Writing Your Own Books

This past week as we cleaned out our school closet I came upon some treasures. Books written by my two oldest!

Several years ago when we were struggling with language arts I stepped away from our regular curriculum for a while and encouraged my daughters to write books instead. It was a memorable experience.

My oldest, who was 11 at the time, decided to write a book about our family. Each one of us had our own chapter. It was very fun to read her views on our personalities, likes, dislikes, attributes, etc. She was extremely observant!

My second oldest, who was 10, decided to write about her grandmothers and great-grandmothers. She wrote a chapter on each one telling stories that occurred to them throughout their lives but particularly when they were little like her. She called her grandmas asking them for stories and giggled so much she got the hiccups! It was a wonderful bonding experience for all of them.

Here’s a run down of what my children did when writing their books.

1. Chose their topic.

2. Did their research.

3. Wrote, wrote, wrote! I had them hand write their drafts but reluctant writers may enjoy using the computer instead.

4. Corrected grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors.

5. Took lessons on using the thesaurus. Five neats in one paragraph are a little much, don’t you think?

6. Typed the final draft on the computer.

7. Published a few copies by printing them off and having them bound at a copy center.

We gave their books as gifts for Christmas that year. They were a huge hit! As I prepare for school to start again in a few short weeks I’ll be adding in “writing books” as part of our schedule. It’ll be a great process for my children to apply what they have been learning. And it will create more treasured keepsakes too!

Montserrat Wadsworth is completely devoted to her wonderful husband, Joseph, and their eight children (seven girls and one boy!). They live on a 4,000 acre alfalfa farm nestled in a small Northern Nevada valley. They’ve been homeschooling for 11+ years. Montserrat enjoys, photography, cooking, crafting, chocolate, and sloppy goodnight kisses. She strives to live each day as God would have her do following Mary’s biblical supplication, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38) You can find her at her blog Chocolate On My Cranium.

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Music Education: Making Music Happen in Your Homeschool

As a music teacher, I’m always getting questions about private lessons and ensembles to join, especially for homeschoolers. And while I do recommend a child’s involvement in formal music training if they are interested and show innate ability, it is not the only way to create a love of and appreciation for this fine art.

Children are naturally drawn to music. Even before they are born they can hear and respond to music, and classical music especially is known to calm fussing babies, focus young children and bring out creativity in people of all ages. To successfully add music to your homeschool, you need only to build off of this inherent love in your everyday life.

boyguitar

Since my husband and I are both classical musicians, music is a part of our life that can’t be separated from who we are. We don’t sit down with our children and show them written quarter notes and eighth notes, or formally analyze a piece of music with them. Truthfully, that would kill the joy already present.

We simply fill their environment with good quality music and opportunities to learn and discuss (even the toddlers!) what they are hearing.

Stock up on music CD’s
Classical music CDs are among the cheapest you can find. It is easy to stock up on the classics for a modest sum of money and have them playing in the background while you eat, play, or work in your home and in the car. Choose a variety: choral, orchestral, opera, different instrument combinations, different languages and time periods. Some good, accessible composers to start with are Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Grieg, Holst, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert, Debussy, and Dvorak.

Discuss, using adjectives
To make the most of your and your children’s listening experience, talk about what you hear:

  • “Wow, that was a really loud section!”
  • “Did you hear how fast that was? How did they play so fast?”
  • “I think I heard a flute. Did you hear any other instruments?”

Fast and slow, high and low, short or long, joyful or sad. So many adjectives can express the music, and there’s no wrong way to hear something. Before you try to make a foray into music in any kind of structured way, spend months listening and let your children surprise you with their experiences.

childflute

Play simple music games
When children feel musically that they have something to say, move from there into simple musical games. Buy a number of varied percussion instruments (these are relatively cheap and can be found online at websites such as www.musiciansfriend.com for a better price than your local music store) and allow them to experiment. Here are a few examples of challenges for them:

  • Ask your children to play their name in rhythm- “My name-is Chris-tine” (long short-short long long), “My name-is An-tho-ny” (long short-short short-short long)
  • Choose a dynamic poem or story and have them come up with a way to tell it using only instruments.
  • Have a dinner when everyone is only allowed to sing and not speak. Opera-style “Please pass the buuuuuuutttttteeeeeeer!” can be a hoot for the whole family.

Attend concerts
Another important aspect of creating a music-appreciate family is to attend concerts in your area. Local universities and colleges often have free recitals and concerts at the music school. Our local community orchestra recently had a Star Wars themed concert with a multimedia element of pictures from the Hubble telescope and people dressed in costume. These gems are often marketed well, but sometimes not. Keep your eyes and ears open especially for these types of fun concerts to attract reluctant attendees.

Listen to Kindermusik
If you have very young children, I would highly recommend Kindermusik CDs, even if you can’t swing the classes. You can buy them on ebay or other swap-type sites. It is crucial for good musical and vocal development to have quality vocal models that young children can learn from and Kindermusik has a wonderful reputation for pleasing recordings and varied arrangements with many instruments involved. My children have also gotten a great deal of musical “tidbits” from the Disney show “Little Einsteins”! When your child can recognize a Dvorak song on the classical station, it’s pretty impressive!

Adding music to your homeschool need not be an intimidating undertaking. Not every child will be apt to study privately for years, but every child can and should be encouraged to express themselves musically. The process of creating and appreciating music is a wonderful way to share creatively with your family. And the musical world can always use more enthusiastic audience members!

Christine Hiester is a Christian, homeschooling mom to three boys and a girl, ranging in age from 9 to 2 years old. She is a musician by trade, eclectic in homeschool style, and continues to grow and learn along with her children in this journey of life and discipleship at home. Visit her blog at Fruit in Season.

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Art for the “Art Klutz”

It’s kind of twisted, really.

I love science, but I really don’t like art!  As a nurse, I have a science and math background.  Those are my favorite subjects!   When we did microscope work, I would find myself going back again and again to look through the microscope by myself!

But art…That was a completely different story.

Art was a weak area in my homeschool.  It was one subject that we all had to work at, or it wouldn’t get done.   If we didn’t set aside time for art study it would never happen!   It may sound strange to some, but we never had that problem getting math or science done.  Just art.  You could say that instead of art being a “delight directed” subject, it was simply a “directed” subject.

But I was determined to provide a well-rounded education, even if it meant including this most obnoxious subject.  I carefully scheduled art a few times a week for two hours at a time.  I figured that should be just often enough, and provide enough time to get something done. Even so, it sometimes didn’t happen.

Here is the problem.  Art is messy.

I’m tidy by nature, and art is messy by nature.  We are a mismatch from the beginning.  Art could get my house covered in so many crazy colors.  Art makes a mess.  Art caused stress because my kids just didn’t “get it.”  And art takes so many materials! You have to buy so much stuff just to paint one thing!  The problem for my kids wasn’t so much the mess.  They had NO problem with the mess.  It was just that every minute spent on  art was one less minute doing what they loved; namely, math, science, chess and economics.

We all have weaknesses

I know for certain that art is my nemesis. I tell parents that when you identify your weak area, that’s what you do FIRST.  It’s the first thing you spend money on when you buy curriculum.  It’s the first thing you consider purchasing again when necessary, if your first choice doesn’t work.  It’s the first thing you do each day.   It’s the first thing you get done before going out to a fun event.

Finding the Spark

I never really sparked a love of art.  My boys were simply not interested.  I thought I had it all figured out when we tried pottery.  After all, wouldn’t boys just love playing in the mud?  But no, pottery was also merely tolerated.  At least the mess (I mean “fun”) wasn’t in my house, but still the art idea didn’t take.   I tried teaching art with games: The Impressionists Art Game and the Parker Brothers game called Masterpiece.  They enjoyed playing it because they love to compete against each other, but I’m not sure a purist would call that “art.”

Teaching Art

I knew I would really have to force myself to teach art.  Others may be able to provide art “experiences” but as a true art klutz, I didn’t know how to do that.  For me and my homeschool, I needed curriculum to help me teach that dreaded subject.  When the children were younger, we used the book “Art Fun” the first year.  My children were much more interested in reading the books than actually doing the projects.  Slightly older, I used the curriculum “Feed My Sheep.”  In high school we used “Draw Today.”

Art Defined

One year I realized that colleges wanted to see one year of Fine Arts on a high school transcript.  As an art klutz, I had to go to the dictionary and look up “fine arts” to see what they meant.   The Fine Arts are music, art, theater, and dance. You don’t have to do it all, and you don’t have to do it every year.

My children don’t enjoy drawing, but they tolerate music.   One year I purchased a 10-CD pack of great composers.  Each CD was a different composer. My idea was to have a “composer of the week.” We would just play a CD during lunch and maybe during math. I found portraits of the great composers on the web, that I would print. We read about them, sometimes online and sometimes from library books.  In high school we studied music appreciation with “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” by The Teaching Company. It was our favorite lecture series. The teacher has a wonderful vocabulary, and my boys would take college level lecture notes in real time, while listening to the wonderful music content.

Do it vs. Study it.

If your kids just “do” art, then maybe you don’t really need to “study” it. We needed to make art a subject, because my kids would never do it otherwise. We used books and curriculum for art history, perspective, and art appreciation. If you aren’t a modern day Michelangelo, don’t despair.  You can give your children a perfectly acceptable appreciation for the arts.  You don’t need to destroy your home or convert the hallway into the Sistine Chapel.  The key is to be flexible and willing to see “Art” in creative (dare I say artistic?) ways.  You can still emerge at the other side with balanced students who will appreciate (if not necessarily create) fine art.

Amazing!

I guess it worked.  Fine Arts was my “great failing” in homeschool high school.  I tried to expose my kids to art during high school but, honestly, it was a pretty pathetic effort.   Fast forward two years.  According to Facebook, here is what my son did one weekend at college:

Alex loved “The Marriage of Figaro” yesterday, went to the Seattle Art Museum today, and is going to “Rhapsody in Blue” at the Seattle Symphony tonight. The pattern is starting to damage my street cred.

Apparently it was successful.  I’m amazed that someone like me, who is “artistically declined”, can raise someone who enjoys the arts so much!

Art klutz parents of the world, unite!

Lee Binz is a veteran homeschooling mother of two and the owner of The HomeScholar, “Helping parents homeschool for high school.” Get access to her free one hour training webinar on homeschool credits, grades and transcripts.  She has a free minicourse called “The 5 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make When Homeschooling High School”. You can sign up for her free email homeschool newsletters, The HomeScholar Record and get your daily dose of wisdom via e-mail from her Christian homeschool blog, The HomeScholar Helper. Get homeschool high school transcript help with her Total Transcript Solution. Get comprehensive help with high school homeschoolers as a member of her Gold Care Club.

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Journal the Adventure

Recently, as I was planning some school time with my daughter, I decided it would be fun to bring back The Year of the Dollhouse. Perhaps some of you know about my blogging friend Lynn and her idea to play and make a homemade dollhouse with her daughter everyday for a year a few years ago now. My daughter was 7 then and we did make some renovations to her house and did some playing, but it faded away. As I thought about what would make this school year special, I asked her if she thought doing another Year of the Dollhouse might sound fun. Now that she’s 10 my plan is to teach some home making skills through our creating and playing at the dollhouse. I pulled out a journal and began some dialogue with her. The journal is for us to plan and talk about our activities with the dollhouse and she loves it. Grammar correction is off limits in our journal allowing her to be free to communicate with me without a critique.

After hearing about the journal and the time I was going to spend with my daughter, my 8yo son wanted in on it too. Only I convinced him that maybe the dollhouse adventure wasn’t for him. Instead I suggested, the Year of the Adventure. His first question was, “Do I get to keep an Adventure Log?” And that is how journal time with him has begun. He and I will be reading Treasure Island and some of his favorite Jules Verne books and trying out our own adventures together. He loves his compass and binoculars and is an all American Adventure Boy.

Of course I wanted to find a way to have an adventure with each of my children. I gulped hard and offered to adventure and journal College Football with my 11yo son. He is a HUGE college football fan and I thought this would be a great way to connect with him throughout the season and I could give him challenges as we chat about team rosters and the National Championship front runners. Of course his absolute loyalty to the Virginia Tech Hokies would be prominent.

But, he surprised me by asking for a Redwall adventure instead. So, he and I will be discussing all things Redwall. He has in mind to make meals and write to the author Brian Jacques. I think he is secretly hoping that once this year ends, I’ll have enough planned to teach a Redwall co-op class.

And finally, my 5yo son requested some stories and after further probing, it turns out he’d like to draw pictures and tell me stories that I will write for him and read back to him. What a great idea for my Kindergartner who is too young to journal otherwise. He and I will enjoy time together and he tells a great story!

These, of course, are a version of the Adventure Boxes I shared with you all last summer. I had wondered then if doing adventure boxes and following a passion right during the school year rather than waiting for summer would be a fun idea. The kids won’t be totally immersed in an adventure at the expense of everything else, but it will allow them time to focus on something special they enjoy while getting extra time from my husband and me through journaling and activities.

I’m certain that we will look back with fondness at the memories we’ll make through our Journaling Adventures. What about you? Are you ready to make some memories with a Journaling Adventure?

Heather is a homeschooling mom of four kids ranging from middle school to preschool and wife to a handsome chemical engineer. Before raising a family, she taught middle school science (with a BS in biological sciences) and has a masters degree in curriculum and instruction secondary education. Now teaching at home means the chance to provide the extraordinary for her children. She’s been homeschooling five years and you can read about those adventures on her blog, Blog She Wrote.

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The Shoot-Out

My husband died last week in a shoot-out with Shoshone Indians on the Oregon Trail, and while it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone else (including my husband), I find myself brooding over the situation as I put away laundry and wash dishes.

We were approached by six Shoshone Indians on horseback. There were seven of us, and we panicked. Well, the kids did. One of them wanted to start shooting right away. The other convinced him to call their grandparents.

The reasoning was quite rational. It went like this: you can’t outrun them. You’ve got oxen and a wagon. If you try to talk to them, and they’re “fierce,” you won’t have a chance to get to your guns. So the safest, most logical thing to do was shoot. And they did.

Yeah, we were pretending. But my kids still chose to shoot at innocent strangers rather than talk first. They were caught up in the simulation, I know. In real life we don’t even own any guns, and we never shoot strangers. I’m taking it too seriously, I’ve been told.

But I played the simulation with my husband before the kids began. I knew that the situation could be gotten out of with a friendly conversation and a gift. Like most things in life, if we will use our words, we will have less trouble.

The “guns” we shot were just rolls of the dice. The Indians were make-believe. Nobody got hurt, not really. “But,” I asked them, “who were these men you killed? Brothers? Fathers? Husbands?” And even now I want to weep. Because I know that these imaginary people in a history simulation represent real people who were killed just as senselessly as my sweet children rolled the dice.

Yes, it seemed safer to just shoot. In many ways, it often seems safer to just shoot. Then we don’t have to worry about understanding other people, being hurt, risking ourselves in an attempt to cross the chasm between one human heart and another.

But I believe in stepping away from my guns and risking my life to cross the prairie to a stranger, hand held out in friendship. It doesn’t sound like much, not shooting strangers for fear they’ll shoot you first, but sometimes…when you’ve run out of food and outrun cholera and winter’s approaching…sometimes life is hard, and it’s easy to think only of survival. In those difficult, stretched-to-the-point-of-breaking times, that’s when we really choose Who to follow, and survival was not a message He preached.

My husband and I have a strict policy of non-intervention with this simulation. We let them buy the snake oil from Professor Thaddeus P. Farnsworth and get sick trying it. We let them bring the silverware and every spare part a wagon could need, even though that meant bringing less food. We giggled but said nothing when they decided to buy oxen instead of donkeys, since that meant they wouldn’t have to bring donkey food. We knew those oxen would come to places where the grass was too scarce to eat, would pull the wagon too slowly and leave them fighting blizzards and avalanches.

We let them decide to shoot the Indians, too.

The simulation does not teach you what to think. It’s merely fact, choices, odds, dice. If you try to outrun the Indians, they’ll ride beside you and laugh. If you try to talk to them, they’ll trade with you. If you shoot them, they’ll shoot back. The impetus to give meaning to these outcomes is on us as teachers.

I’ve told the kids what I think: they killed innocent people. But you can see in their faces that the information does not register, not really. They think they went left when they should have gone right, made an error of judgment. They don’t see the deeper significance. They don’t see that these six characters represented real people.

So we’re reading about Native Americans for the next few weeks. We’ve learned that the Hopis are a subgroup of the Pueblo Indians, and my son is fascinated by the pueblos they built. We’ve read If You lived With the Sioux Indians and learned about some of the things they made from bison. We’re working our way around the continent with crafts from More Than Moccasins, books, and films that are on hold at the library now.

My son said to me this week, “Wow. The Indians are really interesting. They’re like real people!”

Almost all my kids knew about Native Americans came from Little House on the Prairie, and I failed to realize it sooner. I’d dutifully pointed out the racist passages that that book contains as they were reading through it, we discussed them, and we kept reading.

When presented with a group of Shoshone Indians, though, and grandparents who suggested they might be “fierce,” I asked them, “Are they? Are these Indians ‘fierce?’”

My daughter quoted Ma’s objections to Indians and my objections to Ma’s racism.

“So what does that mean?” I asked.

“That means I don’t know,” she said.

We will be reading about the Shoshone next week and about Sacajawea and her baby, her joy over being reunited with her older brother, a relationship my two take very seriously and so will relate with deeply. When we do, then they will know, and then they will weep. Because then they will know who they killed at Independence Rock.

Aubrey Lively is a homeschooling mother of four, ages 9, 7, 3, and 2. She has a BA in Literature and an MEd in Teaching and is currently surviving seminary with her husband of ten years. Visit Aubrey online at http://aubreylively.blogspot.com.

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Creative Writing: The Good, The Bad, and The UGLY Amazing!

If anyone had suggested to me when my son was younger that I would someday be writing an article on how to teach creative writing, I would have been incredulous. My son was a classic reluctant writer. He had plenty of ideas and loved to draw pictures. But when I asked him to actually write words and sentences he acted like the very pencil he had been happily doodling with moments before now burned his hand as if it was covered with acid. He acted as if he could barely remember how to grasp a pencil, yet alone use it functionally. Let me share with you what I tried that worked as well as what didn’t work so that you can hopefully avoid some of the potholes I hit on the road to teaching creative writing.

If the actual act of writing is challenging, observe your child and see if fine motor skills need to develop a bit more.

A child who struggles with the physical coordination needed for writing may get bogged down as he attempts to get his thoughts down on paper. Be sure your child is grasping the pencil correctly. Sometimes a simple pencil grip placed on the writing utensil makes writing physically easier for the child and thus frees the child to concentrate on developing his ideas rather than wrestling with his pencil and the mechanics of writing.

My son, Josh, was diagnosed with AD/HD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and he matured at a slower rate than his typically-developing peers. It was hard for him to sit still for long and his fine motor skills and general coordination were not as developed as his cognitive skills. In other words, he had the ability to come up with ideas but lacked the focus and skill to sit down and write his ideas on paper. I still had him do some of the writing so he could practice and develop those skills. Some of the time, however, I let him dictate his ideas to me and I did the act of writing. Seeing and hearing his own stories read back to him was very motivating.

Another way to encourage the creative juices is to get some paper that is blank at the top and lined on the lower half.

The child can draw a picture to help illustrate their stories. Another advantage to this type of paper is that children who are overwhelmed at the thought of writing to fill an entire page view a half page as much more manageable. More manageable means less reluctance to write, and a relaxed writer has an easier time coming up with creative ideas to write about. This could also be a multi-age project, with a younger sibling helping to illustrate or contribute to a story with an older sibling. An older sibling can show the picture as she reads to the younger children. Having an appreciate audience for what’s been written is great motivation to write some more.

Do not make a big deal over spelling errors.

One mistake I made was to have Josh correct all his spelling errors. Since Josh was a very poor speller, having to make all the corrections was discouraging to him. Josh was a laborious writer with a pencil and paper in the first place, and to have to go back and fix all his errors was disheartening. Being a bright boy, Josh changed a few things about his writing at that point. First, he began to limit his writing to words he knew how to spell. This was not conducive to creative writing, and his topics were severely restricted. The second thing Josh did was to revert to simple noun verb sentences because, you guessed it, I was also the punctuation police for his writing. In essence, Josh taught me about teaching creative writing by pointing out what I did wrong that inadvertently was crushing his creativity.

If your child has only occasional misspelled words, give them the “underline option”. This means that if you are writing and use a word that you think may be misspelled, underline it and keep on writing. Later, you can go back and check the spelling of the underlined words by looking them up in a dictionary. If you have a speller like Josh who will have many spelling errors, teach him the underline option as well but don’t ask him to look up all those words in the dictionary. Usually the child knows what the word means as they write, they just are unsure about the spelling. If you ask a poor speller to look up all the misspelled words she may begin to use small words that are easier to spell and faster to correct. More advanced vocabulary words will not be found in a children’s dictionary, leaving the student who has difficulty spelling trying to find a word in a thick, small-print dictionary when he doesn’t know how to spell it in the first place.

Instead, invest about $20.00 in a Franklin Spelling Ace or similar device and teach your child how to use it. About the size of a calculator, the Spelling Ace is designed so that you can type in a word the way you think it is spelled and then see a display of possible words. Often a child can identify the word they were attempting once they see it, even though they could not generate the correct spelling on their own. This is a much faster way for a poor speller to find what they need than to have him looking up words in a dictionary. Teach dictionary skills, sure, but don’t overuse them when a simple spell check is all that is needed.

As for Josh, when he transitioned to keyboarding (hurray for spell check!) his creative writing really took off. After graduating from high school in 2006, he began pursuing creative writing with a passion. At the present time Josh has written three science fiction novels and has 47 novels started or in progress.

Melinda Boring has been married to Scott for 25 years and has three homeschooled children. Her 22 yr. old son and 21 yr. old daughter graduated from home school in 2006, leaving Melinda an “empty desker” of two along with her 17 year old daughter who will graduate in 2011. Two of her children and her husband have been diagnosed with AD/HD. The children also deal with auditory processing disorders and sensory processing challenges. The name “Boring” just doesn’t fit this family, and Melinda shares many humorous moments in her speaking and writing endeavors. Melinda is the author of Heads Up Helping and has been a contributing author to multiple publications. She is a workshop presenter with a passion for helping struggling learners and providing practical strategies, compassion, and understanding for those with special needs. Melinda is also a speech/language pathologist with over 25 years experience and the owner of Heads Up, a company with products for those who learn differently. You can find her blog at the Heads Up website, where she writes as “Heads Up Mom”.

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Math for the Young

I was inspired recently to write this post while playing for several hours with my five year old and some Unifix Cubes. He and I had a grand time making patterns, counting, and measuring. It made me realize again how much math we can do while we play and how important playful math is to young, aspiring mathematicians.

Generally speaking there are some widely accepted categories of concepts our children need to have in order to begin a solid foundation in math. They are Numbers & Number Sense, Patterns & Classification, Computation, Measurement, and Geometry.

You can play at any one of those concepts with a good set of counters. Another name widely used for counters is manipulatives. I really like the Unifix Cubes because they attach to each other nicely in only one direction. However, any counter will do- pennies, buttons, bears, legos, duplos (we used to use these a lot). So, if your budget is limited, dig in to the toys already in your house and see what there is to play math.

So, you have your counters and you have your young student, but you aren’t sure about how to play? Here are a few ideas:

Numbers and Number Sense: this category includes counting and one to one correspondence along with identifying sets of numbers. I like to use puzzles to teach counting- either the number match kind or the number train type. Almost all of my kids learned to count to twenty with our number train puzzle. There are so many opportunities for asking questions and counting with a good puzzle. Board games are another way to help kids learn counting. Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, and the Eric Carle games are good games to start with. Dominoes are a great tool for identifying sets of numbers and number matching. Kids love to play games and count.

Patterns & Classification: This category includes collecting like items, sorting, and patterning. I like to have my kids sort buttons into muffin tins. You can sort by color, size or texture and older kids can do more complicated sorting. Establishing patterns is important and you can do this using more formal products or you can make your own. With the Unifix Cubes or duplos you can establish a pattern and see if your student can repeat it. Funtastic Frogs have patterning cards and we’ve all seen bears or dinosaurs with patterning cards.

Computation: The beginnings of math equations- addition and subtraction is in this category. Counters that connect are a fun way to talk about adding and taking away items.

Measurement: Here we are talking about length, volume, time, etc. You can introduce measuring tools and use non-standard forms of measurement with young children. We used long towers of Unifix cubes to do some measuring and we counted the squares for quantifying our answers.  Tape measures are a great way to practice counting and measuring themselves against other objects helps for comparison.

Geometry: shape math is what geometry is all about. Identifying and classifying shapes with puzzles, pictures, and shape hunts is always fun.

For readers who don’t want to go it on their own, here is a list of resources you can use with your young math students.

No matter what you choose to use for math with young children or how you want to go about it, the most important thing is to get down and play! You’d be surprised how much fun preschool and Kindergarten math can be without a workbook and it helps to get kids off to a good start in math skills through play.

Heather is a homeschooling mom of four kids ranging from middle school to preschool and wife to a handsome chemical engineer. Before raising a family, she taught middle school science (with a BS in biological sciences) and has a masters degree in curriculum and instruction secondary education. Now teaching at home means the chance to provide the extraordinary for her children. She’s been homeschooling five years and you can read about those adventures on her blog, Blog She Wrote.

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Logic Games for Children

Logic games are a strange breed of toy. Some kids love ‘em; some hate ‘em. Actually, the same thing could be said for parents (not that some kids love ‘em and some hate ‘em!). Some parents can’t wait to see what new logic toys they can find, and some parents’ skin begins to crawl just thinking about them! The essence of whether or not you like or loathe logic games likely has much to do with your spatial abilities. If you rock Tetris, can’t wait to introduce Tangrams to your homeschoolers, and constantly try to fit things together (not figuratively, but literally!), you probably like logic games. If, however, you break into a cold sweat at the thought of a question like, “if you flip and then rotate shape A, will it end up in the position of shape B, C, or D?” (I’m hyperventilating just typing that, by the way, so you know what kind of person I am!), then you will probably not jump for joy at this post. Read on, however, because your children just might!

It’s only the beginning of July, and I’m already having a hard time keeping N, my gifted 7 (as of July 4th!) year-old entertained. When the days get long and hot, and in Houston that means a heat index of 105-110 routinely, it is essential that I find some way to keep his mind engaged so that his hands don’t proceed to strip the wallpaper or peel the paint. Like many parents, I walk a fine line between providing my children with a challenge and giving them toys or activities that are too difficult for them. *Especially* for a child like N, an activity that is too difficult is a recipe for a tantrum and for a digging-in of heels. He won’t admit it’s too hard and he won’t quit, but he doesn’t have the emotional maturity to cope with something that is too far above him. Hence, it falls on me to choose things that hit at just the right level. Gee, that’s not too hard.

Fortunately, however, there are many wonderful toys for children just like my N and, I’m sure just like the ones that you have at home with you. These toys are leveled in such a way that they begin easily (although, for a spatially-challenged individual like myself, that is definitely a relative term!), and then progress to greater and greater levels of difficulty. Thus, a child masters the simpler levels before progressing. The best example I know of a logic game that meets this criteria is Kanoodle. As the manufacturer states, “Using combinations of colored connected beads, players complete colorful puzzles in two unique formats: tricky 2D puzzles and twisted 3D pyramids.” Kanoodle comes with a 48-page booklet which shows you the puzzle you are to replicate. There are hundreds of possible combinations of the 12 puzzle pieces, but only correct combination to solve the puzzle. I can’t even lay out the puzzle pieces correctly to close the small convenient carrying case, but my 7 and 8 year-old kids can now solve the hardest of the 3D pyramids. However, when they first got the game, my oldest was only 6 and had to work up from the simplest puzzle. Solving the logic games (since that’s what, in essence, they are) in this manner built her confidence and didn’t cause her to become discouraged or angry along the way. That’s quite a lot of payoff for a $10.99 game!

Rush Hour is a similarly conceptualized game, although it is more visually appealing to my son than Kanoodle. The premise of Rush Hour is simple. 40 cards are included in the game. A player sets up cars and buses on a 6″x6″ road grid according to the pattern on the card. One of the cars is a red one. The goal of the game is to get the red car safely out of traffic — while obeying all traffic laws! There are four levels of difficulty, so, again, a child can incrementally work up through the levels, all the while gaining competency and confidence. Best of all is the fact that there are several expansion packs available for this game. If your kids are anything like mine, you’ll need them! Like Kanoodle, Rush Hour is very compact, extremely portable, and requires intense concentration – all reasons to love it! The suggested age is 8+, but my son was able to solve the easier puzzles at 5. Like many of these logic-oriented games, Rush Hour is tailor-made for a gifted young child. Perhaps that is one reason it received a national award from Mensa.

The logic games I’ve highlighted thus far are the spatial variety, the kind at which my kids run rings around me. Perhaps other moms join me in a love of a different kind of logical endeavor – the written logic puzzle. I speak now of the kind of logic puzzle found in, among others, Dell puzzle magazines. A written scenario is introduced, followed by five or six clues. Using that information and a helpful grid of some kind, the solver ends up with a final pronouncement: “It was Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick!” or something of that nature. Seriously, though, this kind of logic problem doesn’t, to the best of my knowledge, use the spatial centers of the brain (and I say that because I’m actually good at these!), but it is certainly and fundamentally a logic problem. If your older child isn’t as much into the physical logic games, then, see if she might like to try one of these puzzles. You can find many of them online, and, as is important when introducing any new type of logic problem, you can start them as easy as you need to. One great source for these problems is edHelper. (disclaimer: I create educational materials for edHelper, but in no way get paid for referrals).

Hopefully if you, like me, are running into some mid-summer roadbumps with your overly-energetic and mentally active children, some of the suggestions here may be of help to you. If you need more suggestions, anything by Think Fun is almost guaranteed to be a logically good time. So, apart from school, how are you keeping your kids mentally engaged this summer? I’m sure I’ll be needing more suggestions soon!

Laura Delgado has been married to her husband, Henry, for 14 years. She gave birth to four children in exactly 40 months, but cheated since the last two were twins. She now happily homeschools her 8,6, and two 4 year-olds. She earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rice University, but finds that she uses her undergraduate Great Books education far more in her homeschooling pursuits. In addition to writing for various homeschooling publications, she creates educational materials for edHelper. For homeschooling helps and curriculum reviews, please visit her blogs at Living as Martha and Salve Regina Homeschool.

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Helping Your Slow Reader

I’ve taken surveys of all my homeschooling friends, shrugged off the comments from ones whose children taught themselves to read at age three, and have persevered these last three years that we’ve been teaching our second child how to read.

If I hadn’t successfully taught one child how to read, I probably would have flunked myself out of homeschooling by now, but with the encouragement of friends who have walked this road before me (and lived to tell about it) here’s what I’ve been learning:

1.) Take everything to God in prayer.
Phonics lessons, readers, reading games – none of these are too small a care or concern for my heavenly Father. He created my son’s brilliant math brain and knows which resources will help strengthen his reading skills.

2.) Variety is the spice of reading life.
With a child that easily gets discouraged when he realizes he’s repeating the same phonics lessons that he has been working on for what seems like forever, variety throws some fun and change into the game plan. Check out books from the library on phonics games. We like ones by Scholastic like this one.

3.) Read aloud.
We’re certain our reading challenged child loves the written word because he loves to be read to and will peruse books on his subject of interest for long periods of time.

4.) Get your child a library card.
As soon as he could finish a simple three letter word reader, the big excitement in our home was the trip to the library for a library card. Painstakingly our seven year old filled out the paperwork himself and was handed his yellow card. There was no mistaking the pride beaming from his face. He had earned that card!

5.) Finally, don’t become weary in well-doing.
Have or find at least one supportive parent whose been in shoes similar to yours. Ask advice, pray it over, implement as needed. Sometimes just having a sounding wall to bounce thoughts off of is the greatest encouragement!

Now it’s your turn! Do you have any great tips for me and my learning reader?

Hannah Hagarty is a relaxed homeschooling mama of five. Her and her family are big on the outdoors, big on family days, and big on making memories in everyday small ways. She loves handcrafts, iced lattes, re-arranging furniture and counts falling into bed exhausted a sign of a really great day. She and her husband make a home in upstate New York with their energetic children and a menagerie of animals. Hannah blogs at Cultivating Home.

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How to Teach Writing

Writing has long been one of the most feared and most hated subjects in school. Honestly? I think that’s true for public, private, AND home educators. I believe part of the reason for this is a hyper-focus on grammar & punctuation balanced by only a vague picture of what makes good writing good. Properly placed periods never made bad writing good, and good writing is only improved by such formalities. I love perfect punctuation & clear grammar, but it is no reason to make a student cry.

Writing is about two things: vivid detail and strong voice. My two older children and I finished reading Across Five Aprils today, and while we already knew the ending–that President Lincoln would be assassinated and would not in fact be the beacon of hope for the wounded nation that the main character so longed for him to be–the actual description of the loss made it so much more personal, so much more devastating, that my son and I wept for a loss we had known but never tasted. The detail was vivid.

In students’ writing, we must remind them to use all of their senses, or they will forget that the greatest beauty of homemade bread is the smell of it cooking and the way that that smell reaches inside you and grasps your heart like the hand of a loved one. They will forget that its taste is not flavor alone but texture, and remembering the airy lightness of a special bread made by Grandpa, who passed last year, can be like suddenly smelling his aftershave on the air. Remembering the sticky hardness of a bite taken before news of sudden loss, the feeling of it sticking in your throat as you struggle to swallow it past the grief brings back so much more than just the taste or the texture of the bread.

Strong voice is not as simple as reminding students to use their five senses. This aspect must be developed over time by asking students, “And what do YOU think about that?” It’s not that our personal opinions are more important than facts but that our opinions, feelings, and reactions are human, and ultimately, when we read, we are looking for human connections.

One of my students once wrote about how he decided to become a dentist, perhaps an unusual career ambition for a sixteen-year-old kid, but otherwise a typical writing assignment with its mundane response. Except his wasn’t. He wrote about being in a car accident, regaining consciousness, and immediately feeling for his teeth. He wrote so passionately about his teeth that I was laughing out loud, and I will never forget his essay.

When the humanity of the writer, with all of his or her foibles, eccentricities, pain, rage, laughter, and passion, comes through on the printed page, this is strong voice. Leave the reader laughing or leave him crying, and your story will never leave him.

Teaching the humanity of the voice of the writer and convincing a student that the image in his head is not on the paper of course is more blood, sweat, and tears than it is lovely philosophy.

One way to begin this process is by listening—let the student read his work to you, so that you are not distracted by his spelling or grammar errors.

Focus on content and big ideas the first time through, and immediately find something to praise, preferably two to three things. Give concrete examples of what the student did well—I like how much detail you gave about the dinosaur! This kind of compliment sits deeper with anyone, as it comes across more sincerely and serves as a measuring stick by which the student can remember that he is a good writer, but it’s also a subtle example of how to write. In your praise, you are demonstrating vivid detail.

Next, ask the student if there’s anything he’d change about his finished product if he could. Mine usually take several minutes with very serious faces to read back over what they’ve written while I actively bite my tongue. Listen, and either agree or disagree with his assessment, but remember that his feelings are involved. Writing is personal. You will always have greater success teaching a student who believes he can complete the task you’ve assigned than one who’s convinced he’ll fail before he even starts, so be gentle!

Finally, add a suggestion of your own. This is different from a correction. It’s an interested request for more information or guidance in reading. For example, you could say,

“I sure would like to know more about that dinosaur. I wonder what color he is. Imagine what he smells like! Try to use ALL five of your senses when you’re describing. Except…don’t lick the dinosaurs!” (See—no hurt feelings here.)

Never give more than two or at the most three suggestions. It’s overwhelming, and it’s too much information to remember anyway. The goal is to give the child a sense of pride in his work and the feeling that he’s good at this and can do even better next time. The simple change between believing that one can write and believing that it’s too hard produces dramatic results in itself.

Suggestions should be given according to importance. The most important thing about a piece of writing is NOT punctuation or grammar but coherence. After all, how long can you continue reading something you don’t understand? It’s a painful activity! If the writing is incoherent, ask the student questions to try to draw him out, and make notes of his answers, so that he can see how he might compose a better response in the future.

Second in importance is how focused & clear the writing is. Does the student respond to the assignment? Does he stay on topic? Does he support his ideas well? You may understand all of his ideas, but if he jumps around from one topic to another so much that you feel as if you’re suffering from mental whiplash, you might want to spend some time talking to him about his main ideas, making outlines, and filtering supporting details from rabbit trails. Again, though, be gentle:

“Wow! That’s really interesting information you included here about Australia. And I’d love to know more about the House Finch. But…I’m wondering what those have to do with dinosaurs?” There’s usually a silent pause here, followed by laughter as the student realizes his own mistake. If he defends his choices, though, be prepared to hear him out and offer suggestions for either writing separate papers about Australia and House Finches or changing the topic of the paper to illustrate the student’s understanding of the connection between these three topics. You may just be lucky enough to get one of the rare and beautiful peeks into the mind of your child.

Only after the big things listed above are in order should we worry about grammar and punctuation, although some of these errors will likely be self-edited by the student along the way.

This is where you could tell a student to watch out for sentence fragments or explain comma splices, my personal favorite piece of punctuation. However, if you see that basic grammar and punctuation are a problem but the big issues are not in order, you should make a note of the grammar problems and address them in grammar class, when his feelings and writing are not at stake. Teaching grammar within the natural context of writing can be overwhelming if approached too soon. I imagine that it feels like juggling to the student–remembering good spelling, punctuation, capitalization, topic sentences, content–it’s enough to leave grad students in tears! I think it’s best to keep the grammar separate from writing until the writing is so good that the grammar IS the biggest issue.

One final note. It’s easy to get bogged down with writing and feel as if you’re slogging through endless trenches of Nowhere, whether you’re student or teacher. Make sure to keep samples of students’ work so that you can both go back and look at the progress you’re making together. The difference between a piece of writing produced at the beginning of the school year and one produced in the middle or especially at the end, is the best piece of encouragement anyone can offer.

Aubrey Lively is a homeschooling mother of four, ages 9, 7, 3, and 2. She has a BA in Literature and an MEd in Teaching and is currently surviving seminary with her husband of ten years. Visit Aubrey online at http://aubreylively.blogspot.com.

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