links again
Student of the Word Curriculum. is a K-12, Bible-centered homeschool curriculum for Christian parents who desire to disciple their children not just educate them. The goal is to know God; the method is discipleship, and the main text for all the subjects is the Bible.
Spiders and Lego
10 minute stories
Today's story was about a fellow who was very lazy and how he learned not to be so very lazy. The lad says "I liked it!"
World History
We continue learning about Knights and Castles. Today we learned about how a person learns to be a knight.
We continued work on our spider study
The lad was very eager to do this. I had promised him that we could play with Lego today and build spider webs and a spider with it today. :) Here's to creative thinking! :) So today we focused on learning about different types of spider webs.
Webs have different purposes, according to the individual species of spider, how it captures or stores its prey. Spider's silk can be used to help small, young spiders transport to new areas (ballooning) or be so strong that it is used to make fish nets, as with the Nephila spider web.
Other types of spider webs:
Tangled Web Spiders
Tangled spider webs consist of a shapeless jumble of threads attached to a support such as the corner of a ceiling. Cobwebs are tangled webs that have collected dust and dirt. Cellar spiders, the comb-footed spiders (included black and brown widow spiders), the ogre-faced stick spiders and common house spiders are spiders that make these types of webs.
Sheet Webs
Sheet webs are flat sheets of silk between blades of grass or branches of shrubs or trees. Spiders that create sheet webs also spin a net of crisscrossed threads above the sheet. When a flying insect hits the net, it bounces into the sheet web. The
spider, which hangs upside down beneath the web, quickly runs to the insect and pulls it through the webbing. Sheet webs last a long time because the spider repairs any damaged parts. The bowl & doily spider, the filmy dome spider, and the platform spider form sheet webs.
Gum-footed Webs
Gum-footed webs consist of tightly woven silk strands attached between two branches. The upper strands are dry and built in sheltered areas away from sunlight while the lower strands are built in exposed area and run down to a bottom branch where they are attached. Each of the lower sticky strands are covered in sticky droplets and are attached weakly at the bottom. When an insect walks into the sticky silk strands its struggle break the lines moving the web upwards and lifting the prey off the ground reducing its chances of escaping.
Redback spiders create gum-footed webs.
Horizontal Line Webs
Horizontal Line Webs are made up of one simple line of sticky droplets stretching across low vegetation, bark and leaf litter. Spiders that create this type of web pull the line taut by keeping the slack silk underneath them until an insect hits the line. When that happens, the loose silk whips along the line and tangles the prey. Cribellate spiders and other pea-sized spiders create these webs. Pic from here.
Bolas Spider Web
The Bolas Spider Web is a very simple web designed for their unique method of hunting. In order to hunt and catch male moths, the bolas spider sits on a horizontal line and spins a single line with a sticky silk tip that dangles from its leg. While
waiting, this spider will emit a scent similar to a female moth. When the male moth comes toward the spider, the spider swings the sticky strand in a circle and captures the moth, pulling the strand in to feed.
Triangle Webs
Triangle Webs are created in the shape of a triangle, hence its name. The spider weaves silky strands of spokes and spirals that connect to all three strands. The triangle spider waits at one end of the web for an insect to land. When it does, thequite fascinating all in all. hard to find images of all the different types of webs. As I find them, I'll add them in. :)
spider shakes the web so the insect is caught and cannot escape.
We built a couple of lego webs complete with spiders.
And then did some spider math. I started out with 10 spiders sitting in a tree and then a variety of things happened, at one point we were up to 54 spiders in the tree and eventually got down to 0 spiders in a tree. All done verbally and mentally with the occasional bit of help from a calender and pencil...he is only 6 after all! :)
Woven wonders
Homeschool Program: Woven Wonders
today the lad will be learning the following:
Children 5-12 will learn the basics of hand-spinning and weaving while applying skill and artistry on their own woven piece. They will learn to spin wool from fleece by hand, create a handloom, and weave on it.
The rest of the day he will spend at gramma's while hubby and I kibitz about.
some pictures of yesterday's learning at the London Art Museum
Sea Urchins and more
At breakfast we did our normal reading
10 minute stories
Today's story was about Rip Van Winkle. This story got an immediate thumbs down from the lad. Not sure why as I find it an interesting folk tale.
World History
We have started a section on Knights and Castles.
On with the rest of the day...we started later than anticipated, and went past lunch, but we had a good and interesting time.
While Homeschooling today, in the background I had playing various programs from Homeschool RadioShows. Not saying we listened closely, but every once in a while the lad would ask...is the boy safe mommy? Is the winter over? What happened to the ship?
We followed a plan again.
We started off the day talking about how our eyes help us do things. And then we drew a picture of a globe. Then I covered the paper up with a box with a hole cut into it and said..."draw the globe". It was interesting to see how they came out...definitely not as good as when we could see what we were drawing. Then we tried with some simpler things...circles. boxes, triangles. and then with other ideas...pencil, bowl, plate. we made some observations
1. our eyes help us alot
2. if we practice we can get better at drawing without looking
3. not everyone has the same trouble drawing without looking...sometimes the lad could draw something better than mommy with or without looking, and sometimes mommy was better when she couldn't see.
4. drawing without looking takes longer to do.
We did pages 172, 173-176 in numbers and counting. One page had him colouring bubbles a different colour depending on where they were in the counting line. For instance... 1-25 colour blue, 26-50 colour yellow, 51-75 colour red, and 76-100 colour purple. I thought this would be an easy reinforcing activity for him and was surprised at how much he struggled with it. Not sure how to build up his confidence in this area.
Verse of the week: Eph 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Animal of the day: I had planned to do penguins. that was thoroughly nixed by the lad. he wanted to do SEA URCHINS! So we studied sea urchins. YEAH!! for the internet. Pages we found helpful: google images, enchanted learning, and a couple others. I always find it frustrating when website contradict each other so we basically just generalized. It was neat to look at this animal... but boy are they spikey! We found were some different sea urchins lived on the globe and practiced saying the names of the countries.
Did lesson 9 in First language lessons. This lesson involved looking at a picture and then talking about it. We figured out common and proper nouns to use with it.
A slow day, yet study accomplished
10 minute stories
Today's story was about A fellow with a really big nose and all that happened with him. It was just an odd story. It did point out the value in not believing all that you are told though.
World History
We have started a section on Knights and Castles. The lad is captivated..and all he wants to do is build a castle for one of his toys. Made schooling a bit of a challenge. :)
We then moved on to working with math using reflex. He continues to gain in fluency. While he did this, I got the dishes done. :)
We continued work on our spider study
We learned there are three suborders.
We built a spider using a laminated one we had.
We talked about all the different parts to a spider.
We learned about spider eyes, moulting, etc.
We reviewed what we did previously.
The lad played with Lego building something for the castle that was needed.
We then worked on our animal of the day. Leopards. :) We did the snow leopard to be precise.
we watched part of this series of videos.
we laughed at this
Fact that the lad liked: they live up high in the mountains.
Sad fact: they are highly endangered.
Word of the day: abbey - a place where monks and nuns live, work, and pray. Usually connected to a church.
We will play for a while and then hopefully make some cookies. :) We had planned a walk to the library but we have buckets of cats and dogs falling from the sky and being hit by a falling cat is not our idea of fun. :) Even if a boy child says "can I have one of those falling cats?" :)
we made these cookies
Oatmeal chocolate Chip cookies
1 c. butter
1 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. peanut butter
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1 & 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. milk
4 cups instant oatmeal
6 oz. chocolate chips
Mix all together well.
Drop by spoonfuls on cookie sheet.
bake 10-12 minutes at 350.
Homescholing Sidetrack
That of course led us to look up where New Guinea was.
And to getting out the tape measure to we could see exactly how long 7.7 mm was (the size of the frog). Here is a recording of this little frogs mating call.
Rather neat eh?
At breakfast, we did waffles as per the lad's request, and then we did our normal reading
10 minute stories
Today's story was a lesson in not getting into things you aren't supposed to.
World History
Today we learned about how the viking age came to an end. We learned about the power of the living Lord God over the Viking gods and how that was instrumental in vikings becoming Christians.
We then got captivated by this youtube video
Once we stopped being distracted, we worked on Studyladder. We studied the solar system, did math, did blending of CL and BL, and talked about kitchen safety and implements you use in the kitchen (did this by actually showing him things in the kitchen and demonstrated their use). :) One of the things I like about StudyLadder is that I can offer variety. I can also take their ideas and use them as jumping off points.
As a reward for doing good work I let the boy child work on building yet another boat. He's working on making a big ship with cannons using scraps from around the house.
at lunch we learned about this guy... a carnivorous caterpillar in Hawaii. :)
we also learned how tabasco sauce is made.
and then the rest of the day was free and clear for playing,working, helping, walking, and just being alive on a snowy, blustery day in Ontario.
Lemmings and more Oh My!
10 minute stories
Today's story was a chinese folk tale about how Peking became a great city. (involved some bad dragons and a buddhist monk)
World History
Today we learned about viking runes. Only 16 runes in their alphabet. Intriguing. The boy was quite interested in the pictures they drew to remember stories about people who died. And how they thought runes could make people better.
Sight words reviewed: yes, you, are, please.
New Sight words: yellow, run, egg and three. He got a bit overwhelmed with this today. Not sure why.. he found it easier when I put the words into a sentence. that earned me a smile. :)
We did lesson eight out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2
We learned more about common nouns and proper nouns. :)
He was able to make his own sentence with a proper and common noun.
"Milo chased the kitten into the bathtub. Chase didn't like that."
The Complete book of Numbers and Counting, pp 166-170.
Our animal of the day was the Lemming. This simply thrilled the lad. he likes lemmings. :)
We watched a variety of lemming videos and even saw one where people captured some wild ones and overnight were able to tame them down enough they could handle them without being bitten...and then released them to the wild after they were done playing with them. We learned they can be kept as pets. We saw one video that made us sad... people cornered a lemming and put it into a defensive mode and then kept teasing it...went on too long and then they let it go and did it again (then I said enough of this, they are being mean). the lad asked "Why did they do that mommy? Why would they make him so mad all the time?" I find that type of behaviour bothersome. tease an animal sure...but don't be mean about it.
What else did we do.. we did a snow search and find. This is a big floor colouring challenge. Can you find the hidden elements? the lad finds them and colours them, I read the captions to him and colour in some of the rest. For a lad who dislikes colouring pictures other people drew, this works for us. :)
The rest of the day was spent playing and cleaning up more of his room. We are DONE except for the additional of craft materials to his big box. By evening I had a child complaining about his tonsils being sore. I am getting rather sick and tired of sore tonsils and sore ears. I want my boy to be healthy all the way through!
blog posts I like
teacher vs facilitator - i personally see myself as both :)
Marco Polo Study.
Graphing coins.
Skating, Spiders and more
10 minute stories
Today's story was about the littlest mermaid. he stopped eating so he could listen and said "i liked that story."
World History
Today we learned about what vikings did when they died. Bodies were treated very respectfully and generally burned at sea or on wood platforms.
Today we took advantage of the free skate (parent/child/senior) at the local rink. We had a good time. It is good to see the lad getting better at his skating all the time. At times he was skating independently, and frequently he can make it around the rink without falling. So nice to see him improving his skills.
We then moved on to working with math using reflex. He continues to gain in fluency.
We then started out spider study. Click on the picture to learn where to purchase it.
This is an ebook. You need to print off the learning activities that you wish to do. You can put it into a file folder or use paper to make it into a small book. entirely up to you. I asked the lad what he wanted to do.. "put it into a file folder mommy". it's all good to me.
so today we read a poem Don't Eat Spiders - by Robert Hiedbreder
This poem made the boy smile. It really caught his imagination.Don't Eat Spiders By Robert Hiedbreder
Daddy said to me, "Don 't eat spiders, Don 't you dare.
They may be delicious, But I don't care.
Don't eat spiders, Alive or dead,
Don't eat spiders, That's what I said.
Don't eat spiders, Even in play,
Fried or mashed, Or in any way
Don't eat spiders, That's what I say.
Never, ever, That's what I say!"
But I answered Daddy, "Tell me why !
Will I get sick ? Will I die ?
I'll eat spiders, I don't care.
I'll eat spiders On a dare".
I ate a spider Off the ground.
I swallowed a spider, It wriggled around.
SUD-DEN-LY..... I grew eight legs,
They're skinny and hairy.
I shrank to a spider, Creepy and scary.
I sit in a web, I eat dead flies,
I watch the world With eight beady eyes.
So don't eat spiders, I hope you see,
Unless you want to be A spider like me.
And don't eat spiders. Do you see?
Cause if you eat spiders You might eat me!
We learned that spiders come in: yellow, grey, brown, black, white, orange, red, and green.
While he was colouring the above I used these questions to stimulate his brain. :)
What if there were no spiders in the world?
- we'd have a fly planet and we would have a cloud of flies
- web, house, spider, fear, flies, jumping.
A spider makes me think of
... interesting ones in the garden.
...webs
...webs in my hair!
...flies and mommy being scared. :)
- I would tell them about the spider in case they are scared of them.
How many ways can you get a spider out of your bed?
- spider treats
- slide a paper under him and take him away
- catch him in a jar
We learned some vocabulary: acre, molt, carnivores, oviparous, and arachnids.
And all spiders have these common characteristics.
All have eight legs
All belong to the arachnid family
All have two main body parts
All spin several different kinds of silk, although not all produce webs
All have fangs
All make venom to paralyze or kill their prey
All are carnivores
All are oviparous
All molt several times during their lifetime
From a spider unit study i picked up at a yard sale this summer we found the letters to spelling out spider. This gave the lad a chance to sound out the word spider.
It was a good start to a study. It will take us a few days to finish it.
January 10, 2012 - what we learned today
I had planned to let the lad do Studyladder and Reflexmath while I got our Spider study ready to do. But it took WAY longer to get everything cut out than I thought it would so... we didn't do The spider study, it can indeed wait for another day.
On Studyladder the lad practiced counting by 2's, he did some art, some science - learning about precipitation, and we studied the orchestra. It was kinda funny when we were studying the orchestra. Flutes apparently make him think that there were "bunnies in the house". He likes the bass sounds in the woodwinds, but dislikes the bass sounds in the brass instruments. I found that quite interesting. In ReflexMath he did well. He worked on his addition and subtraction, he played a new game to practice his math and it was really cool to see him progressively learn more and more. :)
I got him started on a new to us program...he didn't much like it. Fun4theBrain. I don't know if there are other games but he was wildly unimpressed with this one. Ah, just looking over their site and apparently there are a whole variety of them. So we'll have to check out some of their other ones.
But that game led us over to another one... animal jam. He had a lot of fun figuring this one out. Is it particularly a learning game? Not really...but he did have to problem solve and that's always a good thing. :) And he was a good and helpful lad whenever mommy needed help with things today. And that is always appreciated.
At supper we read our normal breakfast books.
10 minute stories
Today's story was snow white and the seven dwarves. he found it interesting...and wondered why the lady had to be so mean all the time to Snow White.
World History
Over the holidays we got into the history of vikings. He's really enjoying learning about them, today it was about viking gods. "mommy, why did they have to make a pretend god with cats pulling the cart?" I told him I had no clue. "mommy, why did they have to kill people and animals for their pretend gods?" I don't know buddy, people do funny as in sad/bad things when they don't really know who God is.
I got him out in the yard for some exercise. The plan was that he would go for a walk with his dad while I did up the dishes and made supper but... daddy got distracted by the vehicles so he went out in the backyard instead.
He wanted to work on the snow sculptures but that proved problematic. The snow was soft. So the making of a cat was out, this proven a challenge. What could he do instead? So he went with his old standby, when all else fails...make a skyscraper! :)
Tonight before bed I read him the standard books - a poem from a reader, a bible story, a story of a missionary, and his current two favourite books. He likes me to tell him a story from my head at night and sometimes I don't have a story so I use cheats. Sometimes I have him pick four pages from a stack of "make a story" pages I have. But tonight I did something new...which totally intrigued him.
Anyways, Rory's Storycubes. Shaped like dice. They have 9 in a box, each dice has a picture drawn on each side. You pick a few, roll them out and then tell a story. (at least that's how I used them tonight). The lad was quite intrigued by this and asked MOMMY! Can I tell YOU a story?
Sure buddy go ahead. His pictures were a fish, lightening, and a skyscraper. His story as told via my memory.
Once there was a fish in a lake, he liked living there. There was a skyscraper a bit away from the lake. Then there was lightening! The fish was scared as he didn't want it to hurt him. So he hid. The lightening was really loud and it made the sky scraper lean away from it. It leaned and it leaned and then it fell down on the fish! (make fish struggling noises). The fish managed to get away (and that's is all I remember because something odd happened in the story and I totally lost my concentration).
Not overall bad for a six year old on the spur of the moment eh? :)
Anyways, the lad's favourite books at the moment.
Word Studies in Math...what is appropriate or not
I have to ask as a homeschooler....how is this any different than using a Christmas theme, or a hallowe'en them or a theme on Egypt or the Middle Ages?Parents of students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Ga., are outraged at the school district's response to the reports of using examples of slavery in math word problems, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
The word problems in questions include references to slavery and "beatings," according to the paper.
"Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" and"If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"
It's not just the word problems that are sparking criticism, but the way it's being handled. According to the AJC, district officials said the elementary school's principal will "work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons."
District spokesperson Sloan Roach told the station the teachers were trying to incorporate social studies lessons in math problems for a "cross-curricular activity."
Roach went on to tell My Fox Atlanta that, while the the questions were inappropriate, she doesn't believe the teachers meant any harm.
"This is simply a case of creating a bad question," Roach told the station.
Parent Terrance Barnett told WSB TV that having to explain the questions to his child was painful.
"Something like shouldn't be imbedded into a kid of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, any grade," Barnett told WSB TV. "I'm having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts."
Granted... I doubt that as a parent/teacher I would put in a question of "how many beatings a day did this slave get"... but I fail to see why people are getting so bent out of shape.
Slavery was an event that happened in history. It is. Yes, it has emotional impact. Yes, it was a difficult and dangerous period of time. I get that. I understand it. But as a unit study loving mother/teacher... I don't understand the furor being created over it.
I would hope that the teachers aren't just throwing the information into the math questions but are actually using the math as an integral unit. As in... we are learning about slavery now and these are the issues around it, and yes, we do math as part of the learning process. IF the math is being used in a way that is divorced from the larger teaching aspect of slavery then I would have more of an issue. In that case I could see it is being inflammatory. but done within a teaching unit...I would have no issues.
What do you think? Am I missing something?
Sometimes things don't go as planned
But.. I slept in, sleeping in sets everything way back.
By the time the bunny lady left (sold a bunny this morning) it was late.
SO.. we revised our plans and we did an interactive study on Avalanches produced by Simple Schooling. This was part of a freebie she gave out over the Christmas holidays. This avalanche tutorial was included. I can't give you a direct link to the study as I couldn't locate it and the subscriber exclusive I want to honour that. So if you want to get freebies next year, get on the list and you can get them next year, or rather this year as it's now the new year. :)
Time now to have lunch!
After lunch we'll do the experiments mentioned in this video. :)
We did the surface cohesion one (first one) in the video. Tried it three different ways.
one - the way they said to do it.
two - with oil...that was a bust...the oil stuck to the bread tag.
three - with laundry detergent (powdered) - worked but not as quickly.
Was quite interesting to the lad. :)
And then hopefully sell a chalkboard and then get out of the house for a walk about and potentially a visit with a church member. UPDATE: Sold the chalkboard (a little one) for $10 which is good since I got it for free. And then watched some slow motion videos. Some things are quite interesting when you slow them down...and other things are just downright boring!
Out for a walk with the lad. Stopped into visit with a lady from church, just a short spontaneous visit. :) The lad, on his own choice, played reflex math today.
Back to Homeschooling
Me: Yes.
"BUT I DON"T WANT TO!"
So.. we talked and worked things out. I told him how we're doing things different this year. That mommy is writing out a schedule of what we are doing and we'll work from the list. When the list is done.. homeschool is done for the day.
We read from our world history book and story book over breakfast
10 minute stories
He liked the story at breakfast and thought it funny how the dad didn't get what he wanted because the fish helped the girl.
World History
Over the holidays we got into the history of vikings. He's really enjoying learning about them.
and then I fascinated him with this.
Always good to intrigue a child. :) Found using homeschool freebie of the day.
Then off to do reflex math. I like how they emphasize speed in proficiency and they have excellent customer service. The lad is finding it difficult to maintain the required focus though and there are times when I want to make it easier for him, but that's just the mommy rescuer part of me. He got up to 8620 feet today...not a bad score. he quit because bathroom breaks were required. :) He got back into it and did better this time round. He did a variety of games and its good to see how he is improving in his math skills. :) He likes ninja stars, balloon race and the egyptian conniption.
We were going to do some exercises from the super science book but we reworked those plans. One lad was PROFOUNDLY disappointed at the thought of doing science and art together. he wanted to do some hands on science. So I wracked my brain trying to figure something out that we've studied recently and came up on gems digging kit I got a while back. So we dug up gems. There were supposed to be 8 in the kit.. we got about 13 stones/gems all told. We talked about gems and how they are made, but mostly we dug stones up and had a good time talking and working together.
Sight words: yes, you, are, please. it was quite pleasing to me to see him sounding out the word please. He studied it and worked it out. he did the same for "are". Very neat!
We did lesson seven out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2
We learned about common nouns and proper nouns. :)
Word of the day "abandon". Sentence he came up with "the jail in fable was abandoned once the guards are beaten."
We did listening skills Pg 3. he had to pay close attention to where each of the drivers had to go to get the answers correct.
The Complete book of Numbers and Counting, pp 164-165.
Our animal of the day was the ermine.
in case you want to know about the picture. Ermines eat insects in some areas of the world. The lad "This brown ermine is hunting in the summer time. He is sneaking up on a centipede who is going home to his family. Then the ermine will gobble all of them up."
I asked him if he liked working from a list.
the answer was a resounding YES! So a list we'll continue to do. :)