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SeaStar
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| Posted: Feb 21 2013 at 11:52am | IP Logged
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In February it's fun to check in and see what's working for everyone right now. The school year is over half way done, but there is still a good stretch ahead.
So- what is working for you right now?
Here there are a few things that are working really well here:
1. Life of Fred.
We do one chapter a day as a read aloud. My kids  Fred.
2. Page a day calendars
We started two last month as part of our daily routine:
The Metropolitan Museum Art Calendar and the Audubon Bird Calendar.
I picked both these up at Costco before Christmas for about $8 each, and they have been well worth it! The pictures are gorgeous, and they generate a lot of discussion and research at our house. The Met shows us how art can come in many different forms, and we love to find out where in the world each bird lives.
3. Robert Krampf, The Happy Scientist.
 All right, I admit it. We are addicted to this website. I signed up through the HS Buyers Coop, and it's the best $10 I've spent all year.
Last night we were glued to the video about weathering, erosion and deposits. And I mean really- those three terms alone sound about as unexciting as you can get, and read from a textbook they would cause my eyes to glaze over. But Robert Krampf makes everything fun, and we were laughing over his antics and all the bits of paper he had to pick up at the end of the video.
4. Home Art Studio with Miss Volin.
Still going strong here.
5. Family Formation from the Church of St. Paul in MN
What am I ever going to do when my kids outgrow this religion program?
I am in a panic just thinking about it.
This week's lesson was on temptation and conscience, and I had to make a batch of cookies for it- half with heavily salted dough, and half the regular way. The salted cookies had icing and sprinkles, so naturally the kids went for those first... it was a great lesson on how the devil can make something bad look really tempting.
But also we are enjoying the Lenten Stepping Stone Calendar that came with our Lenten package this year. Every day you pick a stepping stone out of a bag and glue it on the calendar. Each stone has a sacrifice for the day (ie, go all day without complaining, write a letter to someone who is lonely, pray for the souls in purgatory, etc). If you do the sacrifice, you can color in part of the stone with your color (mine is turquoise blue).
It's been a fun challenge.
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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pumpkinmom
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| Posted: Feb 21 2013 at 12:38pm | IP Logged
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Hmmmm, well . . . . . .
Making history an independent subject is working well for us. We made this switch after Christmas break and it is giving me some wonderful free time during school hours and making our days easier. I struggled with history all year until we made this change. Got rid of the spines and oldest is reading some Landmark books on American History. He is at the Civil War right now. Youngest ds is getting ready to hit the Revolution. I had a whole shelf of books for youngest, but did have to buy the books for oldest. Who knew!
Our days are short which is leaving time for learning how to type. I've been putting that off for two years now. Some how we have freed up some time during school or everyone is just working efficiently and we have time to work on typing.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
Tending the Pumpkin Patch
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DianaC
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| Posted: Feb 21 2013 at 2:00pm | IP Logged
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Analytical Grammar -After 5 years of Seton English, my daughter was still foggy in understanding the parts of speech and outlining. After 10 weeks of Analytical Grammar, she can easily identify the parts of speech and is a master at outlining. What a transformation!
First Form Latin - This has worked beautifully for us.
Discovering Music - We have all enjoyed this program tremendously!
On another note: What's Not Working:
the Ipad: my daughter received one for Christmas and it looked like it was a hit - she enjoyed a few apps and especially seemed to enjoy the ebooks she could access from the library. On Sunday, she told me she wished that she didn't get it. She said that she didn't like who she had become since she got it. We haven't gotten to the bottom of those feelings yet, but I think she became uncomfortable with the idea that she had it with her so much. She has put it aside and is back to her "real" books.
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jawgee
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| Posted: Feb 21 2013 at 3:33pm | IP Logged
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1. Teaching Textbooks. My 11YO has been using it for over a year, and around summer time I'll be starting my 7YO on it. We just love it.
2. Our Classically Catholic Memory co-op. The co-op is new this year, and it did take us a few months to iron out some wrinkles, but I am so pleased with how it is coming together. The memory work provides a nice foundation for the kids, and I just love to hear my kids say, "Oh, I remember that from CCM!"
3. Noeo Science. Love it. I am doing Bio II with my 11YO and 7YO together and it's working out fine. Definitely planning to continue with that next year.
4. Using Stories of America: Volume 2 as a US History Spine. It's very nice. We just started using it a week ago, but I am so pleased that I bought it.
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Monica
C (12/2001), N (11/2005), M (5/2008), J (8/2009) and three angels
The Catholic Cup on Facebook
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SallyT
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| Posted: Feb 21 2013 at 9:10pm | IP Logged
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Working particularly well at our house:
1. Life of Fred, which we also do as a daily read-aloud/mental math exercise in addition to regular ol' MCP workbook math.
2. Starting the day with independent/seatwork, then doing our basket of daily read-alouds at lunch. People here like to get up and do their own work over breakfast a lot of the time. I find it easier to let them ease into the day doing their own things -- it's easier for me to be available to help, as they don't always emerge at the same time in the morning. Yesterday, in fact, I had one child upstairs reading in bed, kind of lingering, and I could have hurried him up, but this way I had time to focus on the child who had trotted downstairs early and wanted to get going. So our mornings are kind of loose, but it all gets done, and we regroup over lunch for read-alouds.
3. Augustus Caesar's World and George Washington's World as spines for our two history tracks
4. Duolingo for German. This is a fairly recent discovery -- we had just been playing around with vocabulary and watching a German children's show on video, but Duolingo takes them through lessons with reading, writing, speaking (you record yourself repeating a word or phrase which the program has "said" to you). A lesson takes maybe 10-20 minutes (it won't let you move on to the next one until you master the current lesson), and the kids enjoy it. This has definitely been a good mid-winter addition to our language study.
5. Various YouTube videos, which we check into every now and then to enliven things. Magic Schoolbus is always a hit (I let them watch several episodes today, in fact), and we have also enjoyed the PBS series based on David Macauley's City, Pyramid, Castle, Cathedral, etc. We watched Roman City because we're reading City as part of our basket this year, but then we just had to go ahead and watch them all.
I have to say, I love that page-a-day calendar idea! Wish I'd thought of that back at Christmas time when calendars were everywhere! I'll have to remember that for next year for sure!
Sally
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Claire F
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1. Right Start Math - math was never my favorite, but I find I enjoy teaching it and both my boys have really taken to RS. My 5 year old especially, he seems to naturally think the way RS teaches math and really enjoys it.
2. Song School Latin - I didn't want anything too involved, as my kids are all little, but they love SSL. Just tonight my 3 year old daughter spontaneously started singing, "Quid est tuum, praenomen!" in the car, making her brothers laugh hysterically. It is fun :).
3. Bravewriter's Jot It Down writing projects - I needed some more direction for working on writing with my boys and this program has been so great. It has given me a great jumping off point to create fun projects that they love doing, and helped me understand what to expect from this level of writer. Everything from Bravewriter has been really inspirational and helpful to me as I gain more confidence in teaching my kids.
Sally, I'm glad you mentioned the Dave Maccauley series. I was looking at City (the book), since we'll be reading through Rome later this year, and into next. I'll have to check out the series - I have a feeling my 8 year old would love it. He loves documentaries of any kind.
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Claire
Mom to DS 12/04, DS 5/07, DD 8/09
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SallyT
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| Posted: Feb 22 2013 at 6:40am | IP Logged
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They're even better than documentaries, Claire -- there is a documentary "thread" to each show, but also an animated story line that takes you back to life in Verbonia, the Roman city, for example. Great fun. And yes, your 8-year-old will love it! We've loved doing the book, which has been part of our basket all year -- we do just a couple of pages once a week, so it's lasted us a long time. Enjoy!
Sally
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Feb 22 2013 at 7:13am | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
They're even better than documentaries, Claire -- there is a documentary "thread" to each show, but also an animated story line that takes you back to life in Verbonia, the Roman city, for example. Great fun. And yes, your 8-year-old will love it! We've loved doing the book, which has been part of our basket all year -- we do just a couple of pages once a week, so it's lasted us a long time. Enjoy!
Sally |
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You wanna know something funny. We had this documentsry on Egypt we corded off of PBS when we were young and watched over and over, and I never knew what it was called but always wished I could find it for our ancient Egypt studies.
I had gotten the Puramid book from the library, and my son read it inn the Fall, and I vaguely knew there were movies to go along, but it wasn't until your description that I realized THAT'S the movie! So I looked for it on YouTube, and sure enough, it is.
My boys gave up movies for Lent (which is a sacrifice for mom, too, lemme tell you), but after Easter, I'm so excited to watch it again with them!
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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Claire F
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| Posted: Feb 22 2013 at 11:30am | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
They're even better than documentaries, Claire -- there is a documentary "thread" to each show, but also an animated story line that takes you back to life in Verbonia, the Roman city, for example. Great fun. And yes, your 8-year-old will love it! We've loved doing the book, which has been part of our basket all year -- we do just a couple of pages once a week, so it's lasted us a long time. Enjoy!
Sally |
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Awesome! Thank you!
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Claire
Mom to DS 12/04, DS 5/07, DD 8/09
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SeaStar
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| Posted: Feb 23 2013 at 6:50am | IP Logged
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I always learn so much from threads like this one.
I had forgotten that I wanted to use "Stories of the Americas" next year- we read "Stories of the Nations" last year and really liked it. The Americas version will be great as we launch into our US history studies next fall.
I also did not know that PBS had made film versions of the David MacCauley books  . Putting those on my library list.
Song School Latin is another program I am going to check out.
The page a day calendars have been really fun for us here- in addition to the Met and Audubon calendars (which are oversized and gorgeous) we each got a regular sized one. I got Mary Engelbrecht, my ds got Classic Cars, dh has Car Talk, and my dd has
Happy Notes
which we all really like. It is full of great quotes- funny and uplifting. These would be perfect for daily copywork.
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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jawgee
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I love the page-a-day calendar idea. That would be such a great idea for my 7YO who loves birds/nature and is learning his months. My oldest would probably really like a history one. Off to check those out.
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Monica
C (12/2001), N (11/2005), M (5/2008), J (8/2009) and three angels
The Catholic Cup on Facebook
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SallyT
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You can find all those David Macauley videos on YouTube, if you want to check them out sooner!
Sally
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SeaStar
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| Posted: Feb 23 2013 at 11:26am | IP Logged
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SallyT wrote:
You can find all those David Macauley videos on YouTube, if you want to check them out sooner!
Sally |
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Perfect for our rainy day here today
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Melinda, mom to ds ('02) and dd ('04)
SQUILT Music Appreciation
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Martha
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Classically Catholic Memory
God and the History of Art
Latin for Children via tutor
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Martha
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Yes, they're all ours!
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: What's working for you right now?
