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rose

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Everything posted by rose

  1. I'm thinking of teaching geography this year without a curriculum but I'm trying to determine what to include and what to hold off on until another year. We also have some serious catch up to do. I was wondering if any of you can point me to a scope and sequence for your geography curriculum so that I might see what others are doing and not have to recreate the wheel.
  2. I'll start with a confession. When my children were younger I basically followed an unschooling pattern. We read books and talked but that was about it. Now I have two 11yos that desperately need to catch up on some core topics. They've got great knowledge in some areas and some dreadful deficits in other areas. Today, at dinner, my husband spontaneously drilled my children on some geography questions. My son answered every question correctly but my daughter flunked. She thought Niger was somewhere near Africa, Thailand was in the continent of China, the main religion of Egypt is Catholic and Israel is in Saudi Arabia. She couldn't name the continents and didn't know that they were different than countries. I feel so bad. So, what would you do to catch up? So much of the basic curriculum/books would be babyish for her. I was thinking of studying a country per week and filling in some blank maps as we go to make our own atlas of sorts. If this sounds decent to you, what should I aim to have them know about the country at the end of the week. There seems like a tremendous amount of knowledge to cover in a week. How would you bring this together if you would even try? Any better ideas?
  3. Ambleside online has some great suggestions here: http://amblesideonline.org/Poets.shtml. A little ways down the page they have a link to what they call "Ambleside online's poetry anthology." It's a txt file of over 200 poems. You could just print that out and look at one every day or so to get some good variety.
  4. My son seems to be helped by a little system that I found when researching learning styles. With each misspelled word I have him make a flash card with an illustration on it that he thinks will aid him in remembering how to spell the word. Somehow the illustration needs to be connected to the word. The more colour there is, the better. These words are then collected until you have some arbitrary number and then you give a spelling test with them. Any missed words get a new illustration. As an example, my son recently misspelled 'faithful' as 'faithfull'. The illustration that he drew was of a baby that we know named Faithful snatching the final 'l' from the word. The final 'l' he coloured a different colour from the rest of the letters. I suspect he'll never add a double 'l' to the end of the suffix -ful again. He likes this method too because he thinks it's fun. Much better than the normal headache that spelling has given us!
  5. Warning, this is harsh review of ACE: I knew a man awhile ago that was "educated" all the way through with ACE and it was shocking to see just how uneducated he really was. What I've noticed from the workbooks is that because they are just so open and go there is really no room for critical thinking. The right answer is there in the reading material so there's no training in challenging the facts or critically examining what you're being fed by the curriculum producers. I suspect that this program is more likely to produce followers that can churn out "correct" answers than people who can problem solve or challenge the status quo in any meaningful way.
  6. I tried doing what you're describing but I found that the lesson plans (especially in Y4) prepare the way for activity pages weeks or months in advance. By the time we reach those worksheets my children become frustrated because they don't have the foundation laid. We're doing Y4 (about lesson 130) at the moment and I'm finding that MANY of the teacher's lessons (about 3 activities/week) are too difficult for my children to figure out on their own (too much algebra) but that the worksheets for very easy for them. It feels like the lesson plan are there for me to walk my children through more challenging concepts so that eventually they'll be able to utilize the concepts on their own. Have you noticed this being a problem with your children? I do skip a lot of the lesson plan though and just try to focus on the lessons that will be a challenge for my children.
  7. One more question: I'm thinking ahead here. I have several littles (I have 2 11yos, a 3yo, a 1yo, a 4mo baby and baby due in 3 days!) that I'm going to be adding to my teaching routine within the next few years. Given how teacher intensive MEP is, how do you manage to have enough time to teach multiple levels at a time? It seems like all I'd ever be doing would be teaching math. :o
  8. How about Paddle to the Sea? You could read the story first and then watch the movie on Youtube.
  9. I'm considering buying SOTW vol 4 but I was wondering what SWB's world view was. Is the book US-centric or politically right-wing or left-wing or slanted in some other way that some families might find troublesom? Does it take sides in the various international conflicts that are undoubtably mentioned (ie. communists were evil, US good, etc.). Are there other potential issues? I tried an inter-library loan for the book but no library in our region (BC, Can) had even one copy. Thanks for your opinions. I just hate spending money only to find that a book won't work for our family.
  10. Three other notes: 1. Don't be tempted to skip the teacher's lessons. It will not work. I've learned this through experience. 2. You can accelerate by simply skipping day 5 or by only assigning half of the drill assignments and some of the teachers' lessons that you think your child would find really easy. You can do two days at a time this way. I'm racing through Y4 with my son at the moment. My dd needs the slower pace though. 3. There's an active yahoogroup that can give lots of help if you're stuck on how to use the program.
  11. I really appreciate the MEP program. We've used it from Y2-Y4 so far. I appreciate how thoroughly it has helped my children understand the underlying concepts rather than just teaching them the alogorithms for computations. The program also emphasizes mental arithmetic. I also appreciate how the lessons aren't too drill heavy. There is drill but the children aren't doing 40 of the same types of questions in a day. There is always variety. Some exercises they hate others they don't mind but none of them are too long. We're Canadian so the metric is a bonus. The UK currency hasn't been a problem at all. I also appreciate how the program always has some good challenges in the teacher's lessons. Not all the pupils are expected to be able to work out the answer to these problems on their own but it provides a challenge and give the children some insight into what's coming ahead. My main complaint is that it's too teacher intensive. I don't see how we could get around it though because you can't teach mental arithmetic with a pencil. :) You can print the two of the teacher's pages per sheet of paper as long as your eye sight isn't too bad. That's saves a lot on toner and paper. I never print the copymasters. I haven't had any trouble printing the pupil pages at 100% on 8.5/11 pages. I just jot the page numbers in on the bottom. That seems to be all that gets cut off.
  12. Non-American focused would be better for us since we're Canadian but we might just have to take what we can get.
  13. I'm looking for a book I could either read-aload or one that I could have my children read that would provide an overview of 20th century history like ww1, ww2, the holocaust, the communist revolution, the cold war, the space race, the civil rights movement, etc. I don't need excruiating detail, just an overview so that when we read other books some of these events aren't foreign or confusing.
  14. We've been using MEP Y4 with two of our children (11yo & 11yo). I really like the program and it's working wonderfully for my son and OK for my daughter. I've recently been considering what is holding up my dd and I think it's that she approachs life and school work from a very intuitive point of view. For example, I tried recently to have her write in point form details that she would like to include in a narration (take 6 points, combine into 3 sentences) but she absolutely couldn't comprehend what I was doing. She's really good at writing, though. She can "feel" what will work well and sound nice. Vocabulary in any subject is a nightmare. Formal grammar is a challenge because of the vocabulary and because it's pieces that fit together into a logical picture BUT she's really good at grammar in her writing. Back to math. Here was a problem that I was walking her through today: "We know that the longer side of a rectangle is 34 cm and that the perimeter of the rectangle is 96 com longer than the shorter side. What is the area of the rectangle?" I had to hand hold her to produce these two equations (call short side a). The variables confused her even though we've worked with them a lot. She kept telling me that if she only knew how long the short side was then she could tell me the perimeter or the area. P=68+a+a and P=a+96 I then walked her through how we could put these two equations together: 68+a+a=a+96 Here's the clincher, as soon as I wrote that down the light when on and she said happily, "I know, I know! The short side is 28cm!" From that she understood exactly how to find the area. It all makes me scratch my head and wonder how she can't produce or manipulate the equations but that the answer can just appear to her. Do you have any suggestions for how I can help her see how to break up a problem into it's logical components or how to understand variables or how equations might be manipulated? Any other thoughts? Even non-math specific exercises that might work the sequential side of her brain could be helpful (you should see how illogically she'll wash dishes!). What do you think?
  15. I'm trying to make a list of public domain school books that I can use for our schooling in general and to draw narration texts from. There are lots that I like in theory but I want a tried and true list. Here are a few that I've really appreciated: The Mother Tongue I The Mother Tongue II The Story Book of Science, Jean Henri Fabre The Wonder Book of Chemistry, Jean Henri Fabre Burgess animal books Anything by Earnest Thompson Seton McGuffey Readers I'll add more as I think of them.
  16. A good dramatized audio bible. When my children were younger they would listen to it for hours while they played. We selectively editted out certain chapters from the playlist (like Sodom and Gommorah or the rape of Dinah from Genesis). They knew that they were editted out and this motivated them to actually learn to read! They know the history books really well now.
  17. My 11yo boy sounds just like your boy. He can't stand purple prose. He'll do exactly the same thing you describe by trying to shorten everything up. I've had some success with having him write on non-fiction topics like, "explain how to cook an egg" or "why x is immoral" or "describe the water cycle." It's a lot harder to chop out important details when you're trying to explain something to another person. It also doesn't seem so pointless to him. I don't know how many times he's said to me, "no one is ever going to read this so what difference does it make?" At least with non-fiction writing I can point out that it's practise for very real writing that he'll certainly need to be able to do as an adult. A friend may ask in an email how to fix a part of his car and he'll need to be able to expain himself sufficiently so that his friend can get the car fixed. My son is convinced that he is going to be a bicycle mechanic but he can see that writing on these sorts of topic are simply something that he does need to learn how to do well.
  18. Have you considered "The Mother Tongue" books by Sarah Louise Arnold? I really appreciate them and just printed out the second volume for our grammar curriculum. Volume 1 is an introduction to language arts and covers basic punctuation, letter writing, picture studies, copywork, poetry. The final section of volume 1 is a light introduction to grammar. Volume 2 is a grammar book and I believe volume 3 covers composition (I might be wrong about this though). I'm going to have to take a close look at some of the other volumes mentioned. I really appreciate vintage curriculum. There's so much less twaddle mixed in.
  19. I haven't read all the responses but I wanted to give you some encouragement. I have two older children that both struggled to learn to read. My son just couldn't sit still enough to concentrate. He learned to read at all when he was seven through 100 Easy Lessons. My daughter REALLY wanted to learn to read "on schedule" but just couldn't figure it all out. I would try teaching her every few month and until we would hit a wall. When she was eight I tried Spell to Read and Write and that's what made it all click for her. I think that it was a combination of age and a very systematic, drill based approach to phonics. Within a year her reading was above grade level. The book "Better Late than Early" helped calm me down whenever my mommy anxiety would creep up. I don't wholesale agree with the authors premise but I think that there is a lot to glean from the book and it's worth remembering that children all develop on their own schedules. We have these expectations that our children need to be reading fluently or at a certain math level by age x when this is really an arbitrary expectation placed on us by our society. One encouragement that I would give you is to make sure that you're doing a lot of read-alouds. I really think that once my daughter figured out the code she was able to jump in her reading level so quickly was that she was so comfortable with the way written language feels and the higher level vocabulary in the older books we tend to read. Be encouraged! You still have years to work with her. :)
  20. We're using WWE3 right now and I've glanced at WWE4 and I'm pretty sure that I couldn't personally do those dictations. As my children narrate for me I have to ask them to repeat themselves. Do any of you share this experience? I feel unfair in asking them to do more than I can handle myself. What do you think?
  21. I think that my children are on lesson six (adverbs) and we're already past my understanding (I had no idea they could modify adjectives or other adverbs). I've been keeping up by doing a little studying online. Does anyone have any favorite resources that they could suggest for an adult crash course in grammar?
  22. MEP! It's free, comprehensive, and very well organized.
  23. Do any of you have suggestions for public domain grammar texts that aren't as dry as the sand of the Sahara? My children are both 11 and need to get into some serious grammar work. I'd like them to learn diagramming as well. Any suggestions?
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