Home Painting Lessons

This is Anna’s Aurora Borealis painting that she did last week by following an art tutorial from the youtube channel called, “The Art Sherpa.”

We live in a great time to homeschool or “afterschool.”  There are tons of resources that are available so that you really can give a first-class education at home (even if your own was less than superb).  I had worried about teaching art at home since I stopped taking art classes fairly early in my own education because of my interest in music.  (Isn’t it sad that schools funnel you into one art form or another?  I love that my kids don’t have to make the choice between 1st period orchestra class or 1st period pottery like I did.)

So You Really Want to Learn French

I really like Galore Park’s, “So You Really Want to Learn French,” (SYRWL) but it isn’t the easiest book to implement because there isn’t a teacher’s edition, so the parent is on their own for determining the best way to teach the subject to their child.

The first thing to remember is

Nature Journaling

A page from The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling showcasing materials.

I have heard about Nature Journaling from my homeschool mom friends for the last 5 years.  Most of the avid Journalers are Charlotte Mason devotees, but getting out into nature and studying and observing seem to be something that homeschoolers from several different style backgrounds seem to agree on.  We have the opportunity to meet up with other homeschool students each month at a local wetland reserve, and I decided that we would get more into the nature journaling scene.

The first question to answer for me was, “How do you Nature Journal?”  

We Choose Virtues

When you homeschool, or really when you try to teach anything at home, you are limited by your own virtue level.  How consistent are you?  Do you get up every day and teach your children to [insert important life skill here]?  Do you model diligence as you tackle mundane tasks like doing the dishes?  Do you get up and do your math every day?

There is no teacher to make you do your homework.  There is no one to report to.  It is easy to let things slide and say that you will get to that subject tomorrow.  And suddenly too many tomorrows have come and gone.  This happened this last year in Latin for my oldest and cello for my next oldest.  I was feeling that frustrated feeling that comes when you feel ineffective.

My kids were probably 50%-ers in their least favorite subjects.  I sat and thought about how to address this and realized that I am a 50%-er too.  I was motivating for 2-4 days running and then I needed a break.  I started looking for something that would help me have more diligence and patience, and I stumbled across this gem of a program on my Facebook feed.

We Choose Virtues is exactly what I needed to fill the gap.  

Zone Cleaning for Kids

Systems within systems.  That is the way I roll.  So inside of my accountable kids structure, we use Zone Cleaning for Kids.  Each of my kids has two rooms that they are responsible for cleaning (outside of their bedrooms).  The three oldest clean a living room space and a bathroom space.  The fourth cleans the hallways and brings the laundry from the upstairs to the downstairs.

At first it was really difficult to stay on top of the cleaning.  I would be helping one child and then I would come and find that a different child had been daydreaming instead of actually cleaning.  It was also difficult to enforce standards because I didn’t know how much to expect out of my kids.  I just knew that I couldn’t keep up with the cleaning with all 5 at home all of the time.

Then I saw an educents ad on Facebook about Zone Cleaning for Kids.  

Accountable Kids Part 3

Part 1        Part 2

The Accountable Kids program says that it is especially suited for children ages 3-14, and so that is the guideline that I am trying to stick to, but my 10-year-old seems like she is ready to move on to the written contract stage that the company recommends at age 14.

Accountable Kids Part 2

Part 1

Accountable Kids is a complete system to run your home.  It includes a chore schedule, an allowance system, a negative behavior modifier, a positive behavior reinforcer, special one-on-one dates with a parent, and a weekly family meeting.  It is a compilation of every good parenting idea I have ever heard.

The child’s supplies.  On top there is the board with the special date card and stickers to its right.  Underneath the board, going from left to right, are the chore cards, tickets, bonus bucks, best behavior cards, and privilege passes.

Accountable Kids Part 1

The biggest question I get when I tell people that I homeschool with 5 children at home is, “How do you motivate everyone and get everything done?” That is a real challenge. Some days are better than other days, but the biggest help to me is a program that I found online called, “Accountable Kids.”

Holt Biology

We are two chapters into Holt Biology and we really love it.  As a homeschool mom, I love it because of the resources available and the ease of use.  This is a giant textbook with 984 pages and 34 chapters of good material to teach to your child, so much that if you were in a public school you would probably only cover 15-20 of them.  That gives you freedom to choose if you want to cover them all, or if there are some chapters that you would rather just leave out.

Each chapter has virtual labs, animated biology sections, internet magazine articles and videos for your student to use to help understand the concepts that are being taught in the chapter.  The website has an ebook with active links to all of these resources, so Anna usually reads the chapter on the computer so she can click on all of the links as she needs them.  The vocabulary words are all spoken online with their definitions, so that is a great resource for a homeschool student to learn how to pronounce the terms correctly.  (Often Anna reads in her head, and then she pronounces technical terms differently than standard pronunciation, so this online dictionary is really helpful.)

This is a sample section of the Ch. 2 Study Guide.

There are multiple worksheets that I can assign as the teacher, and all of the answers are provided, so that makes grading super easy.  Generally, I print out a chapter study guide for Anna, and also assign the two Pre-AP worksheets for each chapter.  Then I let her do the virtual lab, Biozine article, and any videos she wants to watch.  After that she takes the chapter test.  There are also labs and projects to do that are not online that are recommended for each chapter.  The unit 1 project has her study a famous experiment and then write a lab report as if she was the scientist conducting the experiment.  I think that is something that we will do.  I like all of the ideas, worksheets, and labs that are available to choose.  You really don’t need them all, but it is really nice that they are there.

This is a sample from a Pre-AP activity sheet from Ch 2.

I also love that there are several levels of worksheets and active reading practice.  There are sheets for ESL learners, chapter reinforcements and Pre-AP activities, so you can adjust it to the needs of your child individually.  We have found the Pre-AP activities to be really great challenges that are raising Anna’s ability to critically think through scientific concepts.

For Anna, Biology has become one of her favorite things to do.  She loves all the information and everything she is learning.  We put it first in the day to get her going strong in her school work.  It was more work than she was used to for science, so the first week was a little bit uphill, but once she saw that she was learning new things and that it was answering questions she had always wondered about, she started to eagerly do her homework.

This is a sample of the text from Chapter 2: Chemistry of Life

Chapter 2 was a crash course on chemistry and it was a bit of a reach for Anna (5th grade), but the animated biology and other online resources did a really good job explaining things like hydrogen bonding, and I felt like she got what she needed to from this overview before starting into studying cells, and it really helped Anna feel confident that she could learn anything that the book threw at her.  I will update more as we progress through the book, so stay tuned…

For more information:

Here is a link to the Homeschool Buyer’s co-op sale for Holt Biology.

You can preview the table of contents at Rainbow Resource, but the chapter sample on Mendel is not in the book.  Mendel in this book starts of page 155 and is Chapters 6-7, so if that isn’t what you see in Rainbow Resource, look elsewhere for a sample.

Beast Academy

We love Beast Academy here.  My son works through the practice books for fun, and my daughter and son both enjoy reading the comic book guide.  This probably sounds weird, but this program has been worth its weight in gold for helping my son enjoy reading.  He is such a mathy kid and we love that he is reading and rereading these guidebooks.

We also love the interesting topics that are included in Beast Academy.  For example, there is a whole chapter on logic puzzles in book 4B.  Andrew learned to play minesweeper this week and really enjoyed it.  Beast has really enriched and rounded out our math education.

Is it a full curriculum?  I would have to say no, or at least I wouldn’t use it as one.  For one thing, my son went through the entire third grade year in a month and a half.  He was doing it in every spare moment, but it still seemed to be over too quickly.  He is now halfway through fourth grade.  I told him I won’t buy the next one until he is done with Singapore 5A.

I guess you could argue that the amount of time that a curriculum takes doesn’t affect whether it is stand-alone or not because frankly, Singapore doesn’t take that long for him either.  But they have a lot of supplements to Singapore that help round it out including mental math, challenging word problems and intensive practice books.  I actually got BA to try and slow him a little since he is starting 2nd grade this year, and I wanted to make sure he is really prepared before he starts pre-algebra in the next year or two.

I would say that BA teaches things well and in-depth for kids that are willing to sit and puzzle it out.  Andrew has frequently said that something in Singapore is too easy, and that he learned those skills already in BA.  (And remember he is 1/2 grade down in BA, but catching up quickly because it is more fun).  However, we have run into several instances where Singapore adds new skills to something he already covered, and that makes me feel like there would be gaps if I did BA alone.

I do understand that different math curricula can cover different topics and still be considered complete.  But since Beast Academy is a new program, and there are no test scores or success stories from past graduates, I am not going to have my son be the first guinea pig to only use that program.  The entire idea of Beast Academy is catering to the advanced math student, and most of us in that category want a rock solid foundation to build from.  We aren’t generally going to be the experimental type with our kid’s education.

Also I have no idea what kind of gaps could exist if I had done BA alone.  Andrew started BA with a whole grade more than required of Singapore math, so I am not sure what would have been absent without the other program.

Andrew told me that he likes being a grade behind in BA compared to Singapore because then he learns a topic in Singapore, and then goes “really deep” in BA.  He said the problems in BA make him think and understand the math differently.

The argument could be made that it is a complete program, but the biggest reason I wouldn’t use it like that is because of the way it is set up.  The comic book style encourages my children to race through the guide, and I am not always sure that they stop to really think through the information.  There are stop signs that tell you to try the problem, but who knows if that is actually happening?  The practice guide has problems to work out, but an unmotivated student could easily look up the answers in the back of the book because they are all there.  Andrew is super-motivated and really wants to learn the math so he uses the program correctly, but Anna has flat out told me that she doesn’t stop at stop signs and looks up answers if thinking about it takes too long.  She said she is just in it for the story.  I really couldn’t recommend it just because of the policing you would need to do for a child who wasn’t self-motivated.

I do highly recommend Beast Academy paired with Singapore Math for super mathy children.  I also like it for fun math-based reading for both of my kids.  I don’t make my kids do the guides, but if they want to, I make it available to them, and I have seen great things from Andrew because of this program.