5th grade art ~ Highlights from the past year.

 

 

Emily is quite my little artist, in every form of the word.  She loves to create!

Here are a few project highlights of hers from this past year.

She painted an Easter Egg on a canvas.

She created a sun catcher  using washable markers and vegetable oils.

She loved coloring the composer pages when we studied the composers.

She created many things with clay to go along with her Early American history.

She made neat Halloween Skeleton paintings.  She was even Painter Smurf for Halloween, although in this picture she doesn’t have the makeup on.

Emily created a very detail oriented Gingerbread house.  Which won 1st place at a Homeschool competition.

She loves to create jewelry.  She received a wonderful jewelry making kit for Christmas.

We made homemade Valentines as well as we have joined an Artist Trading Card group. 

We have done so much more art projects than this.  These are just a few highlights.

 

Create Better Writers

 

 

I received 3 separate products to review from Create Better Writers.  Each serves a separate purpose, and collectively work together to form a complete writing program from grade 3 and up.

The first one I am going to tell you about is How To Write a Paragraph.

Paragraph writing is essential to writing many things from reports, essays, in-depth stories and more.

I can honestly say that I am not sure I ever learned how to properly construct a paragraph in my high school or even in my college education.

Did you know that teaching a paragraph, or even learning how to write one is not as hard as one might think?  Paragraphs have certain criteria that make them so.  This book shows you how to quickly but effectively teach the five parts of a paragraph.

This e-book sells for $7.99. (It is free with the purchase of The Five Paragraph Essay or The Complete Writing Program)

The Five-Paragraph Essay will be the next book I share about with you.

How To Teach The Five Paragraph Essay is for you if your answer is "yes" to any of the questions below.

1. Would you like to show your students how to write a strong five-paragraph essay to a timed prompt, and have them complete it in about an hour?
2. Would you like to show your students a simple format that will help them write essays from any writing domain?
3. Would you like your students to be able to write exciting introductions and conclusions?
4. Would you like a detailed lesson plan that will show you, step-by-step, how to teach the five-paragraph essay?

The last question is the one that really stuck out to me.  Since I feel I was never taught proper writing skills.  I felt this is very important for me to have in order to teach my children how to properly write an essay.

By the end of this very well set out and explained course your student will be able to write a five paragraph essay using a simple outline in less than an hour.  WOW! 

This e-book sells for $17.95

Finally I was sent The Home School Writing Action Plan

This book give you all the information you need to teach writing to all your children, from grades 3 through 12.

This book shows you all the steps you need to take in order to teach your student to have a good solid writing foundation.

It also includes a pacing chart for if you start around the 3rd grade, the 6th grade, or around high school level.  The biggest variation in the pacing guides is the amount of time you spend on each step.  For example a 10th grader is more likely to learn the paragraph much quicker than a 3rd grader.

Here is a sample lesson from this book.

This e-book has proven to be just what we needed in our homeschool and sells for $15.95

This entire program has been easy for me to teach as well as easy for my children to learn.  The incorporation of games in this curriculum causes it to fit right in to our learning style here.  I also enjoy how this in multi-level learning, as well as it has a multi-level starting point. 

To see what others thought of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.

Disclosure: As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion. 

 

Why homeschool?

 

There are endless reasons that homeschoolers do what they do.  A few of my reasons in no particular order.

• To spend quality time as a family
• To spend time allowing my children to develop who they are without constant peer influence

     

• To teach them character traits that I wish to instill in them
• To give them one on one education in which is taught to their learning styles
• To give them the opportunity to take advantage of new and exciting experiences

     

• So they realize that they can be friends with siblings

I have written many a posts about Why I Homeschool.

Now my children were not always homeschooled they have gone to public school.  The experience we both had there, as student and parent left me feeling that there was just something more for us.

Enter homeschooling. 

We love it so much now and have changed as individuals and as a family in wonderful incredible ways. 

I am a strong believer that homeschooling is not for everyone.  It is definitely right for us! 

This has been a part of the blog cruise.  Click the graphic to read about why some others homeschool.

Homeschool Co-ops. Are they for you?

Homeschool Co-ops range from non-existent, to secretive, to big everyday events. 

Homeschool Co-ops can be where a few moms get together with kids and do a book club, or science class once a month or so.
They may even offer

• speakers occasionally
• possibly even a show and tell type day
• a moms night out
• fieldtrips
• weekly or daily classes
• theme/ holiday parties

Sometimes co-ops are funded by a tuition or dues that you pay to join, those fees usually pay for advertising fees, some snacks or even field trip entrance fees. They may pay for speakers to come.  They may charge you a fee or do fundraisers to raise this money.
Other times co-ops are self pay, where everyone pays their own way or contributes their own talents, etc. 
Some co-ops are even a mix of both of these types.

Co-ops for me have never came looking for me, I have always had to go “hunting” for them.  A good place to look is for a Yahoo Group or HSLDA website.

Co-ops are often volunteer ran.  So be sure you volunteer your share.  I have seen many co-ops fall apart because the same moms did everything. They get burned out and begin to feel unappreciated. 

This year I will be teaching my very first co-op class using The Art of Argument.  I am nervous and excited! 

If you have missed any of my posts this week, check them out!

Our Homeschool Method
Our Curriculum Choices This Year
How I Plan
Our Homeschool Area- A video

This has been so much fun!  Thanks for reading along! 

Our Classroom ~ A Video Tour

 
I decided to do something a little different since we do not have a classroom per say, we have a house that promotes education. 

I will give you a video tour of our main living areas.  Sorry in advance for the amateur video skills.  :)

I hope you enjoyed your tour and realize that space truly doesn’t matter when it comes to homeschooling!  

This is linked up to The Not Back to School Blog Hop! 

How I plan what I purchased?

Can you believe it?  This year I am going to plan!  Years past we have done everything from fly by the seat of our pants type planning to having it all planned out for us. 

This year, we are taking majority of the summer off from “official schooling.”  We do still do 3 subjects each day, reading, math and a choice.





I am using this time to plan out months at a time.  I set up a part time desk in the kitchen, that way I don’t have to clean up to cook and eat. LOL!  (seriously though).






Let’s begin with how I am planning Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row. 
I am using the planner page I got from All of A Kind Family. 
I use the book as well as the internet, (mainly Pinterest and Homeschool Share) to get my ideas.  I have collected and preprinted everything I need.  I precut and laminated many things too.  I store those in a Ziploc.

I then put everything I need in a manila folder and label it.  I write on the outside of the folder anything I will need to either purchase or gather from around the house.


I then store all these folders on my teacher bookshelf.  And I use the year long planning page from the Schoolhouse Planner to fill in when we will do each book.  I have planned out our first 8 books and plan to have 12 planned out before the end of August.  Then I am going to try and plan a book a week so I can stay ahead of the game.  I am going to leave room for flexibility.








How I have planned Prairie Primer 


The first thing I did was take the book over to Staples and had them cut the binding off and have it spiral bound.
 



Then I began using the weekly planner in the Schoolhouse Planner.  I wrote the number of the lesson on the planner page.  So for example she will need to do numbers 1-6 and 8 on the first day. Next to each item number that has something to go with it, I added small notes, LB= lapbook piece, NB= Notebooking page, WS= worksheet, if she is supposed to watch something on YouTube then that is written in there, etc.


I preprinted any notebooking pages, lapbooking pages and worksheets she would need.  They are all sorted by week and will be going in a 3 ring binder.

On the bottom of the schedule I have a list of supplies to gather for that week.  I just grab the sheet a week or two in advance and gather what is necessary. 

I have also pre-bookmarked many of her science pages.  I am also  incorporating The Daring Book for Girls into her lessons, and am in the process of fitting that all in. 

She will do Prairie Primer 4 days per week.

Fridays will be set aside for:

• game days
• art projects
• home ec.
• finish up work.
• character lessons

Other things such as grammar and math they will just do the next lesson each day.  So not much preplanning there.

Our Curriculum Choices this year!

Decisions have been made, orders have been placed, packages have arrived, planning has began (more on that tomorrow).

This year our curriculum will go as follows
Tyler, age 3

• Before Five In A Row
• Very Gently introduce All About Reading ~ Pre Level 1
• Tag along with the rest of the children in learning

Katey, age 7

• Five In A Row, using lots of science from the Usborne science books and Nature in a Nutshell as well as history/geography
• Hooked on Phonics upper level phonics
• Copywork
• Lots of reading
• I am still undecided on her math, right now we are working on fact memorization.
• Leaving room for review items

Emily, age 11 (almost 12)

• Prairie Primer, using How Nature Works, How Science Works, How the Earth Works as our main science supplements
• Painless Grammar
• Life of Fred as well as Math Essentials (We have loved this program)
• Finish up Keyboarding
• Review Items
• Rosetta Stone French when time allows
• Co-op classes, sewing and The Art of Argument

Tommy, age 13

• Beyond Five In A Row (Which I still need to purchase and plan out)
• Apologia Physical Science
• Math Essentials
• Painless Grammar
• Copy work for Future Heroes
• Review Items
• The Art of Argument (co-op class)
• He will continue with his MMA classes

As you can see I am trying not to put to much pressure on the kids this year as far as curriculum goes.  I am really looking forward to a more organic learning environment after using K12 last year.  I am also going to make a much bigger effort to do a family read aloud more often.  We have begun reading The Hardy Boys series this Summer and have really enjoyed the time together.


Click on the button at the top of this post to see what other crew members are using. 

What is your favorite curriculum?