Monday, August 24, 2009

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.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

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.
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*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!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

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".