Ideas for us?

[Ninanoo]

My kid learns in an interesting way. Well, interesting to me. It is like a light bulb went off. Last years homeschool was a lot like pulling teeth and so I slacked on it, A LOT. My daughter is 7. She doesn't enjoy traditional learning to the point that she purposely gets problems wrong, or writes backwards, or when asked to correct something she does it the same way three or four times just to annoy me. Well, like i said, LIGHT BULB. I had a schedule and everything all figured out, and then our homeschool money had to be used on something else I have been observing what works and what doesn't, trying several different things and here is what I know...

 

She loves computer games.

She loves board games

She loves contests

She loves performance

she loves free art with no direction

she loves hands on experiances

she enjoys learning songs

 

Math is something she is naturally good at, but still enjoys learning it with manipulatives over book work.

 

Level wise she is at about half way through first grade for reading. Reading was the only thing i did really consistantly because it is so importaint, but she has resisted like crazy. She has learned more this last week then she did over several months last year. We have been using teach your monster to read, and Progressive Phonics which she likes because it is like reading the script to a play.

 

Math she is spot on at dispite few lessons. She has the potential to go far with math as she catches on pretty quickly. I'd still like to keep it fun though. Any kind of fun supllemental things you can think of? Right now she is loving playing store and money bingo, as well as just counting money.

 

History I think I have this covered. She is going to be doing minecraft American History, I was thinking about checking out "History day" with her, because she could create her own pay/presentation for it. I was also planning on reading her biographies. She has a great memory and I have been teaching her the names of the states, and the pledge, and patriotic songs.

 

Science She is passionate about animals and so I thought we would do Zoology, Creatures of the 5th day book 1. and do the projects. We have also planned out a science fair project she is excited about because she likes the idea of 1. Being hands on 2. Decorating a board 3. TALKING TO THE JUDGES (so much excitement about that) And 4. She really REALLY likes winning and is hoping to win.  She is also doing light anatomy via her own request.

 

So yeah. Any ideas at all on things you think she might like, would be a good fit. I am starting to realize she is a lot more intellegent then i think i give her credit for. I want her to enjoy learning because she is an all or nothing kid, and if she doesn't enjoy it, she won't learn at all.

 

 

[Raising Little Shoots]

This is a great book your daughter might enjoy for maths (some areas may be too advanced for her? Not sure)

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Be-Zoo-Vet-Using-Maths/dp/1860075479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408180304&sr=8-1&keywords=using+maths+be+a+zoo+vet

 

(note, this is .co.uk)

 

hth!

[Ninanoo]

We have that here too under a different name. I had been considering it. Thanks for sending me that link! The US one on amazon doesn't have a preview. :)

[RebeccaMary]

Math is something she is naturally good at, but still enjoys learning it with manipulatives over book work.

 

Math she is spot on at dispite few lessons. She has the potential to go far with math as she catches on pretty quickly. I'd still like to keep it fun though. Any kind of fun supllemental things you can think of? Right now she is loving playing store and money bingo, as well as just counting money.

 

Right Start Mathematics has a set of math games that you could check out. There are many board games out there, like Dino Math Tracks, that can be used to practice specific concepts.

 

We've also enjoyed teaching through picture books. Here's a link to a ton of good math picture books by topic: http://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/math-for-kids.html.

 

When my older son was 6-7, he didn't enjoy writing in the books either, so I bought the Home Instructor's Guide (we use Singapore Math) and basically guided him through the math concepts using manipulatives and discussion, writing out just a few problems for him to solve on the white board at a time. He enjoyed it and using the Guide ensured that we weren't leaving major gaps in topics.

 

Other thoughts: Most kids love making their own graphs - you could get oversized books of graph paper and let her graph out heights of buildings, sizes of animals, whatever. She could use the graph paper to map out the house (or the town or the garden) as a way to understand area and perimeter. My older son at one point became obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence and we spent days (weeks even) following the sequence as high as we could - at the time, it seemed kind of insane, but this is how he learned to add large numbers (we then followed it backward, and that's how he learned subtraction with borrowing).

 

Bottom line - as long as you have a plan in your head of what you want to cover this year, I think you can be very flexible about how you get there. 

[....]

She sounds exactly like my older two kids.  Out of frustration, I just made everyone sit down and take one of those learning style tests and it turns out my oldest two are Kinesthetic Learners.  Boy, these kids are hard to teach (and hard to live with).   :sad:   My oldest daughter (especially) wants EVERYTHING turned into a project or experiment.  Mine are also very whole-to-parts...they don't want to be shown "steps" on how to do something...they just want you to hand it over so they can figure it out.  

 

And they just have junk EVERYWHERE.  My daughter has four or five tanks full of water on my kitchen counter with tubes running out of them, things swimming around in the water, "rock filters" that she designed...  My son has models all over the place...3,000 little green pieces of some tank that he is trying to build, a giant airplane all over my kitchen island.  Where am I supposed to cook??    

 

I'm probably over-sharing here, but I'm pregnant...so we are doing a literature-based curriculum this school year to keep things simple and they are just tolerating it to help me out.  I don't think they are really enjoying it.  Neither of them like to write or read fiction.  The oldest hates history.  They both hate anything to do with language arts.  I don't know how the heck we are going to get through high school.  

 

So, what's worked for those two so far: any unit studies, Konos (bolded for a reason), Sequential Spelling, Singapore Math, Art of Problem Solving, those Thames & Kosmos science kits like Physics Workshop, Simple Machines kit, dissection kits from Home Science Tools (in fact, I just ordered the "clam dissection kit" yesterday), Zome Tool, any experiment-based science like "Developing Critical Thinking Through Science" (they LOVED that book), logic puzzles, David Attenborough documentaries, Critical Thinking Company workbooks, geography puzzles (we have one of the states and one of countries of the world)...  My oldest liked MCT's Language Arts, but my son didn't.

 

Sorry for rambling!      

 

 

[Susie in MS]

KONOS or Five in a Row.

[Spryte]

She sounds exactly like my older two kids.  Out of frustration, I just made everyone sit down and take one of those learning style tests and it turns out my oldest two are Kinesthetic Learners.  Boy, these kids are hard to teach (and hard to live with).   :sad:   My oldest daughter (especially) wants EVERYTHING turned into a project or experiment.  Mine are also very whole-to-parts...they don't want to be shown "steps" on how to do something...they just want you to hand it over so they can figure it out.  

 

And they just have junk EVERYWHERE.  My daughter has four or five tanks full of water on my kitchen counter with tubes running out of them, things swimming around in the water, "rock filters" that she designed...  My son has models all over the place...3,000 little green pieces of some tank that he is trying to build, a giant airplane all over my kitchen island.  Where am I supposed to cook??    

 

 

Interjecting to say that I just had to read this to my DH.  He'd like to know when we can set up a meeting for our twins.  You just described our house.  Perfectly.   :lol: 

 

Checking out the resources you mentioned as well.  Thanks for posting them.

[Farrar]

It sounds like you have science covered, but other resources...

 

The Nature Connection (easy to use nature studies guide with a few student pages)

The Amateur Zoologist (really more of a middle school guide, but you could scale down a few things and get ideas)

Dissect an owl pellet

consider doing dissections in general - a grasshopper is a good easy one, a whole chicken roaster from the grocery can be a cool dissection to learn about muscles, etc.

There are insane numbers of good animal books for this age - I especially like Sandra Markle's and Seymour Simon's and Jim Aronosky's, but there's so many good options - you could make a routine of one animal book a week or something

Consider doing literature read alouds that fit into her zoology interest - My Side of the Mountain, Owls in the Family, Gone Away Lake, etc. all have nature themes

 

For math...

 

Seconding the Right Start games and math games in general such as 24 (Primer), Knock-Out, Zeus on the Loose, etc.

Look at the book lists on livingmath.net

Maybe she'd enjoy Miquon?  It can go quickly and uses the C-rods, or maybe Right Start as a full curriculum?

I'll bet she would enjoy Dragonbox...  there are a ton of good math apps out there...

 

For language arts...

 

Think about language arts games like Mad Libs, Bananagrams (we often alter the rules in various ways to make it easier for the kids), Rory's Story Cubes, Dix It, etc.

Maybe look at Jot It Down from Brave Writer - it's writing projects - in general, I say look at Brave Writer ideas - once a week copywork from a book (you could do it from animal books), poetry tea once a week, family movie day, lots of oral narration ideas...

We used the Progressive Phonics base idea on "real" books after those initial levels and that worked well for us - I say just keep plugging away at this, but add in some whimsy and fun

[Ninanoo]

I really like a lot of the suggestions. Thank you! I'm going to have to just completly rethink what we are doing. Luckily i still have 2 weeks before i have to make a solid decision. Thanks :) I'll be looking into all of the suggested materials!