Adventures in Mama-Land

We cut and cut and cut and cut and pasted…   (I discovered this cool cut-apart skeleton in the sample pages for Pandia Press’s Real Science Odyssey, Life (Level 1).  You can download the full sample here , if you’re interested.  See below for why I was looking at science curricula (hint:  I bought a new one, but in the end, it wasn’t RSO). We drew… (ugh, the strange-looking BOY made from the word “boy” in Draw Write Now, Book 1 – I have been dreading this lesson for months, but at least it’s over now and we can move past it) We learned Chumash…  (see how much she HATES colouring things in???)  (but she does enjoy colouring the “leftover” words with a rainbow pattern even though it takes forever sometimes for her to fill them in).  The book she’s using is Bright Beginnings.   …And SO much more! We are doing and ENJOYING the following Evan-Moor daily worksheets, which I print off from TeacherFileBox:  Daily Science, Daily 6-Trait Writin...

Legal disclaimer:  I am not the owner or publisher or Elemental Science, and have no affiliation with anyone who is.  I’m just an ordinary parent looking forward to using this curriculum with my kids. As I have mentioned a few times , I like Elemental Science in general and think it will be a very do-able curriculum for this year – I’m looking forward to diving into it. I initially found it lacking in a few areas, one of which is the poems that are provided to help kids memorize characteristics of various living things (plants, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and human body systems). A while ago, I created a one-page printout with two original poems to help memorize plant characteristics (parts of a plant; parts of a flower).  Now that we’re starting the animals section, I have created SIX original four-line poems detailing the major identifying characteristics of each of the major types of vertebrate. In case you’re curious, I used the Denver Zoo we...

After we did the “Newspaper Camouflage” experiment from Science Around the World , I gave Naomi Rivka a piece of newpaper to design her own “creatures,” one made of newspaper and one made of white paper, so we could find out which would be more vulnerable to predators.  Can you spot all three critters?     I can’t quite make out their shapes, but she was rather proud of how well they blend in with the backdrop.  And it’s pretty obvious which one I’d eat if he wasn’t so darned cute.

A few new “Daily Program” additions I’m trying out as we enter what will hopefully be our first real week of school. We may not stick with all of them through the school year, but I thought they’d be valuable, and they are included in my TeacherFileBox subscription:  Daily 6-Trait Writing , Daily Science , Daily Word Problems and A Word A Day . I’m not married to any of these, so I’ll just see which Naomi likes, if any, and go from there.  If I had to pick which one was the most important, I’d say the 6-trait writing (I don’t know what the traits are).  Although Charlotte Mason doesn’t really encourage “creative” writing at this stage (narration is sufficient to ensure that they’re articulate and voicing their own thoughts), I think it’s fun to explore and pick apart the mechanics of good, vivid writing.  The exercises are low-key and only require a sentence or two of actual writing. Also new this week, the next artist in our Meet the Masters cu...

Before I get started…if you’re looking for something simple for science, I just discovered this free PDF resource from the International Council of Associations for Science Education (ICASE) which is packed with 60 pages of simple, fun-looking experiments demonstrating a wide variety of principles. So over Shabbos (lots of time to myself), I found myself longing for the simplicity of Living Learning Science, our previous literature-based science “curriculum.”  I don’t think anybody else uses it, and even I didn’t do everything it suggested, but it was nice as a reading guide, and very easy to follow and stick with.  (There ARE other Living Learning Books :  Earth Science & Astronomy and Chemistry.  But they’re for slightly older kids, and I think a bit out of our grasp right now.) I realized one thing I liked very much last year was having everything in one binder.  Elemental Science gives you everything in about four sections of two different books:...