6-12-08

This summer I've let Otter take a break from Shurley English and use Language Arts Through Literature instead - which I used years ago with Bear. We both like LLATL, but Otter was flying through it. Part of the reason was because I was having him skip the book study portions. He's still at that stage where I don't want to really tie "work" with reading.
I was considering ordering the next level, but decided to give First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind,
Level 3 a try instead. So far we are on lesson 4 and enjoying it. The teacher's guide is totally scripted and the lessons are non-overwhelming. I like how there is a very clear starting and stopping point, unlike LLATL. I'll write more after we've gone farther in it.

In other news, Bear is blasting through Thinkwell calculus. He is also concurrently using Life of Fred. I had a hard time deciding which calculus program to use with him. He was using Chalkdust for pre calculus, but UGH their calculus program is a whopping $429!! We already had Life of Fred on hand, but I haven't been able to read anywhere of any students who've used it exclusively and taken the AP Calculus AB and BC tests (to see how well prepared they were for it). I read about Thinkwell via the Sonlight catalog (even though I don't use them anymore, I still can't help but drool over their products). It's only 107.95 for a 12 month subscription if you choose the independent learning option (directly from the site). Bear watched a sample lesson and we both decided this is the program to go with. I did some further research and it appears that the Thinkwell calculus course covers all the material in the AB and BC Ap calculus exams, so that's a bonus.

Bear's been enjoying the lessons. He's whipping through them and should be done with the entire course in a couple of months or so. He says the instructor is funny and that the instruction is very clear. In fact some of his Thinkwell lessons explained things he learned in Chalkdust much better.

As for Life of Fred, Bear loves that program the best of all. He always comes over after reading a section and just has to share a chuckle about the story line with me. When he is done with both of the programs, I'll ask him which one he thinks prepared him for the exams the best and will share it here.

Grandma gave us her full sized keyboard! We don't really have room for it, but for now it's in our family room taking up space and delighting Emily and Otter. We can't do personal piano lessons right now so I tried to find some "computer lessons". We are going to give Do Re Mi Fa Soft a try. Maybe I can post the results with a short video or two after the kids have been using it for awhile!

6-1-08

We are eclectic homeschoolers and can't really pigeonhole ourselves into one particular educational philosophy, but one I am particularly drawn to (parts of) is a Charlotte Mason style education. One of the things she was a proponent of was having children take nature walks. You can read a great page outlining her ideas here.

Today we took Otter to San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, which is about 5 miles from our home, and got a good dose of God's beautiful creation - up close and personal. We love it out here and every time we go, we see something new.

Today we saw a coyote, elk, turtles, blue herons, cranes, butterflies, ducks, a variety of birds, ground squirrels and more. Here are some pictures of our visit...

Red-winged blackbird were out in force. We could hear their lovely calls almost everywhere today and you could see them bobbing on the tip of reeds near the water and flitting around the fields. We also saw them attacking hawks. This one on top of a fence post was pretty brave and gave my husband a good scolding while lifting his tail and chirruping. The rest were too skittish to get their pictures taken.

We saw a group of satellite bulls (elk) with velvet antlers. If you look to the lower right of this one, you can see a pheasant. We didn't even notice him until we got the pictures off of the camera!

Otter and dad checked out a snake! (Look at the hand clutching the pants, heheheh). Don't worry, this one was friendly.

He was polite enough to get his picture taken up close. ;-) After a while of being observed he decided he didn't like so much attention and slithered away into the grass.

I've never before seen a bird's nest attached to "weeds"...

This guy dove underwater and then decided to take off when he popped up and saw we were still watching him. Surprisingly there were very few ducks on this visit. The best time to see them here, I guess, is from about November through February. At that time there was so many that sometimes you could see hundreds and hundreds in the sky all at once. Today we saw a total of maybe eight?

Contrast the 8 ducks we saw in about two hours with what we saw several months back:

Here's another pheasant. I think we saw 4 or 5 of them today. This isn't such a good shot because he was pretty far away.

We'll be back to the refuge soon. I'm so glad we have such a great place close by to take the kids.

 

5-31-08

I've been busy, busy busy! I've tweaked Otter's Elementary Science a bit and now I also have two other versions created - a supplement I designed for my high schooler, Bear, and Little Otter's Science for the preschool to 1st grade crowd (as per Rebecca's request). You can take a look at all three from the new Otter's Science page. I haven't made a word document or PDF for the little kids' version but if anyone wants to take what I have and make one, feel free. I will post it here on the site.

Someone asked me on one of the boards I frequent who designed the watercolor otter that is featured with Otter's Science. I threw him together myself using a combination of Painter X and Photoshop, my two fave programs. Painter X is awesome! If you like to dabble in just about any kind of art (drawing, painting, etc.), you ought to give digital art a try. Painter recreates the "feel" of traditional media like oils, watercolor, pastels, etc. You do need a tablet if you want to do much at all (try drawing with a mouse otherwise!) but even with a mouse... it's fun to swab some digital paint onto the canvas. Check out the free trial from Corel if I've piqued your interest. ;-)

Did you know you can get highly discounted software like Painter from several places who provide an educator's discount?

Here are a couple of sites who will sell to homeschoolers:

Creation Engine

Gradware.com

In other news I decided to put my "What's New" stuff for the site on this page instead of where it was. I want to start keeping the blog portion of the site up and that will get me over here and writing. I'm also going to TRY to figure out how to get this page on an RSS feed. I did some reading and it seems really complicated so..............we'll see if I can figure it out. Thanks to Jimmie's great post on her blog for putting the spark of that thought into my head.

5-19-08

Otter's Elementary Science curriculum is (almost) finished and ready to share with you!

Otter is excited about the books that have been trickling in. It's going to be hard to have him wait until August to get started and I'm not sure we'll make it.... there are just too many "cool" things to read about!

 

 

Here are some other books we are reading this summer:

The Chronicles of Narnia We're going through this series. Right now we are on The Magician's Nephew. Bear is listening in too.

The Usborne Book of Living Long Ago I'm using this to supplement A Child's History of the World. Otter likes the colorful pictures.

Recently we Bear bought a Wii with money he saved up for quite some time. All 3 kids are literally working up a sweat with Wii sports. Normally they are not allowed to play too many games during the week, but it's great to see them punching, swinging and jumping
around with a video game. Recently even grandma came over and played a little bit - she wants one too!

If you don't feel comfortable with video games, you might have a change of heart with the Wii. Our local residential and nursing home even bought one for the old folks there.

Homeschool P. E. with a Wii? ;-)

5-7-08

We have finished up WinterPromise's American Story 2 program and also have wrapped up using their Animals & Their Worlds program for science. Both of these programs made for a terrific year that we both really enjoyed.

For our summer school, I'm going to be using A Child's History of the World. I'll be incorporating art and activities from the web to reinforce what Otter is learning.

I like this book because the stories are simple and written in a way that is easy to understand and gives a nice foundation for world history.

We've already been through this book 3 times previously in our family! Each of the kids has enjoyed it. The only problem I have with it are a few minor details like the beginning of the world section or a few of the cavemen comments. Those are easily skipped or modified.

The "big kids" are going to work on specific high school credits.

Emily is going to study economics using:

In other news, I've done quite a bit of work on the human body study I'm designing to go with the world studies we've got planned for the next school year (2008-2009). Otter has become really excited about it as books and supplies have come trickling in. I didn't want to go to all the trouble, but there was nothing out there that quite fit what I wanted to do. Ah well....I like writing curriculum - it's just a lot of work! Hopefully I'll be able to share it all with you soon.

Next Page