What most educational systems don’t account for is the vast discrepancy between students and their individual learning styles or ‘intelligences’. Some students are great at math or reading, while others are great learning a new sport or a new song. The key to a good education is allowing for all of the intelligences to be built on.

As a homeschooling parent/teacher, I found Dr. Mercola’s simple article about ‘multiple intelligences’ did a great job of outlining each learning style in an easy-to-understand format. In fact, I could easily recognize most of my strengths as well as my daughter’s, too.

But, the fascinating thing (to me anyway) was the link to an online test to determine your percentages of each intelligence. After I took the test and had fun dissecting my own chart, I had my 7 year old take it, too. (I wouldn’t suggest it for anyone much younger unless you’re ready to re-phrase most of the questions and even answer the questions for them.) What was amazing to me, was seeing how she answered differently than I would have for her. It turns out that she’s stronger in some areas than I’ve given her credit for, and vice versa.

Of course, the next step is for me to start recognizing her most prominent intelligences and allowing her the space to do more of her school work aligned with those strengths while not neglecting the weaker areas. Should make for an interesting next few months…

What about you? Have you heard of these intelligences before? If you have, is it now easier for you (or your student) to complete necessary tasks with this information in mind? Share your stories!

I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun this activity was and how easy it was to find all sorts of shapes just on our cul-de-sac. I even brought along my husband’s fancy camera so I could shoot a few with her and really enjoyed shooting completely different subjects than I normally do.

We took quite a few of the shots during our 15 minute walk. It would have been a MUCH longer walk if we hadn’t needed to get back quickly to eat lunch! Kate didn’t want to come back!

Kate took the first nine (she’s a great budding photographer – ever the artist!).
I’ve added a few of mine at the end that I thought were fun, too. (If you click on any one of them, you can see the full size image.)
Enjoy!

Will you be a “Shape Shooter”, too? What shapes can you and your little ones find on your walk?? Leave a comment below to tell us…

I’m looking forward to settling into a little different rhythm this year compared to last. I feel like this year is a little more planned out for me, which makes me so much more comfortable. We are going to be following AmblesideOnline’s curriculum for Year 1. For those who aren’t familiar with it, AmblesideOnline (AO) is a curriculum based on the educational approach developed by Charlotte Mason, an amazing educator from England in the late 1800s. (You can read more about her and her educational philosophy here.) Most of the books used in this curriculum are highly literary and are available for free online.

As we go through this next year, I’ll be posting our weekly lesson plans here on the site under the “Curriculum” category. Feel free to use whatever works for your student(s), drop the things that don’t, and add the things you feel are missing. And by all means, please leave me a comment that lets me know what your thoughts are – I’m still very much a novice here and look forward to hearing other educators’ input!

Ready or not, here we go!!!

I started this summer by digging in on the AmblesideOnline website since that is the main curriculum we will be following this year. I pulled up the booklist for Year 1 and printed it out. I looked through our own personal library and my parents’ library (my mom LOVES children’s books), talked with friends who have already gone through Year 1, visited several used book sales, and looked for online resources, including our local library system’s catalog. Every time I would come across one of the books on this year’s list, I would mark on my printout who owned that particular book.

Next, I printed out the Ambleside Year 1 schedule in the form of a spreadsheet I got from the Yahoo Group for AO Year 1. [Just an aside, if you haven't discovered all the great Groups on Yahoo, definitely make some time to join. They are a wonderful resource of files, ideas, links, and most importantly a network of other moms and dads doing the same thing you're doing - learning how to be a teacher! And by the way, there are tons of groups out there, not just related specifically to AO, but also to homeschooling in general and anything else you could probably think of, too!] I spent the next few hours of planning just mapping out which books were where, bookmarking the online books that we would be using, and making notes to myself to request the books I would need from the library on the weeks previous to when I would need to use them. I also outlined my own selections for Poetry, Artist Study, Composer Study and Nature Study for the first few weeks.

Next, I went back to fill in the blanks where AO allows for you to pick your own books. I chose the Bible Story book we’ll be using and filled in the first few weeks of readings. I made the temporary decision to table Foreign Language, Folk Songs, Hymns, Drill and Memory Work for now. I’m already feeling overwhelmed with the amount of content we already have to cover and know that as the year progresses and we both settle into this style of learning and our own routine, we’ll be glad to add new, fresh things to our diet.

And then came the hard work. I started researching phonics and math curriculums. It seems that this part alone could take hours just by itself. AO has very kindly listed a few suggestions of curriculums for each of these two pillar subjects, so I started with their list. I looked over a copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons from our library and realized that I need something that deals more with the rules of phonics as Kate (my 6 year old) is already reading quite well. However, if you’re just starting out with reading with your child, I highly recommend this book. It seems to be very straight forward, has great scripting for the parent to know EXACTLY what to say every step of the way, and has great documented results.

Now that I’m feeling a little more comfortable with the big picture of how everything will work for Term 1 (AO uses a 3 Term system of 12 weeks each instead of a typical public school semester), I’m ready to sketch out the details of how our individual days of each week will look and put things on our calendar. You can see what Year 1, Week 1 looks like here. This website will actually serve to document our progress and house my lesson plans for this year. (You can see our lesson plans from our Kindergarten year here.)

I’m sure that there are things that I’ve forgotten or left out, but I’m also allowing myself the grace to just START and we can fix things as we go. The perfectionist in me is kicking and screaming to have every detail in place, but the pragmatist is saying, “Come on, Kay. We’ve got to get going!”

So, what’s the system that has worked for you as you’ve planned your school year? Do you calendar everything on a dry erase board, write out detailed plans months in advance, or wing it as you go? Any tidbits of advice you’d like to share or have questions about? Feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

I love the twist of Kate reading Me Too Iguana (one of my sister’s childhood faves) to everyone. Of course, some of my fondest childhood memories include listening to that beautiful gray-haired woman read me bedtime stories – specifically from a big book of Uncle Wiggily’s Tales. I still get teary-eyed when my kiddos ask to pull down that special book off the shelf to read another adventure of the long-eared gentleman.

Just wanted to share a little moment of our life with you all today, and encourage you to go read one of your favorite books with your little ones.

Wondering what to do with your elementary age kiddos over the summer? Have a Mac at home that they’re wanting to learn more about? Apple stores are offering summer camps where your kids can learn all about stuff to do on a Mac. Here’s what they have to say:

Your kids could talk about what they did this summer—or just press Play. At Apple Camp, kids ages 8-12 learn how to do cool stuff on a Mac: make a movie, show off photos like a pro, write and record a song, or create a multimedia presentation. You can sign up for as many three-hour workshops as you like. But space is limited, so do it soon. Then get ready for an adventure.

Interested? Check out Apple’s Summer Camp page here.

So I decided to share it with you all here. Enjoy!

Art begs you to notice it.

Why? Because art is God’s way of saying hello.
So pay attention to poetry.
Pay attention to music.
Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays.
Don’t let all this go unnoticed.

Your world is shouting out to you,
revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself.
Listen carefully.
Love art, the way art loves Life.

~Neale Donald Walsch

“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”

For Mother’s Day we have a tradition of planting in our garden in the back yard. The kids help pick out what we want to plant while we’re at the nursery, then enjoy digging holes in the garden to plant their favorites.

Since Kate and I are studying butterflies for her lapbook (and since we both like butterflies a lot), we decided to plant some milkweed to attract Monarchs. Monarch butterflies like to not only sip the nectar from the flowers of these plants, but they also like to lay their eggs on the leaves. The baby caterpillars then eat the leaves as they grow, turn into chrysalises, and then eventually finish the life cycle to become an adult Monarch butterfly.

Within only an hour of planting our milkweed in the back yard, we spotted a Monarch butterfly flitting around the plants over and over for a good 10-15 minutes. Little did we know that it was a she and she was actually laying her eggs! Just a few days after planting is when we noticed the eggs on the undersides of the leaves and then a couple of days later we were already noticing TINY green caterpillars starting to gnaw holes in the leaves.

Today, only one week after planting, we saw a much larger yellow/white striped caterpillar on the underside of one of the leaves.

Needless to say, we are all very excited to get the opportunity to watch the life cycle of a butterfly in our own backyard!! And I just had to share it with you all! I’ll keep you posted as our caterpillars grow larger and turn into chrysalises. We can hardly wait!