Snowflakes Are Falling In Your Homeschool

It is the middle of the winter, and most places have plenty of snow. Learn about snowflakes this month in your homeschool.

~Wilson Bentley is famous for photographing snowflakes. He successfully photographed his first snowflake on January 15, 1885. Try researching his work and life. Watch this informative video about his life. It starts out told in the first person.

-There is a Snowflake Bentley website where you can find out more about his life. There are also copies of his photographs posted there.

-Read the following books to research Bentley’s life:

Snowflake Bentley (Caldecott Medal Book)

The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley

My Brother Loved Snowflakes: The Story of Wilson A. Bentley, the Snowflake Man

~Learn about snowflakes. Go to the Cal Tech website for host of information.

-Read the following books to research snowflakes:

Snowflakes in Photographs

Ken Libbrecht’s Field Guide to Snowflakes

The Snowflake : A Water Cycle Story

-Observe snowflakes. How Stuff Works has a great lesson plan for this science experiment.

~Make snowflakes in various artistic ways. These books can help:

Snowflakes for all Seasons

Make Your Own Paper Snowflakes

Easy Tatting (Dover Needlework Series)

~At ProTeacher you can find a few math activities related to a snow theme. My two favorites are:

-Have a snowball fight. Write a math fact on a piece of white paper and crumple it up in a ball. Make a whole pile of these. Throw your “snowballs” at each other for a specified time. Then everyone takes turns reading the math facts out loud. Repeat.

-Use shaving cream on a table or desk as your snow. Have your child write in the shaving cream. Write math facts or draw shapes. Recite a number such as one hundred forty five and have your child write it in the shaving cream – 145.

Photos, Snowflake-024 & Snowflake-009, courtesy of yellowcloud

Success for the Beginning Reader in Your Homeschool

Photo by pingu1963

Has your child just started to read in your homeschool? Here are a few tips for the beginning reader.

~Have your child practice rereading that first book as much as possible. Start an autograph book for anyone who listens to your child read. Doing this builds excitement for reading since everyone will affirm your child’s efforts.

~Record yourself reading the book, and have your child follow along with that recording pointing to the words. This adds more opportunities to practice independently.

~Remind your child to point to each word while reading. This helps beginning readers to read the words instead of saying the words from memory.

~Create flashcards with the words in the book. Make doubles so you can play “concentration” and “go fish”. This allows your child to practice reading these words in a playful way.

~Cue your child to use different strategies if s/he gets stuck. For example, use the picture clues to figure out tricky words. This allows your child to word solve independently and builds confidence.

~Remind your child to look at all of the letters in the word. Sometimes beginning readers guess the word based on the first letter or two.

~Have fun with your child and be positive!

Provide many opportunities for your child to be successful with reading because that will help your child to learn to love reading in the end.

A Dance and Tumble Class?

Photo by msburrows

As a homeschooling family, we are always looking for opportunities for our children to learn skills that we value but cannot provide ourselves. For our family, we seek out physical activities for our very busy and precocious children. We suggested that my dad give the girls dance/gymnastics classes for Christmas for this very reason. Today was C4’s first “Dance and Tumble” class for the winter session at the YMCA.

Not only did we want C4 to join a gymnastics/dance class for physical education and dance skills, but we also knew that there would be social, emotional, and neurological benefits from the class.

~C4 has Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), and she is definitely a sensory seeker. The activities in this class provide lots of proprioceptive input, which will help her with motor planning and balance. There are plenty of deep pressure activities in the class as well such as rolling, hopping, and jumping.

~This class gives C4 the opportunity to make some friendships outside of our current circle of friends. I hope that she can connect with other little girls who share her interest in dancing and gymnastics. The class gives her a topic to discuss with her friends, shared experiences, and time away from me and her sister to establish new friendships.

~I hope that the experiences she has will build her confidence in her physical abilities resulting in a better sense of what she can do independently. She often tells me that she is unable to complete a task that I have seen her do a dozen times. I suspect that her frustration is a result of her SPD sometimes and other times is part of her limit-testing as a strong-willed child. Perhaps she will gain better control over her proprioceptive function through her dance class and maybe learn a little about following the rules.

~Most of all, I hope that C4 has fun in this class. Today she was so excited that she was going to her class that she simply could not nap. As we got ready to leave the house, she kept telling A2 about how she was going to a special dance class that Papa gave to her for Christmas. When we arrived, she ran right into the room. She dove into the class. She smiled. She laughed. She was thrilled by the end of class. She made sure to tell Daddy all about her experiences.

I have high hopes for this little class!

A Thematic Unit Study: The Mitten

In my last post I write about creating a thematic unit study with one of my favorite books, Bear Snores On. Continue to enhance your homeschool curriculum with another one of my favorite winter themed books, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. This is a beautifully illustrated book and a silly tale that you and your children are sure to love.

• Study folktales and fairy tales. This website has great definitions, history, and examples for a unit study.
• Learn about the Ukraine and create a travel brochure. Lonely Planet has some interesting travel information about the Ukraine.
• Complete an author study on Jan Brett. She really is an interesting author/illustrator. You could read some of her other books and study her writing style. You could also visit her homepage and use the free activities and projects listed there.

Enjoy another good winter read with your children!

Do you have any other ideas for how you could use this book?

Thematic Study Ideas: Bear Snores On

Photo by memekode

Winter is fast approaching and there are many books and activities that you can enjoy to enhance your homeschool curriculum. One of my favorite books is Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. Bear is in a cave hibernating when all sorts of animals discover the cave as a place to warm up. Here are a few ways that you can use this book.

• Learn about hibernation.
• Learn about nocturnal animals.
• Learn about mice, hares, badgers, gophers, wrens, ravens, & moles. They are all included in the story.
• Work on rhyming words ending in the “air” sound (bear, lair, share, hare).
• This book includes repetition as a poetic device. Have your child write poetry using this device.
• Cook the foods featured in the book. Make stew, white popcorn, black tea, and honey nuts.
• Build a model bear’s den.

Have fun with this great book! Do you have any other ideas for this particular book?

Learn about Heaven this Halloween

Here is one last Halloween idea for you. Death is so prevalent in the whole Halloween extravaganza. Why not use that to your advantage in your home school? Learn about heaven!

• Study Revelation with your children. Yes, it is a challenging book of the Bible, but Kay Arthur has a study guide for children. Her study guides never disappoint.
• Read Heaven for Kids by Randy Alcorn.
• Read What about Heaven by Kathleen Bostrom. This book is written for younger children and includes Bible references in the back to further your study of heaven.

Think outside of the box this Halloween! Learn about heaven instead of buying into our culture’s ideas about death .

Charlotte’s Web Activities

My all time favorite book is Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. I cry every time I read the ending. There is so much to the book; it is full of inspiration for learning. Have you read it recently? The friendship theme is simple enough to make the book worth reading to children as young as eight, but the nuances in the book make it worth reading with high schoolers. Here are a couple of ideas for what you could do with this wonderful classic book.

• Study spiders. The life cycle of the spider is really important in the book, so learning about them would enhance your children’s understanding of the book.
• Study pigs. Wilbur is a main character, after all.
• Start a vocabulary study. You can hang a web (web material is readily available this time of year) in your school space. Every day post a new vocabulary word on it. Have the children learn what it means and make it the word of the day; use it correctly as often as possible throughout the day.
• Use Charlotte’s Web as a starting point for reading other literature. For example, read the various versions of The Three Little Pigs. Read Anansi the Spider, a folktale. Read other friendship books such as The Secret Garden, Because of Winn-Dixie, or The Hundred Dresses. With little ones you can sing songs such as “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “This Little Piggy”.

Have fun reading my favorite book!

Memory Verse Meaning

In my home school memory verses are part of our curriculum. I think it is a good discipline to learn scripture so that you have God’s word in your head instead of all of the toxic things we encounter in the world. I think that children need all of the armor they can get when they are faced with our fallen world. The problem that I have right now is helping my kids to actually understand the meaning of the scripture. I have a plan, though!

• Start with a lesson about the verse using something concrete to explain the meaning. For example, this summer we learned John 15:5John 15:5
  English: World English Bible - WEB
  5 I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
  WP-Bible plugin
  . I used a lesson the I found at First-School to teach the essence of the verses. We used grapes on the vine to demonstrate what it means to be the vine and the branches.
• Draw pictures, take photos, or use clip art to visually describe of the meaning of the verses. Hang the pictures next to your child’s bed so you can reference them when you recite the verses together. Make sure the pictures are good descriptors of the verses’ meaning.
• Incorporate some kind of motion to go along with the verses. When we learned Luke 15:1-7Luke 15:1-7
  English: World English Bible - WEB
  15 ¹ Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming close to him to hear him. ² The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.” ³ He told them this parable. ⁴ “Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it? ⁵ When he has found it, he carries it on his shoulders, rejoicing. ⁶ When he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ ⁷ I tell you that even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.
  WP-Bible plugin
  , we played a shepherd game similar to “tag”. One person played the shepherd while everyone else played the sheep and wandered around. The shepherd had to herd the sheep.
• Make up or find a song that teaches the message of the verses. Kids love to sing songs and songs that teach the meaning of scripture will help them to own it.

I hope that your memory verse lessons become more meaningful! Do you have any tips that have made understanding scripture easier for your children?

How Corn Flakes Can Help Your Child to Read

We had an amazing moment today while I was making dinner. My 4 year old daughter named the letters on the Corn Flakes box and read the word “flakes” as “f-l-a-k-e-s” (short a & short e). After I explained that the “e” is silent and tells the “a” to say its name, she read the word correctly! Then she covered the “f” and asked me what it says. I told her to try it out for herself, and she read “lakes”. Then she proceeded to cover other letters and read those words, too. I was stunned and called my hubby and my dad. This is a moment that I have been anxiously waiting for. I just knew that she was ready to start reading! Here is a sampling of what I have done to get us to this point:

• For a couple of months now I have been demonstrating how to sound out words by saying the sounds of each letter and then “pushing” the sounds together.

• I point out sight words (the, is, what) when I read aloud.

• I have her read the letters in alphabet books.

• I have shown her how you can use onsets and rimes to make new words and to figure out unknown words.

1. I’ve written words in the same word family (-at) with sidewalk chalk and bathtub crayons.
2. I explain that we know that “a-t” says “at”.
3. Now add the “b” to “at”. The word is “bat”.
4. Take off the “b” and add a “c”. Now you have “cat”.

I am so excited for her. She was so proud of her accomplishment. This is what homeschooling is all about!