Earn Free $5 Amazon Cards using Swagbucks
25 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Daily Life
In 2 months I earned seven $5 amazon gift cards and two $25 amazon gift cards all by using Swagbucks. I signed-up for Swagbucks a few years ago and didn’t do anything. Then my sister started telling me about her gift cards that she was getting from Swagbucks. Well I love Amazon.com and if I can shop for free then I should probably figure this out. I was especially motivated this Christmas. I also purchase one book for the kids for Christmas and our budget was tight this year. I couldn’t afford to get the really nice books that I wanted to get each of them. So I decided I had better figure it out. My sister gave me her quick how-to and I was off earning.
You earn Swagbucks for searching the web through Swagbucks and on referrals. First you must create an account here. Then just use the site to search the web. But, you say, I already know the web address to all my favorite websites. I know you do. I started just searching for the website that I was looking for instead of going right to it. It was a small additional step of a click after typing it in and then you are there. And a few times a day you can be rewarded with Swagbucks for your search. You can either set your browsers default search engine to swagbucks or you can download the Swagbucks toolbar to perform your search.
You redeem swagbucks for gift cards or gifts. A $5 gift card to amazon costs 450 swagbucks. You can get paypal gift cards, lowes, and many more.
You can boost your Swagbucks by watching ads, SBTV, complete special offers, complete surveys, swag codes and referrals. You can earn matching swagbucks every time someone you refer earns Swagbucks. Monday is Swagbucks big 4th Birthday Bash. Sign-up and then go RSVP to the Birthday Bash for a chance to win one of four $1000 prizes. You’ll also get either an additional 5 or 10 swagbucks that day depending on which team collects the most Swagbucks. They are also giving away lots of swagbucks through swagcodes all day on Monday, Feb. 27. You can find notices about swagcodes here. You can learn about swagcodes and how to redeem them here.
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Adventures in Concussions
24 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in Daily Life, Family
Our Little Gymnast flew off our trampoline 2 weeks ago and suffered a concussion. It has taken me two weeks to ask the right questions in order to get the full story from the girls. She was doing a back flip landed on her bottom on the trampoline and then flew off backward. She landed on her back and then her head hit the ground. However, I didn’t think she was hurt at all at the time. Her sister and her were outside jumping while I was cooking dinner. This is something the do all day long. Little Bit comes running in telling me her sister fell off the trampoline. Her sister was right behind her and then laid on my kitchen bench. I asked what had happened and how she felt. She was doing a back flip, something she’s done 1,000 times on our tramp and really the only way she jumps. It was about like this. The details of exactly what happened didn’t become clear to me until the last day or two. She said nothing really hurt, she didn’t feel dizzy or nauseous and she wasn’t crying. I instructed her to lay down for a bit. I didn’t hear another complaint about it until 8 days later.
So she returned to normal activity the very next day. And three days later she returned to gymnastics practice and again the following week. After her second practice she told me she was dizzy and nauseous. I thought maybe she was dehydrated or hadn’t eaten enough that day, I didn’t think it could be related to the fall since it had been a week. But the next day she couldn’t move off the sofa she felt so bad. I made an appointment for her at our doctor’s office the next day.
The doctor didn’t think it was related to the fall since she didn’t pass out and didn’t throw up. He said it was a virus and it was causing the labrynthitis. She’d be better in a few days. She was already felling better on Thurs. than the day before when she didn’t leave my couch. So I made her rest a bit that weekend to help her fight the virus. On Monday she was back on the trampoline and getting dizzy again. Tuesday she wanted to try to practice, she made through her running and two back walkovers and then was very dizzy. We left the gym and she returned to the couch the next day unable to get rid of the dizzy feeling. I called our gymnastics team trainer to have him look at her figuring now that this had to be from the fall. And when he started asking us questions I realized I didn’t know what exactly had happened and I didn’t know what symptoms to look for to assess whether she was okay. According to our trainer very few people experience vomiting from a concussion and everyone experiences it differently. He also told us that a concussion won’t show on CT scan or MRI. You have to assess the symptoms and do a neurological evaluation. We were referred to see the head of our local Childrens Sports Medicine Concussion team.
So what symptoms had I missed. You might need to know this. Well upon asking the girls more questions the Little Gymnast appears to have blacked out. Little Bit said that her eyes were closed for about 10 seconds or less. Little Bit was calling to her asking if she was okay but she couldn’t respond. The details of what happened after the fall are also foggy to the Gymnast. She thinks her Dad was home when it happened, he wasn’t and she doesn’t remember laying on the bench in the kitchen. The next morning she was extremely grouchy and I punished her for 2 weeks from playing with friends. Something I haven’t ever had to do. The morning irritability lasted for about a week. Any morning that Little Bit made too much noise exiting the room the Gymnast would yell at her about waking her. This is very uncharacteristic as she is usually bright eyed and ready to go in the morning. The Gymnast failed to tell me she was dizzy and nauseous after that first gymnastics practice she did.
As you can see, the girls live on the tramp. If they are outside they are on it. If she isn’t on the tramp you can find her scaling play structures, trying to climb trees or running around on all fours like a horse. She’s not the sit still and smell the roses type. She wants to roll in them and run amongst them.
The Pediatric Concussion Specialist asked as about her symptoms and about the fall, did a balance test with her and a neurologic assessment. He concurred with our trainer that she indeed has a concussion and will take longer to heal since she’s been active over the last 16 days. So how does one heal. By using as little brain energy as possible. She is to have no physical activity, no school work and avoid as much mental activity as possible. She may only have 20 minutes of activity at a time. She is allowed screen time for 20 minutes only, she can color, paint, craft, listen to stories and play quietly imaginative things. No board games, no reading, and no card games. And she has to rest after the 20 minutes of activity before doing another 20 minutes. This is extremely hard, she’s 9 and she’s hyperactive. She has an insatiable need to move, jump, flip and run. It’s becoming a full time job keeping her down. The goal is for her brain to fully heal without permanent damage that could further impair her schooling or worse. We see the doctor in 3 weeks to assess where we are. Physical symptoms go away first but neurologic symptoms persist for longer. She will have to be cleared on both before returning to any physical or mental activity.
Please pray that she recovers quickly with no permanent damage. And that God would bestow His full grace on her to help her be still to heal.
I’m grateful for the team of caring professionals that are helping us navigate this. If you’d like to know more about concussions there are some excellent videos here.
We Are Crazy About Sonlight
21 Feb 2012 2 Comments
Sonlight Christian Homeschool Curriculum is a literature-based, Christ-center learning program. It’s based on the methods and philosophies of Charlotte Mason and Ruth Beechick. Sonlight offers complete lesson plans for Bible, History, Geography, Language Arts, and Science. The lessons are based on real living books not textbooks. The Instructors Guide offers you a daily reading schedule for each subject, study guides, map study, timeline entries and comprehension questions for each book. It is Christ-center in that it includes Bible readings, memorization, devotions and missionary stories. Also, the study guides are written from a Christian viewpoint.
This school year is our 3rd time using Sonlight. But, I wasn’t crazy about it the first time I used it. That was five years ago, my children were 5, 4, 2 and newborn. We started with what is now Core A but then it was called Core K. I did the main Core but not the Language Arts. I thought the books looked very interesting for my 5 and 4 year old. They did not like the history readers at all, I would get them out to read and they would moan and groan. They loved the read-alouds though. The Boxcar Children was the first one we read and they begged for chapter after chapter. I think we finished it the first week. I made the decision to not continue with the history lessons but read whatever read-alouds they enjoyed. It was a winning solution. Looking back on it I realize that my children weren’t ready for history at the time. They loved nature and we read a lot of animal books that year in addition to our Sonlight books. If I had chosen a different Core that year we probably would have loved it as we do now.
After my self professing flop of Sonlight we tried a few other curriculum. And it seemed every year I tried something different like last year when I stumbled upon the Waldorf method and thought it was just what my kids needed. Well it may be what they need but I should’ve started learning about it 5 years earlier and 4 kids ago. I just couldn’t make it work well for us and I was defeated by January. That’s when I started thinking about Sonlight again. I got out my catalog and started pondering what we could do and I walked into our local homeschool bookstore and fell in love. I just wanted to sit on the couch and read to the kids again like we had done all of our other years. At this time my oldests were 8, 7 and 5 and I thought they would love P4/5. And I was right this time. They loved every book that we read. Some people would never think to do p4/5 with an 8 and 7 year old. But we were so busy with still learning to read and basic math that I wanted books that they enjoyed and relished. And so it was. Stories from Africa and New Toes for Tia, stories about how God worked in childrens lives, were wonderful books. My 8 and 7 year olds understood so much about what they children in the stories were going through. They really saw God’s glory in each of the stories. It was wonderful. I don’t think my 4 1/2 year old would relate to the stories as they did. I think it’s a great literature pack for an 8 and 7 year old and if you added maps and science experiments it would suffice for a K-2nd curriculum.
It only took us about 6 months to read all of the books. Because my kids were older they could listen to a whole weeks assignments in one day. So even though we started it last February we were ready for our next core in September. And I thought at 9, 8, and 6 they were ready for Core B. This year I decided to use the Science and the Language Arts as well as History. The Karate Kid loves history now, loves biographies and real stories about real people and has becoming interested in Ancient Civilizations. He also loves to learn about any science topic. I wasn’t so sure about the Gymnast’s interest but she has enjoyed it just as much as her brother. As long as she has some visuals (color pages are her favorite) she seems to be able to grasp the story better. I found several Dover coloring books to divide between the kids that were perfect.
I have P3/4 that I am going through with the two younger boys. We are going really slow through it as I don’t plan to do P4/5 with them until they are 5 and 6. So I have 2 more years to read all those wonderful books and do some fun school with them. And right now they want to read the same story the entire week or longer so it will take us 2 more years to actually read all of the books in P3/4. And I am more than happy with that.
So will I continue to use Sonlight next year? Absolutely. We are going really slow through Core B, I don’t know that we’ll be ready for the next core in September. But when we finish Core B we will definitely be going on to Core C to finish World History and explore the next science topics.
Homeschool Planning–Part Two–My Planners
19 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Daily Life
I love planners. I love to plan. I am just a planner kind of girl. I’ve had a planner for as long as I can remember. Implementation, I’m not as good at that. But if I have planned well and all aspects then implementation goes better.
There are a lot of free homeschool planners on the web and I’ve tried many of them. And I used parts of them for this years planner. Each year I try to find the one that will work best and will help us accomplish our goals. Since we’ve done a few different things I’ve used a different planner each year. Except for this year, I finally developed a daily lesson plan sheet last year that still works.
I have a a daily lesson plan book, a general plan book and a circle time binder.
My general planner book comes from the 7 step free planner at New Beginnings. The steps there really helped me understand what it was I might want to keep track of and plan for. And I really liked her forms. I didn’t exclusively use her forms though. I also followed her suggestion and printed the cover on card stock and laminated it. Then I brought it to the office store and had them spiral bind it.
My general plan book includes the following tabs (in bold) and forms:
1 – a tracking my week page. Cozi.com calendar has worked better for me than this page. But it was a good start before putting it into my cozi calendar.
2 – attendance record from New Beginnings. This was for me only. I don’t really pay much attention to attendance but I wanted to track my habits so I could make better decisions if need be. This is probably my favorite attendance record that I’ve used.
3 – Calendars – a school calendar (from www.donnayoung.org). I used this to get an idea of start date and finish date based on the breaks we take. We typically school 6-8 weeks then take a 2 week break. We also typically take December and May off.
4 – Monthly calendars. They don’t have much on them as I’ve been using my google calendar and cozi to keep up with things. So these were a bit redundant.
5 – Course of Study – Annual plans and evaluation for each student from Westvon Publisher’s The Master Planner. (Which happens to be on sale for $0.75 now). I wrote down all the resources that I had for each subject. I soon realized I had unrealistic expectations. I will use these to plan resources for next year and then use a course of study sheet from Donna Young’s site for each semester to show what we will be using.
6 – Quarter Lesson Plans – Quarter Planner pages from Donna Young. I thought since I like to plan 6 weeks in advance I would try these again this year. It just doesn’t really work for me yet. But I’ll probably keep trying them because one day I’ll figure out how to use them to my benefit.
7 – Logs for library list, reading logs, field trip logs, and audio visual logs. Most are from The Master Planner but some are from The Schoolhouse Planner. (And no, I didn’t pay $39, I got it on sale at the end of last summer).
8 – Coop – Coop forms, class taken information, contact list information from The Schoolhouse Planner.
9 – NOI - Copy of my Notice of Intent that we have to submit to the school board.
10 – Next Year – Curriculum Resources form from New Beginnings, Course of Study and Curriculum Planner from The Schoolhouse Planner and Notes sheets
11 – Notes – just note sheets from New Beginnings
My daily lesson plan book contains my daily workbox planner pages. I printed out a few of the different weekly forms that I could find and tried them out for a few weeks until I could determine what type of planner sheet worked best for me. I tried weekly pages for each student last year, even color coded the pages. But, I liked being able to see what each student was doing each day without having to turn a page. If you google weekly workbox planner pages you will come up with several variations that you might like if that’s your thing.
My circle time binder has our weekly reading schedule, comprehension guides for our books and our memory work that we are working on and have done in the past. What is circle time? Well it’s different things to different people. You can learn about it at one of my favorite websites Preschoolers and Peace. Circle time really is our favorite part of the day. Our circle time consists of reading Bible, history, science and read-alouds together and working on our memory work. We used to have circle time during the afternoons when the littles were asleep and it could last 1-2 hours. This year we are having to spread our reading out throughout the day.
So here’s what my reading planner page looks like, click on it to download. I type in the books that are used every week so I don’t have to write them in every week.
Although I am using Sonlight this year and there are weekly reading schedules included for all the subjects I still made my own reading layout. We are using Core B history, science and language arts. However, we are not using the Sonlight guide exactly and we are on different weeks for each subject. For instance, we had just finished Leading Little Ones to God before starting Core B so we weren’t going to read it again. I didn’t like having to scan the schedule page every day to figure out which parts I was suppose to use and which parts I’m not. And I don’t like to mark a whole lot on my originals since I will likely use them again with the younger kids and I don’t like how messy it looks. So crossing out what we weren’t doing wasn’t an option. I also wanted science, history and language arts on 1 page, instead of 3 separate pages. It really helped me get an idea of all the reading for the week.
Here’s a list of planners that I’ve used this year or in the past.
New Beginnings 180 Page Undated Free Planner – Includes 7-steps on how to make a planner. This website really helped me put it all together this year.
Donna Young – A great free printable site exploding with information and forms. Free homeschool and household planner forms. But that’s not all, free math sheets, handwriting sheets, nature journal sheet.
Tanglewood Education Corebook – This is a website with an entire free curriculum that blends Charlotte Mason and Classical methods. I used this for 2 years and got some great ideas from it. It also goes through how to plan. Loved her 1-week layout. She also helps you figure out how many pages in a workbook to do a day to get it done in the time you want to with progress sheets. Well worth the $5.00.
The Master Planner – currently on sale for $0.75 at Currclick. This planner is very worth $0.75. There are over 160 forms from planning to report cards. Go check it out. You don’t have to use all of them.
The Schoolhouse Planner – From The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. There are many versions of this planner, The Schoolhouse Planner for Mom, the Special Needs Planner, Primary, Intermediate and High School Student Planners.
Guest Hollow – Free weekly chore chart with school assignments on one sheet. I used this one year when my kids were smaller and it worked really good. She has even more printables here.
Homeschool Skedtrack – Online free scheduling program. Haven’t figured this one out yet.
Homeschool Tracker – There’s a free version and a paid version. I’ve used the free version and really liked it. I did the trial for the paid version and it’s on my wishlist. One day maybe it will make it to the top.
Happy Planning!!
How We Do Workboxes
19 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in School
I learned about workboxes several years ago and have been using the method for 3 years now. The workbox system was created by Sue Patrick. The system is especially helpful for visual children, and highly distractible children. You can read about it here. The concept is that the student will be able to see the days work in front of them and see it disappear as they complete it. The original idea is to use 12 shoeboxes and each box gets a subject or task. With five children I don’t have room for 12 shoeboxes. So we use a file box. And of course the boxes coordinate with the kids colors. This is the Karate Kid’s box. My 3 year old and 4 year old each have a box but it doesn’t get changed out except every now and then. When they want to do school they open it up.
This has really helped keep me organized. If it’s in there box then we don’t forget to do it. My kids hate when I say, “Oh you are suppose to do this…” when they think that they were finished with school. So if it’s in the box they have to do it.
Inside each box are 12 file folders. In each file folder is work for one subject. Not all my students have 12 files worth of work. The 1st and 2nd grader only have 6-9. My 4th grader is the only one that has 12. Some of the files are fun things like a maze or critical thinking pages. The Karate Kid has one file that says take a 10 minute break. At the front of the box is an empty hanging folder where they put there completed pages for the day.
Most of the folders are permanent, like handwriting is always file 1, math is in file folder 2. Workbooks stay in there folders even after the work is done. I have a preset do 2 pages or do 1 page and everyday it’s the same. Sticky notes attached to the front of a workbook work great for new instructions or for making changes to the normal instructions. For things that I print out or make copies of I have put them in a folder and take them out as needed to fill boxes.
I do not use a scheduling strip. I printed one out once and have all the cards for it but I just haven’t gotten to putting that step together for the three kids that do workboxes.
I have filled the boxes a couple of different ways this year. At the beginning of the year I filled boxes every night. This got very tedious. Now I plan 2 weeks at a time. I take enough loose pages from the folders for 2 weeks and place them inside the hanging folder but behind the file folder. The first days work goes in the file folder. The rest of the work for the next 2 weeks goes behind the file folder just inside the hanging folder. When I check the kids out at the end of the day I refill the folders. Or I fill them the next morning when they are reading to me. But when I plan for the 2 weeks I fill out my daily lesson plan sheets at that one planning session for the next 2 weeks.
We don’t sit down and work from 1 to twelve every day. Each student starts school with Mom at a different time. I work with each one on the things that they need help with such as their reading and math lesson. When they are done with their work with me they have a different place to be like their 30 minutes of computer time or time to play with the littlest one. And then my next student comes to work on their first few files. At another time of day they come back and sit down to do the folders they can do by themselves.
To keep track of what they have in their box each day I created a planner page for me. Because we don’t sit down and work till it’s done sometimes things get forgotten. But if it’s written down on my planner page then it usually doesn’t get forgotten. At the end of the day they have to sit with me and “check out” of school. I grab my page and check through their box to make sure they’ve gotten everything done.
You can download my daily workbox planner pages for 3 students here.
Homeschool Planning, Part 1
18 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Daily Life
edited to add additional information
This is the time of year that I enter what I like to call research and development phase. I am thinking toward the next school year and starting to consider what we might use. I spend time weighing the possibilities and praying about them. It’s also the time that some are deciding to enter the homeschool world for the next school year and are thinking about how to do it. With all the curriculum options available to homeschoolers now, how do you decide which one you should use? There are a number of schooling philosophies available, just to name a few, Charlotte Mason, Classical Method, Montessori, Traditional, Unit Studies, Unschooling, Delight Directed Learning and Relaxed Homeschooling. There are a number of curriculum that subscribe to each method. And every publisher thinks that they have the curriculum that is the best out there. It’s difficult to read about each one and not be convinced that it’s the next best thing. So how do you decide what to choose?
First and foremost, PRAY. Pray for wisdom, pray for God to show you what your priorities are for your school year for each child. Pray that He would help you discern from those priorities what curriculum would meet those needs. And then right down all possibilities.
There are many books out there that help a new homeschooler understand all the philosophies and how to figure out if it’s for you. Cathy Duffy’s, 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing the Right Curriculum and Approach for Your Child’s Learning Style. This book is a great introduction to each of the philosophies. She also helps you discern what is important to you and what your teaching style is.
Consider your student and their strengths and weaknesses. I have children that need a lot of review due to a long term memory deficit. I have children that get a concept the first time they hear it and it’s painful to review it to death. Some love workbooks and one loves them as long as I write in them. Some don’t mind color workbook pages and one gets overwhelmed by color and needs boring black and white. My girls like to color and my oldest son will color one of every 10 pages I print out for him. But when I just stop printing out coloring pages for him he decides he wants to color of course. So I print them out and one day he might color them.
Keep in mind that what works for your friend and her children may not work for you and your children.
added: When deciding on curriculum options for our family I go to www.homeschoolreviews.com to read what others have said about it. Both their negatives and positives have helped me. Sometimes one persons negative is another’s positive. And I can usually get a better idea if something is going to work for us after reading about how it worked for someone else.
To help you get some of these thoughts on paper you can print out these forms from www.donnayoung.org. You can write out some goals or objectives for your student on this form:
And then you can use this form to list out some possibilities and start counting cost.
I use these every year when I am trying to decide what to do with each of the children.
What do you do to make all that you’ve chosen work? Well stay tuned for part 2 on planners.
A Mid-Year Review
16 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in School
It seems every year I make changes to our curriculum in January. It’s usually about that time that I realize that something just isn’t working. There have been varying reasons that it didn’t work. The biggest reason usually was that my kids needed something more remedial or they hated the curriculum or I needed something more structured. But that is the beauty of homeschooling, when the shoe doesn’t fit you can try another shoe.
This is the first year in our homeschool career that I am not making any major changes. I knew that my Curious Monkey wasn’t ready for structured learning in the fall but I thought as he got closer to 5 in January he would probably be ready. I actually got that right. He has been begging for reading lessons. So we will be starting All About Reading Level Pre-1 in a few weeks. He’s so excited for Ziggy the Zebra to arrive and help him learn to read.
The Karate Kid and Little Bit were working through Sing, Spell, Read and Write but we are taking a little break. Little Bit is reading just about anything she picks up and is bored with the SSRW readers so she is beginning to read through the Sonlight Language Arts 2 readers which I bought for her to start at some point this year. The Karate Kid needed something to read that inspired him. I found seven Billy and Blaze books at a garage sale for $0.10. Billy is a boy and Blaze is his horse and they set off on adventures. The pages are beautifully illustrated with black and white pencil sketches. There are just a few sentences on each page so a boy doesn’t get overwhelmed by all the reading he must do to get to the story.
We’ve added the Life of Fred Elementary Math Series for the Karate Kid. He loves a good story and a story about math is even better. It’s his reward for getting his math workbook pages done. We call it Fred’s math around here and Karate Kid thinks Fred is very entertaining.
Here’s a fun little memory that we made last week. These kinds of things don’t happen often here and I had printed this out to do last school year and it never happened. I do wish that school could be like this every day but I lack the creativity and time for this. Alas though Karate Kid wanted nothing to do with my fun little project so I suppose it’s good that everyday isn’t this fun. However, there were three little ones that had a blast grabbing labels and running off with them to put them where they go.
Seeds Family Worship New Album ~ Purity and Review
14 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Daily Life
Seeds Family Worship’s new album, Purity, is being released today. It’s a project with FamilyLife’s Passport2Purity. It’s a call to live a pure life in all aspects of life. You can download the album here.
We have been listening to Seeds Family Worship for years. Seeds Family Worship songs are Bible verses set to music. But it’s not your average kids’ bible music. Their songs appeal to the whole family. I turn Seeds on all the time. We listen to help us memorize scripture, we listen when we are happy, cleaning house and we listen when we are grumpy. The girls turn it on in their room and dance. A wonderful atmosphere is created when your whole house is singing scripture. I’ve listened to Purity and it’s really good.
Join me and take the Parent’s Purity Pledge and receive a free song from the new album. Pledge with me to live out Deuteronomy 6:6-7; I pledge to live out purity in my home from the earliest stages of my children’s lives—teaching and modeling a life dedicated to God’s ways. You will receive a free song from the Purity album and a free download from FamilyLife
Adventures in Trying to Tame the Chaos
06 Feb 2012 1 Comment
in Daily Life, School
I previously wrote about how school time was a circus around here and how I was Taming the Chaos. Well that didn’t solve all my issues. Finding what works constantly changes around here. And it’s like peeling an onion away, you fix one thing and then all of a sudden you are able to see another issue. The littlest was not on board with my original taming the chaos plan. He was not happy sitting in a room by himself to play. Well it didn’t surprise me because he never has been. Even when he was an infant, if we went into the next room while he was swinging even though he could still see us he was cry. He never liked to be in a room by himself. So I had to tweak my plan a little bit. I also had a few other issues that needed some addressing. The Karate Kid was fighting me all day about everything and would put off his schoolwork to the very last minute of the day. And then there were times when he said he didn’t want to read to me and so I would start to do another’s lesson and then all of a sudden he needed to do his lesson right away. He was controlling too many areas of our day.
I have owned the book Managers of Their Home for many years now. I’ve tried to implement it so many times and failed. Previously what has worked for us it to have a routine or order of events for the day built around set
eating times. After praying about it God gave me wisdom. He showed me what each child needed throughout the day. Karate Kid needs me to tell him when his lessons are going to be and it is his choice to do them or not. The consequence for not doing schoolwork is no afternoon tv. This kid lives for afternoon tv time. He also only does his chores if he gets 30 minutes of computer time directly followed by chores in the morning. He also needs to be told what is allowed during free times and when his screen times will be. He craves the computer and the tv. The littlest needs to be with one of the oldest siblings. I also needed to break up our read aloud times to throughout the day instead of one big chunk. So I set up a Cozi calendar and got started planning our day in 30 minute increments. And here’s what our school day looks like:
We’ve been on this schedule for about 3 weeks now. The night before I started it I sat the kids down and showed them the new schedule. They were really excited about it. It is working wonderfully and has solved many difficulties. The Karate Kid has stopped fighting with me about school. He knows that his time is from 9:30-10:30 and if his lessons aren’t completed with me he has to do it alone. He has come to his lessons everyday and gotten them done. I did learn that it’s okay for me set stronger boundaries with him. I have been doing all their spelling lessons together and he would prefer to have them alone. Last week he started to put up a fight about wanting his spelling lesson alone today. I was able to say, “I am unable to do that. I only have time to do spelling all together and it is right now. If you don’t come to spelling then you will not have tv this afternoon.” He took a deep breathe and said, “FINE, but I want my tray with the tiles to spell today.” I couldn’t believe how easy that was. The schedule has taken the emotion out of the fights. It’s not me that is saying it has to be this way, it’s the schedule and we have to follow the schedule. Works for him since he sees the world in black and white.
Throughout the day all of the kids ask me where they are suppose to be and happily go there. They all know they will get time on the computer, time with Mom and time to play. It has brought peace to our home. No longer are they circling the house looking for something to do and getting into trouble. I now have the schedule posted in our schoolroom where they can all check to see where they are suppose to be.
Why We Love All About Spelling
05 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in ADHD, APD, Dyslexia, School, Spelling
I started using All About Spelling in our homeschool 3 years ago. I started the Little Gymnast on it when she was struggling to learn to read in first grade. She has dyslexia, auditory processing disorder and ADHD. She could spell words and wanted to spell words but couldn’t read the words she spelled back to me. At the end of the first grade she couldn’t read any words. She would sound it out and then guess a totally different word. When I stumbled on All About Spelling I was looking for a slow moving spelling program with lots of review and time for new rules to process. I was hoping to teach her how to read through spelling without her realizing it. The language program we were using before this was wonderful but was like drinking from a fire hose for her.
What is All About Spelling? (from their website)
- All About Spelling is multisensory. The lessons involve sight, sound, and touch. Children learn best when they are physically involved in the learning process, so we take advantage of that fact with this hands-on approach to learning and teaching spelling.
- All About Spelling is logical. Spelling concepts are taught in a logical, understandable order. Each lesson builds upon the previous lesson. The sequence has been carefully tested to produce long-term results. And this is as much a benefit to you as it is to your student—especially if you’ve been struggling with how to teach spelling.
So what do we love about it. The kids love the colored tiles. They are so much fun to work with. At the beginning of a lesson the student uses the colored tiles to build the new spelling words. But these aren’t just the letters a-z, every phonogram is a tile. My kids love to build and analyze words with the tiles. It’s not like school. And there are lots of other multi-sensory activity ideas on their website to try. Some of our favorites are writing words on a window with a dry erase marker or on the sidewalk with chalk.
What I love as the teacher is the student cards and the teacher’s manual. The student cards are broken up into:
- Phonogram Cards for learning to read the phonograms
- Sound Cards for learning to write the phonograms
- Key Cards for learning the spelling rules
- Word Cards for mastering the spelling words
There are three sections to keep track of the cards. Cards to review, mastered cards and future cards. I no longer have to keep up with that by memory or on a sheet of paper. I just file the cards behind the divider where they belong. It seems like a simple thing but it is one of the things that sold me on the program and I still love it. Reviewed cards are reviewed daily or weekly, mastered cards are reviewed a couple of times throughout each level.
I also love the teacher’s manual. I don’t have to think about how to teach the lesson. The lessons are scripted for you. Say this and do this with the tiles. All About Spelling uses dictation in every lesson to keep previously mastered words reviewed so they are not forgotten.
But this doesn’t have to just be a spelling program. I used All About Spelling with the readers to teach the Karate Kid how to read. The readers that go along with the program are beautiful and interesting. The Karate Kid loves the readers. He has read The Runt Pig book many times over. The stories are silly and catchy and the illustrations are beautiful. The lessons are short and ordered and he hasn’t dreaded the lessons, unlike other programs I’ve tried. All About Spelling has helped the Little Gymnast learn to read. After three years of the program we are now half way through level two. She has struggled with a couple of the steps and we spent a long time practicing those steps. One in particular was consonant blends. She could not hear the second consonant. Marie, author or All About Spelling, knew this was a difficult thing for some kids and had a great activity in the book for helping kids realize they missed a sound. The gymnast had lots of fun jumping on paper squares and saying the sounds. She has continued to make progress in reading and spelling through the program.
Lastly, it was very appealing to me that there is a one year guarantee. If this program didn’t work for us we could send it back even after trying it for a year. How can you lose? Most companies only give you a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, you may or may not know if it is working. But a year? I knew after a year of using this program it was the one for us.
Something about that thrills my kids.
