Science on a Tracking Expedition from the Young Scientists Club

 Elementary, Hands On, Middle School, Nature Study, Science, Unit study resources  3 Responses »
Dec 132010
 

One of the issues I’ve struggled with over my years of homeschooling is the desire to do hands-on science projects with my children and the time/effort/inconvenience needed to gather all of the materials to do so. While I adore doing hands-on projects with my children, I do not enjoy gathering up all of the needed materials, running out at the last minute to purchase that one thing I thought I had but I actually don’t, and realizing that I can’t do the desired project because I just can’t find or purchase a required object.  Therefore, all in one hands-on kits have always greatly appealed to me!

Given my love of the convenience of hands-on, educational kits, I was thrilled when I was contacted by a representative from The Young Scientists Club to review one of their new kits.  I chose Science on a Tracking Expedition from their Nature Series.  Science on a Tracking Expedition is geared for children ages 4 and up.  I am using it with my 9 and 12 year old sons, and I also plan to include my 14 year old daughter in some of the activities as well.  Most of the materials in the kit can be used multiple times, making it quite practical for more than one child to use at once.  As well, the materials that may need to be replaced with multiple users (dirt, plaster of paris, paints, and plastic bowls) are quite easy to gather or purchase.

The primary focus of this hands-on kit is on learning to identify and appreciate animal tracks. Children (and adults) learn to identify many different animal tracks such as Black Bear, Great Blue Heron, Gray Wolf, Raccoon, Opossum, Wild Turkey, Whitetailed Deer, and Striped Skunk.  Utilizing the materials included in this kit, children learn about animals tracks through a wide variety of hands-on activities. The very clear instruction manual included has directions for the adult and also has directions written directly to the child.  Hands-on activities include:

  • Making animal track prints using the plastic animal track molds
  • Matching the animal tracks to the animals using stickers and a big poster perfect for a child’s room or schoolroom
  • Writing a short story based on the arrangement of animal tracks at the bottom of the poster
  • Making animal casts using the materials provided
  • Making animal casts from real tracks found on a nature hike
  • Attracting animals to a specific area of one’s yard and identifying the animal tracks
  • Playing a matching memory game in which animal tracks are matched to the animal

While there is definitely enough educational material included to spend at least a week of science lessons exploring the activities, this kit could easily be the beginning of a unit study about animal tracks.  Additional books, videos, or field trips could be added to learn more about the featured animal tracks.

If you would like to learn more about Science on a Tracking Expedition or other educational science kits, you can visit The Young Scientists Club website to learn more about the wide variety of products they offer.  Science on a Tracking Expedition is available for purchase at The Young Scientists Club website for $29.99.

Samantha has homeschooled her three children since her oldest child was in first grade.  She uses a wide variety of curriculum in her homeschool to best meet the needs of her children.  Samantha writes about homeschooling and family life at To Be Busy At Home.  Samantha received the Science on a Tracking Expedition kit free in exchange for her review of the product.  No other compensation, monetary or otherwise was given for her review.

Teaching the Essay from Analytical Grammar

 High School, Junior High Language Arts, Language Arts, Literature, Middle School, Writing  3 Responses »
Nov 152010
 

My oldest child is in 8th grade this year and is taking a Literary Analysis class for the first time.  The class involves writing many literary analysis essays.  Rather than dive right into the Literary Analysis class, I thought it would be prudent and fruitful to first teach her how to write a literary analysis essay.  Even though I feel confident in my own writing, I wasn’t sure how to go about teaching her how to write this specific type of essay.  Therefore, I was completely delighted when I attended a presentation about Teaching the Essay by Analytical Grammar at last year’s MidWest Homeschool Convention.

After listening to the representative explain the Teaching the Essay unit, I knew that it was exactly what I was looking for to teach my daughter how to write a literary analysis essay. More than anything, the very best way to describe Teaching the Essay is CLEAR.  Even if you have absolutely no background in expository writing, Teaching the Essay will teach you, the parent-teacher, how to teach your child to write a 5 paragraph expository essay focusing on literary analysis.  Teaching the Essay is designed for the secondary student – junior high age and above.

As Robin Finley, the author of Teaching the Essay, asserts, writing a literary analysis essay involves fluency, mechanics, and structure.  Fluency has to do with the “gift of gab” and the ability to put words on paper.  Some children are natural writers and will find fluency easier than those who struggle to put words on paper but ALL children become more fluent writers with practice.  Mechanics has to do with grammar and is taught separately from this unit by whatever grammar curriculum you choose.  Lastly, writing a literary analysis essay involves STRUCTURE and Teaching the Essay focuses on the structure of a 5 paragraph essay.  After finishing this teaching unit, your child should have no doubt about what a literary analysis actually is and how one should look.

Teaching the Essay comes with all of the notes and reproducible hand-outs you will need to teach a 4 – 8 week course on writing literary essays.  My daughter is a fluent writer and was able to catch on to the concepts fairly easily so we completed the unit in 5 weeks.  Depending on your child, you may need more or less time to finish the unit.  In addition, a CD is included for the teacher.  Listening to the whole CD gives you a big picture overview of the whole teaching unit so that you feel prepared about how to go about teaching the unit.  As well, the CD is divided into tracks by teaching days so that you can listen to the specific teaching day that you are on to prepare for that day’s teaching.

How does this teaching unit work?

  1. In this teaching unit, all students start with reading The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe.  Then, a thesis statement is given to the child to build a literary analysis essay around.  For this first essay, the parent-teacher and student work together every step of the way to complete this first essay.
  2. For the second essay, the child reads “Wheldon the Weed” first.  Then the student is given a choice of three thesis statements to choose from that correspond to the included short story.  This essay is completed more independently with the parent-teacher giving help as needed.
  3. For the third essay, the child reads “Bargain” first.  Then the student is given a choice of three thesis statements to choose from that correspond to the included short story.  This essay is completed more independently with the parent-teacher giving help as needed.
  4. Lastly, the student chooses his or her own short story and thesis statement.  This last essay is written independently.

After writing four essays in this unit, the student should feel comfortable writing other literary essays.  In my own experience, after writing the essays, my daughter was able to easily apply the knowledge and the structure to her writing assignments in her literary analysis course.  If the student needs more or less practice, the teaching unit can be easily adjusted to the needs of the student.

In addition to all of the detailed instructions given on the CD, Teaching the Essay also includes the following tools to help teach the unit:

  • A very clearly written hand-out titled “What is a Literary Essay?”
  • A graphic organizer hand-out to further explain the structure of a literary essay titled “The Keyhole Structure of the Literary Essay”
  • A completed literary essay of the Tell-Tale Heart for the teacher
  • An outline hand-out of the whole writing process for a literary essay – “How to Write a Perfect Essay:  It’s All in the Process!”
  • Teaching the Essay teaching notes - A Step by Step Guide for the Teacher
  • All the needed texts for the literary essays written in the unit (The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe, Bargain by A. B. Guthrie,Jr., and Wheldon the Weed by Peter Jones)
  • Reproducible worksheets to help the student write each part of the essay
  • Very detailed grading rubric.

To learn more about Teaching the Essay, you can visit their website and watch an informational video about the teaching unit by Robin Finley.  As well, I have found the representatives from Analytical Grammar very easy to talk to and quick to respond to e-mails.  I am sure that they would be glad to answer any additional questions you may have about Teaching the Essay.  Teaching the Essay is available online for $15.00.

Samantha has been homeschooling for 8 years and currently is homeschooling her 8th grade daughter, 6th grade son, and 4th grade son.  Samantha is an eclectic homeschooler using a wide variety of curriculum to best meet the ever-changing needs of her children.  Samantha writes about homeschooling and family life at To Be Busy at Home.

Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons from IEW

 Elementary, History, Junior High Language Arts, Language Arts, Middle School, Vocabulary, Writing  No Responses »
Oct 062010
 

After trying many different writing programs, I am using a writing curriculum this year with my 4th and 6th grade sons that I KNOW I will continue using year after year.  I am absolutely thrilled with the writing curriculum I purchased from the Institute for Excellence in Writing.  More specifically, we are using Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons.  Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons is one of many theme-based writing programs available from IEW.  While this review will focus exclusively on Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons, the use of this curriculum assumes that the parent/teacher has attended (either live or via DVD) IEW’s Basic Seminar on Teaching Writing Structure and Style.  An overview and review of IEW’s Basic Seminar can also be found here at Curriculum Choice.

Basically, Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons takes the nine units of writing instruction covered in Teaching Writing:  Structure and Style and applies them to specific writing assignments that pertain directly to Ancient History topics. For example, three lessons cover IEW Units I and II (Note Making and Summarizing from Notes).  More specifically, three lessons focus on writing from key-word outlines using articles about ziggurats, the Sumerians, and ”The Epic of Gilgamesh” story.  Within those three lessons, several aspects of writing style are practiced as well:

  • creating titles
  • sentence openers (starting with an -ly word and very short sentences)
  • appealing to five senses

A wide variety of writing assignments are given in this curriculum including:

  • Poems
  • Writing paragraphs from key-word outlines
  • Writing narrative stories
  • Writing critiques
  • Research reports
  • Formal essays and reports
  • Writing from pictures
  • Creative writing.

To learn more about the writing skills and history topics covered in Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons, the entire Table of Contents and the Scope and Sequence can be viewed.

The program consists of a Student Book and a Teacher Book.  Not only do I highly recommend purchasing both components, I highly recommend purchasing a Student Book for each student.  To make things even more convenient, it would be beneficial for the parent/teacher to have a copy of the Student Book as well.  Much of the material in the Student Book is simply not included in the Teacher Book.

Advantages

  • The program meshes very well with our history studies in Ancient History.  I adore that the boys’ writing lessons are related to and reinforce the topics they are learning about in history.
  • Many of the assignments include a picture as part of the assignment.  This element particularly appeals to my artistic sons.

  • The expectations for the assignments are clearly given in Final Checklists.  My boys appreciate knowing exactly what they need to do to do well on their writing assignments.
  • Four vocabulary words are introduced almost every week.  The cardstock vocabulary cards with pictures on the front and definitions on the back are wonderful for learning the new words.   Since the program encourages the vocabulary words to be used in the writing projects and quizzes are included, my sons are internalizing the vocabulary words.
  • The program can easily be used with multiple grades at one time.  Instructions and suggestions are given for Level A students (3rd-5th grade) and Level B students (6th-8th grade).  As well, the lessons can be adjusted according to the readiness level of the child rather than the grade level.  For example, I am teaching this course to my 4th and 6th grade boys this year but they are both working at Level A.
  • The Student Book includes many very helpful pages in the Appendix including:  Stylistic techniques chart, Quality adjectives, Strong verbs, -ly words, Five-senses words, Proofreading marks, and Vocabulary words.

The program does require quite a bit of parent/teacher involvement but I am finding that the time investment is paying rich dividends in improved writing skills for my sons.  After years of searching for a writing program that is a perfect fit for our family, I feel confident that I’ve finally found a great fit with IEW’s Theme Based Programs.

For the 2010-2011 school year Samantha is teaching her 4th, 6th, and 8th grade children at home.  Samantha writes about homeschooling and family life at To Be Busy At Home.  In addition to her own blog, she writes for The Homeschool Classroom, Curriculum Choice, and is a member of the TOS Review Crew.

Sew Teach Me Sewing Curriculum Review

 Hands On, Highschool, Home Economics, Middle School  4 Responses »
Sep 062010
 

Since my daughter is in 8th grade this year, I was eager to start some formal home economics classes with her as part of her school day.  Not only do I feel that home economics classes teach valuable life skills, I think they are a wonderful, hands-on break from the more academic subjects which compose her school days.  My daughter had shown interest in learning to sew, so I wanted to add a sewing course to her schedule this year.  Given that my seamstress skills are limited at best, I was nervous about putting together my own sewing course.

Thankfully, I ventured into the Sew Teach Me booth at the Midwest Homeschool Convention.  After talking with the helpful folks at the Sew Teach Me booth, I decided that the sewing curriculum was exactly what I had been looking for in a beginning sewing course.

I purchased the entire course on CD for $89.95 which includes patterns for a few of the projects and pattern design software from which all of the other patterns can be printed.  If you prefer to purchase the curriculum printed and bound which also includes the pattern design software, the price is $159.95.  The curriculum is recommended for ages 8 and up but I think you would really need to consider the maturity level of your child.  My daughter definitely would not have been ready for this course at 8, but at 13, the course is a perfect fit for her.

Sew Teach Me includes 8 chapters covering a wide variety of basic sewing skills.  My favorite part of the curriculum is that chapters 2 through 8 all include a great sewing project to complete at the end of the chapter.  My daughter’s enthusiasm for the sewing course increased dramatically when she had successfully completed her first project.  All of the projects are items that could be given for gifts or kept for oneself.

Most chapters offer a choice of projects so that your child could choose his or her favorite project to complete or complete all three projects if desired.  For example, your child can choose between a ski hat, pet planket, or tic-tac-toe board at the end of the chapter on straight sewing.  My daughter chose the ski hat.

More specifically, each chapter in the Sew Teach Me sewing curriculum covers basic sewing skills with a project or projects at the end of the chapter designed to practice the newly learned skills.  Here is a brief overview of the contents of each chapter and the sewing projects from which your child can choose.

  • Chapter 1 – Learning the parts of the sewing machine.
  • Chapter 2 – Straight stitching.  Projects include a ski hat, pet blanket, or tic-tac-toe board.
  • Chapter 3 – Stitching curves.  Projects include a candy swirl pillow, oven mitt, or hand puppet.
  • Chapter 4 – Fasteners (sewing in a zipper, sewing a snap, sewing hook and loop tape).  Projects include a book bag, hanging organizer, or wrist wallet.
  • Chapter 5 – Survival sewing (replacing buttons, repairing hems, mending tears and rips, re-sewing seams, replacing zippers, pressing, laundry).  The project for this chapter is a laundry sorting bag.
  • Chapter 6 – Decorative stitching.  Projects include a lap quilt, computer mouse pad, or a visor.
  • Chapter 7 – Field trip to a local fabric store, learning about patterns.
  • Chapter 8 – Putting it all together.  Projects include a picnic tablecloth, iCare bib, or apron.

Sew Teach Me is written directly to the student in simple, clear language.  While the class is clearly designed to be primarily an independent study, I am working through the class with my daughter.  If at all possible, I think it is quite helpful to have somebody available to help work through the sewing projects.  Expert sewing skills are NOT NEEDED to help your child with this course.  I have some experience with sewing but I am no expert.  With my limited knowledge and the excellent instruction in this course, I am learning right alongside my daughter.  In the very first chapter, I learned that I’ve been removing the thread from my sewing machine the wrong way for the past 17 years!

My only complaint about the Sew Teach Me curriculum is that I find piecing together the patterns after we’ve printed them out to be difficult.  Using the included pattern design software, patterns are printed right from your computer.  Then, all of the pieces of paper need to be matched up, taped, and then the pattern pieces need to be cut out.  Therefore, I will be purchasing a simple apron pattern for my daughter to use in the last chapter rather than trying to piece together the pattern pieces for a large project like an apron.

You can learn more about the Sew Teach Me curriculum at their website.  As well, you can see pictures of each of the chapter projects.  Fabric kits for each project can also be purchased on their website but I find it much more fun to pick out the fabric of my daughter’s choice at our local fabric store.  If you are not close to a fabric store, though, this may be a convenient option.

Samantha has been homeschooling her three children for the past 8 years.  Currently, she is homeschooling a 4th grader, 6th grader, and an 8th grader.  Samantha writes about homeschooling and family life at To Be Busy At Home.

Growing With Grammar

 Junior High Language Arts, Language Arts  2 Responses »
Jul 262010
 

I have been using Growing With Grammar with my daughter and youngest son for the past three years.  This review will focus on the Growing With Grammar curriculum generally, as we have used several levels of the program.

Growing With Grammar provides a thorough education in grammar, including sentence diagramming.  Sentence diagramming is included starting in level 3 of the curriculum.  The complete Scope and Sequence for the series is included on their website.  Growing With Grammar is a secular program published by JacRis Publishing.  While I tend to use curriculum from Christian publishers in our homeschool, over the past three years and three levels of the curriculum, I have never found anything even remotely offensive to our family values in the grammar program.

Growing With Grammar curriculum is sold as a package with the Student Manual, Student Workbook, and Teacher’s Grading Key for $29.99.  All of my orders have shipped quite promptly and I have enjoyed nothing but excellent customer service from JacRis Publishing.  All of the elements of the grammar program are also sold separately, which is a benefit if other siblings will be using the program at a later date.  So, when using the grammar program for a second time, only the Student Workbook would need to be purchased.

The presentation of the Student Workbooks offers two unique benefits.  First is that the spiral binding is at the top.  This is an advantage for those who have left-handed children.  Second is that the “Grade 7″ label on the front of the Student Workbook has been changed to read “Level 7.”  All of the levels in the program are presented in the same way.  As somebody who has always had one of her children a year below his grade level in grammar, I appreciate when Student Workbooks are not marked with grade levels.  Currently, there are 8 levels in the program.

In my daughter’s experience, she has been able to complete the vast majority of the lessons independently.  One of my sons often needed some help completing his lessons, but grammar has always been a struggle for him.  So, depending on your child, the program can be almost entirely student-led.

To complete a lesson, the student first reads the lesson in the Student Manual.  The lessons are very clearly presented with many, many examples.  The lesson for levels 1 and 2 are included right on the work/text page, so those two levels do not have a separate Student Manual.  All other levels have a separate Student Manual.

Looking specifically at the pages within the Student Manual, they are quite plain with no color and infrequent small, black and white graphics.  I find that the lack of visual stimulation helps my children to focus on the lesson.  After reading the pages in the Student Manual (usually between 2 and 4 double-spaced pages), the child completes the front and back of the Student Workbook page to reinforce the current lesson.

Each lesson in the Student Workbook also has a review portion included.  I particularly like that the review portion includes the lesson number that is  being reviewed.  This makes it easy for the student to go back in his or her Student Manual and look up the previous lesson if needed.

The curriculum is designed so that it can be completed over a 36 week school year by doing 3 lessons per week.

My single criticism of the Growing With Grammar program is that there are no tests available for purchase.  To compensate for this, I have used the end-of-chapter reviews as tests but my preference would be to have both a review and a test for each chapter.  Other than that, I have been completely satisfied with the Growing With Grammar program.  We have been using this curriculum for three years now and will continue to use it in the fall.

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment.  As well, the Growing With Grammar website has much more information about all levels of this curriculum and their new spelling and vocabulary program.

-Samantha writes about homeschooling and family life at To Be Busy At Home.