Thanksgiving Resources

There are some resources for a Thanksgiving Lapbook here.

Several free downloads and printables; book lists; and samples and ideas.

While I'm at it I'm going to list some of the other sites I was looking at yesterday:

Squidoo Page on Lapbooking, very comprehensive. Also a Squidoo page on Notebooking.

Homeschool Share forum -- ideas for a Native American lapbook.
A Native American unit study at Our Homeschooling Expedition.
HomeschoolHelper free lapbook forms
A list of lapbooking/notebooking freebies at Go-Alongs

Game Cards for File Folders

I was researching file folder games yesterday -- and made these two very simple board game cards, just to get the hang of it:

Travel-theme Game Board (pdf)
New World Discovery Theme Game Board (pdf)

The way I understand it, from this site, you can just get a set of cards for things you want the child to remember -- vocabulary, etc. -- a die, markers and then go.

Here are a couple of sets of cards I've made for geography and discovery:

Vocabulary for Empires of the Americas
Geography Cards (pdf)



Enchanted Learning has file folder games, and they seem to be popular for use with autistic children.

Bead Worksheets

I made 3 different kinds of worksheets with beads:

Horizontal Beads -- Handwriting (pdf)
Vertical Beads -- identification (pdf)
Vertical Beads -- numbers and number words (pdf)

I found this PowerPoint Presentation on working with the beads to add and subtract, and there is this E-How article on teaching addition, though it uses red and blue counters.

Here's an E-How on teaching counting using the beads. And here's one on teaching squaring. It will be some time before we get to that!

I found this Addition Worksheet generator that lets you control the size of the font, number of problems, maximum and minimum numbers, etc, and print them out in PDF.

What I plan to do is to have Aidan match the beads with the number words and symbols until he is quite familiar with them, and then start simple addition. Paddy is already basically past this stage.

I apologize a bit for using the word "Montessori" for these when lots of times they are my adaptation and may not be at all like "real" Montessori. However, I do want them to come up on searches and the like. I did use the visuals on places like this to give me a guide for what colors to use. I am sure Aidan would love to use actual wooden beads but we don't have it in our budget atm.... and little manipulatives get scattered quickly in this absent-minded household. Cards, I can print out again and again.... and for Aidan, watching me make them is like a presentation in itself... he gets so enthusiastic watching them get cut and laminated and backed with cardstock.

Cards for Brain Gym Activities

I made two cards or sheets for Aidan and Paddy's OT exercises that I mentioned last week.

There they are in gif form on the right, and I made them into PDF as well.

Pease Porridge Hot
Shoulder Owl

Where I used online sources, I put links to credit the sources. I shall have to find out if that is kosher, though, or if you have to ask permission.

more links.....

I forgot to mention these in the last post:

• Montessori Tray Ideas for Young and Old -- from Garden of Roses and Lilies
• My Montessori Journey -- free downloads
• Theresa's Montessori ideas

Also, I made a "work plan" form in doc. It looks terrible in gif so I'm not picturing it.

Year 1 Resources

I made a few more card type things for Aidan and Paddy this weekend:

Addition Board (pdf)
Addition Cards (pdf)
cards up to sums of 10
Addition Tables (pdf)
table of questions up to sums of 12, to use with the addition board.
More or Less (PDF)
basically, cat counters
Sizes (PDF)
circles of different sizes -- Aidan was having trouble identifying "bigger" and "smaller" last year at speech, so I thought this might help.
Days of the Week (PDF)
hollow letters, for handwriting practice for Aidan or to use to put in order, or to use for a picture schedule for him (he loves talking about time).
Color Words(pdf)

Below, I'm making a list of links I found when I was searching for other things and wanted to remember for the future:

• Science Kit (worksheets and other things)
• My Schoolhouse elementary worksheets
• Granny's Garden School "getting children in touch with nature"
• Learning Page free worksheets
• Kiddy House
• Play Odyssey -- colored printables
• Word Templates
• Little Book Lane -- booklets in different languages, look sort of cute.
• Monthome -- probably most are familiar with this, but it was new to me -- neat visuals and downloads.

I've been here before, but there are some printables and downloads, including a literature-based science curriculum and a history curriculum, at Los Banos Homeschool. There is also copywork in different fonts.

• Starfall, which my little boys like, has printables -- little booklets and worksheets.
• Finally, Quizlet, which I have been using for Kieron -- you can make your own quizzes for free.
• And some Quia Latin quizzes.

While I'm listing links, I was trying to figure out Aidan's speech therapy and did some hunting for that kind of thing, so here are some more links. If Aidan masters position words, more or less, and does a bit of sequencing, he will pretty much have met the goals they set at the IEP last year.

Positional words and directions

• Position Word Games
• Position Words (Math)
• Position Worksheet (PDF) Where's the Cat
• Three Bears position lesson
• Parent Handout on Position Words (PDF)
• Nursery Rhymes to teach position

More/Less/Same/Counting

• Math Worksheets
• Games for More and Less (Lesson Plan)
• unit on coins (more or less)

General Speech

• Mommy Speech Therapy (blog)
• Speech TX

Montessori

• AMI Primary Guide
• Maitrilearning Resources
• Montessori for Everyone (workplans and downloads)
  

Word Cards for Aidan

I made some word cards for Aidan. Paddy worked at them too. They are below in gif. They are short vowel sound CVC's, except for "eel" and "bell" and "egg" which Aidan wanted me to put in near the end since he knows how to read those.

Picture Cards -- pdf
Words for Picture Cards -- pdf.









Aidan helped me type in the words and then hovered around anxiously waiting for me to cut them. He is really enjoying all these projects. Later I am going to back them with posterboard and cover them with clear contact paper so they will be sturdier. I wasn't going to cut the pictures out, but he wanted me to, so I did.

Paddy did them too.

Next, I will try some sentence strips, and possibly sight word match-ups. . This might work well with the simple stories we were writing together during the summer.

Day 49

I guess this is the last day of Week 12!

We actually did a bit of testing today. It was a bit of a sobering experience. I am a "more or less" CMer *(see below) and so that is the context.

I found that Kieron remembered FAR better or at least was able to retrieve far better (those may be two slightly different things) what he had done more or less by rote memory than what he had read in living books, or had read to him.

Now, for context, I rarely ask for narrations. We discuss spontaneously but not after every reading. That's partly what I mean by "more or less". Charlotte Mason insisted on narration after every reading, and for the very reason that I have mentioned -- retention.

She thought the child should do the work of extracting things to remember from the text.... rather than operate by prepared questions and study sheets that would allow the child to soak in passively what needed to be known.

I shall have to reflect. I think also, perhaps, my questions were too broad and general, too much for a child that age. But I also think that he needs a way to "peg" general knowledge on to hooks for retrieval.

Anyway, besides the oral testing he did:

• A geometry test (interior and exterior angles, directions)
• a Renaissance quiz
• a quiz on matter and the four states

I read a bit more of Christ the King to him (finishing chapter 19) and I read him 2 chapters of Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal.

Oh ! and edited to add that the big project today was learning the basics of recorder-playing. I found an old recorder in a drawer and so Kieron and I looked up "how to's" and then he practiced for quite a while.

* "The reader will say with truth,--'I knew all this before and have always acted more or less on these principles'; and I can only point to the unusual results we obtain through adhering, not 'more or less,' but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated. I suppose the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend with; every surgeon knew that his instruments and appurtenances should be kept clean, but the saving of millions of lives has resulted from the adoption of the great surgeon's antiseptic treatment; that is, from the substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied, for the rather casual 'more or less' methods of earlier days." (see Ambleside Online, What is CM?)

Tomorrow starts Term 3!

Numbers and Matching

Perhaps you've noticed I haven't been posting daily logs. The honest truth is that my brain thinks that Exam Week is planning week. And I've been trying to rethink how I do my logs, anyway. Do I really need daily logs? In the past, when I've tried alternatives I've found that I DO need them to keep my brain from free-floating off into planning-land and forgetting about the inconvenient necessity of actually DOING my plans. But I am considering alternatives, still.

I mentioned that I wanted to think through what I'm doing with the little ones during this week. Aidan is a natural Montessori child. Not only is he special needs (I wish I had a better term than delayed and more targeted than special needs), which puts him in Montessori's original target classroom, but he LOVES matching, sorting, and that kind of thing. I suspect he loves it because it fills a developmental need. He is working hard to transition from straight concrete to concrete-operational, and he seems to find symbol-based manipulatives a valuable transition device.

We have an old bingo calling board from a multiplication bingo game and Aidan has been matching the numbers to the spaces on the board.... so much so that the calling board is getting shredded. So I decided to make him some numbers on Monday. I used to have a pdf set of numbers from 1-100 that I downloaded from somewhere but I couldn't find it online this time. Anyway, I did want to color-code them by tens to give him visual clues. So I made my own -- number cards up to 100 (PDF). I also made a set in grayscale.

I printed them out and backed them with posterboard and sealed them with clear contact paper (my laminator broke and anyway, I find I like the feel of contact paper so much better than laminating plastic). Aidan hovered over me the whole time I was making them and set right to work. But I need to make a board that shows him where to put them properly. I just gave him the rest of the poster-board for the time being -- he likes to have a board to frame his work.

He took this picture himself.

Now if you look at the gif below that shows what the PDF looks like, you will see how differently Paddy learns from Aidan. Paddy saw me making the numbers on a Word document, and wanted to try it. So I emptied the Microsoft template, leaving only the frame, and he built it up again from scratch. Not only did he type in the numbers in order from 1 to about 40 (before he got bored) but he color-coded them by tens just as I had done.

If I did Montessori with Paddy I would have to focus on creative things, like this, and on sensorial/practical life activities, because he can use some help with those types of things. He could probably benefit from some tracing activities, too. His fine motor lags behind his conceptual thinking as it tends to with all my kids.


Resources for the Future:

I found this neat Practical Homeschooling site with explanations of the Pink Level that made sense to me, and some visuals and even downloads.

I am so NOT a Montessori type mother so it is a bit of a stretch for me to wrap my brain around these things, but Aidan gets a lot of use out of the things I find and make for him so I'm trying.

Study and Test-taking Skills

I was thinking about how I always seem to drift during review week and to some extent during exam week. It occurred to me that I could use those weeks as a sort of practicum to teach some study skills. I think this is one thing that Sean is having trouble with in school, partly because of the type of memory he has but also because he never really got much guidance in this from me.

Here are a few links I found on study skills for middle schoolers-through college.

• Launch Pad for Success
• Study Guides and Strategies
• How-To-Study
• Study Skills Guide for Students
• Study Skills
• Teaching Study Skills
• Study Skills Lessons for Middle School
• Study Skills Unit
• Study Tips
• Ideas for Review
• How to Study for Tests

I think perhaps I'll choose a couple of ideas to focus on during each term's end and thus use the reviewing as a sort of practicum.

Here are a few more:

• Study Skills Worksheets.
• Various link pages.
• Notetaking and more
• Study Skills Portfolio
• How to Study

Day 48

I did a bit of writing of the Term Exams for Year 7 (google doc form). I will probably be adding to it during the week.

Today was our light day. We finished reading about the Spanish Armada, read a bit more of Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and finished The Tale of Despereaux. It turned out that I liked this book very much indeed and so did Paddy and Kieron both. Such books are not all that common.

Kieron did a decimal and integer place value review at thatquiz.org. He had no trouble.

Paddy did some pages from Developing the Early Learner, and worked on subtraction with visuals from MCP Math A. Then he read a story from Little Angel Reader B on the tortoise and the hare.

He did a couple of games linked from Internet4Classrooms, too.
Aidan did Starfall.

Oh, and also the OT came and played several games with them. She is working on Brain Gym activities with them. We did Owl Movement and Pease Porridge Hot. Aidan caught a ball while on a balance board, and Paddy and I played catch with a ping pong ball. They also played a game where they climbed over a bench and then put their hands in a bag and had to guess what they had grabbed. I really ought to do more of this kind of thing with them; honestly, it tires me out just watching and smiling encouragingly ;-). Bad Mom.

This week I am going to spend some time thinking about the little ones -- I want to make some manipulatives for Aidan since he gets lots of mileage out of them. And think about this kind of creative movement, how to make it work.

Also, I want to plan what to read for the beginning of next term.

Kieron needs more hands-on activities, too. My default is to skimp on these things. I ought to at least introduce them.

Legend of Sleepy Hollow

A few Legend of Sleepy Hollow study guides:

• The tale online in PDF
  
• A PDF based on the play version
• E-Tutor Lessons
• Ed-Sitement
• Fourth Grade Core Knowledge Unit (pdf)
  
• A few more links and resources at this site.

Schedule of Reading (based on the PDF) -- two weeks

1. pages 6-10
2. pages 11-15
3. pages 16-20
4. pages 21-25
5. pages 36-30
6. pages 31-35
7. pages 36-41

Day 47

Light day today:

• Kieron did a couple of simple review tests for math --- perimeters and area, and exponents.
• We reviewed Latin grammar a bit -- it looks like he doesn't thoroughly understand this so I will have to figure out how to give him a chance to practice it.
• He read a section on the Reformation and answered some vocabulary match-up questions.

Morning Reading:

• We read a lot of Despereaux. The pace has picked up and Paddy was extremely interested in it.

I found some study guides which I am going to list here, not because I particularly think I am going to use them, but because I like to read through them after I've read a book to see what the "guiders" come up with. I sort of like literature guides, but am very wary of loading a bunch of educational baggage onto the slender swift thoroughbred that is a good book. This one SEEMS quite good though you never know for sure until it's all wrapped up at the end. Even Clare, who's usually quite severe, liked the author's way of writing. It's certainly fun to read out loud; I particularly like saying Roscuro's dialogue.

• Kate de Camilio (author)
• Candlewick Guide (pdf) (teacher's guide)
  
• Another Candlewick study guide (reader's guide)
• a teacher's lesson plan series for 2nd graders
  

End of Week 11

Summary for Year 7--

• Even though I felt like our days were light, we did cover most everything except Greek (see gif on left for details).
• We are pretty much right on track for exams next week.

Summary for Year 1, for the whole trimester.

Math

• Paddy can do addition up to the 5's and is starting subtraction. He sometimes uses his fingers, sometimes does the operation in his head.
  
• Aidan is learning to name numbers over 20 and can match 2-digit numbers with only a few transposition mistakes.

Reading

• Paddy can read on a simple first year level.
• Aidan can spell several words from memory and read them.

Handwriting

• Aidan can write words from memory (simple 3-letter words). He still has trouble forming some letters.
• Paddy is just learning to form curves. He can write a "C" but has trouble with "S".

Other

• Both have improved in coloring. Aidan did a double-color design with attention to detail. Paddy has learned to stay mostly within the lines though he still leaves white spaces inside the outline.
• Both have improved in listening comprehension. Paddy listens to chapter books on and off, and Aidan likes repeating phrases from things he hears. Both recite bits of poetry.
• Paddy has learned about bees and hurricanes from the Magic School Bus. He is an active listener who asks lots of "why" questions while he is listening to stories.
• Aidan has gained in competence with various life skills. He likes to help in the kitchen, take pictures, bring in firewood, and help clean the vacuum filter.
  

Day 46

Another clear day, not quite as cold as yesterday.

Morning Reading:

• a few chapters of Despereaux
• a section from Christ the King on the Spanish Armada
• more of The Lady of Shalott
• I also read several stories to Paddy from an anthology, while Kieron made cookies.

Then there was an extended break of a sort while I found some Mad Libs for Kieron and he played them (Language Arts). Then Paddy wanted to do some. I hung around for a while and then I took a bath.

Review/Study with Kieron:

• MEP chapter 9 -- Areas and Perimeters, 9.1 and 9.2
• Latin -- answering questions on yesterday's reading, in Latin. Discussed ablative
• History -- review questions on the Babylonian Captivity
• Science -- more review -- we've finished Unit 2.
• Grammar -- "Why the English Language is So Hard to Learn"
• Handwriting -- I forgot to mention that yesterday so I'll put it on here today.
  

Thus concludes Week 11.

This weekend my project will have to be writing out some questions I think he will be able to narrate upon.

Aidan worked with his word box and with number matching.

Object of Interest for the Day (Aidan):



This is the garage door light. Aidan has become fascinated with it. He goes out into the (icy cold) garage to admire it. Brendan took the picture for him.

Day 45

A beautiful COLD day, with ice on the puddles around our house.

We are well into our review week, but this is the first day we really reviewed. I remember my first year homeschooling (with a 3rd grader!) when the correspondence program I was using told me to review the material for tests the next week.

I didn't have a clue what that meant so I ended up just dividing the pages of the workbooks already covered into five sections and then covering a section each day.

Since then I haven't really gotten much better at planning review...sigh. I have figured out that it makes life easier to just focus on one subject per day. Today, since we've been skimping Logic recently, we went through several of the past chapters of the logic book and discussed.

In addition:

• 5 more pages of Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• started reading The Lady of Shalott (led to a discussion about rhyme schemes and emphatic phrases in poetry -- I don't know the real word for the emphatic phrases, but we are noticing them quite a bit "Don John of Austria is riding to the war..." ).
• a bit more of Christ the King -- I had Kieron read the rest of the section independently because the grown kids and DH and I were discussing the election ; -).
• Then, I'm counting the election discussion because Kieron is listening in on it and learning a lot about different povs, etc.
  

(Kieron told me that yesterday when Paddy went outside he was reciting bits of Lepanto. This thrilled Clare who is a huge Chesterton fan.)

Then:

• Next section of History -- from here -- World History 1, unit 11 Renaissance Reformation (PDF)
• A section of science reviewing the states of matter (he knows all this pretty well by now). -- from here -- Integrated Science Unit 2 (PDF)
• Math -- dividing by decimals, and mental division of larger numbers. Here is where my goal-setting this summer with him has paid off. I decided that conceptual problem solving was a priority, because he is such a natural at it and was hating "mechanical math" so much. I can't say he jumps for joy every day with math but once or twice he has said this is FUN! Today for example there was a way to quickly divide by halving. For example 224 divided by 4. If you can half it twice you're set. He actually did some extras with 8's and 16's.
  
• Latin - - a translation exercise.
• Grammar -- more filling in verbs in Peter Rabbit. This seems to be quite interesting.
  

I did something different with Paddy -- I asked him to choose 2 of the books from his "school box" and then those were his academics. Sort of a workbooky Montessori, I suppose.

He chose

• MCP Math A
• Handwriting without Tears.

So we did an addition review page and then a page on "S" -- writing them and then reading some words converted to plural by "S".

I think in future I will try this "pick your own workbooks" and then add in some choices for other things I want him to get to occasionally -- fun things I just never get around to initiating like piano play or drawing, etc.

Aidan

• worked with his word box and made a bunch of words.
• He also rode in the wheelchair to the post office with us.

About the PASS download volumes I linked to above. ... this is dry stuff in several ways, folks. It is basically online textbooks geared for high school students with special needs. Not really enough in itself, but I was floundering a bit without some sort of minimum or base from which to springboard. So I am testing these out on Kieron as a sort of review device, for now. They are dull and as CM said "stultifying" on their own, but they seem to be working OK in the context of all the other things we are reading. And they are standards-based, so I can find all kinds of online things to support them. If I had known about them last year I might have had Sean go through some of them last year to get him used to the high school mode of learning ;-) -- but maybe it's just as well we spent that year reading good books, since that is what his new mode of education lacks most right now.

a couple more things

A couple more forms:

The "unit summary" (blank black and white one in PDF) is an At a Glance form to help me in recording credits for my Year 7 child. I don't really do these by term, except for perhaps the history one. Rather, they are more like "strands" that we pick up and drop during the year.

Also, an assignment chart for my student -- I'm going to try putting these in his binder. So far I've just been writing the daily sheets down on little pieces of paper, which works OK, but I am thinking of transitiioning it over to him a bit more, so I thought he could start getting used to a "homework-log" type format.

Study Log in black and white PDF.

Reading Checklists for History

I made a couple of reading checklists. I am thinking it will be a bit easier to keep track of the things we are reading over a longer time, if I have a checklist filed away in my binder.

For Christ the King, Lord of History (by Anne Carroll) I only used/am using 3 chapters.

Christ the King checklist (pdf)
Usborne "Scientists" (from Book of Discovery) (PDF)

Day 44

Today turned into a conference day. I'll still "count" it since Sean's school has one teacher's half-day each month, and I thought that was a good idea.

Morning Time

• read some of Legend of Sleepy Hollow (hard going with the little ones around)
• finished GKC's Lepanto
• read a bit more of Christ the King.

Independent

• I had Kieron make a breakfast menu (since he said he wanted to have one).
• Went outside
  
• Devised active games with siblings.
• Baking cookies
  

Aidan worked on the puzzle some more.

At the end of the term I usually try to make lists of ideas and plan things so that it's easier for me later on. So this is what I'm trying to do.

Day 43

Morning Time

• 2 chapters of The Blood Red Crescent -- we finished it!
• 2 more sections of Lepanto by GK Chesterton -- very quick stealth lessons on visual imagery and on background notations about some of the scenes in the poem.

Kieron's Monday Computer School

• Thatquiz.org -- dividing decimals
• An online geography game on identifying regions of the US -- this is in preparation for the next unit on pre-Columbian America.
• Weekly housekeeping jobs
• Went outside for a while.
  

Paddy and Aidan

• both played Starfall reading games for quite a while, notably the Dolch sight words matching game, which is good for visual memory AND word recognition.
• Cut up a hundreds chart with scissors (this is actually a good scissors game -- I cut it into strips by tens and then they cut the tens into ones.
• Both worked on an alphabet floor puzzle. Paddy did it once and Aidan has worked on it several times over the last couple of days.

Other Activities

• Paddy and I did some adding games. I wrote 2 sets of numbers from 1-5 on index cards, and then we each got two cards and had to add and see who got the biggest number.
• Then my two boys' (Kieron and Paddy) gaming instincts kicked in and they made a BUNCH of games. In one, we got two cards and had to arrange them so we got the biggest number possible (place value, comparisons). Then we tried it with 3 digits (Paddy didn't know much about numbers over 100 but he got exposed to the concept today). Then we played a few more games of that sort.
• Aidan and Kieron and Clare and I went to the library.
• Quite soon the OT is coming so there will be more activities then.

Last week I read a bunch of Catholic Treasure Box magazines to Paddy. Also, he is still into the Magic School Bus so we have read those a couple more times too.

This is review week (mostly for Kieron since the younger ones are mostly learning in bits and pieces anyway) and next week is for exams so sometime this week I want to start writing those out.