Sunday, May 6, 2012
Took a small vaca...
I decided to take a small vacation from it all and enjoy what I could of my 40th birthday. I have to say it was very uneventful. In fact we did nothing. I had always thought I would finally have a big celebration for the big four O. But, due to a major lack in funds it was not meant to be. I thought 40 would be a bit better than this. I wouldn't have ever thought I would be practically starting over at 40. Struggling to make ends meet. It's been a long, hard year and I hope that it will soon be turning around. But enough of my brooding and depression. I will post again another day hopefully in a much better mood.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Writing resources...
Writing, ug, that subject that many dread to teach, me included. Since the beginning of our homeschool journey back in 2006 I have tried many writing curriculum without much success.
First, we tried Wordsmith. Interesting program, fun and pretty easy to use, but not a good fit for my T who was then in 4th grade. Then, we attempted Rod and Staff writing that is part of their excellent English curriculum, again not for us.
I dabbled in a few small things here and there finally settling on Writeshop which worked better than anything we had tried. It's well laid out, has excellent student and teacher instructions, but the exercises were not exciting. How many times can you describe something, really. What it did teach was the writing process in a very simple but methodical way.
Writeshop was not the answer to my writing curriculum prayers. I was still looking, and looking. One day while looking for Poogie a good writing program, because I wanted to get her started much earlier than T, I found Writing with Ease. Since we used this type of narration and summarizing in SOTW I thought, perfect. And so far it has been a challenging but great writing program for Poogie. But I digress, while looking at WWE I found a link to 7 chapters of a new program by Susan Wise Bauer, Writing With Skill for older students. I quickly downloaded it and implemented into our schedule the next week.
I would love to say it was easy and T loved it from the start but that would be a little white lie, lol. It took some time to get used to how the program is presented and the methods, but when you do the rewards are worth it.
T has always been a good writer, but summarizing and generalizing information is not his strongest skill. These are skills he must master to write well written research papers, a must in high school.
We have been slowly changing over to the classical method of homeschooling and the effective use of these programs by Susan Wise Bauer means we are right on track.
First, we tried Wordsmith. Interesting program, fun and pretty easy to use, but not a good fit for my T who was then in 4th grade. Then, we attempted Rod and Staff writing that is part of their excellent English curriculum, again not for us.
I dabbled in a few small things here and there finally settling on Writeshop which worked better than anything we had tried. It's well laid out, has excellent student and teacher instructions, but the exercises were not exciting. How many times can you describe something, really. What it did teach was the writing process in a very simple but methodical way.
Writeshop was not the answer to my writing curriculum prayers. I was still looking, and looking. One day while looking for Poogie a good writing program, because I wanted to get her started much earlier than T, I found Writing with Ease. Since we used this type of narration and summarizing in SOTW I thought, perfect. And so far it has been a challenging but great writing program for Poogie. But I digress, while looking at WWE I found a link to 7 chapters of a new program by Susan Wise Bauer, Writing With Skill for older students. I quickly downloaded it and implemented into our schedule the next week.
T has always been a good writer, but summarizing and generalizing information is not his strongest skill. These are skills he must master to write well written research papers, a must in high school.
We have been slowly changing over to the classical method of homeschooling and the effective use of these programs by Susan Wise Bauer means we are right on track.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Homeschool Record Keeping
As you may have read on my facebook page my computer got a virus last week and I lost the last 8 months of lesson plans on my Homeschool Tracker. I love the program, and it was my fault for not backing up my data base. I will use it again, but I' like to upgrade from the free Basic to the Plus. But thankfully, I saved all their tests and graded material. Plus, copies of all lesson plans printed out from HST. I also planned this year using subject planners for each quarter.it was nice to see how the year would play out. I love Donna Young's planners. She has great sources for all homeschoolers. She has plans for Apologia Science, handwriting and more. Check it out! Short but sweet :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)