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Q&A- Boxes & Writing:
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
I got the sweetest comment left on my blog today. How it just made my day! (Thank you, Brenda!)
Brenda asks a two part question...
Q-- Where did you get the blue and yellow boxes? ( seen in this photo from this post)
A-- Well, truth be told I got those at a Price Busters store in Honolulu. I've probably had them for 4+ years or so. They originally held various nomenclature cards (ala, Montessori Botany, Music, etc) but have been reassigned to hold the writing prompts. I'd say, however, that you could use any large size recipe box, plastic jar, pencil box, etc. Even a cardboard shoebox would work really.
Q-- ... and the things inside? (writing prompts & copywork models)
A-- I gathered various writing prompts and models from the internet. I never thought *I* would be one to use writing prompts with our daughter. Ever. Really. I always thought "prompted writing" was so contrived and unnecessary. However, our kiddo really likes to write. Her hang-up, at times, is she didn't know WHAT to write, though. So, after various other attempts I decided to "give in" to the notion that make writing prompts aren't horrible. I do leave Friday as a true FREE WRITING day where she writes whatever she wants.
I gathered from sources such as Brave Writer's Blog, Creative Writing Prompts site, Prompts by Jim Cornish-- have printable papers, but I merely copied/pasted an assortment to a plain document so they could all be cut apart. Here are a few other sites I didn't personally gather from but they might have something that is of interest to other. (Can Teach, Writer's Digest --looks for other students/adults, Write Source-- leveled by grade, Prompts by month. )
As for copywork resources... again, *I* gathered from the internet but other families use ready made copybooks that they purchased, or use books the student is reading from, or copy passages from the Bible, etc. For our current needs (strictly for handwriting practice -- it is required to be NEAT! but punctuation, grammar, and vocabulary are all tucked in there, too!) I chose to use a variety of models. Some are from books (read/not read), some from the Bible, some are "famous quotes", some are poems... just whatever grabbed my fancy. Some models are longer while some are shorter. To read more about copywork visit Ambleside Online.
A few copywork resources free online-- Simply Charlotte Mason, Homeschooling 101, Quote Garden, HomeGrownKids
And a few copywork resources for purchase (Note: that I've not used any of these so I cannot give personal recommendations)-- Queens Homeschool Supply, Character Building Copywork, Knowledge Box Central
Finally, while we merely use composition notebooks here for the freewriting/copywork (one each) Notebooking Pages sells beautiful pages that can be printed up and used to write on, thus creating a very lovely writing notebook.
Before I'm asked-- no, I'm unable to share (upload) the document I made that contains all the prompts and copywork for our own boxes. Since these were gathered from the internet I don't want to step on toes of others and violate copywrite. |
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Q&A- How'd You Do That?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Q: Chelelew posted a comment wanting to know how what report options in HST+ I'm using to get the assignment sheet we use (and that I post on my blog.)
A: Once I've clicked the REPORTS tab I click the ASSIGNMENTS radio button (third radio button down under the "assignments" header, on the left. A pop-up screen will appear at which point I usually type something into the title field (an outing that day, a riddle for the day or just a nice comment to my daughter.) I've captured the pop-up window to share here so that you can see what settings I have checked.
 Click to enlarge image!
I use the "Grey shading" option so that the DIRECTIONS FIELD (in the assignment grid/LP screen) will show up more clearly, different than the actual assignments. I adjust the font and font size of the assignment body according to how easily it can be read. Sometimes there will be 1-3 assignment items that fall over to a second page. In that case I'll wiggle things around (like putting shorter directions in place and moving them to the PLC field instead) and make the font smaller. Additionally, I have my footer section of the reports to a font size of 2, font of GARAMOND in order to save ink and space.
Hope that spells things out clearly enough! As always, if you have questions, about this or most anything else, please leave a comment and I'll try to post a Q&A for it!
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Q & A- Hours of our schooling
Friday, April 11, 2008
Jen asks, "Do you set hours you home school? May I ask what your hours are? You seem to have full busy days :)"
Great question, Jen!
Do I have "set hours" for our homeschooling? Hmmm, in my mind, no. We start when morning routine (breakfast, dressing, bed made, teeth & hair brushed) is completed. While kiddo is doing her teeth and hair, that is when I usually go up to the school room with the assignment sheet in hand and stack her books & cards for the day. I've been doing this for years. I'm sure she could manage without it, but it even helps me see what I might need to print off or set aside, etc.
She usually starts eating breakfast about 7:30am (it's been a bit earlier as of late, with the sun rising earlier) after a few minutes taking care of Theo and chatting to him. By 8:30 she's nearly always ready to start lessons, again-- if not sooner.
Sometimes there's a little mid-morning snack at around 10:30.
Lunch is mostly from noon to 12:30-12:40, depending on what we're having for lunch, how long it takes to make, and what we're watching during the lunchtime (Last two days has been United Streaming movies on the Industrial Revolution, last week it was some DVR'd episodes of Leave it to Beaver... things like that ) or listening to on iTunes.
In a normal, full day (I didn't hold back assignments for something else we're doing) most everything is done by 1pm. Handicrafts, projects and sometimes science experiments will come afterwards, thus taking us till 2pm.
Of course, not every day runs 100% smoothly (like yesterday when my computer wasn't reading a CD I'd put in and singing had to take place upstairs), people call, something comes up, etc. and our day might go longer, say till 3.
That probably seems like a LOOOONG school day, but we're so relaxed it doesn't seem long. The majority of the days do NOT run that long, like I said- usually ending at 1pm. But even then the afternoon hours, at least until neighbor friends are available for playing, are spent doing something enriching.
It works for us!
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Q & A on Memory Work
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
An anonymous visitor recently left a comment with some questions about memory work:
"... I've actually been wanting to do this with my children but have not known how to go about it. First off how old is your daughter? I have 4 boys and the oldest is 7. How do you get the memorization done? Can you post a little step by step process? Thanks"
First of all, thanks for stopping by my blog and commenting! My daughter is 10.5 as of this writing. We've been doing memory work since first grade. Actually, if you think about it, we've been doing it since birth. Mimicking my sounds, learning words, learning nursery songs, finger plays, and other little silly typical toddler time activities. But formally, I'd say this is our 5th year.
Currently all the pieces she's memorized are kept in a 3-prong folder, in sheet protectors. That is getting rather full nowadays so I'll be moving that all to a soft-side binder sometime soon.
Her first pieces were from First Language Lessons from Peacehill Press. However, I quickly found she had a knack for memorization and she wanted longer pieces. Additionally, I found that some of the pieces in FLL were abridged or revised and I wanted her working with original sources.
You can read an earlier post of mine about how memory work (poems) are selected, if desired.
Nowadays, she's not only memorizing poetry but has been memorizing historical facts and parts of documents. Currently she's working on an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence. The language is this document has required a dictionary (to better understand content) as well as more effort just to get the lines memorized. It didn't surprise me, however, that she's managed to speed through the basic ground-work memorization. Now she's just working on phrasing and other areas requiring a bit of polishing.
So, you ask... "How do you get the memorization done? Can you post a little step by step process?"
Well, as I mentioned, start small. Whether you're memorizing short poems or short lines of scripture, keep it short. The language used should also be somewhat simple to begin with. Your child's vocabulary level/skill will be the determining factor in that.
When my daughter was just starting out we'd read through the piece 3-4 times a day, during our homeschooling time. Once I started to notice that she either wasn't looking at the paper much or began to speak quicker than I was, that's when I'd start asking for recitation from memory. One line (or maybe just a couple words) at a time. Then we'd either read the rest from the paper, or maybe try for more from memory. Eventually, as days go on, the piece is memorized.
Nowadays, I usually assign a new selection of memory work and have her read through it to herself a few times (perhaps 2x each day for oh, two days.) Then, she reads it to herself 1x followed by reading it outloud to me. This goes on for a couple of days or until she says she wants to "give it a try." (She is usually the one jumping the gun and wants to try from memory.) Again, depending on the language and phrasing of the piece she may only get a few lines from memory recited, or may work her way through a whole stanza with little prompting.
This continues- her reading the entire piece to herself then working on the memory recitation to me- until the whole piece is able to be recited straight through. Once she's gotten about halfway through a piece, however, I've found that the second half goes MUCH quicker than it was to memorize the first half. I really believe the continued reading of the ENTIRE piece during the memory process is key to this.
Now, you may be wondering how the pieces she's previously memorized are handled. As "new" ones are finished they get added to the "old" ones and are put through a rotation. She works on two or three "old" ones each day (along with the current piece.) Those that are more recently added are rotated through more often. Those that are "old hat, old timers" are done less frequently, but still regularly. You can see the current schedule of rotation with this image:
 Notice Patrick Henry's speech is listed three times in the rotation.
It is the most recently added "old piece." As more pieces are added the rotation
will grow longer and the frequency of various pieces will change.
She has her favorites. Sea Song is one she memorized as a requirement for one of the Girl Scout badges she worked on and she's often asking to do that one. Me, I happen to love the two pieces by James Whitcomb Riley. The Cow by Robert Louis Stevenson, an earlier piece, is one that always causes laughter due to the image I used on the printed page for her notebook.
Anyway, I hope this answers your questions, at least enough to get started. Truly, I don't think you can really do anything WRONG with memory work other than perhaps pushing your child too quickly through a piece. We get much enjoyment during memory work time, and I think as long as that is always the case, then all is well.
Now if I could just get it together long enough to add some more recitation audios to my blog! *sigh* LOL |
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Christmas Tree photography
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
A visitor commented and asked if I'd share how I took the photograph of our Christmas tree. Thanks for asking, I'm flattered. But I have to say that I'm surprised to be asked ANYTHING about digital photography. I'm a learn-on-the-go kind of gal, learning through trial and error and reading some tips/tutorials when I can. It's fun. And there's a LOT of awful photos in the process. I'd love to take some photography classes sometime, but until then, I learn on the fly.
"When in doubt, try it out"... that's my mantra for digital photography. And, given that action, random, and candid shots are really quite lost when you're telling someone, "Hey, do that again so I can try it a different way!" I highly suggest trying out settings when you're NOT at an event or whatever. Unfortunately, I really don't have any advice on HOW to get a nice shot. Not particulars that I'm comfortable in doling out to people. However, I can give two quick suggestions though... a tripod or elevated flat surface to set your camera and cranking up the ISO and playing with it. And if possible, shooting in RAW mode is always a nice alternative, allowing for editing adjustments afterwards as necessary.
Here is the Christmas tree last year (2006), standing on the other side of the room, but with pretty much the same ornaments (well we didn't hang the fake candy canes on it for 2007 as they're stuck in some baskets instead.)
At this time I was all thrilled that I was able to change the CURVES (I used Adobe Photoshop) to lighten up the whole picture and used the LASSO TOOL and GAUSSIAN BLUR FILTER to select and blur out the background. Heck, I think I even used the CLONE tool to fill in some of the bare spots on this poor little raggedy ol' fake tree.
Though I showed it in yesterday's Advent post, I'll repost this year's tree (the same one) Christmas photograph for comparison here.
The white lights on the tree glow nicely by bouncing off the background wall. I didn't bother to clone stamp to fill out the branches any as I figured I'd share what I see here at home. LOL
I can share two tutorial/tips bookmarks I have for those wanting to try to improve their photographs of their Christmas tree...
- A visual sampling of minor changes at Two Peas in a Bucket
- A good article from the New York Institute of Photography
And for the record, I use a Canon Digital Rebel EOS currently. I do own the book Understanding Exposure (I highly recommend this book!) which I worked through when I first got the book. Hmmmm, I'd LOVE to reference it again actually, but it must be in a box somewhere as it isn't in my scrapping area with the rest of my books. I'll have to keep an eye out for it next time I'm going through boxes in the garage. *sigh*
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Q&A- Floating Images
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
A visitor asked in a comment how I get the text to wrap with the photos in some of my blog posts.
Easy, peasy once you have the right code in place!
Hope this helps!
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