Homeschool Discoveries

Sharing a few things I've discovered along the way…

Book Discoveries this Week: The Railway Children May 3, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:16 pm
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After finishing A Little Princess, I decided that Miss M and I would try another older classic for our next bedtime read-aloud — The Railway Children by Edith Nesibt.   The Railway Children is a turn-of-the-20th-century story of three English children who leave their city home after their father is mysteriously sent away from the family.   Roberta, Peter and Phyllis find themselves in a country home near a railway, which proves to be a source for interesting adventures.

Nesbit is an author whose work I’ve been wanting to like, if that makes any sense.   Last year we tried listening to an audio book of The Enchanted Castle.  It just wasn’t what I expected, and Miss M and I lost interest after about 2/3 of the book.  Maybe someday we’ll try that one again.  I originally had Five Children and It on our book list for this year, but we committed the cardinal sin of book-to-movie adaptations by watching the movie without having read the book first.  The kids didn’t particularly enjoy the movie, and although I read that that book has a somewhat different story line, I wasn’t very motivated to try reading the book after our movie experience.

I wish I could say that the “third time was a charm” for me with Nesbit’s books, but that wasn’t entirely true.   While I don’t think Miss M liked this story as much as some we’ve read this year, she told me she enjoyed the book.  And she did beg for additional chapters most nights, a sure sign that she was “into” the story.  (The chapters are long, so I had to say “no” most nights!).

I found the narrator’s voice in the story to be somewhat distracting and off-putting.  While the story is mostly written in third-person language, a first person “author/observer” voice comes in on a regular basis:

“I hope you don’t mind my telling you a good deal about Roberta. The fact is I am growing very fond of her. The more I observe, her the more I love her. And I notice all sorts of things about her that I like.”

The narrator even asks the reader a few questions:

“Washing is fun. I wonder whether you ever done it? This particular washing took place in the back kitchen, which had a stone floor and a very big stone sink under its window.”

Besides the unusual narrative voice, I also found the children’s many adventures to be a bit over-the-top for one story.  Even those well-loved Alden kids usually only save the day or solve the mystery once per book.   The Railway Children manage to save a train from crashing, help a lost political prisoner and save a boy stuck in a tunnel with a broken leg all in the same book.  While this put it in the “yeah, right” category for me, I think Miss M loved it all the more because of all these exciting (in a quaint, turn-of-the-century style) exploits. All in all I didn’t hate this book, but I probably wouldn’t enjoy reading it out loud again.  My favorite part might have been the happy ending.  🙂

And speaking of the Aldens, a new fan (or maybe even two) have joined the ranks.  After listening to Miss M joyfully recount the plot of yet another Boxcar Children book, Mr. E asked me to read the first one in the series to him.  Miss M had to grab it one afternoon while we were in between chapters and spend an hour re-reading it for herself.  🙂  This seems to be the first chapter book that Mr. E has truly loved — he has sat for as many as three chapters at a time! Definitely a first for him.  Even Mr. K has grabbed his special pillow and cuddled up for a chapter or so at a time. I’m hoping this will be the beginning of more patience from the boys for longer stories.

I’m linking up with Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

 

 

Resources for Making a Book List April 30, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 8:27 am
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Since I don’t follow a particular curriculum that schedules readers and read-alouds for us, I like to make my own list of books to read out loud and books to “assign” (or sometimes just suggest) for independent reading.

Resources for making a book list or reading listI did this in an organized manner for Miss M for the first time for our current school year (2nd grade).  Last summer I created a Google doc with a list of 20 or read-alouds and 15 books I thought she could probably read independently but might not be likely to find or choose on her own. As the year has gone on, I have added and subtracted from the list as needed, and marked books off as we complete them.  Even though I didn’t schedule the books, I’ve liked having a list to refer to as I take a few minutes to make new requests at the library or place an order on Amazon.  The research and “thinking” is already done for me!

I’m getting ready to make a new list for this summer and our next school year, when Miss M will be a 3rd grader and Mr E a kindergartener.

From lists suggested by various curricula to lists compiled by libraries to lists made by bloggers, I’ve found more ideas for books to read than we could possibly read in a year  🙂  The hard part will be picking a reasonable number for this next year’s list.  But I am happy to have such a wide variety of suggestions available to me as I need to find more reading materials in future years or as our needs and interests change.

If you’re looking to make a reading list or just find a good book to read today, here are some resources to consult:

Book Lists of Various Literature-Based Curricula (for both general literature ideas and history-specific ideas):

Book Lists from Organizations, Groups and Libraries:

Mass-Media Articles with Book Suggestions

Lists from Bloggers and Forums:

And while not exactly a “list”, I love to read about what other bloggers are reading out loud by checking out Read-Aloud Thursday each week @ Hope is the Word. I’ve gotten a lot of ideas from other bloggers’ posts in this weekly link-up!

Lists Specific to History Resources:

Books about Books

Happy List Making (and Reading!)  Do you have any other favorite resources to share?

 

Book Discoveries this Week: Lego Star Wars and Wookie Cookies April 26, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 11:02 pm
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Having just spent the past 45 minutes or so writing and reading posts on the forum for our new spelling curriculum, I just don’t have a lot of energy left for a really “serious” Read Aloud Thursday post yet tonight.   I’m still working through my current read aloud with Miss M, and we haven’t read anything really notable for science or history lately.  That would normally bring me back to a picture book or easy non-fiction post…but the boys’ library book basket has been languishing the past few weeks in favor of more time to play outside, draw pictures of ideal Angry Birds levels, and creating stories of their own.

Tony reads to the boys at night, so I not sure how some of the interesting-looking picture books I picked out at the library have turned out.  Most of what I have read to the boys lately have been run-of-the-mill books on their favorite topics.

One type of book that comes home with us almost without fail after each library trip is a Star Wars book of some sort. If you have a young Star Wars fan in your house, you might have also discovered that a lot of what is available for young fans is well, dull, for the grown-up reading to their padawan learner.  Most of what’s out there is either DK readers with limited vocabulary (great for the reader at that level, I’m sure…but Mr E can’t even read a level 1 reader on his own yet since they are not particularly phonics based) or they are Episode/Movie rehashes.

A few new Lego Star Wars books are breaking this mold.  We discovered “Lego Star Wars: Save the Galaxy” at the library a couple months ago.  Then Mr. E received “Lego Star Wars: Darth Maul’s Mission” for his birthday.   Both of these books are funny and entertaining for kids and grown-ups alike.

“Darth Maul’s Mission” retells the main story line of Episode I with Darth Maul as the central figure, of course. This book is designed in a somewhat comic book style, which I often find can be hard to read aloud.   A main thread of the story is told at the top of each page, and since the boys really wanted to know who said what, we went through each dialog bubble with me pointing to who said it.  After doing that once or twice, they pretty much had the whole book memorized anyway.  😉

Many of the lines in “Darth Maul’s Mission” are funny and irreverent to the original movie.  Obi Wan Kenobi claims a Wookie ate his homework and Darth Maul sets a trap by setting up “Darth Maui’s Party Town.”

Purists will probably complain because the story doesn’t actually stay true to the movie at the end — for example, a good guy character who dies in the movie instead gets shoved in a closet in the book.  But even though my boys are familiar with the “real” story line, they still get a good laugh out of what happens in the book.

Mr. E discovered a fun cookbook on our last library trip called “Wookie Cookies.”   While I wouldn’t normally consider a cookbook a read aloud, the boys and I have had a lot of fun looking through the book together and finding the Star Wars characters in the pictures, talking about the recipe names and what they really are.  “Wookie Cookies” are really chocolate chip cookies, in case you were wondering.  It turned into a fun game of alliteration as we made up new food-name ideas.  Mr. K would like some Emperor Palpatine Eggs, Mr.  E wants some Storm Trooper Spaghetti and I’ll take a Leia Latte, thank you very much.  🙂

 

I’m linking up with Read Aloud Thursday at Hope is the Word!

 

 

 

Wishing Betsy a Happy Birthday April 23, 2012

Filed under: Books,Fun Stuff and Extras — kirstenjoyhill @ 7:49 am

Over four months of blogging have gone by here at Homeschool Discoveries, and I don’t think I have yet mentioned my favorite series of  children’s books:

The ten book “Betsy-Tacy” series is closely based on the life of its author, Maud Hart Lovelace.  Maud’s (“Betsy’s”) childhood home in Mankato (aka “Deep Valley”), along with the childhood home of her best friend Bick (“Tacy”) have been restored and are maintained as museums by the Betsy-Tacy Society.

(You can see “Tib’s” house too, but it isn’t a museum.  Luckily for us fans, recent owners painted it chocolate brown and are totally used to random strangers snapping pictures of their house!)

One of my cousins was getting married this past Saturday in Mankato, Minnesota (both sides of my family are from Mankato originally, and I lived there for five years as a child).  I’m a fan of the Betsy-Tacy Society on Facebook, and I just happened to notice that their annual celebration of the birthday of Betsy/Maud would be the same day (Maud’s actual birthday is April 25th).  The timing was perfect (the celebration was happening during the few hours just before the wedding), and the location was convenient (the church was less than a mile away from the Betsy-Tacy houses!).  How could we not go?

This was our second visit to the Betsy-Tacy houses.  Two years ago this summer, we went on a tour of the houses along with the family of Miss M’s best friend (they are like real life Betsy-Tacy’s…they live across the street from each other and have a third friend around the corner!).   We didn’t do the tour this time, but we enjoyed chatting with costumed character actors, having cake and lemonade and making May baskets.

If you are a big fan of the Betsy-Tacy series like us and like to do lapbooks, you can check out this lapbook I designed two years ago to go along with the first two books in the series.

And if you are a really devoted fan, you can learn more about the triennial(?) Betsy-Tacy convention this summer.  Since the first day of the convention is here in my current city of Minneapolis, I am hoping that it will perhaps work out for me to attend that one day. 🙂

 

Book Discoveries this Week: “Once Upon a Horse” and “A Little Princess” April 19, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 5:00 am
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It’s two-for-one on Read-Aloud Thursday for me this week since I was too busy to get a “Book Discoveries” post written last week.  There’s even a semblance of a fairy tale theme, if only in the book titles.  🙂

Miss M and I took two weeks off from reading Mystery of History Vol. 3 to read “Once Upon a Horse: A History of Horses and How they Shaped Our History” by Suzanne Jurmain.  We just finished a unit study of sorts on horses to prepare for Miss M’s expert day presentation at co-op (she first broadly chose the topic of horses, then wanted to focus in on the subject of how horses were used through history).  I reserved several books on horse related history from our library, and this one seemed to be the most generally readable.

Jurmain’s book opens with a chapter about the evolution of horses, which to be honest, we skipped in our read-aloud since we hold to a creationist view.  I explained to Miss M why we were skipping the chapter.  She knows that many people hold an evolutionary point of view, and I’m sure as she gets older this is something we’ll study in more detail.  Following this chapter is a discussion on the domestication of horses.  The rest of the book is comprised of eight chapters, each covering a different aspect of how humans use or used horses.

We spent the most time reading and re-reading sections on the horse as it was used in war, for work, for travel and in sending messages since Miss M was most interested in those topics, while we glossed over more quickly chapters on topics like horses in sports and racing.  I really enjoyed how this book touched on many topics we’ve covered in the past two years of reading Mystery of History — the Huns, the Mongols, the first mail delivery system in Persia, Knights on horseback and more.  A general reading of history doesn’t highlight the role of the horse, but the horse really was an important “player” in many of these important points in history.

This book is definitely worth a read for horse lovers that are also history buffs.  I’m not sure if this is a big segment of the population, but given that at least one publisher offers an entire course on the history of the horse, I would guess that there are a few others out there besides my daughter!

This week Miss M and I finished “A Little Princess” by Francis Hodgson Burnett as our bedtime read-aloud.  A lot of the books we read I could almost as easily just hand to Miss M and have her read herself.  This was not one of them!  In fact, I was very glad we were reading this one using the Kindle app on the iPad, because I had to use the handy “dictionary” feature a few times myself!

A few friends were surprised that I had not read “A Little Princess” previously.  It’s yet another “children’s classic” I missed as a child in my rush to get to reading books in the adult section of the library.  If only I could have known what I was missing out on.  At least that gives me more to enjoy and discover now!

“A Little Princess” is the tale of the rich daughter of a British officer stationed in India.  Her mother died at birth, and now her father is sending her off to school in London.  Sara Crewe could easily be a spoiled little brat, but instead she is a model of virtue.  She willingly shares and is kind to others and doesn’t let riches and privilege go to her head.  A few chapters into the story, Sara’s fortune changes.  She loses her wealth, status and most of her material possessions.  She is faced with the challenge of living a life of princess-like virtues without her princess like material surroundings.

I have a confession to make.  After reading about seven chapters or so to Miss M (and seeing just how bad things were getting for poor Sara Crewe), I clandestinely skimmed the rest of the book one night after Miss M went to bed.  Shhh….don’t tell her! She hates it when I do that! 😉  But, I just had to know if it was one of “those” kind of fairy tales. It’s not.  Just so you know.  I felt much more relaxed after knowing that, and we both enjoyed the story quite a bit.

“A Little Princess” does not happily smooth over the harshness of life for those less well-off in late 19th century/early 20th century London, but I didn’t think it was inappropriately dark since Sara maintains a positive attitude through it all.  The ending was almost a little over the top for me, but I don’t think Miss M felt that way about it at all.

Has anyone seen a movie version of A Little Princess? I’m curious if it would be worth a watch.

I’m linking up with Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

 

MACHE Conference 2012 Wrap-Up April 18, 2012

Filed under: Books,Curriculum — kirstenjoyhill @ 8:50 am
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I had the opportunity to attend the MACHE (Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators) annual conference in St. Paul last weekend.  It was only my second time attending a homeschool conference, and I am glad I went.

In some ways, my favorite part was the shopping.  I came home with this major purchase:

Yes, it’s an expensive shopping trip to pay money to attend a conference to go and spend more money once you are there.  But on the other hand, it is such a great way to actually see products first hand, ask questions of knowledgeable product reps (or sometimes the authors/creators themselves!), and in some case come home with your item right away.

I’ve known for a couple months that our current spelling curriculum was not working for us.  I had been super curious about “The Logic of English Essentials” curriculum by Denise Eide, ever since having read her book “Uncovering the Logic of English”.   After looking through the material in person, asking questions of the product rep (I was a little bummed that Ms. Eide was not there herself, given that I think she is a resident of our area!), and attending a breakout session about the curriculum I decided to go for it.  I then lugged what felt like a ton of books around for several hours since I didn’t want to pay two bucks for the book check.  Silly, I know!

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say about this curriculum in the future, but I will say I decided to jump right in and use it right away, and I think I am going to like it from a teaching perspective.  I guess only time will tell if it will help Miss M’s spelling woes or help Mr. E get off on the right start as a new speller himself.

I feel good about my investment in the sense that even if after a couple months I change my mind, this product should have a good resale value since it is such a new curriculum.

Besides my purchase of the “Logic of English” curriculum, I purchased a few art supplies (using great restraint — I wanted so many more!), a couple handwriting books, and a few fiction books from the used books area.  I even found a copy of “Gentlemen from England” by Maud and Delos Lovelace for myself!

A few other highlights:

  • I attended a seminar on Fractions by RightStart math author Joan Cotter.  It was a helpful seminar, and helped me continue to feel enthused about Right Start.  If games and these concepts can help kindergartners that Ms. Cotter taught learn concepts that upper elementary children often get confused about, this is a great approach.
  • I had a great conversation with a bookstore owner about “spine” texts for American history.  Unfortunately it confirmed what I already thought might be true — I am going to have a hard time finding exactly the type of text I am looking for at this time, given the age of my student and my other criteria.
  • I heard most of a Keynote session about homeschooling as an opportunity to make disciples.  I am challenged to think “simple” when it comes to having devotions with my kids.   While something fancy and prepared is great, we can also have a great time in the Word by just randomly (or purposefully) having a “one inch” Bible study as the speaker called it — picking an inch of text and discussing a few simple questions: What does it say? What does it mean? What does it mean to me? So What should I do about it?

My conference experience was not without its frustrations.  Two seminars I wanted to attend were full by the time I arrived.  I lost my name tag mid-way through the second day and had to pay a $5 fee to get a new one.  Bummer!  But overall it was a great experience.  I’m not sure going to a conference is an every year sort of thing for me, but I definitely enjoyed my time this year.

 

H is for Horse Unit Study April 14, 2012

Filed under: Books,Themes — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:14 pm
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If you’ve read some of my posts over the past few weeks, you may have noticed quite a few comments here and there about books and activities related to horses.  Although it really wasn’t my intention to begin with, Miss M’s Expert Day project for co-op turned into a fairly full fledged unit on horses.

Here’s how her display for expert day turned out as we set it up at home for a practice run:

Do you have a horse lover in your life? Here are the primary resources we used:

Hands of a Child Horse Lapbook (lots of general information on horses).  Here’s how we put together the completed lapbook project:

DK Eyewitness video, “Horses” (scientific and historical information)

Once Upon a Horse (historical information – read my thoughts on it in this post!)

Various books about how to draw horses

A few “easy non fiction” books from the library (which we already returned before I remembered to write down the titles!).  Some Miss M read on her own time, and a few I assigned as part of her school work.

We also checked out The Complete Horse and The Kingfisher Horse and Pony Encyclopedia to have on hand for further research.  Both looked interesting, but we didn’t end up having time to dive into these very much.

We read Misty of Chincoteage as a horse-related literature selection.  I wrote about my impressions of that read-aloud last week.

Miss M picked the broad topic of Horses for Expert Day, but since she only has three minutes to give a presentation, I encouraged her to pick a much narrower topic to focus in on. She decided to focus on how people used horses throughout history.  Since even that is a very broad topic, she chose to narrow it down even further and discuss how horses were used in war and for travel during her three minute oral report. I was able to work with Miss M on important skills like defining a topic, reading for the purpose of research, and summarizing important points of what she read.   She narrated to me what she wanted to say in her oral report, and I transcribed and helped her refine what she was saying.

As much as it was a lot of work, I am glad we have Expert Day at co-op each year to push us to work on these skills!

I’m linking up with:

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Book Discoveries this Week: Misty of Chincoteague April 5, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 11:56 pm
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After finishing Adam of the Road early last week, Miss M and I started in on Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry as our next bedtime read aloud.  We made quick work of it, finishing it in just over a week.

Miss M loves horses, but she hasn’t read very many horse-themed fiction books yet, other than a few fantasy stories about winged horses and unicorns.  I thought this Newberry Honor book (published in 1947) would be a good starting place.

Misty is a “kid” story just as much as it is a “horse” story.  Two children living on the coastal island of Chincoteague, Virginia have their hearts set on a horse.  And not just any horse — a wild mare living on the nearby island of Assateague.  Each year, the wild horses are rounded up on “Pony Penning Day”.  The horses are driven to Chincoteague for something of a local festival, where all the horses are displayed and some of the young horses are sold to willing buyers from near and far, before the older horses are returned to the wild.  Paul and Maureen Bebee are hard working kids who endeavor to fulfill their dream of not only owning Phantom, the horse they’ve had their eyes on, but her foal Misty as well.

Misty of Chincoteague is loosely based on a true story.  The real Misty was born at the Bebee ranch, not in the wild.  You can even “visit” her, as I learned via wikipedia that she was preserved via taxidermy after she died! (Okay, that weirds me out just a bit — I’m not sure I want to see a taxidermied horse!).   Pony Penning day is a real tradition on Chicoteague Island that began in 1925 and continues today.  This surprised me a bit too, since the idea of swimming wild ponies across a channel to entertain the masses doesn’t strike me as fitting with modern ideas of kind treatment of animals.  But, I will admit I know very little about horses (I never went through a “horse phase” as so many kids seem to do), so maybe this is something that the wild horses don’t mind too much.

Miss M really enjoyed this book, begging me to read extra chapters each night.  The chapters are short, which made it easy to say “yes”!  While I wouldn’t say it’s among my favorite read alouds this year, it was reasonably interesting and exciting.  I’m guessing that Miss M will want to read more of Marguerite Henry’s books in the near future.

I’m linking up with Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

 

Book Discoveries this Week: Adam of the Road March 29, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 7:49 am

Miss M and I just finished Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray as a bedtime read aloud.  I added “Adam” (the 1943 Newberry Award winner) to our read aloud list for the year to correspond with our history studies.  However, I didn’t quite move it to the top of the list soon enough.  We passed by the 1200’s in history at least a couple months ago.

Adam of the Road follows the journeys of Adam, the son of a minstrel and a budding young minstrel himself, in late 13th century England.  Adam travels first with his father and dog, and then alone, as his two traveling companions are lost. The first several chapters of the book are interesting, but not “page turners” so to speak.   Once father and dog are lost, the excitement level of the story picks up, and there were several nights when Miss M and I read two, three or even four chapters in our excitement to find out what Adam would discover on the road as he searches for his lost loved ones.  Adam is forced to be resourceful and self-sufficient as he travels the English countryside alone.

I really appreciated the attention to details on all aspects of Medieval life in this book.  Many real places and historical figures are woven into the story.  The various characters that Adam meets in his journeys are from all across the social spectrum of the middle ages: nobles, members of the noble household, merchants, men and women of the church, farmers and minstrels less honorable than himself.  As I have noticed with several books we’ve read this year, you really could use this book as a springboard for further history studies.  As it was, it served as a nice review of this time in history for us.

I’m linking up with Read Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word:

 

Book Discoveries this Week: Nonfiction for the Boys March 23, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 9:10 pm
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Mr E and Mr K have gotten on a bit of a nonfiction kick again. Besides the usual books about Star Wars and super heroes, the boys’ library basket is filled with books about jets, rockets, weapons, motorcycles, sharks, bones and soldiers.  So, I thought I would share a few recent favorites:

Dem Bones: I picked this one out for a BFSU science lesson on the human skeleton, but the boys added it to their basket and asked for it many times.  This is a cute combination of the song “Dem Bones” (The one that goes, “The toe bone connects to the foot bone…” and so on) and facts about various bones in our bodies.  We all liked the fun skeleton illustrations. I think one of the reasons that the boys liked this book so much is hearing me sing the song.  Even Baby J would stop nursing and look up to watch me sing when I read this book.   🙂

Weapons of War:  We picked this one out due to Mr. E’s sudden interest in the history of weapons.  It is a really cool book.  Even Tony and I were fascinated with it.  This book has a two page spread for each of a variety of historical weapons (like spears, cross bows and early guns).  There’s a lot of text on each page, so a typical five year old might get bored, but Mr. E (who turns five this coming Sunday!) would listen to all the text on a couple different weapons in a sitting.

If I Were an Astronaut: This is a nice preschool level book that Mr. K asked me to read several times.  A lot of books in the children’s non-fiction section still have way too many words for Mr. K’s attention span.    This was one of the few in our library’s section on space/astronauts that was a good fit for him.  I also liked the fact that this book doesn’t dwell on the now-outdated space shuttle.

You Wouldn’t Want to be an Assyrian Soldier: I’m not sure what age group the “You wouldn’t Want to…” series is really aimed at,  but my guess is that most fans are older than five. 🙂 Mr E loved this book, asking for it many nights in a row at bedtime, and giggling all the way at how awful army duty might be for an Assyrian (until Tony finally told him he had to pick something else because he had picked it too many times in a row).  Mr E was thrilled to learn that not only are there more books in this series, but that several of them are about soldiers.  We grabbed three more titles in the series this week at the library!

Miss M and I are still enjoying Adam of the Road as our bedtime read-aloud. We are moving through it at a pretty good clip (two nights in a row we got carried away and read 4 chapters each night!).

I’m linking up with: