Views from our nature study

We have been studying trees since the beginning of the school year with another family in our back yard. Now that we have major repairs and upkeep occurring to our house, we can no longer romp around our yard. We've moved up to their yard where trees are sparse but the views are beautiful. Here's a couple of photos from our walk today on this unseasonably warm day just past peak color here in Massachusetts.

M.E.P. update

We have been using MEP (Math Enhancement Programme) for over 8 weeks now and, after a bit of trial and error, I have finally found where all my boys should be. We are all really happy with it.

M.E.P. is a complete, and completely free, math curriculum. Years 1 through 6 are for kids ages 6 through 11. The next stage is Years 7, 8, and 9 for ages 11 through 14. The high school program is called GCSE and, like all the other years, is a spiral program. In the US, high school math is done by subject each year (algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus) whereas GCSE covers all 4 with increasing difficulty as a student progresses through the program.

For Years 1 through 6, downloading, printing, and organizing the program is difficult at first until you get the hang of how it is put together. Each year has 3 ebooks:

• Practice Book. This is the student's book to write in and typically has 4 exercises.


• Lesson Plans. This is the teacher's book. It has all the exercises in the Practice Book plus several more for the teacher and student to do together.


• Copy Masters. These are supposed to be for overhead projectors, and many of them are already in the Practice Book. I print out the ones not in the practice book and give them to my child to do.

Each of these ebooks are broken down into 6 sections to make the files smaller for downloading. This means you have 18 files to download for each year. Some of the files require a password to open, which is available in the files section of the Yahoo MEP-homeschoolers group.

I print all of the Practice Book, plus pages of the Copy Master not in the Practice Book. I do not print the Lesson Plans since I view them on the computer during our math time.

Here is how our family uses M.E.P. I set aside 40 minutes for ds#1 (age 9.5 doing Year 3) and 20 minutes for ds#2 (age 7 doing Year 2); I do Year 1 with ds#3 (age 5.5) on occasion. We complete whatever exercises we get done in that time and then stop regardless if a whole lesson is complete. Rarely do we finish a lesson in that time at this point but I see my boys working somewhat faster as they get more comfortable with the program.

I call each exercise a "math challenge" and when they complete each challenge they get a small sticker in the margin of their Practice Book or on the Copy Master sheet I printed. Some of the challenges in the Lesson Plans are done orally or on a dry erase board, so I give them verbal praise for completing it. While some of the challenges are nothing more than a series of calculations to do, usually put together in an interesting format, most of them are showing different ways to use new math skills, and some introduce very advanced concepts in their most simplistic form.

The program is written to be used in a classroom. The exercises are easily adapted to be done by a single child on a dry erase board, with few exceptions.

One of the fascinating and wonderful things I like about this program is that ds#2 has been doing a lot of adding and subtracting from 0 to 100 but has not been taught the "algorithm" that most math programs teach. Yet because he has been doing these calculations in his head, when I do "regroup" he understands exactly why that works. He is not learning a procedure, like ds#1 learned; instead he understands the math in such a way that the procedure eventually becomes obvious to him. This is the part I really like.

The other thing I like is that the kids are doing a lot of calculations in these challenges, the equivalent of a typical "drill" but in a very engaging format. This really has helped them remember their math facts, far better than drill sheets do, because they are using them repeatedly in various interesting contexts. As they remember their facts better, they complete challenges with more ease and speed.

Enzyme experiment

Check out our enzyme experiment we did last week.

More abstract art

We've continued with primary colors, abstract art, and lines. This time we traced tools on our paper and then drew lines across them. Each new little section is colored in a different primary color.

I happened to have a board book with pop-out cardboard tools in them that I used--it was easier than trying to hunt them down in the garage.

I've moved art to Wednesdays and Science to Fridays in hopes of doing more art, since we do so much science anyway. It seems to be working so far.

Quotable Saints for copywork

I just bought this affordable title from CHC and it is almost perfect for copywork. The print is very small, and on newsprint-type paper so it can be difficult to read. Ds#2 can use it fine but I know ds#1, who struggles a lot with copying of any kind, would likely need the quotes retyped and enlarged.

The quotes are grouped by theme; you can also use the index to find all the quotes from a particular saint. I'll be using this book a lot for cursive practice and dictation, too.

Italy study

I am currently leading God's Country Club as we study Italy. Check out what we did this week at God's Country Club blog.

Wow, another art project

Amazingly, I was able to get in another art project before making lunch, frosting pumpkin bars, and heading out to a casual and fun harvest party!

This is based on the work of abstract artist Piet Mondrian. Trying to create something with just the right balance of color and white, just the right rectangles (golden ratios, perhaps?) gives an appreciating for this style of art.

The kids' work came out pretty well. We used oil pastels on sketch paper. The oil pastel tends to smudge into the white space, though.

Art project, finally

The kids finally completed an art project a week later than I expected. It seems our Fridays continue to be taken up with all sorts of different things...

This simple project involved making patterns with primary colors. While my boys do not have the drive to create perfect reproductions in each square, the results were still pretty good.

My new home

I have moved from my blog at Homeschoolblogger over to here so that all my blogs will be in one place. I hope you like my new home!