what we're loving...

... right now.

I have decided that I need to qualify all statements like that with something like "right now" or "at this moment"... because, quite frankly, things change.

This is a recent find from the library...

How High Can a Dinosaur Count?: ...and Other Math Mysteries

I'm trying to incorporate more "living math" into Clara's day so I picked up some random books at the library last week. This one has been a huge hit. There's a little word problem for each picture and several bonus questions listed in the back. She loves working with this book.

Alex just started this book last week...

Practice Island by Michael Clay Thompson

We had finally finished up Grammar Island, so when we started Sentence Island, we started this book as well. Who would have thought that Alex would enjoy "four level analysis" of sentences? We do these together and work through them aloud as he writes. I really thought he would balk at doing this book when it came time, but it has really surprised me!

And then there's this book...

Life of Fred Fractions

We're still loving this book... although I will admit that Alex ummm... strongly dislikes the "bridge" portions. He loves the rest of the book though and has really gotten a lot out of it. Because of the humor and continuing story line, he can't wait to keep working his way through the book. I'm excited to see that there are enough books in the series to keep us busy for years.

language arts

That pile above is what we have for language arts this year. I'm very excited about what we're using this year... and that says quite a bit given I generally "strongly dislike" language arts.

First we'll start with the core of our language arts this year...

Michael Clay Thompson's Level I from Royal Fireworks Press

On top is Grammar Island. That's the book we're currently working our way through. It is a totally different approach to grammar than we have ever used before. It actually scared me a bit when I got it. I didn't know what to do with it! It wasn't the typical workbook format that we've had in the past. That said, I joined the yahoo group and got a general idea as to how people used the curriculum and off we went. We're not terribly far into but I have to say that the kids love it. Yes, I said "kids". This was supposed to be for just Alex but one day Clara was hanging out just outside of Alex's door while we were working in Grammar Island. She wandered in, loved listening along and has insisted on being part of Grammar Island time ever since. Now, she doesn't do the actual work with the book that Alex does, but if she loves listening in and is getting anything at all from it, that's a nice bonus. In a couple of years, when she's ready, we'll go through the book for real with her, but for now, the exposure is great.

The other books in the stack are Sentence Island, Practice Island, Building Language, and Music of the Hemispheres.

For variety and work with punctuation, spelling, capitalization, etc., I got this...

Last year I got a proofreading book for Alex. He enjoyed it somewhat, but didn't love it and I wasn't completely sold on it. So, as I went paging through my great big Rainbow Resource catalog, I found The Great Editing Adventure books and thought I would give one a try.

So far I've been very pleased with the book. It is a series of short little "lessons" that go together to form a funny little story. I bought only the teacher's manual. In a classroom setting I'm assuming you would write the "lessons" on the board, but I decided to just type the lessons up with my handy dandy StartWrite software (I love that program... I use it all of the time).

Above is an example of one of the lessons. I sit down and type a bunch up at once and then put them, one at a time, into one of Alex's file folders throughout the week.

In order to do some of the lessons, he needs these...

Merriam-Webster Children's Dictionary and The American Heritage Children's Thesaurus

If a word is circled, he's to look it up in the dictionary and be able to tell me the definition. If it is underlined, he needs to look it up in the thesaurus and substitute a new word in place of the underlined word.

He makes editing marks to make corrections on the part I that I had typed out. He brings it to me once he thinks he's found everything. We go over the answers and then he rewrites the lesson, with corrections, on the blank lines below.

He doesn't exactly love it yet and maybe he never will, but it's a pretty low key way to work on his proofreading skills and I like that he has to actually rewrite the lesson versus just make editing marks.

As for Clara, we're taking a much more low key approach with her this year. She has struggled with school in the past and needed to learn to love school again. I thought these would be fun for her for grammar....

Grammar Tales Box Set: A Rib-Tickling Collection of Read-Aloud Books That Teach 10 Essential Rules of Usage and Mechanics

She is so enjoying the one on one time with me this year. We're doing so much more reading, discovering and discussing when it comes to school. These books have been so great for that. We curl up on her bed together and read... discussing the little prompts in the book along the way. There is a whole teachers guide that came with the set, but I haven't really used it yet. It has these cute little reproducible mini books inside, but our copier is out of ink so I haven't done anything with them yet. I really think I want to get the Punctuation Tales set too, but I haven't completely justified placing yet another amazon order (yet).

Finally, I also have these in the mix...
Clara enjoys watching the Grammar Rock portion of School House Rock. So we work it in when we can.

I have no opinion on the Standard Deviants' Enormous English DVD pack but NOT ONE SINGLE DVD in the ENTIRE set works. Thankfully I purchased the set from Rainbow Resource and they have an amazing customer service department. They contacted the manufacturer and they are sending me a new set directly. I'm anxious to get it so I can check it out and see what it's like.

fun with language arts..

Yesterday we decided to have a little fun with language arts. It was inspired by an impulse purchase I had made last week at a little local toy store...

Mad Libs

We started out by watching the grammar rock section of our Schoolhouse Rock DVD. We specifically concentrated on the ones about Verbs, Nouns, Adjectives and Adverbs.

After that we started doing our Mad Libs. They loved them! I just switched off between the kids at each blank. By the time we were done, even Clara had a pretty good grasp on what an adverb and adjective was. Clara discovered that the more outrageous the word she gave, the more outrageous the story became. We were laughing so hard at some of the stories. I think we did at least four stories before hunger won out and we stopped for lunch.

It was just such a fun little "lesson" that I know they'll be begging to do again!

diagramming sentences = fun?

I never thought so... and quite frankly, neither did Alex. That is, until yesterday.

I typed a bunch of sentences out and printed them. I then handed him scissors and hand drawn sentence diagrams for him to use.

He then went to town cutting up his sentences and diagramming them...
It was pretty cool to watch. He actually got really into it! He kept yelling out all kinds of revelations he was having as he diagrammed. He actually could see relationships and really "get" the concepts when the grudge work of actually writing everything out was removed. I'm not saying that he's never going to have to write things out again.... but removing that element, especially when learning new concepts really helps with Alex.

I'm not sure why I couldn't see this before. I think it is possibly because I get caught up in the way I learned in school.... so many work sheets and so much writing.... all individual work with little interaction with the teacher (or the actual material for that matter). This all goes along with my homeschooling epiphany I referenced the other day.... I must get around to writing that post.

experimenting...

Our homeschool is an ever evolving beast. :-)

I had a homeschooling epiphany the other day (which I'll expand on later) so we're trying some new stuff this week.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.... I struggle with language arts (LA). It was never my strength growing up.... I was more into math and science. Anyway, because of this I have been all over the board with language arts... I have completely ignored it (not the best solution), bought workbooks and curriculum to do it for me and now I'm finally trying a mix - using curriculum in our own way. We're taking the books and going off road. :-)

So, Clara has really been struggling with LA because she struggles with handwriting. She also isn't particularly the sit at the table and do a workbook type (well, at least not for too long). So, I decided over the weekend that I would try typing up and printing out some of the exercises from their LA books. I decided to try this because I really felt that she did get more of the concepts than it appeared when she had to write things out.

So, here's day one...
I decided to use the grade 2 Rod and Staff grammar book I had bought for Alex last year. To start I just typed out some sentences from the book, cut the words apart and let her arrange them back into sentences.... looking for clues to help (capital letters and punctuation). She really enjoyed that. The next section was about sentences versus phrases.... so I typed up their list of each along with the headings "sentence" and "phrase", cut them out and let her put them in the proper columns. Again... fun and quick. Finally, so she can keep working on her handwriting, I typed out a few of the sentences in StartWrite for her to trace and then copy.

Here's Alex's...
He's working in book 3. We haven't gotten very far into it. We stopped for a while when he got into his daily paragraph editing work sheets. Thankfully though, we had stopped right before a review section.

Here he is sorting sentences into columns of "commanding", "telling" and "asking" sentences...
Now, he's cutting up those same sentences in order to separate them into columns of "subjects" and "predicates"....
He had always tolerated his Rod and Staff grammar (once we stopped writing everything out)... but this was the first time that he really got into it and seemed to enjoy it. Figuring he could always use some extra handwriting practice... I did the same for him as I had done for Clara.

After our LA work, it was time for a spelling game...

Snap It Up! Phonics and Reading Card Game, Word Families

I was the referee and the official middle card turner over person. It was a good learning game for Clara and a good review game for Alex. They enjoyed it enough that they think we should get the Snap It Up gamesin all varieties. :-)

I also wanted to show off this little beauty...

My very own Automatic Playing Card Shuffler!! I'm terrible at shuffling cards and so many of the kids' games involve shuffling cards.... I actually used to avoid playing card games with them... but NO MORE!!! :-)

After the traditional round of Snap It Up, we split the ending cards between the two of them and also split the beginning cards.... they then tried to be the first one done with forming words with all of their endings...
It was a good experiment!! However, since it's a little more labor intensive for me, I'm hoping I can keep at it.

let the games begin!

One of my goals for the new year is to get back to playing more games for school. I used to be so good about this with Alex, but I fell off the wagon a bit when it came to Clara.

Since Clara can always use some extra help with spelling, we got out this game yesterday....

What's Gnu?

It was fun.... but I learned quickly that we couldn't play it the traditional way (2 player).... Alex was just too fast. So for the second round, Clara went alone...
and she got different points for her words depending on the level of help she needed. Alex kept track of it all on the easel. We had a really good time playing together and I look forward to making games a bigger part of our school.

someone needs to stop me

I've developed an addiction to CurrClick.com... sigh.

I first found them over a year ago while out looking for free lapbooks.  I have since figured out that my kids don't really enjoy lapbooks (oh... they enjoy the idea of lapbooks but the actual making of the lapbook... not so much).  

So, started poking around on their site to see what else they offered.... which, come to find out, is a lot.  

I usually love having the actual book in hand to look at.... but I'm beginning to be very fond of ebooks.  

First of all, I can just print pages as I need them versus having to photocopy them.  We do have one of those 4-in-one deals downstairs but it's slow and goes through ink rather quickly.  The printer that is hooked up to my computer is faster and the toner cartridges last longer (plus we were given several extra cartridges by a neighbor who no longer had a printer they would work in).

Second, the above makes ebooks very handy when you have more than one child.  

And third, the store is open 24/7 and you get your product immediately! That's probably the biggest perk for me (and my biggest downfall... lol).  I decide we *need* something, I look on CurrClick, order it, print and I'm using it within 15 minutes.

Here are a few of my recent purchases...

Daily Language Review Grade 1

This was purchased for Clara.  We've been using it for two weeks now and she's enjoying it.  Since we're not doing a formal language arts program with her, this becomes a daily mini-lesson for her.  

25 Prewriting Graphic Organizers and Planning Sheets

I downloaded this for Alex the other day.  I am having him write more.  He's writing narrations and other small stuff weekly but occasionally I have him write longer pieces.  I print off the appropriate organizer for his project and have him use it get himself organized before he starts writing.  So far so good with this one.  I have a feeling that we'll be using it for years to come.

Scholastic Daily Word Ladders Grades 2-3

Total impulse buy for Alex.  It has been a HUGE hit though!  He so looks forward to doing these daily.  I'm not sure if it's doing anything earth-shattering for his spelling and/or vocabulary.... but it's fun, he enjoys it and it can't hurt, can it?

Daily Paragraph Editing Grade 2

I've mentioned this one before.  Alex has been doing these since the beginning of the school year and loving them.  We had been just doing the daily paragraph editing from the book four days a week.  The fifth day is a little writing assignment.  I had been ignoring that because... well... just because.  Lately we've been adding it in and it's been really nice.  The assignments are quick and relate to the paragraphs Alex had been editing all week.  Just an easy way to add more writing to our school.

I also downloaded a spellling program for Clara the other day.  However, there were some issues with the download so I won't mention it here until they get the kinks worked out.  CurrClick's customer service was quick and efficient with dealing with the issue... now we're just waiting on the manufacturer to figure it out.

Now, today I was on their site and saw this...

Math Mammoth Geometry 1

It has intrigued me.  Does anyone have any experience with it?  I'm thinking about getting it to use with this...

K'NEX Education: Elementary Math and Geometry

...that I have sitting around on my "math" shelf downstairs.  The price is right so I might have to go for it.  I'll let you know what I think of it if I do and I would love to hear from any of you who might have used it!

language arts for clara

The photo above has nothing to do with this post in particular... I just wanted to post it :-)

I hadn't really planned much in the language arts department for Clara this year.  The program I use for Alex doesn't officially begin as its own subject until second grade (prior to that, it's combined with their reading program which we don't use).  So, I figured that I would just wait until then.  Clara had other plans though.  She is insisting on being at the table... working... for the entire time Alex is working.  This means I've had to do some scrambling to find her work to do that has benefit and isn't just busy work.

She's been doing the Explode the Code workbooks.  Honestly, I could take or leave them.  I don't mind them, but I, personally, have not seen any great benefit from using them.  They both enjoy them, so we keep doing them... I'm sure they don't hurt anything.

I had originally started her in Sequential Spelling with Alex... but that went downhill fast.  It is grade appropriate for her and for Alex BUT given their grade differences... even though she was hanging in there, she wasn't doing as well at it as Alex so things got ugly.  I continued with Alex and stopped with her.  I was just going to take some time off and then start the book again with her later in the year.  Again, she had other ideas.  She wanted a spelling program of her own.  So, she's working her way through the word lists in the McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book.  I actually downloaded it for free here.  It's not a fancy program for her, but so far so good.  She actually works on her small white board when we do spelling.  I've got the itch to add something like the Evan Moor Daily Spelling Skills book.  I'm not sure about that yet though.

Something I did just add is this...

Evan Moor's Daily Language Review for First Grade

She was intrigued by Alex's Daily Paragraph Editing book, so thought I would find her a "daily" book too.  We just started it last week, but so far so good.  She likes having her daily sheet to do too, like Alex.  The daily assignments are short and I use them as more of a brief little language lesson rather than an assignment to do on her own.

Starting this week, I'm adding more writing for both of them.  I haven't worked out the details of my plan yet though.  I've always had them do oral narrations on what they've read or something we've read aloud... but I had avoided having them write out their narration.  Today they wrote.  Alex was on his own.  Clara gave her narration to me orally and I typed it up in Startwrite for her to trace.  Soon, I'll type it up for her to copy instead.

Not a huge amount of stuff that we have going on for LA with Clara.... but it sure is different than what I had in mind just a couple of months ago!  :-)

It truly is amazing....

... how many homeschooling resources are out there for free on the web.

I'm sure most of you who homeschool know all of this already... but I'm a little slow :-)

I mentioned in a previous post my love of Librivox.org and kiddierecords.com. But I'm discovering new things almost daily.

Today I decided that although I had dropped Sequential Spelling for Clara, it wouldn't hurt to be working on a low key, basic spelling program with her. Hmmm... basic....
McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book
That's pretty basic, right? So, I went to Amazon and looked at it and even put it in my cart (for later)... but the instant gratification part of me took over and I decided to look for it on the Project Gutenberg website. Sure enough... there it was! I looked it over online and then downloaded the pdf file (which includes scans of the original book). I printed out the first lesson and hope to start using it next week. If you know me.... you know I LOVE books... so if this goes well, I will probably end up buying the book (I've requested it from the library too just because I can).

I also downloaded the McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader as well. I thought I might use that for daily reading aloud for Clara. She reads so much better than Alex did in first grade that I tend to let her read as much as she wants on her own. This reader includes short little passages that she can read aloud, that would help me keep an eye on her actual reading ability without slowing her down by having her read too much to me.

My next favorite free thing is the Dover Publications weekly free samples. Once you're signed up for their email list, you'll get an email each Friday with new sample pages to print. When I first signed up for the samples we were following the Galloping the Globe book. I knew what countries we were going to be covering and as samples came up that pertained to those countries, I would print two copies and add them the folders I had set up. I then discovered that my children are not really big fans of coloring books and coloring pages. They'll do them if there's nothing else really to do, but they rarely, if ever, want to do them at home. So, I stopped even opening the samples for a while.

Lately, I've started again. I'm much pickier about what I print now though. I print samples from their famous artists books on art paper so they can paint or color them as part of an artist study. I've been printing samples from their famous ballets books for Clara. The one I printed today was a HUGE hit. They had samples from their Mandala Stained Glass Pattern Book. I printed them on cardstock and handed them to them with all of our colored pencils to use while I read from The Secret Garden. Usually Alex does fine, but Clara gets antsy when we do read alouds. Today they both happily worked on their Mandalas while I read FOUR chapters aloud. And, much to my surprise, they were retaining so much more of the story this time. They laughed when things were funny, they looked wide-eyed and shocked at the appropriate times.... they discussed the book in great detail on our bus ride to Alex's rehearsal tonight. It's very intriguing to me how that all works.

They both took their mandala coloring sheets to their rooms with them tonight to work on in bed. I'll have to take photos of them when they're finished.... they're looking fabulous so far.

A site that I've added to my bloglines subscriptions is Homeschool Freebie of the Day. So far I've done much more downloading than actual using of anything from there.... but maybe some day I will! :-)

Okay... there's more, I'm sure of it.... but I've rambled enough for tonight and I'm heading to the couch!

week 2 - what's working, what's not

I know, I know, it's only week two... but sometimes things either really click or they don't.

First up... one that's working....

Evan Moor's Daily Paragraph Editing

My I Spy loving son thinks this is the coolest thing.... a grammar I Spy! He has declared it his favorite thing (after math, of course). This makes me happy because we struggled with finding a language arts program that engaged him. This is not a language arts program, but it makes it possible to skim through some of the dry repetition of our grammar program because of all of the practice he's getting here. I got the regular ebook (not the enhanced one) from CurrClick and I love being able to print my own copies as I need them instead of having to actually make copies.

The one that's not...
Sequential Spelling Book 1

Okay... that's unfair to say. It is working, but I had counted on using it for both kids at the same time and that's not going to happen. Let's start with Alex... he enjoys it, so much more than any other spelling program we've tried. He "gets" the patterns they use and is improving his spelling. Clara on the other hand, is no longer using the program. I will try again in a few months so they are not on the same word list. When will I ever learn that it is not a good idea (no matter how appealing it seems) to have both of my kids using the same book at the same place at the same time? Clara struggled to see the patterns, which was made worse by the fact that they came easily to Alex. Just because the grade range encompasses both kids, I should learn to keep them as separate as possible. I'm hoping after a few months of learning, coupled with doing spelling separate from Alex will help her enjoy this program because I, personally, am really liking it.

We have some other things that are going over well... but I'm going to give them another week before I blog about them... don't want to jinx anything yet! :-)

my loose plan for language arts...

I'm having to get a bit more serious about language arts when planning for next year. The kids did well on the LA portion of their CAT tests, but they were their lowest scores. So, here is my loose plan...

I have struggled with a spelling program for years. The first program we did just never clicked with Alex. It seemed random in its word lists... no pattern that we could tell, no explanation of spelling rules, etc. So, last year I decided to go a complete 180 degree turn and go with a program that was very spelling rule based. Man... that one was a train wreck. It was so complicated that I could never fully figure it out. I've since learned that they offer actual classes on how to use their program.... so I don't feel too bad about not being able to figure it out, but that just confirmed that it wasn't for us.

This next year we'll be trying out Sequential Spelling...
I'll be starting with level one and using it for both Alex and Clara.

For the spine of Alex's grammar program, I will be using Rod & Staff grade 3...
We used grade 2 (sporadically) last year... but this year I'll be taking the advice I had read on a message board and doing a lot of the work orally instead of having Alex copy EVERYthing out of the book.

For practice, I'm getting Evan-Moor's Daily Paragraph Editing Grade 2....
Yes, I am ordering one grade lower than what he'll be in.... but he needs the practice and he needs to build his confidence. I figure this is a low stress way to do this. I'm going to get the ebook through CurrClick so I can just print the pages as I need them instead of having to make copies on a copier.

And then comes the part I'm most excited about... I've been working on putting together a living books language arts list for us to use next year. This will serve to be fun, reinforcement for Alex and Clara's only "formal" grammar. This is born from my love of Julie's Living Math site and my dislike of grammar. I needed a way to make it fun... something we all looked forward to instead of dreaded.

I've purchased a couple books so far...Woe is I, Jr.
I've been reading it and so far, I'm really enjoying it. I even learned a thing or two... however, it's hard teaching this old dog new tricks so I still resort back to my old ways... sigh. (I ordered it from bookcloseouts.com for a better deal than Amazon.)
Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why, commas do make a difference!
The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, you can't manage without apostrophes!

Okay... I ordered these from bookcloseouts.com a couple of months ago (although only the apostrophe book is still available). They were supposed to get put away for next year BUT the kids begged to look at them. Well... then it was all over. They LOVE these books! They think they are HILARIOUS! Each two page spread has the same words on each page... only a slight change in punctuation has taken place. The resulting sentence (with corresponding illustration) totally makes sense to them. After reading them over and over that day... they excitedly showed the book to their dad when he got home. They went page by page explaining to him how each sentence changed in meaning due to the punctuation. The books currently live on our dining room table because the kids regularly read them while they eat.

Honestly, it was these two books that inspired me to run with the language arts living books list idea. I had been thinking about it for a while but seeing the way they reacted to these books, I knew it was something I had to try out.

Okay... enough rambling! :-)

(and a big THANKS to my friend Tracy who helped talk me off of my language arts planning ledge I was on last night!)