Dyslexia At Our House (Plus Freebies and HUGE Giveaway Bundle from The Thinking Tree–value over $100!))

I noticed our son had some reading challenges early on. Not only that, but letter writing challenges, number challenges, math challenges, and handwriting challenges. This was prior to putting him in our state’s virtual academy for homeschool. We only remained with K12 for a year and a half, but in that time, testing was done (along with reams of IEPs and tons of online meetings which were very frustrating, to be honest). Dyslexia. Not profound, but significant.

When I pulled our kids from K12, I had to maintain my own course and establish strategies that would work for our son to succeed. Here are some of the things I found helpful:

I used a basic evaluation like this to discern if I was headed in the right direction prior to formal testing.
One of the best discoveries I made as a mom was realizing it helped our son a great deal to separate his math from any reading assignments. Do math first. Do math after recess or lunch. Why? Because in reading, his brain is going top-to-bottom and left-to-right on the page. Then in math he had times when his brain was required to perform processes going from right-to left, and bottom-from-top. A simple truth, but one I’d never considered before. His brain was exhausted. This is what it may have looked like to him during a normal school day: http://space.io9.com/nasa-tossed-astronauts-with-this-gimbal-rig-before-laun-1727900059
We started slow with reading, and I found that the Abeka pages I reverted to (because I had them on hand) were way, WAY too busy for him. There was too much color, too many different concepts on his math pages in particular. So at that point, I switched to Rod and Staff , which was very basic, one concept at a time, and no bells and whistles to distract. Now that he is older, we use Teaching Textbooks, which is simple, quiet lecture, easy to follow, and appeals to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners.
For reading, I found for our son that he had the best success when he read books in comic book form, with text bubbles. There was something about having small bits of text, isolated and not in paragraph form, that really helped him. “Missile Mouse” (we bought the whole set for Christmas) was a favorite, and we had a wide variety of these books at our library.
I used Abeka Phonics for all three of our kids, with good success. It uses some rote drill along with pictures, and that helped our son to associate sounds with images in his mind.
I also found that in the beginning he made good progress writing in text bubbles as well! We made our own story boards, but here is a fun, free template source.
Simple exercises like these can help exercise the mind!
For reading comprehension, I found it very helpful at the start for our son to use sticky notes for each paragraph. We would decide what the “big idea” in that paragraph was, and write it on the note. This trained his mind to look not only for main ideas and subjects of sentences, but also for how everything works in context.
Using a bookmark under lines of text while reading helped a lot. Pointing at each word with his finger did not help him to train his mind to see groups of words together. Using a straight edge under each line of text helped his eyes to embrace ideas instead of just syllables.
Something that is a relatively new idea is the dyslexia font, available free here. It can be used to create your own printables and worksheets. This was not around when we were first testing the waters, but I’m happy to offer it now!
While we spent time on handwriting (of course), I didn’t make a federal case out of it, and for our purposes we only focused on cursive for his signature.
One of the most liberating things we did was teach typing/keyboarding early. Not only is this a skill our kids must have in this generation and beyond, but for our son, it skipped the whole mental gymnastic thing with the letters he commonly “flipped”. Because he learned the keyboard by rote, his brain told him “b” and he typed “b”. Incorporating the keyboard into our homeschooling was a total game-changer for us! You can find good, free typing programs here.
Our son reads well now (but still prefers not to read aloud). He enjoys works with more difficult vocabulary and mythical names, etc. like the Narnia series, the Chronicles of Prydain, and the popular Tolkien books. I’m so grateful for his progress.
Even now, when we have a good handle on reading, I still see the challenges show up again in math. He can do mental math very quickly, but on paper, it’s a chore. For instance, in multiplication review, using numbers in hundreds and thousands, and remembering to bump numbers one spot to the left in the answers…the frustrations came up again. Understanding fully the “why” of doing it helps some, and TT does a great job at that. But I remembered again that he cannot do reading in close proximity to math. I’d forgotten, and set him up for a very bad day with algebra.

I hope these tips might help someone else who is struggling on this journey. In the last year, I discovered The Thinking Tree–a resource I would have given my right arm for years ago! Go and check them out!

Meanwhile, I have a HUGE giveaway for you from The Thinking Tree! Comment below to enter (and be sure to “follow” this blog!). I’ll post the name of the winner on Friday, 10 am (Mountain Time). Here’s what you are entering to win:

The Boy’s Journal (value $32.00)

The Girl’s Journal (value $32.00)

The Spelling Journal (value $24.50)

The Handbook for Moms (value 32.50)

The Benefit of Using Free Materials (with FREEBIES, of course!)

Obviously, the crowning benefit of using free stuff is…it’s FREE! Right? No rocket science there. But let’s think further.

How much money have you wasted because you read/heard recommendations about some fabulous (and perhaps spendy) product, bought it, tried it, shelved it? Me too. Something we need to remember is that each of our kids is pretty intricately designed. Buying what Ursula Unschooler or Becky Abeka did because it worked so fabulously for them might not be the best use of your precious homeschooling funds. One HUGE benefit of using free materials is that if you don’t like it, there is no guilt in kicking it to the curb.

Another benefit of utilizing free resources is that (unless you are unusually blessed) your kids will probably each need a different approach to their schooling. You may have one child who is not academically wired at all and requires quite a bit of coaxing along. The next child may be bright, but struggling with a learning disability which requires you to rethink e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Yet another child may thrive on using workbooks, and functions exceptionally well independently. Another may be a move-and-touch learner…NO WAY workbooks will work. Have you felt this dilemma? In a perfect world, we could buy one box curriculum, and it would be seamlessly one-size-fits-all. But this is not a perfect world, and our kids are wired with amazing and wonderful diversity. Using free materials can help us adapt from one child to the next. It may enable us to tweak an existing curriculum so that it is usable between child #1 and child #3, by adding more audio appeal, more visual appeal, more touch appeal, more interest-led appeal.

Quite frankly, using free materials may make our break our ability to homeschool in the first place! These days, and with our current economy situation, it can be harder and harder to homeschool. The paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it used to, and you may need one parent to be stay-at-home in order to make everything work. (If you have both parents in the home working while homeschooling, check out this blog post for some good coping strategies.)

In our home, I stay home with the kids. But that means we do a lot of penny pinching. We shop sales. We visit Dollar Tree routinely. Lots of our clothes come from second hand and consignment shops. We don’t do a whole lot of eating out or activities which require financing.

When I really launched our homeschool journey, I was stuck between a rock and a hard spot. I knew we had to quit what we were doing (public school virtual academy, where everything was provided free), but I did not have the funding to buy curriculum, and I needed something NOW. We withdrew our kids from the academy mid-Spring semester, Not ideal from a planning standpoint. How did we survive? Free curricula and internet. And the library became a very regular stop for us each week.

In previous years, we had various curricula given to us or purchased for us. We did Bob Jones dvds, Abeka dvds, and Rod and Staff because of gracious gifts and provisions. They were not only pricey–they were also not “us”. I had not found our niche yet. So, I scrambled. I gave our kids a couple weeks to “deschoolify” (we did reading and basic math I scraped together in a flurry) and used that time to pour hours and hours into scouring the internet for quality, free resources. That was back in 2007.

Things have really stepped up since then. As homeschooling becomes more widely accepted, the internet has exploded with great stuff to use! Amazing, worthwhile stuff. Back in 2007, things were not so plentiful. It’s amazing the difference only a few years can make!

The lifesaving freebies for me in our transition time were:

http://allinonehomeschool.com/ This was by far my biggest salvation. It is Christian (which is my preference), and structured, with lots of printables and live links included. It is now available through high school. This website alone gave me the format I needed to move forward even while I kept searching for ideal stuff that would be tailored to our family. It covers the core subjects and also electives. Flexible and free, you can do it at your own pace.
http://keysforkids.org I used this site as additional Bible material. It is free and gives some practical application for basic Bible truths through stories kids can relate to.
https://www.amblesideonline.org/ When I needed more material to beef up what we were doing, I started looking into the Charlotte Mason method to see if it would jive with my kids and their learning styles. In the end, it was a bit suicidal for me because it required a lot of hunting down of resources, scouring the web again, and finding out of print books. My health was not good at the time, so this was all pretty overwhelming for me. God was so gracious, and when I went to the used bookstore in our little western town, I found several old volumes that I needed. The likelihood of that happening is pretty slim. I’m grateful He was looking out for me!
At this link you’ll find the Schoolin’ Swag Pinterest board for complete curricula (and there’s a LOT more there, too). Not all of the pins are for free stuff, but many of them are!
I highly recommend following this site and this one as well, for lots of high quality freebies!

As a result of my scrambling, Schoolin’ Swag was born. It has now become a favorite resource to nearly 4,500 homeschoolers and continues to grow on a daily basis. Daily, we have dozens of freebies, discounts and deals posted. Of course, I highly recommend joining there as well!

For the Love of Learning,
Diane

What “Bible Time” Looks Like For Us (and LOTS of freebies)

From early on, I start teaching our kids to read their Bibles independently. I want them to see that God can speak to them, and they can understand it. Too much spoon-feeding helps our kids to feel they need to be reliant upon us in order to have a walk with God.

So, from the time they are small, we listen to Keys for Kids every day (you can also get it free in booklet form). We talk about the main idea of each broadcast. I copy and paste the verse for the day into a free handwriting worksheet maker for daily copy work.

When the kids were tiny, we used these little flashcards to learn a verse by heart for every letter of the alphabet.

I’ve also used a children’s Bible like this one, so they can begin reading passages on their own.

Who needs to hear the Bible read aloud more than the cat?

In addition, I also love this brand new children’s topical Bible, compiled by my friend, Michelle Brock.

I’ve used free printable Bible curricula like this and this (for older children).

I also enjoy including missionary biographies. Currently we are using this book, and we are really enjoying it. I’ve tried to encourage our youngest to write a little biography of her own using this free printable.

For my high schoolers, I’ve done some different things. I’ve used the New Answers Book (from Answers in Genesis), which is available free online (as well as a free study guide) for apologetics/creation science. I’ve used this free material to create a “Life of Christ” course (here is a free commentary also). I put together a Biblical Counseling course using the free resources at Debi Pryde’s site in conjunction with this book by Elyse Fitzpatrick.

Finally, I’ve found plenty of videos recently addressing the idea of why the Bible is trustworthy. Here are the videos my 10th grader has watched thus far:

Science Confirms the Bible is True Part 1

Science Confirms the Bible is True Part 2

How Do We Know the Bible is True? (Josh McDowell)

40 Archaeology Facts Which Prove the Bible is True

A little more advanced is this series, “From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man” (free mp3s) by Mark Minnick, which addresses questions about inspiration, translations, and why the Bible we have is reliable.

A great initial discipleship tool is “Basics for Believers” by Dr. Jim Berg (not free, but very reasonable). A more fully developed, free discipleship series called Foundations can be found here.

Here is a screen shot of all the topics covered:

Hope this helps!

For the Love of Learning,
Diane

Curriculaholics Anonymous–Are You Addicted to Collecting and Perusing Stuff?

I’m a purger, not a piler. Piles make me crazy, and nothing distracts me more. True confession? Schoolin’ Swag was begun partly because I came across a ton of great homeschooling stuff I knew I’d never use, or I didn’t need at the moment…and I could not stand to let go of it! So I created the group as a place to park stuff (and in the process hopefully bless someone else who needed exactly that stuff). But that didn’t solve my compulsion to grab all things free and homeschool-oriented.

With all that free stuff at my fingertips, it was very easy to feel overwhelmed. Then it stopped being a blessing and turned into a very distracting burden. Counterproductive. I needed a “sieve” of questions to help me decide what was best. I have met people who buy stuff because it is on sale…without any particular goal or plan in mind. There may not even be a need for it. They may have never used that item before…but it was on SALE! Can you guess what the house looks like? Ever seen “Hoarders”? We don’t want to be that. We want to be good stewards of the money, time, and space we have…not to mention those few brain cells we have remaining.

So here’s the 5-question sieve for printables and downloads:

Does this material jive with our learning style or can it be easily tweaked?
Is this material going to necessitate additional purchases (supplies, etc) for it to be useful? Am I able/willing to invest in those?
Does this fit in my lesson plan currently? Do I have a place to put it so I can readily find and plug it in?
If this is something to save for the future, do I have a logical, usable, accessible way of storing it?
Does grabbing this material obligate me to sign up for things I don’t want (read the fine print)?

At Schoolin’ Swag, I added a little sanity to my life by beginning some Files tabs. Also, by posting items in the group with a little blurb like “great resource for algebra” I can easily find it again, simply using the search tool with key terms. What else do I do with my stuff? Here are some things I’ve found helpful.

First, I think it is good to ask why. Why do I think I need to do something different? Is it because what I am currently doing is not working? How do I believe this new thing will help me accomplish my goals? Don’t change for the sake of changing. Be purposeful.
I rarely bookmark anymore. It doesn’t really organize things in a usable manner for me, and it is too TOO easy to click to bookmark every little thing that seems appealing for that “rainy day”.
Pinterest? I’m personally not a fan. Many at Swag really love to use it, so I started Pinterest boards for our group. To me, that venue is totally sensory overload and it can be a certifiable time waster for me. I click one thing, which leads down the path to something else like a winding path through a dark forest. I get lost. I start out looking for lapbooks on George Washington and end up watching videos of dolphin rescues. Educational? Maybe. Productive? Not really.
I use Evernote (free) which allows me to do save pages (or portions or articles) in folders I can create in a way that makes sense to me. Just download the little toolbar button, and simply click the little elephant when you are on a page with something save-able. Here is a screen shot with the options at upper right for how you want to save and where. I create folders like “Michael’s School” (for things I know we’ll use this year) and “2016-2017 School Year” (for something I’m looking to use in the future). Subfolders can be set up for particular subjects and projects. That way things are not saved just as arbitrary bookmarks, but are categorized in a way so that I can FIND them!

So I don’t “print and forget” those great freebies that are time sensitive and won’t be free later, I have plastic milk crates with hanging folders to organize things I’ve printed. Since they are open and available, the likelihood of my actually filing things is much greater. Just make folders for each grade/subject, paperclip your projects, and plunk ’em in. Go through the folders at least every 6 months. Pull stuff you have realized has lost its appeal and see if you can find a new home for it. If not, flip the paper over, and you have scrap for sketching, math problems, etc. I keep a box of scrap. 🙂
As far as free samples, I find I rarely use them unless they are substantial or it is a handout I need very SOON. So, I usually don’t bother with these and it uncomplicates my life.
Books? I’ve been guilty of grabbing some off the free cart at the library just because they looked cool. We flipped through it once, and off it went to Goodwill. Why add that stress? Check it out from the library if it is cool to look through but not something you’ll make good use of. If you have books that are just gathering dust, set them free! Sell them on Ebay, Varagesale, or even via Amazon buy back. Or, if you are feeling philanthropic, you can give them away on Facebook pages like this.
What about YouTube videos? We love to use those for school! Here is how to create playlists of your very own!
And how about those humongous downloads you grabbed? Those things that are 200, 300, 700 pages? Yikes! Here is what I’ve done with those, because I keep forgetting I have them! I started pulling up the cover page on my laptop, taking a screen shot (on my computer, I click the “prt sc” button at top right, then open Paint and click “paste” and then save the image). Then I save the images to a folder I called “Homeschool Downloads”. At a glance, I can see what they are, and what they are called if I want to open them.

Got some great organization tips for curricula? A 12-step program? Tell us in the comments! 🙂

For the Love of Learning,

Diane

Making Vocabulary Fun (with Freebies)!

As a kid, I remember being given a list of words. I found them in the dictionary. Wrote them on a page in my blue lesson book, and copied the definition. Bleh. We need to spice this up!

Here are some easy peasy ideas:

First, I strongly feel that vocabulary is best learned via reading matter that matters. Have your kids read. Often. So much vocabulary and spelling is easily “caught” (gathered from context, imprinted in the mind by repetition) while reading something enjoyable.
Get a good children’s dictionary. We really like this one. Teach your child how to use it, how to find words by using guide words and alphabetization. Then find your word, read the definition, and have your child act it out or create a sentence including the word.
Write your vocabulary words on a white board in a common location in the house. Give your child a sticker for each time you hear them use their new words throughout the day.
Write a short (maybe even silly) story, trying to include as many words as possible. Use a free template like one of these, to allow your student to illustrate their story!
Play Pictionary with your list, drawing items or scenes to guess the words.
For tactile learners, try using play dough to craft items in association with vocabulary words.
Use websites like this free one, to create your own worksheets, matching words with definitions.
If reading definitions is tedious, read them with an accent. No kidding. Our daughter is reading in her attempt of an English accent today. 🙂
Encourage intelligent viewing. There is children’s programming that dumbs the script down, and there are other choices which broaden the vocabulary. Pay attention to what your kids are absorbing (for a lot more reasons than simply word choice!).
Use nifty free sites like this one, which has some great tools especially for visual learners.
There is also this site which offers free spelling and vocabulary games and tools. Insert your own spelling list and it tailors the activities to reinforce them! Here is a video:

Hope these ideas help! Got some nifty, tried-and-true ideas of your own? Share them in the comments!

What To Do On Those Clueless Days (and free coal samples!)

We all have them. The days when the lessons seem…flat. When the kids motivation level feels like you are slogging through molasses in February. When you feel overwhelmed by all the rest of life and it’s so hard to concentrate. Days when it seems your little students have forgotten everything they’ve learned thus far this year. Every. Thing. On those days, we congratulate ourselves just for getting it done. Just get it done. Check those boxes off. Fill out the worksheets. Go through the motions of education. Never mind passion. No discovery today. We’ll skip art because we want to cut to the chase, toss all the “bells and whistles” and be done.

Do you know that kind of day? Me too.

I’ll tell you what, though. We are so blessed in this age of technology! We have abundant-to-overflowing resources right at our fingertips. For example, our “flat” subject yesterday was science. Reading about fossil fuels. *yawn* I prayed for a little creativity to help my 4th grader to continue to love learning (which is #1 in my mission statement). I found some cute videos on youtube about fossil fuels and how coal is formed. We detoured a little in discussing fossils (which are cool ANY time) and exoskeletons (and she was inspired to build one for her teddy bear out of toilet paper rolls and a tissue box). I showed my girl some photos of a dear friend in Alaska, who regularly harvests coal right off the beach in front of her house. That is so unusual and VERY cool. And I searched for my free coal samples that I’d sent away for last year…to no avail. They are “in a box somewhere”. I have aspirations of visiting a nearby coal mine soon. That will be fun!

Anyway, you get the idea. Google (or whatever your preferred search engine is) is your best bud. I’ve found so many neat things just by typing in a topic and “free printable” or “free worksheet” or “free lapbook”. Don’t be afraid to stray from the text book. Kindle that love for learning. Yes, you’ll hear that a LOT here!

The “Do It ALL” Mom

You are writing lesson plans. You are also planning meals. Planning field trips. Cooking meals. Shopping (usually with all the kids in tow). Picking up (again and again and again…when you homeschool, your home is continually occupied, so it is never really “together”). Vacuuming. Perhaps you “work at home” (on top of the other work, that is!). Dishes. Snacks. You might rarely see other adults. More snacks. Art lessons (with glue and glitter…oy). Maybe you are also a soccer mom, or you have piano lessons to drive to. Maybe you are dealing with a chronic illness, or you have children challenged with a disability. You may have even more “hats” that you wear. And you still need to “save the best of your energy” for your husband, on top of it all.

And now you have that stack of curriculum before you. You wonder if you have the best. You wonder if you’re covering it all the way you should. Are you missing something? Is your child being cheated in his or her education? How will you get the whole book done by the end of the year? What if you skip a page in that workbook, or you don’t have the whatchamacallit for that experiment? What if that cool thing that other family is doing is something you should be doing too? Before you know it, life is one big “Squirrel!” moment. Oh dear.

More isn’t necessarily better. It has been helpful for me to think of the educational experience as a smorgasbord. In the process of meeting the academic requirements for your state or region, you place SO much before your child. All sorts of literature and writing resources, maths, sciences, history, social studies, health, physical education, and electives. This is about so much more than grades. This is about paying attention to your child’s niche. We expose them to all of this varied disciplines and directions, but purposefully. We are trying to get their pulse. Some subjects they will tolerate, some they’ll barely survive sometimes. But then we’ll see it. The sparkle. The passion. Dissections. Still life painting. Persuasive speeches. Story writing. Foreign language. Whatever it is. There will be that something that is it. We can give that thing the direction it needs. “All” is not the answer. People simply don’t excel at “all”…why would we expect a child to?

So, now what?

Remind yourself why you are doing this. Write down those reasons. It’s important. Because when the “I simply can’t do this anymore” days come along, you can go back to those grounding truths. Why did you decide to homeschool?

Then. Step back from the noise. Believe me, I know what this means. I have a group of 4,500 homeschoolers on Facebook, and they are repeatedly listing what they do, what they bought, what they are planning. It used to really jangle my nerves and cause me to question myself. I had to find my own groove.

How do you find a groove for yourself? First, know your kids. Know what their learning styles are. Know what yours is. If those two things don’t jive, you will have to re-educate yourself on how to teach them. Find out what your kids love. What are they interested in? What weaknesses need to be developed? What strengths have you seen? Math whiz? Writing genius? Artistic or musical flair? We have the luxury of tailoring our educational approach in order to nurture these things! How great is that??

So, that’s enough homework for now.

Know why you are doing what you are doing. Write it down.
Understand how you learn.
Find out how your children learn best.
Spend time observing your kids, and investigating what makes them tick. Let it influence your teaching and materials. We’ll talk more about this in a later post.
When you step on another Lego, get yet another request for a snack, and struggle to juggle laundry loads –how many have I forgotten? Too many to count!–between creating timelines, mummifying chickens, and compiling bug collections, stop. Realize what a blessing it is that we still have the freedom to DO this in our country. You don’t have to miss any milestones. You get a front row seat for ALL the “Aha!” moments. You get to watch every bit of the blossoming process. Is it hard? Yes. Is it worth it? Positively.

Children’s Topical Bible Giveaway

We have a great event going on right now at Schoolin’ Swag!

Today I have not 1, not 2, but THREE copies of “The Topical Bible for Kids”! These are HARD copy volumes! I have had a chance to look through this resource, and I love it. Extremely user friendly, for both kids and parents. Addresses everyday issues important to children, like anger, contentment, disappointment, envy, friends, money, school, teasing, trust and much more! The winners can choose between KJV or NASB versions. She is hoping to have an ESV version available before Christmas as well.

**This is an exclusive offer… the book won’t be available for release/purchase until November 1st. For those who don’t win, the retail price is very reasonable… $9.99! I will have an Amazon link to post after November 1st.**

Here is Michelle’s blog post about it: http://www.as4me.net/bibletopics4kids/

Here is a link at Goodreads about it: https://www.goodreads.com/…/show/26861789-topical-bible-for…

To enter the giveaway, you’ll need to comment once in the thread (go join here!). I’ll give this a couple days to be public, and then I will draw winners at 9am (Mountain Time) on 10/31, via Random.org.

Internet Extras to Spice Up a Drab School Day

This morning, Michael is outside splitting wood until he begins his school. Our 4th grader gets her school done mostly before noon, but today we were a little slow getting things rolling, so I grabbed some inspiration from something our youngest was doing in the early hours to give incentive and excitement to the day….an “intellectual bribe”, if you may. 😉

We have so many wonderful resources available on the internet. A few clicks and we can travel the globe! I love to use resources like this to take textbook and workbook assignments to the next level, and bring them to life.

Katie loves to draw. Rarely will she watch something on the TV without simultaneously sketching. Today she brought me a sketch while I was setting up school online for our oldest on the Homeschool Planet site. She told me she had drawn it with her mouth. Ah ha!

So while she was getting her chores done, I found this brief video featuring an interview from Joni Eareckson Tada, about her artwork. I showed it to Katie, and she loved it. I showed her some Pinterest posts showing her work. I also told her about a college friend of my husband’s who also does artwork with his mouth. This led into her live, online drawing lesson at 9am with Mark Kistler.

After this, we listened to today’s Keys for Kids Bible lesson and I printed off the key verse for her to do for cursive copy work. Katie then read our second chapter on Adoniram Judson. She had no real point of reference for where Burma was, so I showed her on a map. Then for fun, we looked at a short video from Animal Planet about Burmese cats.

We then moved on to reading our chapter from Mary Poppins, which was a peculiar one called “Bad Tuesday” where Michael had a particularly defiant and naughty day. The book kept talking about a terrible burning Michael had inside of him. I stopped in the middle of the reading and simply asked Katie to tell me what that feeling was. Her reply? “Sin.” Yes. The day is full of teachable moments about spiritual things, if we look for them.

Our next subject was math, for which we use CTC Math online. I let Katie work independently on her lesson. She lost her Platinum standing (no mistakes at all) for this unit but that didn’t discourage her from asking to do another lesson voluntarily. She’ll have a chance to regain her Platinum standing in the next unit. Today’s lessons were complete enough that I didn’t need to find a free worksheet for review.

Following math, we moved on to reading. Her story today was about a pioneer family making tallow candles. After her reading was completed, I let her look at this video about candle making on the Lewis & Clark expedition.

Then we moved on to language arts, and reviewed action verbs. We did the workbook exercise, and then I printed off this fun, free worksheet to practice more verbs.

For spelling, we are practicing her current list (from her reading workbook…the words correspond to her current story), using the free version of Spelling City. I enter and save her lists, and then she can learn definitions, and practice spelling using various free games on the site.

Finally, because she loves science (we alternate science and history, every other day) I usually save it for last. We are learning about plants and their various uses right now. Today we learn that plants can be “for enjoyment”, and we’ll look up all the state flowers and compile a list. I might have her do this with this free download for notebooking on the states. We are using this list (which links to actual photos) and these free coloring pages.

For “wiggle breaks” (we do Wii Fit, trampoline, bikes, etc….for these, she gets up and dances around…she loves this and it helps keep the day sane) today, this was our play list:

Now, on to the 10th grade work! 🙂

New things coming!

Before I get too involved, I hope to be moving this blog to a new host that will allow me to have more flexibility to do what I want to do. I didn’t realize my hands would be so tied here on WordPress, and I want to be able to control and actually own my content.