ARTistic Pursuits: Art for Children, Building a Visual Vocabulary ~ a Crew review

Creating is always a welcome activity and when I heard about the new video lessons from ARTistic Pursuits Inc. for their K-3 level books, I was very intrigued. The series is ARTistic Pursuits Art Instruction Books with DVD and Blu-Ray; we received Volume 1 of the series – Art for Children, Building a Visual Vocabulary. When all of the books are released, there will be a total of eight (8) books.

Art for Children works with the student to teach them variety of words related to art creation. The book is a hardback book that is printed in full color. There are 18 lessons total. Six (6) of the lessons are video only lessons and 12 of them are text only lessons. The book comes with two discs for the video lessons – one is a DVD only disc and one is a Blu-ray. Both discs contain the exact same information and the video quality is the same.

Through the book, students will explore several different areas of art and discover how artists see the world. They will experience composition, imagination, oberservation,  and communication. They will work with shape, form, and texture while studying landscapes, still life, animals, and portraits.

The book begins with a page letting you know what materials you will need for all of the projects. There is also a short explanation of the teaching philosophy for ARTistic Pursuits.

Each of the video lessons have a single page in the book so that you know where they belong. There is materials information and a couple of steps to follow but there is no instruction written for these lessons. I think this is a shortcoming of this book. You must watch the video in order to complete the video lessons so if you don’t have access to a video player or your disc gets broken, you no longer can complete this lesson.

The video starts with an introduction by hostess Ariel Holcomb. The introduction is followed by instruction and examples by art teacher Brenda Ellis. All you see of the instruction is a video of the artist’s hands with a voice over for the instruction. It is very good instruction on how to use the materials for the lesson and the steps to follow for the project in the lesson. It is concluded with a review of the information and steps to take. Then you are to go create the project on your own. This is where having written instructions would be really helpful. For the paper folding lesson, I had to stand there with the remote control in my hand, pausing every few seconds after each instruction on how to fold the animal’s head. It worked but it was not simple.

The text lessons are fantastic. Each text lesson includes an introduction to the idea covered and is then followed by a reproduction of a work of art by a master. For example, in the texture lesson the work is The Sunflower 1906-07 by Klimt. This master work is studied and some questions are asked to help the student really focus on the art. Then the student’s project is set out for them to complete with images to help guide the student.

Each text lesson includes some preparation notes for the teacher/parent. The materials tend to be found in the midst of the lesson, rather than clearly at the front, but they are there.

Each lesson, whether video or text, can be done in about 30 minutes, depending on how much effort the student desires to put into the project creation. The lessons are designed to do approximately one lesson per week. We were able to make it through most of this book, as it was a joy to do more than one lesson a week. We often did one lesson a day and I had to stop her to get other work done.

Miss J just finished up her 3rd grade year; she is 9 years old. I chose this book for her in order to get the instructional videos of the use of materials. It was good to have some instruction on how to use the specific materials. Sometimes Miss J felt they were fine and other times she felt as though she were too old for the instruction.

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We have used ARTistic Pursuits Inc. in the past and I like the instruction that is included. I like the fact that master works are included and that students have freedom in how they apply the concept to their own work. This is not a program where they study line and then everyone draws the same thing. They might study line but then the student is encouraged to find a new place where they see the ideas of line used and create their art from that new thing. This is great for solidifying the concepts for the students.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this ARTistic Pursuits Inc. program. I like the format but it could use some tweaking. I don’t know that I would purchase the program because to get the entire series would take a commitment, though I am interested in the idea behind the focus on culture in the other volumes of the series.

Blessings,
At Home.

Read more about ARTistic Pursuits and their K-3 art program by clicking the banner below. Other families used volumes 2-4.

Ghost Science – part 2

Ghost Science is lots of fun and is aptly titled for several reasons. One – you can’t always see the processes taking place. Two – sometimes the items just are gone, right in front of your eyes. Three – sometimes they appear right in front of your eyes, out of nowhere.

We talked about the ghost eggs in part one so this time we are going to talk about the ghost poop. (You have no idea how much I hate writing that but it is what this part of the kit was called.) This is essentially packing peanuts.

When these are put into water, they quickly disappear. In just seconds, they were gone, no trace left. The pamphlet that is included in the kit explains why – these are made of corn starch and so they dissolve in room temperature water.

When Miss J heard that, it sparked her mind and she asked THE question – does it have to be just regular water? Guess where that led . . . experimentation.

Miss J spent the next hour or so finding different liquids or making them different temperatures to see if the packing peanuts would dissolve at the same rate as it did during the original activity.

She kept some things the same, as any good scientist will. She always used 4 oz of the liquid, as measured in a measuring cup. She used the same type spoon each time and tried to stir at the same rate. Here are the different liquids she used:

• tap water
• vinegar (white)
• tap water with 2 ice cubes
• very hot tap water
• cold lemon juice
• cold Dr. Pepper
• cold milk
• tea (room temperature)
• olive oil

Results:

• tap water – dissolved
• vinegar – dissolved but not as quickly
• tap water with ice – dissolved much slower
• very hot water – dissolved very, very fast
• lemon juice – dissolved slower than the ice water
• Dr. Pepper – did not dissolve
• milk – did not fully dissolve but did dissolve some
• tea – dissolved fast but not as fast as the hot water
• olive oil – did not dissolve

It was fun to talk about the types of liquids she chose. We talked a bit about acids, bases, and neutral. We talked about hot and cold. All of these observations were fun for her to make.  I was really proud of her for being curious about it and wanting to follow through to test those curiosities.

Ghost Science was a super neat kit and I’d definitely recommend it. It was from the Steve Spangler Science company, which has lots of different kits and materials. It is a resource I will keep my eye on for the future.

Blessings,
At Home.

Ghost Science – part 1

Ghost Science sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it? It was.

Miss J received a neat kit for her birthday titled Ghost Science. There were two experiments included, which will be shared in two different posts so I can share plenty of pictures. The package came with plenty of materials to do the experiments several times.

 

The first one was Ghost Eggs. For this experiment, we used ghost eggs (water marbles). They sat in water for several hours, getting checked by the girls quite often to see how much they had expanded. As they expanded, they seemed to disappear in the water. We took a look at why that was happening and read about what caused it. Miss J played around a bit with different light angles to see what happened. She also noticed how the light affected it as the day went on and as the marbles grew in size.

 

 

After they had sat in the water for quite a while, we placed some of them in a different glass bowl and added a few drops of a liquid that came with them. This liquid caused them to glow when a black light was applied. (It came with a little keychain sized blacklight.) We took the bowl into a dark room and Miss J – and sisters – experimented with how they could apply the blacklight to see the “ghost eggs” better, to make them disappear, and more. They had quite a bit of fun with the blacklight and the glowing eggs.

 

We kept the ghost eggs in a bowl with water for a while and each day the girls would play with them a little bit – seeing how they squished, how they bounced, if they would take pressure and how much, could you juggle them, etc. Something new every time. Plus, they just felt interesting to move around in your hands and to hold.

 

After a while, we drained them and placed them in a shallow dish to see how long it would take for them to dry out. Turns out – a very long time. They took about three weeks to dry out, back down to their original teensy-tinsy size.

After they had completely dried out, we sacked them up and rehydrated (again) three of them to see if they would stand up to being wet. Turns out, not so much. They were much more fragile the second time we put them in water. They did get just as big but they broke very easily. In fact, one of them broke just in the growth process.

The ghost eggs were lots of fun and the experimentation and observation was fun, too. Definitely worth the time and having them sit on the counter for so long.

Blessings,
At Home.

Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology ~ a Crew review

We have been using Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology
in the past month or so. This is another very good science program from Apologia and we are pleased to review it.

Written by Jeannie K. Fulbright and Brooke Ryan, M.D., this program is a great and easy program to use. I was impressed that Mrs. Fulbright ensured that her information was accurate by having a co-author that was an M.D.

We received:

• Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology Text
• Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology Junior Notebooking Journal
• Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology Notebooking Journal
• Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology MP3 Audio CD

Let’s start with the text. Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology Text is a hardback text. It is full color textbook and is not too heavy. The pages are sturdy without being too stiff to easily turn. The print is of a good size and is easily read by these “old eyes” of mine. The text is written to the student so it is not difficult for an elementary aged student to understand. It is intended for the student to be reading the text, allowing them to more engaged.

The text is broken up periodically by some blue lettering that is a time for the student to review what was just covered. Whether it be a narration assignment or a written one, it is intended that the student take just a few short minutes to help cement the information better in their understanding. This allows the student to improve their ability to clearly and effectively learn to communicate their learning.

Throughout the chapter, you will also come across Try This! These are hands-on activities that go with the reading just finished and allow for the student to participate in the scientific method. For example, when we had read about the purpose of bones, there was a Try This! activity that had the student make a clay figure and try to stand it up. Then they added toothpicks in place of some of the bones and tried to stand it up again. This time, with “bones” in place, the figure stood. What a great visual and hands-on activity that shows exactly how bones and the skeletal system benefit the body. The number of activities vary in each chapter and the types of materials needed will vary as well. Some only need things from around the house (such as a tape measure for comparing arm span to height) and others will need quite a few things that you might not have sitting around (such as lemon jello and lots of different candies to make an edible cell). These hands-on activities are what take this program from another good text to one that is over-the-top fantastic.

Each chapter closes with a What Do You Remember? section of questions. These are questions designed to jog the student’s memory and help them recall information. There are answers to these in the back of the book. There is a reminder of the notebooking activities to go along with the chapter or suggestions of some to do if you prefer to make your own notebook. There is also a Personal Person Project. This project is pretty cool. It has the student make their own person shape and overlays to show each of the systems that are studied in the text. The Notebooking Journal has the pieces for this project with the plastic overlays printed in color to glue down on top of the person’s shape. We decided we wanted to be able to see single systems and also to overlay several at once so Miss J created a little pocket on the page next to the person and will leave her different systems pieces there.  

The Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology MP3 Audio CD that is available has been very interesting. It is read by the author so it has purpose and inflection and understanding that a “hired” reader just would not accomplish. Mrs. Fulbright’s voice is calm and pleasant. It is a pleasure to listen to her. This audio book includes the entire text of the course. The CD is best used with the student listening while viewing the text and following along. Mrs. Fulbright explains this early on the CD. It is helpful for most students who are using the audio to also have the visual to reinforce what is being talked about. Also, there are times when Mrs. Fulbright refers to diagrams and images in the text. If the student does not have those to view, the understanding will be hampered.

image of control for CD on the computer

The audio CD would be of great benefit to a student that struggles with reading and comprehension, especially of scientific texts with so many new words and pronunciations. This would be of benefit to a student who is an auditory learner, as well. I can also see this being useful to a visual learner because the student is following along while someone else is reading. Thus, they are getting the visual while not having to struggle with pronunciations. We have had audio books for texts before and they were dry and boring. This is nothing like that. If you have a struggling reader, this might be just the thing.

Note that this is an MP3CD, not a regular CD. It must be played in an MP3CD-compatible CD player or on a computer.

We received two notebooking journals to go along with the study

• Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology Junior Notebooking Journal
• Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology Notebooking Journal.

Generally speaking, the regular journal has more writing than the junior one does and the lines are printed differently. For the junior notebooking journal, there is generally the three-line formation for the student to write on. Not always but for a number of the activities. The junior notebook also has coloring pages for each chapter while the regular notebook does not. Both journals are spiral bound and designed to complement but not replace the text; you must have the text but the journals will provide additional practice with the information.

Each chapter in the text has a corresponding section in the notebooking journals. The beginning of the chapter section in the journals is generally fairly open for the student to write about what was learned or better understood in that chapter. This space also includes boxes for the student to illustrate things of interest or worth remembering. Following this, there are different activities. There are scripture copywork passages that enhance the chapter and each one is generally in both print and cursive so that you can choose which style is best for your learner. The copywork is longer in the regular notebooking journal than it is in the junior notebooking journal. There are sometimes fill in the blanks or perhaps a crossword puzzle. There are matching activities and vocabulary work. There are also miniature books that are pulled out from the back of the notebooking journal, completed, and then placed with the chapter. You will also find project pages, more to explore suggestions, and field trip sheets. There are a lot of different ways to track and reinforce the learning.

Each of the notebooking journals have a lot of activities for each chapter. It is definitely a place where you can complete them all but it may not be best for you to do so. I have one daughter who does everything in the regular notebooking journal. My youngest daughter is working in the junior notebooking journal and she does not do everything. It really depends on your student and how they learn.

The front of the notebooking journals is where you will find a suggested schedule for the anatomy and physiology program. Their suggested pace is two lessons per week. At this rate and following their schedule of activities, it will take 28 weeks to complete the program. Each lesson takes approximately 4 days/2 weeks to cover. It is restated here that you do not need to feel compelled to complete every activity. Pick and choose those best suited to your learners.

We have found that the junior notebooking journal actually has more learning for the anatomy and physiology course. If I were going to be purchasing this for my middle school student and my elementary student, I would purchase them both the junior notebooking. Below you can see a comparison of the same “pages” of learning in the two journals.

We used this two different ways. My 9 year old used it approximately 4 days per week, because we found early on that two days a week was taking too long for my daughter’s attention span. We did every single one of the Try It! activities, mostly as we came to them. Sometimes they had to wait for a different day or until the end of the reading. We read the text together and she did the blue review sections out loud. After doing our planned reading for the day, she would open up her junior notebooking journal and complete her activities in it. We prefer to do a little bit every day so this worked well for us and allowed us some flexibility in our plans. We broke up the schedule that was printed in the notebooking journals into two each and it has worked well. It provides a good bit of reading and activity, without overwhelming, and takes between 30 minutes and an hour. If it weren’t broken up, I think that 1 -2 hours of science work would be too much for my 9 year old.

My 11 year old has been using it, also, though with the regular notebooking journal. She knows that she has to do everything on the week by the end of the week and is a very independent learner. She has generally done her reading all at once and then done the activities and the notebooking journal over the next 3 days. It has worked well for her since she prefers to get up and get her work done early on in the day. If your child is self-directed and an independent learner, this format works well.

We have enjoyed every Apologia review we have been blessed to participate in and we tend to fully complete them. If you would like to read about other product from Apologia that we have used, please visit the following posts –

Exploring Creation with Astronomy
Field Trip Journal
Writers In Residence
Ultimate Homeschool Planner
iWitness books
Flourish
What On Earth Can I Do?

Blessings,
At Home.

Please check out additional reviews and how other families used this program by clicking on the Homeschool Review Crew banner below.

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/apologiaworld    Tag:   @apologiaworld

Twitter:  www.twitter.com/apologiaworld      Tag:   @apologiaworld

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/apologia/            Tag:   @apologia

Instagram:  www.instagram.com/apologiaworld            Tag:   @apologiaworld

Google+:  https://plus.google.com/105053356034237782125

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/apologiaworld

 

Art with Let’s Go Geography

We are still enjoying working through Let’s Go Geography. We don’t stress over our pacing. Some weeks we do three countries; some weeks, it gets left off. It is always interesting and fun, though, and we are really enjoying it a lot still. I hope Year 2 is out when we are ready for it.

I just thought I would show you some of the art pieces that have been completed in relation to Let’s Go. Miss J absolutely enjoys the art part of this and it is good for her to have this time. I sometimes forget that she is still young and doesn’t need to have all the book time that her older sisters do. Besides the fact that she is a hands-on learner All. The. Way. It sticks with her when it is hands-on so these projects are great for her.

If you are looking for a simple geography program that has lots of skill, take a look at Let’s Go Geography. It is a great curriculum that is simple yet very effective.

Blessings,
At Home.

Home School in the Woods Á La Carte projects ~ a Crew review

Home School in the Woods is a tried and true company in our home. We were thrilled to be able to take a look at two of their Á La Carte products for this review

• A Timeline of World War II
• The Art of Quilling

The  Á La Carte projects are small chunks of a study – a game, a timeline, a short lapbook, a project. These small chunks of learning are great for when you are looking for an extension of a study you are doing or wanting a hands-on project of some sort. They cover some really good information but are not long, extensive studies. The Á La Carte projects are often included in a larger, more in-depth study if you are looking for more.

Home School in the Woods is a company that creates digital, downloadable projects and studies dealing with history – from ancient history to present day. Each project is well researched and you can feel confident that the information given is accurate. The projects are all downloaded to your computer so you can print at home and get started right away. The instructions for each project are included in the files and are very understandable.

On to the projects!

Miss J has been studying World War II and we were just finishing up the unit study we were on when this timeline from Home School In The Woods arrived. It is fantastic!

A Timeline of World War II is a downloadable product, purchased directly from HSITW. Once you download it, you can print it directly from your home. We chose to print it on colored printer paper, using blue for the timeline and neon green for the pieces we were glueing on.

To get started, I followed the printing directions and then the cutting and taping directions to get the long timeline put together. We taped all the pieces of the timeline together and the it folds compactly for storage. It goes neatly into the notebooking notebook that each girl keeps. So Miss J has a wonderful timeline to add to her notebook now.

Each day, we would pull out the timeline and look at the dates. We started back in WWI and looked at people and events that impacted the start of the war. It really did start back at the end of WWI, as the policies put in place then impacted various countries and caused hardship and discontent. Miss J would give the date and then read the placement on the timeline. She then got the pages of the pieces to cut out and glue on, searching for the right piece. She cut it out and glued it on. Then we would do an online search to find a short article or video on that event, place, or person. We would watch it or read about it. After that, we moved on to the next spot on the timeline. We would do six or eight items per day. It was a manageable amount for a 9 year old.

This was a wonderful resource to learn a lot about WWII. In doing the timeline this way, combined with the research, Miss J had a very thorough grounding of the causes, actions, events, and people that influenced the war around the globe. I learned a ton, as well. There were a number of people I knew of but didn’t know their exact contributions to the war. I highly recommend studying history this way. It was a manageable chunk of history, yet it was very in-depth.

What Miss J thought about the timeline:

It is lots of fun. I got through it kind of fast. It was kind of fun to learn about the people (like Hitler and Anne Frank). And it is fun to learn about people I didn’t know and didn’t know were there (like Joseph Stalin who was a very bad man).

Now that we have finished the timeline, I am considering purchasing one I just noticed: WWII: On the Home Front Lap Book/Notebook Project. It is right up Miss J’s alley and continues on with the time period we have focused on for the past little bit.

We also chose The Art of Quilling project to try out. Quilling is using paper strips, curling them, and then gluing them into a pattern. I have always wanted to try quilling because I remember a beautiful quilled piece that hung on the wall of my home growing up. We read a bit about quilling from the file and I talked about remembering the hanging growing up. We took the time right then to call my mom and ask her about it. She talked with Miss J about it, remembering creating it, and finishing it the way she did. She told Miss J about the process and what she remembered. It was a neat family connection that brought this project to life.

After the phone call and getting a text with a picture of the piece, we printed the quilling pattern, and then got started. I had purchased a quilling tool at a local hobby store for just a few dollars along with pre-cut strips of paper. It took a few tries to figure out how to curl the strips and then to adjust them to various sizes for the pattern. We learned a lot as we went along such as

• You have to have a liquid glue that comes out well.
• Curling tighter is not necessarily better.
• Curling, adjusting, and shaping is all something that has to be worked on and manipulated for each place on the pattern.
• Age 9 was good for trying this out, with a simple pattern. If it were much more complicated or detailed, it might be a bit trying for Miss J. I would love it, though. We plan to try out more patterns if we can find some online.

We chose the quilling project because it fits with the time period and activities of some of our reading and history lessons. From the 1800s – 1970s, quilling was fairly popular in various places. Since we were working on WWII and had just finished a book about pioneer times, it fit well. And it was fun to try something that people would have done during those times, as well as something that grandma had tried.

What Miss J thought about quilling:

That was awesome! It was fun. It took a long time, forever! But it was fun. It took two days; my final project was pretty.

The Penny Rug Notebook/3D Project looks like another project that would be fun to tackle while sticking to the theme of WWII and thriftiness or using what you have.

Home School in the Woods has wonderful  Á La Carte products and these  Á La Carte projects are often part of a large study, if you are looking for more. We have used Project Passport: Ancient Greece, Project Passport: Ancient Egypt, a la carte Erie Canal, Make-A-State, and more. Other Homeschool Review Crew families were trying out various other Home School in the Woods  Á La Carte projects. Definitely go see them. These are an easy way to find a project that fits right in with a subject you may be studying without committing to a full year curriculum or a long-term study project.

 Blessings,
At Home.

Click the banner to see more products reviewed by the Homeschool Review Crew.

Find Home School in the Woods on social media.

• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolinthewoods
• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/HSintheWoods    Tag:   @HSintheWoods
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hsinthewoods/
• Google+:  https://plus.google.com/b/109711152019235885312/109711152019235885312/posts
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrKq6iLty2fpB6R6ZpcUb8A

 

CursiveLogic ~ a Crew review

Miss J has worked on her handwriting in various ways over the past couple of years and so when the CursiveLogic review became available, I thought it would be a good way to cement the cursive that just hasn’t really transformed her writing yet. It has been a very good experience for her using the CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack and The Art of Cursive.

CursiveLogic is a company that has developed a unique way of teaching cursive. It is a process that works well for young students just beginning but also works well for older students and adults. This cursive program is different than any other I have ever seen and I am so excited about the help it has given Miss J.

The CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack includes one CursiveLogic workbook and access to a teaching webinar. If you have more than one student who will be working on CursiveLogic, you will need an additional workbook for each student. These workbooks can be purchased separately.

The workbook is thoughtfully created. Bound of the top of the page instead of at the side makes it easily used by either right or left handed writers. While both sides of the page are used, you progress through the workbook on the front side of the pages, turn the book over, and go back through the remainder of the lessons on the back sides of the pages. Miss J would tell you that the very best part of the workbook is that there are dry erase pages at the back to practice on. She would practice her letter string, erase, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Until I told her to move on. She loves the dry erase pages.

CursiveLogic gives us a wonderfully fresh approach that is multi-sensory. There is the physical, or kinesthetic, component of writing, both with the writing implement but also by finger tracing and big muscle movements to help ingrain the pattern. In addition to this physical aspect, there is a visual cue (color), a auditory cue (a statement for each letter string that reinforces the motor skills), and quick paced curriculum that moves the student very quickly to practical application, writing words by the end of the first week. This multi-sensory approach appeals to the student.

CursiveLogic has a shape-based approach that guides the student through letter connections from the very beginning. The letters are not learned in a vacuum but rather are learned in a connected string. There are four of these connected letter strings. You will notice on their website that there are basic shapes that letters share and these are grouped together to make the student’s grasp of the connection simpler. It is a logical program that students seem to really respond to, if Miss J is any indication.

Miss J has done very well with CursiveLogic. The combination of letter string, color cue, and catch phrase has been really helpful to her. I have seen great improvement in the few short weeks we have been using this program.

In addition to the workbook, the Quick-Start Pack gives access to a webinar on teaching cursive with the CursiveLogic program. I learned a lot listening to the webinar and seeing the program in action. The webinar will walk you through a lesson with the program and help you see how to guide the learner. Some tips I learned included how to phrase things in teaching to help reinforce the program and the purpose and order of the letter learning. This was a very informative video to watch and I found it useful to prepare myself to teach this program.

If you are an adult who is wanting to refresh or tidy up your own cursive, The Art of Cursive might be for you. This is an adult-style coloring book, with intricate images and copywork. The images to color are actually made up of connected letters and the copywork quote. They are lovely! They provide some different ways to practice letter connection and to work on the uniformity of the letter formation, while providing the relaxation and fun of a coloring book. This also served as an incentive to Miss J to work hard on her cursive since I told her should could not use the book until she had completed all of the lower case letter strings. She was successful and got to use The Art of Cursive.

One note about The Art of Cursive: While it can easily provide a practice for a youngster, it is not intended to teach a child cursive. It is intended as a refresher for an adult or to help an adult learn through abbreviated lessons. There are reference pages in the front of the book that show letter formation and give practice, allowing an adult to learn cursive through the shortened lessons. This book is not intended to teach cursive to a child; the CursiveLogic workbook is where children need to begin.

I had never thought out the fact that a shape based approach to cursive might be a more logical and helpful way to teach writing but this type of approach has really made a difference with Miss J. Her writing still has a way to go but whose doesn’t at age 9? She has made significant progress in the past month using CursiveLogic and is able to write in cursive now. Her letters are more uniform in size and it is becoming a more automatic way of writing for her. Progress has definitely been made.

I definitely would suggest you check out CursiveLogic and their products: CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack and The Art of Cursive. During the month of March 2018, CursiveLogic is offering a 20% discount on the CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack, which is the combo of the webinar and one workbook.  Use the code CREW2018 at checkout. Now is a great time to get this program.

Blessings,
At Home.

Other Homeschool Review Crew families used this program, as well, and you can see their results by checking out their reviews. Click on the banner below.

Birds Unit Study

I know I have hinted and outright mentioned the birds study that Miss J was doing. She just finished it up. It came about because of her fascination with birds and wanting to learn more about different birds. She has been interested in birds since we did a birds book a few years ago. Since we read Look Up!, we have kept our binoculars on or near the kitchen table, which is where we can easily view the birds in the trees out back. We often grab them and study the birds that we can see and we really enjoy watching the cardinal family that comes back every year. This really factored into the decision to create a study, just for Miss J, the focused on birds. She has loved it.

My first resource is a bird study from Memoria Press titled “What’s That Bird?” When a local education store was cleaning out a couple years ago, I was able to get the old version of the teacher guide for this for a buck-fifty. I grabbed it. We used it to help us study the feathers, wings, migration, and more. It was a good overview of birds. We did not use the additional information in this study as it was geared quite a bit higher than 3rd grade.

We also watched Flight: The Genius of Birds, a video from Illustra Media. This video focuses on the dynamics of flight, what is required for birds to be able to fly, and how God’s design is perfect. The videography is just stunning in this video and we enjoy watching it. We learn quite a bit each time we rewatch.

We also checked out a bundle of bird books from the library and spent some time, early in the study, focused on nests, parts of the birds, feathers, and more. We used most of these books in conjunction with the pages from the Memoria Press guide we had.

The website All About Birds was a daily use. It has a good search engine on it so Miss J could easily search the type of bird she needed for that day. The information was thorough, yet accessible for one her age. It included identification, habitat, and food information, along with nest and egg details. There are bird calls to listen to and videos of the birds. This was a really good site for our study.

I have a file from Homeschool Copywork that has coloring pages of birds. We printed these full-size and placed them in a three-prong folder. Each bird is identified. As she studied each bird, she colored it according to the images on the web site.

We also have a membership to NotebookingPages.com. This resource had a blank notebooking page for birds. I downloaded it and printed it out with four copies of it per page. Miss J would fill in one for each bird and then tape it to the back of the picture of the bird that she colored. There are several other page types on birds available in their science section. This resource is invaluable when creating your own unit studies.

The last thing I included in her study was copywork from John James Audobon. She studied a biography of him early on last fall and so including some of his most famous statements is a great way to keep him and his contributions in mind while benefitting her cursive work. These came from Homeschool Copywork.

This was a simple study that has given her lots of information. It has also been really easy to tie in with other work that we are doing, such as a study of the book “Bears on Hemlock Mountain.” It is not uncommon for us to be out and about somewhere and for her to state “I see a (whatever kind of bird).” We talk about it and she enjoys telling us how she knew what it was.

This is just one way in which we strive to encourage our girls’ in their learning and an example of what I wrote about for the 2018 Virtual Homeschool Fair week 3.

Blessings,
At Home.

Bird Books

We created a bird study for Miss J. I decided it would be good to share some of the book resources with you that we used. I will be linking to this in an upcoming post on the unit study itself so be watching for it.

We specifically made it a point to talk about John James Audubon and the influence he had on nature studies, and bird studies in particular. These were two very interesting books about him and his work.

The Boy Who Drew Birds by Jacqueline Davies

Capturing Nature: The Writings and Art of John James Audubon edited by Peter and Connie Roop

These are some of the reference books we picked up at the library.

Backyard Birds

Smithsonian Bird Watcher

Bird – a DK eyewitness book

If You Were a Bird by S. J. Calder

These books were chosen because they hit on a specific theme or idea we were covering such as nests or the birds we were likely to see based on where we live.

Learn About Texas Birds

Backyard Birds Texas by Bill Fenimore

Birds Build Nests by Cathryn Sill

About Birds: A Guide For Children

And these were directing some of the more detailed information and questions for the study.

Exploring Creations with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day by Jeannie Fulbright

Look Up: Bird Watching in Your Own Backyard by Annette LeBlanc Cate

What’s That Bird? Teacher Key from Memoria Press

These books, by themselves, make a pretty thorough bird study. But, if you want to go further with it, check out the upcoming post about the unit study that Miss J just finished.

Blessings,
At Home.

 

Interactive Grammar Notebook for Elementary Students

Miss J enjoys learning with hands-on activity. So, when we were talking about how to do some grammar work with her this year that would be fun, we hit upon doing a notebook using printables about grammar. I had no idea at the time that most people refer to these as interactive notebooks. But hey, even I learned something this way!

Before I began anything else, I made a list of all the things we wanted her to review and learn:

• nouns, common nouns, proper nouns, etc.
• verbs, linking verbs, etc.
• pronouns
• adjectives
• adverbs
• sentences, including types of sentences

Then, I did a bundle of searches to come up with freebie printables that fit what we were wanting her to learn. In the process, I found some other grammar concepts that were perfect to add to her notebook. I saved all of these files on my computer and then I spent some time printing them all. I used colored printer paper to keep it fun and alternated the pages so that she did a different color for each page. Some pages had two or more colors.

There were foldables, lists, matching, lift-the-flap, and more. I found a good variety and we were able to print off enough to do several a week for the entire fall semester. She used a composition notebook to put them in and now she has a complete grammar notebook that she can refer back to if she needs a refresher. I am keeping it handy for that but also so that if I find more, we can add to it as she gets older and works on different parts of grammar.

The areas that she ended up with in her interactive notebook include:

• subject/predicate
• nouns, including common nouns, singular nouns, possessive nouns
• pronouns
• verbs, including verb phrases, being verbs and action verbs
• adjectives
• adverbs
• prefix and suffix
• synonyms and antonyms
• punctuation
• types of sentences
• cliche, idiom, hyperbole, personifiction, simile, metaphor, alliteration, onomatopoeia
• writing details
• how-to practice
• opinion writing
• plot
• important fact identification
• reading responses

I often pulled out Grammar Rock from the Schoolhouse Rock series to go along with a new topic in her grammar notebook. After all, who doesn’t like a some to help you remember?

You can find some of what I saved in my Pinterest board but a lot of it that I used, I did have to give an email for. I didn’t mind and will be considering purchasing one or two options for additional activities for the more advanced concepts. Especially since I saw a couple on Pinterest that I didn’t print for her. Yay – more for her to do.

She was actually sitting here, helping me flip through her interactive notebook to make the above list and was asking to do more. She’ll be happy for me to print some more things for her to do.

What are your favorite grammar resources? I would love for you to share your favorites with me in the comments. It might give me something new to do with her and it might help someone else who is reading along here.

Blessings,
At Home.

Linking up with the Homeschool Review Crew through their weekly linkup.