Cottonwood
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Posts posted by Cottonwood
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You can love them both. I "assigned" A Knight's Tale, too. I just have to keep my finger on the "skip" button at one (or two) part(s) since I have young kids. My oldest has several movies assigned this year for history (El Cid, Henry V, A Lion in Winter (not for youngsters!), etc.). We even built in our Figuratively Speaking topic for this week (conflict) when we discussed the movie. :thumbup1:
A Knight's Tale...forgot about that one! And I thought of First Knight! Good idea..finger on the remote for both...
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Besides everyday real life teaching, I also purchased this curriculum. My kids really enjoyed it and we had some great discussions while we were going through it.
We are huge Weston Price fans. Thank you for this.
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I do this without curriculum by having the kids help me plant the garden, harvest it, cook it, go to the organic farm outside of town and work, going to our pig farmer's place and feeding our spring pig, going to our egg lady's house and gathering the grass fed eggs, farmer's market and explaining why we choose the venders we do, etc etc etc. And yes, it comes together the best in the kitchen. Mine are 11 and 13 and they prepare smaller parts of the meal using our carefully chosen farm/garden foods. We do all this dropping bits of info as we go. We've also watched the foodie documentaries like Food, Inc, Food Matters, King Corn, etc.. I guess all in all, it's a lifestyle as opposed to anything else.
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I'm not sure when they went free since I just 'found' it today. I read on a review site they used to charge.
OH Everafter! I thought about that for our middle ages studies since it's one of my favorite movies of all times, but thought Robin HOod might tie in better. Maybe we'll watch both LOL
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I just read about teachwithmovies.org and thought I"d share. It used to be a subscription site but is now FREE! I can't get over the way it builds a lesson around the movie you choose. DD13 is just finishing Ancient Greek studies so I clicked on The Odyssey. There is so much information there..way more than I'd use while teaching her. I love the page that gives me all sorts of writing ideas for fiction movies that includes prompts and suggestions for writing the paper ..http://teachwithmovies.org/standard-assignments.htm
There is generally a worksheet per movie with questions to think about, morality, ethics, etc etc. It gives the rating of the movie, reason for the rating, other generalities about it, links to other sites that are beneficial for that subject..On the front page of the site there are tabs that categorize the worksheets, AGE, subject type, on and on! I am so excited about this resource.
I clicked on Age 13 and found some good suggestions, clicked on the 1938 version of The Adventures of Robin Hood (as we head into medieval and middles ages) and that page has ALL kinds of references to helpful sites to discuss the story, what was going on in the world at the time of the writing of the story and why it was relevant, lots and lots of background. I like the discussion prompts too. I rarely, if ever add movies to the curriculum here, but will do it if it's entirely teachable and relevant. With all of the resources on this site, THIS is how I'd work a movie into a school day!
It refers you to Amazon to find the movie most of the time, but I have found several on YouTube in their entirety and a few at my local library in an online search.
Can you tell I'm excited? LOL
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Thank you so much, ladies! With this list she should stay pretty busy!
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DD is studying this time period and aside from the literature she will be using to study the period, I wanted her to do some 'fun' reading from these times, too. If you could suggest one or two book from these times, what would it be? She is 13 and reads at an 11th gr level, if that helps.
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What about Snap Circuits? They are always fun. There's videos on Youtube about them too.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=snap+circuits
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Thanks for all the suggestions, ladies. I'm digging into them now.
Check out this periodic table I found. I love how certain elements are highlighted when they correspond to some of the tabs or other info on the page.
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oh, and how long would you expect to teach the periodic table?
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ok, thank you very much, ladies!
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Doing some planning and gathering periodic table resources to teach my 8th grader before we start on other chemistry related content. Do you have favorite places to go for this?
Also, I am trying to decide how long to spend on this. I don't want to belabor it but I don't want to rush through it either. Should I cover 3 elements a day..?? 2, 1, 10? lol
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Well now I'm confused because in the Teacher's Guide, for instance, in week 1, it shows that lessons 1-4 would be covered. So I figured that's loosely 1 a day if you follow their suggested schedule. I also see that by the end of the 'try it before you buy it', they have offered you up through lesson 13, which should complete week 4 according to the lesson sheet. I think we would just work on our chosen history schedule for the week and check the boxes as we go ignoring which week they say we should be on. For 99 lessons, I plan to cover 50 the first year and am hoping that's a reasonable expectation.
And, as for the LA portion, just in the 13 lessons they allow you to preview, there sure are a ton of essays and summaries. I guess we'll just pick through those types of assignments based on our LA load for that week. We'll still analyze the material, but discuss instead doing the writing. Just thinking out loud here I guess..
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To those who have used History Odyssey, Level Two (we are looking at the Modern Times one), after taking a deep look at the try it before you buy it portion, I was wondering what your opinion was on a couple of questions.
Is this a good stand alone language arts program? If not, what would you add to it to complete 7th or 8th grade LA?
Our current LA program is literature driven and very full/rigorous. Not sure if HO's LA content would be redundant ...especially since it is also literature driven. Too much literature? I see that within just a FEW lessons, you would be through an entire novel.
We plan to do History only twice a week, which would mean this would be a 2 yr course for us. Is that too light? I plan to add analytical content to the lessons from Critical Thinking Press. I don't mind this being a 2 yr deal for us timewise, and since they'd roll right into HIgh School right about that time, I feel like they can go right into the Ancients.
In the very first lesson, I see they are to read 8 chapters of the novel. That sounds like a TON of reading all at once?
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Does anyone else teach the exact same level of a subject to one or more of your children...and if so, do you have trouble with both needing some of the materials at the same time? We are going be making this change soon and I foresee the kids bumping into each other when needing the literature and maybe the textbook in that subject. Thinking about staggering which day of the week ea is assigned the work, like have DS do his history on Tuesday, DD doing hers on Wed, using Thursday for discussions...etc? This sort of defeats my purpose of 'combining' history with both. Maybe not though..anyway, ...any other suggestions?
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I could see that working here if we still did the reading for these subjects daily and took the one day to do the rest of the work (mapping, worksheets, experiments, etc) on the one day. Wondering tho how the info retention would be from one day to the next, to the day the actual work needed to be done. Guess it's worth a try, thanks for the suggestion!
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I was also going to suggest the Diva cup. If insertion is the issue, I'm not sure how else she'd get around it.
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This is what I was leaning towards as well. Some of our history for next year? AND language arts both call for research papers and I was going to combine them into one..say, a research paper based on history done with the guidance of the language arts program.
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How many research papers would be a good amount for a 7th and 8th grader per year? Complete with thesis questions, bibliographies, the whole nine yards?
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I just scanned the Level 2 Modern Times and both kids (6th and 7th grader currently) have experience in all of the writing assignments I could preview. They don't love it, but they've done it. THe only skill we need more practice in is the level of outlining required. What I like about it is that it gathers sources, suggestions and info FOR me. I thought with just the KFH I might have to gather all of this and feel my way through..but not if I can get a program like this as a guide. I might actually use only portions and not stick to the lessons strictly. I don't mind heavy tweaking LOL.
I did a quick search for the required reading books and found all but 2 at our library. I intend on teaching both kids history at the same time so it might get tricky as to who is reading what in the course that day and both needing it at once. BUT I can see where I would be tweaking so far. Their language arts lessons are going to be a bit writing intensive and it is live book/literature based too, so I think I can combine some of this work.
Thanks again, ladies.
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One question, RootAnn, one purchased course is one year's worth? For instance, Modern Times, Level Two = one year?
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Great, thanks a lot! I'll check it out.
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Thank you very much! I will dig into your blog posts and suggestions.
We will be doing US History. I agree that we should spend time analyzing history in this stage, so I had ordered this book, as strongly suggested in TWTM, Colonies to Constitution. Critical Thinking Into US History, Book 1 ... to start and will add the next books as needed. Have you used/seen it? I haven't received it yet, but would this be to help us analyze as you recommend? That was my intent when ordering.
I have incorporated several methods of TWTM into my current 'social studies' curriculum, including a wall timeline, but now halfway through the year, it is so full and quite unsightly LOL so I am very interested in reading about your binder timeline. Interestingly, our current social studies curr sent all of the binder separations for a binder timeline through this year and I opted for the wall, now wishing we would have kept the binder idea instead.
Shooting you a PM!
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MBTP is a VERY good curriculum. We are using the 11-13 set (all subjects offered). Even at this age, I seem to be pretty involved in most of it. It is written to the student. I think it is more parent intensive at the 8 yr old level for sure. How much so? I'm not sure. There is a MBTP facebook group called Differently Schooled using Moving Beyond the Page where all of your questions should be fully answered before purchasing. It's a very active group and plenty are using the age groups you'd be going into.
4 days a week?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
I HS my DD13 this year (currently a 5 day a week schedule) but will also be Hs'ing my DS11 next yr. We want to try a 4 day a week schedule next year. I'm thinking of starting mid-July on a two day a week schedule, August a 3 day a week schedule, and from Sept on through May, 4 days a week. Taking off a few days in Nov, a week (or so) off in Dec, a week in April and being done late May or so. Of course, there will be unscheduled days needed off here and there.
If you do a 4 day a week schedule, how do arrange it? Any advice? Does that sound reasonable?