Two Thumbs Up for Apologia Science Author Jim L. Wise

Exploring Creation with Biology - is an amazing look at science through Christian beliefs that our Maker is also the Creator of the earth. I have read the first two chapters and then read chapter 8 which is about the two opposing theories, evolution and the geological index of eras, or the theory that catastrophic events form earths features like the Grand Canyon.

I wish I had grown up reading  Mr. Wise's science books! The picture of the evolution of horses in America that was in my text books has always bothered me, I knew God created people and the earth and all other creatures but sitting in school listening to the theory of evolution always disturbed me, I shelved it in the back of my mind since I could not resolve the conflicting teachings between school and religion. Now I'm thrilled my kids can have the truth from the beginning, or as much of it as we and scientists who believe in God have uncovered. In 1979, a year after I was born a leading scientist said that the evolution pictures of the horse in America is a perfect example of evolutionists twisting data to fit their theory and that it was discarded as unsound science. Well, my text books did not discard it, I was taught this untruth for many years to come. I now am happily resolved and adamant that my children's minds will remain uncontaminated from deliberate misinformation. Also quoted in the text book is a quote from Darwin himself saying that the only flaw in his theory were the "missing links"  that presented a problem. Most people who find a flaw in their theory Clam Up and don't share something they know to be untrue. What kind of person deliberately lies to become know?

Why? with all the knowledge we have do the lies get perpetuated for generations and the truth is so hard to dig up? Literally, it feels like digging and tossing aside filth and sifting out truth.

math options

Abeka- expensive for the quality, lower grades are the same as a workbook purchased from Costco. Have a second grade student workbook. Too expensive for what it was.

Saxon- very heavy on the parents side, time consuming. Rote memory and not much of the fun reasons to love math. Spirals daily, meaning it goes over all the past learned skills. Skills are mastered but it can feel painful for some students. Have 5/6 and 6/7 books. Pages look overwhelming to some students, large amount of daily practice.

Investigations- K - 5-  like it a lot, kids like it and master the skills, attain fluency due to how it's set up. there are areas to draw out or solve problems in multiple ways. Only a few problems on each page and it builds as it goes. there are student work books and a hand book. I found that I didn't need a teachers manual for k-3 at all and in 4th wanted the unit manual for some units like the fractions section. It is mental math, showing all the work isn't the emphasis. Knowing how to get the answer is the goal. Also is affordable to purchase workbooks for each student. I got unused but worn copies second hand for $10-15 on line at places like abebooks.com and amazon.

Connected Mathematics- 6-8- written by the University of Michigan and are very science oriented math skills, everything taught pertains to real life situations and the graphing sections are actual scientific data, like the ratio of the femur to the height of men and women. It does not spell out the basics for the parent/teacher. It needs a math whiz to teach it, I am not this. We did really really love the amazing feel it gave us for what math can do, it is great for science minded people. Shows the outside the box uses of math. More reading than in other texts, again about life uses for the concept being covered. Units cover probability, statistics, geometry, algebra and everything else! Most of it was over my head even with teachers manuals. BUT so worth it!

so we were introduced to Math-U-See by a friend, we borrowed the pre- algebra and completed it in 6 months, three kids did this. A girl 16 whose struggled because she went through too many different math curriculums trying to pick a good one. And two kids in eight grade, girl 14 and boy 12. I handed them the teachers manual and student book and they primarily taught them selves, I helped clarify when asked, they also watched the video of the writer of the program teaching the lesson if they needed more help. It teaches the necessary basics quickly and concisely, no hammering it into the ground with too many problems or too long of lessons. it is not designed to take 160 -180 school days or a school year to accomplish. The levels are to be done in order as the student has mastered(tested well) the lessons they move on. Very simple, it is however boring, not creative or shows almost no use in life. (keep a clean copy of the student work book, when the publisher/owner reprints or edits and updates his curriculum he no longer prints old versions of the manuals. The curriculum is $77 for elementary levels and $35 for student books.)

My intent here on out is to combine it with Connected Mathematics! I am going to use Math-U-See as my basic lesson and add spice to it by supplementing with the fun applications in Connected. I will let you know in a couple years how this pans out, I am making notes in Connected as to which Math-U-See lessons/grades to complete prior to doing the Connected Mathematics.

My recommendations are to use one math all the way through, any of these work well for the families we know. Just don't switch every year like I did, searching for the perfect math. They all get the job done in different ways. Stay with one, my top recommendation would be Math-U-See and second would be Saxon. Unless you're a math whiz then definitely use Connected Mathematics for 6-8th and use mathusee with it and for the other grades. Raising a little engineer or scientist would be easy with Connected.

It's a home not a showroom! Enjoy your home and let your kids "be at home" in it.

 This is what our living room looks like ALL THE TIME!

 

Drawing/art/craft table for the two little ones.

Which they use constantly and we clean constantly, baby likes to come to find snacks here!

One week he had blue poop, then green then purple till we figured out he was sucking on markers.

 

Every time I look at the bathroom it looks like this.

Parenting Makeover!

These books are great: I refer to them often and the wisdom in them is enduring the test of time and use. I am a better mom because I implement the techniques in these books and learned how to think about the effect my choices have on my monsters.

Beginning to teach Reading with the amazing Spalding Writing Road to Reading

My son is loving his lessons, doing them willingly and making quick progress. He no longer looks at a vowel sound in a word freezes up, he also uses the syllables when reading scriptures daily. He is spelling better because he knows the sounds really well now. I am happy and so is HE! I have seen much progress in very few lessons once we memorized the phonemes. He took a week. My 6 and 5 year olds are nearly done with the 70 phonemes after 3 weeks. They write them all but have trouble repeating all the sounds for each one. They enjoy it though, it's quick pace keeps them occupied, they only write the letters once and move through the list quickly each day. My 5 year old is now filling paper after paper with sounds and proudly showing me.

My sister in law has homeschooled for 16 years and I have for 11 and we both taught our oldest kids how to read with Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons, it's some basic phonics and some sight words and every other lesson adds a new sound and reviews old sounds, and after a few lessons there are short stories. It's boring, and dry but does work for most kids. It is also easy to learn to teach and 10 minutes a day. My oldest hated it and struggled, the next two were younger than her and learned easily and read real books when we finished it, The Hobbit and scriptures. Lessons have student write two letters 6 times at the end of a lesson.

My oldest needed something better and struggled for years to read well and fluently, by the time she was 12 she was reading quickly and for fun. Her spelling also improved drastically as her reading did.

My fourth child took 4 years to teach to read and it was very painful and I spent lots of time praying and crying even, I was at a loss as to why he couldn't pick it up. So after asking a lady from church who I found out taught kids with learning disabilities to read, he apparently has dyslexia. So I used Hooked on Phonics and Rocket Phonics which both have serious flaws in them. Cycling through these two and the 100 Lessons helped but was not enough. He was barely at grade level. He's 9.

We both have switched to old school phonic lessons with spelling rules. Last month a friend gave me her old copy of The Spalding Writing Road to Reading. And last year my sister in law found a book called The Logic of English. Both teach the 70 phonemes needed to read and the 35 spelling rules for the English language, including the five reasons for silent e on the end of words. We both wish we'd seen these books sooner, they are amazing and we both love our new methods to teach reading.  For more information on The Logic of English you'll need to refer to reviews on the internet. I am going to buy it too. You cant have too many resources!

The Spalding method is one teacher text about $40, flash cards about $20 and writing notebooks with wide lines. I use regular notebooks and kids write on two lines. It takes some time to familiarize yourself with the method. Schools pay $550 for their teachers to take a spalding class for two weeks for four hours a day. So I studied for about 20 hours and then had a friend who homeschools come over for a half hour to answer my questions. The book is k to 8th.

Steps:

*memorize the 70 phonemes, say them and write them adding new ones and reviewing old ones
*write them until student does them easily
*write daily spelling words, weekly list. may move quicker for older kids
*have a lesson on syllables, helps with reading and pronunciation and with spelling rules
*learn how to mark the spelling words- if a sound makes three choices and the word being spelled uses the second one you write a 2 above the sound.
* write the spelling rules in their notebook, a few a day until done
*discuss spelling rules as they are used in the daily writing words
*sentences are next, using words they already know how to spell
*grammar is added using words and sentences already known
*daily they read their list for reading and read their list for spelling, "read for reading" or "read for spelling" so they check rules and markings

The word list is included in the book. The grammar lessons are not, neither are the sentences. My friend who taught it in school, before homeschooling her kids, said you'd make your own lessons. Make up sentences with known words and let students make their sentences. Grammar is taught through writing, not worksheets, from my understanding.

http://www.spalding.org/index.php?tname=support&p=lessonplans

 

 

A phoneme page, with guide words and rules

 
A word list page, words are learned with syllable divisions and marked, there is a chapter teaching how to mark them. It's basic and easy.
 

 The guides for parts of speech from the spelling list for each level.

favorite art books

Discovering Great Artists is a book I use over and over again, even for the same kids. As they grow their art develops so doing the same project is different each time. These are real art project, no crafts. Some materials are on hand and others you'd need to purchase, but it's reasonable. There is a paragraph about the artist and a project to emulate theirs. This is a good way for kids to try lots of techniques and styles and develop their own art personality. Does not have pictures of artist work in it, I get these off the internet and show the kids the art before we do the project.

These books by Mike Venezia are fabulous, funny and varied, they cover most of the famous artists and include their childhood and life story. They have great photos of art work, including other artists living at the same time period. My kids reread these and discuss the artists in everyday conversations. It's great!

Mastering Weakness

The most frustrating thing about parenting for me is that our kids learn by watching what we do, this is a double edge sword. I am super impatient and get very irritated at distractions, kids who leave without finishing a task(our 9 year old son), and I also get irritated at messes, not accidents but when it's careless I get irritated that the mess is going to cost me time, that it will delay the thing I'm trying to accomplish. I have come to know myself well and a lot of times I'm not happy with what I see. I spend too much of my time irritated at things in life that are going to happen daily. Do I really want to spend my days irritated inside myself? No Way! Two talks I read and reread weekly are Elder Hollands April 2007 The Tongue of Angels and Be Slow To Anger by Elder Christensen April 1971.

Elder L. Ray Christensen: Parents may tell
                                           But never teach
                                           Unless they practice
                                           what they preach

        And this poem is now hanging three locations in my home and we all have it memorized:
                                                 A Little Explained
                                                A Little Endured
                                                 A Little passed over
                                                And the quarrel is cured
He counsels us that "frustrations often offer us the means of progression, for by overcoming them harmoniously, we grow and become more Christlike. He also said this and this is my theme running around in my brain when I battle for control over my thoughts so my words are loving, " the size of a man may be measured by the size of the things that make him angry"  He teaches that in life , "We are constantly exposed to irritations as we mingle with others—and even when we are alone. How we react to these irritations is a reflection of our personalities and temperaments. It would seem reasonable to believe that in order to develop a healthy, pleasing personality and to become useful and an influence for good, one must avoid being easily provoked to anger. Not only would we show, thereby, more maturity, but we would also be able to resolve disturbing situations more intelligently, because seldom, if ever, is any good accomplished while persons are in a rage. Anger does not contribute to good. It is a destroyer, not a builder."
The following is one part of Elder Hollands talk that I have highlighted and again read regularly.

“Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.” ⁴

"Well, that is pretty straightforward! Obviously James doesn’t mean our tongues are always iniquitous, nor that everything we say is “full of deadly poison.” But he clearly means that at least some things we say can be destructive, even venomous—and that is a chilling indictment for a Latter-day Saint! The voice that bears profound testimony, utters fervent prayer, and sings the hymns of Zion can be the same voice that berates and criticizes, embarrasses and demeans, inflicts pain and destroys the spirit of oneself and of others in the process. “Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing,” James grieves. “My brethren [and sisters], these things ought not so to be.”

Is this something we could all work on just a little? Is this an area in which we could each try to be a little more like a “perfect” man or woman?"

                                                
While being realistic about shortcomings I also believe we should see our growth and recognize when we have had a victory. I am a more patient person that I used to be, I keep a journal faithfully and when I reread it I see insights into myself I am sure would be overlooked if not written down. I have improved, yet daily I struggle with the same bad reactions. It's been a learning process to curb unkind words when I'm irritated. I do know I can do it though.

Last week I was in the living room and hear a crash and the sound of glass shattering. My first thought was oh it was probably my grandmothers bowl but I didn't say that, what I chose to say was,
"Don't move, nobody move, we don't want anyone hurt." This response allowed the child in the kitchen to speak up and say what happened knowing I was concerned about them and not an object.

For every victory I achieve over my inner reaction to be irritated I feel a step closer to becoming perfect like Christ has asked us to become. I try not to count my slips, that's not fun and becomes overwhelming. What ever bad trait or habit we'd like to over come it is a way for us to become closer to Christ and use the atonement to forgive ourselves, know that He does understand how we feel and will support us in what we desire to become.

So whatever I am working on and you are working on we can support each other in our path to perfection by forgiving and restraining judgment and looking for each others' talents and positive traits.