Teaching Typing to your younger children?

 

We previewed two typing programs and this is our review.

Talking Typing Teacher

It had cute hands with colored dots for showing you what letter to type with what finger, 

...we found it slow moving and too easy for even a 9 year old. 

This is a typing curriculum that I chose to help my student to type properly. It was not a good choice as we found it to be extremely boring. It talks to you, but that was not enough. The Graphics were, to put it mild, lame! You can probably tell by looking at the screen that it really has no excitement or appeal to encourage a child, teen or adult to try it than the cover of the disc box. 


I friend's little girl was over and mentioned a typing program she has used by Mavis Beacon. Being the computer savvy Teacher Mom I 'Goggled it' and found the following site!

 http://download.digitaltrends.com/tux-typing.php

Free Download Now!
Music to my ears!

This program loaded easily; although I had to decline or dismiss several ads before it installed itself in my computer it placed its adorable penguin on my desktop screen and all I had to do was click! 

Tux Typing is the beginning typing program made for kids, but as an adult I found it fun to type as fast as I can and find out how many errors and what my wpm is while having the fun of blasting asteroids and saving the cities from destruction!

Tux has as I mentioned a menu with lessons, games, quiz type things to teach you how to hold your hands, what to type with what, as well as caps and lower case words. You can type words or phrases and there is even an option to type your own words! We thought it would be fun to enter weekly spelling words and learn to type with them as you practice spelling them. I would definitely recommend this program over the "Talking Typing Teacher" by Cosmi.  Not only for the graphics which were much better or "awesome" as my little friend said; but it loaded so quickly and the TTT took two days to get loaded and installed. 

Also, you can load this to what ever computer you have, even if you have Win.7 or Mac! Fantastic ! 

Oh! I did not tell you the coolest thing yet; there are many more levels of free downloads on the site! You can actually download one for Mom or Dad, teens, high school and college students to improve their speed and accuracy. I will be diving into this program on a regular basis! 

If I find anything else that is fun I will post it here on my Home School section of TeresaWilson.com. 

Planning School Space for Better Work

I don't know about you but I always seem to work better if I can get what I need when I need it. It is the same with school work, or house work, or even writing. If I do not have my pen with me I loose a ton of good words and rarely get them back.  This article is about just that. I will post a beginning, or before picture here and then as I work the space I will give you the after photo. I am not promising it will be perfect but at least it will show the progress of organizng space for home schooling. 

 This is my main trouble space for school items  you can see I have the papers stored an unused printer, Computer housing, and a few odds and ends along with computer discs. I need organization fast!  

My plan is to pull it all off and get some sort of bins, or what not to make things look good even when we are doing our school work so that we can get what we need as we need it. Under the photo frame there is a desk that folds down and my son keeps his school work there when not in use. 

Off to shop! I am making a list and checking it twice, maybe three times... or four? To be sure that I get only what I can use to make things stay in good condition and to gain easy access. 

New Year and a New outlook!

Hello Fellow Home Schooling families, 


Look out because here comes 2012! I can't believe we are already nearly half way through the 9th grade! 


John has been plugging along really well, aside from a few problems with schedules and stress over too much work, we have done a great job with our first half of the year thus far. 
We started our year with both Constitution and History and Geography that deals with the same time period.
After the first quarter we added more practices with drama and less baseball so the memorizing of facts and time periods became a bit much for us to keep up with. We took a look at the Constitution course and realized that it is a 1 Semester class.  Thank God! So we cut that class from this quarter and will add it in either third or fourth quarter to finish up the rest of it when we are not learning the same things.In other words; when we get to the geography we will finish the constitution which I have found out is actually a Senior course level, and so not really needed yet this year. My Freshman is holding his own in Geometry with MUS being a great way to learn for my son. He listens to the lessons and does the first practice lesson in each course on Mondays, then if he gets and A he can take the test either Tuesday or Wednesday then on good weeks we continue to the next lesson, if he gets a few wrong we continue with our lesson on the rest of the week until he 'gets it' and the next practice sheet shows us when that really happens. The test I allow him three retakes to pass; thus far we have not had to use it except on the Middle Unit Test  which he took twice.


With all of the driving I have had to do this year to get people to work and to classes on time my hands on time has often been rushed. So this January I will begin letting people take public transportation more often and focusing more on the English papers ds is missing and to a little more hands on with his Science as well. 
SOS has been a blessing for Science, the projects so far we have watched on videos or discussed what happened when older brother or sister did this project years ago. 
I would really like to get my hands dirty with some more real experiments this month though! 


Do you have a favorite Science experiment?  If so feel free to post a comment! 
We get an early spring in February and so I like to do planting and such then, but with some of the early years it seemed like planting projects fell in the beginning of the science books.  
I am enjoying the way SOS has it set up this year. John started with a dab of Chemistry pretty much but has since moved on to his more enjoyable Ecology and dirt rocks and other elements of the earth we live in. I believe this year, 9th grade, will end up with a dab of biology getting him ready for the three years of Science ahead of him; Biology, Chemistry and Physics.  Can't wait for Physics but we must follow our plan to get the right lessons down. 
I like that we have had some studies with our local home school group  on Biology already because we can refer to some of that information when we get there. 


My choices for next year have begun! I am looking at Simple Schooling Biology, and possibly their US History as well, I am confident that it will be what we need, my only concern if if we have internet access where we will do our schooling. 
Plans are in place, but things have to be set in motion. 
Just like any Home School we plan way ahead, change up a few hundred times then make the set plan to do what is best for our students. 


So until then we will continue with; Bible Life Pak 9th Grade ( Survey of the Word -this is very intense! John has done a lot of digging in the Word to find answers to questions and to understand the written lessons). 
English Life Pak with reading on the side - The City of Ember and the rest of the Books of Ember series is what we are in right now. I plan to have him do some projects on the power point to go with his book reports. 
History- Life Pak 9 is becoming easy to do without the Constitution Course bogging us down. 
SOS Spanish-- going right along with this on course, he is learning to speak a few things and catches words when we are out and about that he knows. 
SOS Science 9 - see above. 
And MUS Geometry- also see above. 


We will add in PE with Baseball in February even though it seems we get way more hours a week than needed in this sport we are doing training on our own as a filler of PE time until then.  


electives will be computer graphics and communication 


This is it for now! 
Be blessed until next time!

In His Word-11-14-11

In His Word- 11-14-11

I am as bad as the Israelites! From day to day I can change my attitudes from selfless servitude to complete selfishness, forget that; from day to day from moment to moment I can change how I feel! I am a woman after all. I am human too, but what about all that talk in the Word of God that tells me to be more like Him? What about that glory to glory change? How can I be sure my days are started correctly? What can I do to start out on the right track each morning?

I know, I can get in His Word, but what else?

I can get in His face!

Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near. Let the wicked change their ways and banish the very thought of doing wrong. Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for he will forgive generously.

Isaiah 55:6-7

I will praise you in the great assembly. I will fulfill my vows in the presence of those who worship you. The poor will eat and be satisfied.
All who seek the Lord will praise him. Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy. The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to him. All the families of the nations will bow down before him.

Psalm 22:25-27

From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

Acts 17:26-28

Search for the Lord and for his strength; continually seek him.

Psalm 105:4

It is through His strength that I can make the attitudes stay good instead of bad. It is the seeking Him early in my mornings that change my entire outlook on the day. I was noticing yesterday as I analyzed why I am this fickle Mom lately. I looked at what caused it and remarked to someone that if I start my day with my good morning Lord time, I am less apt to get grumbles about my chores in the morning. I was trying to complete the chores the night before bed but then I was not getting to bed, or the family movies were getting in my way. If I got up they would pause the show, or ask what I was doing so I just gave up on that. Now I do the minimum before bed and the rest in the mornings. I work better in the mornings and see clearly what there is to do. So why do I get so cantankerous?

I noticed that I usually do if I start my chores before my T.A.W.G. time! Time Alone With God is essential to our existence in the world today. I need to take that time to focus my praise, my thoughts and directions for the day on what the Lord has for me. I need to thank Him for the small things so that I can walk through the big things with His hand in mine.

If I remember that my Lord is with me in all that I do, when I seek His face in the mornings my whole day goes better.

I don’t mean that it has less hurdles to jump over but I can clear them much easier and even if I trip on them ( this is not fun) and they come flapping down on top of me I can get up much easier if I am focused on Him.

Think of it as a track runner who runs the hurdles. They train for months before the season starts conditioning their bodies to be able to leap as they are running. This is not as easy as it looks when you watch a race. The timing has to be precise and the steps must be right in place or they really will catch that back foot on the hurdle and pull it down on top of themselves. This can be horrible or it can be one of those things that you get back up and finish the race depending on the conditioning of the runner, and how badly they fall.

If the runner is strong and has done the proper training he will pick himself up that much easier than if he just was learning the hurdles.

A conditioned athlete does not fall as often as a person who just jumped into the sport without being prepared.

In our lives we must be prepared each day. We do our exercises to get our physical bodies in shape but what about our spiritual bodies? Do we condition ourselves; prepare our selves for the day? Do we feed ourselves a spiritual smoothie? Or do we settle for the fat of the world and have a spiritual donut. The spiritual donut is a message that feels good going down. It is sweet and tasteful to the ears but when it gets to the body it does nothing but tire you out.

A spiritual smoothie is full of nutrition, does not always taste as good as you would like but it gives your body strength and energy to push on through the hurdles of the day.

It’s the same with our walk with Christ. If we condition ourselves to pray each day, and read the Word for the spiritual smoothie, then we will have the strength and endurance to keep a good outlook no matter what the enemy throws at us. Even if we start to falter we will make it through and be able to stand up again after we fall.

When life throws hurdles in your way you have to be able to get back up and again know that the Lord is on your side. You have to be able to trust Him to be there no matter what you do, or what someone does to you. When you seek His face daily those things will be fewer and further between. The doubts you face when you fall and have to get back up will be fewer and farther between. The anger you feel when you get a hurdle tossed on top of you because you did not lift that back leg high enough, will be fewer and farther between. Life will go on, but you will find focus and direction when you start your day seeking His face.

Dear Heavenly Father, help us to seek You each morning as we wake up. Help us to follow after You and do what You would have us do each day. Give us the strength and endurance to do what Your Word tells us to do, in Jesus name, amen. 

Suggested reading: Psalm 105:1-45, Hebrews 11:1-39, Psalm 22: 1-31.

***If for any reason you choose ever not to receive this devotion again please remember that all it takes is replying with a "Please remove me from this list." I do ask that if there is a problem with anything I write for you to feel free to write me back and let me know what the problem was, that we might go over it together and seek the truth in love.

In His love,

Teresa M. Wilson

www.teresawilson.com

In His Word-11-14-11

---

Seek and you will find....

You have to get in the Word!

Attitude is everything! 

Home School High School ~One Month In

High School. Independent study time! YEAH! I can do this! Easy as pie, hand out the work now! Go for it! 

I thought it would be a breeze, set up the lessons get the work planned out and get down to work! 
I did not look at the work as a problem, as long as it was school work what would the problem be? 
Problem: You have to read the work to find the answers. 


Answer: Read the work.  
Problem: Teenager does not want to do the reading in order to find the answer, teen wants to know it all! 
Sure we can laugh at the jokes about the teen who knew it all from the time they turned 13 until the day when they turned 21 and realized that Mom and Dad actually knew what they were talking about. Or maybe the one that tells a teen to solve the worlds problems while they still know it all? 
When it comes down to it we have to study to show ourselves approved, either by the Lord via the Word and Truth, or by the teacher/parent grading our work. Whatever we do in life we have to study to learn how to do it. 


A young man went to work at a new job recently and found there was a lot of things to learn about. I was amazed when he told me he enjoyed being taught how to do things that his last job had just assumed he knew how to do and set him to task. 
Though he did well at the job prior to this one he found it to be tiring and frustrating at times. The new job how ever had a ton of more things to learn about and he found it exhilarating, and even enjoyable to learn and work at it!
So what is the lesson we can learn from this? We need to be taught in the correct way to do things in order to enjoy doing them the correct way. 
We as Home School High School teachers have taken on a huge challenge but if we do not teach them in the correct way, whether they like it or not, they will not learn to do it in the correct way. 
It would be so easy to just 'put in the time' of school each day and say we did our hours. What I like about my state is I don't have to turn in a card that says how many hours I taught, I just have to teach them the work. They can't do the work if I don't teach it. 


How I teach is up to me, or rather how I teach is up to my student's learning ability allows. Some kids learn by seeing, others by doing, still others learn by doing while seeing. First we figure out what way to teach, then we find the tools to do so. 
There are so many things we can use to teach as well! Libraries are full of DVDs with instruction on many things from Geography to sports, you just have to pop in a video and watch the 'film strip' to learn about some countries around the world today. Add to that a bit of written work and you have a curriculum for Geographical study!
I could just let my son watch television all day and call that school, but I won't. I believe I student needs the interaction of a teachers instruction added to reading and interactive type of lessons in order to get a full rounded lesson. 
I would probably call us school at home meets eclectic schooling. We have our own way of doing things with a mix of computer plus book work and a splash of dvd learning added in with lecture work. 


My schedule was going to look like this:
Bible
Math
short snack break
History
Language Arts 
Lunch break
Constitution 
Science
Spanish
PE/ Computer-Art alternating. 


Instead it looks more like; 
Bible / History Alternating
Attentively encourage learning here. 


History/Math off and on days in this time slot. 
Remind student to return to school work and stop watching videos. 
Language Arts - for about an hour of complaining occasionally. 
Math if I forgot to remind him.
Lunch 
SOS classes an play games on the side when Mom is not looking. 
So much for Independent study I thought.
But then I started grading his work. 
I begrudgingly grabbed my teacher manuals turned to the proper pages and began what I thought would be a chore. 
As I went through the work it was better and better. He was really getting it! With each book my smile would grow! Geometry was easy! I took out my staples "That was easy!"stamp and started stamping the lessons1 He was doing such a good job with the less independent study that I figured I must have failed. So I tried another week; this time writing out the list as we used to do with what he had to do each day. He could check it off as he went. Things went by with out much trouble the rest of the month. I would get stressed and then grade and relax. 
Still good grades, he can work both ways. I can teach him to do things on his own while I am near by. 


I am afraid it will be this way for a year now. Cycle of frustration and acceptance and encouragement and even an argument here and there. What it all comes down to is that we are the teachers, the parents, the authority for the teen to rebel against. When they all come in one package then we are in for a fun surprise! 
We will need to persevere to keep on keeping on and to look to the Lord for strength. Just as our students are having so much information crammed into their brains in four years time, so we are learning a lot in this time period. 

In the end the student will go on to College or trade school and get the degree that God has planned for them if we do it right! 


Just remember to keep things in perspective. School teaching is different than being mom or dad, we have to be able to peel off the teacher at the end of the day and become the loving encouraging fun loving parent who will nurture the child in our teens into a grown adult who will know we are there for them no matter what. 


Schedules or lists do not matter as much as time spend with quality learning, teaching to the student and allowing them to move along as their own pace. Oh, and remember that sometimes life gets in the way make some changes, that's one of the blessings of home school we can make adjustments and keep on learning!


I must remember the statement my dear son said at 'Legoland' theme park while identifying' cities with his grandparents " ... that's because I home school and when you home school the learning never ends! If you want to know about something, or someplace you just look it up!" 
Be blessed and not stressed!

  

High school? Really? But I just taught him how to walk!

High school- so many choices what shall I do?

Do you find yourself floundering in all the many choices today in high school learning?

There are many free sources if you search for high school resources you will find yourself swamped in web addresses but what do you choose? 

For Math Help I know that Purple math is awesome. But I needed courses! 

Math U See worked for my daughter so we gave it a try last year for Algebra1. John had very little difficulty in answering the questions correctly but had to learn how to show his work. Sounds like a 'normal' class to me! 

I looked around and found BJU, and Abeka, and Sonlight as well was a bit pricey and a lot more work for the home school mom. If you love planning things out and setting up your days lessons for one student, and have the money go with either of these! Pandia has some great options for Science classes but they need to get moving with the next level before I get there! 

Simple Schooling online was pretty cool we used their Physics for last year but our Science was already here for this year, so no changing that one just yet! 

When it came down to what we had and what to add the options were endless!

  

Today's home-schooler has so many options that we just did not have back when we started schooling Daniel in Kindergarten! He is now a third year College Student so I guess he survived our wacky way of teaching! 

It is so different now! 

We have choices like AOP’s Monarch – sort of a correspondence school at home type of thing with more of a lean on home schooling than the public school’s version “K-12”.

Monarch appealed to me a little bit because it is so full of color and excitement. I would still be home schooling but someone else would be doing the grading, assessing etc right?

Nope. The main difference I could see in my searching is that it is actually connected to teacher help, right? Wrong! It isn’t connected anymore than SOS and it really is pretty much the same with the lack of games, and the inserting of the fact it is web based instead of being loaded to the one computer. This means you have access anywhere you have access to the internet. So if this is important then go ahead and choose Monarch.

We stuck with our SOS for Science this year, and Secondary Spanish and Civics as well.

John has been working in Algebra already so we have advanced him to Math U See’s Geometry for that subject and plan to enjoy it as much as we did when Miresa took this course four years ago. Wow, where does the time go?

We have added to these subjects Life Paks, (the paper version of SOS) in History and Geography- this will focus on Civics and that part of history as well as geography related to these times in history. I found such a deal at CBD.com and purchased a $5 dvd from Drive Thru History that happened to cover the same area. We will use this sampling to see if it is as good as it looks on YouTube! Also added to the mix will be that Civics SOS version. I think we will have him covered in the political sense!

Bible Life Paks for 9^th grade focuses on a survey of the Bible and we recalled using it in the past with the other two Bible scholars in our home.

We are also using Language Arts Life Paks. They have a good variety of lessons but surprisingly lack a bit in spelling department for High School levels. I am using the vocabulary words that they so nicely have in each unit as spelling lists for this year. After having struggled with spelling errors most of my life I am bound and determined to make sure I have good spellers!

We are adding to this Fall Ball and Bowling as well, for PE credits. These will add up to enough hours and credits for one Semester of PE to add to his new High School Transcript!

Our Band course is on hold for the moment but once we get our Trumpet purchased then we will be getting back on that wagon!

Next I searched for some sort of schedule; High School 8 courses!

"Mom, you just get it all figured out and I will do what you tell me to do." WOW! (Do you see the tears of joy falling on my screen?) 

So--- I am trying to decide if I want to block schedule him, rotate his lessons or whatwe have the following as our classes" Bible9- LP

Math- Geometry 1 

Science 9th 

SOS Spanish -Secondary first semester 

History and Geography LIfe Pak 9 Civics SOS + Drive Thru History sample dvd

Language Arts LP9 - plus literature that I am putting together and Spelling via vocabulary lists in LPs. 

PE- Bowling twice a week and Fall Baseball league ( practice 1-2 hr a day plus games) 

Band- No class at the moment but will be inserted and mess up any semblance of order eventually.

This is the list, and by next week we will have lift off and Agape Academy High will commence classes!

So the question is Self Paced courses or Scheduled time increments?

If you have an opinion or idea that worked for you feel free to comment!

This is just the beginning of a series in High School year one.

Come back Next week when we share some photos and the official schedule design!

Until then ~ Be blessed not stress!

Teresa's Top Picks for Homeschool Jr High School

History is a fun subject for Jr High levels. You can stretch from grade school curriculum levels to high school and make it work to fit your student's level of interest.
In many districts or locals one year of History is excluded but we like History at Agape Academy so we will continue through all three years of Jr. High.
We began 6th grade with Story of the World- though this is a course designed to stretch from 4th to 7th grades we found it perfect for information that was both interesting and easy to read.
Story of the World is writen to teach about the different parts of the world active in its time period at the same time. It was like traveling around in a "meanwhile back at the ranch" type of format.
Included with the set we purchased the activity book. I believe it is a must for all levels of useage. The mapwork was nessacary to complete the learning process of where each country was located and how much was 'occupied' at the time period of study. May activities are offered from question and answers to research projects and even cooking recipes! We enjoyed a couple of the later, but mostly enjoyed the mapwork and questions which we often chose to discuss as apposed to writing out and answering.

This year for 7th grade we have chosen a simlar product from the Mystery of History series of History lessons.
We chose the Red set of books, MOH3. It included a hard cover text book, ( which John is delighted that he will be able to use a nascar book cover protector on after it not fitting last years books) and a paperback activity book as well.
As with SOTW it has crafts to research including web sites to look up and mapwork. It also includes pictures and information to create a Time Line for your wall.
Unlike SOTW MOH is Christian in perspective so we are excited to find more of this angel. SOTW taught us many religious histories of different religions but was not so focused on the Christain aspect of History.
Reason for choosing: When it came down to it the reason we chose it is my son read portions from it and said "oh cool lets get this one it has real photographs in it! Not just drawings!"
So we like the visual appeal.
Later this year I will update to let you know how it is working for us.

Other great choices we were looking at were the Heritage series from Bob Jones and SOS History 7th grade. We found cost efficiently MOH was better than the first one and SOS was something we have used throughout the years with my other students and needed a break from for History.


We are however using it for Science!
We chose SOS Science 7 &8 for this years Science partly because we used it with the other kids and they love science still! Secondly because we already have it. We enjoy the mini tutors and games they have included in SOS courses plus the helpful links to online help when you get a problem is always good to have at AOP.Com.
The scope and sequence available there helped us to originally choose this product because it is in keeping with the schools in our area. I believe this is important when chooseing curriculum, to check the local schools and be sure you are following thier area of study to an extent, if you have already studied that then move on to the next level but being sure you have at least what they have done is important. This is so that your kids do not hear from thier friends what mine did this year " We did that in 4th grade!" in regards to our California History class. We did not because in my high school state I had not taken state history until high school, SO in my book we were early. I am also sure we did a bit more intensive study than 4th graders did. Still my kids were put on the spot and I try to keep that sort of thing from happening in regards to homeschooling because some kids still do not get it.


Another good choice for Science that we love the looks of is Apoligia Astronomy which our home school group is discusing using this year. We may join it and do it as a secondary science class just because of the set up and organisation of study tools involved. It includes a Text and notebook with study questions and crossword puzzles and other ativities.
I heard there is a rocket project involved as well!

English-- Writing Strands and Daily Grams with Stech Vaughn's Vocabulary Connections
We chose this because they seem to be suited for the home school 12 year old. WS speaks to the student including telling the student to bring their work to the parent teacher, and repeating the instructions. We like that this will keep me the teacher from having to repeat myself as much as well as the cute way it talks to the student is right up the alley we were looking for.
Daily Grams is a one page a day lesson geared to be ten minute drills each day of the school year. They are meant to be fast and reminders of the grammar we have learned through the years.
The Vocab we got for 50 cents but is colorful and has some reading comp questions in it so it seemed to be a great fit for us!

Math-- what a delima! Trying to choose a math program is extremely difficult when the all time favorite Horizons only went to 6th grade. We ended up wht SOS8 by default ( we own it already and he is at the level after completing Horizons). If I had chosen to purchase I would have tried Teaching TExt books Pre Algebra on him. I believe he will enjoy the colorful computer program that speaks to you as we tried the samples and he did well with it.
Math U See is our choice for High School math because it is better cost efficently and my daughter enjoys learning from the teacher on the DVD program. She got all As in Geometry so it is worth the cost!

I will update with some more top pics in a few weeks so be sure and check back!

California Pizza Box Project

This is one of our California History projects. We were told to make a topographical map. Also known as a Salt Flour Dough map.

While researching on the net we found this wonderful way of doing a report.project in one. Inside a pizza box!

Considering many people are making Lap Books for thier reports now days we chose to make our Map Box more of a lap book box!

Using differnt things we learned about and state flower and bird, plus locations of different places and topographical map work John put it together.

We would like to thank Papa Johns, Lil"Ceasers, Round Table, and Saborros Pizza for the free boxes they supplied us with!

in the drying process... Painting was so much fun because we used tube water colors. We planned to use tempra ... tempra bottles crack after 12 -13 years of sitting on a shelf! GO figure?

Front Cover

The state flower is the California Poppy! The flag has a bear, but that was not the plan, they wanted a turkey but the handwritting on the order slip was so poor that the person making the first flag made a bear! We like bears so that makes us happy.

The state bird of California is a Quail.