January in our little Homeschool began with online writing courses for the 2 big kids who cried real tears and complained loudly when Mom edited their book reports. After a yelling match between me and my 12 year old that never should have happened, I decided it was best for all of us to see if I could find a program that would help teach them writing skills and also make them have to answer to someone who wasn't me.
After some internet research, I found www.time4writing.com. I had written off the time4learning series back when first researching curriculum, mostly because I didn't like the programs that were video-based. I simply didn't want my kids spending that much time in front of the computer screen. I also wasn't aware they offered writing courses, which aren't video-based at all.
Jump to now, and the kids have just completed their first 8-week course each with time4writing, and it was perfect for our needs. It made the kids accountable to someone else, a real teacher, who emailed and responded and gave feedback on each writing assignment, as well as a grade. Both Chase's middle school course and Indigo's elementary school course guided them from simple things like appropriate use of commas to using transition words properly to writing a complete paragraph or essay for their final assignment. Both kids have individually told me that the course helped them a lot with their writing, and I can actually see a difference in the short stories they put out weekly along with their history lesson and in their final book reports. We are really pleased with time4writing.
Social Studies is done as a group still, using Story Of The World. It includes bible stories, and relays them as fact, and so what we do is just discuss beforehand that this particular story is from the bible and that they can decide for themselves if they want to view it as fact. This has led us into a great discussion about conflicting translations, royalty who've cut from and added to the bible as they saw fit, and other factors that may have influenced the book over the years. We got a little bored with the same old review questions and activities listed for each chapter, and I felt that at times the series moved too fast from one region to another. So we changed how we do things. We'll read the chapter, do the review, take notes and discuss. Then we go to the library and research the region. This accomplishes a few things - getting us out the door to the library more often than we were going, and having the kids learn how to use the online catalog and find books. The kids are really into this and are cracking open the books already on the 5 minute ride home. They have to read all the books, then make a lapbook on the region. Lapbooks were one of those things I rolled my eyes at, probably because google will show you some really overdone examples of lapbooks. I don't think we need a lapbook for every subject, and I think it's a waste of time to download someone else's material just to cut and paste into a lapbook. I do think a good way to use them is to have the student be completely responsible for coming up with creative ways to display the information they've learned, in certain subjects. And so far, Chase and Indy have come up with some pretty cool stuff. The best part is, I know they're learning when they do this.
Riley searching the online catalog
Chase colors a page from Story Of The World
Indy's desk always has a thousand things on it.
Indy works on her Mesopotamia lapbook. She loves making pockets using cardstock and staples so much, that I had to tell her to stop making pockets!
Riley cuts out parts for her lapbook. In mismatched pajamas. With underwear on her head. It really is typical for this child, trust me.
I picked a 1st grade program for math so we wouldn't miss any foundational stuff, but she tells me frequently that "my math book thinks I'm stupid." She mocks it by making up her own problems on the sides of the worksheets that use larger numbers than what it is asking her to practice. Instead of doing the sets of problems (the current lesson has her adding to 10, 11, and 12) she draws animals, writes her name backwards, writes her name in cursive, then in cursive backwards, adds extra numbers to the 2-digit ones, and writes the fraction of how much she has completed out of how many questions there are. I fought it for a little, but now I'm letting her take the unit tests again, with the deal that if she gets 100% she can move on, if not, we go back and do the lesson. Thus far, she's getting all the answers correct.
We add in our art and health and physiology and other stuff here and there.
Chase works on his windmill graphite pencil drawing.
Riley draws an elephant.
Other pics of School from February:
Indy still prefers to work in non-traditional spaces.
RJ and Mom build robotic Erector set things.
Music practice is a daily occurrence.
Handling our corn snake, Ramona, is a lesson in itself.
We keep the small tyke busy with hands-on things like beads and pipe cleaners and patterns.
Riley builds things. Still with underwear on her head. I hope this was the same day. It's possible that it wasn't... who knows.
RJ makes Valentine's for his preschool class. He was the only one who had handmade ones with his sloppy 3 yr old writing on them. He received a bunch of store-bought punch-out cards with parent-writing on them. It makes me sad, he and I had such a nice time together working on them. Plus, I learned that Addison is his "best love of all."
Riley builds a ramp with KEVA blocks. She is trying to solve the issue of how high to start the ramp to make the ball jump over the block and into the corral. I sneak in and we do trials starting at each height, and then write the answers in fractions. She is fascinated with fractions at the moment, so she's totally into it.
And so now it's March, 5 weeks until baby, a little warmer most days, and we are starting to get out again and mingle with our homeschool group a little more.
