Abacus Activities

This list of activities came from the card packaged with the abacus Aidan got for Christmas. I'm putting them here because it seems to be oddly difficult to find beginner-level activities to do with the abacus. What's below seems to be enough to get a good start anyway.


Match My Move

Move any number of beads to one side of the frame. Ask the child to match your "move" on the wire below yours. This can also be done with a repetitive pattern--- arrange the 10 beads in different groupings (eg 3 beads, 1 bead, 2 beads) for the child to mimic on the wire below.

Counting Games

Move a certain number of beads to one side and ask the child to count how many beads you moved and how many remain on the other side. Or have the child count from one to one hundred as they move that number of beads on each of the ten wires.

Beat the Clock

Quickly move a certain number of beads to one side and have the child say how many were moved and what color they are as fast as he can (eg 7 yellow beads, 4 red beads, etc). See if he can get all 10 wires correct, or how many in a row can be answered correctly.

Make A Shape

Have the child try to make simple shapes using beads on multiple wires -- a square, triangle, rectangle, diamonds, or a perfect straight or diagonal line.

Simple Addition Games

Choose a number and determine how many different combinations you can find to achieve that sum. Combinations of ten would be 1+9, 2+8 etc.

Complex addition games.

Create larger numbers by assigning different numbers to the colors -- blues are ones, reds are tens, whites are 100s, green are thousands, etc. Line up any number of beads below each other (eg 1st wire -- 3 blue, 2nd wire 2 red etc) and have the child add the totals together to determine the sum.

Multi-Function Problems.

Do addition, subtraction and even simple multiplication and division problems by using the first wire for the first number, the second for the second, and have the child answer it on the third wire (eg 7-4= 3.). After putting a certain number of beads on the first and second wires, yell out the type of problem (addition) and have them race to get the answer.

Match a Letter

Draw or say a capital letter, and have the child create its shape on the abacus (eg letters A, I, E, L are good for starters).

UPS man comes with HWT supplies for next year

about 5 minutes after the Handwriting without Tears order came....



Paddy and Aidan had both staked their claim on a handwriting book.


You can see, looking at Paddy's grip, why Aidan's OT thinks Paddy needs to develop core body strength a bit.

One little extra I got was the short golf pencils. They are supposed to help with a better tripod grip and since both the little ones much prefer writing with markers to pencils, I thought a cute pencil might help.

We'll see.

House in Order

I like this Thirty Days to a Clean House (but I hate the format)

I like this Spring Cleaning at All Things Frugal, too.

We have this week off, so I wanted to go through the house and get things in order. The problem, however, is not so much dirt as it is clutter. All the books that I bring downstairs to use for school end up in piles all over the downstairs. I suppose I really ought to decide what we are really going to use for these last 10 weeks, and bring the rest back upstairs to reshelve. That is something I am dreading a bit because it is going to Take. A. Long. Time. And involve thought, and who wants to think right now?

I will update on how it goes. Perhaps I ought to combine this house order thing with planning for next term and next year.... ahh... there's a thought.

Here are checklists from the past:
Executive Function Spreadsheet
Weekly Routine
Monthly Checklist
Seasonal Checklist

Flannelboards for Learning

Aidan loves his flannelboard, and even his older siblings get interested when I bring out a new set. I bought a collection of flannelboard kits from The Felt Source before Christmas, and I bring out new ones at intervals.

Aidan is developmentally delayed and learns MUCH better with a manipulative he can touch and feel and see, and the felt is quite satisfying tactically, more so in some ways than say plastic, or painted wood, or cardboard, though we use those things, too.

I just brought out the solar system set, which has been a hit.

He likes to name the planets -- Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune are his favorites, because they have rings around them. My 6th grader was pleased to see the graphics for the eclipse because he had been asking questions about them recently.





















Over here there are instructions for making your own flannelboard and felt sets.

One thing that's easy to do is to back cardstock flashcards with felt so that they stick to the flannelboard. .... instance, the nomenclature cards at Montessori Materials.

Also, you can find various templates for making felt board sets on the Internet.

I like the realistic-type picture sets from the Felt Source because they are not twaddly. So many educational visuals for children are just plain silly, with cartoon-y pictures. For example, Aidan's speech therapist is often a bit embarrassed by the silly ambiguity of the learning games and tools that are sold as tools for speech therapists. Aidan generally is bored with that kind of thing, too, and I think most children are unless they are TAUGHT to endure them. But that may be one reason why so many kids just turn off on some "educational" things -- they outgrow the twaddle and outgrow the learning along with it. Anyway, I am always on the hunt for realistic visuals for kids.

Creative Homemaker

OK, this isn't exactly about homeschooling.

But there are several Free E-Books from Creative Homemaker. I use the Quick Breads one and the Muffins one quite a lot, which is more than I can say for most of the cookbooks I own.

Fun School

I really like these Grade Level Skills Help pages on Internet4Classrooms.

Lots of internet games and reviews organized by goals for different grades.

In our normal daily routine, we often do this kind of thing in the last hour of the schoolday, which is around lunchtime. The kids usually rather enjoy spending a few minutes reviewing various skills this way.

Week 26 in Review

I won't call this a weekly report because my Weekly Report attempts have been hedged with difficulties. I can't even keep them on one site, so they are spread all over my various blogs. I think I've decided that this is the best place for them, though.

We are just finishing week 26. Glancing at my year at a glance overview, I see that this puts us just one week behind schedule, which is probably the best we've ever done in 15 years of homeschooling, if you are just looking at keeping on schedule. This puts us on track to be finished by early June. Of course, learning is never "finished", one hopes.

I am homeschooling 5 kids -- a senior in high school, 2 middle schoolers, a "first grader" with special needs, and a bright young Kindergartener with a short attention span. The senior does her own courses and keeps track of it herself. The little ones only work on academics for a few minutes a day, and I have to revise plans almost daily. So most of my planning is concerned with my 2 middle schoolers.

We are mostly on track. You can see the end of term Progress Charts here. Logic/Thinking Skills was replaced with Grammar. I have started a writing intensive for the Year 9 son, and am planning for my Year 6 son.

Sean, Year 9

He finished his 120 lessons of Vocabulary using an old series called Stanford Vocab which I found at a thrift store many years ago. I can't seem to even find it online but I like it because it's simple and uncluttered and includes etymology.

To replace the gap in his schedule left by vocabulary I am going to have him work on Bruce MacIntyre's Drawing Textbook. We have had this simple booklet for years and usually use it for a few weeks every spring -- it is suitable for 4th grade up to adult (my husband uses it to improve his "programmer art" -- his representations for what he wants his artist to design -- he is a computer game designer and programmer).

He is just a bit behind on Jacob's Algebra compared to the schedule which had him finishing in May. This is because we started slowing down and spending two days on the lessons which were harder for him. He is still on a good track though and has been pulling A's ever since January.

He is just finishing Hey Andrew Teach me Some Greek Book 3. This is actually probably about a 4th or 5th grade level resource -- very easy and slow-progressing but I like it for that reason because (1) the kids can use it independently (2) it builds up a foundation slowly so that if they want they can approach Greek more rigorously in high school years and (3) they seem to find it quite fun compared to the "hard" subjects Latin and Math and Writing.

He has dropped Latin. Next year he is going to the local high school and is enrolled for Spanish ; he didn't see much purpose in continuing with Latin and wanted to get a head start on Spanish. We discussed it over several weeks and finally I agreed. I don't have any Spanish program at home besides one of those traveller's workbooks that teach you things like "Which way to the pub/passport office/bank?" so I've been drawing on various online resources including the Quia site.

I have been working with him on writing so here is the Outlining Syllabus(doc) for Thirty Lessons in Outlining that I wrote about before. Here is the syllabus for the first 3 weeks of writing(doc). Basically I am trying to get him to the point where he can write a five-paragraph paper using 3 or more sources, and write out a logical argument (what they call persuasion nowadays but I will approach it more like the chreia/maxim in the progymnasmata). We will work on this over the summer if necessary.

What else? Science and history and literature and religion are pursued in the form of a reading checklist. He is on schedule there.

As for extra-curricular, he is doing a football prep intensive. His father helps him lift weights 4 days a week and he works out with his dad or uncle 3 times a week on the playing field, doing drills and dashes etc. He has gained 15 pounds since he started doing this about 3-4 months ago. He wants to play QB and always has, so this is why he is enrolling in the high school.

I ran out of time so I will focus on the Year 6 son and the littlies in future weekly reports or maybe later on this afternoon if I get the chance (this is our first at-home day since the weekend-- there has been lots going on outside the house so this week has been lighter and next week we are ON SPRING BREAK.

How to Get Started in Outlining

I made an outlining form to use with the book I am using for the boys' outlining practice. The book is called Thirty Lessons in Outlining and is unfortunately OOP. It is very straightforward and targeted.

Here is an outline of how the book is laid out :
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The first few lessons are about grouping things into categories. I have seen these exercises in thinking skills books but can't seem to find any online -- I don't think I'm typing in the right search phrase.

The first section has simple exercises like the ones my special needs child is doing in picture form for his speech therapy.

apple orange fruit grapes peach

The second section has the item types and has you devise your own category:

1 cat + 1 dog + 1 bird = 3 ?

The third section has items like the first one and a category heading, but there are TWO types of item and TWO headings:

dog bird cat bee ant beetle insect pet

These are just examples, obviously. It would be fun to try making your own and in fact, Jensen's Format Writing starts off with exactly this format..... topic and list of examples.

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Then the book moves to finding the topic or main idea of a paragraph -- with a list of choices. Invariably, the list of choices divides into: Too Broad, Too Specific, and Just Right. For example, an entry on Cloud Formation would also include the possibilities Cumulus Clouds and About Air.

After a few lessons of this type, the child is given a paragraph and has to discover the topic for himself -- one that is neither too broad or too narrow. I am going to have Kieron make a "too broad" and a "too narrow" before he chooses one that is "just right".

This site has Reading Tests which are simple 1 paragraph readings that could be used for this.

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Then we move onto the heart of the book, actual outlining starting from a simple level and moving to more detailed outlines.

The first goal is to find sub-topics, similar to what TWTM has you do in 5th grade. You have a 3-paragraph article with a title that expresses the main topic. Then you are supposed to find the subtopic for each paragraph within the whole. For example, a writing on Poisonous Snakes is divided into Rattle Snakes, Copperheads, Coral Snakes. The student has to read the paragraphs and find these subtopics.

The final step in the outlining book is to find details. The book has you break down the article to the sentence level with a numeral system. With my middle schoolers I am having them just list details at this level, not copy down basically every single thing in the whole article. That seems redundant to me.

The outline form I uploaded is for this final section. If you look up "reading comprehension" you can find simple paragraphs that are suitable for this kind of outlining. There are some at ABC Teach and at EnglishWorks. OR you could look up a topic that your kids are studying, like Explorers or Colonial History. Often there are brief information articles online connected with these, though I have to caution that some of them are poorly written.

If the book ever comes back into print, it is really nice to have if you read Well Trained Mind or other resources that tell you to "outline a passage" and your kids don't seem to know how to do this intuitively.... and who would, really? It was inexpensive when I bought it. It has a nice progression and is easy to just hand to the child, not much writing involved and it only takes about 5-10 minutes a day.

Usually I have the kids go through the book in the last term of 6th or 7th grade.

Harvey's Elementary Grammar

Several years ago I typed in a public-domain version of Harvey's Elementary Grammar, in doc form. I just uploaded it in case anyone can use it in some way: Harvey's Elementary Grammar (doc). It may have some typos and imperfect formatting and the like.

I typed it out so I could use it with the Harvey's Grammar class being put up at The Classical Co-op. It was a class for adults to get up to speed with traditional grammar and diagramming so that they could teach their children. The pdf files are still up there.

The edition that I typed in wasn't exactly the same that the class used. I think my version was 1900. You can find an older version at Google Books.

Arithmetic Workbooks online

If you go to this Teacher-Aids page, you can find printable workbooks covering addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They are progressive in difficulty, starting with the basic math facts, and are useful for drill and fluency.

Blank sheets I use with my Year 6 student

A simple handwriting sheet (doc)I made for my 6th grader.

Here is a math sheet (doc)I use for him to organize and work out his math problems.

The gif looks a bit strange but in the doc version it ought to be all right (I have to go test it on my old computer since this one uses Microsoft 2007 and sometimes the forms look a bit different in the old Microsoft and in Open Office)

Jacob's Algebra syllabus

I made this sheet for the rest of the year for Sean's Algebra (using Jacob's). There is a place to put his scores and grades since that is interesting to him at his age.

I uploaded a doc file of the whole Jacob's Algebra Table of Contents in the same form.
Anyone who finds it useful is welcome to download it.

Glencoe has really nice study tools online, even if you aren't using Glencoe curricula.
Here is their Math 6 site with chapter quizzes and even standardized test practice.

There are also PDFs for literature study for middle and high school.

Plan for Classical Writing: Aesop

This is the form I've partially finished for the Classical Writing: Aesop curriculum. I adapted the form in the back of the book and put in my own list of models to use that are related to what we are studying for history. There are some blank spaces -- I am going to draw from books we have around the house for those.

I also uploaded the file in doc form. The models are hyperlinked so that they go to the correct story at Baldwin Project.

Dice and Dominoes for Counting and Adding

I spent a lot of last week exploring Google Reader, and found this manual called Methods of Teaching Arithmetic in Primary Schools, from 1888. You can download the whole thing as a PDF for free. Anyway, I had read before in a book by Ruth Beechick that in the "old days" children did not start doing written math problems right away; the teachers would give them lots of practice with manipulatives and "real arithmetic" before they started teaching them abstract symbols.

This book from 1888 seems to confirm that, since the whole first section of the book is about teaching children to work with numbers in dot form so they can actually see what they are doing by "adding" and "taking away". It has a graphic system based on patterned dots roughly similar to dice or domino patterns. So ever since I read that book I've been looking for online dice or domino manipulatives.

I have some large foam dominoes that look a bit like this...except they are all standard black. So I've been showing these to the littlies frequently -- I keep them in the kitchen -- with the goal of getting them to recognize the shape of the number patterns immediately. They like to play with them, too. They also have been playing a fair amount with dice which of course have the same type of pattern.

Anyway, today while I was looking online for manipulatives and worksheet activities, I found this WorksheetWorks site. It is pretty neat. You can enter parameters and it will print out various counting and number concept sheets. It has dice counting flash cards and also counting with objects, and simple image-based addition.

There is a bit more about Ruth Beechick's approach to early education....here at this lovely blog. Basically, she says that in math learning, children move from:

1. Manipulative/Concrete --->
2. Image-based (still need visuals but don't need to actually handle and move the objects)---->
3. Abstract (a mental image or symbol suffices -- you internally understand the notion of threeness, or variable, or square of the hypotenuse, or whatever)

She makes the point that primary age children need the manipulatives and images because they aren't developmentally at the stage for abstract thinking. But even older learners need hands-on and visual experience when they are starting something new. You see for yourself that it's easier learning a new computer skill if you can work through it yourself, perhaps with someone showing you how, or at least with a diagram or graphic to help you.

Grammar, Writing Samples

This site, called Elements of Language, has a model bank of different kinds of essays for Middle School and High School. If you go to the pdf version, there is a model essay for each type and then a one-page handout giving tips for how to do that particular type of essay.

Also, if you go to this Glencoe Writer's CHoice site, there are a lot of resources including annotated models for grade levels 6-12 showing above-average, average and below-average samples of different kinds of writing.

Some 11th grade student writing with annotations, here. (It is a site devoted to working with African-American students, using some of the KISS applied grammar principles).

Some other odds and ends that came up while I was searching for something else:

Ambleside -- page on Grammar with some information about KISS Grammar and some other grammar information.

A cool chart with a timetable for schooling several children.

What We've Been Doing for Writing

I found a way of doing writing with my Year 9 son and it is strange because it is so NOT my idealistic, unschooly-CMy way of doing things. Yet it is working; he is happy with it and we've made real progress.

My teaching-writing ideal is the Classical Writing program. I love the progym and I love the way CW presents it. Unfortunately, the logistical problems I have had in figuring out the program are many. I have not given up on it by any means but I won't be able to use it effectively until I modify it to suit my own way of doing things.

I have looked at many composition programs and have not been very happy with any of them. I recently bought Jensen's Format Writing. I have heard it recommended for years by classically homeschooling types. I held off buying it because of that word "format" and because my kids usually do start writing very adequately in their high school years. So what we are doing is working, it just takes a while. But the problem here is that my Year 9 son is going to high school next year (to play football) and he will be plunged into a traditional high school language arts program and we both want any potential "issues" to be diagnosed and corrected before he gets there.

I liked Jensen's Format Writing, but I knew right away that I couldn't just hand it to Sean. The organization and step by step method is admirable to me. I will find it very helpful throughout the years, but I am going to have to use it to teach myself, not give to the kids.

So I was at a standstill, and then one day out of desperation I simply typed out a sheet on the computer -- like this:

Read page 116 Usborne Book of Discovery , then answer in complete sentences (a subject and a predicate).

• Who were the Vikings?
• Where did they originally come from?
• Tell a bit about Erik the Red’s journey.
• Which Viking set foot in North America first, and when and how did this occur?
• What people were called the Skraelings, by the Vikings? What happened on the first meeting?

Basically, just an outline of the page in question form. Just like the end-of-chapter questions I remember from my elementary school years. It was so funny to see his face light up with relief. He is a concrete kid and this was just the thing. He zipped through the assignment.

By the end of the week he could write a short paragraph. This week I had him write a 3-paragraph short paper. He has no trouble. He was writing run-on sentences at first, but since we have been working on subject/predicate in grammar we had the terminology to discuss why run-ons are incorrect. I showed him one of those OWL quizzes on run-ons and we went through it together. It clicked and he has been writing correct sentences ever since.

So now finally we can go on to writing papers using more than one source, making a thesis statement, and so many other things. I am not going to have him practice with the silly "talk about yourself" high school assignments that so many of the English 9 syllabi I found online contain. He can deal with those when he comes to them. My goals are to have him able to read and understand a passage, explain what it says in good language, and comment on it reasonably and in orderly sequence. He can use those skills for any type of writing.

Blogging Decisions again

If you still read this blog, you are probably astonished by the sudden explosion of posts after such a long quiet spell. I gave up blogging during Lent for the most part, but this is the weekend and as you can see, I have some catching up to do. (and this got long -- so for the short version skip to the end).

I have been thinking hard about what to do about blogging after Easter next week, when my Lenten restriction is over. My provisional decision is to focus on this blog and neglect the various other ones. My reasoning is that this blog is the one that is the most in tune with what I am trying to do with blogging, at least in this season of my life. I am not really a crafty or artistic blogger, as you can certainly tell. Nor am I very political -- at least politics of homeschooling is a genre that is very well done by others already. I do like to write and philosophize, but when I focus on blogging from a literary or philosophical perspective, I end up letting everything else slide and I am not sure it pays off in terms of helping me live out my role better. While I was on this blogging break I did so much real work on planning and implementing things in the homeschool. Yes, I still wasted lots of time browsing the internet, but at least I was browsing for a purpose directly related to my homeschool (but the house got really messy -- can never seem to do it all).

So I'm experimenting now with limited practical blogging. I love to have a community and share resources. E-groups and message boards like Real Learning are much more interactive than blogs, though, at least the way I do it. They fill the "cyber-community" longing for me much more than blogging usually does. I am personally much more of a responsive-type writer than a proactive one, so my blogging very often becomes rather inwardly turned and I don't really like that. I have found the "post-- comment" format extremely limiting though there are some bloggers/commenters that have transcended the limitations, and you probably know who you are already. It just isn't a comfortable dynamic for me, which is why I read many more blogs than I ever comment on.

But blogs are definitely an easy way to share ideas and resources and you do "meet" some people you might not get a chance to meet in a targeted e-group like the two classical lists I moderate or help moderate. So for that reason I'm reluctant to give up blogging altogether.

As to the details -- I am not really planning to do the daily logs anymore on here because they were taking up 15 minutes per day and were mostly redundant, as I found when I stopped doing them. So instead I'll probably be focusing more on lesson plans and occasionally a "typical day" or "learning notes" or "how we use a particular book or resource".

Horariums

I made these weekly schedules for the two middle school boys. The top one is for my YEar 9 son and the second one is for my Year 6 son. (you can click on them to make them bigger).

They are really useful ; having them open in my notebook gives me an "at a glance" survey of the order of the day, and for my boys they are useful in seeing what is to be done.

My Year 6 son particularly likes the way his is laid out to give him a slower-paced hour in the middle of the school day. During this hour he has a snack, takes the little ones outside, and/or does a science or art project. While he is doing this, I can stay alongside the older one while he is working in Algebra.

I never laid out my homeschool by the hour before. I thought it would be too regimented, too much like a school system with bells ringing. But it's not. The "hours" sometimes go on longer or shorter than 60 minutes. That is why I don't have it tied to a clock. We usually start at about 9 am but sometimes it is earlier or later. Sometimes we get done before noon and sometimes it takes the whole four hours. So the "hours" are basically just to give a realistic time frame and some sort of order for the subjects.

I built the schedule around the way my boys were most comfortable doing things. My older one likes to wake up and start right in with the more "mechanical" subjects, then read for a while. Then he is ready for Algebra : ) and then he can face the more open-ended subjects like writing. My other son likes to start with listening to a read aloud, sometimes while drawing or coloring, then have a slow and more "exploration" type hour, then finish up with the more precise "discipline" subjects.

One more thing -- my sixth grader's week is laid out so that if he gets everything done during the week, he gets a light day on Monday -- only the read-alouds and math drill and his housecleaning chores. Then we go to the library and market. So he is motivated to keep up with his work during the week so he doesn't have a pile to deal with on his "easy" day.

Site for Math Review and Practice

That Quiz has proved to be a nice resource for drilling math concepts for my middle schoolers, and there are even some geography and vocabulary quizzes into the bargain. It is nicely arranged and very simple.

I am using the activities as a drill supplement for my Year 6 student and as a review for my Year 9 student. It only takes a few minutes . Right now they are mostly focusing on Geometry since for my older son it has been a couple of years since he has reviewed geometry concepts, and for the Year 6 son, he is up to the Geometry chapter in his MCP Math F.

Hundreds Chart for Early Math

I uploaded a colored Hundreds Chart (as a doc) My two little ones love these and they are helpful in learning the order of numbers. I emphasized the 10's with highlighting just to help them organize in their minds. Later there are other patterns that can be emphasized, like even numbers, odd numbers, multiples of five, and so on.

Right now, with a kindergartener and a special needs 1st grader, I am mostly working on being able to name numbers up to 100 and find where they are on the board. My kindergartener has this pretty much mastered. My first grader has devised a cute game to play with the 100's chart. He spins a top (he loves tops) and then we call out the number where it landed. He likes to do this with a map of the United States, too.

Another game we play that teaches one to one correspondence is to put pennies (or any kind of counter) on the number places. This gives him some visual and concrete reinforcement for one-to-one correspondence. This is something my other kids grasped instinctively but which has been a problem for him. He is much faster at mastering verbal, rote things like counting, than at actually grasping the concepts behind the verbal terminology.

Here is a blog that has 7 things to do with a hundred chart (and lots of other neat math activities).

My kindergartener liked this site with various interactive and printable games for 100 Day.
My 1st grader liked this Mend the Number Square game online.
I am not altogether convinced these computer games teach to a mastery level but they do seem to help with exposure level learning.

not exactly your typical Palm Sunday vigil

Reading for the Little Ones

I still haven't gotten Aidan into blending, though he's known all his letter sounds for a couple of years and is now learning the phonograms. The concept of sounding out and then pronouncing the word just isn't coming to him, though. I have been doing a lot of research trying to find something that will click with him. He is stuck in 100 Easy Lessons and honestly, after teaching four kids with it I am just bored, especially since I can't get him past lesson 20.

Last week I found this online ReadKEY Vocabulary Program. It is a subscriber program but has a trial version which has a very interesting approach. You put words on a "word wall" and then have the children read them frequently during the course of the day until they are mastered. There are ten words a week, and it is based on the most frequently used words in English language. So in that way it is like Spell to Read and Write, but obviously without as much of a written component (writing has proved to be extremely difficult for Aidan though he has made progress).

I made a file with the first 6 weeks of word practice from the first grade section of the ReadKEY site. (the pages look like the gif above). The way it is set up on the site, the "word wall" words are huge, so you can see them from the back of the schoolroom, of course. So I retyped them to an 80 font which fits well on the page. I fold the paper in half lengthwise (a "hot dog" fold) and then tack it up on the wall in the kitchen. It is easy then to review whenever there is a spare moment. The highlighted words are called "word of the day" and they are the unusual phonetics or exception-words that are very common, but difficult to teach phonetically. The highlighting helps clue the kids in to treat them as exceptions.

I am thinking that I could use this basic method with almost any kind of reader. You can see that the vowels are contrast colors in order to give the kids some help with discerning vowels, but as time goes on obviously it is a good idea to use normal colors for the words. What I'm planning to do is print out the "old" words in b&w and tack them in a different place in the house, and keep the colored "new" words of the week up in the kitchen.

One more thing -- the words in SWR and in this ReadKEY are based on Ayres's Spelling Scale -- he figured out statistically the most common words in the English language and broke them down into levels of difficulty -- you can find his book here in its entirety. I was glad to find it because I didn't realize it was in the public domain.

I haven't decided what to do with Paddy yet, as far as reading goes. I call him a kindergartener though he wouldn't quite have met the cut-off date in our state's public school (his birthday was in December). He can already read several words out of the Tintin books. I am hoping that the passive exposure to phonics via Aidan's work will pay off and the process of actually teaching him will be simple.

How History is Going.

The final form I uploaded is the Outline for History Year 6 (it says Year 5 but that's because it's loosely based on Ambleside's Year 5).

What I did was cross-correlate three books -- Famous Men of the Middle Ages, Discovery of New Worlds, and Our Island Story. I put in tentative dates as references and left a place for notes. That way I can easily decide on what we are going to read that week.

Sometimes, not every week, I fill out one of these history forms -- with lists of readings, activities, and topics to pursue.

But many weeks we do it more simply. Here is the process:

1. I read to Kieron and the younger ones from a historically related novel -- right now it is Hidden Treasure of Glaston.
2. I read to him from one of the history spine texts.
3. I give him a "research" assignment connected to what he read that day -- generally we use the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia or What your Fourth Grader Needs to Know, but sometimes he looks up something in the history atlas or the regular atlas. He looks it up and then we discuss it.
4. Sometimes he does a Dover coloring page, or draws something connected with the reading, or writes a short paragraph.
5. He usually has an ongoing "reader" -- a historically related book that he reads on his own. He finished We Were There with Richard the Lionhearted and is now reading Adam of the Road.
6. And finally, I am trying to integrate this with the MEdieval Sourcebook. These online sourcebooks are a great supplement. I used them with my high schoolers in the past, but it suddenly occurred to me that many primary sources are readable by middle schoolers and that it might be good to start him in practice doing this before he is old enough to get intimidated by the idea.

This is working well. He often draws or colors while I'm reading. A side benefit is that the special needs 8 year old and the 5 year old often listen to the readings and draw or color, too.

Year 9 Reading Checklist

I am planning Sean's reading in a slightly different way than I did at the beginning of the term.

I uploaded the most recent reading checklist as a doc.

I found a good organizational strategy that is working for now. Sean wasn't getting through some of his books as fast as I wanted him to, so I wrote out page numbers by week (as you can see from the doc) and then cut out the individual columns so that he could use them as bookmarks for the books they referred to. When I did this, it actually seemed to prompt him to get through the books faster than I had him scheduled. When he finishes a book in one subject, I give him a couple of days to a week's break and then start him reading the next book on the list.

I would like to upload a list of all the books I had planned for the boys this year, but the actual process of choosing the books is so fluid I don't have it laid out. I usually list (or simply stack in a pile) a whole bunch of books I want them to possibly get to, but I choose the actual book by my judgement of where they are and what they need at that time. Does that make sense?

I'm trying to keep the lists partly so that at the end of the year I can list the books they read in retrospective. But it's hard to lay it out ahead of time.

PRogress Term III

We are starting Week 26. That means that we have completed 125 days of school. Progress!

Here are the updated progress charts for the basic subjects.

YEar 6

























Year 9

Grammar for 3rd Term

I uploaded a chart showing my plans (adaptable, of course) for Grammar for the two middle schoolers for the rest of the year.

I started the 2 boys, who are Year 9 and Year 6, on Daily Grammar. This is a nice online site with archives for daily exercises covering all the main grammar and mechanics on a simple level. You can buy their pdf workbook or you can look at the archives for free, or have free emails sent to your inbox.

The exercises only take about ten minutes per day. I used them once before quite successfully when my older set were in middle and high school. I usually copy them to my computer and format them so they look nicer. I wish I could share those files but I doubt if it would be kosher since the free part of the site depends on advertising.

As I looked around on the web for resources to use I rediscovered the KISS Grammar site and particularly the Starting in Middle School page. KISS Grammar is sort of overwhelming at first glance, but the Middle School overview is quite useful as a general starting point. The webmaster Dr Vavra lists objectives as follows:

A Minimal List of Objectives

Objective # 1 - Basic Subjects and Finite Verbs; Basic Compounds
Objective # 2 - Adding Adjectives and Adverbs

Objective # 3 - Adding Complements
Objective # 4 - Adding Prepositional Phrases
Objective # 5 - The Psycholinguistic Model
Objective # 6 - Focus on Compounds (Optional)
Objective # 7 - Distinguishing Finite Verbs from Verbals
Objective # 8 - Clauses (Compound Main)
Objective # 9 - Subordinate Clauses
Objective # 10 - Analyzing My Own Writing
Objective 11 - Manipulating Clauses
Objective # 12 - More Practice with Real Passages

So you will see that the Daily Grammar exercises are listed in a different order than they are on the site. I picked the DG exercises that would go along with the KISS objectives, because I thought my middle schoolers would get confused if I just started them on the KISS exercises.

The overall GOAL of KISS is to teach grammar in the context of analyzing writing -- your own writing, and good models of literature. This goal is just so compatible with my own goals for grammar study.

Dr Vavra points out that generally, grammar is taught in isolation using contrived, simplistic sentences. Grammar principles are not taught in context of real sentences and real writing.

Now, the exercises at Daily Grammar are artificial and simplified, but there is a reason for this -- it is like showing a simple example in math before you start digging into real problem-solving and more complex examples. It allows the student to focus on the particular principle in mind.

So I am finding that they work well to introduce the KISS objectives.

I will probably write more about it some other time. This is long, but it would have been a lot longer had I written out everything I would liked to have said! Aren't you glad for my pitiful attempts to stay a bit concise!