Sharing time

Because every post needs a picture.

I know, I know, enough already. Why don't I just admit defeat and stick my kids on the bus? Well, first-of-all, I am NOT (not even in the least bit) a professional educator. BUT I am a MOM and, as such, have the intuition of knowing the needs of my kids and myself. So when I see a need for improvement, I make adjustments.

Have you ever bought a product that worked okay and then someone told of a similar product that worked even better? For example, I used to clean the bathtub with a soap scum spray and washcloth. It did okay, but took a lot of elbow grease and time. Then, a friend told me about Lysol Bathroom cleaner and Magic Erasers. I decided to give them a try. Oh. My. Gosh. Crazy difference! The bathtub was clean in a matter of minutes and my fingers still had feeling left in them! Now, I'll admit, I've made a few adjustments to the product choices- I now buy the Great Value Bathroom Cleaner because it's cheaper and works just as well, and I found a reusable scrub brush with a long handle that does a great job.

You can relate, right?

So goes my choices in home-school curriculum. I honestly can't remember what we were using a month ago, I'm embarrassed to say. The last couple of weeks we used Lesson Pathways. I liked how the lessons were divided up by weeks and subjects, but I didn't like that the links took you all over the web and some didn't work. While it is a good website, I decided to not use it so exclusively.

I researched online public schools and even began the enrollment process. It didn't take long for me to realize that submitting reports to the state about how long my kids were "in school" and taking them to Tyler for testing was going to be more rigorous than I could handle. So I dropped it.

I'm sure you're curious about what has caught my attention... it's called Education Place from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Although we do not have the textbooks, the kids are able to learn concepts based on subjects and units within the subjects, and practice what they learn. The subjects are Reading/English, Spelling/Vocabulary, Math, Science and Social Studies.

The website is interactive and has excellent lessons. We don't have a lot of the books they suggest for reading, but I've found some of them on YouTube. I signed up for the Book It! Program and received the certificates for the kids to go to Pizza Hut after reading so many books. Within the Reading subject, there is a link to Book Adventure. I've created accounts for the kids so they can take quizzes on the books they read. I like that I am able to control the settings for the quizzes. For example, I can adjust the number of chances they get to pass the quiz, how long they have to complete it, and the percentage they must have correct in order to pass. I've set the older ones to get 2 chances and make at least an 80%, but no timer. The younger girls get 3 chances and have to make 80% as well.

This is another website we love: Storyline Online, from the Screen Actors Guild Foundation (SAG). "A Bad Case of the Stripes" is read by Sean Astin and is especially enjoyable! In case you couldn't tell or haven't noticed, we are big fans of Lord of the Rings and both Sean Astin and Elijah Wood read stories on this site and we love them!

October 14, 2011

Johnny's education is a different story altogether. He is enrolled in online classes for his Bachelor's of Science in Nursing, or BSN, at the University of Texas at Arlington. He's taking 2 8-week courses: English and History. So far he is doing excellent! I'm so proud of him. I've been able to help him with the heavy workload of reading and assignments and have seen how articulate he has become! He really is a good writer! He is better at English than I am, and I thought I was pretty good. Haha! It turns out, I'm good at reading and spelling and he is better with grammar and punctuation. So we make a good team.

Oh- that reminds me. I'm supposed to be in the other room helping him right now. We're trying to finish his History assignments today so we can participate in the Veteran's Day festivities this weekend for our ward. Gotta run!