A Traditional Literature Theme: Myths and Legends

Here are more ideas for using traditional literature in your homeschool this month. Try reading Myths and Legends.

Myths

Myths are creation tales that include supernatural activity. For a more detailed definition go to About.com.

• Spark Notes is packed with information about mythology. It can be a great resource for you as you start to learn about mythology.
• Have your children read Myths from various cultures such as Native American and Greek myths. Examine the themes that appear in those myth,s and create a grid to of those themes as a graphic organizer. You can also have your children illustrate the myths in order to help them visualize the stories better.
• Discuss the religious nature of the myths that you read. Since most myths have something to do with creation, take this opportunity to discuss creation according to the Bible. You can even make a creation lapbook with your children. I found a free creation lapbook from Lapbook Lessons.

Legends

Legends are stories partially based on fact, but have exaggerated details.

• Children of all ages, particularly boys, love legends! Who can resist the adventures of Robin Hood and King Arthur? These are great, action packed stories to read aloud.
• Write a script for a favorite legend and act it out, or simply have your children choose a favorite scene to turn into a skit.
• Since it is March, you can research the legend of St. Patrick at History.com. You can also find information about St. Patrick at RiverDeep.net
• Write a modern day Legend after examining others. Have your children include illustrations of the legendary hero and his/her adventures.

Photo courtesy of Jorge-11

Puppets Encourage Homeschool Literacy

Puppets can be a useful tool in your homeschool literacy program. Here are a few ways to use them with children eight years old and younger.

~Your beginning reader can read books to a puppet. Young children buy into the fantasy of the puppet interacting with them. Sometimes the presence of the puppet helps a child who is struggling with reading to relax and enjoy the experience. The puppet makes it fun to read.

~Your children can retell books by writing a script and using puppets. It is a fun way to encourage your children to reread a book and understand it well enough to capture the essence of the story. It also encourages your children to write a good script. Younger children will love to watch the puppet shows, too.

~You can make a read aloud more engaging with a puppet. My kids love listening to the puppet read stories, ask questions, and explain parts of the stories. They talk to the puppet. They also like touching it and even mimicking the way that I use the puppet. This tool can be especially helpful in engaging children who find it difficult to sit still long enough to listen to a whole book.

~Your children can teach the puppet. This is a fun way to have your child summarize a new skill or concept that you’ve been practicing. For example, the puppet can learn to sound out words or find rhyming pairs. The puppet can even find sight words in a story such as “the”, “what”, and “said”.

~You can research another culture with puppets. Shadow puppets are part of Indonesian culture. Your children can create a shadow puppet show as a culminating activity after researching Indonesian culture.

Have fun with puppets!

Photo courtesy of nickstone333

Homeschool Learning in the Snow

Photo by *clarity*

Instead of letting the snow distract you and your children from school work, try these ideas for using the snow to your advantage in your homeschool. This is the first in a series of posts about learning opportunities in the snow.

~Practice handwriting.

-Use a stick to write the letters and numbers in the snow.
-Try using a paint brush and water tinted with food coloring to practice writing letters and numbers.
-Use your feet to make BIG letters and numbers in the snow. Color the letters with tinted water in a spray bottle.
-Pack snow into a container and “build” a letter out of snow (similar to building a sand castle).

~Learn geometry.

-Draw shapes in the snow with a stick, or use your body to make shapes in the snow. Organize the shapes by number of sides.
-Pack the snow into different shaped containers and flip them over to reveal a cube, a cone, or a sphere.
-Investigate the best way to draw a circle in the snow.
-Make a circle in the snow and measure the radius and the diameter.
-Use bowls, cookie cutters, cups, or other containers to press shapes into the snow to make tessellations.

Have fun learning in the snow!

Homeschool Visual & Kinesthetic Checklist

Photo by Tony Crider

Are there parts of your homeschool routine that are frustrating you and your children? In a previous post I mentioned creating a visual agenda or checklist to help with difficult times of the day. I have been working with C4 to create a few checklists for a few challenging times during the day. So far C4 has found the checklist for getting ready to leave the house helpful and it has made that process less trying for us. She really likes having something to help her focus.

I wanted to share the process of making the checklists and show you pictures of ours.

• One afternoon we discussed the problems we were having with getting ready to leave the house, and I suggested that having a checklist would help. C4 agreed that it sounded like a good idea.
• We wrote a list of what she needs to do in order to be ready to leave. (shoes, coat, hat, mittens, backpack, & sit)
• We used catalogs and parenting magazines to find pictures of these items to cut out. These tend to be the most appropriate magazines to use with young children.
• I drew a line around the picture that we wanted, and C4 cut along that line.
• C4 glued each picture onto an index card.
• I had intended on putting the cards into a pocket chart, but C4 wants to manipulate the cards. So we keep them in a hanging folder on the door. She pulls them out and files through them as she gets ready to go.
• We repeated the process for the morning routine. We looked for the following pictures: the potty, brushing teeth, brushing hair, getting dressed, & eating.

Shoes

Mittens and Hat

Jacket

Backpack

Sitting

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.
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  . 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.
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  , 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?

The Leaves are Falling!

Autumn is by far the best season ever! The weather is chilly, but not too cold. The foliage is amazing, too. Then there are all of the great fall activities that we love to do like apple picking and hiking. We have focused on nature and the seasons this year, so we’ve read many books about fall so far. There is a downfall to this great season, though. The raking that needs to be done is a huge burden for us. Our yard is surrounded by our neighbors’ trees, and all of those leaves fall into our yard. That means lots of work for us in the autumn. My hubby and I decided to make a little game out of it with the kids, and it turned out to be a great teaching opportunity.

We had the kids walk around the yard and put leaves into their buckets to put them leaves into our compost pile. As they were doing this, they noticed that the leaves were not all the same. Daddy showed them what a maple leaf looks like. We have two other kinds of leaves in our backyard, oak leaves and another one that we didn’t recognize. Daddy suggested that the kids walk around the yard and sort the maple, oak, and unidentified leaves. They emptied the sorted leaves into the compost pile, and on our way back into the house, I brought several leaves inside for an art project. When we got inside, we found an interactive website at About.com to help us identify the last leaf and discovered it was an elm. Then I had the kids sort the leaves into oak, elm, and maple leaf piles. Then we used the leaves to make collages of the different types of leaves. The kids were so excited about this project from start to finish, and we all had a lot of fun!

I liked a lot about these particular activities. One thing that stands out is the kinesthetic nature of the work. The kids sorted the leaves in a very active way by collecting them in the yard, and then they re-sorted them when we got inside. I was able to show the kids how they can research on the internet as well. I also like the visual and tactile piece that came with making the collages. The kids manipulated the leaves in order to make their collages, and touching the leaves in this way gave them a clearer picture of the shape of each type of leaf. They also have these art pieces to refer to now to remind them what the different types of leaves look like. In the end, they will remember how to identify these leaves particular leaves in the future.

Mallard Math

We have practiced our math skills in a variety of ways through Make Way for Ducklings. There are a few mathematical possibilities in this particular book that you might find helpful if you are also working on this particular lapbook.

Since there are eight ducklings in the book, we have practiced counting the number eight. Since my kiddos are kinesthetic learners, I need to incorparate manipulatives into our math work, and a great manipulative for this particular lesson is plastic Easter eggs. First, we sorted the eight eggs by color and counted how many eggs there were of each color. We compared which color we had more and less of. We also dabbled in addition and subtraction by adding one more egg and removing one egg. After all of that manipulative work, we made a counting book with the numbers 1-8. It’s a graduated page book. On each page the children drew the amount of eggs that correlate with the number on the page. Creating this book is also a great way to address the unique the needs of kinesthetic learners since there is a lot of interaction involved – turning the pages, drawing the eggs, counting the eggs, and coloring the eggs. My children needed a bit of guidance with staying focused on the task, but overall, this was a hit!

We also used the song “Five Little Ducks” to talk about counting backwards from 5. We used it as a finger play while I a read a great picture book of the song, Five Little Ducks illustrated by Ivan Bates. They really love this song and adding a kinesthetic piece to it just makes it more engaging. Having the visuals (pictures) also makes the song more interesting. Lessons are so much more dynamic when you weave multiple disciplines together.

Get cracking on your math skills, homeschoolers!

Homeschool Composting

I am one of those homeschoolers who try to use kinesthetic activities to improve learning, and I am always looking for creative ways to connect our learning to real life. The other day I was thinking about all of the waste that leaves my kitchen every day and how to reduce that. The it occurred to me that we can make our home more eco-friendly. Even though we recycle, there is a lot of organic waste that goes down the drain. I would rather put it to good use and since we are growing a garden this year, it dawned on me that we should start composting. Children can learn more about being “green” by maintaining a compost pile than from reading books about it or simply recycling. They also find out more about all of the science concepts involved in the process of composting. What a fun way to learn!

Since I myself have a brown thumb, I know nothing at all about composting – or gardening for that matter. I started researching it and found some great information which will get us started. Hopefully this will help you out, too!

Cornell University has a wonderful website filled with information about composting called Cornell Composting. It is a great place to start your composting journey. It is a thorough website with photos to help you. You can also check out The Organic Gardener to learn about compost containers that will make home composting easier.

If you are not new to composting, but you are looking for a new approach to try out, you can attempt the Berkley Thermophilic Compost method. This video gives you plenty of information about this method and even shows you what your compost should look like.

If you want to delve deeper into the topic of permaculture with older children, you can go to Permaculture Reflections, a blog all about the topic. It would be a good jumping off point to help you find topics to research.

I also plan to start a science journal just for our compost pile. The kids will be able to chronicle the process in it, and we can reflect on the changes that we see. We can even include any research that we do about composting. Another part that I like about composting is that it is an ongoing project. We will spend quite some time working with the compost pile. Our learning and understanding of the topic will deepen over time. Then it will simply become part of what we do together.

There is so much to find out about composting. Find a place to set up your compost pile and get started especially since fall is just around the corner and you’ll have plenty of leaves to add to the pile!

Safety Project

We recently heard about a poster contest at my husband’s work. The theme is “safety at home”. This is a topic that has become pretty important to us since our children are pretty precocious and get into everything despite all of our baby proofing efforts. They climb everything. They remove the baby proofing devices. And they always seem to find something that I forgot to put away like the permanent markers that were left out in an accessible place. (Alas, that is a story for another time…)

In order to prepare to make our poster, we are learning about safety at home first. We started today with learning about the letter “x”. My daughter wanted to work on that particular letter anyway, and it works well for safety lessons. You can use “x” to cross out anything that is not safe for the children to touch.

Start with how to write the letter “x”. The kids love writing on the chalkboard, so we took turns writing the letter on the board. Then we made a Xavier the Pirate craft. (Hat Tip: First-School and DLTK) We made ours into a stick puppet, though. We love pirates so we ran with that theme and dressed up as pirates to go on a “safety hunt” instead of a treasure hunt. Xavier helped us to hunt around our home for things we should not touch (especially the things that the kids have been known to find). We marked those things with the letter “x” as a reminder to not touch these things. (Yes, we used the same permanent marker that the children got into before!) We looked mostly for things like medicines, soaps, mouthwash, and things related to fire.

I love the kinesthetic nature of this project and hope that it helps the kids to remember the lesson we’re learning here. By giving the children the opportunity to find and mark the untouchable items, they are taking ownership of this rule. The lesson played on their interests as well – a pretending and dressing up game – to draw them in. Also, seeing what each of the “no touch” items look like will give them a point of reference if they are in someone else’s home. Even though the item might not be marked with an “x”, they might recognize it as a “no touch” item simply by sight. Hopefully, all of their active participation in the project will help them grasp the meaning of the lesson giving my a little peace of mind and giving them some ideas for their poster.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and distinguish between sounds in spoken language, is important to the process of reading. There are many fun ways to give your children opportunities to practice this skill.

This week we are studying “p”.  We created a box of things with the sound/letter of the week. We searched through our toys and found things to fill our box up. The kids need a lot of guidance and some direction in order to think of items that start with the focus sound. Our box was filled with people, pigs, pajamas, a princess, a puzzle, a purse, a pony, peas, a pot, and a policeman. The next day we went through our box carefully saying the names of the items and focusing on the initial sound, /p/. I wrote a list with the names of the toys. We read the list together focusing again on the initial sound.

In addition to the “sound” box we made a collage for /p/. We leafed through some of those catalogs that keep piling up in my house to find pictures of things that start with /p/. Catalogs are nice because they don’t have any inappropriate ads in them, and the pictures are organized. We cut the pictures out and glued them to pink paper (another “p” word). This is some great fine motor practice.

We combined phonemic awareness with handwriting practice as well. We made the letter “p” using die cut paper shapes (scrapbooking paper). I wrote the capital and lower case “p” onto a piece of construction paper. We glued the paper shapes along the outline of the letters. Then we traced over the outline with our fingers. Since the paper has a texture to it, it provides a nice tactile component to the activity. We also made the letter “p” out of play dough. Again, this is tacticle and kinesthetic.