Feb. 22, 2008
My blog is moving...
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Well...as much as I hate to leave this wonderful community of homeschoolers, I'm moving my blog over to my personal website: DemetriaZinga.com There I have categories on my homeschooling adventures, life with my family, my home based business, tips for work at home moms, my music recordings, and other odds and ends about me... I'm going to miss all the comments and feedback -- the interaction is SO welcoming to me. So PLEASE if I'm on your blogroll or you just want to keep in touch, visit me at my new website (and leave me some comments there so I can add you to my new blogroll!) Okay? Again...it's DemetriaZinga.com See you there! |
Feb. 20, 2008
I'm excited about teaching my wonderful kids!
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This whole weekend passed…Since when did I ever get my whole list of to-do’s completed? That’s just it. ..I didn’t. But I did get something exciting. I’d ordered a bunch of books from Amazon for my daughter’s homeschool. Yesterday when they arrived, I felt like a kid in a candy store. (The UPS truck tends to do that to me!) Here’s what we ordered… This is all based on Susan Bauer's book "The Well Trained Mind". I also got a copy of "First Language Lessons for the Well-trained Mind". All VALUABLE resources!! The history texts are AWESOME. They’re full of bright, colorful pictures for the early elementary child with lots of descriptions, and a timeline. The idea is to study a period of civilization from the ancient times all the way to modern times - one period per year from 1st grade through the 4th grade, and then start all over again from 5th to 9th, and again through the 12th grade. It’s a great way to study history…in order. Unlike the way most schools teach history (american history/ Native Americans — skip to Civil Rights — skip to unit study on Thomas Jefferson– skip, skip, skip), the Classical Education method believes in presenting material in an orderly fashion so it makes sense to the learner. And me being a neat freak, of COURSE I love this way of doing things. Let me tell you, when those books arrived…I felt like a kid in a candy store!! (and so did Nyomi) Maybe it’s because homeschooling is definitely a calling for me. I absolutely LOVE the fact that the education of my children is in my hands. It doesn’t feel like a task. It’s a joy. In fact, one of the reasons I’m so excited about teaching her World History and Science this way is because my education in these areas was not nearly as concise. I went to public school and my graduation class had about 500. My teachers did the best they could for classes of 25-30 kids each period, but the majority of our work was worksheet and answer key based where we learned to barely get by and cram for the next night’s rote memorization test on spelling words or the periodic table, etc. One of the things about the Classical Education method that threw me for a loop was the idea of having young school age kids simply memorize for the sake of memorizing. At first I thought the idea of this was pathetic at best. I come from a Child Development background where living studies and real life projects are honored above seatwork and drill… But the more I looked into the classical education ideas, I realize the truth in the trivium. That kids ages 5-8 are generally sponges, still ready to soak up ideas and facts (ex.- multiplication tables, counting 1-100, reciting poems). All of these drill work activities are a daily part of the classical education method. It’s called “exercising the brain”. Kids at this age just love to recite things for fun. They recite commercials and they have a great memory…so the idea is to give them the facts at THIS stage while they’re eager to learn. The next stage of the trivium would be logic stage when they actually begin to piece their ideas together… Well, Nyomi and I are also still working on French. We have a lot of French resources at hand but no set curriculum. So, we’re just using the different tools I have available. Her dad is a great resource and he speaks to her in French whenever he can. And lately we’ve been listening in on The French Pod Class which is an AWESOME, awesome way to get exposed and submerged into both the French language and culture. Sebastien is just way too cool! We’re still learning piano. We’re working on memorizing our notes. So far she can play Mary Had a Little Lamb and Ode To Joy. Nyomi also enjoys picking out notes on the keyboard to a song she’s heard…hence, the beginning of playing by ear. I encourage her to keep doing it… We have other subjects too: Math (we use Math-U-See), Language Arts (we do spelling, narration work, handwriting, assigned reading, and grammar int he mornings), Biblical Studies (going through the bible beginning to end with The Daily Audio Bible and using supplemental workbooks for elementary age kids) I’ll be updating soon on our studies together… Right now I need to start our school for the morning…then later it’s office time (I’m pulling together some business info for my next couple of newsletter sendouts to my list). On to start my day… |
Oct. 23, 2007
Dress up, theater plays, and funny questions
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Whew!!! Another month has gone by??? Wow. Just in this past month we've had so many events. At Nyomi's co-op, we've had Biblical Character Day where all the kids got to dress up as their favorite bible character. I'll need to find that pic on the camera (if it hasn't been lost, that is!!!) She dressed up as Queen Esther. It was fun... Also in the past month we've been to our local Tuscaloosa Children's Theater to see "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown" - a production put on by many of the talented kids in our local community. We had a great time there of course. There were a few other homeschool groups that attended-- so we had a nice discount and sat together during the show. Let's see, what else... Our lesson plans? Going differently than expected, needless to say! When I first started homeschooling back in August I had the whole semester pretty much planned out with an idea that I would alter some things from month to month. My idea now is -- take it day by day!!! Honestly, there are some days when we both feel like doing a subject past dinner time in the evening, and it's perfectly fine for our family. It's so freeing to know that I don't have to stick within the boundaries of certain hours within the day, and that we can take school with us wherever we go. And of course, these days I've been going to a lot of doctor's appointments since my baby #2 is due in a few weeks...so Nyomi brings her Abeka language arts workbook to the hospital with her and works on it from there. Very convenient indeed. We do sometimes get those questions like "Has your school let out for the day already?" or "aren't you supposed to be in school?" Then I have to go through the arduous duty of explaining that we homeschool and it's all cool. I usually don't get many more questions after I explain, but it still baffles me that people can still not understand that homeschooling is one of many options of educating children, which means that from time to time they'll see school-aged children with their parents between the public "school" hours of 8-3. At any rate, I never let it bother me. The questioning is okay with me too, because I'm really quite happy and content with our arrangement. My family enjoys it, I love it, and most of all, Nyomi is having a blast and learning so much. More later (hopefully before Baby 2 is born)...  We'll see how busy I get, but I'm thinking we should be able to squeeze in another podcast episode before the year is out. |
Sep. 27, 2007
Interesting homeschool video
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Here's a great homeschool video by a homeschooled teen...he gives an awesome speech, and I'm sure his parents are proud! Click here to view. |
Sep. 27, 2007
music flash cards
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We found the music flash cards! Of course, I could have gone to our local music store but I wanted a good deal and I found some on Ebay for about $3 and very little shipping. For those of you interested, here's their official site: http://www.johnsonstring.com/ but check out their ebay store if you're a music learner/teacher...you'll find some good resources there. |
Sep. 26, 2007
curriculum reviews
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I know I haven't updated in a while, but this month has been so busy and we've been having a blast. I picked up some curriculum on sale at our learning education store 2 days ago and it's exciting to know that we can really meet our learning objectives for the year with these few workbooks! I'm glad I don't have to pull anything out of the "magic hat". Honestly, sometimes I just don't feel like hunting down resources from all over the internet. It's nice to have a workbook or guide right at my hands for daily use, and of course, I can always modify it as needed. Let's see...the Abeka language arts curriculum? Not exactly what I'd expected when we made the purchase at the homeschool fair. The teacher's guide is more geared toward a larger classroom setting, as opposed to a private instruction or homeschool setting...and I absolutely can't stand scripted curriculum which tells me how to teach and what to say. Suggestions are fine, but I think the Abeka program goes a little further than the suggestion mode and sounds very scripted. Example - "write student's name in cursive and place on the desk...then greet students with the alphabet song found on page (x)...then say "this is how we write the letter 'i'...who is our friend for the letter 'i'? The Indian boy! Repeat after me...'i'..." Okay, you get the point. Too scripted for me. For language arts, we've found ourselves simply reading lots of books and talking about the sounds the letters make- currently focusing on both long and short vowel sounds. Nyomi loves to read the bible to me, so we count that as our Bible learning time also. We do have some bible curriculum, although I'm finding just how unecessary it is... We use Explorers, and we have the New Testament workbook for kindergarten. We find that just talking about bible stories and reading them straight from the bible is the best method. Math has been one of our most fun subjects. We're using Math-U-See, a Pretend & Play Cash Register with workbook (for money), plus flashcards for telling time. The Math-U-See is a well-grounded curriculum that is covering her basic foundational knowledge of math concepts. She's learning place value of ones (or units), tens, and hundreds, counting 0-100, skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's, and currently addition. Later she'll learn some subtraction, multiplying is introduced, and telling time. All of this using the manipulatives is really helping her tremendously and she can't wait for math time. For social studies, we're studying the presidents...just stuff we're finding off the internet. We also bought a small booklet for kindergartners about the community and rules, presidents, and other social studies facts so we'll integrate that. Science...hmmmm...after the sunflower project we seem to be at a stand still. Mostly we've been looking at pictures of animals and discussing their habitats. I think I'd like for us to start a unit on senses and do some experiments with that...I'll keep you posted. I'm STILL looking for a good set of cheap music note flashcards. I thought maybe I could find some for free download on the internet, but to no avail. Perhaps I'll try ebay. Piano is going well -- we're mostly in review of songs she already has learned. We started a new song this week called "Ode To Joy", but before we go any further with new songs I want Nyomi to have a better concept of the notes she's reading and being able to truly recognize them with or without the name of the note placed beside it. Hence, the flashcards are needed for daily review. French...that's something my husband is helping her with. I'm going to dub him our official French instructor since that was his native language and he's fluent. I've done a few French games with her, and that's been fun...but nothing helps as much as hearing the French in every day spoken language. I also bought a little CD and booklet curriculum for young kids to listen and learn French through song and phrases. Nyomi is loving that CD and listens to it in her spare time. Well, that's an update on our reviews for this month. Next time, I'll take more pictures of projects she's embarked on since we plan to do more of those in the upcoming weeks. Until next time... |
Aug. 29, 2007
History and math fun
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Last week we did a brief history/geography lesson on the Makings of America. Here's Nyomi with the globe as she learns to locate the United States on a globe and atlas:  We also discussed our National Anthem and sung it a bit (and played it on the piano) as part of our music. The weekend passed by rather quickly and I'm getting ready for the next telechat series at Christian Ladies Connect, so I've spent some time preparing for that. Meanwhile, I've been kind of harried about Nyomi's science lessons for the month. I've got some objectives in place for her this year for science and I want to cover a segment of these before the end of September-- so I'm doing some spur of the moment search for cool projects to integrate into our objectives and we'll be set. Math-U-See program is EXCELLENT! We've gone through 12 lessons (although they're set to be paced one lesson per week and we've only been in school for 3 weeks) but she loves the program and I do too. Which says ALOT for this particular program since I'm sooo picky. Currently she's on the concepts of adding numbers together using manipulatives and I'm seeing where she's able to recognize a set of 3 1's within the a "6" block. She will split the block mentally in half and say "I see 3 units on this side and 3 units on the other side, so this is a 6 block". Then we take the 6 block and, say, another 3 block and "smoosh" them together to make "6 + 3 = 9" or "6 + 3 is the same length as 9". The program is quite comprehensive I think...with the exception of money (which we'll work on with time- recognizing pennies, dimes, nickles, and quarters and assigning value to them). I've been meaning to find a good pretend cash register for those upcoming lessons/games. Well I guess that's all for now... We'll need to do a new podcast episode soon. |
Aug. 24, 2007
First Day of Co-Op
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Today was Nyomi's first day in Co-op, where lots of homeschool families get together weekly to give the kids an awesome learning experience to supplement our daily work at home. Nyomi really had a blast and enjoyed the "classroom" experience of being with other kindergartners and having 4 teachers. Her schedule consists of 4 blocks where she has: reading, creative thinking, P.E. (then snacktime), and finally music. Here is a picture of her wonderful morning: At morning assembly wearing her name tag and backpack at hand.  More postings later on some of the things we are learning in history this week. |
Aug. 23, 2007
Celeb Will Smith on homeschooling
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I didn't know that Will Smith and Jada Pickett were homeschooling their children. I found this to be quite interesting (yeah homeschooling!) http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/will%20and%20jada%20opt%20to%20homeschool%20their%20children |
Aug. 14, 2007
#2-Nyomi's Plant Science Project
 This podcast episode is about Nyomi's plant project this summer. She just grew her first sunflower is mighty proud of it!Listen in to this episode to find out about our upcoming project plans for the year, and a brief mini lesson review and discussion my daughter and I had on how plants grow.  Click Here To Listen |
Aug. 12, 2007
rules for daily life
 I'm doing a study on managing our lives with Elizabeth George's book "Life Management for Busy Women". I hold the studies weekly by teleconference at www.christianladies.net (it's free to join!) One thing that has really struck me in chapters 1-3 is the idea of "early" time and "first" time with the Lord. Elizabeth really stresses this in her book-- but I like to think that there are a variety of ways we can spend time with the Lord--but however we choose to do it, we must ALWAYS abide in Him. He alone makes our heart tick, and keeps on giving us the strength we need for our daily tasks, such as homeschooling. I like the "Rules for Daily Life" on page 33 of her book: "Begin the day with God Open the book of God Go through the day with God Converse in mind with God Conclude the day with God Lie down at night with God" (Life Management for Busy Women, Elizabeth George, p. 33) |
Aug. 10, 2007
the first Friday
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Today we did a more relaxed homeschooling approach since all week long we went straight by the books in our chosen curriculum. Since it's Friday we kind of "chilled" and went to McDonalds where my daughter played in the KidsClub house for about an hour, then we came home and she sang with her dad as he played some praise and worship music. She then watered her plant (a sunflower which has grown tremendously under her care in the past 2 months).  Afterward she worked on a few handwriting worksheets and played some computer games on PBSKids.org. So in all, today she did Language Arts, Music, Science, and P.E.  In science, she's been learning about how soil, sunlight, and water help a plant grow. Here's her beautiful sunflower which she's been growing for about 2 months now:   French has been great! Her father's native language is French so it's a real plus having the "source" around to help us integrate the language into our family life. In the meantime, when he's at work we've been playing a game I like to call the "BonBon Game", where we have several differerent colors of candies (or in French "bonbons" or "les bonbons")...but since we don't keep candy at our house we used colored counting chips instead. I made flash cards and set out groups of 5 red chips, 4 yellow, 3 green, 2 blue, and 1 orange, for example. The flashcards gave both the names of the colors and the amount in French. I would ask "Je voudrais deux bonbons bleu, s'il vout plait" and she would learn that I am asking for 2 blue candies and would give me what I requested. The other half of the game is when she had to ask me (in French) for the amount and colors of candies she wanted. In piano, she's learning theory (quarter notes, half notes, whole notes), what a measure or bar is, bass clef and treble clef, and so far is able to recognize the notes C,D, and E on a music sheet. On the piano keyboard she recognizes middle C and all low and high C's. Of course, these are things we've been working on since she was very little, so this didn't all happen this week!!! I plan to make some music flashcards (or buy some, or even print some out if I can find a great free resource) so that she can learn to recognize more of the notes. Anyone knows of a great resource for this? Let me know! |
Aug. 9, 2007
#1- Nyomi's1st day of kindergarten
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Aug. 9, 2007
first day of Kindergarten
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Today was Nyomi's first day of kindergarten. I'd say we had a blast! We started our day at around 7:30 AM with a quick shower, breakfast, prayer, and the pledge of allegiance. She helped me sort laundry into 3 piles/categories (mathematics skills), and we did storytime and went over the class rules for the upcoming year with a Class Rules chart. We did our calendar for the day - noting the month, day, the season, and the weather for the day. Then at 8:50 we took her small table and chair out on the porch to enjoy the nice weather and did Math and Bible outside. For math we focused on counting 0-9 with manipulatives using the Math-U-See program. She finished all 5 days of lesson 1 because she didn't want to stop. I'll have to pace her on Lesson 2, but I'm glad she's enjoying math so far. For Bible we did a lesson, discussion, and worksheet on the creation. At around 9:30 she changed her into her leotard and I set up a ballet DVD for her P.E. She exercised for about 30 minutes, then on to Handwriting for another 20 minutes. Finally, we did Language arts using the Abeka (and a little of my own twist) in learning vowel sounds. She's been sight reading very lengthy words since she was 4 and can pick up a King James Bible and start reading, verses and chapters at a time...so learning HOW to read has not been an issue for us in terms of teaching, but we still want to make sure she has the basics of phonics covered, so we chose Abeka mainly because of its strong phonics program... So we're on break now. It's been a long morning, so we've had free time pretty much all afternoon and it's about time for me to begin cooking dinner and finish up laundry. But, before the day is over I'll let her get on my computer for a while and freshen up on some common French phrases, and before the end of the day we might have a piano lesson. These are things we've already been teaching since she was very little, so the transition into today's first day has been rather easy. The only thing extremely different for me is scheduling the amount of hours per day needed to cover my basis for our church school and making sure I document everything we do for my own records...so it's definitely more structured, to say the least. Overall, this has been an awesome first day of Kindergarten!!! |
Aug. 9, 2007
Tomorrow is the day!
  Let me briefly introduce myself. I'm Demetria Zinga, and I currently reside in Alabama with my husband and 5 year old daughter. We have one more daughter on the way. We are a family with many interests, skills, hobbies, and ambitions. If you had asked me 8 years ago what I wanted to do with my life after college, I would have told you that I wanted to start my own day care center and work with children, but that ultimately I had no clue what I would do with my life. These past 8 years of wondering what to do with my degree in Child Development, working in various fields, and earning a masters in a totally different field (Interactive Technology) have been a sweet struggle. I say a "sweet" struggle, because today although things are not crystal clear, I have a better idea of the direction God is taking me in. I love women's ministry and currently run Christian Ladies Connect (www.christianladies.net), and I also love web media and helping businesses with their web audio and video needs (http//www.faith-media.com). My husband is into computer networking, website design, music production, and so much more. Despite all of my interests, one thing I know for sure is, that this road I'm on is supposed to be a road of simplicity and peace, and I embrace it. Finally, I do get to "use my degree" in Child Development...everything I've ever learned and wanted to do, I have the opportunity to do now with my own child. It is awesome and I wouldn't trade this time in the world for anything. Every moment I spend with my daughter is so precious to me. So does my new journey begin? Yes, it begins...tomorrow in fact. We registered our daughter (Nyomi) under a church school so that we can homeschool her and we officially start tomorrow. I am SO EXCITED and of course, so is she! Tomorrow I plan to blog an entry about how our first day of Kindergarten went. She's mentioned wanting to start her own podcast like mommy's (ChristianLadiesTalkRadio.com). So perhaps there'll be an opportunity for that as well. Will write more perhaps tommorow. Signing Off...  |