Joshin
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Posts posted by Joshin
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We keep a craft closet with wood, pipecleaners, felt, paper, etc. We have bins full of random wood shapes, clothespins, wheels, etc. My boys have built entire play sets out of these things with the help of glue, felt, pipecleaners, etc.
I taught them to sew with felt. They traced a drawing on two pieces of felt, cut it out, sewed it together and stuffed it to make their own personalized animals.
We did spool knitting last year. They each made super long snakes and knit jump ropes.
Nature crafts like carton bird feeders and pine cone crafts have gone over very well.
We picked up a hand drill (nonpower drill) at a garage sale one year. The drill, a lightweight hammer, screws and nails were used constantly to build simple airplanes and such.
My method of teaching crafts is to do a simple project to show them a technique, then give them some free time with the craft closet. They come up with much better things than I would once they know the basic techniques!
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My 7 year old was a very, very reluctant reader. According to him there was no point, other people could read to him, and he didn't want to. I had to find his motivation (for him it was "you can't work for NASA unless you can read") then I had to get rid of all the fluff. That pretty much meant no curriculum at all. he knew his letter sounds already, so I just threw together a weekly plan of going over each main blend set and the digraphs, one at a time, then we did 10 minutes of activities to practice them. I also spent some time teaching two or three sight words each week. It seemed as he gained confidence in being able to quickly recognize a few words, he was more willing to sound out and try to read other words. Listening to him now you would have no idea that he couldn't read anything five months ago.
It really was the extra stuff in most curricula that was holding him back. By the time they moved on to the next thing, he had forgotten everything from before because of all the extra games, songs, and such thrown in. When presented with the bare bones of "this is how you do it" he was able to progress much easier. I combined my plan with daily reading, but we took turns -- he would read a sentence then I would read the next. This way he didn't lose the thread of the story when he stumbled, which frustrated him and was further taking the fun out of reading.
If you would like, I can PM you the list and curriculum I put together for him. I stopped updating it about halfway through when reading clicked for him, but it has the basics I was doing for each week and a full listing of the phonics blends we were covering.
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My kids are almost six years apart in age, they have vastly different learning styles, and they excel at different subjects. I approach both classically but their curricula has been different, it has to be. I haven't used any of the same core subject curricula with either. Although we use the same science and history spines, DS12 has extra history he does for pure love the subject and so he can go deeper, while DS7 has extra science and math classes he takes for the same reason.
I agree that separate curricula also helps avoid competition. DS7 is rapidly approaching his older brother's skill level in math, and I expect he will move ahead of him in a couple of years. Hopefully using different curriculum will help ease any sting. Heck, they've both already surpassed me!
I'm lucky that there is a large gap between my kids, though. My eldest was moving into mostly independent work when it became time to begin HSing younger, so I never had the stress of trying to teach two that needed all my help at the same time. We planned the age gap for college purposes (hopefully only one in college at a time), but it has paid off in homeschooling, too.
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The entire family does their weekly cleaning chores together on Sunday morning. Daily chores are done at the appropriate time (such as setting the table) or when the person it's assigned to has time that day. Right now my older son has more chores than his younger brother, but I expect that to change in coming years when he has more outside the home responsibilities and possibly a part time job.
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I used copywork with my eldest and it was great for him (although he inherited DH's handwriting, sigh). I am a huge proponent of copywork in general, but with DS7 it's just not a hill to die on. He hated it, I told him why it was useful to do, so he mastered those things independently just so he wouldn't have to do copywork.
We aren't using a writing program this year, but I did look through several (I can't remember them all, but one was Writing Strands) the other day and they all seemed to revolve around those sort of "pretend" prompts. DS12 has used Wordsmith Apprentice and Wordsmith, and they are that way, too. (Especially apprentice!)
I'll have to see if I can get a copy of Bravewriter to check out. Not in the budget to purchase things that we won't use, but it sounds intriguing!
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We clean once weekly on Sundays. My kids are old enough that they share in cleaning -- bathrooms, dusting, wiping down sills etc., vacuuming. I take care of the kitchen and mopping, and DH cleans up the basement living areas. It takes about an hour for all four of us to knock out the 1200 SF upstairs and the 800 SF downstairs. Laundry is also done weekly on Sunday mornings.
I wipe down the kitchen daily, DS12 does the dishes daily, and DS7 clears and wipes down the table each evening. We also put away everything each evening, so my house is never really that dirty. In the summer I usually have to sweep the kitchen daily because we track in a lot from the garden and duck pen outside (back door opens on the kitchen). My house is always neat but it's only really clean on Sundays. My goal is to keep it neat enough I am never embarrassed when unexpected company comes knocking, and so I don't get all twitchy about clutter.
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They usually tell us in our email what is local and what isn't. From my understanding, they try to do local whenever possible, then they go to small farmers (that aren't local), and only as a last resort do they get it from big agribusiness farms. We used to do it weekly a year ago, but last summer we finally got our garden up to size to provide the bulk of our produce needs so we no longer need to buy produce. I still occasionally get an add-on -- my mom still orders BB's so I add it on to her order if something appeals.
Our baskets seem to average about 30 lbs in size, which is an excellent winter deal on produce where I'm at. My sister lives in a different state where BB's are new, and her baskets are smaller. She was told it has to do with the amount of participants. More participants means more money in the collective pool and they get a better deal in the bulk ordering. I think it also has to do with the volunteer sites. We have lots of sites in our area and we have ordered from two different ones. One we always got more produce at, the other (which is no longer in operation) it was obvious the site managers were filling their baskets a bit more than everyone else's.
Also, some weeks just weren't as good. To be expected, I guess! Apples and potatoes figured heavily in our baskets as well, so this upped our basket size. These were almost always local but we are in apple and potato territory.
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Thank you, Farrar! He's already writing strong, properly punctuated sentences, although still with a bit of creative spelling. He attempts paragraphs in his free writing, but they are disjointed at this point. I think we'll continue as we are for the remainder of this school year so he can continue to have fun with writing. Then, we'll tackle paragraphs, topic sentences and supporting sentences next year. If he gets it that well enough, maybe I'll progress to short reports and stories with him.
This child learns just so differently than any other I have encountered. It's as though he uses sheer will to get knowledge into his head, but if he doesn't have an interest nothing sticks. For example, copywork. He hated it with a passion. I finally gave up and told him if he could write neatly and form his letters and space words properly, and punctuate his sentences I'd let him stop. He spent a weekend writing the alphabet over and over, looking at the inside flap of his notebook to verify the letters were shaped correctly. Then on his own, he mastered the cursive letters on the inside of the notebook a few weeks later. I just had to show him how to link the letters. When I asked him why he did it, he answered because he saw those and just knew if he didn't I'd make him do more copywork learning them someday and so he thought he'd just learn them now. It's nice when he takes off on his own, but finding his motivation is my biggest issue with him on some subjects, otherwise the heels dig in and there is no budging him.
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Minivan Mom, this sounds a lot like my son and your method is very similar to what I have done this year. He doesn't mind the process of writing very much anymore, though. It's the instruction method in all these curriculum that really frustrates him. The prompts they use to teach a lesson are too silly or boring. He feels no urge to "pretend he is a reporter" or similar. It's just not how he is wired. Too much fluff, and he shuts down. I need to get right to the meat of the lesson and tailor it to his interests or goals to get him engaged.
I am confident in my ability to teach writing without a curriculum (I'm a professional writer and I have also worked as an editor). I'm just wondering about any guidelines of what is age/ability appropriate for 8 years/3rd grade. DS12 wrote an 7,000 word novel for NaNoWriMo at that age, but I don't think DS7 will be at that stage so my view of what to expect and plan out is a bit skewed by my older son. The main think I am learning here is that my kids are such polar opposites in strengths and weaknesses that I can never reuse the same curriculum or plans for either of them!
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I have a rhythm to my window shopping. I tend to do most of it in September when I second guess everything we're using, although I rarely buy then. Then in January it starts up in earnest as I start planning for next year. My main downfall is a local thrift store where it seems every homeschooling family in a tri-state area must unload their old curriculum. Each time I go in there I walk out with stuff. Fortunately, their books are mainly priced under a $1!
As for printing, print on demand is one of my favorite things! Staples, Kinko's, Officemax -- they all do it. As soon as I download a PDF curriculum that's more than 25 pages long I load that file into my copy shop's print on demand and pick it up the next day. Most of them will mail it, too. It costs about $5 to do a whole grade's worth of the MEP practice book, and Mr. Q's chem was less than $20 for both student and teacher copy (unbound and in black and white, I used binder's we have lying around).
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I'm wondering, if you were to assemble your own writing program for an 8-year-old/third grader that just began to read fluently, what topics would you cover? I'm putting together curriculum lists for next year, and I am hitting a brick wall with writing for DS7. My older son is a natural writer and we didn't use a curriculum until 5th grade, which didn't hurt him at all (In fact, I don't think he really needs a curriculum now, but he enjoys using them so much). DS7 is the opposite. He's accelerated in math but is a reluctant writer and he's also stubborn. I visited our homeschool book store yesterday and looked over some writing programs, and I can already hear his groans and arguments. I can already tell the WTM recommendations for this level won't fly. It's not that the lessons look too hard, but the topics used to teach the lessons will just bore him to tears and the repetitiveness will frustrate him.
He was also reluctant reader but now he's doing well and enjoying it -- but he only learned after I dropped curriculum and just taught him the phonics rules for each letter/letter combination one at a time. He's a no fluff kind of kid. This year I have just been using a Think! Write! Draw! book and letting him more or less free write. He has capitalization, punctuation and basic sentence construction down pretty well, which is what the lower levels in most curricula seems to focus on anyway.
The writing program I put together for my older at this age is probably a bit advanced for where DS7 is going to be in a few months. We basically just did three units -- poetry, short stories and simple reports/research papers. I could just get a curriculum and make him do it, and he would (although the daily complaining would be loud). Writing just isn't a hill I find worth dying on with this boy, though. So, my plan is to put together our own personalized writing curriculum targeted at his science interests.
We will continue to use FLL for grammar because it's been fairly painless. We also use a separate spelling program which he actually enjoys, because to him spelling is like a puzzle. So this is just writing.
Thanks!
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Washington is easy-peasy, like an above poster stated. There is a college credit minimum required to homeschool that one of the parents has to meet, or you have to take a homeschooling parent class. I've never taken the class, but I hear it is a joke. The yearly testing is also a joke. They will never check up on you or ask for the scores. There is also a homelink program, but that differs by location and school district. Some are run by homeschool parents and work just like a very well organized co-op, while others are managed by the local school district and vary in quality.
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We're not news junkies. I read the headlines each evening to stay aware of what's going on in the world, and then read any stories that warrant my attention. DH is similar. No regular TV or newspapers here. We both follow tech and science news very closely. My older son reads the news online on his own because he likes to keep abreast of things so he can talk with my dad, whom is a total news junkie. My youngest is only interested in science news. We all talk about current events at the dinner table each night, though, so they have a pretty decent exposure to what's going on in the world even if they aren't watching the nightly news.
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We love, love, love the Dorling Kindersley (DK) science encyclopedia! Ours is the 1994 copyright, so I am sure there is a newer version out there. We like everything about it, but my favorite part is every page has a small box in the corner that has cross-reference page numbers for related topics, so it's easy to flip back and forth quickly. My 12 year old has been using it for 6 years and he still gets a ton out of it, and my 7 year old loves it to death. He'll just sit and look through it for fun.
Edit to add: Tons of visuals. DK books are always heavy on visuals, and this is no exception. Every bit of info comes with illustrations, photos or diagrams.
This is the revised version of what we have
I think this is the newest version, but it could be a completely different book.
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Thanks for this thread. :)
I am a non-deist Witch. I'm not Wiccan. I don't believe in any gods/deities and I'm quite firm on that. I believe spirituality and religion are not at all the same thing. I believe that religion is actually counterproductive to spirituality. I try not to influence our son in this regard. I'm not into indoctrinating kids. He sometimes says he believes in a higher power, but then will say he doesn't believe that in a literal sense. He does think upon the issue, and I feel that is a good thing for him to ponder his spirituality on his own.
I am very much like this but Buddhist instead. I am a Zen Buddhist, so there is no need for any of the deity or superstitious beliefs in this sect, in fact they are often looked down upon by other practitioners as illusions from the ego. My flavor of Zen also doesn't go for literal reincarnation. To simplify it (a lot) the basic idea is we reincarnate ourselves many times in our one life, and we can achieve an optimum -- for lack of a better word -- incarnation in this life by meditating and dropping all illusions, while also working to alleviate suffering in the world as best we are able.
Growing up (in Texas, of all places!) I was never really exposed to religion. If people I knew were religious, they kept it to themselves. As an adult, I have formed some very strong opinions. My problems aren't with religion, per se, but more when superstition and belief override sense and truth to the detriment of the whole.
We were studying Galileo yesterday, and there was a quote in the book from Galileo along the lines of if the philosophers and religious leaders of the past knew what we know now, then these things would have been written as truth in the bible and my trial wouldn't be happening. DS12 asked if the bible is ever rewritten to take into account modern findings. When I told him no, not really, he shook his head and said, "Well, that explains a lot. I think I understand why some people act like they do better now."
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If any of you come from a religious background, have you run into family members who are still members of that church insisting that you teach your children about the faith of your childhood? For example, I was raised in the RCC from birth. I knew early on that I was atheist, but was still required to attend the local Catholic school and Mass every Sunday until I was in high school. Now, as parent to three boys, my parents have made some noises about teaching the kids even more about the RCC than we've covered as part of a general study of world religions and tolerance.
My background isn't religious at all, but DH was raised by a pagan mother and his fundamentalist Christian grandparents. He is now an Atheist/Buddhist like me. His grandmother was very excited when we started HSing, but then quickly bummed when he had to tell her no to a bunch of Christian curriculum she wanted to buy us. We live cross country, so it isn't a big thing most of the time. My eldest son identifies as an Agnostic/Buddhist but is sensitive to all beliefs, while my youngest is very anti-religion. We have to coach him before talking to g-grandma so he doesn't say things to upset her (which I sometimes think he does on purpose). I honestly have no experience with any of this from my background, so I'm bad and make DH deal with it most of the time.
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I've always wondered if single parenthood is really that new. Looking back at my own family tree a few generations, and many were raised by single father and mothers. Not because of divorce, but because of death or abandonment. One of my great-grandfathers was widower with young children, the other great-grandmother was widowed young (one died in childbirth, the other from polio). My husband's grandfather was abandoned by his father when he was 13. Dad left five kids and a wife, telling grandpa that he was now old enough to take care of them. His grandmother was raised in an orphanage. War, accidents, disease, birth -- these killed a lot more people in the past. From anecdotal evidence when reading history, being orphaned seemed a lot more common, too. Then we had a golden age of sorts in the middle of the last century with better working conditions, medical care and less childbirth problems so there was a spike in the nuclear family unit. Now it may be on the decline again.
So not a new issue. Just the same old issue but with different causes.
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I have a 6th and 2nd-ish grader. Our schedule since coming back from break:
The following are done daily:
9:30-11:00 - assigned lit reading, writing, grammar, vocab
11:00-noon- Math
noon-12:30ish- lunch
12:30-1:15ish: History
1:15-2:00ish- Science
Only one of these are done, they rotate through different days:
2:00-done- French, art, logic for 6th grader
Programming, art, logic/math/word puzzles
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I think they are useful to some people, not for others. I make outlines daily as a writer, but I know other writers that use other methods for organizing their notes and articles. I didn't learn to outline until high school when I took a class on writing research papers, and it all just clicked. Outlining just works for me.
My oldest son is an outliner, too. It's just the method that works best for him when it comes to organizing his thoughts. My youngest likes post-it notes in manilla folders, or hanging out of a book like flags, for keeping track of his thoughts. He's young, so he may find a different way to organize his thoughts in the future.
My goal is to introduce the boys to several note-taking and thought organization methods so they are equipped to find the way that works best for them when and if they ever need it.
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I gave my oldest a durable book cover for his Boy Scout manual. Inside it holds a notebook and pen, as well as the manual. I made it, but they sell them at our scout shop, too. I knew the hardest part for him would be to take notes and keep track of things at meetings, so I figured that gave him an easy grab-and-go option when running out the door, plus would help protect his manual on campouts.
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Cathmom, after the holidays I try to clear out the things that don't need to be on it anymore. We receive some items for presents. Also, I try to clear out things I no longer want or have purchased elsewhere. We have out-of-town family that shops from us off the wishlist, so I need to keep it up to date :)
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I agree, not all people can use a big list. For my personality it works well, because I have an innate need to keep my thoughts organized and to always feel like I am doing something. I still have some of my notebooks from when I was a child (around 8 years old) and they are filled with lists I was keeping, so I guess I have always been this way! I even kept an inventory of my belongings from about third grade until college! (Yes, I should probably seek professional help :D )
Things I don't include are daily, weekly or monthly things that repeat. For example, I may list "make annual scout plan", but I won't list "organize weekly scout meeting." My list mainly contains long term things, but it also has a few seasonal things on it. For example, I grow a huge garden and planting it always gets done, but I tend to forget to plant garlic in fall. So I always add "plant garlic October" to my list when I start getting the spring seeds started. I scan my big list once a week when I make my weekly list and pull a thing or two off it to get done, so I don't miss these reminders.
A few items currently on my list:
Make sofa/chair covers
V-day gifts for boys/hubby
Reorganize hall closet
Find baskets for linen closet
Order/plant fruit trees
Find a new dentist/make appt *APRIL*
Make hall tree
Rework savings plan
Plan A's bday party *By MARCH 30*
Order curriculum *JUNE*
Clean out Amazon wishlist
The above items I have added since Jan. 1st. If my past rate prevails, I'll have about half of them done in a few months. Things like making slipcovers aren't time sensitive, so it just keeps it fresh in my mind if I see a good deal on upholstery fabric I like. It doesn't really matter if I do it tomorrow or next year, but I don't want to forget about it. Occasionally I see something further back on the list I've decided not to do, so I cross it off.
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I've wondered too! I always guessed it had something to do with the answer to life, the universe, and everything (Hitchhiker's Guide), but maybe she didn't trust the white mice so thought maybe the answer was really 43 and not 42?
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Pinterest is still fairly new, and quite a few adware scammers have targeted it. I've noticed Pinterest has gotten better with catching them, so I'll get a warning when I click on the pin. One trick, look at the URL above the pin before clicking it to go through to the site. You can usually tell if it's a scam url -- it will have a bunch of nonsense numbers and letters instead of a proper name (example: gh67dhjsw. net instead of happyscrapping. com), or the URL will be completely at odds with the pin (freeipadnow .com when the pin is showing a cookie recipe).
Don't click the links in my examples, I just made them up :)
Why do people drink out of Ball jars?
in The Chat Board
Posted
I'm a city girl and was raised a city girl, but my mom was a farm girl and she always saved jam jars to replenish our drinking cup stash. She would sometimes pick out jam from the grocery store solely based upon how pretty the jar was. My mom even poked holes in the lid for straws when we were travelling, which I see is now all the rage on Pinterest! I can and preserve a lot, so we have tons of mason jars. I did pick up some with handles at the thrift shop just because I thought they were cute, though.