Homeschool Discoveries

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

L is for Lapbooks May 14, 2012

Filed under: Fun Stuff and Extras — kirstenjoyhill @ 3:29 pm

Lapbooks are one of my favorite “special” things about homeschooling.  It’s a type of project I had never heard of until we were homeschooling, and something that it seems few people outside of homeschooling have ever heard of.  Maybe you could say it is one of homeschooling’s “best kept secrets.”

What is a lapbook? A lapbook is a project (usually on one topic) composed of multiple small, paper “mini-books” folded together, then glued into a file folder or perhaps onto individual pieces of cardstock bound together in some fashion. If you are new to lapbooking, I recommend this Squidoo lens as an excellent introduction to the topic.

Over the past three years, we really haven’t made as many lapbooks as I hoped we might.  As  a part of a geography study when Miss M was in Kindergarten, we made an extensive lapbook on Antarctica, and started (but unfortunately didn’t finish) lapbooks on China and a general one on the Seven Continents.  We used a lot of free resources to make these, mostly from a great site called Homeschool Share.

Then the summer in between Miss M’s K and 1st years, Miss M wanted to make a lapbook about the Besty-Tacy books.  Not finding any resources already created for a lapbook on this topic, I spent hours creating one from scratch.

You can download the templates for yourself at homeschool share if you are interested in it!

Last year (Miss M’s first grade year), we didn’t end up doing any lapbooks.  By this spring, Miss M was interested in giving lapbooking a try again.  This time, we used a lapbook kit e-book from In the Hands of a Child for the first time for Miss M to create a lapbook about horses:

We have two more lapbook projects going currently:  a lapbook on flowers and other plants, (to go along with our current science studies) and a lapbook about early flight/famous pilots to go along with our current unit study on that topic.  I’m using a combination of free printables from homeschool share and other sites, as well as some portions purchased from Hands of a Child and Currclick.

Miss M really enjoys the “crafty” aspect of lapbooking.  She enjoys the cutting, pasting, coloring and drawing.  She doesn’t enjoy the writing aspect of lapbooking quite so much. When she was younger, she didn’t like trying to write in a small space.  Now that’s less of a problem, but she gets easily stressed out about not knowing how to spell the words she would like to write.  Some of the Hands of a Child lapbooks are available with the text already filled in (sometimes in a “traceable” font) — though I wonder if this produces quite as much learning about the topic in question!  I’ve also had her at times narrate to me what she would like to say in a particular lapbook piece.  When Miss M was younger I would write in the mini-book for her, or now I might type up her narration and have her copy it into the lapbook piece.

Assuming Miss M’s enthusiasm for lapbooks continues, I am hoping to incorporate even more lapbooking into our homeschool next year (perhaps also mixed in with some notebooking). I have purchased several Hands of a Child lapbooks at deeply-discounted sale prices (watch both the Hands of a Child site and Currclick for regular sales and even free titles!) to go along with some of the history and science topics we’ll be covering next year.  Maybe we’ll get Mr E in on the lapbooking act next year too!  So far his patience for anything related to lapbooking has been cutting out pictures and gluing them into a folder.  But as he gets older, I’m guessing he will enjoy making lapbooks too.

To see what other bloggers thought of to go along with the letter “L” visit “Blogging through the ABC’s” at Ben and Me!

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Collage Saturday: Flight, Flowers, Fish, and a Frenetic Day May 12, 2012

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:19 pm

Do you ever have those weeks where you waaaay over estimate what you can accomplish? Capped off by a day where you pack in waaaay too much activity?  That was my day yesterday and my week in general.   We still had a great time.  But I did figure out that just because we decided by the end of last week to take a break from new math and spelling lessons for several weeks, that doesn’t mean we can expect to  play a bunch of educational games and spend a bunch of time on a new unit study and practice for standardize testing and plan some special outings (in a week when we also have our co-op)…and expect to actually get that all done.  Lesson learned!

Our frenetic day on Friday wasn’t originally planned that way.  I started my week thinking that baby J had a pediatrician appointment on Wednesday, and that after the appointment my mom would meet up with us to go to the Sea Life aquarium at the Mall of America to take advantage of their special homeschool discount week.  Then on Tuesday I discovered the appointment was really on Friday, and my mom let me know that her schedule changed and Friday would be a better day for her to come too.  Meanwhile, I had previously signed up for a Friday time slot to bring a meal to a family from our church who recently had a new baby.  And Miss M was having an early birthday sleep-over with her two best friends starting after dinner on Friday.  Yep, I was crazy agreeing too all that action in one day!  But we survived and a good time was had by all.  🙂

The Sea Life Aquarium was fun, and probably at least a little bit educational:

My favorite part was the bright blue frogs.   That and watching baby J watch the jelly fish! After lunch at the mall, we spent the afternoon in the kitchen cooking up a storm — a double-sized dinner and treats for the slumber party:

 That’s a heart-shaped red-velvet cake, homemade berry “sorbet” (from a magazine recipe that Miss M really wanted to try), and a strawberry Jello with strawberry puree and pineapple.  I think I must have had too much puree in the Jello, however, because it didn’t hold the shape of the mold at all!

Miss M’s actual birthday is a week from Monday, but this was the best date for the sleep over.  The girls stayed up until almost midnight, then were up by 7:15 or so on Saturday for raspberry waffles and lots of crafting and playing before heading home.  I was pretty exhausted by the time they left!

Here are a few other highlights from the rest of our week:

1.  Monday turned out to be our only day for game playing. Miss M and I played more Multiplication Memory in the morning, while in the afternoon Mr E and Miss M (and Miss J, Miss M’s best friend from across the street) humored me by playing Phonogram Hopscotch when they really just wanted to be riding bikes and scooters up and down the sidewalk.

2.  Happy Baby J hanging out outside on Monday, watching the big kids ride bikes/scooters and play hopscotch.

3.  Mr E did a bit of reading and math this week, mostly on Monday and Tuesday.   Here he is on Tuesday showing Mr. K how to make the stairs on the abacus.  Mr. K wore the bee costume all afternoon that day.  🙂  Tuesday was a big day for Miss M and I to work on test prep (we have standardized testing next week — it’s a requirement in MN).  She learned the difficult lesson that if you do a four digit subtraction problem and get an answer that is not among the choices listed, it really is the student who is wrong, not the test booklet.  A tough lesson for a 2nd grader to come to grips with.  At least it was tough for my 2nd grader who is not used to multiple choice tests!

4. We have a Family Science Night nature walk on Wednesday night to discuss flowers and other plants and how they adapt to their environment.  With our schedule freed up during the day on Wednesday from our initial plans of appointment and aquarium, we were able to accept an invite from friends visiting from out-of-town for an early lunch meet-up at Ikea.  Between that and a much-needed grocery store trip…it turned out not to be a big school day for us!

5. Thursday afternoon was our second-to-last co-op meeting of the year.  Miss M has been preparing for the geography challenge since January, and she passed!  Students at our co-op are rewarded with $5 if they complete the geography challenge for their grade.  Miss M proved she could locate all 50 US states on the map to earn her five bucks.

6. & 7.  Sprinkled in throughout the rest of our busy week was our new “delight directed” unit study on flight.  We took a trip to the big library downtown last Saturday and found many books on flight.  Miss M wanted to focus primarily on famous early pilots, so we came home with picture book biographies on fliers like Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Erhart,  The Wright Brothers, and more.  Miss M read several on her own, I read one out loud to all the kids, and read a couple of the shorter ones to the boys that Miss M had read herself.  Miss M also got a bit of a start on a lapbook about early flight and famous fliers.   The kids were so excited to tell everyone this week that they “know stuff about a bunch of famous pilots” as Mr. E likes to say.  Our study will continue for the next couple weeks.

Have a wonderful Mother’s Day!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners and the Weekly Wrap-up @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

PhotobucketWeird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

 

Book Discoveries this Week: If Waffles Were Like Boys…And Other Picture Books May 9, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:59 pm
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We took a trip to the “big library” (aka the downtown Minneapolis Central Library) this past Saturday.  Despite being less than 15 minutes from our house, it still seems like a big undertaking to get there and parking is not free, so we end up going just a couple times per year.  Every trip there is a real treat because of the vast selection of books available to us!

I’ve had a hard time lately feeling inspired by the picture book selection at our regular neighborhood library branch.  I’m sure there are still plenty of gems to be discovered, but I feel like I keep seeing a lot of the same old books.   With a selection of many thousands of children’s books, it wasn’t hard to find something new at Minneapolis Central!

One of our favorite finds from this library trip is If Waffles Were Like Boys by Charise Mericle Harper and Scott Magoon.   The title caught my eye as I was browsing the stacks, and I brought it home without much of a glance at the contents.   It  turned out to be delightful! We read on the first pair of pages, “If Waffles were like boys…breakfast would be a battlefield.”   Mr. E started laughing in a nearly-uncontrollable way at the sight of the fighting waffles, and didn’t stop until the book was over.  Then we read the book again!   Any boy (or any mom of a boy!) will relate and probably enjoy the various scenes showing everyday-life objects coming alive in all the ways boys love to play.

We also really liked A Place for Zero by Angeline Sparagna LaPresti.  Mr. K picked this one off the shelf.  We told him the title, and he remembered it long enough to ask for it by name a couple days later!  Zero is a number living in a land of mostly digits 1 through 9 (and, it seems, a “plus”, a “multiplication” and an infinity.”   The other numbers can all play “add-em-up,” but poor Zero doesn’t add up to anything, so he’s left out.  He needs to go on a quest and find his life’s purpose! This was a cute and even heartwarming book, as zero learns all the things that make him special.  There’s even cute baby zeros (since that’s what you get when you multiply by zero, of course!).   The boys loved it too, asking for me to read it again right after I finished the first reading.  I spied them flipping through this book several times throughout the day.

Here a few more quick takes on some of the books we’ve been enjoying this week:

Pickles. Please by Andy Meyer.  Maybe you’ve heard of  “Pinkalicious”? Pickles, Please is for the “picklicious” crowd.   Alec loves pickles so much, but no one else understands — until he goes to the pickle factory!

The Day Roy Riegels Ran the Wrong Way by Dan Gutman is a football tale based on a true story with a great lesson — It’s okay to make mistakes — even big ones!

My Chincoteague Pony by Susan Jeffers is one I picked out for Miss M because I thought she would enjoy this sweet story of a girl who wants a pony of her own.  If you have a horse-lover who is too young for Misty of Chincoteague or a bit older reader who still appreciates a good picture book, this story might be a good fit.

Welcome to Monster Town by Ryan Heshka.  We found this title at our neighborhood library branch a few weeks ago.  We have “visited” Monster Town many times in this clever story where “Frank N. Stein, master electrician, appears shockingly good at his work,” and monster children ride the “ghoul bus.”  A great story for kids that like monsters (and puns).

{Photo Credit}

Visit Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word for more great read-aloud suggestions!

 

K is for Kirsten…J is for Joy (aka me!) May 8, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — kirstenjoyhill @ 5:33 am

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When I joined the “Blogging through the Alphabet” challenge, I had great intentions of writing a separate post for each letter of the alphabet about something homeschooling-related.  I made a document with ideas for every letter…but “J” really stumped me, and I missed that week all together.

I even considered having a “jammies” day just so I could do “J is for Jammies.”  But unlike (apparently) many homeschoolers, the thought the thought of a day in my jammies and having to see my kids in their jammies all day was enough to drive me batty.  I am so not a jammie day person! Even my babies get dressed for the day! So, with that personal quirk out there, I was at a loss for anything related to homeschooling that started with “J” that I would actually have anything to say about, and my ideas for “K” weren’t much better.

Then it occurred to me that I could take an easy out with this one since my first and middle initials are K and J.  And since I am the homeschooling mom writing this, that’s related to homeschooling, right? (I know, it’s a stretch).   I know I like to “get to know” the writers of the blogs I read, so maybe someone will want to get to know me, Kirsten Joy, a little bit better too. 🙂

Places I’ve lived…: I currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Growing up, I lived in several other towns in Minnesota (Mankato, New Ulm, Willmar and St. Cloud).  I also lived in Ames, Iowa for eleven and a half years (college plus the following 8 years). I tell people I’m “originally from” St. Cloud, MN since that’s where I graduated from high school and where my mom still lives, though I actually only lived there for four years.

When I was growing up I wanted to be…: For a long time I wanted to be a chemist or a computer programmer.  Then my mom told me that chemists make bad things that hurt the earth and that by the time I grew up that computers would program themselves.  😉  Next I decided I wanted to be a civil engineer and build bridges.

In college I studied…: My first major was, in fact, Civil Engineering.  However, after getting a “D” in freshman physics, I took a hard look at myself and my abilities and realized that my true love was all things related to language and communication NOT science and engineering!  I changed my major to English with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Professional Communication.  I was considering pursuing a career in technical writing or technical editing, but God had other plans for my life!

After college I…: While finishing up college at Iowa State University, I felt called by God to pursue full-time Christian ministry after graduation.   I did not grow up going to church, but I placed my trust in Christ and became a Christian my junior year of high school.  As a freshman in college I found a great church where I grew in my faith, made lots of close friends and spent a lot of time involved with various campus ministry endeavors.

I had the opportunity after graduation to continue working with this church and campus ministry as a full time staff member. This was an incredible opportunity to be paid to do things I absolutely loved, like women’s ministry, event planning and administrative work.  I also took on a role as assistant editor for the daily devotional publication of the association to which our church belonged.  I continued in my role as a campus ministry staffer full time until Miss M was born, and then part time until we moved to Minneapolis. I continue editing for the devotional on a quarterly basis.  (Just don’t judge me as an editor by my writing here…I am terrible at editing my own work!).  😉

How “boy meets girl”…:  My husband and I both attended the same church in Ames, Iowa.  We worked together in a few ministry roles, and the sparks flew.  After a short courtship and engagement, we were married in September of 2002…hard to believe it is our tenth anniversary this year! Time flies when you are having fun! Tony was working on his PhD when we first got married, so we knew we would stay in Ames at least until he was done with school.

How I ended up here…:  We moved to Minneapolis, MN so my husband could pursue post-doctoral research.  We stayed after that was over because we didn’t feel like God was telling us to go anywhere else!  Tony left the academic career path for a job in industry.  We love the church that God led us to here and the city neighborhood in which we live.

Why we decided to homeschool…:  The short answer is that we were impressed by the lives of homeschooled kids we knew in our church in Ames (both kids still in school and friends we knew as fellow college students who had been homeschooled themselves).  We wanted to have the same opportunity to influence our kids during their formative years. We hope to use homeschooling as an opportunity to raise kids of outstanding character that we can launch into the world as kids/young adults who will positively impact others for the kingdom of God.

Why I started this blog…:  I had a “general” blog (it started out as our wedding website!) for many years.  It was really just intended for family and friends to read and what I wrote about changed as I changed and as our life changed.  We let the hosting for that blog expire last summer and I realized I missed having a creative outlet for writing.  But I also decided that “this time around” I wanted to focus on a topic I am passionate about (homeschooling, with a focus on books/reading) and reach out to develop broader readership beyond my facebook friends.  I want to share my “finds” and chronicle our homeschool experience along the way.

What I like to do in my “spare” time:  Now that I have this blog, I like to blog in my “spare” time!  Other than that, I really like to cook and bake (I am obsessed with breakfast baked goods!), read books and blogs, and hunt for bargains at thrift stores and garage sales. I also really like playing board games, trying new restaurants and generally experiencing adventures in the city with my family.

What I want to do when I grow up when my kids grow up:  I envision I might have another “career” of some sort later in life.  Maybe!  I day dream about jobs involving books, history, or writing…or maybe I could come up with some combination of the three!  At least I have a while to figure that out.  😉  Just a blog and a very part time editing job is plenty for me right now on top of juggling all the responsibilities of staying at home with my four kids!

Visit the “K” post link-up @ Ben and Me to see what other bloggers came up with for the letter K!

 

May Showers May 6, 2012

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:49 pm

We’ve had a lot of rain the past several days.  On Thursday, the first rainy day, the rain showers hit just as we were coming home from an appointment at the clinic for baby J.  As much as the practical side of me wanted to keep the kids inside, I let them head out in the rain to play:

I just love how Miss M shared her umbrella.  🙂  Mr. K stayed out the longest of the three big kids.  He broke his umbrella last fall and we did not replace it…but he didn’t care how wet he got at all!   I had a bit of extra wet laundry to wash, but it was worth it to see them have so much fun out in the downpour.

 

Collage Friday: Finding the Silver Lining May 4, 2012

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:48 pm

We’ve had a looooong week.  I’m rarely so happy to be finally relaxing with my decaf latte on a Friday night! If you want to see fun pictures and read about the silver lining we found in the storm clouds of our week, scroll down a way.  If you want to read the “real life” stuff that was going on, continue in the next paragraph.  🙂

Miss M in particular was having a rough time of things this week.  We had a few rough patches last week, especially while doing math.  I wasn’t sure if the math was to blame, or something else.

This week the math lesson that caused tears on Friday was “so easy” on Monday.  But the spelling lesson that was “the best way ever to learn spelling”  as of last week was “way too hard” on Monday when it should have been only incrementally more difficult that what we were doing last week.  Then I heard from Miss M that she has “never seen anything like this before” when she was doing a math review lesson on Tuesday.  By Tuesday afternoon, Miss M’s behavior while doing school and otherwise had resulted in the consequence of losing a few privileges.  And Wednesday was better, but not much.

Tony and I discussed what might be going on, and we couldn’t put our finger on any one reason for Miss M’s uncharacteristic behavior and difficulty with school work.  I think it could be a combination of things: burnout as the year ends, “spring fever”, schedule changes/longer school days as I try to work in Mr. E’s Kindergarten work into our schedule, maybe not getting enough sleep and probably a few character areas that need some refinement (and training/practice during times of non-conflict!).

Whatever the case, we sat down and looked at our calendar and realized that with a variety of things going on this month that will take us away from time spent doing school (special events, field trips, Miss M’s birthday, annual testing…etc), we have few “regular” school days left at this point.  Tony and I decided that we could end a week earlier than I had initially planned (finishing right before Memorial Day instead of on June 1st), and we could also take the rest of the month off from new spelling and math lessons.  The times of stress while doing these lessons were coming frequently enough that the negative consequences of continuing was probably more than the educational benefit we would get.  We’ll spend extra time playing math and phonogram/spelling games instead!

Despite the “storm clouds” that seemed to follow Miss M most of the week, our week definitely had a pretty silver lining:

1.  Baby J turned six months old on Monday!  Here he is laughing at something Mr. E did…a frequent occurrence in our house.  Baby J is so giggly — probably the most giggly any of our kids were as babies.

2. It was convenient that the next lesson in Right Start C was going to be a game lesson anyway…so we can at least say that we finished 2.5 lessons this week.  🙂  This game was multiplication memory.

3. Meanwhile, while Mr. E practiced writing numbers and I helped Miss M with the math game, Mr. K played with his puzzles…by dumping them all out to find the one he wanted!

4. and 5.  With formal lessons not going so well this week, I encouraged Miss M to spend extra time reading.  I gave her a stack of books I picked out at the library to give her some variety from her typical picks of late (boxcar children and horse/pet books).  She is really enjoying the “Toys Go Out” trilogy (she just finished the second one tonight).

6. Making a water color painting of the garden.

7.  Our state requires annual standardized testing beginning the year the student is seven by October 1st, so this will be Miss M’s first year to test. Knowing that Miss M does much better in situations where she knows what to expect, I decided to order this test practice booklet.  We spent about half an hour going through it orally today, and we’ll spend maybe 15-20 minutes a day on it next week as well if all goes as planned.   Most of the questions themselves are really pretty easy for Miss M, but we are discussing how to read directions, the types of questions she’ll see on the test (she has seen very few “multiple choice” type questions before!), reviewing terminology, as well as talking about some math terminology that is different than what we are used to with Right Start.  The results of this test are really for our use only, but I know that Miss M will be much less stressed out while taking the test if we’ve prepped for it a bit ahead of time!

8.  Stopping to watch ants while out on an evening walk/ride.  Another day the kids were finding cracker crumbs to give ants on our sidewalk, and watching with interest as the ants tried to carry them away!

9. This is my favorite silver lining of the week.  🙂  On Tuesday night after our rough day, Tony “randomly” selected a NOVA documentary on Netflix about the Wright Brothers for us to watch as a family in the evening.  Now everyone is super excited about studying aviation history!  Now I feel vindicated for keeping around this four-volume series of books about aviation history that I picked up free at some point (You can get the series free in .pdf format here!).  😉  Miss M read three of the four books this week.  Today we used Ami’s Delight Directed study planning page @ Walking by the Way to brainstorm how we will study aviation history further this month.

Oh, and Mr. E has been doing some Kindergarten work here and there:

His enthusiasm is waning a bit from a few weeks ago as nice weather abounds.  🙂 But a lot of progress can be made on K level work in a short time.  Mr. E enjoyed coloring while I read the first book in the “Boxcar Children” series, practicing writing on paper and in a salt tray.  He asked to go back to learning printing this week and to learn lower case manuscript.  So much for cursive first! Maybe he can just learn both at the same time.  He wanted to “write some math” too, so while Miss M and I played a math game, he wrote out adding equations and asked if they were “true” or not.  They were almost all “true”, other than a few backwards numbers.   We didn’t do any new phonics lessons this week, but he continued to read a few pages per day out of the phonics readers I downloaded a few years ago from readingatoz.com.

Whew! That’s a long week-in-review too!  I’m looking forward to what I hope will be a relaxing and fun weekend.   Hope yours is great too!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners and the Weekly Wrap-Up @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

PhotobucketWeird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

 

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?

 

Collage Friday: Sewing Week! April 27, 2012

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 8:05 pm
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I certainly did not start out this week planning on teaching the kids to sew.  Miss M has been asking to learn to sew for months.  Now, I know a little bit about sewing, but it’s not a really strong skill of mine.  My game plan was to enlist some friends who are better sewers to help Miss M learn how to sew this summer (and I still might enlist their help if her interest continues!).

However when Miss M asked me yet again if she could do some sewing…or “even please mom just give me some fabric and tape to make something?”, I decided to say “yes”!  Inspired by the “10 Days of Pouring Into Your Child’s Passion” series at Blog, She Wrote and by this post about simple sewing skills at Many Little Blessings…I decided that I could at least get Miss M started with a needle, thread and a piece of scrap fabric.  Then Mr. E wanted to learn too!  That was a bit more of a stretch for me, but I said “yes” to him too! I drew the line at Mr. K and told him he had to turn five before he could sew!

Hand sewing went pretty well.   Mr. E and Miss M made little bags and pillows, though Mr. E later turned a couple of his creations into “wrecking balls” by wrapping the thread around in interesting ways!  After a couple days of practice on hand sewing, Miss M thought she was next ready to try a skirt for one of her dolls.  I watched a tutorial video and decided that maybe, just maybe I could pull out the sewing machine and help Miss M put a skirt together in that way.  We made our own skirt pattern following the directions in the video and I did most of the sewing on the skirt, since I was trying to reacquaint myself with the machine.  I consider it a small miracle I even remembered how to get it going!  😉  Unfortunately, the skirt turned out too small.  I hope I can keep the momentum going to try again.  Maybe we’ll BUY a pattern this time!   Meanwhile, I did also let both kids try a bit of machine sewing to make a couple of tiny pillows.

Besides our multi-day impromptu sewing adventure, we did do some regular school stuff and a few other fun things this week:

1. We wished “Betsy Ray” a Happy Birthday in “Deep Valley” last Saturday.  Read about it here.

2. and 3.  We started a new Family Science topic with a Science Sunday with Dad about plants.  Miss M will be putting together a notebook/lapbook about plants…and here the boys are coloring in their own version of a sheet about plant parts.

4. and 5.  Week #2 of Logic of English Essentials for spelling went really well.   Both Mr. E and Miss M enjoyed Phonogram Bingo on Monday.  We played a phonogram game involving hopping up and down the outside steps on Tuesday.  I felt like we didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked on spelling this week, yet Miss M did a great job on spelling word dictation today!  She told me she loves her new spelling feels like “this is finally the right spelling for us!”  Yay!

6.  Mr K is ready for summer! This is what he was “playing” while the bigger kids did their hand sewing on Monday.

7. and 8.  We did about three and a half lessons of Right Start Math this week, including playing a Sum Rummy game, filling out a multiplication table and making a multiplication table out of cards.  I wish I could say math went as smoothly as spelling this week.  This was, unfortunately another one of those “character building” weeks of math that I suspect had little to do with the math itself.  One day Miss M was totally tracking with multiplication, and then today we could not even get through a whole lesson that looked pretty easy to me due to attitude issues.  Huh.   I’m praying for insight to know whether this is directly related to math and we need to slow down or camp out on some of these topics before moving on…or if math is just the flash point for character areas the Lord is refining in Miss M’s life!

9.  This was possibly my highlight of the week…a trip to my favorite semi-annual library book sale in a suburb about 20 minutes from our house.   I picked up all the books in the picture (plus a big book on the history of Minneapolis that I missed adding to the pile…that one is for me) for only $10.50! Miss M also picked out about two dozen books that only cost her about $4 of her “book money”.   I was hoping for more titles related to our American history studies next year, but I was happy with some Great Illustrated Classics and other chapter books that I hope will appeal to the boys in the next couple of years, a couple picture books, and a few read-alouds  to enjoy with Miss M along with the couple history titles I did find.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners!

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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!