The Curriculum Choice

Catholic Mosaic by Hillside Education

Feb 282010

Catholic Mosiac is published by Hillside Education, intended for K-4^th grade, though it has been my experience that these picture book suggestions are so well loved they are part of my families traditional yearly celebration of the liturgical year.

Young and older alike will look forward to reading or listening to such classics a:

Hans Christian Anderson’s
The Little Match Girl
Song of the Swallows by Leo Politi
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges
Joan of Arc by Kiane Stanley
Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Suess
The Clown of God by Tomi de Paola
The Legend of St. Nicholas by Demi
If Jesus Came to My House by Joan G. Thomas

Chose from over fifty-two picture books featured in Catholic Mosiac with discussion questions, vocabulary words, copywork and enrichment activities.

Instructions are included for making a liturgical year notebook divided into the categories of:

Advent
Christmas
Epiphany
Lent
Easter
Pentecost
Ordinary Time
Baptism
Penance
First Communion
Confirmation
Vocations
Saints
Rosary
Mary Pope

Recommended resources are listed alphabetically and book lists are divided by month and then again by feast day for easy reference. The book list includes short summaries of each featured book. The black and white illustrations for each month would make nice coloring pages or notebook dividers. The parents help page for each featured book includes discussion question answers. I especially like the enrichment activities that often explain more about our faith. For example, did you know that Mary is often called our Lady of Seven Sorrows and is drawn with seven swords piercing her heart? The seven swords represent the seven sorrows in her life.

In Catholic Mosaic you will enjoy the many simple hands on activities explained through out the book. Children can make a thankful collage, a scrapbook of beautiful things, a St. Brigid of Ireland banner, a St. Benedict ladder of humility and a mosaic valentine. Chose to go on an Indian scavenger hunt, make brown paper sandals, make a clay crown of thorns, a giving tree or create a chalice and host out of construction paper. Bake bread and cake, make a First Communion hanky, draw a kitchen angel and copy the uncial alphabet with a charred stick. Have fun with nature and decorate a walking stick, paint rocks and make crayon rubbing impressions. Celebrate Christmas by making an advent calendar and paper poinsettias.

I especially like how the craft instructions encourage children, and parents, to create a unique project, the finished craft is not a pattern look a-like product. All the crafts are explained well and use common household art supplies like construction paper, crayons, popsicle sticks, felt, scissors and glue.

There are five appendixes:

Prayers and Feast Days
How to integrate the Catholic Mosaic with Seton Art I
Integrating Catholic Mosaic with Catholic Heritage Curricula’s A Year With God
Twelve Pro Life Activities Anyone Can Do
Twelve World Outline maps, with book lists from Catholic Mosaic to correspond with each map

Most of the featured books are easily found at a public or church library, some favorites you will want to own can be bought from the book suppliers listed on page 18 in Catholic Mosaic. Those looking to use living literature to study the liturgical year need search no more, Catholic Mosaic is the book to help you teach the truths of our faith through memorable stories and hands on activities.

Susan, who lives in the heart of Dixie with her husband and three school age children, blogs about quilting and homeschooling at Stitchin’ Life.

image credit: Fountain Resources

Careers Units for Kids – Wanna Be’s Review

Unit study resources No Responses »

Feb 282010

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question most children love to answer. Those answers change many times through the years. When I came across a sale for the Wanna Be series from The Old Schoolhouse, which are unit studies about different careers, I grabbed my debit card and ordered. We love unit studies and I had nothing for careers in yet. The series covers the following ten careers:

Firefighter
Veterinarian
Chef
Military
Doctor
Police Officer
Missionary
Farmer
Artist (upcoming release)
Pilot (upcoming release)

While these units are written for ages 4 – 10, even my husband and I learned a lot as we used our first two units. I love that these units are written from a Christian homeschool perspective. I love reading how families make these careers work in their life. The information for high school homeschoolers is wonderful, giving them direction on how to prepare for that career, while the end of unit activities have fun games and activities for younger kids.

What’s inside a unit?

Information pages about the career, with information for preschoolers through high schoolers.
Crossword puzzles
Coloring pages
Handwriting Practice
Vocabulary
Copywork
Applied math problems – relating to the career.
Word Search
Creative Writing Prompts
Quiz
Fill in the Story
Experiments
End of Unit Activities – games, memory verses, and ideas for great themed parties.
Great resource lists that are internet linked.

Our first adventure centered around a police officer’s job as peace keeper and law enforcer with When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Police Officer. Each day we read a few pages from the e-book as a family and did activities. I used the library list to gather books for our unit study basket, which we explored throughout the week. You can find the ones we chose HERE. We found out the tools of the trade, training needed for the job, and even some of the science behind fingerprinting.

My oldest wrote a story called The Jewelry Thief (read it HERE ) in response to one of the writing prompts in the unit. She really enjoyed learning about how police use clues to solve a crime. We finished up our unit with a trip to our local police department.

Our next Wanna Be adventure took two weeks using When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Firefighter. We were able to compare many things we had learned about becoming a police officer with the path to becoming a firefighter. Again, the library list and end of unit activities gave me plenty of ways to include my younger children. Our second field trip in a month led us to Fire Station 3, where we saw up close and personal many of the things we had learned about during the unit.

The Wanna Be series is a great fit for our unit study family. Each title is a complete unit study. I do not have to find books at the library unless I want to. Many creative ideas are included for some themed games and activities perfect for my younger crowd, while the information is meaty enough that we will reuse these when the kids are older. My children are already debating which career we will learn about next – I hope they choose chef!

Written by Tristan, mom to 5, homeschooling through unit studies with a side of lapbooks. You can visit her at her blog, Our Busy Homeschool.

{Disclaimer because the FTC says I have to: I bought these books with my own money, and yes, we really used them. All opinions presented herein are my own.}

Language of God Grammar Series from Catholic Heritage Curricula

Elementary, Language Arts 2 Responses »

Feb 262010

Language arts covers such a dizzying array of subjects — from spelling to composition, from grammar to vocabulary, just to name a few. While, for whatever reason, we have gone primarily with secular sources for much of our language arts materials, we happily use Language of God for Little Folks from Catholic Heritage Curricula for grammar instruction.

The Language of God books take a gentle approach to grammar, much like other materials from Catholic Heritage Curricula. I really enjoyed that pages were easy to understand, and often my boys could work on these without assistance from me. (That’s always a plus, in my book!)

As a Catholic homeschooler, I also enjoyed the overt religious content of this series of books. While learning about capitalization, for instance, the kids not only learned about capitalizing words like Susie and Dallas, Texas, but they also learned about capitalizing for Sister Mary Regina and Blessed Sacrament.

Although this isn’t true of every page of the workbook, many exercises include Bible or saint stories. For example, the student may be working on proper punctuation while the sentence tell the story of when Jesus walked on the water.

These books have helped my children’s grammar skills, and they have greatly helped me by being simple to implement.

The workbooks are available in Levels A through E (which is nice for struggling students, in that there is a specific grade level attached to a certain level listed on the actual book). Level A is listed on Catholic Heritage Curricula’s website as being for advanced 1st grade to average 2nd grade, while Level E is listed as for advanced 5th grade to average 6th grade. The prices differ for the various levels (likely because higher levels have more pages), but they all range from $11.95 to $16.95.

Another nice feature of this book series is that the workbooks are spiral bound, which makes it easy for students to keep the book open to the appropriate page. I also enjoy that there is an answer key in the back of the book, saving me from needing to buy a separate teacher manual.

We plan to continue using the Language of God series for our children as a portion of their language arts instruction throughout their elementary school years.

Angie can be found writing about faith, family, and household management at Many Little Blessings. She is also the founder of The Homeschool Classroom and Catholic Mothers Online.

Star-Spangled States Review

Elementary, Geography, History, Unit study resources 2 Responses »

Feb 252010

While I am a unit study mom, I do not feel the need to turn every topic into an elaborate unit for my family. This year I wanted to encourage my 8 year old to work independently of me for one subject. The topic we chose? Geography of the United States. She was interested in knowing where the states were thanks to dear cousins who move often as a part of being a military family, as well having as other family members scattered across the country. We had set goals for her geography study:

Learn where the states are on the map.
Learn the capital of each state.
Learn the postal abbreviation for each state.
Read some fun stories along the way.

Knowing I wanted this to be independent, I looked for a simple, repetitive format to hold her hand. I discovered The Star-Spangled State Book ($18.95)from Knowledge Quest. The book itself under 100 pages. Each state has it’s own page packed with facts and stories in a matching format. The stories were fun and interesting, they would hold her attention. As a matter of fact she usually tracked me down to tell me the stories later. The Star-Spangled Workbook($29.95)was what really sold me though. It has 259 pages broken down into two semesters, 36 weeks total, and includes a reproducible CD so I can use this curriculum for each of my children in future years. Each week is laid out in a 4 day format. In Semester 1 on days 1-3 you learn about 3 states. The two sided workbook page for each day on the front is the same as the regular book in grayscale, but information is missing. The student has to remember and finish the information. Then there is a map of the US for the student to find the state and color it in.

On the back of the worksheet at the top is a simple question, “What do you remember about (insert state name)?” My daughter could write a short answer of what was the most memorable to her. This was one of her favorite parts, telling what she knew. Underneath that section are two vocabulary words to define (she learned dictionary skills!). Last is a set of 4 boxes where the student draws the state, connects 3 state outlines with their names, finds the state on a portion of map, and unscrambles words related to that state’s information. I will be honest, my daughter hated the word unscrambles, so I let her skip them.

Day 4 in each week of semester 1 is a short map quiz that has the student labeling states on a US map. Short, easy, and helpful in meeting one of our goals.

We finished semester 1 this month and decided to take the end of the book exam because we are not moving on the the second semester of the book right now. It was 5 pages covering labeling all 50 states on the map, matching capitals to states, writing postal abbreviations, and finding a mystery state that shares a border with a list of states. Makayla did great, taking a week to complete the exam. After she labeled the blank map with all 50 states I let her use it to find the mystery states, because we had not worried about learning border states in our semester 1 studies.

When we pick the Star-Spangled States Workbook back up to do semester 2 later on it will take us through fun geoquizzes flipping through the book itself to strengthen her recall of the facts as well as the stories. She will also focus on borders, learning which states border each other, increasing her map skills, and reviewing capitals and other facts.

Knowledge Quest also sells the Star-Spangled States book and workbook together at a discount, for $39.95. You can see sample pages for both the book and workbook HERE.

I am so glad I discovered The Star-Spangled States book and workbook. It has been just right to introduce Makayla to our country while encouraging her to develop her independence. I will definitely be using it with each of my younger children when they are ready.

Written by Tristan, mom to 5, homeschooling through unit studies with a side of lapbooks. You can visit her at her blog, Our Busy Homeschool.

{Disclaimer because the FTC says I have to: I bought these books with my own money, and yes, we really used them. I am not affiliated with Knowledge Quest books in any way, though I really like many of their products. All opinions presented herein are my own.}

High School @ Home, You Can Do It! by Diana Johnson

High School 2 Responses »

Feb 232010

When I started homeschooling over 6 years ago, one of the questions that people asked me was, “What about high school?” I remember quite distinctly thinking that the question was ridiculous given that my oldest child was then going into first grade. Alas, children grow up all too quickly. Now my oldest child is going into 7th grade next year and the question, “What about high school?” no longer seems ridiculous at all.

I just finished a very helpful book, “High School @ Home, You Can Do It!” by Diana Johnson. After reading this book, I am feeling less stressed about homeschooling my children through high school. The book is divided into twelve sections:

The Homeschool Choice
Defining Your Philosophy of Education
Seeing the Big Picture: Kindergarten through College
Designing the Program
A Comprehensive Homeschool Course Listing
Evaluating Coursework Objectively
Recognizing Your Student’s Achievement
Special-Needs Students
Choosing a College
Understanding College Entrance
College Credit the Alternative Way
Reflecting on the Journey

The book is written from a Christian perspective which is evident throughout the entire book. At first, I was disappointed with the book as the first few sections did not deal directly with homeschooling a high school student. Sections one and two discuss reasons for homeschooling and different philosophies of education. One comment from the first chapter did strike me as quite wise, though. “Day in and day out, for better or for worse, for over twenty years we have opened our books and schooled. And it worked.” I find a great deal of wisdom in those simple words having labored in the trenches with my children for 6 years now.

After the first two sections, though, the remainder of the book really focuses on the nitty-gritty of how to go about educating a child at home for high school. The author includes high school course and credit guidelines along with an extensive list of suggested curriculum for all core classes. The majority of the suggested curriculum are from Christian publishers. I particularly liked that the author took a course and showed how a home educator could design the course using her favorite curriculum and projects rather than relying exclusively on a textbook approach.

The section about evaluating coursework objectively was excellent. I particularly liked the course contracts. She suggests setting up a course contract with your high schooler outlining exactly what is to be expected in a particular course. She gives examples of course contracts from her own children and includes blank forms for the reader. She explains how to calculate GPAs and how to make high school transcripts for your child. Blank forms are included in the text and on a CD included in the back of the book. I found this information TREMENDOUSLY helpful.

Lastly, for me, the author helped to take a lot of the mystery out of the college admissions process. I now have a basic understanding of CLEP exams, dual enrollment, and AP exams. She even makes suggestions for different ways to celebrate your child’s graduation from high school. A lot of information is covered in 297 pages!

I would recommend this book to anybody who is feeling nervous about homeschooling their student through high school. I felt like I received a ton of practical advice and now have a resource that I’m sure I will refer to again and again over the years.

Samantha can be found writing about homeschooling and family life at http://tobebusyathome.blogspot.com.

Reading A-Z.com

Elementary, Language Arts No Responses »

Feb 202010

We started our official reading adventure this year with reading a-z.com! Right off the bat, I loved the full scope of curriculum the website offers: the website is comprehensive to say the least. No matter where you are starting out, just about anybody who needs an elementary language arts addition to their schooling can benefit from reading a-z.com.

There is a very small learning curve to the site so it is easy to just “jump right in” where you need to be. Pick and choose your own curriculum from their ample selection or take an assessment test that is included to see where you need to begin for each child. Enjoy leveled readers, alphabet materials or jump into phonics and phonemic awareness materials. Each area offers a full, comprehensive lesson path in that subject matter.

We are currently in the “Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Materials” tract. I simply log in, and elect the next lesson in the tract. I can download that lesson’s readers and display them on the computer or print them in black and white for my little ones to color (a fantastic activity for preschoolers to “do school” while we are on another subject). Each of the modules provides full lesson plans (including instructions for the teacher), worksheets, and manipulatives such as flash cards, spelling squares, high frequency flashcards, and the corresponding readers. Each module expounds upon the module before it so sometimes all of those manipulatives are not necessary to print and cut out. I usually research and print only what I need.

Reading A-Z.com offers:

They also provide something new in their “reading extras” area of the website. This week it includes free additional reading unit studies for Haiti and the Olympics!

I love that this site offers multiple grade levels at once, so a homeschooling family only needs to purchase one classroom subscription a year for the whole family. Resources are appropriate for all K–6, ESL/ELL, special education, and remedial reading and correspond to most state curriculum standards.

Reading a-z.com has an annual subscription in the amount of $84.95. They also offer free samples online and offer a money back guarantee should you find it won’t work for your family after-all.

Whether your child’s reading journey is at “A” or advanced to “Z”, Reading a-z.com can be a wonderful addition to your homeschool journey! Visit them today at http://www.readinga-z.com .

Written by Diana S. A homeschooling mom of two boys, growing in Grace and trying to joyfully ride the roller coaster of Life Curves.

Resource for Catholic Families

Uncategorized No Responses »

Feb 192010

Angie and I have been working together to create a resource for Catholic Homeschoolers like none other. It is a toolbar that sits at the top of your computer and guides you to some of the best Catholic sites and blogs available to Catholic families.

The toolbar itself has many components that are geared towards families, but it also has a huge homeschooling emphasis.

Take a look at all that you get when you download this resource:

Family planning sites
Sites on the sacraments and saints
Web pages about the holidays and feasts
Links to crafts for Catholic children
Forums that you can join to meet other Catholic families
A drop down menu dedicated to homeschooling – encouragement, curriculum reviews, email lists, suppliers, and magazines
50 Catholic blogs, plus more on the way!
RSS feeds to daily readings, Catholic Icing, The Homeschool Classroom and more
Email notification for all your email accounts
A radio player that features Catholic radio stations plus your local ones too
Weather updates

We are still adding sites daily to this free resource. If you download it and you would like to suggest an addition please email us @ hslifemedia@gmail.com

Did I mention that this resource is free?

To download this toolbar visit the page: http://catholichomeschoolingmoms.ourtoolbar.com/

Wait! There is a give-away!

Remember that pretty rosary that was at the top of this post? For your chance to win it you may leave a comment on the Homeschool Classroom that you have downloaded the toolbar for a chance to win this beautiful rosary hand made by Angie. You may leave one comment if you do any of the following:

download the toolbar for one entry
twitter about the toolbar for another entry
blog about the toolbar for another entry
leave 5 or more Catholic sites that are not included that should be on the toolbar for one entry

Entries will be closed on February 23rd.

Institute for Excellence in Writing: TWSS

Classical, Elementary, High School, Junior High Language Arts, Language Arts, Philosophies, Writing 8 Responses »

Feb 182010

Institute For Excellence in Writing- Teaching Writing: Structure and Style DVDs By Andrew Pudewa

Feeling Empowered as a Parent/Teacher

Many of my blog readers have been asking me to write a review of Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) for a long time. I have hesitated to write the review since we are still very much a work in progress using their system of writing. My boys were in middle school when we first started using IEW’s Teaching Writing: Style and Structure program. At this point, after using the plans for three years, I feel prepared to give a review of the program based on how our year is going with this final stage of IEW and their Teaching Writing: Style and Structure DVDs and manual. (TWSS)

Just a Note to Make Things Clear

Please note that there are several programs available through IEW but this review is for the TWSS DVDs and teacher’s manual only. The TWSS DVDs are for the parent to watch and glean techniques and ideas in order to guide their children through the writing process. They are the beginning step to using the IEW system in your home school. Parents do not need any previous experience teaching writing nor do you even need to be a confident writer. The TWSS DVDs will teach you all you need to know to help your children add structure and style to their writing.

The Strong Points of the TWSS Program

Guides the Parent: The TWSS method of teaching arms the teacher/parent and students with a variety of tools to use in their writing. The IEW system is a system that builds up a great foundation by introducing a structure that the child can use to express his thoughts in a logical and meaningful way. Each new skill slowly adds on the last skill. The DVD lessons in the TWSS series arm the parent with concrete ways to structure and then “dress-up” the student’s writing. Each lesson gives you specific objectives so the parent and student know exactly what the writing piece needs to accomplish. A whole new vocabulary is learned in the process and soon everyone is talking about quality adjectives and who-which clauses. (Link to a handout explaining more about dress-ups.) The most significant thing about the way new tools are added is that we are no longer trying to fix everything all at one time. The lessons help us to concentrate on the new tool introduced and to incorporate the previous tools into our current writing.

Lessons Build From Elementary to High School: Each lesson in the TWSS plan is a baby step to more sophisticated writing. Starting with key word outlines and summaries, your child learns to gather information to write about each week. I love that I can tailor the topics we want to write about to the lesson and make it even more meaningful. My boys are now busy writing instead of thinking of things to write about. The flexibility to choose your topics and apply them to each of the lessons in the TWSS sequence is one of the greatest benefits of this program.

Working from a Key Word Outline Makes Writing Easier

Tailor the Topics for Writing Projects: For instance, this week my boys are working on writing a research report. They both chose a topic from their current areas of study with one choosing a physics topic and one choosing a biography. They had plenty of fresh ideas from their studies to incorporate into their writing assignment. Remember that we did not start off writing research reports, but the TWSS lessons have built from one paragraph summaries to three paragraph essays to now a five paragraph essay with introduction, conclusion, and bibliography. Our next step after mastering the five paragraph essay is to work on what is called a “super essay” which is basically three five paragraph essays tied together with super introduction and super conclusion paragraphs.

Here are the official units covered in TWSS in the DVD lessons:
Units 1-2 Note Making and Summarizing including Stylistic Techniques and Dress Ups
Unit 3-Summarizing Narratives Stories and introducing Sentence Openers
Unit 4-Summarizing Reference for Library Reports and adding in Advanced Dress-Ups: Decorations, Triples
Unit 5-Writing from Pictures
Unit 6-Reports from Multiple Sources (extension of Unit 4)
Unit 7-Creative Writing and introducing introductions and conclusions.
Unit 8-Essays: Basic, Expanded, Super-Essay, Persuasive (extension of Units 4 and 6)
Unit 9-Critiques, Book Reports, and Reviews

Teacher’s Workbook: Along with the DVD lessons, you will receive a workbook with extensive notes for each unit, checklists, charts, and resources for your child to use with the lessons.

Writing with Their Own Voice: It has always been important to me to have my children develop their own voice in their writing, to have the paper sound like it is from their own thoughts and reasoning. IEW has helped my boys use the IEW tools in a way that makes writing in their own words easier. At first the checklists provided with the lessons seemed cumbersome and awkward. They did not enjoy all the “box checking”. For instance, as the sentence openers are introduced they had to go back and rewrite a lot of their sentences to make sure they had used each sentence opener tool . (More on sentence openers in this IEW document, see page 7) The editing process was tedious and we all loathed that time of the week when we would review the writing and the checklist together. Progressively, each time we used the sentence opener tools in our writing, it became more natural. Now as the boys write an essay they can easily insert the sentence openers as they go along, they are on their mind. By incorporating the various style tools in the TWSS program, they have found their writing voice.

TWSS consists of 6 DVDs for the Parent

Possible Obstacles to Successfully Using the IEW or TWSS Programs

Parent Involvement is High: If you are looking for a short-term fix or a program that you can have your child work through independently, the IEW system is probably not for you. The tools taught through the TWSS DVD lessons are helpful to the parent in their guiding the writing process with their own children. The tools are then used by the student to first learn how to structure their writing and then to incorporate style points to make the writing piece their very own. Your children will benefit from your help and support through the process of learning to write an summary, a story, and essays of all sorts. The DVDs included with the TWSS program can be used over and over and I have found it beneficial to watch them at the beginning of each school year.

Cost of the Writing Program: I struggled with the price tag on this program for over a year before purchasing the DVDs. Our home schooling convention had Andrew Pudewa as a speaker and listening to him explain his ideas and philosophy behind this plan convinced me it was worth the investment. It was also helpful to hear his style of teaching and his great sense of humor that comes through as he teaches. You can listen to his introductory video by going to this LINK and scrolling down to where there is a link to his video. I have never regretted the decision.We purchased the TWSS and the Student Writing Intensive (SWI) programs together for $239 which when you take into account that we are using the plans for our fourth year, they are a reasonably priced. (The SWI program is a set of DVDs that the student watches and it comes with a complete set of lesson plans. The SWI DVDs correspond with the TWSS DVDs which are for the parent to watch. I need to write a separate review for the SWI plans-stay tuned.)

Help in Using the IEW, TWSS, and SWI Programs

Bonus Student Workshop DVDs: Included in the TWSS DVD program are three disks showing at different levels how Andrew Pudewa teaches his writing workshops using the TWSS lessons. I highly recommend watching these along with your child after getting started with the TWSS plans.

Free Resources: There are some free downloads available on the IEW website, both materials and pod casts.

Online Groups: There is also a very helpful Yahoo Group IEW Families, that has lots of free lesson plans, writing helps, and suggestions for free that you can tap into. The moderator of this group is very good at answering questions so if you are undecided about whether to purchase this program for your family, you might ask her some more specific questions about how you intend to use the IEW programs, especially with younger children.

TWSS DVDs have made me a more confident writing teacher and coach. I have the tools to do what needs to get done to step my boys through learning to write wonderful essays and then some. The emphasis is on creating great writers all throughout the TWSS plans. All parents can teach writing structure and style using this great product.

I wrote a little bit of my random thoughts on IEW on my Harmony Art Mom blog a few months ago. You can read about it HERE.

Written by Barb-Harmony Art Mom. I also blog at Harmony Art Mom and my business is found at Harmony Fine Arts. I would love for you to join us for the Outdoor Hour Challenges at Handbook of Nature Study.

Teaching Grammar With Playful Poems

Elementary, Language Arts 3 Responses »

Feb 172010

When I taught school outside my home it was all the rage to teach grammar through writing. While grading the students papers I made notes on the grammar I thought they needed to learn and then used the grammar textbook to teach grammar in mini ten minute lessons three times a week. Overall, I didn’t feel very successful, but I kept plugging along as that was what was required of me as a public school teacher.

In homeschool I thought I found a gold mine when I discovered Ruth Beechick’s method of using passages from the children’s reading books to teach grammar. I spent quite a bit of time coming up with lessons that introduced nouns, verbs and basic punctuation to my children. I would start the year eager and enthusiastic about writing lessons for three grade levels of “Beechick Grammar” as I came to call it, but soon grew weary.

I felt guilty, I’m an English teacher who wasn’t consistently teaching grammar skills to my own children. Yikes !

I was lamenting my lack of a good Grammar to my Mom one night and she took it upon herself to send me a grammar she thought looked good by Nancy Mack. If you haven’t heard of Nancy Mack and her work you can read about her on her website here: http://www.wright.edu/%7Enancy.mack/grpoet.htm

She is an Associate Professor of English at a University in Ohio, she used to teach public school and she too was being asked by the school to teach grammar through writing. I know how that goes.

Nancy Mack, devised a system that makes perfect “fun” sense to me and my children. She teaches grammar through poetry.

In her book Teaching Grammar with Playful Poems: Engaging Lessons with Model Poems by Favorite Poets that Motivate Kids to Learn Grammar she introduces and explains to children the parts of speech using patterned poetry by favorite children’s poetry writers like: Kalli Dakos, Bruce Lansky, Lilian Moore, Colin McNaughton, Jack Prelutsky, Karla Kuskin and Shel Silverstein.

Children give a dramatic reading of the sample poem, write a group poem, learn a grammar topic through a mini lesson and write and illustrate their own poems and more.

Children write before they learn the grammar topic. Students are encouraged to “not skip the art part” ! Mack believes writers do need grammar instruction, she believes the parts of speech do not need to be mastered before writing begins and skill based grammar instruction like underline the subject once and the verb twice does not improve writing. She’s clearly my kind of gal!

She also uses the word joyful to describe her lessons. I’m sold! And after trying it out for over a year so are my children!

In case you want to know to more, the lessons also include thought teaser extension activities, grammar reinforcement activities and suggestions for writing about literature in a way that relates to the grammar topic.

Teaching Grammar With Playful Poems has ten chapters.

Each chapter takes our family about a month to work through as Ms. Mack includes not only grammar extension activities but topic variation suggestions and writing about literature prompts that connect the topics studied in the chapter to well known literature.

Chapter one is called grammar instruction myths, this chapter includes a discussion of the challenging assumptions about language learning. Here you can read about Ms. Mack’s philosophy of teaching grammar. If you are like me you will find yourself nodding in agreement as she explains how to teach grammar through poetry in a purposeful fun way.
Chapter two is called verbs and features cures for a boring day poems. This chapter has lessons on action verbs, verb tenses, irregular verbs, predicates and imperative sentences.
Chapter three is on nouns and in it students write lost and found poems. Concepts taught are common nouns, singular and plural nouns, capitalization and article-noun agreement.
Chapter four or pronouns encourages children to write encounter poems. Lessons taught are on personal pronouns, subject and object pronouns, and possessive pronouns.
Chapter five focuses on adjectives using synonym poems. Adjective usage, synonyms, adjective-forming suffixes and serial commas are reviewed.
Chapter six is about adverbs and poetry in motion poems. Adverb usage, comparative and superlative adverbs and sentence structure are taught.
Chapter seven is prepositional phrases where students write dream poems. Prepositional phrases, and objects of prepositions are reviewed.
Chapter eight is conjunctions and the writing of pair poems. Lessons are on coordinating conjunctions, parallel structure and compound sentences.
Chapter nine is on interjections. Students write extraordinary experience poems. Interjection usage and punctuation is featured.
And finally chapter ten is on taking the next step, or supporting grammar lessons beyond the book.

Teaching Grammar With Playful Poems is not a complete grammar, but rather a way to review and reinforce grammar already introduced, taught and practiced. The book is recommended for grades 3-5, though in my opinion, easily adaptable for older students. Some of the suggestions; write a poem on the overhead, trade and edit papers with other students or write a peer group poem are probably not suited to all homeschools. Though, to my surprise, my children did like writing a family group poem before trying their own and they do enjoy editing each others work.

Finally, if you are thinking grammar through writing poetry sounds fun, but you are not sure how you are going to fit it in with the current grammar you are using, might I suggest, using these activities as a break week. This is what I did at first, I took a week off our traditional grammar and did instead an activity in Ms. Mack’s book. I have also used the poems for copywork and have discovered my children writing poems unprompted in the format of the poem we learned in Teaching Grammar With Playful Poems. I will end today’s review with a promise to review, very soon, another of Ms. Mack’s books Teaching Grammar with Perfect Poems for Middle School.

Susan, who lives in the heart of Dixie with her husband and three school age children, blogs about quilting and homeschooling at Stitchin’ Life.

Lessons in Responsibility for Boys

Bible No Responses »

Feb 162010

Boys are curious creatures if you ask me. One day I think I’ve got mothering boys down, and the next day I realize I have no clue! They want different things than girls – they need different things than girls. One thing I’ve seen in both of my boys, as compared to my daughter, is the need for independence. They both want to do things their way, feel like they’ve made the decisions and done the work, and feel as if their efforts have reaped wonderful fruit.

The problem – they aren’t quite ready for all this independence yet. In other words, projects go disastrously awry as poor, uninformed choices are made, or the things that truly have to be finished are pushed to the side while things they want to work on are attacked with gusto. Moms of boys can tell you story after story about volcanic eruptions in the living room, clocks that will never work again after being disassembled, building projects that ,um, “beautifully” grace our homes and so much more.

I’ve come to understand that this journey to turn my little monsters boys into men – men that will take that independence and boldly go into the world for God – requires purposeful teaching about one main thing… responsibility. Biblical responsibility that translates into daily responsibility.

Earlier this year, I went on a search for some sort of Bible/devotional curriculum that would help me teach this topic of responsibility to my boys. What a blessing it was to find exactly what I was looking for from the Pearables company.

Lessons In Responsibility for Boys, Level 1 is written for any boy six or older. In this book, you meet Ben who is just learning the idea of responsibility. In short lessons that only take about 5-10 minutes, Ben begins to understand responsibility as it relates to such things as chores, siblings, possessions, friends, television, grooming and plenty more – there are 30 different lessons to be exact.

In each lesson, you read a short story to your son, ask a few questions and complete a simple task. The task could be anything from writing a list of household rules together to planning healthy snacks. A reproducible coloring page with an appropriate Bible verse is included with each lesson, too.

The lessons are meant to be used once per week, but we chose to go ahead and read through one lesson per day since I was starting with a nine year old.

Lessons in Responsibility for Boys, Level 2 is written for any boy eight or older. In this book, Ben’s older brother, Josh, continues learning what it means to be a responsible young man. The lessons in this book are more in-depth and require 10-15 minutes to complete.

Again, a coloring page with a Bible verse is provided with each lesson. The lessons, however, include more Bible verses and discussion about how those relate to our lives. The questions from the first volume are replaced with a suggested prayer this time around, while a task is still offered. Most of the tasks encourage your son to be in the Word himself in order to make connections in his own life, or ask your son to have real conversations with his parents about the topics.

Topics covered teach responsibility in the areas of reading the Bible, fellowship, being considerate, clothing, money, learning to care for and fix things, and much more – again, there are 30 lessons.

My older son and I have made it through the 1st volume and are about 1/2 way through the 2nd volume. Our time together has been VERY well spent!

-Written by Cindy, eclectically Charlotte Mason mom of 3. You can find her blogging at Our Journey Westward and Shining Dawn Books.

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