Louisa had a great time building a cozy country cottage in miniature! All you need is cardboard, glue, acrylic craft paint and some tissue paper for flowers to bloom around your door! This doesn’t have to be a female craft. Boys can make a fire station (complete with second floor fire-pole) or a space station . . .whatever you can imagine . . .
Hot . . . Cold
Wet . . . Dry
New . . . Old
Open . . . Shut
Children can grasp the idea of opposites at a young age. If you take advantage of this concept when teaching math, it cuts your work in half!
Instead of teaching subtraction, teach “opposite addition”. If you know that 3 + 5 = 8, then you can do the opposite. When you see this problem: 8 – 5 =___, just make it into a backwards addition problem. Start at the opposite end (the back) and add this way: what number plus 5 equals 8 ?
Midsummer: Growing, growing!
I thought you might enjoy seeing how our bean tepee turned out! I think I got overly excited on this project, because every few days I would go out to check if the seedlings had come up yet, and not seeing much, I would plant many more seeds. I did that several times, and then everything sprouted up and overwhelmed us! How fun!
Summer time—the academic pressure is off! Whew! Now some really important learning can happen: creativity! From a monetary standpoint, the value of a creative mind is priceless. Every businessman and inventor yearns for more of this precious element! It is not something that can really be taught in school, either—but you can foster creativity in your home.
Here are some ideas to feed your family’s creativity:
My son Ammon (15)
Louisa and Mark
Here is an interesting, easy game to help your young ones begin identifying the phonic sounds. All of my children have started their adventure of learning to read with this little game, beginning as early as they are eager to learn their letter sounds (usually 4 years old). They beg for this game over and over.
My 3 youngest: Louisa, Ammon and Emily
Spelling correctly is just as important as doing your hair!
How’s that?
Well, it makes quite a first impression, whether on a job application or in a love letter.
Question:Our state requires all homeschoolers to test each year. My daughter scored well for reading, spelling and language arts but not so well on her math. On abstract thinking and estimation, she scored under 1 percent! Math has been really difficult for her—she has a hard time grasping the concept. She is a facts learner. 5 x 5 = 25—that is the fact but when I have her work a problem like 55 x 5, she just sits and stares at the paper. Unless I am right there with her going over step-by-step, she cannot do the problem. She says things to me like . . . “too hard”, “don’t know what you’re even talking about!”. I currently use ABEKA math (have for years) but am wondering if Singapore Math would be better. What do you recommend? [Read more…]
Some children are stumped by long division. They can be progressing along just fine, learning their times tables and doing well on their math lessons, when suddenly long division enters the picture and math becomes a tearful subject. When I taught Emily (9) how to do long division, we encountered some problems. In explaining it to her, I realized that I was using an old tried-and-true, failproof method that I’d learned somewhere that seems to help every child along in learning long division. Here it is, just in case you ever need it!
Summer and company go together like bread and butter. Consider what a visit from this special guest would be like! It makes me want to re-evaluate everything I say and do in light of His company, and be far better than I am.
