My Math Journey

Math was always difficult for me as a child. I don’t remember my mom having me “tutored” though until Jr. High and High School level Math. I vividly remember staying after school daily beginning in the 8th grade. My 8th grade Math teacher, to this day, is still one of my favorite people on the planet. I have only positive memories of her constantly telling me “you can do this!” As I moved into high school, I remember meeting a Math tutor at my church every Wednesday night prior to Wednesday night activities. In college, I dated my Math teacher’s son…..so I passed. {not fully joking here}

This experience however made me a good elementary Math teacher! I understand kids who struggle. When I taught in public school, I was chosen to attend the Marilyn Burns Math School to teach kids Math through experiences. This was a life changing experience for me and I realized why I struggled so much as a child. I loved teaching Math in my elementary classrooms. I loved watching the kids faces light up when they would finally understand a concept through experiencing it verses a bunch of problems on a page. 

Fast forward a few years into homeschooling……I picked a workbook full of problems without experiences? SAY WHAT? I knew better, but the time monster got the better of me in the beginning. {I had to check it off my list!}  I vividly remember the day, one of my children started crying and said “I can’t do this!” I stopped in my tracks remembering immediately the words of my 8th grade Math teacher to me. I remember closing the book and THROWING IT AWAY! I did not want this child to go down “my Math road” thinking they could not do Math. That very day, I dug back out my  Marilyn Burns Math files and just started playing games with this one child.  I don’t remember how long I took this approach with this child, but long enough to build back the confidence level it would take to make them successful at another Math curriculum. 

For this reason, I love Math literature to teach Math skills, especially in the lower elementary years! Looking back, you don’t even need a Math curriculum in the younger years.  If you need a little bit of guidance on what Math skills are recommended a different ages, that is easily accessible online. Grab the list of skills and find Math literature and hop on over to https://mathgeekmama.com/ for some awesome lessons and games per topic. 

Curriculum Choices for 2018-19 History/Language Arts

I get ask all the time. What curriculum do you use? I wrote about it a long time ago in the post My Style of Homeschooling, but I thought I would update it in a new post. I am still very much an Eclectic....which means "a little bit of this and a little bit of that"  I do attempt to make a year long plan every summer, but its only the 4th full week of school and I've already edited "the plan" 4x!


This year I am using From Adam to US as my spine for {almost everything}

This is a middle school level study on World History...Starting with Adam and Ending up in the Modern Times called "Computer Age" LOL 

This spine has recommended literature that aligns with the time period the kids are studying! We have explored these two books so far this year! 

Some of the books that are recommended this year have a Brave Writer Arrow Guide to accompany them, but not all of them!  So I plan to use those when available, but when not available, I am pulling in.....

Writing Rhetoric is a collection of stories of men and woman from the Middle Age Time Period. The kids practice diagramming sentences and identifying parts of speech as well as learn to write a compare/contrast essay for each person.  I have "scheduled" this to match what we study in History. 

It takes about 2 weeks to cover one person. 

Both Kids have had a Cursive Class and we use Draw and Write Through History to practice our skills! 

I am using  the Fallacy Detective and Philosophy for Kids to teach Logic and Reasoning Skills. It is SO much fun and talk about Big Juicy Conversations!!!

So I'll come back another day and talk about Math and Science and our Beautiful Things Loop! 

One Month Down....

Today we finished our first month of our new school year! Wow! It has flown by.....In this post I will highlight some of the parts of our new Brave Writer  curriculum.

We finished our first Jot It Down  Monthly Writing Project! This months project was to create a Photo Journal. The obvious choice to me was to print photos from our recent 3 week Summer Vacation. The kids had fun organizing their photos, arranging them on each page and writing a caption for each page.  This was a super fun project!

The kids have added a few more Nature Journals to their sketch books.. This is my favorite photo! 

I have really enjoyed teaching the kids Grammar and Spelling using The Wand and the Classic Frog and Toad Stories. 

We have had two Tuesday Poetry Teas and Ava loved using her tea cup souviner from Biltmore Estate. 

Last but not least we have also had two "Friday Freewrites". The reason I put that in quotation marks is because we are actually completing these on Thursdays with HIGH HOPES of taking Fridays off this year!!!

Another Writing Component that is not part of Brave Writer, but that I added in is a Travel/Field Trip Journal. This will be a place the children can record what they learn during our immersion learning days! AKA Field Trips! 

For Math this year, I have added in Teaching Textbooks. So far I really like it, but we have not yet hit an area the kids don't easily understand. My normal teaching bent is to use a more hands on approach than this offers, but its working for now. 

Ava is enjoying learning to cook. I think by the end of the semester, she will be ready to take over dinner! 

For Bible this year we are using Kay Arthur's children's inductive Bible Studies. We have started with a study on God's Covenant's. I can only pray that if our children learn to study God's Word in this manner they will make a huge difference in their generation and the next generation of leaders in our country.

 

For Reading this year, I am going to focus on exposing the children to the Classics. Ava {and Samantha} has started with The Secret Garden. The boys have started with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea although I have not captured a photo of them with the book.

Another most exciting thing that has happened this last month is that Zach was ask by his "Brain Gym" teacher to help her train some other therapist who had come in from literally all over the US to learn some of the methods she uses to help children in the Gym. This is a therapy that helps him that is offered by Manegait.

Well thats a wrap for this month! Next month we will begin Story of the World Curriculum for History. I hope you've enjoyed just a little piece of our Learning At Home! 

Tuesday Poetry Tea Time.....and The First Day of School 2015-2016

So...I've never been more excited to start school. I have fallen head over heals in love with Brave Writer. Brave Writer is a lifestyle. A lifestyle that teaches your children to write by making it a way of life.  I purposefully wanted our first day back from summer to be on a Tuesday, so that we could have our first Tuesday Poetry Teatime!

I went with a Dr. Seuss theme because the first two books the kids will study this year are Dr. Seuss books.  While these books are below their reading level, we are using them to explore Writing and Grammar Elements.  I also begin and end every single year with the book Oh, The Places You'll Go! 

The kids were literally at the table by 7:30 AM this morning, going through all their First Day of School Surprises:) 

One Surprise I had for them was a letter from each set of Grandparents! This I hope will be a new tradition that will give them a collection of treasured letters by the time they graduate! 

After a bit, we enjoyed our favorite Raspberry Tea and Blueberry Muffins and dove into some Poetry. I read to them out of The Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. We laughed and laughed and took turns reading these poems!

Your Off to Great Places Today is YOUR day! 

American History…the fun way!

The kids showed such an interest in the American History at Greenfield Village during the 4th of July Spectacular, we took them back for a full day.

Here is a glimpse of the parts of American History the kiddos {and their parents} learned today!
They loved being able to ride on different types of early transportation throughout our day!
Family Ride in Henry Ford’s Model T






They were lucky enough to get the very front row of the train and were able to watch the Engineer add coal to the train.

They were able to watch and learn about several famous American by watching 15 minute plays throughout the day.
They LOVED this play about the Wright Brothers.

The boys especially enjoyed touring the bicycle shop and the Wright Brother’s Original house that has been transferred to the village from Dayton, Ohio. (Zach got a thrill climbing out the window)


Ava has recently fallen in the love with the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, so what a TREAT to get to hear her story in person!

Of course Ava enjoyed being the teacher at the McGuffy School House.


Next up we visited the

My Train Loving Boys LOVED this stop…and little did they know it ended with a BIG surprise!

They got to go down some stairs and look up to see all the part under a train! WOW!

As we were leaving the round house, one of the engineers was rotating the track and let the kids help him!




Levi, especially wanted to visit Thomas Edison’s Lab.

This was such an incredible day! I love to have fun, but I especially love it when fun and learning go hand in hand!