Suz MamaFrog
04-15-2010, 10:11 PM
I thought I'd move this to a new thread, so as not to hijack Michele's other one......WARNING - This is looooooooooooooong. Feet up, cuppa in hand kind of long :lol:
Alright, since you've asked, here's a week from our row of Homer Price All of our weeks follow a pretty set routine - read and discuss Monday and Tuesday, Independent Study on Wednesday and Thursday, then together for review and projects on Friday - so there will be lots of similarities from our week with Boxcar Children.
Homer Price, Chapter 1:
Monday - Introduce the book, read the chapter. Have printed/prepared and give to dd: mini book about Homer, double mini book on slogans (what is a slogan?/my slogan,) Scholastic biography poster and pocket to store it in scrapbook, vocabulary mini book. Discuss advertising slogans - give her definition for scrapbook, examples, etc. Discuss vocabulary words. Used the Discussion Question for a chat. Give her following assignments - 1.) Define all vocabulary words by using dictionary or context. 2.) Choose a favorite prodyct and create a new advertsiing slogan for it.
Tuesday - Read a chapter from Children's Homer by Padraic Colum. Discuss Homer and give her info for scrapbook. Discuss history of radio lesson in manual. Give her assignment of creating a biography poster about Marconi. Discuss road markers and how you can tell what type of road you're on by the shape and color of the route signs. (Later, when we went to dance class that afternoon, I asked her to tell me what kind of routes/roads we used to travel there. Living education without documentation, but it was fun to see what all she could remember.....) Discussed art lesson and had a good laugh.
Wednesday - She worked on her vocabulary words, her slogan and her poster.
Thursday - Finished her poster.
Friday - Give her the science challenge of designing a doll "lift" that could raise one of her dolls from the floor to the bed/table/desk. Explain how pulleys work and had a couple of empty spools for her to use, along with string and anything else she might need from the "art box." (I felt this was closer to what Homer actually did in the storywith Aroma than an egg cracking machine as suggested by the manual's lesson.) Reviewed the work she had completed Wednesday and Thursday.
Now, she had a pretty "light" week as far as her assignments went that week, but we still accomplished a lot, I think. We do so much other writing that I seldom assign a writing project from BY, quite frankly. I can see where others could use a lot of the LA lessons and Writing/Discussion Questionsa as independent work, but it would just be too much for us most of the time. As it was, we used all but three or four of the manual's lessons, and still had a pretty full week. (We may have discussed the human relationshipo lesson at some point, because I have a little checkmark beside it, but I can't recall when, and there's no "paper trail" in her scrapbook, so I can't be certain.)
A couple of things:
*I tried BY with dd at age 8 and she wouldn't have any of it. Your dc may be different. DD wasn't ready to let go of FIAR so soon. I think the chapter books intimidated her a bit the first year, and we ended up with another year of FIAR that I hadn't really planned on. I tried again at 9 and while she was more receptive, she ended up hating every minute of it. I took a good long look at HOW I was doing BY and realized I was teaching the life out of it. I realized I had to come up with a way to help her learn rather than feed her the information. After 4 years of FIAR 1 - 4, she was used to less formal, gentler guiding through her learning than what I was doing with BY. I thought that since this was "middle school" and harder, more complex topics, etc., I felt the need to slip back into teacher mode for some reason. Opening BY for more independent learning on her part, and using discovery learning and research and whatnot made her feel more grown up, more "in charge" and she's loving BY now.
*I have everything printed/prepared/gathered together for Monday morning. I have all of ds's necessaries for his FIAR title that week ready to go, too. Yes, this takes some time over the weekend, but since I've preplanned my most of our lessons well in advance, it's a simple matter of deciding which ones to do together, and which ones lend themselves to independent work on her part. Also, I check with HSS and other "freebie" sites for notebooking pages, mini books, etc. that we can use to create the scrapbooks. (I use the alternative portfolio assessment here in WV, and our scrapbooks are a BIG part of that every year, so they're a priority every week.) You may not want or may not be able to devote the time that I do every week to preparing our BY materials. It's usually not much more than an hour, but I know for some that's an hour too long. Also, by "preplanned" I mean I take a week or two every year and roughly plan the titles we'll row,, and the lessons I'd like to cover during each row. I make notes in my manuals with sticky notes - one for lessons we'll row, one for go-alongs/resources/etc. and one for extra materials/field trips/experiments/recipes/etc. For BY, I have them at the beginning of each chapter's section of lessons. Then, when I'm doing my weekend planning, I know exactly what I need to prepare for Monday.
to be continued...................
Alright, since you've asked, here's a week from our row of Homer Price All of our weeks follow a pretty set routine - read and discuss Monday and Tuesday, Independent Study on Wednesday and Thursday, then together for review and projects on Friday - so there will be lots of similarities from our week with Boxcar Children.
Homer Price, Chapter 1:
Monday - Introduce the book, read the chapter. Have printed/prepared and give to dd: mini book about Homer, double mini book on slogans (what is a slogan?/my slogan,) Scholastic biography poster and pocket to store it in scrapbook, vocabulary mini book. Discuss advertising slogans - give her definition for scrapbook, examples, etc. Discuss vocabulary words. Used the Discussion Question for a chat. Give her following assignments - 1.) Define all vocabulary words by using dictionary or context. 2.) Choose a favorite prodyct and create a new advertsiing slogan for it.
Tuesday - Read a chapter from Children's Homer by Padraic Colum. Discuss Homer and give her info for scrapbook. Discuss history of radio lesson in manual. Give her assignment of creating a biography poster about Marconi. Discuss road markers and how you can tell what type of road you're on by the shape and color of the route signs. (Later, when we went to dance class that afternoon, I asked her to tell me what kind of routes/roads we used to travel there. Living education without documentation, but it was fun to see what all she could remember.....) Discussed art lesson and had a good laugh.
Wednesday - She worked on her vocabulary words, her slogan and her poster.
Thursday - Finished her poster.
Friday - Give her the science challenge of designing a doll "lift" that could raise one of her dolls from the floor to the bed/table/desk. Explain how pulleys work and had a couple of empty spools for her to use, along with string and anything else she might need from the "art box." (I felt this was closer to what Homer actually did in the storywith Aroma than an egg cracking machine as suggested by the manual's lesson.) Reviewed the work she had completed Wednesday and Thursday.
Now, she had a pretty "light" week as far as her assignments went that week, but we still accomplished a lot, I think. We do so much other writing that I seldom assign a writing project from BY, quite frankly. I can see where others could use a lot of the LA lessons and Writing/Discussion Questionsa as independent work, but it would just be too much for us most of the time. As it was, we used all but three or four of the manual's lessons, and still had a pretty full week. (We may have discussed the human relationshipo lesson at some point, because I have a little checkmark beside it, but I can't recall when, and there's no "paper trail" in her scrapbook, so I can't be certain.)
A couple of things:
*I tried BY with dd at age 8 and she wouldn't have any of it. Your dc may be different. DD wasn't ready to let go of FIAR so soon. I think the chapter books intimidated her a bit the first year, and we ended up with another year of FIAR that I hadn't really planned on. I tried again at 9 and while she was more receptive, she ended up hating every minute of it. I took a good long look at HOW I was doing BY and realized I was teaching the life out of it. I realized I had to come up with a way to help her learn rather than feed her the information. After 4 years of FIAR 1 - 4, she was used to less formal, gentler guiding through her learning than what I was doing with BY. I thought that since this was "middle school" and harder, more complex topics, etc., I felt the need to slip back into teacher mode for some reason. Opening BY for more independent learning on her part, and using discovery learning and research and whatnot made her feel more grown up, more "in charge" and she's loving BY now.
*I have everything printed/prepared/gathered together for Monday morning. I have all of ds's necessaries for his FIAR title that week ready to go, too. Yes, this takes some time over the weekend, but since I've preplanned my most of our lessons well in advance, it's a simple matter of deciding which ones to do together, and which ones lend themselves to independent work on her part. Also, I check with HSS and other "freebie" sites for notebooking pages, mini books, etc. that we can use to create the scrapbooks. (I use the alternative portfolio assessment here in WV, and our scrapbooks are a BIG part of that every year, so they're a priority every week.) You may not want or may not be able to devote the time that I do every week to preparing our BY materials. It's usually not much more than an hour, but I know for some that's an hour too long. Also, by "preplanned" I mean I take a week or two every year and roughly plan the titles we'll row,, and the lessons I'd like to cover during each row. I make notes in my manuals with sticky notes - one for lessons we'll row, one for go-alongs/resources/etc. and one for extra materials/field trips/experiments/recipes/etc. For BY, I have them at the beginning of each chapter's section of lessons. Then, when I'm doing my weekend planning, I know exactly what I need to prepare for Monday.
to be continued...................