The Importance of Biography and Memoir in Education

The beginning of November brings, in a normal year, the local library booksale. Our family looks forward to this and the girls save money to purchase interesting books and support the library. This year, I picked up only biographies or memoirs. How did that happen? I don’t know. I didn’t even pick them all up in the biography section. But it got me to thinking about how important this genre is in education and how neglected it seems to be.

History is important. I think we can all agree on that. But with the teaching of history come the need to narrow the events to those deemed most important by whoever is creating the study/text/unit/etc. By necessity, history as a discipline picks and chooses what to look at because you can’t cover it all. This also means that, intentional or not, a bias influences what is included or not. Try as you might, no one can cover everything with no bias involved.

For this reason, there needs to be more. And that more comes in the form of biography and memoir. These two types of writing allow us to see into the lives of real people experiencing real events in real time. Yes, you will still encounter a bias but it is the bias of the person who witnessed and was hurt/helped/affected by the events in the story. It is the story of that person and those around. It is personal and important. And what you will find, when you dive into the genres of biography and memoirs is that you will get more information than you will ever find in any kind of textbook.

Memoirs, in particular, are fascinating to me. They are rich with detail and information about the events of history but they tend to show us a whole lot more about how those events affected people. When you view the events of WWII through the eyes of a child who was rounded up and sent to a concentration camp, you feel and understand a whole lot more about it. When you read about WWII through the story of a Major League baseball player whose life was deeply altered by the events of his life there, you have a deeper and richer understanding of it all. Reading about life behind the Iron Curtain, the propaganda of Communism, and how difficult and frightening it was growing up there, you see the world around you quite differently.

I did not grow up reading biographies. In fact, I don’t really know if any at all were included in my education growing up. I probably did but I don’t remember them. What I do know, is that now they draw me in and I find myself with a deeper, richer, more sympathetic view of history and the events of history. We can never see the events as clearly as the people who lived through them did. But, by choosing to include biography and memoir in your studies, you will enrich your life and the lives of your students, making them more aware of the world around them.

I do plan to write some posts about the books I picked up at the booksale because they are fascinating. I got them just a couple of weeks ago and I have read them all. I encourage you to read more of these genres and enrich your historical understanding.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Questions When Considering How & Where to Educate Your Children

I have been thinking about what questions one should consider when looking at what education fits your family best, whether it be public schools, private schools, or home education. These are some of the questions I have had come to mind.

• What do you want your child to get out of education? Is it to finish all the boxes required for college entrance? Is it to learn how to learn independently? Is it to set them up for life and a life of learning? Is it to keep them immersed in a particular world view or to keep them out of a particular world view? What is the goal of your child’s education?
• What is your family’s lifestyle like? Home education is a lifestyle. There is no denying that since the children are a part of daily life, appointments, volunteering, chores, everything. Can your family lifestyle adjust to that?
• What is your vacation style? If you are one who likes to take off on a moments notice or spend two weeks in another state, can the education format you are considering work with that? Will they work with that?
• What is the work schedule of you and/or your spouse? How will the children’s schedule in any given education style impact their time with a parent? How high is that in your priority list?
• How flexible are you? How flexible do you want to be? Some education styles are firm and set; some education styles are the definition of flexibility.
• What do you value about your child’s personality right now? In the future? How will each of the education styles you are considering help or hinder that growth?
• How important is independence and out-of-the-box thinking to you? How important is it for there to be a single right answer to something? How important is it for there to be many ways and options to answer a question?
• What do you consider important in the child’s personal growth? Will your educational style encourage and support that growth? Will you have to change your ideals to fit into the style of education you are considering? Is that okay with you?
• Why are you considering each of the educational styles you are looking at? What is appealing about each one and what do you not like about each one?
• What concerns you about the world? How is this dealt with in the educational setting you are considering?
• How important is freedom to you? Freedom to act, think, choose, change, move about, schedule, time, etc. Does the educational style you are considering support those freedoms? To what extent?
• How do you feel about knowing, or not knowing, what your child is studying? Will it be easy to communicate with the person teaching them and choosing their curriculum?
• What does the word socialization mean to you?
• What kind of time are you willing to dedicate to your child’s education? How much of it needs to be “time on task” and how much is discretionary time?
• What is your child’s learning style? Are they an auditory learner? A visual learner? A kinestetic learner? A combination or maybe even something else? Can this be supported in the educational style you are considering?

Are you noticing the question that keeps coming up?

“Can this be supported in the educational style you are considering?” Or “Will the education style you are considering support and encourage (or hinder) _________________________?”

This is a big part of the thinking through process when you are seeking to find the right balance of priorities and values for your child’s education. And it is tough. There is not an answer that is better or worse for most of these questions. There is an answer that is best for you or one that is better suited than others. But there is a lot to consider. These are not all the questions you can ask to decide where your child’s education should happen. These are just some things that I think are important to consider.

Do you have any questions you would add to the mix? Leave them in the comments section, please, for others to consider on their journey.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Winter Education Doesn’t Have to be Different

You know, I struggle to think of education during different times of years as different. And that is okay. I can stay the course and be pleased with that choice.

We often see others posting of all the great things they do differently for a change in season or a holiday or what-not. At that time, it is easy to let the monster of comparison creep in. But don’t, y’all! We are not all the same. I am speaking to myself here. Just this morning, I was thinking how I needed to get the girls outside more because they aren’t “active enough.” But my girls are; just in different ways than that parent was talking about. I was letting comparison slip into my thinking and my decisions. Bad choice. That seldom turns out good for me. 🙂

So, what does winter education look like? Well, it looks like regular school days for most of the time. It looks like more breaks and a few special, fun activities. We do tend to do more puzzles. We take more holiday time off. In a “normal” year, we spend some time with family and visit NM, where we get to see good snow and do some hiking and maybe visit a museum or two. But, really, those kinds of things happen other times of the year, too.

So, winter education is really no different for us here in central Texas. And that is okay. So, to the mom or dad who is looking around, get some ideas but remember you know best what works for your kiddos. Mine need routine and time in the dance studios. Time outside doesn’t rejuvenate them like others say their kiddos need. Give mine a good song and a barre for their rejuvenation. Pick and choose what is right for your students and don’t waver in your thinking just because someone else posts a fun looking idea. You know. Stay the course.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Linking up with the Homeschool Review Crew for their monthly blogging challenges. This week is How do you homeschool in the winter? Head over to the blog to read up on lots of ideas and takes on this theme.

Teaching It All ~ 2020 Not Back to Homeschool Blog Hop

Another of the major misconceptions about home education is that the parents have to “teach it all.” You don’t. You can’t. So, what do you do when you come across something you just don’t feel qualified for? Here are some choices.

• Allow your child to learn it himself. One of the major goals our family has is that our children know how to learn thing, how to teach themselves. I don’t need to know everything because I need to teach them how to find information, to learn, to seek out what they want or need to know. Of course, I am there to guide and to help. I have often done some research of my own on the side so that my guiding is more informed but I still teach them to teach themselves. Videos abound on all sorts of topics. Blogs are out there that are highly specialized. Companies exist for every niche imaginable. Learn to seek out these things and anything can be learned.
• Learn it yourself by staying one step ahead. There have been a few classes where I have learned either by doing the lessons one day ahead or doing it right alongside the girls. I don’t have to know it all ahead of time; I can learn as we go, too. History and science are some that this approach has worked well with.
• Find someone who knows. Maybe this is a friend. Maybe this is a company with a video curriculum. Maybe this is a co-op class. There are tons of options for outsourcing the class. You do not have to be the one teaching every single component of every single student’s curriculum. You can find help. Voice teachers and violin teachers – we have done both of these even though I could have done both of them myself. (I have a music ed degree and taught it for several years.)
• Video curriculum is available for many things. Some of the best companies have great customer service where there is a teacher answering phones or chat boxes so that the student can get expert help with this struggle. Unlock Math was fantastic about this and every time my oldest got stuck, she could enter a question into the chat box and have automatic, specialized help. Journey Homeschool Academy is another video based curriculum that is highly specialized and has great help available to the student. The biology class that my oldest is using is just fantastic about pushing and encouraging and helping the student along.

I am sure there are plenty of other options out there that I haven’t touched on because, honestly, I am just sharing what is coming to mind when I sit here pondering the question “How do I teach. . .?” Don’t stress because there are plenty of options and you know yourself and your children better than anyone else. Nothing is permanent and choices that don’t work out can be changed. So, dive in and find what works best for you, for your child, and for the subject that you are considering teaching.

There are others writing about how they teach different subjects so visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read about the topic of “How do I teach. . .?” From tot school to high school to the many elective options, there is a lot of wisdom being shared at the linkup.

Yesterday was discussing curriculum choices. If you missed it, here are some of the blogs for you to read.

Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses shares Homeschool High School Curriculum Choices for 2020.

Annette @ A Net in Time shares Grade 10 Curriculum Choices.

Yvie @ Homeschool on the Range shares Curriculum Reveal.

Vickie B @ Tumbleweed News shares Our Favorite Curriculum {Blog Hop}.

Jessica H @ My Homeschool with a View shares Tips for Curriculum Shopping.

Yvonne @ The Life We Build shares Our Kindergarten and 4th Grade Curriculum Choices.

Dawn @ Schoolin’ Swag shares Morning Time.

Teresa B @ Teresa Brouillette shares Homeschool Curriculum .

Kristen @ A Mom’s Quest to Teach shares Top Five Homeschooling Curriculum Choices.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

 

Moving On – summer learning despite the heat and virus

Typically, we do not do a ton of book learning over the summer. The girls generally get to spend their time at church camps, serving others, mission trips, and other camps or classes. The girls are typically gone every other week, on average, during the summer. As with so many other things, this summer has the theme of “everything is different.” No camps. Not any of them. No mission trips. Serving others locally looks different. VBS will be online. Everything is different.

So, what do we do?

We decided to move on. We started our school year July 6. Miss E is working on 11th grade and getting her dual credit information taken care of. Miss L started 9th grade and is learning with a very different curriculum, so she is getting used to that. Miss J started her 6th grade and being encouraged to work much more independently than before.

Is it hard? You bet. I am definitely getting the question of “why do we have to do school?”

A lot. But, we are planning to take some good chunks off in the fall when we typically get a bit burned out. Maybe we will take from Thanksgiving to after the New Year off this year. That is typically a difficult time frame for us due to activities. That would make it easier. And knowing that, they are able to move on without too much grumpiness.

And, dance classes make everything a bit better, too. The girls are each taking five weeks of dance classes. Each class is an hour to an hour and a half. They are taking 6 classes each. It is a good bit of activity as the temperatures climb (hit 104 here this week) and they don’t want to be outside much.

We are also working on virtual materials for church. We spent part of last week making videos of puppet scripts to share online. They did 4 scripts and 3 sets of songs. Miss E assisted in the sign language interpretation of the song videos and will hopefully be able to add sign interpretation to the puppet scripts videos. We are working on that part of it still. The girls wrote the scripts (in collaboration with another young lady). They are about to tackle scripts for Vacation Bible School, which will be done virtually in August.

The two older girls are also helping teach Wednesday night Bible classes this summer. And being asked to assist on some of the Sunday morning classes.

Much of these activities would not have happened or would have happened differently had COVID-19 not been affecting things life as it is. Great lessons on adaptability have been learned and they have been able to participate differently in some activities. They also have been able to take more of an active role in some teaching opportunities.

Moving on with our learning has been different, not necessarily “good”, but a good thing to do.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Elementary Plans 2019-2020 (5th Grade)

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Miss J is in her final year of elementary school – 5th grade. I can’t believe how quickly this has gotten here! She is such an exciting student – her imagination and interests are fun. She is also a very distractable student so we do struggle with staying on task. She benefits greatly from taking a brain break every 30-45 minutes and getting some wiggles out. She has really benefitted from the mini-trampoline (or exercise rebounder as it is called by the company) in the living room so that she can take those quick breaks. She also takes breaks that involve riding her bike around the neighborhood or practicing her dance or creating with legos. These help her stay strong and get refocused.

Her plans are exciting to me because many of them are just exactly what she wants and is interested in.

Math – CTCMath is what she will be using for 5th grade. The short video based lessons are a good fit, giving her challenge and practice without busy work that other curriculums have. You can read our review of CTCMath that we recently posted.

Language Arts/Literature – Miss J will be using Hewitt Homeschooling for her literature course. We reviewed it a couple of months ago and I really like the way it works for her. It keeps her focused on what she needs to think about and asks her to delve a bit deeper into what might be motives and reasons characters act/think/respond as they do. She is currently working on the book The One and Only Ivan. She will also continue to use the 5th grade level of the Reading Eggs workbook that we are reviewing. The short lessons (5 – 10 minutes) focus on comprehension, spelling, and grammar. She also has access to the online Reading Eggs program for some games and activities.

Science – Bird studies are on the program for this year. I just bought some field guides and handbooks that will be fun. We have a bingo program and we have a scheduled time for weekly birdwatching, which will involve her keeping a field journal. She wants to learn to identify more birds and something more about their anatomy. We have a couple of documentaries that we will be using, as well as some picture books. There are also some interesting bits on birds on SchoolhouseTeachers.com that we will access. (SchoolhouseTeachers has a good sale going on for a couple more days. Don’t miss it!)

History – She will continue with the USA Pack to learn two states a week. She also wants to do a timeline so we will be pulling the timeline out of the Home School In The Woods study on the Middle Ages that Miss E has been working on and add it in for Miss J. These two things will create an interesting combination of history but it is of interest to her so she will learn quite a bit. Again, there are some videos on SchoolhouseTeachers.com that we plan to use to go along with, in addition to a neat resource I did a review of (but didn’t publish on my blog) called History Bombs.

Art – Visual art is going to be done using a combination of Creating A Masterpiece drawing lessons and ARTistic Pursuits for upper elementary. I am actually going to be doing a lot of her teaching with these, but giving her the opportunity to create works of art.

Music – She has a current desire to learn the guitar. At Home Dad will be doing some teaching with her three times a week and expecting daily practice. We’ll see how long this interest lasts. . .

Dance – She will be taking four dance classes a week, so about 3 hours of dance. This will be a great PE time for her as she really enjoys it.

That is it for Miss J’s plans for her final year of elementary school.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a fabulous resource that we turn to often for supplementing our courses or finding new areas of interest. From full classes to supplements, there is something here for students of every age and one subscription is usable for the entire family. Click on the image to head over to SchoolhouseTeachers.com to learn more.

Life Skills Are What, Exactly? ~ Not Back to School Blog Hop

We have chatted about the WHY of teaching life skills and some ideas about how to be intentional about life skills. Now, let’s get to the nitty gritty –

What exactly are “life skills”?

To be as simple as possible – the skills needed to live life.

Now simplicity is often good but in this case, it is too vague for me. So, let talk.

The skills can be broken down into areas or topics, if you feel you need a check list. I have seen an excellent lists, broken down by age appropriateness, followed by skill types: practical skills and personal/interpersonal skills. I have seen random lists with life skills listed (think 40 things to know before you turn 18). I have seen the question asked on social media with everyone chiming in their own thoughts. Any of these ways work!

Let me share my thoughts on skills, as they are coming out today. (Note: this is today; tomorrow may very well create a different list or new ideas. That is a beautiful thing about life skills – that list can grow and change and be personal.)

PRACTICAL SKILLS:

• anything related to cooking: the actual cooking and baking, reading a recipe, measuring, taste testing, serving, setting the table (formal and informal), menu planning, grocery shopping, grocery budgeting, canning, preserving food,
• anything related to house keeping: laundry (sort, wash, dry, fold, put away, iron, hang), dusting, picking up, caring for and repairing furniture, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, gift planning/shopping/wrapping, budgeting, bills, cleaning the bathrooms, doing the dishes,
• anything related to the outside care of the home: mowing, edging, caring for and repairing the mower or other tools, plant care, gardening, planning the garden and learning what will grow, purchasing and planting, fence care, fence repair, vehicle care and maintenance, vehicle repair (not even just doing it yourself but knowing where and when to take it in), painting,
• anything related to the long-term maintenance of the home: changing air filters, having the AC/heat unit checked and maintained, painting, taking care of the foundation (in Texas during the heat we have to make sure the foundation has plenty of moisture around it or we get cracks in the foundation)
• anything related finances: writing checks, maintaining a checking balance, obtaining and using a credit card, bills, setting up utilities, investing, choosing a bank or investment company, saving money, “rainy day” funds, getting the cars inspected and registered
• anything related to health care and insurance: finding a company for health and for car insurance, knowing how to read the statements, knowing what you have to pay for and what is covered, dealing with things like prescriptions or doctor visits, dealing with auto insurance claims
• I am sure there are plenty of categories and items that I haven’t listed out here. But this list could be humongous if I wrote out every item.

PERSONAL/INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

These are quite a bit harder to put into categories or like items. For me, it includes things like keeping your temper, speaking kindly, helping others, and such. This includes writing thank you notes, writing invitations, being responsible for personal items, personal care, and interacting with older adults. This could be done through something like taking a meal to a family or serving with Meals on Wheels, volunteering at a library or teaching a class. Taking the initiative to make sure others in the youth group know about an activity you think they would enjoy attending is another way you might see this growth happening. You might see your child talking to the visitor at church or introducing themselves to a child who looks lonely at the park.

Not long after I decided on my topic for this blog hop, my friend Brenna Rhodes gave a talk at church about what her family calls Real Life University. Guess what it was about? Yep, this – life skills. She had a great list of what they expect their kids to know and learn and some great tips. It was just the encouragement I needed for this series. And, yes, she gave me permission to quote her and share some of her ideas. One of the things that she said that I really liked was this:

Develop every talent God gave them to the best of your ability. Do not “put them in a box.” 

So I need to ask myself – am I doing this? Am I helping my children develop EVERY ability God gave them? Am I passing along the wisdom and skills they need as adults? This is how they will grow to be great spiritual warriors and servants in God’s kingdom so I certainly need to be.

I have found that the more I look for ways to see these life skills being learned, the more I notice. They are everywhere and often happen naturally. I am working on being more purposeful with the documenting of these skills and will share more on that tomorrow.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read about the ideas, tips, and encouragement you will find from all the other bloggers who are participating in this week’s NOT Back to School Blog Hop. Below are some links to their blogs but if you want their post from today, click on the image above to get the link up for today.

CREW @ Homeschool Review Crew – 2019 Annual Not Back to School Homeschool Blog Hop

Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses – ABC of Homeschooling

Dawn @ Schoolin’ Swag – Adding Fun to Your Homeschool Day

Erin @ For Him and My Family – Large Family Homeschooling

Lori @ At Home Where Life Happens – Learning Life Skills

Monique @ Mountain of Grace Homeschooling – Homeschooling the High School Years

Monique D. @ Early Learning Mom – Homeschooling With Autism

Yvie @ Homeschool On the Range – 5 Days of Upper Grades Homeschooling

Abby @ Making Room 4 One More – Time Management for Homeschool Moms

Amanda @ Hopkins Homeschool – 5 Days of Homeschool Questions

Amy @ the WRITE Balance – Year-Round Schooling

Annette @ A Net in Time – Homeschooling.

Betty @ Lets Get Real – Homeschooling High School

Cassandra @ My Blessed Mess – Eclectic Homeschooling

Kimberley @ Vintage Blue Suitcase – Roadschooling with a Teenager

Yvonne @ The Life We Build – 5 Days of Relaxed Homeschooling

Destiny @ Some Call It Destiny – Encouragement for the Homeschooling Mom

Karen @ Tots and Me…Growing Up Together –  A Peek into Our Homeschool

Cassie D @ Deputie Tribe – Homeschooling 6 Taking Care of YOU

Kristen Heider @ A Mom’s Quest to Teach –Theme: A Quest for a Great Homeschool Year

Patti Pierce – Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy – My Favorite Homeschooling Things

Wendy @ Life on Chickadee Lane – 5 Days of Nature Study

Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning – Homeschooling my final 4 

Christine @ Life’s Special Necessities – Yes! You Can Homeschool Your Special Needs Child

Sally M – Tell the Next Generation – Tips for Homeschooling Struggling Learners

How To Be Intentional About Life Skills ~ Not Back to School Blog Hop

As you begin to think about being intentional about teaching life skills to your children, be prayerful. Ask God to direct your thoughts, to guide your ways. This is the best way to begin anything, really, so why would teaching life skills be any different. Keep in mind your purpose for teaching these life skills. Yesterday, I shared with you why we want to be intentional about teaching life skills to our girls.

Today, let’s chat a bit about what intentionality might look like.

Action words come to mind for me first:

• look
• listen
• see
• hear
• read
• talk
• work
• walk
• act
• practice
• and we could go on.

A friend I know and greatly respect made this statement about being intentional and teaching life skills:

Let them help. Let them grow. Let them learn. If it is important enough for us to do, it is important enough for the children to do alongside us. – Brenna Rhodes

That really struck me. It isn’t always easy to have a child working alongside you. As an example, we just finished putting the doors and knobs back onto our repainted kitchen. Having Miss J help me was time consuming and slowing. It was slowing to teach her how to set the doors against the hinges, to screw them in, make sure they are tight, keep from dinging the new paint job, etc. Yet, she now knows how to add hinges to things like doors that might need it. She can look at how a door should go against a cabinet and tell if it is aligned right. She can tighten a screw without stripping it out. And then we did the knobs and pulls. The first few, I’ll be honest – I was worried she was going to scratch the finish because of how the pulls sit. She didn’t, though. Not one. She listened and was so very careful that I felt somewhat foolish that I had worried.

This is just one example of letting them come alongside me in my work, to do what I am doing and learn to do it on their own. Another example is going to be evident on the blog during our next round of Blogging Through The Alphabet. I have asked the older two girls to write the posts for me. They are going to split up the letters and choose favorite books to write about for older students, including designing an activity to go along with that book. I enjoy writing on the blog and so I figured, I’ve been doing this for a few years now, it is time to get them involved. Miss E and Miss L have each done a little bit once in a while but this will involve so much more – deadlines, writing for an audience that isn’t mom or sisters or dad, fitting the writing to a purpose and idea, creating a graphic to go along with it, thinking about activities that other students would enjoy and designing around that, learning how to format for the blog, and so much more. But this is a life skill in the digital age, isn’t it? Not necessarily the blog format but all the other stuff? Those are life skills, I am doing the Blogging Through The Alphabet anyway, so why not use the opportunity to teach them these life skills.

I hope you are seeing that I am trying to include the girls in what I do every day. Yes, learning how to care for a house or mow the lawn or do the laundry are important skills. But life skills are so much more than that.

Did they have a great class with someone? Have them write a thank you note.

Did they enjoy the sermon? Stop and talk with the preacher about what they really liked about it, the point that they got from it.

Did they can pickles? Allow them to share the jars with others. Miss J took all but one jar of the first batch of pickles we did and gave them away. She wanted to share her bounty with others. We may be buying pickles this year but that’s okay. Her skill of giving, showing love, talking to others (She had to give each person the jar and tell them what they were, where they came from, and why she was giving them pickles.), planning (She wrapped each one with a ribbon and had to remember to take them.), and so much more.

Do they want to learn a skill you don’t know? Allow them to ask around in safe community places (church would be where we begin) to see if there is someone who could teach them. This is how Miss L ended up in debate last year. And she learned SOOOOO much from that debate class. Life skills galore!

I am starting to get off track here but do you see how something that happens in every day life can be the gateway to learning a whole host of life skills? You just have to be looking for it and paying attention to the actions that you are doing anyway. Something simple can really be used to great advantage when you begin thinking about life skills.

You have probably heard the saying that goes something like this:

If you don’t teach them to serve God, the world will teach them not to.

This is great motivation for teaching life skills and all that comes with them. Tomorrow, let’s chat about what life skills are. Specifically, what life skills look like. I have given you a sneak peek here, I guess, though my rambling. Tomorrow – specifics!

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

There are many more tidbits to be found on the link up for the Not Back To School Blog Hop. Be sure to visit the post on the Homeschool Review Crew to read other articles and get loads of information to encourage you on your homeschool journey.

CREW @ Homeschool Review Crew – 2019 Annual Not Back to School Homeschool Blog Hop

Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses – ABC of Homeschooling

Dawn @ Schoolin’ Swag – Adding Fun to Your Homeschool Day

Erin @ For Him and My Family – Large Family Homeschooling

Lori @ At Home Where Life Happens – Learning Life Skills

Monique @ Mountain of Grace Homeschooling – Homeschooling the High School Years

Monique D. @ Early Learning Mom – Homeschooling With Autism

Yvie @ Homeschool On the Range – 5 Days of Upper Grades Homeschooling

Abby @ Making Room 4 One More – Time Management for Homeschool Moms

Amanda @ Hopkins Homeschool – 5 Days of Homeschool Questions

Amy @ the WRITE Balance – Year-Round Schooling

Annette @ A Net in Time – Homeschooling.

Betty @ Lets Get Real – Homeschooling High School

Cassandra @ My Blessed Mess – Eclectic Homeschooling

Kimberley @ Vintage Blue Suitcase – Roadschooling with a Teenager

Crafty Classroom USA Bundle ~ a Crew review

When the USA Activity Bundle Pack came up for review this year from Crafty Classroom, I knew it was a product I wanted to use. It is a fun way to approach learning about the United States. The bundle includes three PDF files:

1. USA State Birds
2. USA 50 State Mazes
3. USA Activity Pack

USA 50 STATE MAZES

This file includes one maze for each of the 50 states. The maze is in the shape of the state. In the process of working through the maze, the student views the shape of the state and can become more familiar with it. Each maze is challenging yet fun. I do believe that the size at which you print these will make a difference in the challenge level. I printed them at half-size, two to a page and made a booklet out of it. This definitely added to the challenge of the mazes but it was fine for my 10 year old.

USA STATE BIRDS

The realistic art cards for the state birds includes a picture of the birds that are the symbol of a state (so less than 50 since several are shared by states), space to write facts about the bird or describe the bird, and a set of small cards with the name of the bird on one and the picture of the bird on the other. I again printed this half-size and made it into a booklet. I am not fully happy with this version of it. The writing lines are a better size for Miss J at this size but it makes it harder to color the bird with all its markings. Also, in a booklet form, we cannot cut the smaller cards out to use in a matching game. Miss J really wants me to take this to a printer and have it printed in color for the matching cards.

USA STATE-BY-STATE ACTIVITY NOTEBOOK

This PDF file contains one page for each of the 50 states. Each page asks the student to identify several symbols for the state. There are several activities for each state.

• a flag to color
• a place to color the state on a map of the US
• a map of the state to mark the capital, rivers, lakes, and mountains (if desired)
• a place to mark the state abbreviation, the state # of when it joined the union, it’s nickname, the state bird name, and the state flower name
• a picture of the state bird to color
• a picture of the state flower to color
• lines to write a fact or two about the state

We pulled a book about the 50 states off of our shelf to use with this activity. Each state has it’s own few pages so it works easily.

The State-by-State Activity Notebook also includes two games at the end of the file. One is USA Bingo and there are several bingo boards to print and use. The other game is Roll Across America, a board game where you would roll a die and move a certain number of spaces. You will need to provide the markers for the bingo game and the die and pieces for the board game. Both games provide variations to learning the states and/or capitals and facts about the states. These would be fun games to have printed out larger than I printed the rest of the file.

We have been using the program informally this summer. Every few days Miss J will pick up one of the booklets and work for a bit on it. She has really enjoyed the mazes. She has done several at one sitting a few times. She has also enjoyed the USA State-By-State Activity Notebook. She spent quite a bit of time working on each state that she has completed. I have allowed her to skip the writing part since we are being informal this summer.

I do plan to use these a bit more formally when we start school in a few weeks. I plan to have her complete three states per week, completing the page in USA State-By-State (include the fact writing), doing the maze if it is not already done, and completing the page in the bird book (if it isn’t already done since some of the states have the same state bird).

Miss J’s thoughts:

I like this, even though I am not really far. I really like the mazes. The state facts were really fun. It was kind of helpful having a book to do it with. It would have been harder without the book. I really liked the birds and flowers and stuff. There wasn’t really enough space for me to write a fact about the state because there were so many facts to choose from. It would be wise to add another page to the state of just lines to write facts on.

My Thoughts:

This is a neat set to use to highlight the US. We had planned to take a trip this summer through several states and I was going to use this for her in each state we entered. (Plans change when home air conditioners need a major repair, though.) As far of the use this fall, I am going to have her trace our Mega Field Trip from last fall and find each of those states.

This is a neat set that has so many possibilities. There is a lot that could be done with it and it can be adjust and modified to fit the age you are working with and the need you have.

A couple of years ago, we reviewed another product from Crafty Classroom – their paragraph writing program titled How To Write A Paragraph. There are lots of other products available so be sure to visit the shop.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Be sure to visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read about other products from Crafty Classroom that were being used for summer learning. The products include:

R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook K
R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook Gr. 1
Interactive Math Curriculum Notebook K
Alphabet Letter of the Week Curriculum Notebook
Bible Letter of the Week Curriculum Notebook
Sight Word of the Week Program
Pattern Block Activity Bundle
Fables & Tales
USA Activity Bundle Pack

Click on the banner below to go to the link up for Crafty Classroom.

Matific Galaxy (math practice) ~ a Crew review

Once in a while, we end up with a program that just captivates one of the girls’ attention. Matific Galaxy has done just that. This online math practice program is such an enjoyable way to practice math that when Miss J asks to play computer games, this is where she goes. She will easily spend as much time as I will let her practicing math on the Matific Galaxy site.

Even when she gets stumped, she doesn’t mind asking for help since she is having so much fun. We started her off on the 5th grade level since she is a rising 5th grader. I figured it would give her a bit of a challenge but if it was too hard, we could easily go back down a level and truly call it practice. Even the hard stuff she is enjoying. I don’t remember her being frustrated with this once.

Matific Galaxy is available worldwide in a huge variety of languages. It is not American and thus is not aligned with anything in the US (such as Common Core) YET it does a great job of teaching the math skills the students need. With a research-based spiral curriculum, this is a challenging and encouraging supplement. They list all of the skills taught in each grade level right on the website, with the opportunity to try one of them before purchase.

Matific Galaxy is an online subscription. It requires internet access and a paid subscription. You can choose a single grade option or a multi grade option. The material goes up to 6th grade. Each student must have a separate account as it tracks individual progress. There is a 25% discount for each additional student according to the website.

There is not a placement test that I could locate.  Since the skills are listed on the website, it was fairly easy to make a determination of where to begin. It is easy enough to move them up or down grade levels if needed.

The student will login and it is easy to get right to work. The student works through different episodes. Each episode has a cute little pixelated character that shows progress within the episode. Each completed activity earns more pixels to complete the character. You can see the difference here with the completed character and the one being worked on.

 

The activities are fairly straightforward. Miss J’s favorite are the activities that work on geometry. She has really enjoyed those. It will ask her to identify the number of sides or the number of vertices or some other identifying attribute and then click on shapes that match that. Within each skill area, there are just a few question so that it doesn’t wear the student out or frustrate them when working on a challenging skill. I believe they ranged from 3 to 7 questions per skill.

 

If it was a computation skill, there is a calculator that comes up on the screen to help the student figure their answer. This was helpful in some of the multiplication skills. Miss J still needed paper and pencil or whiteboard and marker for many of the skills she was working on. She had not worked on multiplying decimals or adding fractions before so this was one area where she needed help from one of her big sisters or a parent. We had to teach the skill and then she could practice it. While it meant the game took a tad bit longer, it was a great way to keep doing what she was having fun with for math and still get in the teaching of new skills and concepts.

One of Miss J’s favorite parts was taking care of the characters after she had earned them. Each character continues to want care – cleaning, toys, and food. When you do this for the characters, more coins are earned which allows more clothing or accessories to be bought for the character. While this has nothing to do with math, it is something that Miss J enjoyed about the program. AND, she could replay the math games to earn more also. Miss J did this often as she wanted to earn more coins to buy the characters the things they wanted, like new handkerchiefs or hats or construction equipment.

 

There are reports that allow you to see where your student is excelling or struggling and the reports are simple to read and understand. There is the activity highlights report that tells you how much has been completed and the average of scores for overall categories.

The Results by Topic report breaks the categories down by skill area and gives the percentage correct. It also gives a comparison of the average for all students using that level of Matific Galaxy.

There is also a report that breaks the skills down further by the assignment within each episode.

You can select to receive a weekly update via email to get reports how the student is progressing, if the weekly time goal was met, and other information.

If the student is struggling, you can access a few worksheets that correspond to some of the skills. They are not simple to get to for the homeschool teacher as they are found on the classroom part of the site but they can be sent via email one by one for the topics where more help is needed. I was looking at what was available for work with decimals and found this one that I had emailed to me. I can then print it out for Miss J when she is working on that skill.

This has been a wonderful program to have come across. I imagine in just another week or two, Miss J will have completed all of the grade 5 skills. This is because she will spend, easily, 4 hours a week on the program as opposed to the suggested 45 minutes per week. That’s okay with me as she is really increasing her math knowledge at great speed.

I plan to have her go back over the skill areas where she didn’t have above 80% since this is where her greatest challenges are being shown. Most of these are where she had to be taught the skill to complete the game and so she struggled a bit. Not a problem! She can tackle them again in order to earn more for her characters. A Win-Win!

After she gets those averages up, I plan to move her on to the 6th grade skills. Why not? If she loves it and is learning, why hold her back? This program is a huge hit and I feel no hesitation in recommending it.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Please visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read about the other families who have been using Matific Galaxy. Just click on the banner below.