One of our current notebooks this school year is one state history. The resources fell together pretty quickly and very inexpensively. It all started with a a state of Colorado coloring bk from the souvenir section at Walmart. I figured it would be extremely easy to take the color book apart and build a notebook around it by adding library books and narrations. The girls are loving this and willingly check off state history from their goal charts each week.

Here is what we are using:

State coloring book  you can purchase locally or use these online.  If you google your particular state for its coloring book you are sure to unearth one in no time. There appears to be one for each at the state gov. sites.

C is for Centennial a Colorado alphabet bk.  You can find free study guides for each book in this series here.

Mr Donn has a set of links to state history lessons and games online. These include geography, history, webquests, and folktales.  One of those links is particularly helpful for notebook printables – ABCteach   Enchanted Learning would be a similar resource. More interactive map games here  and here and especially here.

About.com has a set of state history plans as well. I honestly didn’t find much here that we would not have gleaned from the coloring book so don’t feel you need all of these resources. Go with whichever is easiest to access.

Be sure to surf your library for real books to flesh out the topics in the guides. We are focusing on the shorter bios and fact books that can be finished in one sitting. The encyclopedia is a good resource as well. A short entry for each page in the color book suffices.

Black and white state flags to print.

We are adding short narrations and pics from places we have visited around our state and that would be it!  Simple, fast, cheap, fun. If you take off with state history you may end up rabbit trailing to world geography. Elizabeth found P is for Passport which looks every bit as good! A is for America is another of his titles. Or try M is for Majestic (national parks) or any one of the dozens in this series.  I am so taken with these we may end up spelling our way through geography and history this year : D

Found some Lewis Carroll sites to work on with Alannah and thought I would pass them along. This one has a number of links including lesson plans. Discovery School has a plan that includes surrealist art study. While you are there check out the lit section.  Did you know they had a Great Books program online?? We haven’t really investigated some of these artists so may go down that rabbit trail. This one focuses on different Alice illustrators and is geared for younger readers.

I have been rolling over some of his quotes this morning. Thought I would share while we are on the subject:

On teaching: "My one pupil has begun his work with me, and I will give you a description how the lecture is conducted. It is the most important point, you know, that the tutor should be dignified and at a distance from the pupil, and that the pupil should be as much as possible degraded…. So I sit at the further end of the room; outside the door (which is shut) sits the scout; outside the outer door (also shut) sits the sub-scout: half-way downstairs sits the sub- sub-scout: and down in the yard sits the pupil.
The questions are shouted from one to the other, and the answers come back in the same way—it is rather confusing till you are well used to it."

On God: "I have had prayers answered – most strangely so sometimes – but I think our heavenly Father’s loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me. "

and finally: "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. "  And now, I am going to find my chart and do just that. : )

How is it there are only 2 (ok 3 now since I just subbed!) bloglines subscribers to the Montessorimom blog? Check out the links!  You will like this one <g>

   We started school back up this week. It was a light week but the children are getting back into the swing of things well. I have always been skeptical of "to do" lists since too often they are mere speculation on my part. We regularly end up doing even more exciting things than my little planner could have imagined.  I have taken to keeping "done lists" instead and recording our work that way.

   We have a steady school diet of core subjects such as math, language, reading, and religion. To these we add the Charlotte Mason stand-by’s – nature notebooks, artist and composer studies, history timelines, and so on. Toss in a hefty dose of Montessori materials and you have a good picture of the Schoolhouse. That’s the background for you. : )

  This week we spent some time on the plant studies we have been working on this summer. Throughout the past months they have been getting books about plant life cycles and doing experiments, including the aforementioned gardening project. Our favorite resource by far has been Janice Van Cleave’s Plants bk. This book was full of experiments we were able to do and a couple of awesome paper models.  This week they created a pollination model and painted our sunflowers on which they spied several bees. They did a very nice plant parts model earlier this summer. The pics I took of that aren’t responding to any amount of ‘come out, come out wherever you are’ however.  Will try to unearth them this week.

This week’s  nature notebook pages were about frogs for obvious reasons <g>

The girls made more geography term pages.

We are still going strong with the Signing Time videos. Several things fell into place that are developing into a stand alone unit. The story at church last Sunday was about Jesus healing the deaf man. They narrated that. Then Moira had to choose a new chapter bk to begin.  She pulled Helen Keller off the shelf, not realizing she too was deaf and blind. The Magic Schoolbus bk at the bkmobile was about the five senses.  They loved that one and as we worked through the videos and bible story Aidan soberly pointed out that we ‘really needed to read more of that book and figure this out.’  So that is the direction we headed. We discussed the sense organs and the nerves leading back to the brain. We discussed the parts of the brain that registered the senses and how if those areas were damaged you still could not see/hear/etc.

Alannah is finishing one of her first ‘real’ lit works, Alice in Wonderland. Colin had suggested it to her several weeks back and she took his advice. Another wonderful coincidence – each fall the library system chooses a classic to be its all area ‘read’.  They have promotional events through the school year such as plays, presentations, and so on.  Guess what this year’s title is?  Yep!  Alice.

Asher is halfway through Story of a Soul. He is also working through What to Listen for in Classical Music by Aaron Coplandand ‘Tis by Frank McCourt. It is a sequel to McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and hopefully less graphic but don’t consider this a ringing endorsement.

Our current family read aloud is The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson.  When Asher got wind of it he said didn’t we just read that?  As it turns out I read it to him and his brothers about 8 years ago when Allen was in Saudi Arabia. Guess it made a favorable impression! Time to treat the younger set to this book.

  Saturday was spent rotating the horses to a new pasture and moving the water troughs etc. Then they tackled the new goat shelters. We helped friends move a few weeks ago and in return they gave us these gigantic dog houses on their new property. Allen and the kids measured and cut new larger openings for the does and moved the shelters into their pastures. Then they had to restring the fence. LOTS of practical life happening there! It does my heart good to see them run and retrieve the correct tool when he calls for a Phillips screwdriver or a drill bit.

That wraps up week one!

Remember Horseshack raising his hand enthusiastically when Mr Kotter asked a question?  Imagine me doing that now! <g>

Jen sent me this link: High School Ace and I can’t say enough good things about it.  It’s got sooo much packed into one place it caused me to do the happy dance. Check out the subject area links. The English section alone links to cyber lit guides, word of the day, test prep q of the day, poem a day, spelling rules, grammar rules and exercises, the MLA styleguide (a must have!), research paper how tos, plagiarism notes, and more! The history sections link to all major eras, figures, maps. There are science charts and labs for all branches, links to foreign language games and lessons, and math exercises for each level of hs study.

Students can also analyze the daily news, learn study skills, brush up on health topics, and play thinking games. Can you say one-stop shop! : )

I got tagged <g>

1) ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED;

One??  Are you serious?? Will the meme police come and get me if I can’t pick just one? ; ) 

I love The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Dr Raymond Moore. His 3-pronged approach (short concentrated academics, work at home, service to others) is sensible and balanced. He advocates delayed academics, which might seem out of place in a Montessori-inspired homeschool. However Montessori is all about spontaneous education vs imposed. And if you have all little ones it is important to hear this message that noone is going to miss the educational boat if you can only devote short spurts to academics in the lower grades and that home comes first in homeschooling.

On that note, my next pick is…

Real Learning by Elizabeth Foss. The book I would have written had I ever written a book lol!  The book that launched our friendship.  I am as grateful for that part as for the content.

and finally…

A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. A calming, encouraging, gentle read. (Ishould be hyperlinking but I need to get to the barn.  It’s all in the sidebars if you scroll down.)

2)ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN’T BE WITHOUT

Our library system!  It was a huge consideration in choosing a permanent home. We have one of the best systems in the country imo.  And the bookmobile…. God bless whomever thought of that! I order whatever strikes our fancy and it appears on Mondays.  Doesn’t get much better than that!

3)ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT

Well there are fewer and fewer of those since I don’t buy much anymore. I would have to say primarily daily lesson plans. I HAVE bought lots of those. Never actually finished them however. They weren’t a complete wash because they showed me some critical things – first, that there is little to no standardization among schools. What is taught, how it is taught, how much is assigned is all extremely subjective. Second, I learned great teaching tips over the years that were incorporated into our lessons.

4)ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR:

Home Educator’s Tutor Magazine (!) and our journals.  I regret we didn’t give as much time to either of them as I would have liked hence….

5)ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING NEXT YEAR:

See above <g>   We plan to notebook more extensively and to make better use of the HET resource. It includes music (with a CD each issue) art pullouts, nature study, lit, ancient world, bible study and more in one place. No denominational biases noticed.  As for notebooking, I have become convinced that nothing is more effective than writing and editing for mastering language. And I dont want to invest loads of time into stuff that will be thrown out. (ie workbks) We are also looking forward to the Signing Time videos.  They are a huge hit around here!

6)ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY:

a new piano!  Oh we need a new piano. Music practice figures heavily into our days. At least one child wishes to pursue it as a career. We need a new piano. Should I not be able to purchase said piano, next on the list is quality paints and paper. Odds seem weighted in favor of the latter don’t they?

; D

7) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED:

An extra hour or two each day! I find soooo many things in life fascinating and just can’t fit them all in a given day or week or month.

8)ONE HOMESCHOOLING CATALOGUE YOU ENJOYING READING:

hmmm.  I don’t read many anymore.  Keeps the overhead down. <g>  Rainbow Resources is my favorite one stop shop.  It’s like a phone bk with detailed descriptions of each product. Also like Timberdoodle and I do spend lots of hours over the Nienhuis catalog, though more for making materials than for buying them.

9)ONE HOMESCHOOLING WEBSITE YOU USE REGULARLY:

google!  Ok so it’s not a homeschool site per se.  But where would a frugal homeschooler be without google??  Daily use here! Never buy before you google your options.

10)TAG FIVE OTHER HOMESCHOOLERS:

Jen

Dani

Maura

can’t think nor link more…gotta get to the goats.  Have a good one all!

Today’s Schoolhouse find is Don Potter’s reading links.  He has several instruction books and sites linked from here: Don Potter  I can’t imagine there would be much left to know about reading instruction if you made it all the way down this page! 

Having not yet made it through the entire page I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that statement. : )  I am a sucker for free downloads however. I got those!  Enjoy.

4real ladies were asking about pics of the folder games so am uploading a few in case you haven’t seen them in person.  Our favorites are the Carson Dellosa line, not for the great art (it isn’t) but for the variety of skills addressed and the age range covered by the series. Another mom reviewed the Evan-Moor books quite favorably. And there are some printable games free online. Free File games   preschool printables  free games from Mormon Chic  yet more games  Most of us prefer the books to the freebies in this case.

Some wondered about the prep time involved for the teacher. That depends.  If you personally are doing all the coloring, laminating and cutting then yes, its time consuming – at least initially.  There are short cuts though. One is printing directly onto colored cardstock vs coloring by hand.  The other is to enlist an older child who could use the fine motor practice.  If you choose the latter the game is not going to look as glitzy as the ones on the books’ covers but they enjoy them just the same.

The earliest games include things that go together, visual discrimination (matching pictures/patterns), shape work, basic counting (to ten), beginning letter sounds.  At the next levels they progress to single digit addition/subtraction, beginning phonics work (consonant and vowel sounds, capital and lowercase letters, etc), time telling to the hour and half, and so on.  The highest levels include games for parts of speech (noun, verb, etc), multi-place value addition and subtraction, fractions, contractions, ending punctuation, and the like.

What I like about these games is that they cover the same skills found in basal workbooks but they are nonconsumable and don’t depend upon writing ability.  Kids can progress based on their academics and not on their fine-motor finesse. This was huge for some of ours!

Basic construction: copy the game pieces onto cardstock (white or colored), tape half into an opened file folder as directed. Laminate or cover the matching pieces with clear packing tape and cut them out. Affix a small ziplock baggie to the back of the folder to store the loose pieces.  That’s it! You can store them in magazine holders upright on a shelf you can file them in a file cabinet. You can hole punch the folded file folder and store in a larg 3 ring binder as well.  You can also use poster board cut in half and folded if you wish for more vibrant colors than those which most file folders come in. They may not fit into the mag holder or cabinet however.

Now, take my word on this one, under no circumstances allow the children to play with the games when not supervised. You will be pulling your hair out when you open it next and find some of the pieces have gone AWOL.  Been there, done that. : / 

Figured I would explain the two games shown in the storage post while I am at it. First is a simple sound discrimination game made from craft sticks and varied sizes of bells.  (both available in the craft section of Walmart or the like) You put a bell on each end of a pair of the sticks.  In case you are thinking glue would have been faster let me save you the trouble.  The bells stick yes, but they dont jingle. : P   Play is most effective when the children are blindfolded so they can’t identify by sight. you can make the game harder by making intermediate pairs from, say,  small and medium bells.

Next is the poker chip patterning game from I Can Do It (see left sidebar – it is a must have!). You make mats from standard craft sized felt rectangles and trace chips in various patterns onto one side of the mats. To play the children can initially place chips right onto the tracing. I made dots on the outlines so if they wish they can practice patterns and counting by placing that number of chips in the pattern. Later they can reproduce the pattern on the blank side of the mat.  Much later yet they can make mirror images of the patterns such as those found in books like Building Thinking Skills.  I like games like this that have multiple levels of play.  More bang for your buck. ; D