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!
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
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:
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.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Homeschool Record Keeping with Evernote
I am continuing to play around with Evernote. I decided to use it to keep a list of the boy's activities. We do a ton of stuff, but I forget everything we do. Just because I didn't keep track of it doesn't mean we didn't do it, but I find it satisfying to look back and see all that we did.
The first year I homeschooled, I kept a list in paper planner of as much stuff related to education as possible. I find it useful to start a new list each month. Below is an example. Our summer schedule is pretty laid back. I know there are some things that I forgot to put on, and that's okay. I can easily add to it as I remember things, such as looking at the dinosaur exhibit in the museum. I won't update the table on this blog, because it's too dificult, though.
Homeschool Record June 2012
The first year I homeschooled, I kept a list in paper planner of as much stuff related to education as possible. I find it useful to start a new list each month. Below is an example. Our summer schedule is pretty laid back. I know there are some things that I forgot to put on, and that's okay. I can easily add to it as I remember things, such as looking at the dinosaur exhibit in the museum. I won't update the table on this blog, because it's too dificult, though.
Homeschool Record June 2012
| Date | Bee | Bug | Activity | Description | Subject | |
| various | X | X | Neighborhood Pool | Swimming! Bug learned how to swim on his own. | P.E. | |
| 6/23 | X | X | Fossil Hunting | Outing: Park rangers gave a talk on the climate and history of the area; the boys got to collect fossils and bring some home. | science | |
| 6/25-6/29 | X | Camp | Dinosaur Camp at children's museum | science | ||
| 6/25- 6/29 | X | Camp | Animal Habitat Camp at children's museum | science | ||
| various | X | X | Gymnastics | The boys finished their gymnastics classes at each performed in the recital. | P.E. | |
| various | X | Ballet | Bug finished up his ballet class and performed in the dance recital. | P.E., Fine Arts | ||
| various | X | X | Spanish | Review, music | Spanish | |
| various | X | Math facts | Review | Math | ||
| various | X | German | Review | German | ||
| various | X | Spelling | Review | Language | ||
| various | X | Watership Down | listening to me read book | Language | ||
| various | X | Band of Brothers | finished listening to dad read book | Language |
I think Evernote is going to be a good organizational tool for me. I'll post an example of my record keeping for the regular school year in a few months.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
K.I.S.S.
Keep It Simple, Stupid. That's what I had to tell myself. I'm supposed to be using the summer to organize, to gather and prepare materials, and to just generally get everything ready for the upcoming school year.
ONE of the many things I'd like to do is make language cards. These will be laminated photo cards that I can use with both children for auditory games to increase their Spanish vocabulary. (I do not do reading or writing in Spanish with them and do not intend to until they are much older). I can also make English labels for the cards, creating some Montessori-style reading activities for Bug, and he can use them when he's ready.
I bought a beautiful book called Photos for Building Language Skills. It has 900 color photos, divided by category. The categories are actions/verbs, animals, bathroom, body, clothing, colors and shapes, emotions, food, furniture and household items, holidays and seasons, kitchen, money, music, nature and weather, opposites/adjectives, people and family, places, positional concepts, rooms at home, school tools, sign language, survival signs, time, toys, and transportation.
Some of the cards I will not use. We don't learn sign language, so I don't need sign language cards. However, the vast majority of the cards I'll be able to put to great use.
Back to the keep it simple part: I had planned to pick out pretty scrapbooking paper for each category, mount the cards onto it, and then laminate them. However, I realized that all the pages of the cards have a unique background color already on them. Therefore, all I need to do is use my paper cutter to cut the cards out and then laminate. That will save me a ton of time--cutting the backings and gluing the cards on them would have taken me many additional hours.
I'm estimating that I'll be making at least 800 cards! I do not actually know the Spanish words for all of the cards, although I know most, so I'll have to make myself a cheat sheet as well. I think I'll cut and laminate my cards first, make cheat sheets that can be foled up, and store each set of cards and cheat sheets in slider sandwich baggies. I also may need smaller ziplock sandwich baggies to separate the cards we've worked with from the new cards.
And that's only one of the many things I want to do this summer.
ONE of the many things I'd like to do is make language cards. These will be laminated photo cards that I can use with both children for auditory games to increase their Spanish vocabulary. (I do not do reading or writing in Spanish with them and do not intend to until they are much older). I can also make English labels for the cards, creating some Montessori-style reading activities for Bug, and he can use them when he's ready.
I bought a beautiful book called Photos for Building Language Skills. It has 900 color photos, divided by category. The categories are actions/verbs, animals, bathroom, body, clothing, colors and shapes, emotions, food, furniture and household items, holidays and seasons, kitchen, money, music, nature and weather, opposites/adjectives, people and family, places, positional concepts, rooms at home, school tools, sign language, survival signs, time, toys, and transportation.
Some of the cards I will not use. We don't learn sign language, so I don't need sign language cards. However, the vast majority of the cards I'll be able to put to great use.
Back to the keep it simple part: I had planned to pick out pretty scrapbooking paper for each category, mount the cards onto it, and then laminate them. However, I realized that all the pages of the cards have a unique background color already on them. Therefore, all I need to do is use my paper cutter to cut the cards out and then laminate. That will save me a ton of time--cutting the backings and gluing the cards on them would have taken me many additional hours.
I'm estimating that I'll be making at least 800 cards! I do not actually know the Spanish words for all of the cards, although I know most, so I'll have to make myself a cheat sheet as well. I think I'll cut and laminate my cards first, make cheat sheets that can be foled up, and store each set of cards and cheat sheets in slider sandwich baggies. I also may need smaller ziplock sandwich baggies to separate the cards we've worked with from the new cards.
And that's only one of the many things I want to do this summer.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Venus Transit: Ideal vs Real
I imagine the ideal family, homeschooling or not, preparing for the Venus
transit, explaining in advance to their children what it means. They
would prepare for the event by figuring out the best and most enriching
public viewing area to attend and RSVP early. They would all go
together, smiling and happy, possibly holding hands. They might even
set up a telescope in their yard. Everyone would be thrilled by this
rare astronomical phenomenon, and it would spark an interest in their
children that would lead to a unit study in advanced astrophysics.
Back to reality, our family observed the Venus Transit the other day. My husband has a vague interest in astronomy and saw the last one back a few years ago. The day before this year's transit, he began complaining about how he didn't RSVP in time at the university to see it there, how to see it at one of the local museums would cost $30 a person, and so on. He complained that he did not have a tripod for his high powered binnoculars. I mentioned snidely that he had many years to prepare for this moment, and it was too bad he chose to wait until the last minute. I, the homeschooling mom, had no interest in planning for this Venus transit thing. I had better things to worry about, like fitting in enough theme park visits this summer.
On the day of the transit, I assured my husband, still sulky about the Venus transit happening and not being able to see it, that it would be too cloudy to see anyway. "Too bad for all the suckers who paid for the dinner!" I thought to myself. "It's just a dot," I told him. "It's not like anything's exploding. Who cares?" He went upstairs to tell Bee about it and received a similar (rude) response.
Well, my mathematician/physicist husband used his cute head and ended up projecting the Venus transit onto a card by propping his binnoculars on a lawn chair. Bug was out there with him and was happy to see it. Bug (age 4) can identify all the planets and is very interested in them. Then I came out and decided it was pretty cool after all, followed by Bee who thought the same thing. He can also identify the planets by looking at pictures. I thing planets are pretty, but I get confused sometimes trying to tell them apart. Clearly, my children take after their dad in many ways.
I was very impressed with my husband's makeshift projection system. He's quite the homeschooler.
Back to reality, our family observed the Venus Transit the other day. My husband has a vague interest in astronomy and saw the last one back a few years ago. The day before this year's transit, he began complaining about how he didn't RSVP in time at the university to see it there, how to see it at one of the local museums would cost $30 a person, and so on. He complained that he did not have a tripod for his high powered binnoculars. I mentioned snidely that he had many years to prepare for this moment, and it was too bad he chose to wait until the last minute. I, the homeschooling mom, had no interest in planning for this Venus transit thing. I had better things to worry about, like fitting in enough theme park visits this summer.
On the day of the transit, I assured my husband, still sulky about the Venus transit happening and not being able to see it, that it would be too cloudy to see anyway. "Too bad for all the suckers who paid for the dinner!" I thought to myself. "It's just a dot," I told him. "It's not like anything's exploding. Who cares?" He went upstairs to tell Bee about it and received a similar (rude) response.
Well, my mathematician/physicist husband used his cute head and ended up projecting the Venus transit onto a card by propping his binnoculars on a lawn chair. Bug was out there with him and was happy to see it. Bug (age 4) can identify all the planets and is very interested in them. Then I came out and decided it was pretty cool after all, followed by Bee who thought the same thing. He can also identify the planets by looking at pictures. I thing planets are pretty, but I get confused sometimes trying to tell them apart. Clearly, my children take after their dad in many ways.
I was very impressed with my husband's makeshift projection system. He's quite the homeschooler.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Homeschooling at a Theme Park: Maps
So, we went to our local theme park today. We have season passes. I absolutely love going there on weekdays, especially in the spring before school lets out and in the fall after school has started. We miss having husband/daddy along, but it's great to be there and encounter no lines or crowds.
I would never assign a task at a theme park or try and make it be a learning experience; we just go to have fun. However, the problem with homeschooling is that you just can't help but learn wherever you go, and it's often not in the so-called "educational" areas that our theme park offers.
What I am loving about theme parks for my kids is the map reading that it encourages. Both Bee and Bug insist on having their own paper map. I never get a map--I just borrow one of theirs if I need to look at something.
Bee, of course, reads the words on the map, and last year that was a really good activity for him. Now, his reading level is much higher, and it's no longer a challenge. But it's nice to see him looking at the map and orienting and figuring out which direction things are in. He can also read the signs well. I gave him the task of remembering our parking lot name and number, and he did, and he took great pride in directing us right to our car.
Bug, on the other hand, is just getting an introduction to maps. He likes to look at it and find his favorite rides and point to them on the map. He's just identifying landmarks and getting used to the idea of the map, and it makes him feel grownup and important to hold his own map.
The thing I love the most about this "map activity" is that I had nothing to do with it. Bee started insisting on getting his own map at some point. Of course, Bug wants to be big like his older brother and have a map too. I did not sit down with them and point things out about the map that I think they should know--they just ask me questions about it. This is an activity that came spontaneously from them, and I always think that's neat. I don't think it's necessary at all for a good learning experience, but I love it when it happens that way.
I am pretty sure, however, that the maps would not be nearly as fun if it had been my idea and I had given them each a map. "Here you guys go! Maps! See what you can find on a map! This is North!" And so on. It's much more fun for all of us when they take the initiative.
Our Worm Factory Arrives
Our Worm Factory came. The worms haven't arrived yet, since I ordered them separately. Bug and I set it up together. It looks nice, and there is nothing about it that screams "worms live here." Obviously, some people (like my parents) would freak out to know that worm composting was going on in my house.
I like it much, much better than my attempts at homemade bins. One of the things that attracted me to it is that each tray weighs only 18 pounds when full--in other words, easily managable. My homemade bins would get extremely heavy.
Bug is very excited--he was worried that our dog might eat our new worms, but I assured him we will keep an eye on the dog and make sure he doesn't do that. I think this is going to be a fun, low maintenance project. And, if we do have any problems with univited bugs to our bin, I can always move it outside as a last resort. I think it would be fine on our shady back deck in the summer and in the garage in the winter.
I like it much, much better than my attempts at homemade bins. One of the things that attracted me to it is that each tray weighs only 18 pounds when full--in other words, easily managable. My homemade bins would get extremely heavy.
Bug is very excited--he was worried that our dog might eat our new worms, but I assured him we will keep an eye on the dog and make sure he doesn't do that. I think this is going to be a fun, low maintenance project. And, if we do have any problems with univited bugs to our bin, I can always move it outside as a last resort. I think it would be fine on our shady back deck in the summer and in the garage in the winter.
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