Forts

We've had a wonderful streak of sunny, warm days--it's enabled us to get the back of the house and deck painted after the tree fell on it. Now the law of averages is catching up with us and rain and storms are in the forecast for the next four days.   In our house rain outside means forts inside.

Materials are gathered from everywhere--couch cushions, kitchen chairs, sheets, our big whiteboard.  Today's fort spans the living and dining room.  Fritz made it large enough for both of us and the dog (she's scared of thunder and needs a hidey hole to run to during the storm).  We had a picnic in the fort today and have played several games. 

The favorite game this week is one that I just picked up at the Homeschool Expo called Muggins.  The board has holes numbered 1 through 36.  Each player roles three dice and then adds, subtracts, multiplies, and/or divides the three digits to come up with a number of an empty hole.  You then place a colored marble in the hole and try to build strings of marbles by coming up with calculations for consecutive numbers.  Your opponents are trying to come up with numbers to block your string from growing.    In the real game you don't have to reveal your calculation unless challenged, but Fritz and I are explaining our calculations because I want to check his math facts.  See, who said math class had to be boring worksheets?

 

Review: Alphabet Beats

I have a way of keeping tabs on my Schnickelfritz's emotional well-being by just keeping my ears open.  I'm not sure he's aware of it, but he often hums or sings to himself while he plays, builds with blocks, or watches the world go by his passenger window.  Sometimes I can recognize the tune (it's often classical music) and sometimes it's his own composition.  Even my mother has commented on how she enjoys hearing Fritz's music in the background of our phone conversations.

The other day Fritz was riding his bicycle in circles around me and the dog on our afternoon walk and I noticed his melody had been replaced by this short little rhyme "up and around, back up and down...a."  I was thrilled.  To me this meant not only was Fritz in a happy mood, but our latest attempt to improve his handwriting was sinking in and  he associated the writing excercise with feeling good.  Up to that point, handwriting practice often meant whining, complaining, bargaining for every printed word, etc.

Fritz learned this little rhyme for forming the letter "a" from Miss Marnie on The TV Teacher's Alphabet Beats: writing lowercase letters.  It doesn't take long to pick up these little chants as they are repeated often.  Miss Marnie forms each letter by tracing it three times, by writing on a blackboard three times and writing it on lined paper a total of six times--always accompanied by the rhyme.  In between writing sections, the student is introduced to words that begin with the letter being studied.  You can see a sample teaching the letter "p" by clicking here. 

 

Alphabet Beats  Uppercase and Lowercase are currently available and Number Beats will be coming soon (Fritz also has a problem with forming numbers from bottom to top).  The menu allows you to go right to any letter so you could start with those in a child's name, or just focus on problem letters.  As I mentioned in an earlier post,  letter formation has not yet moved to the automatic side of Fritz's brain yet.  We are beginning a writing exercise by Dianne Craft and I plan to integrate the Alphabet Beats' rhymes into the exercise.

The Alphabet Beats dvds retail for $35 or you can get both for $64.99.  There is a free download for the lined paper Miss Marnie uses.  They do carry a lined whiteboard for writing practice but I have heard from Dianne Craft that whiteboards lack the friction necessary to help children develop muscle memory.

You can read what my fellow crewmates think about Alphabet Beats by clicking here.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Alphabet Beats: writing lowercase letters for the puroposes of completing this review.  I received no other compensation. 

A party going on in Heaven

Today was my son's second birthday!  This may seem strange to some of you who know he is seven years old.  Every year we celebrate the anniversary of his birth, but truly up until yesterday he only had one birth. 

As Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John 3:3 "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."  Yesterday in front of his grandparents, a great grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousin, his Sunday school class, his Royal Rangers commanders, and the rest of the congregation, my Schnickelfritz made his public confession of faith and was baptized by his father.  I stood nearby with a camera, a towel and a heart full of joy.

 

Smart kids who hate to write

One of the greatest challenges of attending a homeschool expo is picking which workshops to attend.  I wished I could split myself into twins and cover twice as much.  There was one workshop I had circled and highlighted and marked with stars in my program--I wasn't going to miss it.  It was titled Smart Kids Who Hate to Write and presented by Dianne Craft.  My Schnickelfritz would work through Math U See from sunup to sundown my his own choosing, but getting him to fill a page from Handwriting Without Tears takes cajoling, reminding, etc. 

I felt better as soon as I sat down in the room because I knew I wasn't alone in the struggle--there must have been 300 parents in there looking for answers.  Mrs. Craft proceded to demonstrate a typical child she would evaluate by his writing the lowercase alphabet.  Now I don't recall her ever being at my dining table, but she'd obviously seen my son writing before--starting letters and numbers from the bottom, making his "o" with a clockwise circle, substituting capital letters seemingly at random.  I've shown him and drilled him in the correct way to make letters, but he never seems to do it that way when writing on his own.  I'd almost decided to let him write however he wanted and just be glad he was putting pencil to paper at all (technically it was usually marker to white board). 

Mrs. Craft refers to this as a blocked writing gate.  The movements necessary to form letters have not moved to the automatic side of the brain.  My son is having to use way too much energy and thinking to push his pencil around--no wonder he gets drained and cranky.  Other clues of a blocked writing gate include: solving math problems in the head instead of writing them down,  poor spacing of words in a sentence,  digits that don't line up when they do write math problems.

The good news is there is an exercise we can do every day to help solidify the muscle memory and make writing automatic.  It involves tracing a large sign for infinity three times and then practicing forming the letter.     I really can't do it justice trying to explain it.  If you recognize this problem in one of your students I would read the article Smart Kids Who Hate to Write at Dianecraft.org.  Be sure to look at the photo of the writing excercise.

 

I need to brag on my husband

Last Friday and Saturday, I attended a Homeschool Expo in St. Louis.  You know how you are at the end of one of those?  My feet hurt, my back hurt, I was on information overload.   To top it off, this convention was held in a three story building and it seems I was always traveling from the first to the third floor--surely I was walking down the steps sometimes, but it seemed like one of those "back in my day" stories where everything is uphill both ways.

I had to swing and pick up my Schnickelfritz from a day at Granny's house.  When we left, I called to let my Toolman know we were starting the trek home.  When I pulled in the driveway I could see my husband had anticipated just how whipped I would be.  He got all the fixin's we needed for a cookout and was just starting a campfire.   Our woods are quite lovely right now with flowering dogwood and redbuds.  We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and watched the stars pop out.  What a perfect way to relax and unwind. 

Review: All About Reading

 

Earlier this year, the Homeschool Crew had a chance to review All About Spelling and its Level 1 reader.   AAS has truly  revitalized the language arts portion of our school day and we continue to use it.  With perfect timing, along comes the reader for Level 2--What Am I?: a collection of short stories.

 

These stories are a lot more interesting than those in The Beehive Reader (which is being renamed Cobweb the Cat)  from level 1.  We're no longer limited to one syllable, short-vowel sound words.  Because our AAS Level 2 book predates What Am I, it doesn't include prompts in the lesson on which story to read.  I'm assuming newer editions will include this in the lesson plan.

The pictures are as charming as ever!   The stories vary from the zany "Broken Robot," to the cute "Skunk Hotel," to stories with profound life lessons like "The Bake Sale" and "Matt the Musk Ox."  Sometimes I think the author is a little heavy handed at inserting words to reenforce the spelling lessons though--in "Broken Robot" the title character "...slung a bunch of pumpkins into the bathtub" in a hotel.  My Schnickelfritz stopped reading the story to ask why there were pumpkins in the hotel room. 

On the plus side, this reader does introduce the student to more than just short stories.  "Broken Robot" is written in the form of a letter,  chapter 9 is a collection of poems, and chapter 10 is a word game with clues to guess "What am I?"

What Am I? is a high quality hardback book.  The first pages allow a student to write to whom the book belongs and begin to take pride of ownership.   It will retail for $19.95 and be available on a new website, All About Reading sometime this month.   You can read what my fellow Crewmates think about What Am I? by clicking here.

 

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of All About Reading's What Am I? for the purpose of completing this review.  I received no other compensation.

Math U See

Steve Demme, founder of Math U See was a speaker at the Homeschool Expo we attended this weekend.   He was easy to spot as the tallest man in the halls.  It was amusing to see how children flocked to him--you'd have thought one of the St. Louis Cardinals was in the building.   Little boys waited in line for a chance to be asked a math question by the man they've evidently seen on their TV screens at home.  My Schnickelfritz had his turn as well.  He quickly provided the correct answer to "What is 3 X 4?"  Fritz  followed up by saying it was his turn to ask a question.  Here it is-- "What is 87 squared?"   And he made Mr. Demme solve it in his head.  What a tough teacher!!