Honesty w/ Aesop!

Hi Readers,

I am a fan of  “A Well-TrainedMind" by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. After reading the book, I decided to remix the way I taught reading to my first grader, Peanut. Since everything is (or can be) centered around reading, I wanted him to learn more than just a story or how to summarize. I wanted to add reading fluency, comprehension, lessons, Christian principles, illustrations, imagination, ideas, and create a love for reading.

I know that sounds like a heavy-duty list--but it worked!

My son and I were conversing more, he was using his imagination, applying his character and Scripture to every day life, and especially during our reading time. He thrived in reading and he was anxious to see what the next fable was about and figure out the moral..

As a homeschool mom, I am constantly searching for ways to combine two (or more) subjects together. In my quest to teach character, I discovered that Aesop covered many values I desired for my son to study and we could read at the same time! And thus, "Character w/ Aesop" was born! I am working behind the scenes to compile more studies together, but in the mean time I have one ready for you to download for free today!

I am not a theme-based guru, but I do appreciate them and they seem to work well with elementary-aged children, so I welcome them. A few weeks ago, we began the series with a unit in Honesty. We kicked the “reading text” to the curb and we started with some awesome fables from Aesop that, in my opinion, spoke well of being honest and expecting honesty from others. I added in some Scripture copywork so we could discuss what God expects from us in the area of honesty. It was very important for me to teach my son just how consistent God is. So, I added stories and Scriptures that taught Peanut how to be honest but also how to protect against being deceived.
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The "Character with Aesop" unit study is designed for homeschoolers 1st-3rd grade in mind, but children K-5th could easily benefit. The series will teach students about character through the famous morals of Aesop, reading, and Scripture copywork. (Note: There is a non-Biblical version if you desire the study without the Scriptures.) 

How we did it: (This is listed on the "Directions" page of the unit download.)

Length: 2 weeks (1 fable per day, Monday-Thursday)

1. Read the Story

We alternated reading stories, so sometimes he read to me and I read to him. In the “You Read to Me…” book we always took turns with the colored paragraphs. P.S. I normally read the stories from “Aesop’s Fables” because the language is a bit harder.

2. Discuss the Moral or Lesson

This was a basic discussion about what the lesson meant. I wanted to see if he could figure out the lesson before we read it together at the bottom of the page. Then, I had him explain why the lesson shows honesty and how could it help/hurt others.

3. Narration

I had Peanut retell me the story in his own words. I prompted him with questions to assist in reinforcement. As he retold, I wrote down what he said I my “best handwriting” on handwriting paper. Then, I gave it to him and he read his narration. (I made sure he was satisfied with his summary.)

Peanut's retelling: Th Boy Who Cried Wolf

Peanut's retelling: Rooster and the Fox

4. Illustration 

Peanut drew and colored a picture of what the fable was about. He had to include the title of the story and the moral somewhere on his illustration. (We glued his illustration to the back of his handwriting paper and stored it in his Reading Notebook.)

This is one of my favorites of his! A perfect illustration of "The Rooster and the Fox!"



Peanut's version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf!"

5. Record

Peanut recorded the fable, its author, and the date read of each fable after reading it.

6. Copywork (They are a part of the download!)

This was such an exciting way to teach reading.  He thought it as “so cool” to see the Bible applied to a simple story and he feel in love with ME doing the writing portion of his narrating. (Little does he know, I am merely modeling for him. He will have to do his own narration next year!)

Click HERE to download!

Stay Tuned!

I have more character w/ Aesop units coming on:  

• Being a Good Worker
• Friendship
• Safety
• Pride 

…And More!

Joyice Harris
"The Writing Enhancer"

Black History 2013

February is Black History Month! I love this time of year because it gives us an on purpose time to study the history and heritage of our ancestors. Because two of the children that I homeschool are pre-schoolers I chose a very light approach to introducing this topic. My other schooler, is a 1^st-2^nd grader so this is not his first time learning about Black History, so we went a bit deeper.

For my preschoolers I divided some of our history in four sections:

·          Civil Rights (Dr. Martin Luther King & Rosa Parks)

·         The White House (Barack Obama & Michelle Obama)

·         Slavery (Fredrick Douglas & Harriett Tubman)

·         Athletes (Michael Jordan & Williams Sisters)

It was important for me to introduce them to both historical and modern figures as well as male and female figures. They are too young to delve deep but I have decided to give them one fact of each person daily. We have added coloring pages, activity pages, songs, and books!

For my 1^st-2^nd grader, we are using the same plan except I added one more area of focus (Inventors) and he has three people to learn about a week instead of two. His plan looks like this:

·         Civil Rights (Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, & Rosa Parks)

·         The White House (Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, & Condoleeza Rice)

·         Slavery (Fredrick Douglas, Benjamin Banneker & Harriett Tubman)

·         Athletes (Michael Jordan, Jesse Owens, & Williams Sisters)

·         Inventors (George Washington Carver & Garrett Morgan)

I downloaded a Black History Bio Sheet from TpT to assist us. He will record the name, draw (or paste) a picture, birth date, city and state of birth, and why this person is famous or celebrated.  Again, we will supplement with books and crafts! For the Bio Sheet, please visit Mrs. Tabb store here!

Books:

·         ABCs of Black History

·         Seed of Change by Jen Johnson

·         Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby by Charles Hubbard

·         More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradbury

·         Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport

·         This is the Dream by Diane Shore

·         Boycott Blues by Andrea Pinkney

·         We March by Shane Evans

·         Heart and Soul by Kadir Nelson

·         Back of the Bus by Aaron Reynolds

·         The Bus Ride that Changed History: the story of Rosa Parks by Pamela Duncan Edwards

·         X: A Biography of Malcolm X by Jessica Gunderson

·         Barack by Jonah Winter

Websites:

·         http://www.nickjr.com/printables/black-history-athletes.jhtml

·         http://www.kidzworld.com/article/3081-sports-moments-in-black-history

·         http://www.timeforkids.com/minisite/black-history-month

·         http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/history/spotlight_september.html

·         http://www.factmonster.com/black-history-month/

·         http://holidays.pppst.com/blackhistorymonth.html

Resources:

·         http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/MLK-Rainbow-Coloring-Page-for-Younger-Children

·         http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Black-History-Coloring-Pages-w-Biographies-Activities-71-slides

·         http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FreebieFamous-Folks-of-Black-History

·         http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Black-History-Mini-Bio-Sheet

Anything new in 2013?

We had a wonderful Christmas Break! We hope you did too! Now that the 2013 is upon us and we are all settled in it's time to get back to school!

Are you adding (or subtracting) anything mid-school year? (Please comment for me!)

We are!

• I am adding Mad About Jesus Laboratories to supplement with Science and Christian Teachings.
• I also re-did our Homeschool Schedule. My son is not too interested in History right now so I docked it down to 2 days per week. He loves his Geography so I threw it in but I still cannot seem to find a great time for it. We will see how this week goes.
• I also re-did the way in which I will be teaching Spelling/Writing/Grammar/Reading.
• I finally purchased an art curriculum.I went with See the Light. My son enjoyed the demo lesson online (+ the reviews were all great) so it is sure to be a hit in our home.
• PE! I finally incorporated some structured, scheduled physical education time. Both of my boys enjoy working out, soccer, and basketball. So we will get our feet wet with those on Mondays & Thursdays.
• Last but not least....I joined a local homeschool group! I am already please with the calendar and types of events we will attend with other homeschoolers.
• Over break, I created a simple Books of the Bible chart. Feel free to use, share, or print! 

                        Let's get ready to kick-start the second half of the year!

Finishing out the Year!

Greetings! Here is a brief overview over the final weeks leading up to Christmas Break! 

In Tot School

We are following Carisa’s Rock Star Curriculum and Erica’s LOTW Curriculum for Chipmunk. I mix and match a few things and modify for his interest, ability, and our schedule, of course, but I really so like the combination of what these homeschool moms have created. 

So without further ado, we have been learning:

• How to write the letters H & T
• Pre-writing Practice
• Letter Identification (we love letter mazes for this)
• Letter-Led Bible Verse (we love Steve Green)
• Writing the number 2 (and boy does it pose some challenges
• Size Sorting (we loved the LOTW Turtle sorting for  “T”)
• Cut and Paste (asking a 3 year old to cut, oh my!)

 

• Butterflies (we learned how to make a butterfly with fingers paint and hands)
• Build-a-Pattern (we loved the LOTW Hippo Building for “H”)

In First Grade

Morning:

• Calendar Notebook (Peanut is thinking of ways to make  11)

Math:

• Counting by 10s Review (we love number mazes for this,)
  Addition Mazes (trying to figure out sums of 7, 8, & 9)
  Chapter 2 Test (Peanut ACED it!)

Social Studies:

• 13 Colonies and how they began(matching using card print outs and yarn!)

Science:

• Life Cycles of a Frog & Butterfly

English:

• Adding “s” and “es” to nouns
  Compound words/nouns

Reading:

• We read out first play and acted it out!

Bible:

• Balaam & Balak (Peanut love the part about donkey and the angel!)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Addition Mazes

I love the letter and number mazes that I have found for my tot. However, my 1st grader has been a little disheartened that his brother has all the "fun learning." So, in an effort to make math even more fun, I created some addition mazes as well. The concept is the same, except instead of number and letter and identification, students have to determine which addition equation equal the given sums.

You can download the mazes here.

Enjoy,
MissMom

Growing Seeds

Last week, we are exploring living and non-living things in Science.

• We have learned:
• The difference between living and non-living
• What all living things needs to survive
• What is necessary for things to grow 

We ended the week with a cool and fun science experiment on sprouting seeds.
Peanut learned what main element is needed for seeds (and all other living things, for that matter) to grow.

We used Red Wheat Grass seeds for the experiment. With just water and 5 days, the seeds began to sprouted.

If you would like to complete this science experiment for yourself, please download it here.

I used this for my (advanced) 1st grader who is on 2nd grade curriculum, but I am sure most 1st-3rd graders would easily be comfortable completing this experiment.

Weekly Update

We are excited about Thanksgiving this week. We have "themed" out the entire week in most of our core lessons and especially in our extra-curricular activities. We are learning about Pilgrims, Indians, Pocahontas, giving thanks, harvesting, and much, much more. We have had some new packages arrive this week and we are eager to either get started or really delve in.

Take a look at some of the activities we have been working on this past week:

1st: Tot Trays! 
I have incorporated some alternative ways to keep this fun and exciting for my tot.

2nd: Geography!  
We have began our "Road Trip USA" curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. It has wonderful lessons and plans and my son is enjoying himself. We will be charting each State Insect/Bird/Animal as we explore the 50 states!

3rd: Countdown to Christmas! 
My boys enjoyed creating this calendar. We will be counting down our days and celebrating Advent along the way. The pack is called Everyday Emmanuel from What's in the Bible? Later this week, we will be stuffing our calendar pockets with fun-filled family things to do for the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas. We will keep you posted!

Helping Kids Write

My son loves to free-write, but formal writing is another animal! We have been practicing very hard on writing a personal story this week. Because my son is an aspiring artist, I thought of a way to make writing fun! We introduced colors and he thought is was so cool to begin writing on construction paper. I created a PDF as a guideline to help other teacher-moms who may have creative, unmotivated, or struggling young writers. My son was excited about his final draft and he has been talking about it all week!

Hopes this blesses someone, MissMom.

You can click here to view the PDF!

From brainstorming to final draft, Peanut mastered the writing of a personal story, 2nd grade!

What are we getting into?

We are all on track this morning and ready for learning.

This week we are adding Tot Trays for Chipmunk and Geography for Peanut.

We had a mini preview of tot trays yesterday and it was a hoot! He enjoyed counting finding his ABCs, and making the letters of his name. We are thankful to Carisa for the idea. You can visit her page here to learn more.

Today we will be adding cutting, painting, and 1-2-3 counting to his trays. He is working with a new distance learning curriculum as well and he his loving his two teachers. He has mastered all the letters in his name...now we just need to get them in the correct order! :-)

Peanut has a mini-preview of the 50 states as we take a year long road trip through our country! We begin with our nation's capital--D.C. He visited early this year and is excited to learn some new thing and read up on some of the landmarks he's seen. We chose the curriculum from Erica of Confessions, you can visit her site here.

Today we start unit 2 in all of our subjects. In math, we are learning place value, greater than/less than, expanded form, and rounding. Peanut is very excited about math! In Social Studies, we are planting and learning about farms, past and present.In English, we are working on how to use the thesaurus and dictionary.

I will check back in later today with updates of our day!

I have a class to attend this evening and all my "worthy" caretakers are unavailable, so off to class they go with me. This will be my first time taking them with me, so let's pray!

2012-2013 Student Interviews

I loved this idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. It was quite fun interviewing my guys and hearing what they had to say. Because we transitioned from school to homeschool, I am a bit late in the year with all of the homeschool tenants of education, so forgive me for posting this in November!

I have created a basic template for this, for those who want one. If you send me an email address I will send it to you as I am not sure it would post here without losing the formatting. Even with the template, you would still have to insert your own pics, obviously. I created mine a bit differently than Carisa, b/c I have no photography software skills and it was getting late and I wanted to feel like I had accomplished something by staying up 3 hours over my "bedtime." So, it's not perfect, but it's ours. If you are savvy with photography software, then yours will look better than mine. Oh, and I let my boys choose their color scheme, so forgive me if it does not "match." I like to let them be creative.

So here's to trying (and a little inspiration!).......