Mystery of History 4 and Sonlight for High School

As I have posted before, Mystery of History 4 works well with Sonlight and for high school. We're using it this year for my senior and sophomore, and have not been disappointed. This may turn out to be our favorite volume yet! Even my non-history loving child has been excited to tell me about several of the lessons (the early one on Bach and Handel helped my music-lover!)

This year is our most "eclectic" year yet. I had planned to pull books mainly from Sonlight 300 and then other cores for the earlier time period, but I also really wanted my oldest to get some British literature in, and a more focused "literature course" before going to college. (I tend to have us read and enjoy literature, discuss what interests us, and only occasionally do "literature analysis.") So with that in mind, I had to be pretty ruthless in deciding which Sonlight 300 books we could read aloud. I decided in the end to do Learning Language Arts Through Literature Gold (British Lit), some 300 books, a few from 530, and even a book from Core H and Core F, to round out our lit for this year.

We read aloud for about 30-45 minutes per day typically. Here's what I came up with (the number preceeding the book shows the approximate week I hope to start this book, and the chapters after show how much I anticipate reading per day):

Summer Read-alouds:

The Best of Sherlock Holmes (2 days per story, 4 weeks)
The Wednesday Wars (9 sections, 30 pgs each, 2 weeks)

School Year Read-alouds:

1- In Search of Honor. (Core H. 1787 – French Revolution: 3 ch)
3- Jane Eyre – (Core 200. 1 ch)
9-The Importance of Being Earnest – (Core 530. 1890’s: ½ Act/day 1-2, 1 Act 3)
10- The Great Brain – (1900’s beginning: 1 ch)
12- Murder on the Orient Express (2 ch)
15- Old Man and the Sea – (1940’s: 25 pages)
16- The Hiding Place (1940’s: 1 ch)
19- The Great Divorce (Core 530. 1-2 ch)
21- Alas, Babylon – (1950’s written: 1 ch)
23- Breaking Stalin’s Nose – (Core F. 1950’s-ruled 20’s – 50’s: 6 ch)
24- My Father’s Daughter – (1952: 1 ch)
27- Red Scarf Girl – (1966: 1 ch)
30- To Destroy You Is No Loss – (1975: 1 ch)
33- There’s a sheep in my Bathtub – (1990’s: 2 ch)

Movies:

The Scarlet Pimpernel (French Revolution)
As You Like It – Shakespeare (filmed at the Globe)
All Quiet on the Western Front  (WW I)
Cry, the Beloved Country (1940’s just after WWII)
Ghandi (1950s)

Optional:

Gulliver’s Travels (1726: 39 chapters, 2 chapters per day, 3 weeks)
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (53 chapters, 2 per day = 4-5 weeks)
Fallacy Detective: 38 Lessons, 1 per week?

Readers:

LLATL Gold

1 – Emphasis on Poetry
6 – Romantic Poets – Wordsworth, Coleridge
9 – Frankenstein
13 – More Romantic Poets – Shelley, Keats
15 – Emma for dd, Gulliver's Travels for ds
21 – Victorian Poets – Tennyson, Browning, Arnold
24 – A Tale of Two Cities
30 – More Victorian Poets – Hopkins, Hardy
31 – The Time Machine
33 – Modern Poets – Eliot, Owen, Graves
34 – Animal Farm

If I wasn't doing British Lit, I might have chosen differently for the readers, though I think the time frame lines up nicely to do British Lit with this level of MOH.

We've already veered from this slightly--since MOH 4 wasn't ready when we started our school year, I started with Jane Eyre (thought-provoking look at character, faith, the internal battle when resisting sin.) Hopefully we'll hit In Search of Honor close to when we study the French Revolution.

One more change--after pre-reading Emma (used in LLATL Gold), I decided my son would not be interested or amused by it! (He did sit through Pride and Prejudice as a read-aloud a couple of years ago, and did well with that after the first 1/3.) So I'm going to substitute Gulliver's Travels for him when that comes up.

That's one reason I really like coming up with a one-page list like this--it makes it easy for me to alter plans depending on what we're doing in the year, and to make the curriculum work for us, while at the same time giving me a solid plan to follow for the year.

I'm really excited about the variety of books this year, and the chance to discuss compelling works, as well as include some humor. I'm treasuring this last year of working with my son before he graduates, and enjoying both students as they become young adults. Sometimes homeschooling high school is intimidating--I can look too far ahead and lapse into worry and fear about the future. But the Lord pulls me back and reminds me they are in his hands, and to treasure and cherish today and the gift of homeschooling.

AAR 4 Sneak Peek

For those of you anxiously awaiting the release of All About Reading 4--it's not too much longer! All About Learning Press is hoping to release it the week of September 8th. Read more about it and check out an activity you can download to get started: "Eagles Learn to Fly"



Enjoy!

Games for Practicing Math Facts

Many family games and board games involve a math or reading component and can combine family togetherness with working on math facts in a fun way. Games for younger kids can strengthen counting skills (Think Uncle Wiggly, Sorry, CandyLand, Chutes and Ladders, Hi-Ho-Cheerio and the like), and games for older kids can strengthen calculation skills.

Here are some games we've used for practicing math facts:

Multiplication Math war: 

This is just like the card game war--each player gets half a deck of cards, but instead of turning up one and having the highest number take both player's cards, turn up 2 cards, multiply, and the highest product takes both. If you tie, then you do a war--3 cards upside down, and then 2 turned up to multiply.

Play until one player has all cards or set a time limit & the person with the most cards wins.

Take out Jacks-Kings if you don't want to multiply with them, but you can use them for 11, 12, and 13. Aces can be 1 or 14, depending on whether you wan to go easy or hard.

You can also follow similar rules to play Addition War--highest Sum wins.

Phase 10 Dice 

This is a great game for showing kids how to add quickly by making 10s, as well as beginning probability skills.

The game comes with 10 dice, and the player has to make sets and runs, depending on which round they are working on. They get three rolls, and if they complete the "phase," they add up the points on their dice. I modeled adding by physically making 10's with my dice--9 and 1, 8 and 2, or 8, 7, and 5 to make a 20, and so on. Once the kids saw how this made adding faster, they quickly learned to manipulate their dice to make 10's or 20's as well.

Monopoly 

Addition, subtraction, and multiplication skills are all used in this game. And as a bonus, there are cards to read as well.

Yahtzee 

Addition and multiplication skills

Blokus 

Conceptual skills with fitting shapes together and using them to block your opponent's moves

Farkle 

Definitely a family-favorite! A dice game that involves addition, multiplication, and probability

Five Crowns 

A fun card game with changing wild cards and progressively more cards that need to be used. Addition skills--players have to add the remaining points in their hand.

What are some of your favorite games that also involve a math component?

Hope Is My Anchor: Win Invisible Illness, Visible God, and other book...

Hope Is My Anchor: Win Invisible Illness, Visible God, and other book...: Jenn at Busy Being Blessed is having a " Blogiversary Bash " to celebrate her 12 years of blogging! She has some amazing giveaways and freebies planned, including many homeschool items...

AAR - Fun Review and Fluency Pages

Here's a bunch of ideas you can use for both the fluency pages and the word cards in All About Reading to incorporate more review. Have Fun!

For the word cards

Use games to review the word cards. Pull out favorite family board games like Sorry or Candy Land, and have each player read a word before his or her turn. You might enjoy Bake the Cookies as a way of reviewing.

There's also a bunch of other free games--Over Easy, Word Flippers with F/L/S, A Flock of Ducks for L1, and Feed The Anteater, Be a Lumberjack, and Wake the Sheep for L2.

For compound words, there's Banana Splits. You can find that and the Free Penguin Fun Facts book for reading or spelling practice in the free Winter Practice Activities.

If your child enjoys games, consider getting the Ziggy Supplement for some folder game options you can use for review. (These were designed to go with level 1, but can be used with cards from any level.) 

You may also want to check out: Rhyming with Candy Hearts, which has words you can use with levels 1-3 of AAR.

 

Use the word cards to make up phrases and sentences for your child to read. Let your child also make up funny or silly ones for you (or a reading buddy) to read as well. Some kids really like that!

Pull out word cards that rhyme (start with a small number and work up) and play the matching game--mix  them up, turn them over and each player flips over 2 cards, says the words, and if they rhyme, the player keeps that pair.

Here’s an idea for kids who like to color: take coloring pages with big spaces and write review words or phrases in blanks. When the child reads the word, they get to color that space until the picture is complete.

Do the activities from the activity book more than once during the current lesson, and also bring back activities from previous lessons.

For the fluency pages:

Sometimes students do get overwhelmed by the amount of words on the fluency pages. Marie has some great ideas for using the pages to make them more fun or interesting (and there are more great ideas in the comments section to, be sure to check that out!) Check out the Top 5 Tips for Using the AAR Practice Pages. A lot of these will work for readers too. A few more ideas:

Use the viewfinder bookmark to read them.

Use the page for your reference only and write the words, phrases, or sentences one at a time on a white board.  When your child can read one line well, try writing two lines at a time.

Make the words/phrases/sentences with tiles for your child to read.

Mix up the exercises a bit more–do something from the next step and then just a bit of the fluency reading from the previous step. This will stretch the next step out a bit more, and give a bit more fluency practice, without having the practice be all together in one chunk.

Use the words, phrases, and sentences to come up with a little book together that your child can read.  Put one phrase or sentence on each page, and let your child draw a picture, or cut and paste pictures from a magazine on each page.  My kids used to really enjoy making up little books like this.

What are some fun review ideas you have used with the cards or fluency pages?

Faithful Bloggers Festival

If you're a blogger, this looks like a great opportunity to learn how to be more effective. The sessions will also be recorded if you can't make it at the scheduled times--June 3, 4, 5 at 1pm Eastern. The link below has more info.

Hope Is My Anchor: My Olympic Dream (Two-Man Bob-a-Luge)

Hope Is My Anchor: My Olympic Dream (Two-Man Bob-a-Luge): So there I was at the Olympic reunion party, when I suddenly realized, “Hey, I’m an Olympian!”  Yup, I won a bronze medal in the two-man luge.  Well, actually it was a combination of luge and bob-sled as I remember it.



You see, I just happened to be at the Olympics (because, you know, people just show up there without reason), when this big burly guy comes up to me... (read more)

Hope Is My Anchor: Illumination Award Winner! Invisible Illness, Visi...

Hope Is My Anchor: Illumination Award Winner! Invisible Illness, Visi...: The results of the 2013 Illumination Awards have been posted, and Invisible Illness, Visible God has won a bronze medal in the Devotional category!

"With the motto, "Shining a Light on Exemplary Christian Books," the Illumination Book Awards are designed to honor the year’s best new titles written and published with a Christian worldview."

Hope Is My Anchor: Hope Is My Anchor: The Spatula Thief Strikes Again...

Hope Is My Anchor: Hope Is My Anchor: The Spatula Thief Strikes Again...: Hope Is My Anchor: The Spatula Thief Strikes Again! Merry Christmas K... : Two years ago, my daughter wanted a detective-themed party for he...

Forgetting Plates and Auditory Processing

Conversation with my daughter this morning....

Me: how are you doing this morning?
Anna: Fine...forgetting a plate.
Me: forgetting a plate?

I'm wondering...what bearing does this have on how she's doing? Where is the plate--in her room? I've told the kids not to keep dishes in their rooms. What's so important about this plate?

Anna: For. Getting. Up. Late!

Yes, I'm auditorily challenged this morning!

I often have a similar glitch--the spaces between words disappear and my mind has to tease out the sounds and decide which ones form words. When I was 7, I asked "what?" whenever my mother spoke to me...so often that she had my hearing tested! What I heard was...

somethingakintotryingtoreadasentencewithnospacesbetweenthewords.

My hearing tested fine, and I learned to stop saying "what?" all the time, to pause, and to wait for the sounds to separate into meaningful words in my mind. And it works...most of the time.

There is that line in Jingle Bells that puzzled me for years. It made sense to me that they were "making spare-ribs bright." That meant they were putting lots of barbecue sauce on them--one of my favorite meals! It would be warm and cozy after a breezy sleigh-ride. But why they took soap with them was just beyond me. ("a one-horse soap and sleigh.")

And then there was that country song..."You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille." I could never figure out why he was so worried about his crop in the field, since he had 400 children. My mother would have put those children to work in that field, and they'd get the job done! Years later I laughed when I realized...it was "four hungry children."

Enunciation. It's a good thing!

When I started homeschooling, I learned about Central Auditory Processing Disorder, and my glitches started making sense to me!

If you've ever questioned your child's hearing and not found anything wrong...this may be what's going on.

Some things that help:

Slow down just a bit when you read aloud. Pause just slightly more between sentences and paragraphs.

Have your child sit where he or she can watch your mouth so that the sounds will be crisper. For example, letters like M and N can be very difficult to distinguish, but it's easy to see the difference in how we form these sounds.

Do school work in a quiet room with few distractions--your child will be using a lot of energy trying to focus on what you say. This is especially important for reading and spelling work.

Use multi-sensory methods to reinforce your teaching, rather than relying on one method (this has been found helpful for all kids, actually, but is even more important when a child has a struggle with one particular method). Don't attempt to explain things all orally--use manipulatives to "show" what you are saying in math, or letter tiles for reading or spelling. (Programs like Math-U-See, All About Reading, and All About Spelling integrate manipulatives.)

Shorten explanations and directions. (Remember the teacher on the Peanuts cartoons?! That's what our children hear when we talk too long or too quickly!) wah-wa-wah-wah-wahhhhhh....

Don't avoid reading aloud--my daughter sometimes has similar missteps in her hearing, and when she was young, she often didn't enjoy our read-aloud time. I think continuing with read-alouds strengthened this mode of learning for her though, and she came to enjoy read-alouds a lot (still one of the favorite parts of our day--here's one of her favorite ways to listen!)

Allow for “lag time” while your child processes what you just said--they need time to let all the sounds become (hopefully meaningful!) words.

Don't take it personally if your child becomes frustrated or argumentative during a lesson--that may be a sign you need to back up a bit, review something easier, and try the new concept again in a bit or even on a new day.

And...laugh. After all...forgetting a plate IS pretty funny!