electives: information technology and what ever co-op classes he signed up for
what curriculum would you recommend for him? We have decided that outsourcing classes at this stage creates more problems than they solve. But with my ADHD I can either plan or I can implement a pre-made plan. Me planning something and then trying to implement it never ends well.
if you made it this far: Thank you for taking the time to read it all.