IEW: There's no such thing as too much help

I am so thankful for the additional teaching helps IEW offers through free downloads of articles and workshop audios.  I honestly believe that without them we would never have worked through the learning curve of the program and just tossed it aside as "not for us." 

For our review, we received the DVDs for the student intensive program.  When we began IEW, I used the same technique for viewing the video lessons that we emply with Math-U-See.  Whenever Mr. Demme asks a math question I would pause the video and give me Schnickelfritz the opportunity to answer before the childrem blurt it out.   Fritz is very good at math and has no problem coming up with a correct answer.  This is not the case when it comes to writing.   I would hit pause when Mr. Pudewa asked for key words and allow Fritz to underline his choices.  When it came time to testing our keywords I would again pause the video and tell Fritz "Now you make a sentence using these three words."   The results were poorly chosen key words, fragments of sentences, a frustrated student and teacher.  According to the teachers DVD  forming sentences was supposed to come naturally to native English speakers.   I began to worry that there was more than just a dislike of writing and perhaps a real learning problem here.

Then I listened to a workshop entitled "The Four Deadly Errors of Teaching Writing."  Error number two is holding back help.   I was doing the equivilent of throwing Fritz off the diving board in the deep end of the pool and expecting him to learn to swim.  I saw that Fritz was making poor keyword choices but rather than steer him to something better I was waiting for him to discover it on his own during the keyword test.  I had never explained to him that a sentence needs to be a complete thought and the only grammar he's been exposed to are Schoolhouse Rock videos.   It wasn't a learning problem but a teaching one--I think I've admitted before that one of the reasons I was excited to try IEW was because I had no idea how to teach writing on my own.

Mr. Pudewa encourages a lot of group brainstorming at each stage of the writing process so that kids with more language skills and larger vocabularies can help the weaker students.  They call out suggestions for keywords before Mr. Pudewa writes them on the whiteboard.  They build lists of adverbs and stronger alternatives to overused words like "goes" or "said."  Fritz is literally in a class by himself though.   I had to turn to the kids in the videos to be his surragate classmates.    We watched the videos again and this time I didn't hit pause until after the examples had been given.  I figured out that my literal son was trying to form sentences with only the keywords so I had to rephrase myself and ask "What sentence are these keywords trying to remind us?"   Incidently, it isn't a problem if the child quotes back the original sentence verbatim.  We're not worried about plagerism at this stage.  The child will be learning how to "dress up" the sentence by adding adverbs, combining sentences with who or which clauses, and replacing weak verbs and adjectives.

When we needed additional practice I showed him the Unit 1 section of the Teacher's DVD as well as the Student Writing workshop samples included with the TWSS.  Kids have a remarkable way of letting you know when they no longer need your help.  As Fritz became more familiar with the techniques he would blurt out "Pause the tape! I know!."

Easter Egg Hunt

Last year Schnickelfritz attended a wonderful Vacation Bible School program at a Baptist church in a nearby town.  You can read about that here.   We learned that they also host an Easter egg hunt so Fritz and I attended with his two best home-schooled friends.   True to their reputation, it was a class act all the way.   This church really knows how to serve others with joy and show Christian hospitality.  I only took a few pictures because  more often than not I was trying to catch up to 3 excited boys and carrying their baskets.

After registering, each child got to pick out an Easter basket to keep.   They had all shapes, colors and sizes.  Fritz's two friends went for sports-themed,  wicker baskets and Fritz went for his favorite color --blue.  The big draw really shouldn't have been called a hunt.  It was really an exercise in picking up quickly and not stepping on the hundreds of eggs scattered across the gym floor.  (I was so thankful this was indoors because we had a windy, wet, and cold Saturday).  

 Scattered throughout the building were more activities: face painting, family portraits, cookie and cake decorating,  crafts for preschool and school ages, games, and free hot dogs and nachos.   One game I liked best was a shell game, but in honor of the ressurection you were trying to keep track of the empty shell.  Guiding us to visit all the activities was a scavenger hunt.  At registration we received an empty egg carton and a clue sheet.  The 12 clues were all written in rhyme and directed us to a different area of the church.  When we arrived we would ask the volunteer if they had egg number whatever.  If we had guessed correctly we received an egg, then we could do the activity.  (I had a terrible time getting the boys to do the activity right then, they wanted to stay on the egg quest but we returned later). 

When we found all twelve stations (and the last one was actually a women dressed as Mary who wandered around the building), we ended up with our own set of Resurrection eggs!  There was a puppet show that discussed the symbols in each egg and the wonderful message of the empty twelfth egg.   Unlike the hunt, these eggs were ours to keep so we could share the gospel message with others.  The boys were quizzing each other in the back seat as we came home to make sure they remembered the contents and what they stood for.

A boy without a name

I will confess as I see gas prices soaring and my dollar not buying as much at the grocery store that I start having little pity parties for myself.   I compare my family to my neighbor's or my fellow homeschoolers and this mental list of "Don't Haves" starts accumulating.  I don't have a pool, a new car, season tickets to Silver Dollar City...it could go on and on.  Last night I heard the testimony of a man named Peter and I will never allow myself to start a "Don't Have" list again.  He had me beat--as a child, he didn't even have a name.

Our church is taking part in a pilot program of Compassion International to pair up churches with means in North America with churches without means in improverished areas of the world.  Our sister church is in Peru.  No one really knows how this program will work yet.  We've just agreed to a two year commitment and during that time our church must sponsor 50 kids in the area of our sister church through Compassion International.  We doing so now as part of our annual Easter project.  Our family picked an 8 year old boy named Jose--perhaps he'll grow to be a penpal with my Schnickelfritz.

What does this have to do with the boy with no name?  He came to our church last night as a representative of Compassion International.  He had a sponsored child himself in his home country of Rwanda.  The death rate for babies and young children there is so high that his mother refused to name him for fear she would grow attached and then lose him to starvation and malnutrition.  He ate one meal every other day.   After running away from an abusive father, he became a boy of the streets--doing odd jobs for scraps of food.  It wasn't until he became a sponsored child receiving food, education, and medical care that he dared to hope for reaching another birthday.

I DO have  a warm bed, air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter, food in the fridge and pantry, a loving family and a loving God.  From now on I will be writing out a Do Have list and remembering to thank the Heavenly Father who has bless me with so much.

Show Me Missouri

A fellow Homeschool Crewmember was looking for volunteers to write a little information about their home states for her blog. Since I was already gathering information about our state's history to teach Schnickelfritz next year I volunteered to share about Missouri.

Father Marquette, a Jesuit priest, and Louis Jolliet, a French explorer are credited as the first two white men to lay eyes on the land that would be called Missouri while travelling south on the Mississippi River. According to Marquette's journal---

….we heard the noise of a rapid, into which we were about to run. I have seen nothing more dreadful. An accumulation of large and entire trees, branches, and floating islands, was issuing from the mouth of the river Pekistanoui [Missouri], with such impetuosity that we could not without great danger risk passing through it. So great was the agitation that the water was very muddy, and could not become clear.

Pekitanoui is a river of considerable size, coming from the northwest, from a great distance; and it discharges into the Mississippi. There are many villages of savages along this river, and I hope by its means to discover the Vermillion or California Sea. Judging from the direction of the course of the Mississippi, if it continues the same way, we think that it discharges into the Mexican Gulf. It would be a great advantage to find the river leading to the Southern Sea, toward California; and, as I have said, this is what I hope to do by means of the Pekitanoui, according to the reports made to me by the savages. From them I have learned that, by ascending this river for five or six days, one reaches a fine prairie, twenty or thirty leagues long. This must be crossed in a northwesterly direction, and it terminates at another small river, on which one may embark, for it is not very difficult to transport canoes through so fine a country as that prairie. This second river flows toward the southwest for ten or fifteen leagues, after which it enters a lake, small and deep, which flows toward the west, where it falls into the sea.  I have hardly any doubt that it is the Vermillion Sea, and I do not despair of discovering it some day, if God grant me the grace and the health to do so, in order that I may preach the Gospel to all the peoples of this new world who have so long grovelled in the darkness of infidelity.

Father Marquette wasn't the only man with aspirations to find a water route to the West. Over one hundred and thirty years later President Jefferson would send Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery up the Missouri River in search of the same goal. The most famous landmark in Missouri—the St. Louis Arch commemorates Jefferson's vision and Missouri's role as a "Gateway to the West."  Missouri was the starting point for both the Sante Fe and Oregon Trails.  The starting point for the famous but short-lived Pony Express  was St. Joseph,  Missouri.

Along with Western Expansion, a great overlap between Missouri and United States history is the issue of slavery.   Missouri  territory wanted to form a state government and seek statehood but that would have thrown off the balance of power between slave-holding and free states.  In 1820, the Missouri Compromise allowed the territory to form a government and write a constitution but prohibitted slavery in any of the origianl Lousiana territory north of the 36 30' parallel.   Later, this legislation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scot case, stating that the congress  didn't not have the authority  to prohibit slavery in U.S. territories.   (Incidently, even though the steps of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis was often the site of slave auctions, a jury there originally found in favor of the Scots' freedom). 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="547" caption="The Old Courthouse"][/caption]

During the Civil War Missouri remained loyal to the Union although it continued to allow slavery.  This border state was truly the site of brother fighting against brother.  More that 100 battles or skirmishes took place in the state--making it the third most active state after Virginia and Tennessee.

 

 

Review: Science Weekly

 

The latest product we've been sent to review is the Science Weekly newsletter.  The four-page production is available in six learning levels from Kindergarten to Grades 5-6.  Although titled "Weekly,"  a subscription actually has 15 newsletters (for one specific level) during the tradition school year.  The experiments (at least the one we received) may also take longer than a week to complete.



The lower levels (K to 2nd from left to right) feature a large picture on the front with labeled objects.  Each progressive level has more vocabulary words and more sentences growing to short paragraphs.



The upper levels rely more on text to explain material although pictures are still included.   New or unfamiliar terms are followed by parentheses with a syllable breakdown but they aren't exactly pronunciation guides because there are no phonetic symbols.

The inside spread may include a math problem, penmanship practice, or a crossword puzzle but always at least one lab experiment.   Like the reading assignments on the first page, each level is a little harder or more complex.    The kindergartner traces a few letters in each vocabulary word, traces numbers in an addition problem, orally covers what they ate today and what could go in a compost pile, and creates a small amount of compost in a plastic bag.   Level B (the one I used with Schnickelfritz )  has alphabetizing and penmanship practice, math involving a calendar, and a lab with a control and two variables. 

The lab experiment was to attempt to make compost in a bag (like Level Pre-A) but in addition to the regular bag you would have a bag with water but no air and a bag with air but no water.  The student would observe the bags after one, three, and six weeks.   Fritz is already quite familiar with compost and helps me feed our tumbler with kitchen scraps and yard waste so we did not perform the actual lab.  Upper level experiments begin to follow the scientific method by requiring the students to hypothesize about results.

I would have like to have the entire four pages of the newletter devoted to science.  Having a kindergartner trace 9 + 6 = 15 can't be logger as a math lesson and since I only have one student I don't need time-filling exercises that a teacher juggling a class full of kids might.   If I were a mother with kids of varying age I'm not sure I would purchase a subscription for each level.  First, it would be expensive at $19.95 per level.  Second, I don't think you could keep up with separate experiments for each level.  In the composting sample I received you would need 6 plastic bags,  7  gallon size buckets, and 2 5-gallon buckets to cover all six levels and some labs lasted 4 weeks and others 6 weeks.  I think I would get the highest level appropriate for my kids and just let the information trickle down to the younger ones.   The teaching notes (a separate newsletter included with your subscription) contains answer keys and lab information about all the levels so you could make your own math and vocabulary worksheets.

You can view samples of each level on Science Weekly's website.   And you can see what my fellow Homeschool Crewmates thought about Science Weekly by clicking here.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of each level of Science Weekly and the Teacher's Notes for the purpose of completing this review.  I received no other compensation.

Science of Disney Imagineering

Several weeks ago I posted about some videos we watched during an illness that were entertaining  to a sick kid but could still count towards school.  Now I've found a whole new series I want to share!!  We've just booked our vacation to visit the mouse in Florida and I had looked into their educational field trips but they just weren't going to work for us.  One link led to another and I discovered a set of educational DVD's put out by Disney that explains the science behind some of their theme park rides.  There was a period of time that I wanted to be an imagineer and of course my Schnickelfritz plans to open his own theme park someday--called Seven Flags (we've already started a copyright infringement lawsuit fund).



The videos give a foundation in physics and show that science can be fun.  Imagineer Asa is our guide.  He defines terms with cute stick figure cartoons and then heads out to the parks to show how the theory of science is put into practice.  Our first video covered Trajectory.  Asa defines several terms like trajectory, projectile, etc. while introducing his new invention THE CHURRO-MATIC 5000!!    This goofy machine launches sugar coated, fried snacks to hungry park guests.  Since we have discounted wind resistance (we're in his workshop) and the launcher only has one speed,  Asa  must alter the angle of fire so the churro lands in the basket.  Of course this is Disney and for entertainment purposed several churros go awry first.

Then it's off to Disney World to see how important trajectory is in setting ramps for the car stunt show at Disney Studios.  Another imagineer explains how computers simulate perfect trajectory (no wind resistance) in Toy Story Mania.   We learn that projectiles don't need to be solid object as evidenced by the hopping water fountains outside the Imagination pavilion in Epcot.

My son laughed himself silly, but he did learn as well.  The DVD comes with a bonus feature quiz and he would have scored an A- if this had been an actual test.  Fritz is only 8 and the video is geared towards 5th to 8th graders so I think he did quite well.  This is just an introduction to the principle.  We learn there are complicated formulas in calculating trajectory but nothing further.  In fact, we learn that humans have a natural ability to do this without thinking--when's the last time you sunk a basketball in the hoop?  You didn't need a slide-rule or calculator for that.

There is also a "Try It Yourself" lab experiment--in this case building a three man slingshot.  We'll have to save that for a summer water balloon extravaganza.

We're requesting the entire series through our inter-library loan.  Other titles cover Gravity, Magnetism, Energy, Electricity, Friction, Fluids, Levers and Pulleys, Designs and Models, and Animal Adaptions.  (I may preview the last one before I show him to see how much evolution creeps in).

Biblical Feasts and Holy Days

Our local co-op is offering a new series of classes on the Feasts and Holy Days of the Bible.  We had about ten moms and 30 kids at our first class which was an overview of the Jewish calendar.  The goal is to meet a few days or weeks before the event to learn more and then celebrate with our own families when the holy day occurs.  This topic has been an interest to me since our church held a Passover Seder.  The leader was a messianic Jew and in addition to teaching us the historical and traditional Seder service, he also showed us how the symbols can lead us to the true Messiah. 

The leader of the class invited us to her home to celebrate Hannukah last December.  She's been celebrating the biblical feasts for 16 years so she has a lot of information to share.  She's a homeschooling mom herself (although all her kids are pre-school age), so she came prepared with quiet activities for the kids who wouldn't be able to sit for a two hour lecture.

I'm looking forward to the whole series.  Coming up first--Passover.