Review: More Middle Grades Historical Novels from Susan Kilbride

Pop over to The Curriculum Choice to read my review of two more middle to lower high school level historical novels from Susan Kilbride's marvelous Our America series!

Ambleside Online: The Perfect Fit for Our Family

I love a literary-based education, and Ambleside Online fills the bill for our family. Read my review of Ambleside Online and why we use it for our foundational curriculum at Curriculum Choice!

Middle Grades Historical Novels Bring the Past to Life

I recently had the pleasure of reading and reviewing three middle grades novels by Susan Kilbride, a seasoned homeschooler and homeschooling author. These books are wonderful, and my review at Curriculum Choice tells you why I think so.

Plus, Amazon is giving away FREE Kindle versions of one of the books on July 15, 16, and 17! Hurry over to Curriculum Choice to get the details!

BirdSleuth: A Great Resource for Birdwatching and Nature Study

As you may already know, we are dedicated backyard birders. As a form of nature study, birdwatching is easy and inexpensive and fun. You can even take the leap into the field of citizen science with the Great Backyard Bird Count and Project FeederWatch, both programs from Cornell's Lab of Ornithology.

I recently came upon another Cornell resource called BirdSleuth. This is wonderful! Read my full review over at Curriculum Choice. . . .

Traditional English Sentence Style Helps Prepare Students for College

"Allegorical Figure of Grammar," by Laurent de la Hyre

If your children have their sights set on college, make sure they are prepared for college-level compositions. Pop over to Curriculum Choice to read my review of Traditional English Sentence Style, a FREE high school grammar course that focuses on elegant sentence structure.

Testing, Testing

Photo credit

Last week, I threw into our mix a bit of standardized testing. My state's homeschooling laws require that standardized testing take place every three years beginning with third grade. Now that my daughters are older, I prefer to test annually, so they get a better taste of such requirements.

Different states have different testing requirements. In my state, I have only to choose a nationally-normed test, which allows me many options. For several years now, I've selected the CAT/5 Survey test. This is a short-form test, with six sections of 20 questions each, as opposed to the Full Battery.

Why the Survey test? Because it saves time and because it lessens the chances that the test will cover concepts we have yet to cover. I've found that the latter situation does nothing but ruffle my children's feathers and stress everyone out to a painful degree.

Why the CAT/5? Because homeschooling parents can administer the test at home. Another test option is the TerraNova, but I don't know anything about that one. I stick with what I know.

Then there's the ITBS and the Stanford Achievement Test. To administer the ITBS at home, a parent must hold a college degree and be accepted as a test administrator, which for me is one too many hoops to jump through. The Stanford also requires the degree as well as teacher certification and test-administration experience OR video training and pre-approval as a Stanford test administrator. Again, too many hoops.

Instead of giving the test at home, I could easily locate an ITBS testing center and drop off my daughters. For a few hours each day over three days. For a price, in terms of money, time, and stress. No, thank you.

There are several services that will mail you the testing materials and score the test for you. I've used both Family Learning Organization and Seton Testing Services with great satisfaction. Three others I've seen online are Thurber's Education Assessments, Crosspointe Educational Services, and Brewer Testing Services. But I don't have any experience with either of those.

As the girls move from middle grades to high school, I'll reassess my decisions on standardized testing depending on our needs. But right now, I'm happy with what we're doing.

Finally, a Daily Schedule System That WORKS!

 

In our years of homeschooling, I've used a variety of scheduling methods. I've tended to stay with one for myself, but the girls' I've altered and changed in an attempt to find what works best. Here's what I have learned:

• Weekly printouts with each week's assignments designated by day (which is the system I use for myself) tend to disappear during the week.
• Daily printouts of each day's work disappear during the day -- at least with one my children they did.
• With printouts, one child tended to check off assignments diligently, and the other needed reminding. Frequently. As in several times a day.
• Whiteboard method, with each day's assignments listed to be check off as completed worked well, but the large whiteboard took up quite a bit of room in my small kitchen AND hid a lovely painting (a fact Miss Priss detested). Also, I had to write out each day's complete lessons and assignments each day. (Quelle surprise.) I thought I'd take the board down every day after lessons were completed, but I didn't. (Ditto.)

A few weeks ago, I came up with our new system and it is working well. I designed one template (which I have available on Scribd in both Word and PDF formats, so download at your pleasure), printed it out, and then secured it in an 81/2 x 11 frame. I included everyday lessons on the printout, so I only have to write in that day's reading assignments and activities directly on the frame's glass. I use a fine-point wet-erase marker (Vis-a-vis). The girls use the same marker to check off assignments as they complete them. A quick spritz and wipe, and it's all ready for the next day.

Here's a peek at the Scribd document:

  Today's Schedule PDF by The Bluestocking Belle

You can alter it to best suit your family's needs. Or use it as a beginning point to create your own.

This system has been a wonderful solution for us. It only takes a few moments to jot down that day's readings and activities; there's no paper schedules for the girls to keep track of; and it's easy to alter if need be. Plus, I write down my errands in the Notes section, so the girls can see my agenda for the day.

And everyone can now see the lovely painting in the breakfast room.

Physical Science for Middle Grades

Not being a science person myself, I am always on the lookout for quality science materials well suited to a home school environment. I found a winner in the Basic Physical Science Note Pack from In the Hands of a Child. Pop over to Curriculum Choice to read my review!

Weekly Happenings: Ancient Egypt and Signs of Spring

This week we got back into the swing of things after two weeks of theater busy-ness. We still aren't up to top speed, but that will come. Next week.

Our inaugural days of participation in Project FeederWatch were Tuesday and Wednesday, our second foray into citizen science (the first being the GBBC). We saw 19 different species but not more than four of each species at a time. I also tried my hand at a chalk pastel rendering of a male bluebird! For tons of pastel inspiration, click the link at the right: A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels.

After lunch today (Friday), I made homemade oatmeal cookies and ate a lot of dough. I still feel slightly sick, but it's worth it.

We read about the Mosaic Map of Madaba and Machaerus, Herod's fortress in present-day Jordan, where John the Baptist was beheaded (website). Above, Miss Priss researches images of Machaerus. She found some neat cutaway and 3D pictures to share. Tiny Girl found us images of the mosaic on her laptop. I love it when the girls' interests are piqued and they conduct extra research on their own! Both links I've made take you to more photos and information.

We also worked on maps of Jordan. The girls have enjoyed our mapping exercises of the Holy Land. I download and print free blackline maps of each country. Then we consult our several atlases for mapping details.

I determined that our study of the ancients needed more of an Egyptian touch than AO Yr 6 scheduled, so I made some additions. Fortunately, the girls agreed (otherwise there would have been pushback -- ugh) since they've read and enjoyed Rick Riordan's Egyptian-themed novels. This week, both girls began Roger Lancelyn Green's Tales of Ancient Egypt, and Tiny Girl read The Golden Goblet, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, a Newbery Honor book set in ancient Egypt. She gave it a big thumbs up. Miss Priss plans to read The Cat of Bubastes, by G.A. Henty. This title has a free Kindle edition and is also available on LibriVox, if you're looking for something to pass the hours on an upcoming car trip.

Piano recital pieces are coming along nicely. They are also working on other pieces as well. I love listening to them play! We build piano practice into our school day, and the girls' skills are really improving.

Signs of spring are everywhere. My daffodils have come and gone. The earlier azaleas are covered in buds, a few of which have already bloomed. The hydrangeas and rose bushes are leafing out, and the iris by the mailbox has sent out leaves. Ornamental pear trees are blooming everywhere (see my Weekly Happenings title photo) and so are Japanese magnolias. Ornamental cherries are covered in buds. Below are some photos I snapped during the week.

Lenten roses (hellebore) outside the historic sanctuary of my church.

Our tiny red azalea bush.

Flowering cherry trees in bud at a neighbor's house. These trees are glorious when in bloom.

I don't recall what kind of tree this is (at my church). It might be a dogwood. Time will tell.

Those are some glimpses of our week! How was your past week? Full of good stuff, I bet!

Happy weekend!

Link-ups:
Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers
HammockTracks
Homegrown Learners

Need Some Encouragement?

Sometimes we need a little boost along the way, don't we? Kind words to cheer us on (or up!). A nudge to reconsider our focus.

I recently reviewed a lovely source of all these things: Homeschooling with Purpose, by Amy Roberts of RaisingArrows.net. To read my review and get a glimpse of this ebook, pop over to the Curriculum Choice....

Considering Dissection

I don't know about you, but I don't look back at my wet lab days with fondness. And, although I believe that dissection is part of a well-rounded education, I don't relish the thought of frog guts and formaldehyde all over my kitchen table. I'm strange that way.

Since I live in a larger metro area, I'm blessed to have at my disposal many homeschooling class and co-op opportunities, some of which offer science classes, including biology and dissection. This has been my plan until my friend, Eliza, introduced me to a great idea: digital dissection.

Before you raise your lip in derision, as I almost did, let me hasten to add that Eliza is a science person (degree and all that jazz), so she knows of what she speaks. She turned me on to The Digital Frog.

From the website:

• The Digital Frog 2.5 engages students with an interactive, virtual dissection, allowing the student to learn each of the cuts necessary by "cutting" with a digital scalpel before watching the full screen video. 
• Animations and interactions allow students to see how the frog's body works—from blood pumping through the heart, to joints that can be built up and moved by the user.
• The Digital Frog 2.5 is so much more effective than a wet lab because the interactive dissection is seamlessly linked to a comprehensive anatomy and physiology section, with human anatomy comparisons.
• A fascinating ecology section reminds students that biology is the study of living organisms.
• With context-sensitive definitions on every word and spoken pronunciations on significant words, students have all the information they need with just a mouse.
• The Digital Frog focuses the student on the study of structure and function, rather than on the process of dissection.
• The Digital Frog also encourages squeamish students who may otherwise avoid biology and science.

Well, that's enough to make me give The Digital Frog serious consideration. I have a squeamish student to think about, not to mention my reluctant self. And the cost is reasonable. The home version is $85 -- less than the in-person class in my area, especially since I'll save myself a one-hour round-trip drive every week!

Give The Digital Frog website a bit of your time. You may be convinced yourself!

Weekly Happenings: Back in Action

 The last two weeks have been quite busy, and I've neglected my blog. That weighs heavy on my mind, let me tell you. Blogging is my one real creative outlet, and if I'm away from it too long I feel. . .  weird. Dissatisfied. It's hard to explain.

But one of the things taking me away from the blogosphere is paying work, and that makes my heart happy.

Anyway. The girls and I swung back into action last week. For the most part, they enjoy Year 6, term two readings. Animal Farm is not a favorite of my eldest, despite our background discussion earlier this week. "I can understand what it's about, Mama, but I still don't have to like it." Too true; but that doesn't change the fact that you have to read it.

But Augustus Caesar's World and Story of the Greeks continue to delight. I think it helps that a lot of the material is familiar to us. We learned about Julius Caesar's death and the following wars in Plutarch's Life of Brutus. And we've covered many of the Greek stories in our myth readings in previous AO years.

In math, Tiny Girl and I turned back to Master Math sixth grade video lessons and worksheets. This week, we covered decimal/fraction conversions. Miss Priss is swinging right along at Mathnasium and is due for her first assessment since joining. We are very interested to see what the results will be!

On Wednesday, we visited the Genghis Khan exhibit at a nearby museum. WOW is all I can say. The exhibit was really well done, and we learned a lot. We all brought along our sketch pads and sketched a few items that interested us.

On Friday, I got my brand new computer all set up and running. Yippee! Our old desktop was doing the best it could, but new technology made it glacially slow. The new desktop was my Christmas gift, and I picked out everything just like I wanted it.

All our activities have kicked in. This week, the girls attended drama class, piano lessons, and Mother-Daughter Bingo night with Girl Scouts. Only Miss Priss and I enjoyed the latter; Tiny Girl spent the afternoon and evening at the barn on the first sunny day we'd had for a week!

I also managed to make a loaf of no-knead white bread on Thursday evening. If you haven't tried this recipe, I highly recommend it!

So that's our week in a nutshell!

I'm linking up with:
Hammock Tracks
No Ordinary Blog Hop
Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

"Owls" Project Pack: A Fantastic Study!

I've enjoyed a few lovely days off to celebrate Christmas and New Year's with my family and friends. I hope you had some rest and relaxation time as well. There's nothing like a cold, rainy Christmas Day that invites you to stay jammie-clad in front of a nice fire with a really good book, is there? Perfection!

I wasn't completely lax, however; I found time to write a review on a most wonderful resource: the Owls Project Pack from In the Hands of a Child. If you and yours love owls -- like we do! -- you'll thoroughly enjoy this. To read my complete review, pop over to Curriculum Choice.

And a happy and blessed 2013 to you!


Photo credit: Doug Greenberg / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Five Types of Pronouns Notebooking Page

Today I whipped up a notebooking page for my daughters to use in our grammar studies. This page highlights the five types of pronouns, which we've been studying via Daily Grammar: personal, relative, demonstrative, indefinite, and interrogative. I went with a basic format for this one. My idea is that the girls will definite each pronoun within its box and then list examples.

It's available for free on Scribd!

Pronouns

Sir Isaac Newton Notebooking Page

Here's another notebooking page I created for our Secrets of the Universe: Objects in Motion (AO Year 6) study. Sir Isaac Newton features largely in this selection -- and quite rightly, too. I decided to keep this page more general in design for universal appeal. (No pun intended. I mean it.)

Sir Isaac Newton Notebooking Page


Speaking of Isaac Newton, the girls and I got a good feel for his life last year when we read the chapter about him in R.S. Ball's Great Astronomers (AO Year 5). He strikes me as one of those brilliant, weird types. His intelligence is stunning, and I'm glad he did what he did during his lifetime, but I wouldn't have wanted to sit next to him at a dinner party. And I'm quite sure the feeling would have been mutual. I suffer no illusions, believe me!

Letting Go of "Normal" Expectations for Life

Do you find that, like me, you tell yourself, Next week, we'll get back to a normal routine? Or After Christmas/New Year's/spring break, etc. we'll get it together? I don't know about your life, but in mine, it just doesn't happen. When I look back at all my weekly reports that begin, "This was a weird week" or "Things didn't go as planned this week," I have to laugh ruefully.

The fact is, it's a weird week when things do go as I expected and planned.

A few weeks ago, I read a post by Mrs. White on her blog, The Legacy of Home. Her words really spoke to me.

Life never lets up.  We often say that tomorrow, or next week, we will fix our routine.  Or when things calm down, we will get back on track. But life will keep throwing us something new to juggle.  The goal is not to wait until things are better, but to do them in the middle of the challenges. 

Well, amen and amen! What a perspective.

I have to admit, friends, that I often let my school plans get derailed by life. That's not to say that I throw in the towel at the first sign of distress; but I have a hard time staying on track in medias res (as per  Greek dramatics).  I lose sight of my short-term goal (as in, lessons to be completed) and find myself backpedaling.

One beauty of homeschooling is, of course, its forgiving flexibility. In times of trouble, illness, and great stress, we can adapt our plans to match our more limited resources. Yet this same flexibility can be a drawback when we continually adapt/rework/put off our school plans due to yet another unexpected event, big or small.

Homeschooling is truly a lifestyle. We educate our children in life, not just schoolwork. They learn -- by watching us -- how to handle the mishaps and unexpected surprises of the everyday. Are we teaching them that upsets have the power to derail our best efforts and plans? Or are we teaching them to roll with it?

As a woman of faith, I want to teach my daughters that God is never surprised by events that spring up, unlooked for, in our day-to-day lives. "Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans," said John Lennon. Put another way, life is what happens no matter what our plans.

I can't keep living for the day when things get back to normal. This is normal. We're all living in the now. So the question is, now that I've made that my reality, what am I going to do about it?

• Take a hard look at our daily schedule and how we spend our time. Are the girls wasting time? (Yes.) Am I? (Ditto.)
• Make more intentional decisions about how we spend the time we have. Can we better use our evenings? Does Tiny Girl have to be at the barn early in the afternoon or could she go later?
• Make room for more flexibility when needed. Could we stretch out the readings on this or that book without getting so behind we'll still be reading it this July?

That's where I'm going to start. Once I get going,I may discover other ways I can ensure that my lesson plans don't get flung into hiatus when life happens.

What about you? Have you found ways to absorb the unexpected in your day-to-day living? If so, I'd love to hear about it!

I'm Featured on Hammock Tracks' "Who Homeschools?"

Thanks very much to Savannah, who writes about her life and homeschooling at Hammock Tracks for asking me to be part of her feature, "Who Homeschools?" If you've been wondering what made me take the leap into homeschooling, nip over there to read all about it.

Savannah also hosts a weekly report link-up on Fridays, called "It's a Wrap," which I often join. Don't you just love reading blogs? I do, which is why I don't watch TV and have no knowledge of pop culture.

And I make no apologies.

My Article in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine!

I am so excited! I have an article in the most recent edition of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. Here is a link directly to my article, "The Spelling Apologist: Why Good Spelling Is Essential and How to Select the Right Curriculum."

This is a fabulous issue, friends. And you can read it online for FREE! How fab is that?

                                                                                                                                                 

	Look inside >
December 2012

Two New Galileo Notebooking Pages

I've been messing about with creating a few notebooking pages for scientists we are studying in Paul Fleisher's series, Secrets of the Universe, which is a part of Ambleside Online's Year 6 curriculum. I've uploaded my latest two on Scribd.

This first is a generic page featuring a rendering of the man himself and two quotations.

Galileo Notebooking Page

The second page is more specific to Fleisher's Objects in Motion: Principles of Classical Mechanics. It highlights the Law of Pendulum Motion and the Law of Uniform Acceleration. I used the same rendering but a different quotation.

Galileo Notebooking Page: Two Laws

Why I chose the quotations I chose: I found it intriguing that Galileo, a devout Christian, often criticizes the Church in Rome in his writings for its stance against heliocentrism. For Galileo, one's firm and unyielding faith in God did not negate one's own God-given power of observation and reason.

I hope you find these useful!

Books That Add Richness to World War II Studies

The girls and I recently read about World War II. Our history spine, Story of the World, volume four, gave us a solid and broad understanding of events leading up to the war's outbreak, the war itself, and the aftermath. I always look for good books to add depth to our learning, a richness if you will, to provide more meaning for the girls -- and me.

Here's a list of books one or both my girls have recently read:

• Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green
• The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
• Snow Treasure, by Marie McSwigan
• Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
• Don't You Know There's a War On?, by Avi
• 10 Days: Anne Frank, by David Colbert
• Anne Frank: Her Life in Words and Pictures, by Menno Metselaar and Ruud van der Rol (You can read my review of this excellent book here.)

For my part, I read The Devil's Arithmetic and Briar Rose, both by Jane Yolen, and Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay. The latter is an adult book, but would be perfectly suitable for high school-aged students. Both of Yolen's books are very well written, powerful, and gritty. However, I decided to wait until my girls are older to assign these titles.

Of course, when one thinks of holocaust stories, The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, and The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, tend to top the list. Again, I decided to wait on these until my children are more mature. We do own a CD audio theatre production of The Hiding Place, which we will listen to very soon.

I recently found a great blog called The Children's War. Written by Alex, this blog is an annotated bibliography of children's and teen's books about World War II. Nip over for some fabulous reviews and book ideas. But be warned: you could end up spending some serious time!

Have you found any great World War II titles you'd like to share? I'd love to hear about them!


Caveat: Some of the books my daughters have read contain objectionable language. To my mind, the language used fit the situation and character. Use your own discretion for your family.