The Evolution of Our Learning

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Christina C

When my husband and I decided back in December of 2013 that we would homeschool our children , I had an idea of how I thought it should look. I pictured planned out and scripted lessons, textbooks, and very specific subjects, like Math, English, Spelling, and Science. I began to explore my options and came up with a couple of complete curricula that looked interesting. Complete curricula, the open-and-go kind, tend to be pricey. Before I committed a huge chunk of change, I did a little more research. A lot, actually.

I liked the idea of the Classical model. I liked Charlotte Mason’s ideas about education. I liked unit-study styles that approached a topic from all angles and subjects, and I loved literature-based programs. My own style was starting to feel a bit eclectic. But that didn’t feel very good at the time. I wanted to belong to a group that shared the same educational ideology, the same philosophy. I wanted a homeschool “identity.”

I decided to go with a unit study, literature-based approach, while at the same time following the Classical progression through the ages. I thought that idea made sense. I felt comfortable with that. I had enough hand holding but still had the freedom to allow for my children to explore their own interests.

All the while I was exploring methods, philosophies, and curricula, I was undergoing a mental transformation as well. My reasons for wanting homeschool were evolving. Originally, I wanted to homeschool DD (my sons were too young for school at this point, so DD was the main consideration) out of fear. I was intimidated by the system. I was afraid of sending my child to be among strangers every day. I was afraid for my daughter’s feelings. She was being regularly mistreated by a few classmates that found her too different to accept as one of their own. She would get off of the bus everyday crying. I was afraid that DD’s self esteem was on a freefall to rock bottom. I was afraid that her zeal for life and learning was going to get squelched by traditional school. I had fear after fear and it took me further and further from my goals…

As my reasons for homeschooling started to evolve, to turn from fears to desires, so did my plan. You see, when you fear something, you tend to run away from it. You shield your eyes. Run for cover. Your fear paralyzes you. It makes you freeze and you are unable to see anything but that which you fear.

An interesting thing started to happen. As I consciously let go the fears that were binding me, my confidence in myself as a homeschooling mom began to grow. I felt like I didn’t need, or want, as much hand holding. The identity I was making for myself became ok. I was in charge! And as my confidence in my decisions grew, my confidence in my kids’ decisions grew as well and I began to let go of some of the control over our learning. I started to give my kids choices.

It started small, like “Do you want to do Math or History?” Now, sometimes entire days are spent chasing rabbits down trails. Figuratively, mostly. We still manage to get the basics, like Math, Reading, and Writing in on a regular basis, but the rest interest driven and as we desire. And field trips are just as important as days spent at home reading.

We also like to add lots of “enchantment” to our days, even when using our more laid-out curricula. I give all the credit for this to Julie Bogart from Brave Writer. Her encouragement and inspiration has been instrumental in transforming my view of homeschooling from one that looks more like “school” as we know it to a place of more enchantment, more freedom, more fun.

So although we love our curriculum choices (eg. Brave Writer for Language Arts, Moving Beyond the Page for a complete, literature based program, All About Reading for Reading, and Right Start Math) we also think that the World is our school. Life is learning.

Every day is different in our “school” and that’s exactly the way we love it…

10 Amazing Apps for Kids

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Christina C

I am not a huge fan of “screen time.” I really don’t advocate for allowing, or worse, encouraging kids to spend lots and lots of time in front of the TV or computer screen. However, let’s be honest, there are times when, especially if you have more than one child, you need to provide a distraction and all of your best intentions fly right out of the window. For those times, why not make it as educational as it is fun?

Here, I am going to focus on some really neat apps that we have stumbled upon that provide as much opportunity for learning as they do entertainment. Best of all, every one of these apps is free! (Some have in-app purchases, so you may want to make sure your device is in airplane mode when your kids are using them.)

Toontastic is by far our family’s favorite. Kids get to create characters, design a setting, provide voices and sound effects, and add animation to create their own cartoons! The app also walks users through the elements of a story, so kids learn about plot, rising action, conflict resolution, and denouement. My kids fight over the i-Pad to get to this one!
TeleStory was created by the same developers as Toontastic. It allows kids to write, direct and star in their own TV show!
Block Craft 3D is a lot like Minecraft. It allows kids to create, build, and grow their own villages. My kids are huge fans of Minecraft, but when we are on the go and don’t have internet, this app is a great substitute.
NGA Kids Art Zone is a great place for kids to learn about famous works of art while interacting with each piece. They even get a chance to create their own artwork.
Poems by Heart by Penguin Classics is a great app for learning and memorizing famous poems.
The POETRY app from the Poetry Foundation is also a fun way to learn about and read poetry. Kids can use the spinner to read random selections or choose their own feelings and topics to generate a related list of poems.
Hooked on Words is a word search app where the kids get to work on a little spelling. My 8-year-old daughter loves this one!
MoMA Art Lab is another great art site where kids get to work on really interesting art projects. Another one of my daughter’s favorites!
Sky View is a great app for exploring the universe. Simply hold the tablet up, down, or anywhere and it will show and tell you what is in the sky. From constellations, planets, satellites, and space stations, the kids will enjoy seeing what’s out there!
Blackfish is another really neat story and game creator. It’s a great way for kids to use their creativity to write, illustrate, set to music, and publish their own books.

I would love to hear about other great finds, so if you have any please do share!

Our Favorite Thanksgiving Read Alouds

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Christina C

We love the Holiday season and one of the ways that we enjoy our time together is by reading great books. We keep our Holiday books separate from our everyday books and it is a great pleasure to pull them out a few weeks before the special day. Now is the time that we begin to pull out our books about Thanksgiving.

Here are our favorites. I found these to be engaging, spark great interest in American History, and foster compassion for the original Americans.

(This post contains links to Amazon.com. Should you decide to purchase any of the books, Thankfully Home will receive a small commission. This will not cost you anything at all! It helps us buy books for our family, so thank you!)

Fun Games for Learning

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Christina C

I have been doing a lot of thinking for the past several months about how to make learning more fun, more engaging, more organic. Part of the reason that we chose to homeschool was to be able to live on our terms. To have the freedom to live and learn in ways that work for us and that make us happy. I love laid out plans, but I also love to wake up in the morning and throw caution to the wind and go down a long rabbit trail and see where it leads us.

One thing we have done lately is add in lots and lots more games. I mean, what’s more fun: Memorizing your math facts or playing dice games? Memorizing maps or playing The Scrambled States of America game? Working on spelling lists or playing Scrabble? You get my drift. Plus, a huge added bonus is that we all get to spend fun, quality time working and playing together. We are together all day every day, but somehow, something is different when we are all playing a game together.

I thought I would put together a list, by subject, of our favorite games.

Math:

Any game that uses dice can be used as a math game. As a matter of fact, my kids and I played Harry Potter and the Mystery at Hogwarts game yesterday and I could see how much my six-year-old was learning about basic addition facts as we played. My three-year-old was also working on counting and subitizing during every turn. We are also using a math curriculum called Right Start Math that includes loads of manipulatives and math games to teach concepts. That being said, we still like to pull out a math game once in a while…

Math Dice and Math Dice, Jr – These games are great for learning addition facts. My two older kids (6 and 8) are very competitive with this game. They learned their basic addition facts so quickly and had such a great time doing it! I pull these out whenever we need a little extra practice…

i sea 10! – My three and six-year-old LOVE this game! It is a bit like Memory in that the child turns over two discs per turn and yells “I see 10!” when the two numbers add up to ten. Then in each consecutive turn, they attempt to make sums up to ten by remembering where each number is. My littles love this! As a matter of fact, I think my three-year-old may have learned to recognize numbers by playing this game.

Math War – My daughter loves to play this game! It gets her really thinking on her feet because I am fast and she is competitive…Plus, it’s a great way to reinforce what she is learning in her regular math curriculum.

And to introduce and work on money while at the same time practicing addition and skip counting, this little game is so great. My kids beg to play it!

This game is a lot like scrabble in that you use tiles to make equation “sentences.” It includes all four of the basic operations, although we will only use addition, subtraction,
and multiplication. I purchased this one to help my daughter master her math facts.

We discovered this gem while on a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Apparently it was a popular pub game as well as a game frequently played by sailors and pirates on ships. When we got home to our hotel, the kids and I played this for a couple of hours. Honestly, my 6yo DS learned his math addition facts up to 12 in one evening! It is called Shut the Box and the object is to roll two dice, add them up and flip the number tile that matches your roll. You may flip one tile or two tiles that add up to your number. We created a “House Rule” that if your number had already been flipped, and all of the numbers that add up to your roll have also been flipped, you may look for two numbers that subtract to your number. The game ends when either you “shut the box” by flipping all of the numbers or you cannot flip any more. Your score is the sum of the remaining numbers. You want a low score. We have absolutely loved playing this game!

Language Arts:

The absolute best thing you can do to instill a love of language in your kids is to read aloud to them. We do that every day, but in addition to our “school” work, we also like to play word and language games. Here are a few that we love.

These next several games are fantastic for developing creative, descriptive, and imaginative language. The kids use dice, cards, and story prompts to weave fantastic tales. My kids adore all of these! We even have fun sometimes by writing down the stories we come up with. These are a lot of fun to read later and look back on what we wrote together.

These games are great for working on spelling: (there are too many fun games for preschoolers to mention here, so I will stick with the slightly older set of k+)

Thinking and Strategy:

We play these games to reinforce and improve abstract thinking skills. All of these are absolute favorites.

This is my older son’s favorite puzzle game. He and my younger son often pull it out and plat by themselves for a long time. They love trying to copy the designs and are so proud when they complete one!

We love playing this as a family. It is a little bit of a reach for my kids, but they really love trying to figure out the pattern. It’s wonderful for reinforcing color, pattern, and shape discrimination.

These puzzles keep my sons busy for an hour sometimes. They love trying to copy the images on the cards, all the while learning about spacial relationships, shapes, colors, and sorting.

Obstacles is a fantastic game for the whole family to play together. You progress through a series of cards with various obstacles depicted on them and use “tool” cards in your hand to come up with creative ways to overcome the obstacles. We have a lot of fun playing this!

This game involves looking at a set of cards and determining what they have in common. It is a bit like another one of our favorites.

Categories is a bit more abstract, but this gets the kids sorting, visually discriminating and categorizing too!

This game is as much a challenge for the grown-ups as it is for the kids and it really helps develop visual perception and build abstract thinking and classifying skills.

We got these three games for Christmas from a friend and we can’t stop playing them! All three are strategy card games and are easy to understand and great fun!

Geography:

This was our first Geography game. It is accompanied by a very funny book by the same name. My 8-year-old daughter loves playing this and it is a really great way to learn U.S. geography.

Take Off! is a really fun game. It includes a huge laminated World map that also depicts flags of the countries of the World. Players race from destination to destination across the World from east to west.

These following games are also great for learning the locations of states and countries. Players construct 10-day trips from destination to destination using specific modes of travel. Very cool!

This list is by no means exhaustive, but these are our favorites. I have absolutely no problem pulling any one of these off the shelf when the kids ask for them. As a matter of fact, I also “count” these as school time because I consider playing games just as educational (if not more) as filling out a worksheet, only it is tons more fun! Who said learning and fun don’t go together?

(This post contains links to Amazon.com. Should you decide to purchase any of the games, Thankfully Home will receive a small commission. This will not cost you anything at all! It helps us buy books and resources for our family, so thank you!)

The Monster Cafe is Open for Business!

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Christina C

One of our favorite annual activities during the Halloween season is opening up our “Monster Cafe.” I originally got the idea last year from the book Games for Writing by Peggy Kaye. This is a wonderful resource chock full of creative ideas to prompt and improve writing skills, both mechanical and creative. It really is an invaluable tool for teaching kids to write and enjoy writing!

The kids and I convened at the kitchen table, pens and paper in hand, ready to brainstorm. You see, monsters like really icky, slimy, gory, and gross things. Ordinary food and drink just won’t do.

On to our planning…

The first order of the day was to come up with menu items. Such things as Grilled Scream Cheese Sandwiches and Hack-A-Roni and Fleas ended up on our menu! The grosser and more morbid, the better! Ghoulish, yes?

Next, came the design and creation of the menu. The kids picked out colored construction paper and used oil pastels to decorate the menu. DD copied menu items from our master list onto the construction paper. DS1 wanted a little help with his writing, but he illustrated his pages very well – lots of monsters and scariness! DS2 had a great time drawing monsters!

Here is our finished product. Next order of business, opening up and waiting for the monsters to arrive!

How to Love a Book!

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Christina C

This might not look like learning. It wouldn’t have looked like learning to me two years ago. Kids running around with robes and magic wands. Sitting on the couch reading a big, colorfully illustrated book about wizards. Coloring pictures of pretty plants and flowers. There might even be a little figuring out of how many wands were sold in a week if 14 were sold each day. Or how about designing a shopping mall for wizards? Does that sound like learning? Or fun? Are learning and fun mutually exclusive? Not in my house. Not anymore…

We are reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling aloud as a family. There is a recently released illustrated edition that is simply exquisite! When the sun goes down and bedtime is approaching, my children beg to get this book out! It has so profoundly captured us that we have decided to toss out the curriculum for a while and enroll in The Hogwart’s School of Wizardry! After all, there is no better way to love a book than to dive right in and let the pages take you where they may, to become a living part of it.

At this school, we don our robes and learn things like Herbology, magic spell writing, and wand making. We write articles for the Weekly Prophet. We looked deeply inside ourselves to help the Sorting Hat decide to which House we belong. I happen to have two Gryffindors and one Ravenclaw.

I got most of my inspiration for activities from Emily Cook at Build your library. Emily’s unit studies are spectacular! We are for sure loving the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Unit Study! There is also a plethora of Harry Potter math activities that one can find doing a simple internet search.

It is so wonderful to bring a beloved book to life by becoming a part of it. By living it. It becomes a part of you, too, forever…

(This post contains a link to Amazon.com. Should you decide to purchase the book, Thankfully Home will receive a small commission. This will not cost you anything at all! It helps us buy books for our family, so thank you!)

this post is participating in read aloud thursday at HOPE IS THE WORD.

Halloween Tea Party!

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Christina C

Halloween is not just another holiday at our house. It is cause for an ongoing celebration! We decided to kick off our festivities with a Halloween Poetry Tea Time, full of all the usual trappings of the holiday – costumes, treats, decorations, pumpkin spiced tea, stories and poems.

Poetry Tea Time is regular event in our home. The kids just love preparing delicious treats and racing to the bookshelf to choose their favorite poetry books. Today will be a little different. A little. We will be sipping, listening, and taking turns reading as witches, sorcerers, and fearless space rangers . We will read from spooky Halloween poetry books. We will revel in this enchanted, magical, place for a while…

Oh, and we have invited some more guests to join us today…

What a wonderful time we had together, my Emerald Witch, Harry Potter, and Buzz Lightyear! I can only hope that these are the times that my children remember fondly when they look back at their childhoods and reminisce…

Here are the poetry books we read from:

(The images contain links to Amazon.com. Should you decide to purchase any of the books, Thankfully Home will receive a small commission. This will not cost you anything at all! It helps us buy books for our family, so thank you!)

Traveling Back to The Middle Ages

Posted on October 25, 2015 by Christina C

We are currently reading about The Middle Ages in History. For our spine, we are using The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer, which we love! For those of you who haven’t experienced this series, it takes you from Pre-Historic times through The Modern Era in story-like fashion. There are four volumes and separate activity guides that accompany each one, for those that like to include written activities, mapwork, crafts, and additional reading. At the end of this post, I am including a list of some living read-alouds for this time period.

We thought we would bring our reading to life by visiting our local annual Renaissance Festival!

Of course, we had to dress the part! Introducing my little Knight, King, and Lady! We were immediately greeted by jesters, knights, and other Medieval characters selling their food and wares. From costumes, wooden swords, jewelry, tapestries, clay pottery, drinking horns, turkey legs and more, it was like stepping back into a Medieval village!

We meandered through the crowded streets and came upon this…

An outdoor theater where Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare, was being performed! Stories become so much more meaningful when they are brought to life!

We also happened upon some acrobats and comedies being performed as well.

This was followed by more wandering, meeting interesting folks, and seeing the amazing sights and sounds of a real Medieval town.

And we even got to meet and chat with the King himself!

Imagine what imaginative places the kids will have now in their minds when we sit together and read about these interesting, colorful times! If only for a day, they have lived it themselves. They have been there. This is the closest thing we have to traveling through time…

These are some of our favorite living read-alouds for this time period. We have read and loved some and look forward to others as our studies progress:

(The following pictures contain links to Amazon.com. Should you decide to purchase any of the books, Thankfully Home will receive a small commission. This will not cost you anything at all! It helps us buy books for our family, so thank you!)

When it’s Time to Reboot

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Christina C

We as parents are well-intentioned. We want the best for our children. Every day. But I have to be honest. I am human. Sometimes I get tired (often, actually). Sometimes I get cranky. Sometimes I can be unkind and ungrateful. Sometimes I love my children but I forget to cherish them.

My family has been so doggone busy for the last couple of months. Between art classes, science center classes, piano lessons, musical theater classes, and visits with friends and family, I feel like I am being stretched in a medieval rack. I am not usually the type of person who books our schedule full. I don’t thrive in that way. My kids don’t either. We like having things to do and people to see, but sometimes we just like staying home and having quiet time. We like the freedom that our homeschooling life affords us of being able to pick up and go where the wind blows us. We like to go down rabbit trails when we are beckoned.

I knew we reached a place of discomfort for everyone because the short tempers were flaring at the drop of a hat. We were not in a place of happiness or respect. We were not gracious. There was no peace. It was time to unplug and reconnect. It was time to remember and acknowledge the things we are thankful for. It was time for a reboot…

So, we put away the curriculum. We put away the books (well, not the poetry ones or the read-alouds, or the bed-time favorites – we could NEVER do that!), the worksheets, and the agenda. We dropped it all in favor of some impromptu fun. We piled into the car…

And headed out to the country. It is beautiful this time of year in South Central Pennsylvania. The leaves have changed and are vibrant hues of red, orange, yellow, burgundy, and gold. As we headed North-West, the rolling hills spread out before us. The drive was spectacular!

Finally, we arrived at Boyer’s in Bigglerville.

Is there a better way to appreciate the fall than to go apple picking in the country?

The fresh air, the rows and rows of beautiful trees, the smell of grass, the backdrop of rolling hills dotted with colorful leaves. It was nothing less than exhilarating!

The kids darted up and down the rows, in awe of all of the beautiful fruit hanging from the trees. They started filling their bags. My heart felt so thankful to have this time with them, watching them select, pluck, and admire their choices.

When the bags were full of beautiful Fuji and York Empire apples, they were dragged back to the car and proudly heaved into the back. Each child was very protective of their bag of apples!

Time to head back to the market to have our haul weighed…

This was our drive. Isn’t it exquisite? This photo doesn’t due justice to the beauty of this countryside…

The kids had their haul weighed proudly – 35 pounds of apples! Yes, 35!

We decided to stop for lunch on our hour-long way home. We spent the time reconnecting. Talking. Listening. Remembering what it is that we love about being a family.

When we got home, we peeled, boiled, and pureed our hearts out and made the most delicious applesauce! My daughter got out her Raddish kit and made us a scrumptious Dutch Apple Pancake! I have to say, the “fruits” of our labor were well worth it, both literally and figuratively.

Now I know that there will come a time when we need another reboot. That’s ok. For now, this is enough…

Welcoming Fall

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Christina C

Now that Fall is officially here and the cooler weather has set in (for most of us 🙂 ), there is a slew of fun things to do that help welcome and appreciate the beauty that fall brings. Here are some of the things we like to do or are planning to do this year:

Bake IMG_20150921_102939450 ! There is absolutely no better time to bake than Fall! Apples are aplenty and there are so many things you can do with pumpkin! Who knew? Some of our favorite recipes are for pumpkin pie, apple pie, baked apples, apple sauce, pumpkin bread, apple pancakes, baked pumpkin seeds, oh there are so many! We will also be enjoying our “Apples Everywhere” cooking kit from Raddish Kids.

Go on a nature hike! The cooler weather and changing leaves make for a very enjoyable time to get out and and explore Mother Nature! Collect leaves. Try to see how many colors and shapes you can find. Try to find out what kind of tree they came from. Make a leaf collage when you get home! Collect pine cones to paint and, if you have planned ahead, try some leaf and bark rubbings to save for your nature journals!

Create Fall-inspired artwork! Here are some great places to find inspiration –

Do something creative with your leaf and bark rubbings. Maybe make a collage!

Read together! The local library always has a nice display in the children’s section of wonderful books about fall. Select a few and snuggle up! I think we currently have every single book out about Fall and Halloween that our local library has 😉 ). And in case you haven’t seen it, here’s our list of favorite Halloween books. Have a tea party! Get out your tea set, brew your favorite tea, bake a treat, and sit and read stories and poems about fall. Everyone will love it!

Go apple picking! Visit a local farm and pick your own apples! Often, these farms will have other activities like hayrides, corn mazes, petting zoos, crafts and other fun things to do while you are there. Be on the lookout for any local festivals as well! When you are finished, bring your apples home and bake!