Category:

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.

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. :)

Review: Bible Study Guide For All Ages

8/7/2013

My son LOVES doing this. :) He doesn't ask to do it, but whenever I pull it out he goes zipping off to find a pencil and eraser and gets himself all set.
"MOM.. what's going to happen next?" is the frequent question I hear. :)

Vendor Information

Vendor: Bible Study Guide For All Ages
Products Received:
Primary Student Pages
Primary Teacher Guide
Bible Book Summary Cards
Children's Songs CD set
Prices range for different products. Please see below. :)

Age Range: the primary set is geared to children who are just learning to read well. So primarily for children in first and second grade.

photo primary-student-pages_zps82bb3a12.jpg

Easy to do. The only thing my son dislikes is the whole colour this a certain colour or underline with another colour. Fought me on that, we do everything in pencil since the colours chosen didn't seem to really matter in the long run. So he draws or does everything in pencil. Student pages are sold in sets of 26 lessons.

I like that the lessons are fairly predictable (and I think he does too). Mom, we did a map yesterday so today we do the timeline. :) They follow a pattern of review, song, activity, lesson, review and application. (I may be missing a step in there though). Either way, quite predictable, easy to follow along with.

Price: $5.95

photo primary-teacher-guide_zps3f764220.jpg

Good useful guide. Very helpful. Very practical as well. I've used a variety of Sunday School type materials in the past, and this guide I like. It is so easy to just turn the page and follow along with what the child is learning.

Price: $9.95.

photo childrens-songs-cd_zps6d5f5503.jpg

The songs are easy to learn and fairly catchy. We even got DAD singing along with us. The lad took great joy in learning the 12 sons of Jacob. :)

My regret with the CD is that the words weren't printed out. This made learning the songs more difficult.

Price: $19.95

photo bible-book-summary-cards_zps28dfa8ff.jpg

I remember thinking when I heard about the summary cards... what's the point, will they really be useful or ??? To my very pleasant surprise they are very helpful. My son can now give a good synopsis of the book of Genesis.

Simple graphics that help explain what the main themes of a bible book are about. The graphics help with memory. They come black and white or coloured, I received the colour version and recommend them. :) The lad really liked them and found them helpful in recalling what Genesis was all about.

You can view a sample summary card here.

Price: $24.95

One of the lessons had me dump of bunch of blocks on the table and ask if I should be pleased with what I built, the lad said no. So I ask, what could make me pleased? He said, if you actually BUILT something... So I asked him to build something that HE might be pleased with. :)

Issues I had
1. The Spiral Binding for Teacher's Guide.   I found that the spiral binding for the teacher's guide was not big enough to allow you to actually USE IT. The pages just did not flip around.

2. Group Lessons.   Most of the lessons I did made it clear they expected it to be used with a GROUP of children. Not effective if you only have one child being taught.   Some activities I simply didn't know how to modify for one child.   Others we just talked about and the lad went OH.. I get it. :)

3. Student Pages.   Would like someway to keep the lessons intact. My lad is a careful boy, but even with his care, the pages are starting to come loose.   We'd rather not have that, as he likes to look them over again.

Verdict/overall thinking

My son: Mom, when we are done this book, can we get more of them?

My hubby: That seems like a good review you are doing there hun, can I look it over? They seem to have done a good job and the lad certainly likes it doesn't he? (hubby rarely wants to look over what we are doing, so this is a good thing). :)

Me: They are very well done. I can't say I always agree with the application theme as sometimes it seems not "big enough" but it does help him think. I often thought as I use them is that they would be great for situations where people want to teach the bible stories to children of a variety of ages and abilities. The student pages are quite affordable and if they all follow the same stories/pattern, wouldn't it a great way to teach the lesson to all those children at the same time and have the dialogue going. Olders learning with youngers and giving that benefit of experience. Small churches, families, and such like. They are just well made and we have thoroughly enjoyed using them. We do plan to order the next ones in the series and see how we like them as well. :) I want to purchase the wall timeline and maps as well.

Did you know that other fine folks have reviewed Bible Study Guide For All Ages? Well they have. If you want to see what they have to say about it, go check it out over here or click the link below. :)

Global Art and more

7/17/2013

This week we've gotten back into doing some homeschooling. :)
Last week the lad was at a church day camp where he did some woodworking, swimming, learning bible stories and such like.
On Tuesday afternoon we celebrated Dad's birthday by lunch out and watching Despicable Me 2.

Today we did Sunday School for all ages, Reading Kingdom and Global Art.
The lad likes doing the Sunday School for all ages and I can see us purchasing this curriculum when we are done with this review.
Reading Kingdom he's getting quite frustrated with. We have managed to get past the skills assessment area. He finds it doesn't give him enough time to get the tasks completed and he finds that quite stressful.
Global art was just fine as you shall see below.

supplies needed: hammer, board, items to hammer with, and metal lids.

Choose your hammering item, apply hammer. Normally when the lad hammers we have a short hammer for him. But it's gone missing and is most likely stored somewhere in the quagmire that is his room.....He had some difficulty controlling the larger hammer but persevered and was pleased with the results.

Try very hard (well okay not too hard) to not get distracted by very interesting fun little bugs that come to join you. This bug was perhaps 3 mm long, did a really neat curl up thing with its tail, washed itself, did some really short hop/flights until it soared off across the kitchen with an eight year old hot on it's tail. The lad ended up catching him and releasing him to the wilds of Ontario. :)

our efforts met with Milo's approval, and he helped by reminding us where scattered nails went (he scratched his one up from under the board).

The minions showing off our finished creations. I tried a planned one (in the middle) of a bike. But also made a go with the flow on (end nearest foot) and the lad made a purple minion replica. He was quite pleased with the end result.