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RenaInTexas

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  1. I also encourage including a selection from a different culture like: - A Long Walk to Water - Refugee - Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry
  2. I use Canvas which is free. It is a full learning management system so you can keep it as simple as a course to do list with or without due dates or as complicated as turning in all assignments, giving online auto-graded quizzes, and grade tracking.
  3. SciShow Kids Fun Science Bill Nye the Science Guy CoolPhysicsVideos TheBackyardScientist There is another series with a kid and his dad.
  4. I took a comprehensive Strong Interest Inventory test and Myers-Briggs test in high school and it was spot on. It was administered by the military (meaning it is also what they use). But it is the same test you can get from their website. I took some free tests and they are just not as comprehensive (meaning they don't ask as many questions) and thus not as accurate or as complete (meaning the results were not as informative and they didn't completely capture 'me', some results were just wrong). If you want complete, valid results, go ahead and pay for the real test.
  5. After I have decided what will be taught and what curriculum will be used, I: - take each curriculum and chose what each lesson will cover. Place each lesson into Canvas (used to use spreadsheets). Include any needed supply lists, youtube links, web links, supplemental material on the lesson page in Canvas. I do this for the entire curriculum over the summer. It takes me a couple hours per day for about a month to get everything done. But when the school year starts we are open and go and I know that each lesson is thought out and we aren't missing anything important. It also gives me a birds-eye view in that I can see overlaps that can be skipped or covered quicker the 2nd time around. I can also make different subjects coordinate (for specific topics, not all year). For example, we did a link between history, science, art, and reading last year that was awesome and allowed the kids to grasp the information on a deeper level. On school day, we open the lesson in Canvas, do what it says and then mark it as complete. They can also take quizzes in Canvas and turn in assignments there as well. Planning --takes time and effort --- but just makes these easier when it is show time.
  6. Math - Glencoe Pre-Algebra History - MOH 4 Science - Holt Physical Science supplemented with lots of reading and experiments about physics (will skip chemistry chapters because we did Chemistry this year). Spanish - Spanish for Children B + RAZ Spanish book + Rosetta Level 3 + iTalki tutoring for conversation Reading - Read classical literature and discuss using Progeny Press Guides or similar + self-guided reading + Figurative Language Language Arts: Writing - Writeshop 1 + The Creative Writer Grammar - Fix It Level 3 & 4 Spelling - Megawrods 3 &4 Vocabulary - Ceasars English II using Mentor Network Bible - God's Great Covenant Old Testament Electives: Piano Sports - Basketball and Baseball (all in evenings with public school kids) Python Programming One hour free study period every day to work on assignments, projects, or self-directed learning. That seems like a lot but we get it done. We school 8-3 with breaks and some subjects alternate days; several only take 10-20 minutes.
  7. My competitive boys like Quizlet. Another thing is to get him to internalize his competitiveness...compete with himself...his best. So, for example, let's see if this handwriting exercise can be better than your last where better means neater, not faster. ... You made a 90 on the last spelling test, now shoot for a 100. ... Can you get 2 in a row ... How long can this 100 streak last ... Let's see if you can finish this spelling test with a 100 and its neat and within 3 minutes. So just keep adding layers of him competing with his prior efforts.
  8. What I am trying to wrap my mind around is this: even if that is what you were teaching, why would that have been the response? Given the nature of the course, is the expectation that you are going to agree with everything taught? I would think that - in signing up for a course like this - the goal is to learn how to evaluate and discuss different perspectives, respectfully, even when you strongly disagree. Thus, strongly disagreeing with what she thinks the message was, is the opportunity to learn and practice standing in your beliefs, arguing your side, and respectfully listening to the other side, while strongly disagreeing with it - and formulating arguments for your side and arguments against their side. If you are going to split and run as soon as you don't agree with a perspective, why sign up for such a course in the first place. Appropriately, sit with the daughter and discuss that this is the view of some and this is how I think about it and how we handle it and etc... and maybe return to class with a rebuttal. I don't see what you could have done differently because the nature of the course is to ruffle feathers. If you can't stand the heat (or aren't ready for it), stay out of the kitchen. My grandma always told me: a guilty conscious speaks. It may not be the message you sent, but it is the message that was heard and there is a reason for that, that is beyond your control.
  9. "Mom, what state is Texas in?" "Texas is a state." "Then what is Dallas?" ...There is now a huge map in our homeschool room.
  10. let him decide. ds10 still goes back and forth and we have realized that he is even-handed. He does everything with both hands except basketball where he can ONLY shoot with his left --- weird! My mom is a lefty and she said that I showed signs of being even-handed, but when I started school, the teachers forced me to be a right-handed writer. But it shows up in other areas like I can bat with both hands and I am left-footed (track and field thing). My husband writes right and does absolutely everything in sports as a lefty ... bats, shoots, throws. I can tell you that in sports a lot of dads train their sons to be left-handed batters. If you do it early enough, the sons have no preference and it is natural to them. So it makes me wonder if handedness has a strong link to nurture (or ability to be nutured). Maybe more of us are righties (or not even-handed) because our parents gave us things in our right hand --- so we used it more?
  11. If I think back to when my kiddos were in public school, I would say that notebook paper was a vintage supply that I love. They had us buy spiral notebooks and they all came home unused at the end of the year. Imagine a year of no real written output. It was all click an answer or bubble in one. Now that we homeschool, that 'vintage' notebook paper is used daily 🙂
  12. IMO, for the ages of your children, MOH is sufficient and the Levels will be appropriate. Remember you will go through history again. The second time through I would not use MOH because I don't consider it high school level. It is written so that younger students are in Level 1 - which is why it is easy - and those same kids are older once they hit Level 4 - so it gets more mature and lengthy. There are details that it glosses over, but I believe that is because it is considering the age of its target audience. The audio has two options in some cases --- one for youngers and one for olders, not sure if the book has this. The deeper details that are missing are not needed at this age, they will get that the 2nd time through history. There is a lot of church history, but I think that is great. My sons enjoyed learning all of that - we all know have a good understanding of why there are so many 'types' of Christians and church denominations. I didn't find nonchurch history lacking - they just didn't get into the weeds of some issues - which would be a little much for younger kids anyway. But again, I don't view it as high school level, when you teach history over from the beginning, you will choose another resource that was written for high schoolers which MOH was not -- it was written to span a wide age group.
  13. Whatever you get, make sure he knows how to use it. You'd be surprised. But you don't want him using test time to figure out how to do a square root (for example).
  14. Oh, well I think you should definitely look into doing MOH for history. You can buy the audio cds and just sit and listen to the lessons. The yahoo group has listening guides, timeline figures, and coloring pages. The older can fill in the listening guide as he listens and the youngers can color the appropriate page while they listen. Then you all can put the lesson on a timeline with a date and a one-sentence summary. I do not believe that the MOH gets into the age of the earth much. It starts with Creation and goes from there. It interweaves the history of the world with history as written in the bible. So one lesson may be about the Children of Isreal and then the next lesson about the Babylonian civilization. It is a time-ordered telling of history and shows (indirectly) how the writing in the Bible lines up with other historical writings ... same names and time periods. I will try to find and post one of those MCT schedules. We use MCT + Writing & Rhetoric together because W&R gives the practice and guidance that MCT doesn't. But MCT gives the structure, understanding, and relevance. I would use MCT or Well-Ordered Language, not both. The practice books are all the grammar practice that is needed.
  15. Is MCT working? If so, I would stick with it and instead take some time to write out a structure for it. There were some day-by-day schedules posted here a while back. Let us know if MCT is working and if we should help you structure it or if you really want something other than MCT. If it's the latter, I would suggest looking at the following: Well-Ordered Language + Writing & Rhetoric by Classical Academic Press (Christian) Fix It Grammar For unstructured science (zoology), my boys watched all episodes of Wild Kratts (amazon prime) and are animal experts to the point where a Yellowstone guide 'offered' them a job. They did this in their free time and as I 'taught' them zoology from Apologia, I saw how much they already knew. We could have skipped it, but they enjoyed reviewing it all. You should also state if you want Christian or not because that makes a difference in History and Science. I can tell you Christian because that is what we used up until Middle School where I felt they needed exposure to the non-Christian point of view. For Science we used Apologia Young Explorer Series with the Notebooks. Very structured, open and go except for experiments. You can find videos on youtube to accompany each lesson. If you are non-Christian, it is very easy to not read the Christian parts as you read to your kids. I even skipped some because Christian texts can often try too hard if you know what I mean. For structured history, we used Mystery of History, but this is strictly for Christians because you cannot skip over the Christian parts. MOH has a free yahoo group that has all types of activities and tests to help you add some output to the course.
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