A Picture A Day: January 25, 2013

Second NHBA book club this month for Icefall by Matthew Kirby.  Learning about ravens, eating skyr and playing Hnefatafl (this is a link to an online version.  Here are the directions)

A Picture A Day: January 11, 2013

We began our National Homeschool Book Awards Class this morning.  Our featured book this month is Icefall by Matthew Kirby.  We loved it here at our homeschool.  Of course, it probably helps that we are of Icelandic descent!!  AH and his friends work on the craft project.

A Picture A Day: September 16, 2011

Finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

National Homeschool Book Award

 I'm so excited about this opportunity!  A group of homeschool moms here in Minnesota have organized a National Homeschool Book Award.  Here is how they describe it on their website:

The NHBA is a readers' choice book award designed to recognize and celebrate current juvenile fiction that explores learning experiences occurring outside the traditional classroom setting and that resonates with homeschool readers.

The group has nominated four books for their inaugural award:

Alabama Moon by Watt Key
Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy & Snowcap by H.M. Bouwman
Savvy by Ingrid Law

Homeschoolers are asked to read these four books and in October vote for their favorite.  The winner will be announced in November.  During this time their website will offer activities based on these books.  It costs nothing to participate in this award.

The website offers summaries of each nominee and explains the process in depth. They also have a facebook page!  Check it out!

Now you know what AH and I will be reading for the next few months!

Vacation

We don't often go on vacation or travel, so when my husband suggested visiting his sister and her family in San Antonio, Texas for Thanksgiving I was ecstatic!  It had been 5 years since we were there and that time was busy with wedding bells and all the activity which surround such events.  AH was pretty excited, too.  He and his cousin, CN, are very close.  Whether it's been a couple of months or a year, they seem to be able to pick up where they leave off.  Visiting San Antonio also gave me inspiration for a unit study we completed before we left: The Alamo, of course!  AH had been there before, but was 2 or 3 years old at the time.  Here was the perfect opportunity to study some history and to reinforce that learning with an exciting field trip that included a plane ride!

I found some wonderful resources to use in our unit study:
Inside the Alamo by Jim Murphy
A phenomenal resource! I checked out 7 or 8 books on the subject, but this became our main guide through the unit study. We simply read one or two chapters each day and discussed the subject matter.  There are anecdotes, sidebars, maps and beautiful photographs and sketches which enhance the story.  The history is so thorough, I didn't feel the need to use any other book beside the one listed below.  As I was looking up the link to the book, I found a short study guide to the book.  I didn't use it but wanted to link to it for your convenience.
The Alamo website
The Daughters of the Republic of Texas have done an amazing job on this website.  There are facts, activity pages and curriculum, so I encourage you to explore this rich website.  Unfortunately there are several broken links but there are many other resources on the site.   Here are the resources we enjoyed:
Lesson plan for 4th grade
Lesson plan for 7th grade
Each of these extensive lesson plans has worksheets, coloring pages, a time-line, a map, diagrams of the Alamo and puzzles.
If you find that you can visit the Alamo, they have a history hunt list, a patch program and a young courier program for kids to complete.  AH wasn't interested in completing these, so I have no idea whether they are worth it or not.
Susanna of the Alamo by John Jakes
My 12 year old boy didn't enjoy this as much since it is written for a younger audience, but it did have a woman's perspective that I wanted to bring to the study.  We often hear that no one survived the Alamo, but women, children and slaves did survive and this book explores why Santa Anna released these few.

This had to be one of the simplest unit studies we've done.  AH didn't want to put together a poster or a power point presentation as we usually do, so we simply read, discussed and did the activity sheets. I did put together some "trading cards" with pictures of key men and women of this time period.  On the back, AH then wrote 3 interesting facts about each person.  I will upload the templates in the future since am finding it difficult to do right now. Of course, the big event was visiting the site of the battle.  Since photography isn't allowed within the Alamo, we don't have too many pictures to show you.  But here is what we have:

Our whole family in front of the Alamo.

We stopped by the Alamo on a Segway tour of downtown San Antonio.

San Fernando Cathedral where Santa Anna would climb to the top (of the old section, not visible) and survey his troops and the Alamo.

CN (left), Doug (AH's dad) and AH (right) enjoy a game of Balderdash with the family

Thank Goodness for Rachel

I'm often asked how I can teach my child every subject. The questions are asked as if we learn in a vacuum. I suppose most people think that homeschoolers must be all alone at home all the time. AH and I strive to be out in the community: both the general and the local homeschooling community. The homeschoolers I know read blogs, Internet sites, books and magazines for inspiration and help. They love to share what they learn. Most of my inspiration and ideas come from others who are homeschooling themselves. The most helpful suggestion I've ever received came from Rachel, a homeschool mom in St. Paul who I found myself working with during the Minnesota State Fair. What wise ideas did she impart? She simply recommended a book, Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of your ADD child, by Jeffery Freed and Laurie Parsons. AH doesn't suffer from ADD (we've had him tested) but he is extremely right-brained. Rachel also has a right-brained learner, so I immediately requested the book from our library. I read the book with interest, not thinking it was going to change our homeschooling lives, and was intrigued with the author's ideas. It was the chapter on spelling that changed everything for us. AH has had an extremely hard time with spelling. His is atrocious! We've tried all sorts of systems and books and methods to no avail. Here was one chapter of a book that unlocked the mystery of spelling. I remember thinking to myself, "Could it really be this simple?" As the author suggested, I chose a word that had multiple syllables and that he wouldn't know how to spell: Cartography. I spelled it out on a sheet of paper like so:

Cartography

I called AD in from another room and asked him to study the word and make a mental image of it in his mind. I gave him 20 seconds. Then I covered the word and asked him to spell it. Without much hesitation, he spelled it correctly! This is a child who had difficulty spelling the word from! The author then tells you to ask the child to spell it backwards. I thought there was no way AH would be able to do that, but I tried anyway. With that mental image in his mind, AH spelled it backwards correctly! I cried that day and almost everyday that we work on spelling. It's fun to see the pride on his face when he remembers how to spell a word. And, yes, he can still spell cartography correctly!

Thank goodness for Rachel! Sometimes inspiration is sitting right next to you.

Celebrate Banned Books Week!

Celebrate our freedom of speech! This week is Banned Books Week. Pick one up and read it with your child! AH and I have read quite a few found on the list, why not one more?! We started A Wrinkle in Time. What are you reading?

Some books that have been challenged or banned:

The Holy Bible, Huckleberry Finn, Don Quixote, The Koran, Tom Sawyer, Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels, Canterbury Tales, Harry Potter, Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Leaves of Grass, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Les Miserables, Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, Book of Common Prayer, Grapes of Wrath, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Origin of Species, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Farewell to Arms, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Jungle, Gone with the Wind, All Quiet on the Western Front, Sun Also Rises, Doctor Zhivago, East of Eden, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings,The Talmud, James and the Giant Peach, Little House on the Prairie, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Chocolate War, Hatchet, The Catcher in the Rye, Flowers for Algernon, A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, Harriet the Spy, Blubber, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings, The Pigman, Lord of the Flies, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Forever, Bridge to Terabithia, Sounder, The Indian in the Cupboard, Julie of the Wolves, A Wrinkle in Time, The Giving Tree, The First Captain Underpants, The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book One), and the list goes on and on and on!

A Tradition Continues

My kids were quite little when the first Harry Potter book came on the scene. We were enthralled by the adventures of that little orphan and his friends. Each afternoon we would pile on the couch in the living room and read the books out loud together. Even when my daughter became a teen she wanted to continue. She and AN would take turns reading. It's what we did together. AH was too young to remember reading all of them, but he would play in the living room while we read. We all participated. We enjoyed the books so much that we eventually made it a tradition to attend each midnight release party of the books. We really enjoyed these times together and when the series of books became movies it was a natural transition to attend the midnight showings of the movies. My older kids attended public school and I always allowed them to miss the next day of school when we did these activities.

Well, I am truly thankful that our tradition has continued. Last night, AH, AN, AD, MB and I went to the opening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Even though my daughter is in her early twenties and lives in her own apartment she joined us last night at the 3 am showing of the movie on the "Ultra Screen." I thought that my 17 year old would ditch us for his friends, but he also chose to watch with his mom, brother, and sister. What makes this even more fun is that my daughter's boyfriend, MB, has joined us for the last two movies. And so it continues!

And the movie? It was great!

A Blast from the Past

Do you remember the set of books, Childcraft? I loved them as a child. We didn't have all of them, but the ones we had were old and well loved. I was browsing the bookshelves of Goodwill last week when I came upon 2 pristine Childcraft books from the 1990 How and Why series. Each was priced at $2.99 and I grabbed both of them and began to search the shelves for more. Alas, I didn't find more, but the ones I did buy have been a hoot! AH and I paged through Volume 13, Mathemagic last night. Remember, this is a child who has had issues with math for most of his school life. He loves this book!! We solved rebuses, attempted to solve brainteasers and read about squaring numbers. He came up with amazingly creative solutions to some of the brainteasers, even if they weren't the "right answer" and that is exactly what I'm striving for: problem solving creativity. It seems to me that creativity and using your imagination is the key to liking math and understanding it. A natural and playful creativity cannot but make math beautiful and (gasp) fun. AH actually asked if we could do some more of the activities in that book today! I know he has a long way to go, but at least we have found part of the path and are enjoying our walk.

My favorite math websites and blogs:
Math Mama Writes
Living Math

An long, but very interesting, article on math and creativity:
A Mathematician's Lament