Tag Archives: homeschool

History, Homeschooling

If you give a child Jonathan Park…

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The children and I have been listening to Jonathan Park and The Hunt for Beowulf(a creation science audio adventure series) because it touches on Noah’s Ark and Creation.

Which we have been studying.

But they became really interested in Beowulf because of it and asked that I get it for them.

I had been wanting to do the Brave Writer Boomerang on Beowulf but thought they might find the book too difficult.

Since they requested it, I got them the book from the library.

Because they were going to read it anyway we are doing the boomerang.

Because the boomerang had them recite the first 11 lines I had them listen to the “Eve of Saint Crispin Day Speech.”

Because I was already on youtube, I had them watch the “Old English Version of Beowulf” and found “Seamus Heaney reading Beowulf.”

Which was amazing.

I felt a bit like “If you give a mouse a cookie” but I think it is my favorite way to teach

So if you also want your child to read Beowulf, listen to Jonathan Park 😉

Homeschooling

What works for Language Arts 2nd/3rd Grade

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My twins have some special learning needs.

What does this mean for how I teach?

It means I have not found one language arts program that works for them yet.

They need A LOT of repetition and learn at a different pace than most curriculums.

We have been working slowly through First Language Lessons Level 1(grammar).

This plus All About Spelling(it teaches phonics rules) with easy readers was all the language arts my boys needed but I am finding that it is leaving gaps with my girls.

I tried out Brave Writer with them but quickly realized they were not ready for the 1st/2nd grade program yet.

The copywork and dictation was lost on them.

I was a little disappointed because I have loved this program for the boys but I will try again next year.

As of right now I have settled on buying several different readers in the same level. Plus doing All About Spelling, First Language Lessons, and The Good and the Beautiful.

The Good and the Beautiful Level One Reader, plus Abeka 1st grade readers.

This might be a bit redundant but they are getting a lot more repetition.

I have them on a Mon-Wed-Fri for language arts with reading on the off days.

What I have come to realize this year is that we can do what we can on those Mon-Wed-Fri days but if we don’t get something done I can just pick it up on Tue-Thur.

This might seem simple to you but I kept thinking of Tue-Thurs as our History/Science days and would not do the extra Language Arts on those days.

But we kept getting behind because my girls have good days and bad days so it can throw the whole week off.

Now we pick up where we left off.

Usually I do The Good and the Beautiful and First Language Lessons then leave spelling for the next day if needed. But The Good and the Beautiful’s lesson was long yesterday so I pushed First Language Lessons back also.

This is helping us keep moving forward and the pressure is off a bit on those harder days.

Do you have a child that needs more repetition than most curriculum’s give?

Homeschooling

Around our school

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We do school all over the house.

Dining room Living room Kitchen Porch Although I might drool all over beautiful homeschool room tours, I don’t know that one would work for us. Most of my kids need to have space or they can’t do their school work. On a nice day we can leave our front door open and have even more space 😉 Like for bubble blowing. So this little one is not bothering a big sister trying to do math. My twins need to SEE math.

Every part of it.

RightStart Math is very hands on but even that is not enough for them, so we bought these Base Ten Blocks.

When they still could not see how many tens are in a thousand we bought 100 tens.

I thought they would be overwhelmed at building a thousand cube out of tens but they both wanted to do it. So while this one blew bubbles. Her sisters saw that there are 100 tens in a thousand.
Do you have a favorite math manipulative?

Do you have a designated learning space?