Recommended reading list

My librarian asked for a list of books, homeschool related, that other homeschoolers would want in our little library:)  Here is a part of the list I provided:

Senior High: A Home Designed Form+U+La
The Well Trained Mind (Classical Education) (Jessie Wise, Susan Wise Bauer)
Managers of Their Homes and
Managers of Their Schools (life organization and pro-textbook type organization) (Teri Maxwell)
Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe (Todd Wilson)
The Relaxed Homeschooler (Mary Hood)
100 Top Picks (Cathy Duffy)
Help for the Harried Homeschooler (How-to and Organization) (Christine Field)
Homeschooling at the Speed of Life (How-to and Organization) (Marilyn Rockett)

There were a few others (I lost my copy of the list!) so I will add those if I find them later.  I tried to get a good mix of how-to, organizational, classical, relaxed, and textbooky.  I may have listed a Charlotte Masony book or two, but can't remember now.  I struggled with that one.  I haven't read a ton of CM books, but the ones I have read, bored me to tears (all the ones others rave about). I DO like CM's method, but apparently I'm not too keen on reading about it:)

Taking responsibility for one's own education

Yesterday was a rough day.  We had done a bit of carschooling the day before, so our books were in a disarray.  The kids didn't know what they were supposed to be doing.  The 2yo was hyper and needed to stop jumping on my couch cushions.  The brand new protractor was missing under piles of stuff and we were hunting for it everywhere.  Meanwhile, the 2yo quietly stopped jumping on couch cushions to head upstairs and find trouble there.  I felt like the world's worst mother and homeschooler.  That missing protractor was a sign of my failure.

I worried that I was the center focus of education.  I was the authority on whether their work was sufficient.  I was responsible for their supplies.  It was all up to me to make the day flow easily from subject to subject.  It was not flowing easily, because neither one of us was keeping track of our things.  At some point, I wondered how I was ever going to transfer that responsibility from me to them. 

Even our lessons are spoon-fed.  I give the lesson, they work on it.  I tell them when it is wrong and help them make it right.  It isn't difficult for them.  They do not have to wrestle with finding the right answers.  Doubts crept in about what I was doing here.  Wouldn't they be better off in public school, where some responsibility is thrust on them?

A friend with a son in public school told me that she's had the worst week.  Her son isn't bringing home his books.  He didn't know how to find the information he was supposed to be reviewing.  He wasn't taking notes in class.  He was getting poor grades on tests.

We all worry about our children not working hard enough and taking responsibility for their own education.  It isn't limited to homeschool children.  Even many good students in public school struggle to make their education their own. 

Cleaning out the trash from the treasure

For record keeping, I've kept all of our old workbooks in piles, and all of our loose papers stacked in boxes.  After a few years, these things really add up to one big mess!  I spent the weekend sorting through things, trying to pull together a portfolio for each year and each child.  This has been no easy task.  It has been an excellent exercise, however, in seeing what is Educational Trash and what is Educational Treasure.  It has reminded me of an important aspect to curriculum planning.
When you look back on your homeschool five years down the road, what would you like to see in that stack of books and papers?  What would you look for to keep?  What would you toss? 

I didn't have my answer right away.  It took some sorting and reviewing to see what really seemed Save Worthy.  Here is what I came up with:

• Tests and Chapter Reviews.  This gave me a good overview of what was accomplished in a whole chapter
• Handwriting samples.  I dug this out of spelling tests, dictation, narration, or simple question answering in the workbooks.
• Writing samples.  Any papers that the children had written were saved.  Some things I saved a Rough Draft and the Published (or Final) Draft.  If an outside teacher were reviewing this, they'd want to see the process.  I didn't save all rough drafts, but a few to show that we did go through a planning, writing, revising, and final publish phase.
• Projects or pictures of projects.  Let's face it; you probably don't want to save that lopsided diorama, or that huge human body poster your child made.  However, a picture of it is a nice, small thing to keep.  I kept some originals, as long as the originals were small and easy to store.

And that's it! 
I realize that the things I value and save are DIFFERENT from what I value when I lesson plan.  Oops!  Over the past few years, I have been letting the kids skip the chapter reviews and tests.  These are the easiest things to save.  Rather than saving a whole chapter on Addition, why not save that Chapter Review at the end as a testimony to mastering Addition? 

One more thing I found very valuable:  a report card.  I did not keep these every year, but I wish I did.  I didn't assign a grade to each subject, however.  I wrote a brief description of what was covered under each subject.  For example, in Kindergarten, it might've looked like this:
Math:  can count to 100.  skip counts by 2s, 5s, and 10s.  Understands place value ones, tens, hundreds.  Telling time to the hour.  Basic addition and subtraction using objects.
Language Arts:  can use phonics skills to decode CVC, CVC-E, and some double vowel words.  Can read 30 sight words. 
Social Studies:  studied Community Helpers by visiting a Firestation, Police station, Doctor and talking to each one about their jobs.

I used WorldBook.com to get my scope and sequence for each grade level.  I used some of WorldBook.com's ideas and terminology, but wrote what I thought was important for each child, each year. 

Water Cycle, Carbon Cycle, Nitrogen Cycle

Some good YouTube videos on the topic:

Water Cycle
http://youtu.be/3tExrDk013A

Nitrogen Cycle
http://youtu.be/1XC7xT0mIbY

Carbon Cycle
http://youtu.be/0Vwa6qtEih8

Partial Product Division and Decimals don't mix

A typical Partial Product Division problem would look like this:
172 / 5
Can you take 5 x 100 out? (500) No, too big.
Can you take 5 x 10 out (50) Yes.  How many of these could you take out? At least 3.  Ok, so 5 x 30 = 150.
172 - 150 = 22
Can we take out any more 5 x 10? (50) No.
Can we take out 5 x 5? (25) No.
Can we take out 5? Yes.  How many 5s could we take out?  At least 4.  5 x 4 = 20.
22 - 20 = 2.  Can we take another 5 out? No.  So let's add up our answer:
30 + 4 = 34; so the answer is 34 with remainder 2.  Actually, when we do it, we tend to take out each 10, and then each number after that.  So, we would've done 10 + 10 + 10 + 4 and remainder 2.  Anyhow.
This is much trickier when you introduce The Decimal (dun dun DUN). 
Same problem with a twist:
17.2 / 5
Can we take out a 5 x 10? (50) No.  But we could take out 5 x 1.0, and we could do this 3 times:)
5 x 3.0 = 15.0.  17.2 - 15.0 = 2.2
Can we take out a .5? (2.5) No.
Can we take out a .1? (.5) yes.  We can take out about 4 .1s, or 5 x .4 = 2.0.
2.2 - 2.0 = 0.2  So our remainder is 0.2
Let's add (the fun part - dun dun DUN)
3.0 + 0.4 = 3.4 with a remainder of 0.2
But now try it by taking out each part individually (make sure you line up all those decimals correctly!):
1.0 + 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1
OR, try it with a much larger number:
172.54 / 59
Yiiiiiiikes!!!!
But the good news is, it is a really good mental exercise in Place Value.

Partial Product Division

I don't have much time to blog these days.  I thought I would share a quick link to an alternative to Long Division.  It is called Partial Product ( or Partial Quotient) Division:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27636818/Partial-Product-Division

Memorization and trying like mad to avoid it

When I was in school, I was a slightly above average A-B student.  School was relatively easy, and I only learned just enough to get the slightly above average grade.  When something had to be memorized, I had a tendency to just sort of float through without actually memorizing something.  I think my reaction was always something like, "What? I'm supposed to memorize this? Are you crazy?  I'm not doing that!"  Funny thing, though, is that I apply that same thought process in teaching my children.  Recently, we hit an area of difficulty in the Horizons Math books.  Why?  Because they're supposed to be doing Roman Numerals.  I actually dropped Horizons Math for a few weeks to avoid it.  I thought about switching programs.  I thought about just crossing off all things Roman Numerals in the books.  I just wanted to avoid it!  Granted, I'm not entirely sure why Horizons Math has such a strong focus in Roman Numerals.  I only use Roman Numerals I, V, and X when reading a Roman Numeral clock.  It isn't often that I'm reading Roman Numeral clocks (or non digital clocks for that matter).  Or, occasionally I'll read a book with the larger Roman Numeral chapters.  I'll watch a movie and wonder "hey, what year was that movie made?" and the answer will be displayed in Roman Numerals on my TV screen.  But other than that, I just don't use Roman Numerals.  Why bother?

But then I realized this was contrary to my mission as a homeschool mom, overall.  Why teach my children to let things slide and to avoid hard work?  So I made some flashcards and gave them the goal to have those Roman Numerals memorized by the end of the week.

They memorized them in one day.  After that, we reviewed the cards.  When we picked up Horizons Math again, the 8yo started in on the Roman Numerals.  I said, "hey, wait - now I need to show you how numbers are subtracted on the left and added on the right!"  But she already knew this.  She had been struggling before and taking a long time to look up each Roman Numeral before writing her answer down. Now, she knew them cold.  She was able to calculate numbers under 100 quickly and easily, because she had the symbols memorized.

There are many things that do not need to be memorized.  (Remember the cram-test-and forget method of learning in schools?)  However, I think there are some guidelines for what should be memorized:

• will it foster a greater conceptual understanding?
• will it make the work easier?
• will it be valuable to know and something to be used in everyday life?

Things like measurement conversions are good to know:  pints, quarts, and gallons will help in the grocery store, especially if you want to find the best price.  When oldest memorized her multiplication tables, her conceptual understanding improved for multiplication, division, and fractions.  It also made the work a whole lot easier.