Bringing Good Home

For the next couple of weeks there will be a link in my sidebar to an Usborne Book Fair for our homeschooling group.

I said I wasn’t going to actually BLOG on my new blog.

I lied.

For starters, I have renamed the resource and redesigned the graphic. I didn’t like either one. They sounded… cheezy. And like I was promoting some kind of gimmick or scam. Not good. I’m so happy with my product name, now, though. Wanna see?

See? Isn’t that better?

Also, I have decided to post a free link each day.

That’s not so bad, right? Just one a day. In fact, it’s the easiest blogging I have ever done! In a few minutes I can type up an entire week’s worth of posts and schedule them to post each morning. And since I’m not getting any comments *ahem*, I don’t have to do any comment work, either. It’s the easiest blog ever.

But if you wanted to fix that and make me work for it so to speak, you could subscribe to my feed to get the free link each day and you could tell others about it.

(Yes, you could.)

(If you wanted to.)

(And then you’d be helping me get the word out, get some good resources out to people, and help me become an online entrepreneurial blogging momma whatever.)

(Yeah, that would be nice.)

SO. Then.

I also need product testers.

I need 5 people who want to try the preschool freesources, for free, and then blog about it. Wanna be one? Just let me know. But only if you use Mozilla Firefox; the Internet Explorer version is still in the works. But if you use Internet Explorer and would need that version, let me know about that, too, because I’m interested to know how much need there is for that.

So leave me some feedback, people! I need feedback. I’m lost without feedback. Feedback feeds my need for approval. Yeah, it’s a sad, sad thing.

For those of you have been trying. the Book Samaritan website is now back up and running.

For more info, read “Free School Books Always Work For Me!“

No. Well, yes. Well, sort of.

I’ve been busy working on a new project and the first part is finally finished!! I’ve created a page for it - okay, it’s technically a blog. But it is NOT a blog that I will blog at regularly! I’m not THAT crazy! I’m only going to use it to post each part of the project.

And in case you’re wondering what that project is, well, go check it out. Faith. Family. Home. School.

Sound familiar? Yep, that’s our homeschool name. Well, without all the periods. I added that for emphasis.

And the project? It’s a really awesome home school tool - if I do say so myself.

So check it out and then tell me what you think. There. Or Here. It doesn’t matter.

Sound good to you? I thought it might.

I recently learned about a non-profit organization called Book Samaritan that supplies curriculum to home schoolers who need the extra help.

How marvelous!

They work entirely on a donation basis - which means they rely on the donations of others to make it work. So if you’re not interested or in need of requesting books, you could still donate them to help others in need.

I love it when people get together to help other people. It’s the Golden rule and the 2nd greatest commandment (love your neighbor as yourself) at work in real life.

On May 28th, I put a letter in the mail to Book Samaritan requesting our remaining needs for the upcoming year and when I checked my mail on Saturday, June 7th I had a package slip waiting for me. I couldn’t believe it was that fast! We excitedly dug through the box when we got home, and we’re very pleased with the things we received. Together with what we already had, we have basically everything we need. Princess still wants a piano book, which we should be able to acquire before the fall semester starts.

So if you’re interested, check out their website and send them a letter. The only thing they require is that you donate the books back to them or to someone else when you are done with them, instead of selling them for a profit.

I think that’s a great idea.

And if you’re willing to send them your old books, by all means, go ahead and do that, too. Some home schooler somewhere will be greatly blessed.

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Note: I’m not getting the website to pull up, but it has in the past. My hubby and I emailed them and got a response saying that they are working on their site, but they are still there and open for donations and requests.

To send requests (the more general your curriculum request, the easier your order will be to fill) or donate books, mail to:

Book Samaritan

1715 Grandview

Pawhuska, OK 74056

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Works for Me Wednesday is hosted by Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer.

The tall bookshelf in the school room has been through a lot of transformations over the last year and a half. It has pretty much been some variation of having school books on the top two shelves and small toys and books for Little Prince on the bottom two shelves. All of the girls reading books have been on the small bookcase in the corner. It looked something like this:

Little Prince is bigger now, though, and can easily dig things out of his toybox. Also, he was developing a bad habit of dumping all the baskets on the bookshelf out at once. Because of that I recently I took all the toys off and put them into the toybox instead. So earlier today the bottom was empty, and the top looked like this:

I pulled off a bunch of completed worksheets and workbooks that can be stored, moved the reading books over, and then it looked like this:

And then I employed an organizing trick to make it more visually less cluttered (grouping books by size or color or a combination of both) and now it looks like this:

Here’s my purge pile. Most of it went into a box to be stored away as proof that my children do actually do school work here. It should be more organized, but for now it’s all together in a box. Other than a stack of folders and a few blank worksheets that need to go back into the surplus, the rest of it went in the garbage.

Now the little bookcase is empty (or it will be once I find a home for the coloring books) and I can move it out of the school area entirely. You can read about the last time we tackled the school area and see more pictures by clicking here.

Tackle It Tuesday is hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom.

First of all, thanks for all the info. One of the drawbacks to homeschooling is that you can’t poll the class and gain a whole lot of information. However, you CAN poll your momma’s blog.

Now the results.

“Which do you prefer, cake or pie?” What do you think? I confess I thought it would be pie. And for a while it looked like it would be. But in the end, it seems most of you prefer cake. Yes, that’s right. Princess tallied 12 votes for pie and 15 votes for cake. It was close, though! Very, very close. Personally I’m a pie person. I like chocolate, cherry, pecan, apple.. guess I should start singing the pie song from that movie…

We created graphs for the other two. I had her tell me how many rows and columns we needed but I helped draw the grid. Then she labeled and colored it in. Except on the 2nd one, when she asked me to color while she labeled. It looked like fun so I agreed to help.

As it turns out, the majority of my voting readers (that would be 8 of you) prefer the color blue - oh yes, blue is indeed the winner. Now, blue is okay and all, but in my opinion the best color is pink, which came in second with 7 votes, with red (my other favorite color) coming in 3rd with 6. So really, if you add the votes for pink and red together then most of my voting readers prefer the same colors I do.

As for the favorite insects, I know that made a few of you squeamish but you’ll be happy to know that the winners are at least cute. Yes, winners. We had a tie for first with 6 votes each for Ladybug and Butterfly. The Rolly Polie and Praying Mantis tied for next place with 3 votes each.

Thanks again, it was a lot of fun! We’ll be sure to keep y’all in mind for future projects. Class dismissed.

Recently I told you that I tested Princess for learning style and discovered that she is a visual and artistic learner. I already knew this - but I hadn’t taken that into consideration with her schooling. And it occurred to me: maybe I should.

So how have things changed since then?

Her biggest area of struggle had been math. She hasn’t been very strong in it, from the very beginning. Initially she had trouble making the abstracts of math concrete - which we implemented with the use of manipulatives.

Now she can add and subtract, but she isn’t fast at it and she second-guesses herself a lot. We hit a point mid-year where I wasn’t sure she really had it, and I was hesitant to move on. We began only doing addition drill sheets each day. My thought was that with repetition she would get better and faster.

But things only got worse.

She got slower and slower and started asking more questions that she should have known the answers to. Then she started daydreaming and doodling and asking me unrelated questions about science and other things.

Finally it dawned on me that she probably did KNOW it, she just wasn’t DOING it, but rather she was fighting it instead. I tested her verbally with a couple of math problems, I found a couple of math games for her to play online, I observed a little more closely and then the light bulb came on: “She does know it. She just doesn’t want to do those sheets.”

It was that revelation that led me to test her learning style. And a few other revelations.

1. She may be able to do math well, but she might not ever be exceptionally fast at it or enjoy it all that much.
2. And that’s okay.

Still, I do want to work with her and not against her.

After a bit of brain-storming and consulting with other moms, here’s what the last couple months have looked like for us:

• We’ve used more word problems. I’m not sure why she does better with word problems, but I think it helps her visualize what is going on.
• Throughout the normal workings of the day, I ask verbal math problems related to what we’re working on or what we need to calculate.
• I started giving her shorter worksheets to prevent her from burning out and fighting it.
• I found more math games online for additional work on top of the worksheets.
• We looks for ways to make games out of it. We’ve finally begun working on multiplication (after getting bogged down in drill sheets for a few months - good thing we’re not technically done with second grade for two more months) and we’ll probably make a Memory-like game where you match the equations and the sums

Making a few changes has made a big change in our school day.

There’s a lot less whining and fighting. And there’s a lot more learning going on, too. Which is always a good thing since that’s the point of school, right?

One of the good things about her taking the assessment test is that we’ll see what areas she still needs more work in over the rest of the summer. We’ll take those results, come up with some fun ways to work on those areas and get busy with the visual learning.

Recently, assessing Princess for her main learning style only confirmed what all the years of ceaseless drawings have been telling me: She likes to draw.

Well, okay the assessment said a little more than that, but that was the main thing that stood out to me as I read through the results and looked at the drawings scattered around our house.

I’ve long wondered what to do with all the drawings. They can’t all fit on the fridge. Shucks, in one day she can make more than what will fit on the freezer door. I’ve added a “gallery” in the school area with some fishing line and thumbtacks along the top of the wall. But even this is insufficient.

I confess I secretly throw most of them away when she’s not looking. Otherwise we’d be overcome with papers! Seriously, her drawing habits alone are enough to justify a switch to recycling.

I present my evidence to the court: (click to enlarge)

So what’s a girl to do?

Finally I got an idea. I’m going to make her a portfolio with a 3 ring binder and some cheap sheet protectors. She’ll get to decide whether she wants to put a drawing in there or throw it away (or recycle it once I get that system in place.) And when it gets full.. well, we’ll see how long it takes for that to happen. Either we’ll create a new one or she’ll have to switch to a one-in-one-out rule. Until then, we’ll finally have a home for drawings!

One more, check out her portrait of Big Daddy:

(He was on the phone, a grimace was the best I got.)

So tell me.. what do you do with your children’s drawings?

We’re reviewing graphing and to make it more fun - YOU get to provide the input for the graph. Come on, don’t disappoint a second grader! We won’t have much to graph if you don’t answer.

Graph #1: What’s Your Favorite Bug?

You can pick any insect, no limitations, just tell us what it is and we’ll graph it in a bar graph.

Graph #2: Cake or Pie?

Do you prefer cake or pie the most? For the purpose of this exercise, you have to pick one or the other. You can’t say “both” - that’s cheating. We’ll use tally marks to see which one “wins.”

Graph #3: What’s your favorite color?

Pick a color, any color, and let us know!

Thanks y’all!!!

*Note: You’ll have through Monday the 19th to answer, we’ll be making our graphs on Tuesday the 20th (We don’t do school work on Mondays.)