Kid’s Signatures

 

Do your kids have a signature?  Mine don’t.  Some of mine can’t even write in cursive yet.  It hasn’t been something I have pushed though we are working on it.

Last night we spent our family night filling in passport forms.  What fun!!  While doing so we learnt that kids over 10 need to sign for themselves (though parents need to verify as well.)  So a big part of our evening was for the kids to find how they wanted to sign their name and practice.

We also discussed initials – as that is another official signature that they need to develop.

I had never thought of this before – had you?  Pete and I reminisced the days when we practiced our signature as kids.  Pete confessed he practiced his during the sermons at church (we all decided, kids as well, that this wasn’t a good role model!!)

They’ll be practicing all weekend and then we’ll get the forms finalised.

 

Language Arts Incorporated

 

This week I’m putting the final touches to our study schedule for the coming year – or for at least the next 6 months.  I’ve been reading Ruth Beechick’s A Biblical Home Education and have taken many notes which are forming the framework for our next season.

 Teaching children at home does not have to be as difficult as people make it by trying to follow too much of the world’s system that has developed layer upon layer over the years.  We can peel away excess layers by the one great principle of viewing language learning as different from the content subjects.  Language includes speaking, reading, writing, listening, and thinking.  These are skills to use for learning Bible and all other content.  Children improve these skills by using them in their content subjects.  That is more effective and more efficient than adding layers of skill classes. – Ruth Beechick, A Biblical Home Education

It is good to be reminded of this.  For the most of our homeschooling years we have incorporated our language study/skills into our other content subjects, like Ruth Beechick says.  But over the last few years I had decided to focus on writing skills and (whether right or wrong) set aside specific lessons and curriculum for that.  To be honest I’m not so sure we achieved as much as it looked like we would on paper.  This year I am going to attack it a different way – get back to incorporating speaking, reading, writing, listening and thinking into our core studies: Bible study and General Knowledge studies.

My main goals are that my children can

• Ask questions to formulate what it is that they want to learn
• Find relevant resources (books and online) for the information they want to learn
• Find the answers to their questions
• Take notes from what they are reading
• Organise their collected information in helpful way – outlines, notes, or graphic organisers
• Write summaries or paraphrases, full sentence answers, a paragraph or essay on their researched topic

Ruth Beechick outlines very simply but comprehensively how these processes can be achieved in a homeschool setting.   Though it doesn’t look like a curriculum resource, reality is that this book is full of the things you need to teach your children – across all the curriculum areas.  It is very much a big picture book, but with enough details to make it helpful and easy to integrate into family style learning.

Seeing the importance of incorporating language arts skills into our other subjects means that I have to set aside longer in order to achieve the work.  If I want my children to think, talk, research, question and record on a daily basis we need to have time to do so.  I have set 2 hours for us to read, research and record.

I’m looking forward to this change in our language arts studies.

Writing Tools: Word Bank Dictionary

On of the early writing tools that we gave our children was the RIC Publications “My Desktop Dictionary”.  It is simply a book of word banks.  A word bank is a list of associated words.   For example:

• Themes kids like to write about:  beach, dinosaurs, earth, insects, library, transport, weather, just to name a few.  For example under the heading of beach is listed words like: bucket, lifesaver, splash, towel, sand and more.
• Themes connected to their life:  family, community, feelings, at school, animals, things I can do etc.  For example under family is listed words like: aunt, uncle, grandad, mother etc.
• Themes that they need to refer to regularly:  Words that sound the same, contractions, seasons, days of the week, numbers, shapes etc
• Alphabet pages – For example listed under “O” is o’clock, octopus, often, only, opened, opposite, outside, owl and many more.  They also have plenty of space for the child to write words that they use and need help to spell correctly.  Daniel’s “S” page is very full with words like spectacular, stream, strange, shipwreck, survive, scoop and so forth.

When the kids where learning to write, or having difficulty with spelling, I’d expect them to have their word bank dictionary with them when they sat down to write.  When they can’t spell a word they are to see if it is already in their dictionary, if not, or if they can’t find it, they come to me and we work on either finding it or recording it in an appropriate place.

The benefits of having a word bank dictionary are:

• The child gets used to using a resource when they want to find information (how to spell a word – dictionary)
• Their vocab is expanded as they write about a theme, they can see all the other words they could incorporate into their writing piece
• Their spelling is improved as they consistently see words spelt correctly
• Their writing is improved as they don’t baulk over their spelling

I liked having a purchased dictionary – it gave the kids a sense of a real dictionary (they were 4-6years old when I gave it to them.)  It became theirs.  Their copies are very tattered now.

But there is no reason you can’t make your own.  Actually, when Daniel is interested in a particular subject, or writing a story with a particular theme or setting we will brainstorm words and write up a word bank for him to refer to.

Word Bank Dictionaries (or simply word bank lists) are the first step towards teaching your children to use a dictionary.  They empower the child because he has the information he needs right there at his finger tips – this independence in writing will encourage them to write more.

 

Let’s revisit Routines

photo credit: www.123rf.com

Here is a series of articles that I’ve written on Routines from my website

Establishing Daily Routines

Writing a Daily Routine

Being Flexible, Having Choices

Maintaining Routines

 

Here’s a link to my Time Management blog posts

 

Learning without doing school

One of the keys to not being overwhelmed is to recongise and validate the learning experiences that happen outside of our planned homeschool – that is, the things that happen in regular family life.   Here are ten learning experiences my kids had in January:

Birthday parties are always a learning experience - here they are trying to catch a waterballon in a sheet without bursting the balloon.

Grandad and Peter had to put an electric fence up - a great opportunity for the boys.

Nomi designed and made these puppets and Jess made the theatre - as a gift for their little cousins

While visiting with family we had a cousin sleepover - they played games together.

Josh, Jess, Nomi went to a youth camp where they met new people, and learnt more about God's ways

Naomi on the Giant Swing

Jessica on the giant swing (Daniel also did this but I don't have a photo).

An outing with Grandad

This photo was taken for a facebook avatar - lots of learning going on regarding facebook and how to use it wisely.

While driving home from holidays Pete used the GPS to give everyone a world-wide geography lesson.

Lots of sewing has been going on - mainly Kindle covers and t.shirt alterations

If you add to these photos things like family Bible study, reading books, and discussions on various topics such as ethics, beliefs, politics, business and many other topics, plus the things we didn’t take photos of (like a horse AI programme right at our back door)  - you have a very full learning month.  Have you considered what your kids get up to in family time as learning opportunities and therefore a part of their homeschool experience?

I’m linking in with OhAmanda’s Top Ten Tuesday