A really great visual resource

This morning I am looking for some videos to help the kids understand symbiosis, a concept that their science book only called "helping each other".

I think they should know the term and watching some short videos would go much better than hearing a lecture.

I came across THIS!!!!

It is organized by topic

Are you kidding? This is awesome!

http://www.watchknowlearn.org/Category.aspx?CategoryID=3091

More resources and thoughts on grading

OK, I need to some free time, so I am going to try to make this snappy. Excuse the editing if I miss a run-on sentence or something.

In a nutshell, this week was a challenge. I think it was only a challenge in my mind. I think we are all disengaging from the culture of trying to be just like public school at home and realizing that things are just different at home. A conversation that I have with an inquisitive child that only happens because he has the time and energy to even think and ask me these questions counts as learning. What grade can you put on a learner's spirit. I'm wondering about grades right now and I find myself questioning the idea of grading entirely.

I remember the program that we as parents were allowed to log on in real time and check the exact assignments our kids did and what grades they received in public school. First, I realized in a whole quarter of a year for my "high ability" student, that there were literally only a handful of things that were graded. A handful of things, people! I have no idea what he did all day, but I have a feeling that she was more like me than anything. She loves sparking curiosity and if I were to wager, the projects that they did were graded on a rubric, but a very kind rubric. I think she felt the students were successful if they were engaging and participating. She set the whole classroom up like that. No rows of students staring at a teacher gabbing all day...this is what I grew up with and it's hard to imagine what her classroom was like, I just know that it did not consist of rote memory work and classical drills all day. They were discussing, exploring, reading, researching, and doing things. She  personally developed the high-ability curriculum for the school and has I'm sure her very own philosophies on  how to make a child successful and how to engage the thinking skills in her students. But, the idea that I should have hundreds of graded worksheets assessing the smarts of my kid for all to see just kind of turns me off, and I think she got that, too. As a dear friend said of her child who was diagnosed with learning disabilities, "We like to create more successes than failures."

Shouldn't that be true with anyone?

Now, my fifth grader also had less work than expect, but her grades were tallied at the very tail end of the quarter with little to no explanation. When I looked at her work I felt that the problems did not allow for a small misunderstanding of material. In other words, there wasn't much work that was actually graded, and when it was, if you made a mistake, it was a weighty mistake because of it. I know she was kind of upset that work she would have spent a whole night on was not actually even read or graded. "OK" was marked on the top showing that the teacher recognized she did her homework - it was just that. Home work...not to be actually graded and applied to her final grade. I have a hunch that this is somehow because many students simply don't do their homework anymore and assigning it is a way to seem like you're actually doing school, when in reality, the kids that didn't do it, simply don't get a sticker that day. Dumb. And it wasn't teaching my daughter that doing your work actually matters. So she began to not take it as seriously and she would lose her work sometimes. This was simply unheard of in my day. In fact, NO ONE ever DIDN'T do their work. That would have been punishable with a detention and a bad grade.

So I'm grading work but also letting myself recognize all of these valuable moments during the day that they are learning and their simply isn't a grade you can put on it. With that said, one of the my top objectives is to get them test ready and ACT/SAT proficient. Which means reading comprehension skills, and learning math techniques that will be helpful to solve harder problems. We will also be working a little more with word problems than I think the public school does.

As promised, here is a list of more resources that we are using:

Each child has a Spectrum Math book which covers the testable core objectives for that year. In addition we are using this text for my sixth grader:



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967991595/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_9?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I will also start using this for my third grader soon when I feel he is comfortable with all the things he needed to learn in his fourth grade text (jumped up for high ability last year in public school).

We use these for grammar practice:





For English we are also encouraging lots of reading and we have already done a big project in relation to science where each of the two older kids did a presentation on any living thing that they wanted to do. They had to list which kingdom and other classification information, habitat, human interaction, challenges, diet, etc.

Sis did a presentation on sharks and brother did a presentation on European Glass Lizards. It was cute and fun. They both had to use proper grammar and also learned how to research and start remembering how to organize web pages and such for works cited.

Owl Pellet Photo Journal

Today we took out the owl pellet that we had bought on a homeschool shopping trip with my friend awhile back. I wanted to wait until we had finished our chapter on ecosystems which also covers adaptations.

We will also be working on chapters coming up that have to do with anatomy, so it was a perfect linking exercise into that as well.

The owl pellet itself is an ecosystem for smaller insects like a moth - interesting! The pellet had a guaranteed entire skeleton of a starling bird inside. 

The following is a photo-journal experience of the kids opening up the pellet and finding the feathers and the bones of the starling. 

Starling skull

Brother trying to determine a bone part. 

Brother sketching the bird claw and making observations...

Piecing the skull and vertebrae together with the hip bone.

Academia and Field Study

So last week we finished off our first chapter in science. It stressed classification of living things. I created a test of a fill in the blank word box, also short answer, and just plain old fill in the blank. For my third grader, it was a little challenging and I gave him about five minutes to look in his book to get answers he just had on the "tip of his brain" *wink* They both got a B, so I feel that it was a success!

Yesterday was tough for a few reasons and I'm glad it's a new day and that by God's grace we can begin anew.



I realized I was being a little bit "all business" about school and we needed to get back into nature and get out of this house!! It was a beautiful day so we headed to the park with a nature walk, including creek walking (my kids' favorite).

Exploring near the creak

Flowers and tiny mollusk shell found near creak

They collected some items and I kept my lecture to a minimum (per Charlotte Mason's philosophy). I did sneak in some talk about erosion as we looked at the exposed tree roots. I also had the kids find a nonvascular plant and we once again talked about what makes moss different from a tree. We spotted some fungi (not a plant) and saw two different kinds growing under a very nice tree trunk perfect for resting with baby and watching the kids explore in the creek.

We followed with a picnic lunch and then drove to the playground portion.

Little Y had an utter meltdown and made a punching motion and grabbed my legs when it was time to go. He was so red and hot after playing at the park. It was a stark contrast to the cool shaded walking trail and calm appreciation of nature. How I love peace and so it was time to go home. Thankfully the screaming stopped when we got to the car (seriously, thank God).

Mommy and Baby E relaxing on a fallen tree

All said and done, it was a great day.

We will do some math time later and we do have our spelling tests today. I also wanted the kids to sketch their favorite find and write a little bit about that.

It feels laid back, but we are still learning. This is the beauty of home schooling in an eclectic style. You can exchange your schedule for a field day and enjoy life.

Cute fungi near the stream

But our schedule is working great with the blocks on normal days. The day is guided, but it's not a moment by moment thing. You can't schedule for one child needing extra help or some other problem, etc but it does help to know when we move on and how to get each subject done in the day. 

Scheduling and other early struggles.

Last week was a disaster of feeling discouraged.

We had to scrap the original schedule I made because Dad started teaching the middle schooler math. Except I am teaching math again. He is a back up but I still needed to plug in times for one on one.

My original home school schedule left me a shadow of a mom.

Not even kidding. For some reason, I tried to jam everything in the morning, and I ended up being a harried, horribly hungry, and totally overwhelmed mom. The baby sensed the frenzy and got fussy.

So last week was kind of thrown off because I thought I could just wing what we needed to do and when. Errands threw me off, my mom visiting a few times threw me off, and I just wasn't sure what to do and when.

Schedules can be comforting, I've learned - as long as they don't schedule every second.

And schedule breaks, for heaven's sake!

I definitely wanted to include my challenges and struggles in home schooling. So here is the first major one that I have had.

Scheduling for four kids, small group, church, husband, the home, the kids' other needs, writing, friends, family, never mind that I still haven't really scheduled anytime for my own creativity but I hope to change that soon!

I really don't want to be a resentful person, but I find myself in the victim role put there by myself when I don't give myself time and recognize when there is too much tension or stress.

So this week feels much better.

Here is my schedule. This is only for the main subjects that I directly lecture or have an agenda for. As with most home educated children, some other things are happening that are child led learning. And we are always looking for opportunities to show them "on the field" rather than from a text book.

Additionally, spelling lists are given and independent "for fun" books as well as books that I assign are also apart of our curriculum. Also, we do many creative projects that blend English and Science with art and those aren't on the main generic schedule.

Daily Schedule (this is adjusted if we have errands or piano lessons, etc):

9:00 -11:00 is my grammar and writing English block of time.

11:00 lunch, tidy, chore block

1:00 Science (lectured and discussed with the older two)

2:00 Coffee and Snack break

3:00 Math Block (kids tagteam watching the baby if she is awake for lecutre/learning time)

Bedtime - Books with Little Y and devotion time

With Little Y, I find myself working with him in the morning or afternoon when the kids have their work done for the day. For instance, today, we discussed the article on Chimps on his Big Backyard magazine subscription and we did a maze and made and read the little booklet.

He also made a card for his baby sister's upcoming birthday - so sweet.

We are keeping all media to a minimum for the big kids.

Little Y has game time when I am lecturing science, but sometimes he plays or does another activity.

Yesterday, I bought marshmallows and toothpicks for a learning activity and to introduce shapes, designs, and architecture. I didn't think it was as cool as I expected it to be. Mainly because the marshmallows were not co-operating. He spent over sixty minutes playing with it, so for that reason, I think it was a big success. I am sure he was learning tactile and other skills by doing this activity. Big brother also played with it some, but this was definitely more of a preschool craft.

What am I using?

I get asked this quite a bit, so I thought I would talk about what we are using.

I may break this up a bit depending on if the baby wakes up.

The first thing I should make clear is my love of science! I don't necessarily love measuring and data collection. I love the exploration, the questions it provokes, the fact that we really know so little and so there is always a sense of awe and mystery and more questions (which means more critical thinking).

Tangent alert: Did you know that critical thinking was sited as one of the biggest traits that employers of creative industries need but American students and the workforce in general are not providing? That's right. There is a need for critical and creative thinkers but there isn't a supply of them.

It's what makes people think things through and make good choices. The lack of it is what lets political talking heads get away with lies all the time. It's easy to lie with statistics...

Anyway. I digress. Tangent is over.

So back to science. Done correctly, I am going to raise - this is a goal here - kids who THINK, QUESTION, and CARE about the world around them. They will know the difference between climate and weather, yes...and they will be able to answer why it is important to conserve or why we should care about bees.

It's gonna be great.

So here is the BASIS of what we are learning about for science:

our science book

How am I adjusting this for my third grader and my sixth grader?

Well, first, my oldest never actually worked in this. She told me they opened it twice. You can't move on if you haven't covered the basics.

We are learning about cells, classifications, life science, matter, energy. The important stuff.

I also purchased a book of experiments that will help strengthen some concepts. We watch docs and we have lots of animated discussion to encourage thinking. Big sis does the challenge questions and little brother is working on his verbal communication skills with me by simply discussing what we learn.

Remember he has speech challenges and so this is part of therapy.

His writing seems a bit weak and he gets overwhelmed with writing. Even being in his "advanced" class, public school in general is SO WEAK on writing. It is amazing to me. I want him to like writing. I am a writer, so I am passionate about keeping it a positive experience.

In another post,  I will talk about English/grammar/writing. But for now, science is more of a discussion time for the little guy. And he has some of his science words added on to his weekly spelling list.

My sixth grader will need to be challenged with extra projects because she loves that kind of stuff. So, I'll try to keep up with what she does in that regard for science.

So ends the, "What are you using for curriculum science portion..."

Maybe it's the weather or the fact that my kids were at Grandma's last night and I missed them, but today is a great day here. We have lots of joy spending time together. Big Sis took the baby outside and ran around with her as she enjoyed the misty, cool air that is such a stark contrast to the weeks of hot and dry drought we've had.

Presently Brother has his nose in his second Judy Blume book that he can't put down and Sis is practicing her faster piano notes. She really is enjoying piano and I've noticed she goes right to it when she is happy and frustrated as a way to express herself. Oh, blessed success!! She's the one who is easily overwhelmed. We all can have similar tendencies, really, but with her it is such a challenge leading her into ways of re-direction. But, it looks like this is something she is getting better and better at, and she really enjoys and has the talent to get even better.


As we went outside today I decided today we will do our final entry in our science journal. I had the kids make some final observations and make a sketch of their specific plant now that they are yielding tons of good stuff.

They are learning how to care for a garden AND enjoying the harvest!!

pickling some peppers

we are eating lots of cucs  and they are so delish!!