Finding What Works

I've been slowly plugging away at place value with Harry. Very slowly. Now I don't mean he's slow. I mean that we work a couple of days a week for maybe ten minutes at a time. Partly because that's about all he'll cheerfully take and partly because I just forget to do it with him. But it works. We can work at it for a total of twenty minutes one week and yet he gets it when the next week rolls along.

Aside from the Math U See videos and worksheets I made two helpers. One was suggested by the curriculum and those big, colourful, bristol board houses under the red dragon and behind the butterfly net are it. It's a set of place value houses for the MUS blocks. They held Harry's interest for about 4 minutes.



The second set of helpers were just some place value cards. I made a set for Catherine when she was younger and so made a set for Harry and just matched the colours of the cards to the colour of the proper MUS blocks. These he loved.



I think there's a game supplement where MUS recommends place value cards but damn it, I'm claiming creative genius on this one.

In any case he's done well with place value. I'll review it a bit this week but next week we'll move on to addition. I'm fairly sure he'll zoom through that.

Curriculum Lineup

Okay, almost everything is in. I'm waiting on Life of Fred Fractions and I'm hoping for The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe within the next week or two but everything else is ready.

Catherine - Summer/Fall:

Math
Primary Math 5A (Quite a search to find a place that still sells the non-US version)
Brain Maths Volume 1
Life of Fred Fractions
Daily drills
Occasional read alouds and exercises from The Historical Roots of Elementary Mathematics.

English
Winston Grammar
Everyday Editing (my resource!)
Classical Writing Aesop (This may be used less then the next resource)
Suggestions for Simple Writing Exercises for the Grammar Stage
Lots of Reading

Science
The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe
Big read aloud - Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World
BBC Trials of Life videos

History and such
Big read aloud - The Arctic Grail
The Geography Coloring Book

Arts and Crafts
GeeART16
Handsewing a pillow, Nintendo DS case and learning to knit.

Music
Music Ace Deluxe

Philosophy
Philosophy for Kids

Harry

Math-U-See Foundations and Tonka Phonics. Most of his other stuff will be tweaked from what Catherine is doing.

It sounds like a heap of stuff but most of it will be pretty informal. The videos we'll watch on Friday nights with pizza ad popcorn and the read alouds will probably happen as the kids play Hot Wheels and Pokemon. I did build an actual form-filled binder for homeschooling schedules and keeping track of resources (pictures another time) but I suspect that will be more a spine and aid to consistency rather then some slavishly followed program. I hope anyway. I still want to balance the work stuff with some unschooling principles.

We'll see.

Probably, You Shouldn't Read This.

It's been quite a weekend. No, I'm not going to say anything more. It's just been quite a weekend with it's more then it's share of emotional challenges.

It's always at those times though that profound silliness comes to the rescue. Like Saturday night when my sister put sour cream and onion rings on three fingers, stuck up her thumb and said, "Look! It's the three wise men and Baby Jesus!"

I argued that that was completely inappropriate.

The sour cream and onion rings looked too much like halos and so the proper thing to do would have been to have one of them on the baby Jesus thumb and perhaps Ringolos on the fingers.

If you're going to construct nativity scenes with junk food, you damn well better do it properly.

I'm Nominated!

I'm in the running. So far though there are only a few nominees. For me to know I really AM the best I have to beat out LOTS of other homeschooling blogs. Do my ego a favour and go over and nominate some more blogs that you think deserve to be in the running for the Alasandra Homeschool Blog Awards!

Crossing My Fingers

So remember my last post where I expressed my longing for Ellen McHenry's Elements curriculum but my uneasiness about ordering when I couldn't get a response to my emails? Well, I...er...I went ahead and ordered the curriculum anyway. I guess I'll see if she's willing to ship to Canada, eh?

I'll let you all know when it gets here.

Curriculum Sellers - Pet Peeve

I want a specific curriculum. It's The Elements by Ellen McHenry and it looks like a lot of fun. The only hitch? I have no idea if she ships to Canada. I've emailed 3 times to two different addresses (the first one, the one on her site, didn't work) and have had no response yet.

I don't think there's anything nefarious going on here, just a busy woman with a full mailbox. But darn it all, it's frustrating and I don't want to trust a site with an order if I can't even get a response to an email.

For people selling curriculum who don't want to frustrate customers like me there is a solution. Give your customers the option of PDF downloads. Knock a few dollars off the price (what you save in media costs) and let a customer get access to your material as soon as they've paid. There are no issues with shipping to deal with, no worries about parcels that arrive late or not at all, just a quick transaction and a happy customer.

If you're out there Ellen, please contact me. Your curriculum looks fantastic and the sample lesson was a hit with my daughter.

Orson Scott Card - This Guy is a Writer?

I have to wonder.

Here's why - State job is not to redefine marriage.

Read it if you wish but be warned, there's not a well-thought out point or reasonable bit in the whole piece. It's a bit of a shock to realize the screeching hysteric who wrote this rambling and in parts, outright dishonest, rant is the same man who can pen such fantastic, thoughtful and graceful works of sci-fi.

An example:

Already in several states, there are textbooks for children in the earliest grades that show "gay marriages" as normal. How long do you think it will be before such textbooks become mandatory -- and parents have no way to opt out of having their children taught from them?

And if you choose to home-school your children so they are not propagandized with the "normality" of "gay marriage," you will find more states trying to do as California is doing -- making it illegal to take your children out of the propaganda mill that our schools are rapidly becoming.

Either he's horribly uninformed (seems to be an acceptable thing these days. Even people in favour of homeschooling can exhibit the qualities of a Lessenberry it seems) or baldfaced lying. The California case had nothing to do with homosexuality in any respect. The state isn't trying to do anything and in fact was, in the wake of the judges comments about homeschooling, extremely supportive.

The only good thing is that the above quote comes fairly early in the article so I felt excused from having to slog through the rest of the stupidity. If an author goes that wrong so quickly, the duty to give him a fair reading evaporates faster than pee on a hot sidewalk.

How embarrassing for him.