All About Spelling: A First Impression

After a little over a year of using a basic spelling list and online flashcards with Bee, I decided we needed a different approach.  He was getting frustrated sometimes, and there were words that he just kept missing, even though he had seen them over and over.

I decided to try All About Spelling, which is a spelling program that uses coloful note cards, letter tiles, a large dry erase board, utilizes audio, visual, and kinesthetic learning, and emphasizes the rules of English spelling.  Bee is very logical, and I think he will appreciate having a better understanding of why things are spelled the way they are.  As I understand it, English spelling does actually have rules, but most of us aren't aware of most of them.  I mostly learned how to spell by being an avid reader, and memorizing my spelling words each week as a child.

I ordered level 1, and although much of that level is going to be pretty easy for Bee, there are some new thinsg for him to learn, and there are even a few things that I have learned about English spelling!  I haven't learned to spell anything new, but I did learn how to tell when letter "c" is going to make the "s" sound instead of the "k" sound, and when to use the letter "k" in place of the letter "c."

It's not a material for independent work.  The parent sits with the child and gives a number of lessons that are carefully explained in the teacher book.  This is ideal for Bee, as he thrives on one-on-one interaction with an adult.

It took some time to tear out the cards, and I still have not finished putting all the magnets on the tiles.  Still, the teacher prep is easy work that requires no mental power.  I don't know about other homeschooling moms, but my brain is totally fried.  So, this is easy, and the only prep is a glance through the teacher manual, before giving the lesson. 

Another huge plus for this material is that it is worksheet free!   The emphasis is on learning the concepts, not filling out worksheets.  There is a card file to store the cards, so the parent knows what to review, and mastered cards go into their own divider.  It's a very well organized little system. 

I hope that we will work through level 1 relatively quickly.  I did the first lesson yesterday, and I hope to do 2 lessons a day a few times a week until we master level 1.  Then, we will move onto level 2, and maintain or slow down our pace depending on how challenging Bee finds the material.  It seems like a great material for homeschooling that can be used with both children who are natural spellers and those who struggle with it.

So, that was my first impression, at any rate.  I will write another review after I've been using the material for a few months.  (Here it is.) 

Learning Addition with a little Montessori

Bug, who is about to turn 5, has been learning addition this year.  My background is in Montessori, and we emphasize the concepts of the various operations when the children are 4 and 5, so that's what I've been trying to do with Bug.  Addition is putting together; subtraction is taking away; multiplication is putting together the same quantity; and division is sharing equally.  When children understand these concepts well, they have a great foundation for future mathematics study. 

I showed him addition with the Montessori Golden Bead material first.  The golden bead material contains thousand cubes, hundred squares, ten bars, and unit beads.  This allows the children to have a concrete impression of our base-10 number system.  We added some 4-digit quantities this way.  I'm not sure it quite clicked for Bug at that point, but it's hard to say, as so much goes on with him internally that I don't know about.  It's very different working with this material at home than it is in a classroom, where he would have been watching the older children work with this material. 

He's also done some addition on his fingers, and this week I had him do some addition problems using seashells as counters.  Both times he did this, I wrote five one-digit problems on a colorful piece of paper and had him answer them.  At this point, it was clear to me that he understands the concept of addition. 

He has been very enthusiastic.  He's a tad too perfectionist about getting his numbers to look just the way he wants them, but I can deal with that.  Today, I was so happy because he made worksheets for his brother and his dad (and himself!).  His brother and dad were happy to humor him by answering the problems. 

Later this week, I hope to show him addition with carrying on the golden bead material.  This is not for accuracy, it's just to give them impression of what happens when we carry, and how we can't go over 10 in each place value. 

I do not think the Montessori materials are necessary for teaching children math at home.  I have them mainly because they have such sentimental value for me.  They are extremely helpful, but there are many good ways of showing math to young children.  I think the most important thing is that children have a solid understanding of how the operations work. 
He'll eventually move onto another Montessori material, called the Stamp Game, that allows children to work with 4-digit quantities in a concrete way.  We'll also be working over the coming months with memorizing his addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts, with a goal of finishing these by the time he finishes second grade.  I'm hoping that computer games will prove to be a good tool for him in the memorization process (as they were for me once upon at time), but these did not work for his brother. 

Hurray for math!  So far, it's been my favorite homeschool subject to facilitate.  I supposed that is odd, since I am a former English and Classics major.  My children's other parent is a mathematician; perhaps that motivates me. 

Time4Learning: A Review

With Bug being homeschooled full time this year, along with his older brother, we've all had a lot of adjusting to do.  At first I thought that he would do things alongside his brother, doing something similar but age appropriate.  I am finding that it helps to use the computer to keep Bug busy at certain times, and everything goes a lot more smoothly if he can play on the computer.  PBSkids was an obvious choice.  Looking at Homeschool Reviews, I came upon a program called Time4Learning, which has many, many rave reviews.  I guess I'm going to have to be the oddball, because I didn't care for this program. 

I should have known that I would not like it.  It offers a lot of things like lesson planning and grades, which would be a big time saver for me if I made a lot of lesson plans or grades.  I don't, especially not for a 4-year-old.  Instead of lesson plans, I tend to provide options to him.  I've never understood how homeschoolers can do extensive lesson planning when it's impossible to predict how easy or how hard a concept might be, or how interested a child might be in it, or what else might come up that week.  And I never use grades.  If I feel they need correction, I will usually ask them to fix it.  Sometimes their answer is equally right or even better.  I always tell Bee that it's good if he's not understanding everything right away.  Otherwise, it would be pointless for him to be doing the work, if he's already mastered it! 

The other problem I saw was that, based on most of the concepts taught, Bug really needed to be in their 1st grade program (he knows his numbers to 100 well, and is becoming more proficient up to 1000).  However, he didn't quite have the reading skills to do the activities.  The lessons seemed boring to me, and there was constant multiple choice quizzing.  It observed that each activity consisted of a boring explanation, followed by a boring worksheet type activity, followed by a boring quiz.  For insteance, my son knows how to sort, but he had to sit through a lengthy explanation on the sorting process. 

Time4Learning is rather expensive, at $20/month/per child. Fortunately, they offer a free trial period of 14 days, and I was able to get my money back. The company seems to have good customer service, refunded my money hours after I had cancelled, and sent me an email asking for feedback.  They also offer monetary credit to those who leave reviews, which makes me think that the abundance of rave reviews are possibly not as genuine as they could be. 

I think it was mostly a philosophical problem that I had.   This is probably a good program for parents who value their children checking off objectives on state standards lists and want more test prep.
In our homeschool, we emphasize critical thinking, logic, following our intellectual passions, asking probing questions, and so on.  This program is just not a good fit for us. 

I'd rather my 4-year-old occupy himself happily with PBSKids.  We'll also be trying CBeebies, published by the BBC.  These sites won't help much with my lofty educational objectives for Bug, but they will keep him happy at no cost to me while I read to his brother from our history book, and Bug may learn a little something in the process.

Note to commenters:  I've noticed that several negative reviews of Time4Learning have the same people commenting on them, as if they are affiliated with the company in some way.  If I suspect you being compensated by the company, then I will not publish your comment if you have not disclosed your affiliation. 

Our Worm Bin: An Update

I had a comment asking for an update on our worm bin.  We got a Worm Factory about three months ago and stocked it with 500 red wriggler worms.  We are not squeamish and keep it in oun den, next to a love seat.  I had a homemade bin in the past, so was not new to raising worms. 

The bin is doing great.  There are lots of worms of different sizes, so I assume they are reproducing well.  I added the second tray on a couple of weeks ago, and many of my worms have already moved up there.  My youngest child enjoys feeding his banana peels and apple cores to the worms.  I am putting more and more of our kitchen scraps in there, and I think eventually it will be able to absorb the majority of them.  Some kitchen waste will still need to go in the outdoor bin, such as garlic, onion, and citrus pellings.  I tear up lots of cereal box-type cardboard for the bedding.

There are structured "worm activities" out there, but I haven't looked into doing them. The children just know the worms exist, they eat are garbage, and produce castings that we can use in the garden.  Worms are a fun addition to any homeschool (or home). 

Homeschool Day Book: A Review

Record keeping is not my strong suit.  As I've written before, I've been experimenting with Evernote to keep of a monthly list of our activities.  However, I was not completely satisfied with it because it took time to get the table formatted, and it couldn't be easily separated out into other types of reports.

Our school year "officially" started on Tuesday, and Monday night I stayed up getting things organized and planned for the week.  I decided to take a new look at homeschool record keeping software and printable planning pages.  

I came across a number of options, most of which I did not like. The programs I looked at had features that were not relevent to my family, such as grades and detailed lesson plans.  I am sure that these types of programs are invaluable to parents who make detailed plans well in advance and want to keep track of grades.  I looked at paper planners, but I was able neither to find or make something that looked like it would be easy to work in the moment and convenient to look back on at the end of the year. 

Then I came upon Homeschool Day Book.  I downloaded the free trial.   I think it's a keeper.  I like it much, much better than my own Evernote system, or any other system I've tried.  I've made a daily checklist to keep on a clipboard to check off through the day what the children do, and then I can quickly enter it into Homeschool Day Book at the end of the day, week, or month (yikes, hopefully not a whole month at once). 

Here are the pros for Homeschool Day Book:

• It is extremely intuitive to use.  It didn't hurt my brain to figure out how to use it.   A person with basic computer literacy will figure out how to use all the features of the program within 5-10 minutes. 
• It is easily customizable.  You can enter your own subjects and categories how you like. 
• If you enter an activity for the day, then it automatically updates your "attendance" record, marking that child as present for the day.  
• When you enter an activity, you can enter it for one or more children at the same time AND one or more subjects at the same time.  This is awesome, because we have so much overlap.  
• To create a report, you select the time period that you want, select the child or children, and select all subjects or one particular subject. 
• At first, I was sad that there was not a "book list" or "field trip" option because I wanted to keep track of  books I read outloud to the kids and print that out separately.  Then I realized that I can just call them subjects, so that I can print out separate reports for them.  Each time we finish a book, or go on a field trip, I can check that field.
• You can also keep track of how much time is spent on a particular activity/subject, but I'm not interested in that.  It would be useful for states where parents are required to log the hours children spend in "school."  

Here are the cons:

•  It's pretty bare bones with few frills. This is a good thing in some ways, but it also means that there just aren't that many features to figure out.  
•  I am not crazy about the way the reports look.  If you create a report for both your kids, for instance, it doesn't indicade which kid particpated in which activity, nor does it indicate the subjects that you checked.  You can print out reports by kid and by subject, however.  Also, there is a lot of white space that shows up if you create the report with description.  

Overall, this program is fun and easy to use, very customizable, ideal for relaxed, eclectic, and/or unsnchoolers.  I think it would be invaluable to someone who needs to keep track of how much time their children are spending on "school" to meet state requirements.  It's definitely more fun, faster, and convenient to enter data into the program than it was to enter it into a homemade table or spreadsheet.  It costs $39, which is not cheap, but it is comparable or less than similar programs.  If I have the time, I will use the reports to create my own, prettier reports of our homeschool.  If I don't have time, the reports generated by Homeschool Day Book will suffice, printed by child and by subject.

I'm happy about this convenient way to keep track of what we do.  Like I always say, the children learn the same whether or not I write down what they do, but it certainly gives me a feeling of satisfaction to be able to look back and see all that they accomplished. 

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Homeschool Day Book in exchange for writing a review (positive or negative) on my blog. 

Evernote and Homeschooling: An Update

As it turns out, I'm increasingly finding Evernote to be a useful tool.  It's much more convenient than bookmarking a site.  It's nice that you don't have to worry about the site disappearing because you've saved the information on the Evernote.  All you do is highlight the information from a site that you want to save, click on the little Evernote button that gets added to your browser, and then tag the site.  I use tags such as homeschool, homeschool 2012-2013, Spanish vocabulary, science experiments, history, etc.  I learned today that you can nest your tags, so that pretty much all tags related to homeschooling are now a sub-tag of homeschooling. 

I always find cool crafts on the Internet, but then I have trouble finding them in my bookmarks.  Now, I have them saved in Evernote and categorized seasonally.  I'm making my plans for the year in Evernote.  I was making our weekly schedule in Open Office, but I may make that in Evernote too. 

As I wrote before, I'm also keeping a monthly record of our activities with a table in Evernote.  I admit that it's impossible to keep track of everything educational that the boys do, but it certainly does make me feel better to look back and see what we have done.  I tend to stay so focused in the present and the future that sometimes I look back on the blur that was my month and think, Did we do anything at all?  Jotting down what we did is really helpful to me.  The boys learn the same whether I write it down or not.
Although it's not directly related to homeschooling, I'm really happy with organizing recipes with Evernote.  I've even typed some in, and it's very convenient to me to just pull up the recipe on computer and consult it as needed.  If I get an iPod Touch, I'll be able to pull up the recipes right in the kitchen. 

I have my recipes tagged under both recipe, and under their main ingredients (which are now subtags of recipe.)  I'm planning to use Evernote to plan our monthly meals.  I am a big fan of freezer cooking.  I am lucky to be married to a man who enjoys cooking, so I only have to make four meals a week (Monday through Thursday).  That means I could cook 32 meals and have enough for 2 months! 

Record Keeping: Simple Portfolios and Scrapbooks

One thing I've done for the past two years is put much of Bee's work in a 3-ring binder, for each school year.  I have it divided into three categories:  Math, Language, and Other.  For his first grade year, I put nearly all of his written work in there because we just didn't do a ton of written work.  For his second grade year, I've put all of his writing samples and the weekly math page that we did, but I had to thin out and just use what I thought were the best/most interesting/most representative samples.

I'm also making a binder of the work that Bug brought home from preschool (drawings, letter and number tracing, Montessori metal insets, etc.).  I put little projects he's done around the house as well.  His stuff is kind of scattered, so I'm gradually collecting it.  Since he'll be only homeschooling next year, I'll start a new binder for him.

I'm going to a "crop" this weekend.  For those who don't know, that's where a bunch of scrapbookers get together in a big room and work on projects.  I'm hoping to make simple 8.5 x 11 pages of the field trips that Bee (and Bug to a lesser extent) went on the past two years.  I will then make a copy of them.  The originals will go in a special family homeschool scrapbook.  The copies will go in their binders for the year that they occurred.

I keep photo pages, certificates, and the most special projects in plastic sheet protectors in the notebok.  The protectors are especially good for little booklets.  Many pages just get 3-hole-punched and stuck in the binder.  I am probably saving too many things, but at least they are neatly put away in a binder, rather than scattered throughout the house. 

I start the school year the in June before the real school year starts.  So, most everything that happens in the summer before the school year goes in the binder for the upcoming school year.   Other families might find it makes more sense to start in the fall.  Or those who eschew the concept of the traditional school year might start in January.  And there's no rule that these binders need to be "one-year" binders.  Families who are better at throwing things out might have a binder that spans several years. 

This portfolio/scrapbook could also easily be put together by non-homeschooling parents who want to save momentos and work from each school year. 

List of Items I include (or plant to include) in portfolios: 

• Photos of museums and cultural attractions we visited (we went many places locally, and Bee and his dad travelled to both NYC and DC this year!)
• Photos of fun days (like when we went to theme parks during school hours)
• Photos of them and their homeschool friends at park days
• Photos of  extracurricular activities
• Writing samples:  I treasure these; it is so special to look back on what children thought was interesting to write about.  I love to keep the scraps of paper I find lying around the house with things that they spontaneously created. 
• Interesting workbook pages
• Art work (larger pieces can be photographed, and the photograph included)
• Projects made at camps and classes
• Certificates/ribbons given upon completion of a program or winning a prize
• Brochures of Places we Visited
• This coming year, I hope to include in each binder a list of the things that we did each month, from my Evernote.  

They learn the same whether or not I keep records!  But it is nice for all of us to look back on what we've done to get a sense of accomplishment.