Eva March Tappan

I have found a children's non-fiction treasure in Eva March Tappan; her books have become the center of our history education.  I have read Marshall, Eggleston, and Guerber, yet we most enjoy Tappan.  A Massachusetts native, making her a local favorite for us, you can read her full biography at The Baldwin Project.

Her writing engages my boys better than other similar books have.  For her events-based books, she ends each chapter with a summary, which is a great narration helper for me, and then three or four creative writing suggestions.  All of her books are all in the public domain and available at the usual places--Google Books, Open Library, The Baldwin Project, and Heritage History to name a few.

For World History we are reading The Story of the Roman People instead of Foster's Augustus Caesar's World.  She of course has books about Greek History and English History, too, among others.  Here is Open Library's list of her titles.

For American History we are focusing on the Colonial Period.  We will use American Hero Stories as well as An Elementary History of Our Country.  In addition, she wrote a delightful book called Letters from Colonial Children.  Ten fictional children, each from a different colony, have written one or more letters to relatives back in the Old World.  According to the preface, while using the modern language of her day she still strove for historically accurate details.

From a Catholic perspective, though Tappan is a Protestant Christian, she by far gives the best account of Catholic American history that I have found in these types of books.  One of the children in Letters is a Catholic girl from Maryland.  While not a perfect Catholic perspective, it gives a lot of Catholic detail and falls only a little short compared to Eggleston, Guerber, and especially Marshall.

With these books as a spine, the rest of my U. S. History should fall into place for the next term.  I'm looking forward to incorporating more of her works into our studies.

Advent

We have begun our Advent break and, yes, I am already behind in our activities!  Sunday was spent relaxing--and lighting the Advent wreath--and yesterday was a whirlwind!  We did see a wonderful performance of the Nutcracker in the morning, spent a couple of hours with friends in the early afternoon, brought Ds#1 to choir practice after that, and then I was off to teach for the evening.

We are catching up, though!  Advent mornings begin with reading The Jesse Tree by Geraldine McCaughrean.  We then read the bible passages listed on the back of the Jesse Tree ornament and place it on the tree.



Next we are following the Advent Catechesis Reading Plan 2010 from Family in Feast and Feria.  The plan is based on three beautiful and instructive books written by Inos Biffi and illustrated by Franco Vignazia.  All three books are available through Family-Centered Media.  The plan has us read An Introduction to the Liturgical Year over two weeks, adding in The Life of Mary during the second week, and then reading The Way to Bethlehem for the third and fourth weeks.  Added to this are readings from Ethel Marbach Pochocki's books Saints of the Seasons for Children and Around the Year Once Upon a Time Saints.  The former is used throughout all 4 weeks; though it is OOP it is readily available used.
The latter is available through Bethlehem Books, as well as Amazon.


I also downloaded the files for My Little Advent cards and companion calendar from Family in Feast and Feria, so I better print them out very soon!

Especially, let us prepare our hearts to celebrate the Lord's coming, and prepare our souls for Him to come again.  Advent blessings to you all.

This Year's Program

I have been very busy over the summer and this fall such that I have not been able to blog, so now that the first term is two-thirds over I guess I will post something about what we are using this year!  I am now into our sixth year of homeschooling and finally, finally have I found what works for us

Religion:  We are continuing using the excellent Faith and Life series, only this year my two older boys are going through the program online.  I purchased access through My Catholic Faith Delivered which not only has the text read aloud to them, it also has a lot of multimedia and interaction to reinforce what they are learning.  They very much enjoy working this way.

Math:  This is our third year with the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (M.E.P.), still a free download from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics.  Ds#3 is about to start Year 2, while Ds#1 and #2 will move up to Year 5 and Year 4 respectively by the start of our next term.  We have a lot of living math books as well that the kids are free to read and use, but this is really our focus.  The program is truly excellent for teaching math.

Language Arts:  Ds#3 started Primary Language Lessons from Hillside Education.  It's been a slow start for him as he gets up to speed with his reading and penmanship, but he is at the stage where he is progressing rapidly.  The program is designed to be covered in a single year, 3rd grade, but I like to go more slowly and cover it in two.  I really love how this program prepares my kids for writing.  No, this program will not put them on "grade level" with grammar or spelling or vocabulary.  But I no longer do any formal spelling since I have found that for some children it comes easily (Ds#2) and for others not so much (Ds#1), and they have best learned spelling through writing.  Vocabulary, too, is best learned through reading.

Ds#2 began Intermediate Language Lessons also from Hillside Education.  He brings his writing from this program to a writing class at our co-op and together they have really improved his imagination and narration.  Ds#1 is on the third section of this program, and also has a co-op writing class, and he has blossomed into a talented creative writer--and this from the loudest complainer about writing!  These boys, they do complain, but eventually they grow into it and this program has helped.

As for grammar, I agree wholeheartedly with the philosophy put forth by Analytical Grammar, a program we are trying, and liking, this year.  They believe, as I do, that grammar is a finite subject that can be learned during the 3 middle school; no year after year of grammar.  The program consists of 3 "seasons" or 10 week sessions, one for each year for grades 6th through 8th.  The bulk of the grammar is taught in these sessions, one building on another; periodic worksheets keep the information fresh between seasons.  I had my doubts that Ds#1 would be able to handle something this intensive and fast-moving.  I made a point of giving him my attention as he learned each section.  It was rocky at first; now I am quite impressed with how well he parses and diagrams sentences.  If he can do it, anyone can do it!
 
World History:  This is our second year using Connecting With History from St. George Books. We are using volume II this year, from the Birth of Christ to the Battle of Hastings (1066).  Between the books and the activity suggestions, this is how history should be done.  While this is a Charlotte Mason approach based on living books, the program is designed like a Classical approach such that you revisit each volume every 4 years, each time moving up another stage.  The whole family worked out of the same volume, yet they each read books and so activities for their level.  If only such a product was available for American History!

American History:  Since we do not have something as great as CWH for this subject, I try my best to set up something similar.  I have decided this year that we are going to study early America--American Indians, The Colonies, and People of the Revolution and the Constitution.  Our focus will be on biographies rather than events.  I used LibraryThing to figure out what books I already have relating to these topics, and then I use the library to fill in anything I may be missing.

You can see what we are doing for Science and Nature on my two other blogs, At Home Science and A Private Eye Nature.  More about co-op, Charlotte Mason, and learning to come!

Twisty Noodle

If you are a fan of Donna Young's Resources and Printables then you may want to check out Twisty Noodle.

Twisty Noodle has tons of coloring pages and penmanship worksheets with a picture to color, the words to copy under the picture, and under than the formatted line to write on.  Just having a picture to color after writing is appealing to Ds#3.  What I found really neat is that not only can you change the words on the worksheet to whatever you want, you can also set the font to be block, D'Nealian, or cursive.  I've printed out a week's worth to get the school year started.

Hands On Homeschool Carnival

Yes, I've learned how to make screencasts for an online class I am teaching at the college, so I thought I'd have a little fun with the carnival this month.  (BTW, I am teaching my kids, too, so they can make narrated electronic presentations...but more on that if and when it ever happens!)

The carnival this month has a few good ideas to think about as the school year quickly approaches.

This Thursday look to the night skies for learning.  I present Planets and Meteors August 12 posted on At Home Science.

Cheryl has moved to Blogger and her new design looks great!  She presents Preparing Your Hands-On Classroom posted at Talking to Myself.

Also, I have tips for using more maps in your homeschooling and keeping them protected from less-than-gentle-handling in Maps and More Maps! on this blog.

Melissa presents baby bluebird bonanza...well, not really a bonanza...but bluebirds, for sure! posted at Bugs, Knights, and Turkeys in the Yard.

Nadene presents Practice Art In The Frame posted at Practical Pages.

Angie in Ga presents Don't leave it out posted at Live, Love, Learn,.

And finally I present Creativity posted on my hands on nature study blog, A Private Eye Nature.

Enjoy!

Maps and More Maps!

Awhile back my mother-in-law gave me a pile of old National Geographic maps, and they have been sitting in the basement waiting to be used.  I bought a large, black, zippered artist portfolio to store them in last year and now I've finally gotten around to doing something with them.

First I actually unfolded them all and placed them into the portfolio.  Excited about using them for homeschooling and knowing how easily maps get torn, I wanted to laminate them.  Dh on the other hand did not want to do anything to them in case a collector was interested in buying them some day (which also means using extreme caution when showing them to the kids).  I mused about having map-sized sheet protectors, and then I realized that they must make something like that to protect nautical charts from getting damaged at sea.  And I discovered they make them for blueprints, too.

I ordered them through Engineering Supplies.  They are certainly too expensive to use like sheet protectors for every map, but I bought one medium and one large one in which to put whatever map I am currently using.  They come with reinforced holes in the edging to hang them and a zip-lock seal on one edge.  Being plastic, we could write on them with dry or wet erase markers and then wipe it away for the next map.  And because these maps are double-sided I can easily make use of the information on both sides of the map.

Yesterday I cataloged the stack of maps so I knew what I had without having to sort through them.  It turns out I have 105 maps dating from 1975 to 2009.  There's a lot of history information in those maps, as well as earth and space science, and, of course, geography.  I really could have used the Great Peoples of the Past maps last year with our ancient history study, so now I am ready to pull one out that relates to whatever we are studying.  Maybe I can use them in much the same way as I do music or art study--hang them up and spend time each week just looking over the make becoming familiar with the geography and history of the world.

Interactive Notebooks with OneNote and Dropbox

Around this time last year I blogged about using OneNote for lesson planning, and I still love it!  In each notebook I create, I can add as many tabs and pages in that tab as I like.  On each page I can put all kinds of resources, from website links to screen clippings to file links or even files, as well as create content directly.  I have not even used a lot of the available features, like tags.  I have found it to be a very powerful tool.

I am now incorporating it into our homeschool.  They have OneNote on their computer upstairs and I created a notebook for each of them with 5 tabs--Science, Nature, Math, US History, and World History (for now).  I can put reading assignments, links to Adaptive Curriculum or ExploreLearning or Discovery Streaming, and comment on their work.  Each subject tab has a journal page for them to write notes about their assignments.

This is the Journal page for the Nature tab. You can add as many tabs and pages as you need.

But what a pain it is to log into their accounts and review their work, especially when I often do that after they go to bed and the computer is in Ds#1's bedroom.  I found a brilliant and free solution called Dropbox that has really let this idea of an interactive notebook take off.

I created a Dropbox account from my laptop; it asks you to put a name in for your computer, so I called it Mom. (It automatically fills in any name already given to your computer, but you can erase that and fill in whatever you want.)  I downloaded the desktop application onto my laptop and onto their computer.  A Dropbox icon now appears in right section of the taskbar and a My Dropbox folder is created in My Documents.  In the My Dropbox folder are the folders that I created online.

This is my folders list on the Dropbox website.

I then created their OneNote interactive notebooks and placed them in my Homeschool folder in the My Dropbox folder. On their computer, I logged into each of their Windows accounts and then logged into Dropbox.  It asks again for a computer name and I put in a different one when I logged in under each of their Windows account--Ds#1 and Ds#2.  Within seconds the OneNote notebooks I created for them appeared in their own Homeschool folders in their My Dropbox folders.

Now all any of us has to do is open the notebooks from within OneNote and make any changes we want, just like we would do before installing Dropbox; it automatically updates all the computers without having to do anything else.  It is all very simple to do, and my kids don't need to have email address or logins to do it.

Of course you don't have to use this to create interactive notebooks.  You could have your children's writing assignments automatically synchronize with your computer, or whatever other file you choose.  Just place a file in the My Dropbox folder on your computer and the software does the rest.  You can even use it for what it was intended--to keep files on your computers, laptops, and mobile devices all synchronized.

You can also make public folders that anyone can access, or shared folders that only people in your network can access.  It's a great way to collaboratively work on a document should you need to (maybe a co-op, perhaps.)  Feel free to join (if you go through this link I get a little extra storage space--a referral perk Dropbox gives to everyone) and connect with me, Kris AtHomeScience!

Mater Et Magistra Magazine and Giant Silkmoths

Mater Et Magistra is my favorite homeschooling publication.  It has an incredible mix of articles and exceptional writing, making it informative, inspiring, and enjoyable.

As you can see in the picture, the magazine has a lovely cover design.  And though I don't think the designers used a Cecropia silkmoth for the color palate, the two happen to match perfectly. The moth my aunt found in her yard.  I put it on the magazine to give perspective to the size of the moth in a photograph and could not help but notice the resemblance.  It shows just how much all-around good sense the publishers have!

Talent Show

Our homeschool enrichment group had its annual talent show. Ds#1 was the Master of Ceremonies for the evening and did a great job! He was also in a skit while Ds#2 played piano. Here's a slideshow of the fabulous evening.

Killdeer At Co-op

Paula's house has some expanses of rocky areas, perfect to camouflage killdeer eggs.  We have not gone hunting for the nest of the one that was running along her drive way that I was able to photograph so nicely.  I was hoping to get a picture of the orange feathers hidden at the base of the tail under the wings, but not this time.

To protect their nests, killdeers will run away from it hoping that the intruder will chase them instead of finding the nest.  This guy was certainly running away from the rocky areas so perhaps there is a nest in the yard somewhere.  We'll have to be careful when we are out there for our co-op cloud study, or when the kids are playing.

I am still hoping to capture the image of a red wing blackbird that also likes to visit her yard.

Math, MEP, Charlotte Mason, and Mastery

Sylvia posted some great food for though on her blog Homeschooling in a Bilingual Home with Mastery versus Spiral.  She discussed one educator's call for math mastery and yet wondered about MEP's spiral design.  These were my thoughts on the subject:

Interesting post, Sylvia. I suggest that given the definitions as presented, MEP is a program of mastery yet is not a Mastery Program.

Reading Liping Ma's book will help people understand what I mean. Ma makes the case, IMHO, that US teachers teach mastery of an algorithm, or the mechanics of doing problems without mastery of the mathematical concepts, while teachers in Asia have a better understanding of mathematical concepts and teach them to their students. IMHO, this was achieved by mastering concepts on a low level (1 or 2 digit numbers, using 10s, etc.) before advancing kids to greater complexity, like multiplying 37946 x 897.

My oldest is in Y4 of MEP; we switched from Math U See last year. He has not done any large or complex multiplications. He continues to master the regrouping and distributive property, though he does not call them that, by breaking larger numbers into smaller numbers and then multiplying or dividing those. He learned division through place value and no longer gets confused by "bringing down the next number." He can multiply and divide large numbers because he figured it out based on his mastery of small numbers. That is the genius of MEP.

Compare this to Math U See. By the end of Gamma my son was multiplying these large numbers because he learned mechanically how to do it, but he didn't really understand what he was doing or why. Englemann calls that Mastery. I call that Mastery of the Algorithms, while I call MEP Mastery of the Concepts. This difference is why Liping Ma got the results she did.

MEP is a true spiral program because it does not put forth a concept to cover until mastery and then move on to the next concept. But there are, what shall I call them, pseudo-spiral programs that are basically mastery programs in that they move from topic-to-topic only do so in shorter bursts. In fact, I think what we call spiral programs are really these mini-mastery programs, and are like Englemann's floating stairs. I can see why Miss Mason did not care for them. MEP then is something different entirely.

Sylvia followed up with Mastery versus Spiral (Part II)

This got me thinking not only about MEP but about education in general.  Regarding MEP:

My first comment is regarding whether MEP is a spiral program or a mastery program. My answer is: both! I currently have children in Y1, Y3, and Y4; the older two have each completed the entire previous year. What MEP does is it introduce a big subject, like multiplication and division (started together) at its simplest level, 1 digit numbers. Once that is shown and kids are doing it, MEP then presents a wide variety of different types of math concepts to which multiplication and division is used--tables, graphs, word problems, etc. In doing so, the program also slowly advances the difficulty of the multiplication and division, but never beyond small, easy-to-grasp problems.

I blogged about this here.

By this construct, MEP is teaching mastery of multiplication and division--from early in Y3 to where we are so far in year 4. It did the same thing with addition and subtraction in Y1 through the early part of Y2. Yet MEP has a spiral construct in all the other concepts to which basic arithmetic is applied. Geometry, measurement, and fractions are all scattered throughout Y2 through Y4 (in fact during the same weeks in Y3 and Y4 as I am learning with my two older sons!)

How this will work with fractions I am unsure. I know Ds#1 is ready to learn more about fractions than he does, yet because we switched to MEP later in his school years, he is only on Y4 though in 5th grade while the younger two are in MEP years that match their grades (Ds#2 being about a half year "behind" in that sense.)

I am not one to worry about keeping up with the public school kids (more about that in a subsequent post about Englemann.) I think it will be revealing as to the real strength of MEP as we do learn more about fractions, decimals, and percentages.

More important for me was the implications Englemann's approach would have on education in general, and comparing his thought to Charlotte Mason:

Again, I can't disagree with him in terms of mastery programs compared to spiral programs, but I disagree with him on the bigger picture.

For example, he states when a child does not learn, that reflects badly on a teacher. Yes, but then, in his Sweden example, he basically is saying, "If you just teach it like this then they will understand." Well, maybe not, and that's the point. A teacher has to know a topic well enough to explain it in a variety of ways to reach a variety of students. I think that is what US parents mean by having a teacher care about their children, while Englemann advocates a master teacher.

Yet central to Charlotte Mason's homeschool philosophy is that education is the science of relations. Every child must form a relationship with some knowledge in order to learn it. Compare that with cramming for a test, or even memorizing a method. Englemann's "mastery of the method" is his definition of learning.

He is right, though, especially in math, that by knowing these methods hard a fast a child will do better in school--but that's because school assessments are designed to reward those who do! And that is why, according to Marilyn Burns, vast numbers of people have Math Phobia. For some people memorizing the algorithm simply does not work, and Englemann's answer seems to be, "Well, they just didn't master it."

This leads to the phenomenon of what I very irreverently call Stupid Human Tricks. This type of mastery creates intelligent-appearing children because they can perform all the wonderful 4 and 5 digit multiplications and divisions, spit back science and history facts, and diagram sentences with ease. They even get rewarded on tests for doing so. Yet they do not forge any relationship with the material, and so they will retain but a fraction of what they so brilliantly regurgitate. Ultimately, is that really education? Do they understand mathematical concepts? (Most do not.) Can they discuss the impact of historical event? (Most cannot.) Can they write well? (Not generally.)

Yet the science of relations should not be an excuse to avoid challenging our children, as if our child's enjoyment is the sole indicator of them forming relations. On the one hand, Miss Mason states that we should not interfere with a child's narration for they will glean what is important to them on their own terms (which is why choosing content reflecting my values is the first priority in selecting books and media.) On the other hand, she wrote the facts of a passage, say from a history text, on the board to which the children could refer while narrating. I guess there's no getting over mastering those facts, yet that should be the servant of forging a greater understanding of knowledge and not its master. In short, teach our children to think and not just to know.

A Private Eye Nature

I am embarking on an expansion of our nature studies, which I admit has been lean lately.  I am incorporating The Private Eye as a regular part of our study as a way of bridging the gap to science as well as improving writing and art.

I am so encouraged by this method, and I am so eager to inspire our nature studies, that I started a new blog as a result.  It is called A Private Eye Nature, and so far I just have the introductory post that explains how it all works.  Stay tuned more more!

Home Geography for the Primary Grades

I downloaded Home Geography for the Primary Grades somewhere along the way from something related to Charlotte Mason, maybe Ambleside Online.  While doing a little spring file cleaning I decided I would try it out at our TORCH co-op with the youngers, four boys ages 5 to 7.

This book is an example of what used to be thought of as geography, what today would be a mix of earth science and social studies.  The lessons are short--we typically cover two or three of them in the 45 minutes we have.  So far we covered direction, measurement, and mapping.  The book includes the lessons, some poetry, and exercises, some hands-on, some written.

This week we learned about mapping.  Here on the board the boys first looked at a picture of a classroom and then drew a plan of the room.  We then went on and used a measuring tape to draw it to scale.

The book is ideal for early elementary kids to give them a nice mix of formal lessons, poetry, copywork, geography, science, and social studies.  So Charlotte Mason, no?

A Few Lenten Resources

In case you have procrastinated and now that Ash Wednesday is upon us you are looking for a few good Lenten resources (which is my usual state of affairs...)

The Lenten Workshop at Catholic Culture has sections for information, prayers, activities, and a personal program.

The Interactive Calendar at EWTN offers daily reflections and actions.

The Lenten Season from the USCCB also has an interactive calendar plus a lot of information and suggestions for the season.

Vivificat! has put together an extensive collection of Lenten reading free for the dowloading.

May your Lent be fruitful.

Flowchart Notes

I can across this link on another list and it looked like a really neat idea for narration especially if your kids like to draw. It is simply a flowchart where you draw a picture and then write what happened below it, and when put it all together you get a story.

It is more in depth than a single picture narration and yet not as extensive as a lapbook. The idea came from this page at mrcoley.com, the web site of a fifth grade teacher. He also has a pdf available describing it. My kids' pictures won't be as nice as these but I think they will enjoy the process and improve their note-taking skills.

Christian Heritage Art Program

We just started using the Christian Heritage Art Appreciation program from Catholic Heritage Curriculum. This is art appreciation and study from a Catholic perspective covering the breadth of art history. The program has eight levels, each level divided into 6 time periods. We are using the program with out TORCH co-op, the younger five kids using level 1 and the older five using level 3.



Both levels start withh prehistoric art. Level 1 focused on cave paintings. After the kids watched the video with examples and age-appropriate discussion of cave paintings, they painted on crinkled brown paper bags to simulate cave walls.





Level 3 focused on Native American art and geometric shapes. They too used crinkled brown paper bags, but they made stencils of geometric shapes which they used to make designs. The program is enjoyable, informative, and easy to use and I particularly like using it in a small co-op setting.

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival

Welcome to the February edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival! Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, President's Day, and importantly the start of Lent--February is a full month, and so is our carnival!

Ritsumei presents an entry after my own heart, Vinegar! posted at Baby Steps.

Becky presents Rain, With An Occasional Cool and Cloudy Break posted at Wide Open Campus. That bottom picture is just wonderful!

Angie presents Winter Outdoor Hour:Nature Close To Home-Cattails posted at TheOneThing. What fun!

Angie also presents great skill building in #5 Handicrafts/ Life Skills Challenge also posted at TheOneThing.

Angie's been hoppin' and she also presents Fun Friday and Why I Home School posted at TheOneThing. Why do you homeschool? "Why wouldn't you," I say!

Pamela presents Not Kidding... posted at Blah, Blah, Blog. I can see why she's Not Kidding anymore!

Deana presents Make-Your-Own Word Family Review Cards posted at The Frugal Homeschooling Mom. She writes, "Here’s a simple, cheap way to practice rhyming words and word families with your preschooler. It’s also a great way to review phonics. Don’t go out and buy word family review cards at the homeschooling supply store or teacher’s store! It’s so easy to make them yourself." I agree!

On my other blog, I started Journey North Mystery Class project. It's not too late to start as we've only done the first week! Journey North Mystery Class Preparation posted on At Home Science.

Anyone who hosts blog carnivals knows you get a lot of spam. Though this next entry falls into that, it actually has a lot of fun printables for kids so I thought I would include it. Car Color-by-Number Mosaic posted at Printables for Kids. At least it's not a "Top 10 sites for..." whatever site!

Our blog carnival creator, Cherylinma, presents Spaghetti Trestle Bridge posted at Talking to Myself - Homeschool Blogger. Looks like a must try book!

Rachel presents Tips for Moms, Activities for kids by Quirky Mommas » Blog Archive » Using M&Ms to Graph with your Preschooler posted at quirkymomma.com. This is colorful and tasty. It will have your kids asking to do math, lol!

Brenda, now at her new web site, presents Creative Photography posted at Brenda. This is a really great project to do.

This next submission is from DreamBox Learning math program, but it is a homeschooling company and the blog post was about math field trips--two things you don't typically put together! Tracy Beach presents Math Learning Field Trip Ideas for Homeschoolers posted at Math Learning, Fun & Education Blog : Dreambox Learning.

Finally, I have submitted my post about our recent History Fair posted at Science Of Relations.

Enjoy the carnival--I certainly have.