Category: Reading

A book work day

10/15/2013

Today the lad an I were busy in the morning. We read our books.

A nest for Celeste, 1000 science facts, burgess bird book for children

We worked on our bible study guide. We so enjoy using these materials. You can find the review we did here.

When we finished that we did some work in this curriculum book. It's grade two, so it's got the easier words for the lad to read. We did reading comprehension and how many words can you make rhyme, and can you put them in order. He did well. Soon his confidence will be up again and we'll push on for harder grade three words. :)

The lad filled out his addition facts sheet. He figured out the patterning of it very quickly. It was good to see that. In the past when I have asked him to do so he struggled. Neat to see the changes a year can bring. :)

Then he needed to do his review work for TOS. Today it wasIXL and French Essentials. In IXL he practiced learning the full subject of a sentence, and greater/lesser than in math. In French Essentials we learned the accents. There are five accents in French.

We plan to make some cookies later on today, but first I have a doctor's appointment to take care. We'll make oatmeal raisin cookies, and make some with chocolate chips instead of raisins to please the boys in my family. :) The recipe we'll use is this one.

Our Current Reading Selection

10/7/2013

In the morning, two books we tend to read. One page or one chapter (depending on the book) every day. :)

In the afternoon, just one book. And we absolutely adore this one. A nest for Celeste. :) Sometimes we are so caught up in it, we read TWO chapters. :)

in the evening - the rule is I read until 9 p.m. No later. :)   Sometimes too much conversation about what we learn or what we are thinking cuts down on just how much we read. :)   One chapter, paragraph, or page depending on the book.

We read one history book, one book with poems, one just because book, one "read with mom" book, one fact book (sometimes two), one book on Canada, and one geography type book.    Think you can figure out which is which? :)

Magic Tree House #16
Pocket Factfile of the world
Bugs
On the banks of Plum Creek
Coastal Habitats
A book I can't find on amazon called "What's cooking" it's from Byeway Literacy Ladder and I so wish I could find another 10 of these books.   They work SO well with my lad, just so very very well.
The New Days and Deeds - has poetry in the back, one poem a night...some inspire stories. :)
and currently we are reading YWAM's George Washington.

Reading and learning

8/28/2013

We read three more books at lunch today.

The amazing world of spider by Janet Craig
Jillian Jiggs to the rescue by Phoebe Gilman
The grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle

The Amazing world of spiders taught us new things about spiders. The fact that they have an oil on their skin that keeps them from sticking to their web. And that there are two main kinds of spiders...hunting and web-building, and we discovered a new type of web we didn't know before called a dome web.

click on picture to go to source of image. Spider Web images.

The Jillian Jiggs book made us laugh out lough. It was fun, filled with rhymes, and had a surprise ending. The lad says "this one is a keep book mom".

The grouchy ladybug was okay to read. It wasn't great, it wasn't horrid either. It would be excellent in a teaching situation to learn about sizes and also as a remind that being nice is not a bad thing to be. Grouchy doesn't really get you anywhere except perhaps wet, tired and hungry.

What else have we been doing lately?

We continue to do some math drills... no more than 10 minutes, so far the lad is beating most of the drills easily. It is giving me a good sense of what he knows and what I need to work on a bit with him.   Good to do now before we get to set on what we are doing.

We're are working on Time4Learning.   This is a review that we are doing.   He was happy today to very much improve on his reading speed for a piece that he needed to do. :)   It helped him to see that practicing does help when it comes to reading.   I'm happy that he's gotten a boost of confidence.

We continue to work our way through Bible study guide for all ages.   This is a product we reviewed a bit back.   It is a good fit for our family...and has gotten my boy willing to sing. :)   The only issue I have with it, is that it is geared for groups and sometimes working around the group aspect is beyond me.

Beyond that, we are just getting into the swing of things again on a more formal basis.    After not doing much official homeschooling while we had our international student here it's been good to be a bit more organized again. :)

Island of the Blue Dolphins

7/20/2013

My boy is sad.

We finished "island of the blue dolphins" tonight.

He wants it so badly to continue. He was all caught up in the lives of the girl with her dog and her birds.

She got rescued and found out all her people were dead, she was the only one left....

He's so sad about it....

it was such a good book....go out, get it, read it with YOUR children. :)   (but don't tell them the spoi

NOW... to me this is a good thing. He got so caught up in this book.   Ah... it's such a good thing. :)   But it is sad that he's sad about the book being done.
Gives us a good reason to find ANOTHER good book to read.

SO Suggestions?   What should I go to the library to find???

Summertime Learning through Reading

6/24/2013

The lad and I like to read books together.
We have some we read at breakfast, some we read during the day and a bunch that we read at night.

In the morning we are reading though the Warriors, a dangerous path. We are also going through "25 Truths" by Ed Douglas. At this time we also read though our devotion from "keys for Kids", this devotional can also be found on-line here. The last book we read at breakfast is "the burgess bird book for children".

Reading this book has inspired us to put up a bunch of bird feeders. We have one just for the grackles (mostly to encourage them away from our other feeders), two small ones for finches, and others for sparrows, jays and other such birds. It's been rather fun watching the birds. We've met ground birds, sitting on a perch birds, bully birds, shy birds, juveniles, adults, male and female plumage, and so much more. It's been fascinating.

"MOM! Come quick! What bird is that?"

Sometimes we know from our reading, other times we need to ask qustions like we did this morning on facebook, and yet other times we search through the birds of Canada book that we have.

This is a mourning dove. We have three that hang around the feeders catching the waste of the other birds.

Throughout the day we pick up one of the books on Canada that we have. Both are old, been through the wringer a time or two books, but they are interesting reading, though not always factual. It teaches us discernment and the ability to just enjoy a good story as they are both written in a story format.

In the evening we do the bulk of our reading. We've just started reading "the island of the blue dolphin" on the advice of more than one Summer Reading list for boys person from the Schoolhouse Crew.

We are also reading "the treasure seekers" by E. Nesbit, another book about Canada..this one being a factual book. Also a book on polar regions (we've been reading 100 facts about ______ books lately). The lad has a primer he needs to read one page in every night except for weekends. The book we are reading currently is called "yawn and dawn". Then of course we have a devotional book we've been reading. I do the scripture, the lad reads the prayer and learn from verse. I picked this book NOT for the devotional content but for the fact that I can read something, and the lad can read something. We continue also to read through a Kids Yearbook type of book.... it's a bunch of facts interesting to children.

It's good to read together. I'm continually amazed at how many words my son knows how to read now, and yet how he struggles with some simple ones. I know that over time it is coming so it's good. it's just one of those lovely parts of homeschooling that I so enjoy. :) Good books help!

Insects and more

6/4/2013

My son is more and more using his reading skills in his learning.

Today we started a new program called Samson's Classroom. I was able to purchase this quite inexpensively through Educents.

Everyday of doing formal homeschooling (or is the hope) my son will be doing a new sight words list and working through a reading comprehension game. He will be practicing the spelling word list that I designed for him all week. These are words that he has struggled with pronouncing and reading on a regular basis or are taken from his reading program. The goal is to reduce memorization and to cement words into his brain better. :)

Today he showed me how well he knows some of the common sight words which is a confidence booster for him. Each level he needs to do perfectly in order to advance.

Oh Insects...where does that come into play?
We continue to work through our Insects Study from In the Hands of a child.

The lad is enjoying this study. Today we learned the exciting fact that Katydids hear through their knees. That struck the lad in interesting and kinda funny. But the Moon Moth totally intrigued him so we looked it up. They don't eat when they are fully mature, and then to live as adults for only one week (surviving only on what they took in as caterpillars). They go through five larval stages, changing colours at each stage. We read these online articles: Meet the Moon Moth and Wiki.

The above photo comes from this source.

The lad also continued this morning to work through mammoth math. This morning's sheet was a puzzle he needed to solve in order to answer a question. The lad had fun doing it but was highly disappointed in the answer.
The question: how do you get a giraffe in the refrigerator?
The answer: open the door. Put the giraffe in. Close the door.

Made me laugh, but the lad was just ... but mom, that won't work, giraffes are too big to fit in, you have to shorten him first!

This afternoon the lad will go for a bike ride (phys ed) and do some horitcultural work with me (planting our beans and moving his broccoli around a bit to make room for our own veggies).

We've continued to enjoy our bird feeders and I am hopeful to put up a finch feeder this afternoon and to get the lad to help me protect one or two of our feeders from the grackles. I like grackles but they will eat a feeder empty in one afternoon and I can't afford to feed that many birds, eating that much food, ALL THE TIME.

this captures perfectly how hard the grackles will work to get free food. They don't fit on the feeder, but boy oh boy will they try hard to do so. They flap and flap and work and work. They do succeed IF they are the smaller grackles, the bigger ones just can't. :)

Oh! It was rather cool on the way home last night. I saw a smallish turtle on the side of the road. So we stopped to take a look. It was rather neat. It was a wild eastern painted turtle. :)

We didn't mean to, but we made him hiss at us. It was a soft but determined KR--ISS. He threatened us with an open mouth and everything. But the lad commented something to the affect of "Mom, why do people call turtles slow, he can really scurry away fast". But I pulled him out of the grass a few times so we could take a good look at him. He was quite determined to get away from us and as soon as he was put down would get as far into the grass as we could. When we were one looking at him, we made a path in the grass for him to get through more easily and he used it speedily to get away and down into the ditch.

This encouraged some research on the boys part. How do you tell a girl turtle from a boy turtle? The size of the tail for the most part. Boys have a longer, heavier tail.

Today was better...learning, exercise and fun

4/4/2013

we have graduated from CMJ1 and have moved onto CMJ2. (this in adventus)

Today was a MUCH easier day than yesterday.

We did our adventus, looked through an offer from Educents ....regarding Samson's Classroom (we did the demo and that worked well for our reading, phonics, and sight words). Looks like it will be a good fit for the lad and progressive so that will help I think. With my coupon turns it into a $20 purchase for the year.   So that makes it worthwhile to me.

Did a little bit of review of what we learned yesterday with Great Empires.   Did our Target the Question....good practice today for rounding up to 10 and figuring out how

I wanted to do some math with the lad but he was VERY much not interested in doing A+Tutorsoft today so I said okay... we can do math from our upstairs book.... We worked on Area and Perimeter today. That lead to fun ...oh my.. we had FUN with this.   Doing the work was boring (said the lad) but learning what it actually met... My son is into angry birds so putting into angry bird speak.....The bad piggies set up their area that they want to hide in. The birds are wanting to breach their perimeter in order to get into the area that the pigs are hiding in.

using geometric shapes to build bad piggies.

the helmeted pigs have chosen an area to defend and have marked off their perimeter...can headband pig outsmart them???

Later on we went for a walk, on our walk we looked for places that it would be easy to set up a defense area. One of our balloon pigs came along for the walk as well and she kept on pointing out....see...I could hide there and see where I could form a perimeter?? SEE??? (she was VERY talkative). :) It's just very nice to have fun and learn at the same time. Sometime I'll have to set up a capture the flag game with the lad. :) It will be just another way to help reinforce how math concepts work in real life situations. :)

Tough days

4/4/2013

Mom... I don't want to.
Mom... do I have to?
Mom.. can we play?

This today was the constant refrain.

And I have to admit....for a while I just plumb gave up. Let's play Skylander bud... it's a new game, let's give a thorough going over...but then doing our "COOPERATIVE PLAY" he started the MOM... DON"T DO THAT stuff so I kinda said enough of this. I don't need this attitude stuff even while playing a game.

SO... we picked up our Astronomy lapbook from AJTL, We looked at what they had for us to do and the lad said...but mom... didn't we have to look at the planets some more? (Ah HA!!! I said to myself...I sorta have his interest.... let's work with that). So we hunted up the small planets that we had, and the dowelling that i bought and ....we made our planetary system. Is it accurate? NO...but will it do? yes... and it did make for conversation about the planets. We used the image here to helps us figure out which planets were which.

I have to admit to being a bit amazed today. I often feel like I'm not a particularly good homeschooling parent as I'm not organized or well planned.   I'm just very relaxed (too relaxed at times I think). BUT anyways, we do lots of reading and talking about subjects.    The lad frequently mentioned "mom, do you remember we read about the earth and how many would fit inside the sun". "Mom, do you remember that...." that was a frequent sentence starter. Makes me think we are doing something right. :)

Okay what else did we do.

OH.. I started "great empires", that comes from Homeschool in the woods.   I went through the list of the histories we could look at and Vikings appealed to the lad since they came to Canada.

We read through the three pages of text and talked about it. The lad needed to focus on things with the globe and trace out patterns of how the Vikings moved around. We learned of Vikings becoming Christians and how they influenced change in the cultures surrounding them.   Quite fascinating.

And then the lad was DONE. No more, I couldn't keep him focused on anything. I want to play, I want to.... (do anything other than focus). So off we went to clean the kitchen fridge out. In the process the lad invented a milking cow. :) Made me laugh. He took a balloon, attached it to a water filled bottle. Made a small hole in the bottom and proceeded to milk it. "Mom! you have to practice this. It's good to know how to milk a cow cause what if sometime we have no more milk in the stores?"   ... So i too needed to milk a cow (even though I have milked LOTS of cows in my childhood). :)

We got the fridge clean (the lad's responsibility was to get the door clean) and then set out to make a new treat. Roasted Honey Cinnamon Chickpeas. We found the recipe here.

First came skinning the peas.

Adding cinnamon and oil to them.
Roasting then at 400 for 40 minutes.
Then putting some honey on them and roasting for another 7 minutes.

And yes....they were yummy! :)

NOTE: the lad did 90% of the work in getting these ready. I helped with skinning the peas and getting things in and out of the oven. The pretty much did the rest. The link above has a video that he watched to learn what to do.
An EXCELLENT first (or fourth) recipe for a child to learn to do on his own.

Developing Critical Thinking

4/1/2013

I like to develop critical thinking in my lad. One of the best ways I have found to do that is to read something and then stop to ask him questions about it.

Right now we are reading through "the world Almanac for kids"

Last night we read this myth

In the beginning of time, the world was completely dark. The only thing that existed was water and the mighty god, Bumba. One day Bumba was plagued with a tremendous stomachache. Racked with pain, he vomited up the sun. The sun dried up some of the water, leaving vast areas of land. Still in pain, Bumba vomited again, spitting up the moon and the stars. Bumba kept vomiting, but this time it was living creatures - the leopard, the crocodile, the turtle and so forth. The last living creature to come from his stomach was mankind.

After the lad was done with his "gross, Mom" exclamations I asked him... so tell me lad.... what is truth and what isn't truth?

1. The way things came out in order...that's truth mom. God made things in that order.
2. Bumba.....he didn't make the world.. and mom, that's GROSS.
3. Man was made last by God too!

Then he asked : why would they make a story up like that mom?

My response was that all people carry within them some aspect of who God is. Sometimes they don't know who God is yet and sometimes they just don't want to believe in God so they make up something that makes more sense to them. This is a VERY old story from a tribe in Africa, so they might not have known who God was yet.

He got this quizzical look on his face and I could tell he was thinking but he couldn't express his thoughts yet. I expect they'll come out sometime this week.

How do you teach YOUR children Critical Thinking?