Monday, September 13, 2010
Dancing Bears a review and my thoughts on it so far.
1 comments Posted by Homeschool Mom at 11:58 AM
Dancing Bears is a synthetic phonics program from the U.K. which can be found here Sound Foundations. There are different levels one can choose from to begin with depending on the need of your DC. I decided to begin with Bear Necessities A1 since T is still rather young and still at the beginning of his journey relatively speaking. Books A1 and A2 are a more stretched out version of book A taken at a slower pace to better cement the information for younger children or those with LDs. The book comes with 2 sets of "flash cards" which can be stored in little envelopes in the front or back of the book. The front envelope is for the cards your student needs to master whereas the envelope in the back are for the cards the child has already mastered. The front of each card is the phonogram and the back has the sound(s) for the teacher. For example you would hold up the card with "a" on it and the child would be expected to give all teh sounds the letter a can make. Once the student can quickly recall the sound of each card it can be considered mastered and move to the back of the book.
Once all of the cards for A1 have been mastered you then move into oral blending using pictures. For example you will have a cat, dog and a man. You would ask the child to point to the picture of the c/ at or the d/ og or the m /an. the second step would be to move onto the phonemes with the same 3 pictures. You would ask the child to point to the picture of the c / a / t, d / o / g or the m / a / n. Once you have passed the oral blending stage you move onto print. When using the print sections the child is asked to trace words and to read using "the cursor". The cursor is simply a card with a notch in it so that you can move it over the words to encourage reading from left to right and so you can sound out each sound at a time for reading. The cursor works beautifully and can be used in early readers that you may use alongside the program.
overall I am very very pleased with this program and DS is enjoying it way more then OPGTR and things are making more sense to him which is awesome! It is great when he begins to really understand something he was struggling with before now that he has been given better tools to figure it out with. He has a great desire to learn to read and now we have a program and a method that is working on getting him to that goal and building him a very strong foundation that will make language arts much easier for him in the long run.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
We were in need of a new chore system so I did some looking and kept running into the same wall. All the ones I liked would cost a LOT to get for 5 kids! So I set out to make my own system based off of the parts of the other I liked. :o)
All of our chore plaques
Family chore plaque
A close up of one of the chore plaques
First I went to walmart and bought 6 unfinished wooden plaques (5 big and 1 small) I got one for the new baby and set it aside so he'd have the same as the other kids :op. I painted each one with a solid color then each kid's name on it. I then measured and drilled holes for the hooks and screwed them in. Finally I wrote, in a paint pen, the names of each hook spot. Then came the long part. I made tags with pictures in open office draw and printed them out on card stock. I then went through and added the colored strips with markers and cut each tag to the appropriate color for the time. Yellow is first thing in the morning before you come down for breakfast, red is morning right after breakfast, blue is after lunch, purple is after dinner and green means it can be done any time in the day. After I got them cut I laminated them and cut them out once again. The final step was to hole punch each card so it could be hung on the hooks. We also have our mini plaque which is the family chore card storage. it hold the "money cards", which can be turned in for real money at the end of the week and the blank chore card which we can write in dry erase marker some new extra chore that needs to be done. We have must do chores that are required to be done by each child with no compensation. These are things like cleaning your room,folding your clothes and hygiene sorts of things. We then have "extra" chores that are assigned and can be done in order to earn money, like pulling weeds or cleaning the bathroom. The older kiddos have more must do chores of course.
All of our chore plaques
Family chore plaque
A close up of one of the chore plaques
Finally our new schoolroom in all of it's glory ( minus the wall map) :op
4 comments Posted by Homeschool Mom at 8:54 AMSo as you saw in earlier posts, we did have our school stuff integrated into our greatroom which was getting slowly taken over. I think it was a combo of nesting and desire to have our own spot that caused me to all in one day at 8 months preggo to move everything upstairs and "make" a room out of part of the huge playroom. The initial move took me most of one day and then the finishing up and organizing took a few weeks. It is now DONE except for hanging up the laminated wall map that is due from amazon any time now. So I thought I would share some pics with you all!
So here is a view from in the school room out into the playroom
Here is our reading nook with the nifty big ikea leaf and the big beanbag from big lots (14.99!) On each wall I have a stick up velcro mounted LED tap light so they can read when it gets dark. The set of 2 lights cost me 4.99 at walmart.
Now from here we are in the far reaches of the playroom looking over towards the school room. You can see the train table and off to the left the media center. You can see the big blank space on the wall above the desks to the left of my blue cabinet from here. This is the spot where the big wall map will go once it gets here.
Here is a more close up look at the media center which consists of a flat panel monitor and on the other side of the wall/bookshelf the computer running it.
Now we are "in" the schoolroom. This is the right side by the window which is our art center. Here we have our Ikea easel that used to sit unused in our playroom, the art drawers (menioned and shown in an earlier post) We have lots more organization in here now to keep the art supplies more at hand and accessible! On top of the blue art drawers I have a rotating organizer bought at five below for $2. The rotating organizer holds elmers glue and my set of scrapbook fancy edge scissors (Michaels for $5 with a 40% off coupon)
Here is the craft cart which houses more craft supplies like foam sheets, mini trees, wax seals, pastels ect. The Ikea roll paper holder sits on top of here so we can unroll it onto the group table for art time.
This is the art supplies wall center. I got the two hanging drawer sets from a store called "five below" Each cost me 5 bucks and they work so well for holding little things like pom poms, feathers, pip squeak markers and foam stickers! The colorful cups are from Ikea and are called bygel rail and cups. Best part the bygel rail stuff is CHEAP! It cost me
This is the left wall of the schoolroom. We hung up some awesome track shelves with real pine wood rather then the more expensive and yuckier particle board.
You can also see the workboxes for all our games, our DVDs, our writing center, our file folder games ect. The magazine holders on the bottom right shelf hold our piano books :) We just got and started pianimals! We keep our big keyboard in the top of one of the closets in the boys room.
Our writing center. I got this on walmart.com and it is awesome for organizing all of our papers, journal books, handwriting books and other writing related stuff! On top you can see some of our LA related big games like the TAG reader spelling game. In the top right cubby are some awesome spiral bound journals I got for ten cents a piece online!
The file folder games in their hanging organizer
The writing center bygel cups for holding pens, reading timers and other goodies
What a desk area looks like (we have 3 one for each boy) Each kiddo has a virco desk, chair worbox cart and color coded crate, expanding file, pencil box, mini crate and index card box. The color coordination makes it much easier to organize things!
My "teacher" cabinet. I got this 3 years ago on same at kmart in the baby section and it was sitting unused for a few years until now. It is PERFECT for school! I keep all my hands off mom stuff in here. It even had a removable rod for hanging clothes that fits the art paper rolls from Ikea perfectly! On the inside of the door it has a cork board and a chalk board. I have a mini pocket chart ($1 at target) where I keep our general workbox tags out of the way. I also have a map of the schoolroom with a typed out list of everything in it for DH or my mom in case they need to take over or want to help out. On top lives are interactive globe, a math balance and our science kits. The drawers on the bottom have office supplies like paper clips, rubber bands, bulk pens ect.
The right front corner of the school room by the art center. You can see the stacking letter trays I have to organize our construction and art paper here. You can also get an idea of how I made the dividing wall. I used 4 bookcases and one drawer cart lined up then tensioned together with a baby gate. This made a wall so solid that DH can't even get it to wiggle.
This is the underneath of the big group table in the center of the room. You can see each of the mini file crates for each boy under there which holds the folders for the current 6 weeks. I keep the big file crates down in the office more out of the way. You can also see my piles of newly unbound books waiting for me to spiral punch and bind them.
So that is our new setup and let me tell you we are LOVING it! DS2 can play happily in the big playroom now while we work on school stuff or he can come in and do some art stuff :o) It makes it so much easier to get things done when everything is right there and fully organized so you can grab and go!
Thanks for looking!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Our larvae came in the mail today! It looks as though they are already getting ready to go into the chrysalis stage as they are all going to the top of the container and hanging out. I'll post pics as they progress!
Editing to add the rest of the stages!
Chrysalis!
We have butterflies!
We kept them for 2 days so DS could see them eat and fly around then we took them outside and set them free :o)
We moved our school stuff down into our greatroom some time ago to make room for the new baby. So I figured while I have camera card loaded and I'm on a roll I'll get pics up :op
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The Sonlight shelf. It holds all of the Sonlight books for cores P 3/4 through core 1. I also have some other history stuff on the bottom shelf and my science kits up top for pre-k
Next up we have the early reader organizer. I got this from walmart.com site to store for 20 bucks and it holds our early readers perfectly!
Next up is the workbox and desk area. Eventually there will be one more desk and one more drawer cart and then it will be complete unless we are graced by any more "surprises" LOL
Next up is the math and LA book shelf. Top of the case has my big old sing spell read and write kit box. Top shelf is Singapore math and Math-U-See as well my Rightstart math games kit. Bottom shelf is all phonics and grammar.
Nest up is my Science, languages, misc and early reader shelf. LOL Up top in the crates are all our school DVDs and software. Very top small shelf is more early readers like bob books and our magic treehouse collection. Second shelf is where some science and our misc books live. Bottom shelf is tall science books and languages (Latin and Japanese).
Onto to the misc drawers. On top the Math-U-See blocks live. Top black drawer is filled with the game pieces for all our file folder games each in it's own ziplock baggie and marked for easy finding. The yellow drawer keeps all our learning finances games and stuff. Red drawer is musical instruments. Blue drawer is our language arts manipulatives.
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Around the side of the wall we have the math manipulatives drawers and more workboxes. I have an insane variety of math manipulatives that the kids like to pull out to play with and we use with our math work time. Ontop of all the workboxes we have our learning resources board games. You can have a look at the workbox post to check out what is in the boxes.
Next up is the writing center which has it's own post explaining it's parts
Then we have the mommy area off in a corner past the toddler play enclosure where kiddies dare not tread :op Top shelf has more shoeboxes with various school supplies and are labeled with sharpie marker. Next lives my science kits and a stack of fun time workbooks. Next is my microscope, slide set and talking globe. Then comes all of my teacher's manuals as well as double of consumable books for the not yet old enough kiddos to use. Bottom shelf is my binders that hold Sonlight, History Odyssey and REAL science odyssey.
then comes the little mommy shelf by the window. Top has my drawing paper roll holding I got from IKEA. Top shelf has construction paper, bin of art supplies and stuff for the wall calendar. Bottom shelf has extra magazine files, and various supplies as well as my box of DVDRs.
So that is our "school area" for now. At some point when the youngest kiddo outgrows the big playroom toys our school will move up there and have it's own space. For now though it works and fits nicely into our greatroom.
Another fabulous idea from the Well Trained Mind Forums!
This is two full set of blocks put away into one art bin. You could use a fishing tackle box too as they are pretty much the same thing but we had an art bin on hand :op
I finally got around to creating a writing center for our homeschool! I used the list and ideas given by our writeshop primary book to build off of.
The table is an adjustable height table from sams club that cost me about 29 dollars. (man I love SAMS!) The blue tower to the right is our craft cart which is filled with all of our arts and craft goods minus the construction paper. On the table I have stacking paper files which holds: 3 types of writing paper from big fat tripled lined to college ruled notebook paper, DS's HWOT book, DSD's HWOT book, DSD's happy scribe book, sentence strips, drawing papr and on the very top the index card box full of writing prompts. To the left is a magazine hilder that has in it: A children's dictionary, a websters dictionary, 2 grammar and punctuation guides. Then I have a purple box FULL of crayons and a revolving implement holder that has: Pens in several colors for the various stages of the writing process, glue, glue sticks, pencils, erasers, dry erase markers. Last on my wall above the center is two quotes from famous writers framed and surrounded by more quotes on the topic of writing by famous writers. Below the quotes is a 1 dollar hanging pocket chart for holing sentence strips.
The stackable file
The writing prompt box. I used some from the writes ource series and then found more in a google search. I am still not done writing them all on cards yet :op
A quote on our wall :op
So there you have it our writing center in it's full glory.
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