I have taken the summer off, quite literally, and have not even been to visit here for most of it. I am trying to get caught up on recent posts to see if this question has been answered but fear it will take me a lifetime to do it. I have a few actually. I went to a Abeka book viewing thing today and was leaning toward using some for my fifth grader. After perusing the books for a bit I have changed my mind. So now I feel like I am back at the beginning and regretting taking the summer off...a little bit. I have "Word Roots" because my 5th grader wanted to learn Latin roots. So I think that will cover Vocab and maybe even Spelling. I have Easy Grammar 4/5 to finish. I am ALWAYS looking for a writing program. I am not a confident writing teacher as I find it very difficult to evaluate and my son despises writing and that makes for tears on both ends. Any great writing programs out there??? Also, he wants to learn Geography. He wants to know where everything is located on the world. I looked at our local teacher supply store and they had nothing. Nada. Zilch. Was told they are not sellers as teachers do not have time to teach Geography. So I am also looking for any Geography suggestions there. Now for the 2nd grader. I have an amazing friend who gave me many teachers guides and books to use for most subjects. One that I looked at today was Spelling. We did not do spelling lists last year and now I fear I have put my reluctant reader further behind. I am leaning toward starting him at a 2nd grade level anyway and filling in gaps. Anyone have a child that, "Hates Reading and Writing" and thinks it is a, "Stupid waste of time?" I realize I am most likely making this way more difficult than it needs to be as that is what I do best. Any ideas will be appreciated and researched. Thanks!
On your 5th grader, if the student is really interested in Geography, I'd really encourage this as a place to work on the writing. Why not design your own geography course of study? Divide the world into regions, for each region have your student do the following: Learn the countries, capitals, and major physical features. Pick one country: Create a travel brochure of places in the country they'd like to visit. Plan the trip (even create a short slideshow to "persuade" you to go). Write a short report/travel guide to the country to accompany the slideshow and brochure. The student can then present their information as a travel agent spotlighting a country to visit. The process can be repeated for every world region, and covers informative and persuasive writing; short and long form writing; works in technology integration (PPT); and introduces public speaking.
Hi, Dawn, good to "see" you! Many, many boys see spelling/writing "a stupid waste of time"! For the writing, my philosophy is that if they're going to be a writer, there's not much you can do to stop them. And if they're not, there's not much you can do to make them one. So why fight against their natural bent? I don't waste time and tears over "creative writing" but just focus on writing the "practical" things: a paragraph, a personal narrative, a report, a letter (business or friendly), a news article, a research paper, and so on. For the older child, perhaps Jump In, which is from Apologia, for "reluctant writers" about his age and older. Or perhaps Writing Strands, beginning at #3, which I have used to get a small group of 9th graders to not hate putting stuff down on paper (they had not had to write much in public school, and hated it, but they thought WS was kind of fun, by comparison). It's written "to" the student, so they don't feel as intimidated. You might want to look at Jensen's Vocabulary which covers the Latin and some Greek roots. Or English From the Roots Up, which I have not used but have heard good things about. For geography, Christian Light Education 4th grade (which we'll be doing this coming year), or perhaps Around the World in 180 Days, which is more of a notebooking system that covers every continent. You have to do the research, to fill in this outline that covers the physical geography, the people, their religion, their politics, their history, and so on. It's structured for use by all ages, with tougher questions for highschoolers, a bit easier for junior high, and easiest for upper elementary. It will encourage writing a paragraph or two here and there, so a little or a lot of writing, too. I'm thinking your 2nd grader could do this along with, by listening, looking for pictures, and so on. It's not, strictly speaking, just a one-year project, although there are guidelines for completing it in one year. For the 2nd grader, I'm suggesting Rod&Staff 2nd grade phonics, and/or 2nd grade spelling. Spelling is phonics-based, or you could just pick words out of the Phonics. The Phonics might seem pretty dry, but a lesson is only a two-page spread in workbooks, so it might be do-able. It's plain, not colorful, but a very affordable price.
We used two things for geography, and we loved both of them: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.htm This one is free, but it's worth a bundle of money! It's fun, and students of any grade level can learn all of the countries, capitals, rivers, etc. very easily, because there are multiple levels of difficulty for each. http://www.christianbook.com/gallop...-edition/loree-pettit/9781931397650/pd/397650 This is meant to be an all-in-one curriculum, but we used it only for geography. I printed the sheets I wanted from the CD that's included with the book. We never touched the book, so we'll be able to resell it later when my second child is finished with it. (I know the description says K-4th, but the printables have all sorts of sheets you can use... especially for writing, coloring country flags, labeling maps, etc.) I've found a lot of writing programs *I* like, but the best ones are insanely expensive, and I have a reluctant writer, anyway. So... I've been teaching writing through other subjects (primarily English), and encouraging him to write about whatever he wants (Minecraft, Legos, friends, etc.) just to show him that writing can be fun. OH!! I almost forgot!! We also used this one for geography: http://www.amazon.com/Around-World-Coloring-Dover-History/dp/0486439836 We LOVED this one. I only wish it had a lot more countries in it. It's great!
2littleboys mentioned Sheppards. My oldest taught herself all the countries using that. It's very good and fun. For US Geography, I used enchantedlearning.com (which has some free stuff, but for this, you probably would need to pay about $25/year) They have pages on the states...information pages, mapping pages, the flags and what they symbolize pages.... I also bought Dover's coloring book on the states, and wrote to their Department of Tourism. For World Geography, look into Around the World in 180 Days. So, Lindina, what writing would you suggest for a 14yo, starting high school? Phillip has a good grasp of grammar (thanks to R&S), but hates, hates, HATES to write!
You have some good suggestions here already, but i did want to share that we have been using Essentials in Writing for my son who does not enjoy writing. It is a short dvd lesson and accompanying worksheets for grammar or writing. It is very straightforward, easy to use. He watches the lesson and does the accompanying activity. He is going into 6th grade and writing is no longer a major hurdle. This is not to be confused with the Insititue for Excellence in Writing! Very different approaches, oh and EIW is very affordable!
Jackie, I don't know anything that gets them over the hatred of writing, really. But I one year used Writing Strands 3 (actually intended for 3rd grade and up) with a group of 3 9th graders. They were fresh out of public school and had not had to compose much of anything before - and I suspected that they often just took the zero instead of turning in assignments. I only had one book, so I "taught" the lesson, we did some things together at the board, and I gave them assignments. I believe we completed 17 or 18 writings, and they found out that it could be quite painless. I mostly remember one we did at the board about "expanding sentences". We started with the simplest sentence: The dog ran. Then we added stuff gradually and ended up with something like: The little shaggy brown and white dog with a red collar ran very quickly across the yard chasing his yellow ball that was thrown by his owner. We laughed a lot with some of these, and they learned that writing longer, more descriptive sentences was not nearly as difficult as they thought. Other assignments covered things like to write in order (you can write in order of time, importance, space...) of space, like describing your bedroom, from the door around to the door again going to the right (or something like that). Things they really knew about, concrete stuff. There were imaginative writings, too, I just can't think of them right now. Writing Strands has several levels, and apparently they build on each other, but we never got to that. Two of them left after that year. One moved to another state, and went on to take his GED, but had no problem writing the essay part. One of my 3 boys went on to the military later, in the MPs. When he was being sent from Korea to wherever, they wouldn't let him go until he'd taught some of the other guys How To Write A Report! He thanked me later for getting him over that barrier to writing. He still didn't LIKE writing, but he knew how it should be done. Of course, we did other writing in the 10th and 11th grades, but then the family moved away in the middle of 11th, so I didn't get to graduate him. You might also want to look at Jump In from Apologia, built for the older reluctant writer, or Jensen. (I <3 Frode Jensen.)
How much R&S did Philip do? What level book(s), done when? I thought there was more writing going upwards. We've (DGS and I) have only done the 3, planning on doing the 4 this year. Maybe I need to get out WS3 again?
I think we did 4-6 (or maybe 3-6...?) There's a bit of writing in it, but not really that much. I feel we need to hit the writing hard this year. I'll probably put him in a writing class at co-op next year; it doesn't fit into his schedule this year. Last year, I had something I wanted to use with both him and Faythe (it really wasn't designed for just one!), but with moving my aunt in Assisted Living, my mil passing away, and us moving into her house, it never got off the ground. And this year, with Faythe graduating in December, it's not going to happen!
Spectrum has great workbooks in both of those categories: Writing: http://www.christianbook.com/Christ...on=Search&Ne=0&event=ESRCQ&nav_search=1&cms=1 Geography: http://www.christianbook.com/Christ...on=Search&Ne=0&event=ESRCQ&nav_search=1&cms=1
I've used Spectrum for both writing and geography. Writing was ok, but Geography was dry and very limited.
Wow! So many great ideas! Thank you! I have been reading and looking into them all for a bit now but on my phone and so I couldn't respond to this from there.(For the life of me I cannot remember any login info and I auto login on the computer.) I am finally on the computer again and will be spending a good chunk of my day reading recent posts and researching more into ideas for this year. I really appreciate the feedback! We have been "playing" around with the geography games website and I think it will be great!
I have always dreaded the responsibility of teaching writing. We have a 9th grader this year and I actually considered pushing her out of the house and into public school because of this one subject. Well maybe not, but there is a high level of dread and if she had volunteered to go when I asked her this year as we do every year, I would likely not have discouraged it at all. Anyway, a year or so back we examined another homeschoolers copy of EIW writing intensive level A. I could see it was just what we needed in terms of the type of help ,but I seemed to juvenile for my kids. It seems that they have B and C levels as well as a B level continuation that bridges over and continues through the C and beyond. We will be using the B this year. EIW Writing Intensive videos take the student step by step through gaining the tools or building blocks for writing. One step at a time. It's not a fill these pages with something approach, but rather gathering the tools so the student has the skills to examine information and write about it etc. I am not a writer, and cannot explain this well. The first video in A for example has the kids look at a small 1 or 2 paragraph story with a few sentences. They find the main idea for the article then identify the key words in each sentence. They jot this down then rewrite the ideas of the story in their own words using synonyms etc. As they progress they are also tasked with an encouraged to use various parts of speech to "decorate" their writing or make it more descriptive or colorful without being wordy. It was nice to have them actually writing something with little pain the first lesson. It is not a substitute for a grammar program, but mostly a writing course. If I can get my kids writing with well planned themes with organized ideas and good and varying sentence structure, they will be ready for college. I can teach them to interact with the word processor and spell and grammar checkers to polish things up after writing. Being dyslexic this is specialty of mine. ( I do not practice this skill online much)
