Blog Archives

Choose: a FMF post

2/28/2014

Five minute Friday posts have simple rules.
1. write for five minutes on one word
2. post up on Lisa-Jo's linky
3. visit the person before you and offer encouragement to that poster

They aren't hard to do. And you often get to read some interesting posts.

Now what I do, is I generally think about the word for a bit, I'll often find a pic that I think can tie in with it, and then after I post it, I take my five minutes and just write. Sometimes my post takes a twist I don't expect, sometimes it doesn't.

This week the word is CHOOSE.

Choose

Three
Two
One
Go....

My son and I right now are doing a study on the names of Christ.   We are using a book that I got for review purposes, it has forty names in it.   AND we are actually sticking to it. Often we'll start something and then part way through we'll get bored, but not this study. The lad is interested, I'm interested, and we're learning together. It's rather neat.

But it's a choice we make right?   Will we get bored? Will we stick it out?   Will we find a new way to do things?   We've varied things a bit in this study... we use different ways to put the names down... we mostly have used sticky letters, but we've also done stenciling as well...

Making choices is something I am trying hard to get my lad to understand. We have so many choices to make in life. Some of them will be God-driven, and some will be man-driven. What type of choice are we making at this MOMENT.

When I complain about a meal... what choice am I making? Why am I making it?
If I yell at someone out the window or scream about something? What choice am I making?
If I help someone pick something up, or hold a door open, what choice am I making?

And then the kicker.. WHY am I making that choice?

Too often the answer is this... because I felt like it, because I want someone to think nicely of me, because I.....

So often God doesn't even come into the equation.

So often God should.

Choices... choosing.... it's often so hard to make the right one. To truly make the God-driven one.

How do you make your choices?

STOP.

Snow up in our neck of the woods

2/27/2014

These pics are not from today, but from a walk the lad and I had Sunday I think?? It's much too blustery and cold out today for many pictures. :)

yes, this pile of snow almost reaches the top of a neighbours house.

here we found some puddles and tried to make them splash high as if we were cats from Riverclan not minding if we got wet or not. :)

sliding on ice slides like kittens from Thunderclan is just TOO much fun. :) Meow, meow says this kitten. :)

this pile of snow is from the end of our driveway. The lad likes climbing it and perching on top.

Today's actions

2/27/2014

the lad started off doing Reading Kingdom before we had breakfast.
We moved from there to learning about 1st, 2nd and 3rd class levers through Supercharged Science.

We then learned what Migdal-oz means how it relates to God.

From there we moved on to Science and History which coincided well with each other today as both talked about the Chinese inventing gunpowder. The reasons varied... from seeking the elixir of eternal life or trying to make gold.

then we headed out to take a walk in our blustery weather. :)

Upon arrival at home the lad sat down to work on his math, and then relaxed for an hour before we needed to head out to the store for a bit. Cheques to deposit and all. :)

It's been a cold, blustery day but overall a very good day. :)
My headache is diminished over what it has been for which I am very grateful.

Reading, Constellations and more

2/26/2014

Today we got off to a late start with our schooling. I've been dealing with a headache for the past 10 days... doc tells me it's a particular type of migraine that is hard to get rid of. :) It causes dizziness which means headaches, your head ache with makes you dizzy. In time it will leave. Makes it slower getting going though.

Anyways, we read from the warriors over breakfast. The lad was able to recall facts well from previous reading we had done. Then upstairs to work on the names of Christ study that we are doing. Today we learned about Yahweh Shamma (i may have spelled that wrong). The Lord is There. The authors connected it with Immanuel... God with us which I thought was rather cool.

From there we moved on to doing Story of the World where we learned about the Grand Canal in China. Saved China (as a whole nation), cost to Sui Dynasty their leadership (high taxes, increased poverty, death, poor working conditions). I think it's amazing what they did... despite the cost to the people involved. Five million people, six years, 1200 miles I think. All of China now connected. Amazing!

Then we read from our science book and were inspired to make our own Constellation viewer. This was rather fun to do. :) We fit Reading Kingdom into the mix as well.

The lad then worked on his math ... doing it through IXL since by this time I'm running on empty and just need to lay my head down for a spell. We had lunch.... I did the easy chips and cheese thing, the lad had some pizza. We finished the day with the lad doing his 20 minutes of reading. Today his book was "Wood Frog".

All in all a nap did me a world of good afterwards and the lad had fun just relaxing with Skyrim for a while (he's learning to read some of the options on his own as well). :)

Making a Constellation Viewer

2/26/2014

The lad and I have a science book we try to read from every day. It gives snippets of information that often inspire us to pursue further. Today they were talking about sextants and needing to follow the constellations.

I recalled the activity for the Lego Club through Currclick for next month and thought to meself..... I wonder if we could make that. So as the lad sent to work on some other homeschooling I pulled together the pieces called for. Then we sat down to see if we could figure out how they made it, from the pieces given. We couldn't. So the lad was "mom, why don't we just make our own version of it?"

Sure why not. :)

Since we didn't quite make it the way they wanted us to we needed to cut down the constellation cards that came with it. We cut off about 1 brick worth. Poked holes into the cards and then the lad had a hoot looking at the constellations, asking me the name and what they were supposed to stand for and then saying "Mom, to me it looks like a ____". The big dipper was the only one that he said looked like a dipper or a scoop. The Crux he said looked like a box, and the Hydrus apparently made him think of pizza.

All in all it was a fun activity. And he learned a few things as well. :)

I looked through it as well. We learned that we needed to cup our hands around the ends to block the light coming in past our eyes.

Perhaps you too could make a constellation viewer and cards? Have fun seeing what YOU see in the stars. :)

Dimensions are approximately 6 high, 12 long, 14 wide. with flats on the top and bottom.

look through side.

side view

card view side.

I linked at at the hearts for home blog hop. :)

Blogging through the Alphabet: U is for Understanding

2/26/2014

I have to admit, I had a whole bunch of U words floating around in my head for doing this post on U... uplifting, usurping, uttering (dictation), Ursa (a space post), and such like but couldn't (through the fog of a migraine) figure out what to write on, and then this morning, I read this post about Unschooling and it brought back to mind the struggles I have mentally with this form of schooling.

I know people who chose to unschool their children, I KNOW that it means different things to different people...but the ones that act like true unschoolers say two things.
1. you have to trust your children to learn what they are supposed to learn to get along in life.
2. you don't need to teach your children anything unless they want to learn it.

I struggle with that.
You see my boy?   He is an inquisitive, animal focused, artistic type of lad. He is both very stubborn and very soft.   I can quell him with a look or a raised voice (even if the voice is not raised in anger).   He is very articulate and knows well his own mind. And he is only eight.

1. Trust your children.

How do I do that?   And if I do that...what am I teaching my son.
if I trust him to manage his own schooling and learning what am I teaching him truly?

I fear that I would teach him that
1. his interests are more important than mine
2. his interests and my need to trust him are more important than God.

You see God says "train up a child in the way he should go".   It doesn't say trust your child to know what's important and what he should learn, but to train him up.    So how does Train him up fit within that paradigm of trusting your child?

2. Don't teach your child something that don't want to learn

My son dislikes learning math. I am not sure why...as when he was a child he could do math easily in his head and liked to show off his prowess with that.   But now, getting him to do simple math (math he used to do in his head) is sometimes a challenge. So I really don't know what is up with that.   Does that mean then that I should just ignore math?   I don't think so. Math is a fundamental part of our lives...it is used on a daily basis.   But then I look at math and the need (if unschooling) to trust your children to learn what they must learn and I apply that to the bigger picture..

Do children want to learn how to be obedient to their parents and more importantly to the Lord? Not generally. The bible is clear that we are all full of sin and inclined to go our own way. It shows time again how people who love God dearly still will often seek their own paths and not God.

So if I teach my boy that he only needs to learn what he wants to learn what am i ultimately teaching him? I think that is the question that people really need to answer.

What do you want to ultimately teach your children?

Now with all that said, does that mean I can't use his interests in our homeschooling?

No!

My son loves angry birds.... so why not use that in art and math?
My son loves small critters... so we can use that to do math, art, history, science, geography and so much more.
My son loves building with duct tape... well duct tape weapons require reading, history, math and just so much more.

I can use his interests to build up interests in other areas, to spark his creative juices and his willingness to tell me things that he has learned.

It's means that when we do bible study I try to incorporate some form of art with it. Most recently we are building a word plaque/wall hanging with the names of Christ on it. This spurs his creative juices and we learn together. It's a good thing that.

So we need to understand what we are doing when we teach our children.
I can't say I have it all down pat as I really honestly don't. But i'm thinking that I'm starting to get a better grip on why some forms of schooling (or not schooling) cause me to feel alarmed inside, particularly when folks who are believers tell me that they are considering doing this in their schooling.

How do you approach your schooling?

Join us over at BenandMe as we blog through the alphabet. :)

Schoolhouse Expo: two can come free!

2/25/2014

Two lucky guests can come and listen for free!

So comment below. First two people to do so, get to come along with me.

Deadline is Wednesday morning 1100 a.m. :)

Review: Science4Us.com

2/25/2014

MOM! Can I do my science now? MOM! You haven't gotten the science up for me yet. Mom, hurry up I want to get started now.

These words and more have been repeated often in this household for the past few weeks. :) Today I will tell you my impressions onScience4Us.com.

Product Information
Received: Science4Us.com Online Subscription, six month subscription
Vendor: Science4Us.com (http://Science4Us.com)
Pricing: $7.95 per child per month
Age Range: K-2, useful for grades 3-5 for review and for filling in gaps
Received: Six months access to all areas of the program.

Science4Us.com is targeted toward K-grade 2 learners. Interactive activities, hands-on and well as on-line learning, good for homeschools, tutoring or physical building schools. Inquiry based, digital learning.

How I used it

Science4Us.com has LOTS of different information on it. It has a parent/teacher area where you can pull worksheets and activities off of it to supplement the videos and cement the learning. There are useful videos to watch that will teach you how to use all the different areas of Science4Us.com.    It is indeed a very well-written program that can be used in so many different ways. :)

Part of my goal with my son is to start fostering some independence with his learning. So my focus with this program was to let my son direct his learning. He LOVED watching the videos and he LOVED watching them by himself. As a mostly grade three student, we used this science program as a review of work already accomplished.

I walked him through the teacher part (and showed him what I could print off and the activities he could do), showed him how he could just do lessons, or just do videos or do a mixture of the two etc....he opted to just watch the videos. As he said "Mom, I learn lots just watching the videos and some of this I already know... we did it before."    Given that we are a science oriented family and he has done lots of science already his statement was quite accurate. Watch the videos lad...make good choices here. :)

First day reviewing the materials my son was at the start "Do I have to do this mom?" and then he watched one video... and soon watched another and then watched another and then looked at the time and said "I think three is enough right mom?   Can I do three everyday?"

I said sure. Sounds like a plan to me. :)

And that is exactly what he has done.
Every day he watches three videos/assignments (some are interactive activities). What he learns pops up in conversation usually a couple of days later.   Sometimes he calls me over and says MOM, you have to watch this. See??? Isn't that neat?   Mom, isn't he funny?

Using the program
Finding videos to watch is SO easy.   If you notice the graphic below you will notice there are four books to one side.. these are the four branches of science covered: Physical, inquiry, life and space.    If you click on a book, it opens up sub-areas, and those sub-areas open into other subareas.   Then if you notice the middle section it shows you the most recent activity. The scroll bar allows you to see the entire area of study, and if you've completed the video/work section it will have a start on it. My son learned quickly to look for those stars, chose the ones that had no stars, finish/watch those and once everything was starred he could choose another book to look at.   Each of the sub-areas (or modules) is divided into 8 sections so could conceivably take you 8 days to accomplish if you did just one a day.   The helpful teacher aids turn them into a full curriculum and is very easy to use.

At the bottom of the screen area you will see "are you a parent or teacher? label.   This section includes helpful areas to teach you how to get the most of your time with the program.

To access the teacher area for activities and printables, you log into the Teacher section, look for the area you want your child to study, find the teacher aids and activities, print off and you are set to go. :)   The activities are broken down in grades K, 1 or 2.     One of the grade two activities in learning about simple machines was this "This hands-on activity provides students with the opportunity to reveal prior knowledge while generating interest in and curiosity about simple machines by using the internet to research objects that use simple machines."   Students were then directed to find pictures demonstrating different types of simple machines, and then to think of a simple machine that have ever used and to draw a picture of it.

Things I would change
Figuring out the controls for the Notebook exercises were a source of frustration for my son.   They weren't intuitive for him, I needed to help him figure it out and he wanted to be able to do it all himself.   The Hot/cold challenge he found too difficult and got very frustrated by.

But this enabled us to test out the customer service response of Science4Us.   Their turn around time was very quick (yeah), the helpfulness of the response (not so great).   :)    But that encouraged us simply to figure out a different solution on our own and lean on dad for help so it all worked out. :)

Frustration of having to sign in new every single day. Would like to be able to sign in every two weeks, or just have it so it was an automatic login.   Since my lad simply doesn't remember login information it means I have to login him in daily.   Would be so nice to just say.. Click on the Blue Bar, or find your name. :)

My son's response to Science4Us.com

When I asked him what he thought of the program he said "I liked it".
What did you like?   "Pretty much all of it"
What didn't you like? "I had no parts that I didn't like."
Did you find anything difficult?   "No and once I knew how everything worked it was easy to do and figure out".

My Response
I loved that I could see what he had accomplished.   By saving his work I could see what he did for the interactive activities.
I loved that my son was able to work independently.
I thought it did a great job of reinforcing the learning he had already accomplished WHILE teaching him new information (that's a win-win).
I appreciated how easy it was for him to pick out a new area to learn from and if he didn't know what it said it would read out what the section was all about.

Bottom Line: would I recommend this product?

YES.   It's a great curriculum.   Reasonably priced. Effective and engaging.   Has worked excellently as a review tool with my grade three student.

Social Media Links for Science4Us.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Science4UsSays
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/science4us/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Science4Us
G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112259351657747584252/

Want to know more about Science4us.com? Click below to read more reviews

Computers and Learning for Children, can it be true???

2/22/2014

I have to admit, I have a couple computer programs that I use regularly with my son.
1. Reading Kingdom. Reading Kingdom is a fun, easy-to-use online program that teaches children 4-10 years old how to read and write to a third grade level.
2. Science4Us. Granted we are doing this for a review but my son is enjoying it so much that he'll continue to use it for as long as we can after the review. :)

I'm a bits and snippets type of homeschooler.   Show me you are interested in something and I'll teach you about it until you want to move on to something else. Sometimes that is just five minutes of learning, other times it stretches into a week or more. It's all good.   I do find though, that for some topics (aka reading and math) that regular attendance is necessary for continuity in learning. :)

Now I have tried math on the computer and that does NOT work well long term with my boy. He doesn't like bells and whistles with math. He just wants regular pages that he can work on and never mind the fanciness. He'll enjoy an on-line math program for a while but then you can see him getting a bit antsy about it all so we play around with it a bit.   For instance, he enjoyed doing target the question because I could print off the situation of the week and he could work from that.

But science, history, and reading work really well for him so we use our reading program, we watch documentaries and search youtube for good videos.   For instance this video popped up in my facebook feed and inspired a session of learning about ants. He thought it was a great way to get rid of nasty ants as it was so hot the ants wouldn't know what happened until they were dead. BUT not a good idea on our friendly outside ants here. :)

Whenever we go out for walks or just out for whatever reason I tote along my phone so that when he asks a question I can immediately look it up if I don't know the answer myself. He's starting to learn how to scroll through the images so he can ask additional questions. We've learned about water striders hibernating for the winter, and where the best place is to find snow fleas, and all sorts of interesting things. Currently the big question is MOM, how are we doing in the Olympics. It's gotten so I can just give him the phone now and he knows where the find the information. Rather cool that eh?

I make use of my kindle to do our names of Christ study. We are reading from a book I did as a review for some company (can't remember which right now) about the names of Christ. Isn't the lad doing a fine job of putting the names up?

We still use some "old-school" technology of paper and pen and even a cassette deck with tapes. We off and on listen to some history tapes from Chelesea house publishers. We've studied Marco Polo and soon will embark on the adventures of Magellan. Combine those audio tapes with information we find on library or at the library is just an added benefit in learning. :)

Getting Science DVD's such as the one we are currently reviewing for Science and Math are a boon to us as we can stop them anytime to ask questions, generate thinking skills, test theorems etc before seeing how the experiment actually works for the person putting on the experiment.

Before I go on with the rest of my day, I want to tell you that I am writing this post to go with the Crew Carnival of Technology in your homeschool. I have to admit, I"m drawing a blank as to when it goes live so I need to go look that up. :) Ah Feb. 26! So check back then to go read what others have to say about how they use Technology in their Classrooms. :) Cheers!

Lego Challenge Entry

2/22/2014

My son loves these books we are reading together. They influence much of what happens in this household. :)

His lego challenge "build something from a hero"

Hence the destruction of the forest by the mouse-brained Two Legs. The four trees have been knocked down, the Clan homes destroyed. The cats have to move!