Socialization Article

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/13/home-schooling-socialization-not-problem/

Let them be Little

Object Lessons

One fun thing I have learned since coming home to teach my own children is that you can use the same things to teach your own children at home as you would in children's church! Wow, isn't that a revelation?! What kills me about all this is that I didn't think much about it before. I had my separate Sunday School/Children's church ideas in their very own box. Why in the world didn't I try that creativity on my own children?!

I love object lessons. My friend Pam gave me a great book with short object lesson devotionals. I have been doing these and the boys love them. The first one I did, I came into the room wearing mismatched socks. The lesson had a Scripture verse and then a devotional about how our lives need to match what we say. Really cute, really fun, and I hope it will be really memorable to them!

Update

With the move to our new house, the holidays (and all the craziness involved), it has been a little more difficult to update my blogs.

But I thought I'd take just a minute to update.

First of all I want to say how much I treasure the opportunity to home educate my children. To me, it is worth every minute of the time it takes. I treasure the time I have with my boys.

Even on the most trying days, I feel that those are opportunities for character development and relationship building.

Michael is doing a daily Character study with the family at lunch-time every day. It has been such a joy to sit back and watch him teach and lead our family!

The boys are still learning Scripture memory from the book of Proverbs.

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Justin is working with double digit divisors and long division, fractions, simple algebra, and converting English measures. In Language Arts, he just moved from learning about comma placement to possesive nouns.

Jonathan is focusing on improving his addition skills by going through Twin Sisters Addition workbook & CD. He is doing well; I just felt that it would help him move through his ABeka math more quickly if he can master addition. There is a CD with the workbook that is great for reviewing at bedtime.
In Language Arts, he is separating syllables and recognizing special phonics sounds.

Ryan is learning to read. We take it slowly and patiently. The patience is paying off because he is really starting to blend the sounds together. I don't want to rush through this. I want him to get it without regretting speeding through it.
He is not "there" yet, but he is getting there. I am so thankful that I have the opportunity to teach Ryan to read. I would not trade these memories we are making together!
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For Science, we are learning everything from insects to Creation Science (Debunking Darwinism).

The boys read history separately to themselves and then we also do unit studies. In our unit study, we just talked about the Indian mounds (burial grounds). One interesting mound that we talked about today was the "Serpent Mound". The picture in the book we are using is much better than this one:
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/northamerica/serpent.html


I had forgotten, but studying that reminded me of the place in Alabama called Moundville (near Tuscaloosa) that we visited on field trips when I was in school. We may just have to go there for a field trip sometime ourselves. There are surely a lot of Indian themed historical places around here as well. I am looking forward to finding them!

We haven't done many messy Science projects lately because of the holiday stuff. We are still meeting with Stacie and Anna weekly.
Sometimes we play board games. Other times we do easy crafts. Another week I had several children over. They ran around in the fields, got muddy, and then came inside and baked cookies. I plan on having more children over soon to do some Christmas cookies. I am also hoping to get back into regularly visiting the nursing homes. We have several from our church in the same nursing home (as well as Nana), so I am hoping that we can make that a more regular activity again.

Well that's it for now. I hope I can do better updating from now on.

The chief thing

I love this quote:

“To bring the human race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world.”

From A Charlotte Mason Companion

Supplementary Math Exercises

Jonathan will be using Twin Sisters Addition CD and workbook to supplement his ABeka Math. A Beka Math is awesome, but I thought a music CD & workbook would be an additional benefit (no pun intended).
The CD can be popped in at bedtime and all three boys can enjoy and learn.

I love the fact that we have the freedom to take the time to master this concept. It looks fun!

I only paid $1 plus shipping for this ...thanks to Swagbucks!

The rich man, the poor man, and the thief

Language arts story by Justin


Once upon a time there was a rich man, a poor man, and a thief. The rich man had cider, the poor man had gruel, and the thief had gravy. Well one day the thief stole the cider, and the rich man blamed the poor man!
But after the poor man went to jail, the poor man escaped and lived happily ever after.

I read this out loud and then laughed. Justin was giggling and said, "Well you know he wouldn't want to steal the gruel!".
Definition of gruel: a thin porridge. (Justin dislikes oatmeal)

Justin: Language Arts samples

For Spelling & Vocabulary, Justin gets his list of words from Noah Webster's American Spelling book. He then looks each one of them up in his dictionary (with my help) and writes the definitions. Later, he will make the words into sentences and stories. You can click the pictures to see them more clearly.
For Language, I read him a list of sentences and phrases (from A Beka Language 3). He must determine the difference between them orally. Then he copies the sentences and changes the phrases into sentences.

American History: Study of Early Peoples

We are currently studying a few of the Early Native American People groups. We are using The Complete Book of United States History for our studies.

One of the most interesting things about the early native Americans were the marks they left. Hieroglyphics (little pictures to represent words), Petroglyphs (hieroglyphics in stone), Pueblos (stone apartment type structures), etc.

(Also, Justin is really excited because there is a section about Indian sign language. He, of course, had to browse ahead in the book and find that).

Here are some of the boys' drawings of Hieroglyphics, petroglyphs, and pueblos.

Click the pictures to see the details. Justin drew pueblos with petroglyphs on the walls.

Jonathan's (he explained his)

We watched the clip below to see it in "real life". Very interesting. If we were rich, we'd head on over there for the weekend to see them. But I'm really thankful we have Youtube as an alternative. :-)

Arts & Crafts

Our Dollar Tree has a lot of fun craft items. Yesterday I bought 2 bags of styro-foam balls (various sizes), acrylic paint, and colored pipe cleaners.

Unfortunately I do not have pictures (the lense of my camera is broken! Hopefully I will get it fixed soon!), but today the boys all made bees. So cute! Justin actually made his entire bee out of pipe cleaners. Jonathan and Ryan used the balls and pipe cleaners. The balls were the body and the pipe cleaners served as legs and wings. This goes along with our bee unit study (and of course just for fun). We named Ryan's bee "Miss Apis" since Apis is part of the scientific name for bees.

Justin used the remaining balls to paint for his solar system (he is studying it on his own).

Another Vocab Story

Jonathan, who has quite a sense of humor sometimes, penned quite the vocabulary story today. The word is "abandon." He had to write the definition and then a story.

"I wish to abandon my house."
"But you can't", said Sam.
One of his friends said, "Yes, he can; it's his house."
Then Sam learned that it was not his business.

My money-saving news!

I can't help but post about this. I am so excited!

Recently I sold a big bunch of books on Ebay. I made enough money to buy new or almost new curriculum for our school year. The nicest thing was that I had actually made money on some books I had bought at the thrift store (For example, I paid $2 for a set of books and sold them for almost $8.)

I am so thrilled because by selling all those books, I freed up some space and basically paid for almost all of this year's curriculum for the boys that we need!

A couple of treasures that I was able to buy off Ebay:

*Schoolhouse Rock 30 Year Anniversary Set. I believe it's the entire collection. I love Schoolhouse Rock because it sets just about everything educational to music (Math, Science, Grammar, History, Government, etc).

Here's a sample:




*The Complete Book of United States History:

Story Telling style, Maps charts, & timelines.

I wanted something complete that I could teach as a unit. This seems to fit the bill and I can supplement with "living books" and audio books (which I get from HomeSchool Radio Shows, Your Story Hour, and library).
I also got this brilliant idea. I was at Walmart looking at the shipping supplies and lo and behold I looked down and there was a giant roll of craft paper for around $3!
I thought, "That would be PERFECT for our time-lines!".
We can roll it up to store it until next time. I was doing time-lines on the wall, but the sticky tack wasn't coming off very easily and we were running out of space to put the figures. I love doing time-lines so I was disappointed that the wall wasn't working out. I am thrilled about the craft paper and can't wait to try it!

I was also able to get the ABeka books we needed very reasonably. I was especially thrilled to get Justin's entire set of readers brand new for $20. That's a great deal... especially considering the fact that they will be passed down to his brothers! They are true treasures. I loved reading them as a child and am thrilled that my own children have the opportunity to read them as well.

Spelling, Grammar, Dictation, Copywork

I think I mentioned before that I heard a great audio seminar about Language Arts from a veteran home-schooling mother. Both of her children are adults and have published writing, so I was interested in hearing what she had to say. She is a huge advocate of Note-booking for all subjects. I must say, I have to agree with her that note-booking is very beneficial! The first Note-booking project was for our bee unit study. Now that I understand more about the process, we are enjoying note-booking in the area of language arts as well. Notebooks are great ways to keep a nice record of the boys' work. (We are still using ABeka curriculum as core.)

One fun area of note-booking is in story writing. My boys love to write their own stories, so after they have written their vocabulary words with definitions (Justin has to look them up in the dictionary), they write stories about their words.

I wanted to share a couple of the stories here. I must say their stories make me chuckle!

By Justin (who likes short and sweet and to the point):

Once a man thought he was sacred! But people would warn him that he was not sacred. But he would not listen because he thought he was the best. One day he thought that he had the most glory! Then one day he drove right over a cliff! He had died.

By Jonathan

(He narrated the story to me while I wrote. Then he copied my writing - this is to keep him from seeing words misspelled even if they are his own words. Charlotte Mason recommends this):

Once upon a time, there was a dog. He liked briers and brambles. His master's name was John. John named his dog "BrierThorn."
One day BrierThorn ran away. Then BrierThorn saw a cat. He ate the cat for lunch! BrierThorn saw two dogs. He got into a fight with them. BrierThorn and the dogs had a boxing match; BrierThorn won!
Next, he went to a pizza place. He stole some pizza. "Come back here!" said the baker. BrierThorn said, "You can only have the crust."
Then BrierThorn went home.

September Update

I know it is about time for an update! I don't have a lot of time, but there are a few things I want to mention. Hopefully I will find time to update with some pictures soon.

• We have the new & exciting privilege of meeting with Jonathan's old school friend Anna once a week! She is homeschooling as well. This is a lot of fun not only for the boys, but for me as well since I have made a new friend with her mother Stacie.
  
• We are still studying bees. Currently we are reading:

The Bee People

A very delightful classic I must say (1899)! I had downloaded it as a freebie several months ago, and when we decided to do our unit study I remembered I had downloaded it. (What a nice coincidence huh?)

Here is a little synopsis I found on another site:

An attractive introduction to the curious structure, habits, and activities of bees, in which readers learn how the bees' wondrous body parts equip them to gather nectar and pollen, construct the hive, and nurture the young, and how the different kinds of bees interact in the life of the hive. Over one hundred pen drawings [emphasis mine... these are beautiful!] by the author illustrate the features described in the text.

We are also reading another nice little book called The Brownies at Home by Palmer Cox (written in 1893). I absolutely love it! The entire book is written in poetry form, and the little "brownies" are illustrated all throughout the book. The boys enjoy looking at the pictures and choosing which ones they like the best. Evidently, as I have looked into the brownies, they were very famous in their day. Books, toys, dolls, and even a camera were named after them! The copy we have is black and white, but this picture above gives a good idea of what the brownies look like. This particular book is about the months of the year. Justin & Jonathan are working on their very own Spelling & Vocabulary notebooks based on the Noah Webster's American Spelling book (The Original Blue Backed speller). These are not only a great way to keep up with their education, but they are also very fun and entertaining! I give them a new list of words, they are to look each of the words up in their dictionary, write the definitions,write a story about the words, and possibly draw pictures for chosen words. Their stories are very entertaining! Ryan is learning to read! I know I mentioned we checked out Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons from the library. I had to take the book back, so there was a break of time where we didn't get to go over the lessons. Thankfully, I was able to order it from Amazon and we have our very own copy now. - I am also reading story books to him from the library. - Along with these lessons, we are going through Disney Number & Counting & Alphabet learning workbooks.These are cute workbooks I found at the Dollar tree. He traces numbers and letters & counts. He enjoys working through these with me as we snuggle on my big bed. -On his own he does a LOT of drawing and cutting out with his scissors.

My Sentiments Exactly...

http://afullheart.blogspot.com/2009/08/wordless-wednesday-on-my-refrigerator.html

The American Spelling Book

I have been waiting all week for my printer ink to arrive. It came today! (I only paid $11 per cartridge for my ink, and it is great quality!)
I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to use McGuffey Eclectic Spelling book, but after review I prefer Noah Webster's Speller.

Pictures below of our very own The American Spelling Book (better known as Blue Backed Speller) by Noah Webster. I found it on Google books, magnified it to 16o percent, and printed it (168 pgs) on my printer. I put it in a nice three ring binder that I had lying around, and it is ready to go!

Click the pictures for a close-up picture.

I know our American language has changed over the years, but I think this will be a great foundation for my boys.

An update on our Unit Study

Just a few pictures from our bee unit study. We are far from finished, but I thought it would be nice to document some of our activities with some pictures.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Playing a game about bees*
I read to them about how bees send "bee scouts" to find nectar, and then how they dance to communicate to other bees where nectar is found. Then we played the proboscis (bee tongue) game. We initially used party blowouts with velcro attached (to represent the bees' tongue), but the boys DESTROYED them!

Jonathan and Ryan were pretending to be bees. Justin was as well, but he wasn't about to let me take a picture of him with his tongue stuck to a flower! I don't blame him because I wouldn't want to share a picture of how I was showing them how the bees dance.
At least it was fun, and I hope it helps them remember!

Jonathan writing paragraphs about different types of bees... (yes, they doodle on everything!)

Ryan's page. He colored the bee picture, cut it out, and pasted it along with some flower cut-outs I provided. He wrote the word "bee" as I told him how to spell it.
Another one of Ryan's project. It says "Buzzy Bee: Tulips are sweet"
Jonathan's
Jonathan drew this bee free-hand and labeled the parts
Justin's notebook. We use sheet protectors for each page (thus the shine on the pages). They are imperative for creating nice, lasting notebooks.
Justin's page about "carpenter bees" (Jonathan is doing the same paragraphs)
.... and bumble bees
Justin's drawing of a bee with its parts

I still have several pages of things to do and read to them as well as going through their notebooks and helping them to correct mistakes. Hopefully I will have more pictures to post soon!

Update

I haven't posted very much lately because we have been so busy around here. But as a courtesy to our family member readers and because this blog is part of my records, I need to give a little update.

We have continued with year-round schooling because of its convenience and benefits.

We are still using Proverbs for Parenting for Scripture memory, Arthur Maxwell's The Bible Story, and ABeka workbooks.


As a suplement to language arts, earlier today I downloaded our very own copy of the McGuffey Eclectic Spelling book (1879!). I had bought a copy of Spelling Power last year when we started out (at the suggestion of a well-meaning friend), but I just couldn't make myself be happy with it. I have it waiting on the shelf and I intend to list it on Ebay.

Google-books makes many of the old educational material available today free online! I am VERY impressed with the content and quality of the educational material from the late 1800's and early 1900's. I intend to use quite a bit of those books as teaching tools. I especially like the McGuffey readers and hope to get hard back readers eventually. For now though, I am able to print and use what I want from the Google site until I am able to get copies of them. We are continuing to use the ABeka readers as well.

We are still going through our bee unit study, and enjoying all the neat things we have learned so far. I added those pictures in the above post.

I am currently reading The Chimney Sweep's Ransom by Dave & Neta Jackson to the boys. This series, called "Trailblazer Books", introduces young readers to Christian heroes of the past. The Chimney Sweep's Ransom introduces John Wesley. The last one we read introduced George Mueller. The boys and I have enjoyed them, and Justin in particular is never satisfied with just one chapter.

Bee Videos

I wanted the boys to see some bees in action, so we watched some videos on Youtube. My favorite was the one about the melipona bee from "exploration films".

Bee Unit Study

The boys were really excited the other day when Pa-pa & Grammy gave them a bee's hive. We ended up keeping it for about a week, and then it started to mold so we had to throw it away. It was so fun to study it!
It was very fascinating because the queen bee was right on top of it, and you could see eggs and worker bees on and in it as well. Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of it but it looked a lot like the one here----> click this link.

Because of this experience, Justin told me he wanted to do a study about bees. Great idea since this would epitomize life-integrated learning!

I decided we should do it in note-book (scrap-booking style). We hope to including copy-work, work sheets, essays, pictures, dictations, art work, and whatever else we decide to add. I have already collected a lot of resources to use throughout the upcoming weeks.

Justin said he is making TWO of them (One that is directed by me and the other to make "however he wants it".) :-)

Today we read an introduction to our unit study, and then we proceeded to create the covers and artwork for their notebooks.

They drew & cut out several pictures before a decision was made on the final product. You can click any of them to see a closer picture.


Ryan enjoys cutting and pasting. Of course he is at the perfect age for this.
You gotta hold your mouth just right. I caught him sticking his tongue out a couple of times, but couldn't get it on film fast enough.
He animates just about everything he draws. If you look closely, you can see smiling clouds and a smiling sun.


Justin did not want to use the bee the other two boys used (too cutesy, I think), so he drew his own bees.

Here Justin is drawing a "killer bee" for his very own "separate notebook." (you can click the picture to see his drawing up close and the copybook nearby.)


I am looking forward to seeing the final products, yet I am anticipating enjoying each moment as we learn together.

Famous People who Were Homeschooled

Very encouraging!

Educators

Frank Vandiver (President - Texas A&M)
Fred Terman (President - Stanford)
William Samuel Johnson (President Columbia)
John Witherspoon (President of Princeton)

Generals

Stonewall Jackson
Robert E. Lee
Douglas MacArthur
George Patton

Inventors

Alexander Graham Bell
Thomas Edison
Cyrus McCormick
Orville Wright & Wilbur Wright

Artists

Claude Monet
Leonardo da Vinci
Jamie Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
John Singleton Copley

Presidents

George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
John Quincy Adams
James Madison
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
Abraham Lincoln
Theordore Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Scientists

George Washington Carver
Pierre Curie
Albert Einstein
Booker T. Washington
Blaise Pascal

Statesmen

Konrad Adenauer
Winston Churchill
Benjamin Franklin
Patrick Henry
William Penn
Henry Clay

United States Supreme Court Judges

John Jay
John Marshall
John Rutledge

Composers

Irving Berlin
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Anton Bruckner
Felix Mendelssohn
Francis Poulenc

Writers

Hans Christian Anderson
Charles Dickens
Brett Harte
Mark Twain
Sean O'Casey
Phillis Wheatley
Mercy Warren
Pearl S. Buck
Agatha Christie
C.S. Lewis
George Bernard Shaw

Religious leaders

Joan of Arc
Brigham Young
John & Charles Wesley
Jonathan Edwards
John Owen
William Cary
Dwight L. Moody
John Newton

Others

Charles Chaplin - Actor
George Rogers Clark - Explorer
Andrew Carnegie - Industrialist
Noel Coward - Playwright
John Burroughs - Naturalist
Bill Ridell - Newspaperman
Will Rogers - Humorist
Albert Schweitzer - Physician
Tamara McKinney - World Cup Skier
Jim Ryan - World Runner
Ansel Adams - Photographer
Charles Louis Montesquieu - philosopher
John Stuart Mill - Economist
John Paul Jones - father of the American Navy
Florence Nightingale - nurse
Clara Barton - started the Red Cross
Abigail Adams - wife of John Adams
Martha Washington - wife of George W.
Constitutional Convention Delegates
George Washington - 1st President of the U.S.
James Madison - 4th President of the U.S.
John Witherspoon - President of Princeton U.
Benjamin Franklin - inventor and statesman
William S. Johnson - President of Columbia C.
George Clymer - U.S. Representative
Charles Pickney III - Governor of S. Carolina
John Francis Mercer - U.S. Representative
George Wythe - Justice of Virginia High Court
William Blount - U.S. Senator
Richard D. Spaight - Governor of N. Carolina
John Rutledge - Chief Justice U.S. Supr Court
William Livingston - Governor of New Jersey
Richard Basset - Governor of Delaware
William Houston - lawyer
William Few - U.S. Senator
George Mason

Dictation

Dictation is a great way to improve attentiveness, spelling, penmanship, and grammar. We are using Benjamin Franklin's quotes.

Today we used:

• "A penny saved is a penny earned."
• "A good conscience is a continual Christmas."

Bending bones

I meant to post the results of what happened to the bones soaking in vinegar.

The chicken bones obviously bent, but the deer bone only softened. It would probably need quite a bit more time to soak since the deer bones were so hard.
The reason this works is because vinegar is an acid, and dissolves the calcium and magnesium in bones. You could actually see powdery stuff in the bottom of the bowl at the end of the week. Fun experiment!

Unit Study: Skeletal System

Since I have decided to take a more relaxed approach these days, I want to do some fun unit studies. This one is about skeletons.
We will just let them flow and not plan how long each one takes. The more information and ideas I find, I will just add them in. When we feel like we've learned all we need, we will move to another subject (or even a related subject... like right now we are learning about skeletons and it made Justin interested in fossils... so maybe that will be our next unit study).


Yesterday we started with a hands-on project. We placed a big deer leg bone and a chicken leg bone into a bowl of vinegar. The plan is to let them sit for a week and then check and see how hard they are and compare them with one not in the vinegar. I am hoping to post the results of that experiment when we get there. We also watched a couple of helpful YouTube videos about the skeletal system.


Today I made up a song to help us learn the bones easily:

"Help me Learn the Bones"


My head has skull, maxilla, mandible
Go down to Vertebrae, clavicle
Scapula, humerus are in my arms...
Help me learn the bones!

My arm has radius & ulna
Hand my carpal and phalanges
Tickle ribs; crack your vertebrae
Pelvis and sacrum

My leg has femur & patella
Tibia, fibula,& tarsals
Metatarsals and phalanges
We've learned the bones!"


I also got some other great ideas I printed out at this site including several poems about bones & skeletons, as well as the idea to sing the "hokey pokey". Instead of saying "Put your right hand in", you say "put your right phalanges in" and instead of head you say "Skull", etc. You can replace whatever body part with the name of a bone. Lots of fun!

On the site I mentioned above, I got the idea to do a Qtip skeleton. This was too cute and they liked it.



Deer bone and chicken bone. I think I am going to transfer this to something with a lid... vinegar is just a wee bit smelly :-)

They liked this game. It was very easy to make. I found the clipart on microsoft.com and just cut the skeleton into parts and glued onto the construction paper.
They rolled dice, and picked up whatever number they rolled. When they picked up the piece they were to say the parts. After everyone picked up a piece, they put the skeleton together. I am keeping this game in an envelope to keep playing until they learn all the parts.
I told Michael if I would have thought ahead, I could have waited until after Halloween because of all the skeletons they sell. Oh well, we had already started when I thought of this so I just went ahead with it.

Books!

I couldn't believe my good fortune yesterday. I went to the thrift store to see if I could find a large stock pot (for soap making). I didn't find one in satisfactory enough condition, but I found a ton of books that we can use in homeschooling. The one entitled Columbus is a real treasure. It is worth more than I paid for all of the others. We have read several books by the authors and we really like them (they do a thorough job on the history and the pictures are fabulous).
The paperbacks were 10 cents and the hardbacks were 15 cents. I spent $4 total on them. Included are historical biographies, books of poetry, literature, science, and language.

Ryan's Reading & Numbers

So far, we have been really happy with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Ryan is on lesson 6 (we don't do it every day) and actually asks to do the lessons. It is so easy! You can see the little red octopus lying on the other pillow. He "helped" teach Ryan today.

Here Ryan is tracing numbers in a cute book I got from Dollar Tree (Disney's numbers and counting/ Winnie the Pooh). We also have one to trace letters. They are a great value since they cover the basics and have bright, colorful pictures. Best of all, they only cost us $1!

Eventually he will move on to Italic writing like his brothers, but for now we are just getting the basics down.

Nature Walk

We took a nature walk today. I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to find some nice "specimens" to study.

In front of the big maple tree... getting ready to explore and collect and observe. Some of these pictures are things we looked at and talked about.

Woodpecker holes

Sitting in their home-made fort (in the back yard)

Ant holes (under a rock)

Honeysuckle

Bees!
These mushrooms were growing in the mulch at the park

"Here's something, Mom"

I am hoping for them to start nature journals. They will draw and label, and any misspelled word will be practiced in their journal along with their own musings & observations.

We walked around our yard and the little neighborhood park