2_girls_mommy
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Posts posted by 2_girls_mommy
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My family did have all of these traditions, so I will say, lots of this is intuitive to me. But one thing I've always done since the kids were little was get library books on everything. Children's books for the seasons will contain craft ideas, bits of history that you can then check out MORE library books about, etc. I have a subscription to Schoolhouseteachers.com which is also fantastic for this kind of thing. Besides whole curriculum or individual classes, they have a seasonal section with unit studies and resources for everything under the sun, down to some that are just lists of great books to check out from the library. If that's not feasible, I often just Google children's lessons about... And come up with ideas for most things. Sorry I'm not very specific. But the library and internet have been my main go tod until the last few years when I joined SHT, and they've always worked for me. Oh, and library classes. Ours has kids classes and storytimes that will often do activities around the seasons too. Their take home kits for each month during Covid in lieu of live classes had a lesson including STEM ideas, but always around the holidays for the month.
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On 3/19/2022 at 7:17 PM, Quarter Note said:
Oh, I haven't seen those before. I'll look into them. Thank you!
There's not any instruction, but they are creative, fun books that kids can work through on their own. You can set up guidelines for which books and videos to use and set up some time requirements or whatever. You can also just set them loose and say get this many pages done and just follow the directions on each page and see what happens. There is a lot of ways you can use them. I have girls, and they appeal to them. I am not sure about for boys because I don't have any, lol.
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1 hour ago, Quarter Note said:
Oh, I love this idea! My 5th grader would probably research WWII jet fighters, but if it kept him busy and got him writing, I'd happy to listen to anything he had to say. Thank you! (Between you and me, though, I'd probably rather listen to reports on animals!)
If you haven't seen them before, Funschool Journals from Thinking Tree are fun for guiding kids through some schooly subjects and getting them to do some writing and research on their own.
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Drawing with Children is good.
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I would restart First Form. It's not rigorous at all, but will give a good base for going forward into high school and the next levels.
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I don't think it looks bad at all to have done 3-4 years of something and then not continue. Look at it the other way: it looks good that they did 3-4 years of one activity. Life situations change. Opportunities change. Interests change. And as PP said, senior year is very busy. People understand that.
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I haven't looked at the IEW besides in passing, and we never actually got beyond WWS1, and then one of mine did the New Oxford Guide after WWS 1 (along with writing across the curriculum as in WTM like the summaries, history in context papers, outlining, etc.) She took a college concurrent enrollment writing class her senior year and made president's honor roll, so I think at least your 2nd path is enough, even if you don't do it all. I am sure if the IEW is written for high school it is good too. I have always found his workshops to be highly helpful, but haven't ever actually bought his products. ETA... I have actually bought the spelling which my student with spelling difficulties is using as review. I meant I haven't purchased the writing, though I have drooled over them.
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Apologia is not my favorite, but it is what all of the co-ops my kids were in during elementary school always used. There was no problem doing hands on. It has been awhile since I have looked at it. But maybe they got extra activity ideas from the additional notebooks that go along with them? We even checked out an incubator from the local agriculture extension center and hatched eggs that year for co-op the year we did Flying Creatures.
I think we also would watch some videos that we would just google online (before the class and download,) of animals that were mentioned in the chapter they were supposed to have read. We did so much hands on in every class, I know that. But like I said we may have gotten extra activities from the notebooks or maybe even just found some on our own to supplement. It has been awhile. But if you like the Apologia, I would think it is easy enough to find ideas on any basic elementary topic to add to the book's suggested ones if needed. (or pick up any other book of experiments for kids, like a Janice VanCleeve on the topic.)
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On 3/6/2022 at 1:45 PM, Jean in Newcastle said:
I guess that I'm too late to the party, but I will give a couple of cents worth of thoughts anyway. I always thought that the point of narration in a Charlotte Mason type education is a form of letting kids "be the teacher" in the sense of demonstrating what they know verbally or in written form. And as they get older it also works on their organizational skills as they have to organize their material in a coherent whole. But this is not formal "teaching" and isn't new material. (Though I suppose kids do presentations on new material that they've researched on occasion too.)
I agree with you here. Most of us are doing these type of assignments (narrations, presentations when appropriate, discussion, written papers that demonstrate knowledge) pretty regularly. I wasn't seeing anything novel except the offer to pay the student, which I think we all thought was... interesting. My senior gets a weekly email reminder every Monday from Mrdmath for the math class she's enrolled in to do a student check-in, which basically tells her to spend today's lesson time teaching her homeschool parent the current lesson. Since I'm not involved daily in her math lessons since it's an online class, these do kind of serve as her "teaching" me, informally. Really they're just more of a time for me to see how much she's understanding of her current lessons, a time for me to plug into her class and see how I can help or how she's progressing. So, teaching mom isn't a new idea to me. I was trying to grasp what was new about the idea.
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What about following the WTM example? We did for a few of the high school years as written in the high school section. It takes a little planning on your part, but it's not too hard.
Read a core history text, outline, do a timeline- color coordinated if you're really on the ball, a map book, then tie lit in by choosing books and poetry from the given lists, doing research on context before each lit selection is started and then a summary paper or project at the end of each, using the Well Educated Mind, an encyclopedia, and the World timeline book to help. I really loved the years we did it this way.
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Rod and Staff as a daily curriculum. I'm using the Everything You Need to Know to Ace English Grammar for middle school book as a review with my senior right now. It is a good reference to have as well.
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I am going to second the suggestion of reading The Well Trained Mind and starting there if you haven't yet. Then learn to put together your own curriculum. There is a Debra Bell book on Homeschooling Teens that is also good for helping do this in the teen years. I am sure she has materials for younger grades too, but can't say for sure because that is the one that I have and have read. But I know there is Homeschooling Year by Year by Rebecca Rupp for all grades that is a simpler to read yet similar set up to The Well Trained Mind. There is Charlotte Mason style Ambleside Online that has a schedule and free curriculum. There are all kinds of ways to put together your own full curriculum without just ordering from a homeschool publisher.
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Of the ones listed I think Berean Builders is the closest. It follows a chronological approach vs a topical approach like Apologia. It is so much more interesting and less wordy than Apologia which takes any topic in the junior series and drags it out into WAY too much reading. (We found the year that we did Apologia Flying Creatures that we could check out interesting library picture books that were so much shorter and more interesting on the topics and then use them to do the activities and do most of the questions. It was so long and dry. But with the Berean Builders it has short readings, easy to do experiments, and a couple of notebooking prompts for each section. Super simple to do. I will say that we never used the Science in the Beginning one in the series that somebody above said was boring, so it might not be as good as the one we used (Science in the Age of Explorers.)
The next closest thing others on here have suggested that are simliar are the Tiner books. We read these aloud throughout upper elem. school into early high school with whatever branch of science we were covering. I never did them as science alone as they don't have much as far as science content, but are mostly history of science. For high school we switched to the Story of Western Science to read alongside science for scientific history.
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13 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:
4. People will offer sympathy and make vague offers of help. Try to pin some of those down---"let me know if I can ever do something for you"--should get turned into, "Honestly, we could use some help with meals" or "I'm worried about how I'm going to keep up with keeping the bathrooms clean" with people who are your true, good friends. Give specifics, and you're more likely to get the support you're going to need.
Hugs, and best wishes.
This is good and specific! Yes, for us, when people offered meals, I said what I really needed was rides for my high schooler that was going to be home alone a lot and couldn't drive. She could stay home and work on her classes and make her own meals. So my church set up a schedule for driving her back and forth to her dance classes for two weeks and a co-op leader picked her up for co-op to keep her life a little more consistent.
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Yes, we have had a year like this this year too. My ydd got a diagnosis in Nov and then had a major surgery 3 weeks later, had a recovery set back in January and was hospitalized again for a few days then, and has had doctor appointments and recovery issues non stop since. This is just our life right now.
In our case we had a strong first semester in everything before her diagnosis in Nov. She had had most of her appointments before that in the summer and not during school thankfully. We had a short week between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but productive- she won a science fair and did a talent show performance which is bittersweet because she has had to drop all sports and physical activity since surgery. I am so glad she got to do the performance that week. Of course, the week in the hospital after surgery we did no school. Then the next week at home in bed I did what I could. She was in bed, but she did crafts daily, I read a chapter book and a history chapter to her that week. She got a series of science themed chapter books as a gift that she read that week, and we did history/Bible stuff. For math, we just played gamed and she did activities of her choice in different activity books that people gifted her, and she practiced flashcards a little. AFter that, we continued things like the previous week, but that was the week before Christmas when we were on break officially anyway. I counted her surgery week as school days and excused absences. We just picked back up what we could after Christmas. There are days when we don't get to everything because of dr. appointments or because of pain management. But like PP said, we have kept up reading, LA, and math. We only really took a couple weeks off from reading SOTW. But we maybe did less projects or bookwork with that than we would have for a couple of those weeks. Because mine is little, her academics don't take that much time in a day, so we have been able to keep up. What I can't keep up with are my volunteer positions that I had committed to for the year. I am struggling with one, but doing the best I can and had to let one go that I had committed to for the year.
I have it probably easier than you OP because I am not the one sick. I have had extreme stress and lack of sleep over some of the things we have encountered. On those days, I just do the best we can. There is even one day in her school log that says "no school today. In shock after her dr. appt."
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On 2/19/2022 at 6:49 PM, 8filltheheart said:
I agree 100%. It is one of the reasons I like going through alg twice with progressively harder texts. I have done that with 6 kids who have graduated and my 2 current kids at home. They have all been rock solid in math (even my weaker academic kids)
It is the foundation for every single math and science class going forward.
I haven't done this with more than one text, but have definitely taken math slowly and not tried to rush Alg 1 in 1 year with both of mine so far so as to make sure they got it.
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12 minutes ago, Insertcreativenamehere said:
I'm aiming for just 20th century world history.
QuoteIn that case, you could try using SOTW 4. I used vol. 2 one year for a co-op class. I lectured by using certain chapter, and pulling the sections I wanted to cover the most. Obviously, I couldn't cover all the chapters. But we had a weekly history class and a weekly art class and a once a month special subject class and a once a month field trip around the vol. So each week during history hour we had lecture time with review of the past timeline and peoples and introduced the highlights from the chapter. They had assigned readings from SOTW at home to cover beforehand. In the art period we had an art project based around a project from the A.G. and during the once a month special topic we'd cover a topic like heraldry or knights or castles and do a special project. For the field trips we tried to find related places like visiting a medieval fair.
If I was doing modern history I would do something similar with vol. 4.
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Are you breaking it up into a particular time period or trying to cover all of world history in one year?
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We used Rod and Staff 8th grade math as our PreAlgebra with both of my kids, not a separate pre Alg curriculum, then moved into Alg. 1. with both of mine. It had a couple of chapters labeled PreAlgebra towards the end, but most of the book was just really reviewing fractions and all of arithmetic getting ready for Algebra. It worked ok for us.
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Definitely Writing With Skill. I would look at the Well Trained Mind for some of their secular suggestions for biology if the given ones don't work for you.
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I really like the Thinking Tree Economics journal. You can pair it with any book, course, or video series. It kind of guides the student through the study and gives a few project ideas. We used it for high school.
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Ok, i have a general plan:
Rod and Staff 3rd grade math
Rod and Staff English grade 3 (finish 2nd grade phonics .) Extras: McGuffy's Eclectic 3rd grade reader and Rod and Staff 2nd grade Bible for oral readings.
Rod and Staff Spelling 3rd grade
Story of the World vol. 3 and Activity Guide (after finishing vol. 2 which we won't complete this semester and will finish in the fall more than likely.) I use The Complete Book of MAps and Geography on the days we aren't doing SOTW, so we will continue that.
Science: technically a chemistry year using Adventures with Atoms and Molecules and a Thinking Tree Minecraft science journal. But she will also take whatever classes our co-op offers next year which might include units of other topics. I also got her an Animal themed core Thinking Tree journal which we can pair with any resources like our other books and SOTW materials, but does encourage animal readings, so there will be some of that throughout the year. We will use Magic Schoolbus and other picture books on topics to go along,
Prima Latina I can't believe my baby is ready to start Latin! She has loved a semester of Spanish, so I think she will like it. I may offer this in co-op so she can do it with a group.
Art: I haven't put together a plan yet, but there will be art. It will include artist studies along with our history using the Usborne Introduction to art, drawing using Drawing with Children techniques covered in the past, and lots of other unplanned at this time projects... Plus co-op may have a class. I also will look to see what Schoolhouseteachers has that looks interesting. I often pull a unit study from some of their classes. They have a ton of cool art classes.
Music: I have been using Schoolhouseteachers' music plans from their "grade in a box" curriculum packs. But we are a grade behind. We are finishing up the 1st grade music from them now. So I will probably just use their 2nd grade curric next year. Dd has started some guitar lessons for now too. I have no idea if she will be continuing that into next year, but if so, we will. If not, we might start piano at some point.
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On 2/17/2022 at 5:07 AM, Zenen said:
Thanks Classically Minded !
Since my son has had a fit with The Well Trained Mind , I was interested in what WTM’s mentality would suggest for 1st Grade Science. I tracked down 4 of the 6 books in the post:
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Adventures-Nature-Activities-Children/dp/0876590156
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556523483/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ASZYD5P53U3II&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/Green-Thumbs-Activity-Outdoor-Gardening-ebook/dp/B00DKMOXO4
But am unclear on the ‘First’ Encyclopedias for animals and human anatomy would be.
Kind regards,
- Zenen
I used the Usborne First Encyclopedia of Human Body and Usborne First Encyclopedia of Animals (though the animal one was my least favorite of the first series,) and for later years the Usborne First Encyclopedia of Space and of Earth and so on.
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I used the Form Series starting in 5th grade. I used Latina Christiana for 4th grade. I found these to be semi multisensory if we did the songs, the standing up for recitations and everything during class times. We played games in class time, we made flashcards for every vocab word. We created maps and learned the culture and mythology alongside using the National Latin Exam and the Exploratory Latin Exam syllabi as guidelines of additional thematic vocabulary to learn (so for colors, we created fun art projects labeling the colors and played games like Mother, May I? which got them up and moving. We sang "head, shoulders, knees and toes," to learn body parts in Latin and substituted in all the body parts for fun which again got them up and moving.) These things were in addition to the First Form work, but even using the Form series, if you do the songs and the recitations and the bits of culture included a bit creatively, and play some of the suggested games once a week or so, you get the kids interested and moving.)
Beginner Latin 8th grade
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Same here with the NLEs. Mine got two golds including one perfect paper and a cum laude on levels 1-3. She went through all the Forms then Henle2-3 using the MP guides for Latin 1-4. She was one question away from a cum laude on the Latin IV exam. So they did the trick for us. Her degree in college requires four semesters of Latin. They looked at her test results and only made her do one semester of intermediate Latin, so it saved her some college hours too.