My Favorite Homeschooling Resource

bunny wearing swag

I don't remember when I first discovered the BrainPOP website, but over the years it has become my favorite source of learning for my boys. The movies cover a huge variety of topics, are entertaining, and above all, educational. The creators of the content are even happy to accept input from their fans as we learned when JT discovered an error in one of their movies.

When I begin to put together outlines for each science unit, I always check to see what kinds of movies and activities I can find on BrainPOP for that specific subject. For example, when I started the planning for our astronomy unit, I looked under the space tab and found this collection of topics. Many of these fit right in with the outline I had already designed. Each movie also has other associated content. The FYI section has pages with further reading on the movie topic, like this one for the Mars movie. I can also print out activity sheets and quizzes to go along with what they are studying.

teacher's answer key

In addition, I can log in to the BrainPOP educator's site to print out answer keys for many of the activities. This feature is very handy when we are covering topics outside of my knowledge base. The educator pages also have other teacher created content, suggestions for using the movies, and lesson plans arranged by subject.

The activity sheet on the left came from a recent lesson on stars. That week we watched a lecture from the Great Courses DVD Our Night Sky, read a chapter from Our Universe by Debbie and Richard Lawrence, watched the BrainPOP movie Life Cycle of Stars, followed by this activity sheet, and finally read a chapter from Janice VanCleave's Constellations for Every Kid. I like being able to spread our learning across multiple formats to keep it interesting.

Science is the topic I seem to use BrainPOP for most often, but I also find myself using it for geography, history, art, music, math, and even grammar. I really like the activity sheets I found in the grammar section and hope they will help EM with some of the difficulties he has when it comes to that subject. Grammar can be very dry, especially for such a kinesthetic learner. Fun videos can make it a little easier to swallow.

I know there are plenty of free resources out there on the web that I could use instead of BrainPOP. But I really feel like the quality of the content makes it worthwhile for me. All of the free help on the educator's site allows me to tie it all together into a great learning experience.

And Tim and Moby crack me up while teaching me, not just my boys.

This was not a paid review. I did not receive anything from BrainPOP for writing this post. I just love the site and want to share that with other homeschoolers.

When Mom is Occupied

Runewars

My husband's cholecystectomy and recovery has kept me busy for the last week. I decided not to take the week off from schooling because I knew it would be harder to get back into things the following week if we just dropped everything. I also knew that a full week of schooling was not going to happen because I just couldn't focus enough to plan and carry out my part of the deal. On top of that, I knew the boys were stressed out by the whole ordeal so I figured they might need some time to unwind.

We started the week off by finishing the things that we had to put aside last week when our schedule was interrupted by appointments and trips to the hospital. Tuesday we had our bi-weekly book club meeting, so that filled most of our day. For the remainder of the week I only assigned math, reading, American history, and art. Our American history studies have been focused on the industrial revolution. Yesterday we finished reading Samuel Slater's Mill and the Industrial Revolution. Then I found this PBS documentary called Mill Times with David Macaulay that we watched today.

nothing like Monopoly

Obviously, that short list of work has not kept the boys busy all week. What they have been spending a lot of their free time doing is playing board games with their dad. Since my husband has not been able to work and can't move around much, board games have been a good activity for him. This game of Runewars has been set up for three days on the library table. They play a little each day when they finish their school work. I am not a big gamer like the rest of my family, so I usually use the time they are playing to get other things done around the house.

Ahoy, mateys!

Tonight, my daughter and her husband came over for dinner. After we cleared the table, they all set up Merchants and Marauders. EM and I did not play, but JT did play with my husband, daughter, and son-in-law. During a quick break to take his shower, JT was explaining to me how the chances of him getting a specific action could be calculated using a linear inequality. I was very excited to hear him say that since he's been working on inequalities for math this week and was struggling to understand their application. Interestingly, my algebra class on Coursera is also covering inequalities right now, so I was just as happy to see real life application.

Next week I hope to get back to a full schedule. Having the flexibility to slow down and take life as it came this week was a real blessing for our family. There are few times I appreciate our homeschooling lifestyle more than when we are dealing with a crisis. And now I'd like to appreciate it a little less with no new crises this year. 

We Interrupt This Homeschooling Life...

surgery instructions

...for a little laparoscopic surgery.

The gallbladder is an interesting organ. It doesn't really do much on its own. It's more of a storage location for the work of the liver. The liver makes bile, dumps it into the gallbladder, which in turn, squeezes it into the first section of the intestines, called the duodenum. But sometimes the gallbladder rebels. Sometimes it gets angry.

This week my husband's gallbladder got very angry, so it was decided gallbladder temper tantrums would no longer be tolerated. Hence our side trip to learn more about the digestive tract and all about a procedure called laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

They really are the best!

First step, dig out Mom's all-time favorite book of anatomical charts. Don't all moms have this book as their favorite? No? Strange...
I have been just a little extremely stressed out by this whole process. I am a control freak; as I may have mentioned one or two or a thousand times in the past. Control freaks do NOT like unplanned medical issues. One of my many ways of trying to cope with things like this is through knowledge. Since I needed to know all about what was going on I thought I might as well take the boys along for the ride. Before explaining why their Dad's gallbladder needed to go, we needed to explain what it usually does, what it was doing wrong, and why it really isn't necessary for survival.

small but temperamental

We showed the boys this chart so they could see exactly where the gallbladder is located. We talked about what it does. We also explained that the current problem was that their Dad's gallbladder had stones, made of cholesterol, that had formed at some point in his life. We don't know for sure how long they have been there, but statistics show that about 20 million Americans have them. Not all of these stones cause problems for the people who have them. But when they do, watch out. The hard stones cause pain when the gallbladder contracts to squeeze the bile into the duct. Sometimes the gallbladder walls thicken and get infected. Sometimes stones get stuck in the ducts. Fortunately, it looks like our situation has not come from a stone trapped in the duct. More than likely the passing of a few stones caused the problem.

not drawn to scale

After we met with the surgeon, my husband drew this picture to show the boys what the surgeon was going to do. If you are laughing at the simple picture here, believe me, it looks almost identical to the one the surgeon drew for us in his office. We explained how if the gallbladder is removed, the liver continues to produce bile, but instead of being stored it just goes directly into the intestines. Then we watched an instructional video on our hospital's website about how doctors perform laparoscopic cholecystectomies. I also learned that they are sometimes called lap chole, which is a whole lot easier to say than that tongue twister!

Life offers us many opportunities for spontaneous learning. I am glad that we have access to such a wealth of knowledge online. It's good to know we can take these experiences and run with it when necessary.

But next time, I'd prefer that it be something a little more mundane, like mold identification or maybe word etymology. No more anatomy lessons needed in the near future, thank you.

Nature Comes Calling

Grima the Second

This is a snake.
On my carpet.
This was the second time I found a snake on the floor in one day.

This morning, as I was walking downstairs I see a snake shaped thing on the floor in the library. I assume it's one of the boys' rubber snakes. As I get a bit closer, I realize they don't have any that are quite so wiggly...and long...and alive. Luckily, I am not afraid of snakes so it wasn't as big of a deal for me as it would have been if something like a large spider were sitting in the middle of the floor. Then I might have dropped my coffee and run screaming back up the stairs. Instead, we found a container to pop him in and tried to decide what to do. As it is currently around 30 degrees Fahrenheit most days, it didn't seem like putting the poor thing outside would be an option.

I made a phone call to the park naturalist we know from some homeschooling events. She told me he had probably been hibernating in our walls and came out when we had a warmer spell the last couple of days. I already knew that the snake was a northern ring neck since the snake from our critter zoo was the same species. I also still had our terrarium in the garage from our last adventure in snake containment. While all of this planning was going on our visitor was waiting in a plastic container on my desk in the office. When I got off the phone and brought the terrarium into the classroom, I found the snake on the floor. It had escaped from the storage container. The lid was the snap-on type, but not the exact fit for that particular container. I never thought it could get out of there AND off the desk.

So, we scooped it up again and popped it into the terrarium. I made absolute certain there will be no more escapes. I took a pipe cleaner and tested all along the edge of the lid to be sure there isn't even a tiny space for him to slip through and terrorize the house. The boys named him Grima in honor of the first ring-neck who was also Grima. Our first Grima was released back into the wild in the fall of 2011. There was a bit of debate over whether this was in fact the same Grima. Ring necks don't do all that well in captivity, so we only plan to keep him until he can be released in April when the weather is right.

For now, I guess I'll be stocking up on red worms and keeping my eyes open for any more surprise guests this winter.

Where on Earth?

new book

Over our holiday break, I made a few revisions to our routine. One place where I made a change was with our geography study.  Last year, and for the first half of this school year, we have been doing one geography lesson a week.  This would include either work in the Maps, Globes and Graphs workbooks published by Steck Vaughn or our passport program we started last year. I found that one day a week didn't allow for great retention of new knowledge. I decided to switch geography over to the same model of study we use for other 'minor' subjects.  We will now be spending two to three days a week of more in depth study over a period of five or six weeks.  We already cover music, civics, and health in the same way.

Conveniently enough, there are five major themes in geography, so that works well with my plan of a five week unit.  Each week we will focus on a different theme using resources such as BrainPOP, our Usborne Geography Encyclopedia, and other online learning tools. In addition, I purchased a new book for our library, Challenging World Geography by Richard Rayburn. The book is split up into sections for each of the seven* continents. We decided to start with North America since our home happens to be located on that landmass. This new workbook is really helping the boys to learn how to use tools like atlases and search engines to find answers in the activities.  Yesterday they each had a worksheet that gave them a list of mountains of North America.  They had to find the location and height of each, arrange them in order from the tallest down, and then create a bar graph comparing the five tallest. Today they needed to locate notable bodies of water of North America.  We also watched a BrainPOP video about climate types and did the corresponding printable quiz.

I find that splitting subjects out into these smaller units really helps, not only for the boys' focus, but for my planning.  When I allow myself to spread a subject too thin, I don't always spend the time working out the details.  Concentrating on one thing for a few weeks at a time keeps the subject matter focused and keeps it from becoming tedious.

When we have completed the geography unit, we will only have our health unit left before our school year wraps up for the summer.  It's freezing here tonight, with an expected low of 2°F. It's hard for me to believe that summer is just around the corner when I feel that frigid wind blowing, but I know it won't be long before I'm wishing the heat away again.


*There was some debate in our household over whether or not there are seven continents.  We found C.G.P Grey's video, What are Continents? to be an amusing explanation and are still not sure what we believe.

Variation on a Book Club

Warrior Cats

A few months ago, while chatting with a fellow homeschooling mom and the children's librarian after an event, the topic of book clubs came up.  The other mom was sharing experiences her children had at recent book club meetings.  Many times the books were not of interest to her kids or it was obvious that others had not read them and couldn't contribute to discussions.  We wanted to look at starting our own book club, but finding the right book would be tricky.  Our pool of children would be small and span a wide group of ages.   

And then I threw out an idea,  "Why do they all have to read the same book?  Why can't we just allow each child to read what they want to read and then share with the group?" 

Therefore sealing my doom to start a new book club based on this idea.

In all honesty, this project has been an easy one with much support from those involved.  The librarian made the children's section of the library available to us an hour before opening on the days we will be meeting.  She also suggested that we bring lunches and have time to just hang out after our discussions.  I found a book in  my pile of resources, The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists with a section titled, "Book Report Alternatives".  This is a list of 50 ideas for sharing a book with others, including examples like number 25, compare the movie and book versions of the same story, or number 38, paint a mural that shows the key incidents in the story.  I shared this idea list with the parents that planned to attend.  Our local homeschooling parents have a Meetup group, so I posted the event on there. The most difficult part of the project came next.

I had to get the boys motivated to work on their presentations.

EM chose the final book in the first series of the Warrior Cats books, The Darkest Hour,  as his book for the meeting.  I told him it might be a good idea to just share about the world of the Warrior Cats, instead of focusing on the plot of the book he chose.  I knew it would be difficult not to give any spoilers to the story if he went into very much detail about that book.  He sat down with a couple of index cards and made his notes.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly he took on this task.

book club poster

 JT chose the book Stowaway by Karen Hesse.  This story is historical fiction about a young man who stows away on James Cook's first voyage on the Endeavour.  JT made a poster showing the route of the journey and also historical maps from before the trip to show how maps changed after these exploratory journeys.

The day of the book club meeting we packed our lunches and book projects and headed off to the library.  The only other family to show up for the first meeting was the mom from the original discussion.  I had high hopes that more would take part, but I have learned not to expect too much when starting something new.  I was just happy that we had enough kids to have a meeting.

In all, there were five participants from age 9 to 14.  Everyone shared a book they were either currently reading or had recently finished.  Several wonderful discussions were sparked by the speakers.  Warrior Cats turned out to be a favorite of a few.  Two shared books that were based on video game worlds and that led to much discussion.  The librarian helped to facilitate when the speakers were unsure of what they wanted to say.  When all had shared their books, we broke out our lunches and kept the discussion going.

We ended up staying at the library for almost four hours that day.  My boys and another participant logged on to the library computers while I chatted with the adults.  Hopefully next time we will have a larger crowd to share the fun.

In the end, my homeschooling mindset of one size does NOT fit all, worked well with the book club.  Not everyone is going to want to read the same book...and they shouldn't HAVE to in order to participate in a book club. It's already difficult enough to get most kids to sit down and read a book when they have so many other options for entertainment. Hopefully, the book club discussions will bring new books to their attention, allowing them to expand their reading options.

Reading has always been one of my absolute favorite things to do.  I want my boys to share in that joy.  Nothing beats getting immersed in the world of a book. 

And that adventure should never be turned into a chore.

Out With the Old, In With the New

new composition books

Even though my boys kept their computer use to a minimum during the holiday break, I decided we should have a little laid-back schooling this week to keep the extended vacation time from turning into a week of slug-like activity.

Because I wanted to continue my planning work during this week, I came up with a list that allowed the boys to work independently most of the time.  I put daily assignments on separate index cards for each subject for each boy.  As they completed their work they placed the cards into the work basket.  Most of the days, they worked quickly without my help.  I limited the subjects to reading, math, computer programming, book club project, and educational videos.  I chose most of the videos for the week with each boy being allowed to make one selection.  They also spent time playing outside in the snow, visiting the library, trying out new board games they received for Christmas, and reading their new books.

While they were occupied with learning, I started some planning for the remainder of our school year.  I picked up a few new books over the summer that I haven't incorporated into our schedule yet.  Don and Jenny Killgallon's books Sentence Composing for Elementary School and Sentence Composing for Middle School are looking like a good alternative to a more traditional method of teaching composition, especially for JT.  I am also considering using Dandy Lion's Advancing Writing Skills with JT.  As always, I have too many good choices and am struggling to choose the best one.

a few math choices

This lightly scheduled week also allowed me to test out a few new ideas with the boys.  EM just finished Singapore Math 4A prior to our break.  Before I start him on 4B for the remainder of the year, I wanted to see what he could do with Henry Borenson's Hands-On Equations Learning System.  He flew through the first several lessons, immediately understanding the concepts.  I think I will be incorporating this product into his learning.  I also pulled out a fun logic book by Mindware, Sequencers, and found that JT excels with this kind of thinking, while EM needs more help.  JT also did a free trial on ALEKS math and decided he would like to use it for the rest of his pre-algebra studies.  I will also be opening an ALEKS account for myself.   I signed up for an algebra class with Coursera as a review for my old skills before JT starts it next year.  The professor highly recommends that all students have an ALEKS account to use for the work.  So now we'll both be using ALEKS math.

technology to conquer

My final project this week will involve learning how to use my dad's telescope for our astronomy unit.  It is a Meade Polaris 114DS.  Once I know how to use it, we will be able to link it up to a screen and stargaze from inside the house!  The rest of the unit is coming together fairly well.  This will be the first science unit where the boys will be working most of the time on separate materials according to their ability level.  I have the Our Night Sky lectures DVD from The Great Courses for JT.  EM will work through a fifth grade astronomy unit.  Both will use Janice VanCleave's Constellations book.  Plus, both will put the telescope to good use throughout the rest of the school year.

I feel like things are really coming together for the upcoming months.  It's hard to believe we are already half-way through this school year.  As always, time flies when you are having fun!