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Showing posts from January, 2013

New Older-Kid Parsha Workbooks: Yisro & Mishpatim

For more information about these, please click here . Meanwhile, I have uploaded the new workbook for Yisro and will do the same for Mishpatim later on today (done!). Here are samples from Yisro: And from Mishpatim: As before, this is a work in progress at a busy time.  That means I’m very distracted and I want to know if I’ve made mistakes.  I’d even love just a quick note to let me know how old your child(ren) is/are and which bits are most helpful. To download these and hundreds of other Limudei Kodesh (Jewish) printables – including weekly parsha copywork and holiday resources, click here .  (search for “workbooks”) For General Studies printables, including science, art and music resources in Hebrew and English, Ambleside, composer and artist resources, click here .

Narrations That Blew Me Away: Beshalach

First Gavriel Zev’s.  We seem to have arrived at a happy place where he will dictate while I type.  At the end, I made a game of it, so when he said “Now, print it out,” I typed “Now, print it out.”  And then, when he said, “Erase that,” I typed, “Erase that.”  After much giggling and fooling around and erasing, I printed it out.  He cut it, pasted it onto the blank page, then did the rest by hand. What blew me away is the fact that it wasn’t crumpled.  When he undertakes an art or craft project, there’s about a 75% chance that it will not meet his bizarrely high standards (apparently, nobody has told this kid he’s only 5!) and he gets frustrated and rips and/or crumples it.  I have begun a campaign to encourage him to a) work in pencil, b) cross things out if they come out wrong, and c) live with mistakes, because we all make them.  All with mixed results so far – perhaps the crumpling ratio is down to around 60%? Anyway, he was pleased enough with this one that he let it stand.  So

Three Reasons People Think Homeschooled Kids are Geniuses

Someone asked me today if I thought being homeschooled helped my kids get ahead, ie move beyond grade level academically.  I said no, right away, and I think she was surprised at the bluntness of my answer.  But it’s true:  homeschooling won’t necessarily give your kids an edge. Here are a few reasons why people think homeschooled kids are geniuses, and why it ain’t necessarily so (though homeschooling is great for other reasons!): Homeschooled kids love to show off their knowledge:  Yes, indeed!  Most homeschooled kids I’ve met are not inhibited about doing what most adults would consider “showing off.”  They haven’t been discouraged by the experience of sitting in a classroom with their hand up waiting for their turn.  Even with multiple siblings, their turn is bound to come sooner than in a class of 30-plus.  Then, too, they’re around adults all day who care about their interests and listen patiently while they express themselves.  This freedom to say what they want can make the

Blog Spam – the Cream of the Crop

These days, for every blog post, I receive dozens of spam comments.  Some are an uninteresting blend of keywords – boh-ring!  But others attempt to disguise themselves as legitimate comments… indeed, more than legitimate , they mask themselves as the most suck-up kind of grovelling, flattering comments, at least until the end when they ALL wrap up by saying something to the effect of, “come visit my blog!”  Can anyone explain these type of comments to me??? I understand about search engines and keywords and spam, but what doesn’t make sense is that some  of the URLs are totally nonsensical, so it’s difficult to imagine who is actually footing the bill for these spammers’ “services.” Anyway… however the heck they work, I thought I’d share with you the “cream” of the crop, spam-wise.  Here are a few of my favourite comments currently awaiting moderation (links removed, of course!): Your means of explaining the whole thing in this piece of writing is truly pleasant, every one be capa

New Older-Kid Parsha Workbooks: Bo & Beshalach

I have been playing with ideas for a slightly more intensive variation on the parsha copywork we’ve been doing all along and come up with a 6-page booklet that I think might work well not only for us, but hopefully for others.  I will explain the ideas behind the different pages and you can decide if all or part of this would be useful to you. The whole booklet is centred around an excerpt from the parsha.  It may or may not be an entire contiguous passuk – I’ve done two so far and one is, while the other isn’t.  One draws in bits and pieces from several pessukim to create a “complete” passage that is more concise than the original text. The idea is to introduce spelling and vocabulary words through the context of the weekly parsha.  The English words are fairly easy, so this won’t make for very intensive spelling practice.  My thinking behind this is that my kid is feeling discouraged in Hebrew, so if throwing in a couple of easy English words will help boost her self-confidence, th

Presenting… the 2012 Blog Posts Word Cloud

So there you are.  In case you’re new here, that’s what this blog’s all about!  (courtesy of WorditOut ) Oooh – here’s the Wordle version , for comparison: What are YOU all about these days???

Where have I been, you ask??? And what are we reading?

Well, not taking a holiday; that’s for sure!  We’ve been reading up a storm… here’s a selection of our current read-alouds… We’re also slowly making our way through our “ Winter Reading List ,” based on the Second Five in a Row unit study curriculum.  You can get the printable wall chart for that reading list here .  As with the First FIAR reading list we did last year, some of the books are wonderful; others are just so-so.  Links to all the books we’re reading are over here in the Official MamaLand Amazon Homeschool Curriculum n’ More Store .     So here's the big fat excuse for why I haven't been posting: our stupid !#$^ computer has been failing for a while, and when that happens, I end up spending 95% of my “relaxing” computer time just trying to make the thing work.  Finally, 2 weeks ago, one of the hard drives quit entirely and I ordered a new computer – well, a $250 out-of-date refurbished computer that I could stick the working hard drive into.  Which seems