Counting Cards . . . for Re-Doable Counting Fun!

My older kids, in elementary grades, were doing math work pages and other written schoolwork.  My young 3 year old was just beginning to learn his numbers, and I was looking for a special activity in number recognition, for him.

Thinking it would be fun for him to place number tiles to match with pictures, I made up some pages with pictures of items in groups . . . and a blank square near each group, for placing a number tile.

And it worked!  This activity was one of my young kids' favorite ones. The picture pages were passed down through several children, and it gave them something special to do for school-- just for them-- and just like their older siblings, they were doing "math pages."

Because we had a variety of different pictures, a very young child could go through them, doing one each day, and then start over again in random order-- so these pages could be continuously used for quite a while.

Later on, I redrew the pictures (our originals were getting worn), and made a set of these full-color pages that can be printed out (onto card stock); it is called Counting Cards, and is available either by itself, or in a preschool math bundle (along with Preschool Math: Number Tiles).

Here are some examples of the picture pages; there are 15 different printable pages:

For more info see www.gentleshepcurr.com/math.html

World History Shorts -- a middle school history framework

When studying history, it's really helpful to use a "framework" or backbone type of resource-- some people choose a book series, such as Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World, or Joy Hakim's A History of US, for this.  They read aloud, or assign reading, in these books to provide a continuing, overall story, and supplement with historical fiction and other resources that greatly enhance and enrich the total learning experience.

While reading aloud is wonderful, and both of the series mentioned above are well-written and interesting for either group reading or individual silent reading, there are situations that may come up where a certain child needs to do his own history studies, at his own pace and level, and doing a lot of reading just does not fit into his/her learning style.

This has happened several times in our own family's homeschool journey, and we were thankful to have found a great resource that has world history broken down into short, easy-to-read vignettes, just to cover the main events in chronological order.

It is called, World History Shorts (volume 1 and volume 2), by Kristina M. Swann, and published by Pro-Ed/PCI Publishing.

Volume 1 covers ancient history (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome) and progresses on through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ending with Japan's culture in the 1600's.

Volume 2 begins with the Scientific Revolution and Age of Reason, and covers major wars and politics as well as the Industrial Revolution and other social/cultural changes over the time period of 1600's through the 21st century (ends with the concept of terrorism, with the Twin Towers attack).

What I liked about this resource is that not only does it provide a short reading selection (one page-- about 6 paragraphs) for each topic, but it also has copy masters for reviewing the material; each topic has one page with info to read, one page with multiple choice questions, one page with a crossword puzzle, one page with a map or chart activity, one page with suggestions for extension activities that use writing, and one page with a short quiz.  This turned out to be a "perfect" fit for older kids (middle school) who were wanting or needing to do much of their work independently.  They could get an overview of world history, supplemented by reading some historical fiction (also independently), with very minimal direction/help needed from me as a teacher (just giving the assignments and looking over their written work was all that was required).

I found that the review pages could be assigned in different ways, depending on the situation-- for some kids doing one topic per week was a good pace, others might cover the same material faster-- there are six pages per topic, but we usually did reading on one day, then combined some of the other pages on 2-3 other days.  Because all these pages were about the same topic, the student's attention was brought back to what they had read about on the first day, helping to retain the information.

I liked that this history study resource included all parts of the world -- not just Europe and the United States, but also topics on some Asian countries, Latin America, and Africa.  It truly gave an overview of world history, and also the information was presented in a fairly "neutral" manner regarding politics and religion; the readings didn't appear to be slanted strongly in favor of certain ideas.

When I purchased this 2-volume set many years ago, it was only available in printed form, which meant I had copy masters and needed to make lots of copies . . . but now this resource is available in ebook format, as well, so you can have computer files that are printed out (and this takes no space on a shelf!) which is very convenient, as everything in these sets is presented in work page format (there is no actual book to read).

With our younger kids, we did lots of history related read-alouds, and there are many great series and individual books for this.  But when some of our older kids desired or needed independent world history materials, we were really happy to discover World History Shorts !

Note-- for some more curriculum recommendations, please see the "links" page at Gentle Shepherd: LINKS

Super and Simple Primary Grades (Creative) Writing

Do you sometimes wonder what assignments to give your younger students for writing? After all, they are just starting to gain proficiency in doing handwriting and spelling, and if you tell them to "write a story" they may look up at you with a blank stare.

But, on the other hand, asking them to "tell" you a story will probably produce a lot of imaginative ramblings.

What I found worked the best in our own homeschool was to give a topic (so there is something to focus the creative energy toward), and listen to my 1st or 2nd grader tell about it while writing down the words.  Then, over several days, the young student would copy his own story over, using nice penmanship.

I set up a whole series of topics, so it was easy to just pick the next one after finishing a writing piece.

And now, this extensive list of topics is part of a small ebook about how to teach writing in the primary grades.

There are some other creative writing ideas, too, and a writing journal template printable. These ideas are for 1st and 2nd graders, PLUS a section for 3rd graders. There are some sample pages up on the Gentle Shepherd website, HERE.

So if you're looking for an easy-to-use creative writing program that gives great results and can bring much joy to both the creators and to you, this small idea ebook may be just what you're looking for . . .

Word Box Writing

Word Box Writing . . .
The way this works, there are six words in a box, that are kind of related -- for example, "cactus, desert, sand, water, lizard, prickly." Below the word box are some lines for writing, to write 4 sentences using all six words.

This takes some thinking! You can't just write one sentence with each word; some of the sentences will have to have more than one. . .

So what is the purpose of all this?

Well, number one is to have some fun doing writing.
Then also, there is the thinking part . . . and kids might like to use the words in the box as story starters, sometimes.

Would you like to see what these printable work pages look like? Take a look here: http://www.gentleshepcurr.com/word-box-writing.html

Touch Typing -- A Simple System, with Stories . . .

When I learned to type, many years ago, it was in a high school typing class. We typed for almost 40 min every day, using the now antique electric typewriter (at the time it was exciting new technology). The things we typed were rows and rows of all kinds of phrases and sentences. The only one that sticks in my mind now is the saying, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country." Such was touch typing in the '70's . . . and it served me very well. Because I had memorized the finger positions, I could type fairly quickly and even with my eyes closed (or while looking at what was being typed-- which was a useful skill).

When my kids learned to type, starting in the '90's, instead of using a typewriter they used a word processor. This allowed for all kinds of fancy and wonderful things-- you could easily erase (delete) what you'd already typed-- no need to use a correction ribbon or White-Out. . . and you could rearrange words, sentences, paragraphs . . . without having to type the whole thing again! This was almost magical, and truly a timesaver, though my kids never knew what they were getting out of having to do.

They used computer software to learn and practice their typing skills. I remember some fun games they had, with letters falling down from the sky and other strange things. For the typing lessons themselves, the kids typed lots of mostly nonsense syllables, at least in the beginning. Later on, they got to have some words and much later on, some sentences.

My oldest child thrived on competition, and the falling letters games were plenty enough to help her perfect her speed and accuracy. This software for beginning typing had worked fine for her, and we expected to continue with it. When the next child started his learning process, I decided to try out the program myself, to see what it was like. I disliked making assignments for things I wasn't very familar with. So I sat down to type the beginning lessons-- row after row of nonsense syllables, usually in groups of 3 or 4 letters. It might be because I already knew how to type that I found this process intolerably tedious and dull, but at any rate my reaction sparked a thought; why not make typing lessons that use actual words and sentences . . . maybe even an entertaining story, early on in the process?

So I started making lessons, and my second child switched to using them. He had 7 more siblings who would eventually go through the material, and in the process would help me discover a few things that needed changing. My husband taught technology at a public school, and found that his middle school students enjoyed these short lessons, too-- each one took only about 10 min, and within half a school year the entire course could be completed.

Later on, I created an ebook with these typing lessons, and began offering it online, through a new business we were starting, Gentle Shepherd.  And it is still available there, today . . .  if you'd like to learn more about this touch typing course, please visit the "Typing" page on Gentle Shepherd's website.

Fact Hunts! for research

I always looked forward to "Fact Hunt" day when teaching my kids, because of two things-- first, I knew it was an open-ended, interesting assignment that they would enjoy, and second, I would get to read the facts they collected and enjoy looking over the info; sometimes "ordinary" and sometimes very unusual.

We usually did this assignment once a week, with kids who were in middle school.  They would take a certain topic-- for example, "citrus fruits"-- and use whatever sources they wanted (since modern times and the internet this has always been online searches, but some of our oldest kids did use books back in the day . . .), making a list of 10 facts about the topic.

There were no requirements other than finding 10 facts-- they didn't have to write complete sentences, or find any certain types of things.  The whole idea was just to give them a short research project, to get them used to the process of doing "research."  (You know, the kind of thing you need to be doing when you're writing reports and research papers, and also just learning in general.)

To keep time and a schedule from getting in the way of just enjoying the assignment, the kids would do the fact hunt as the last thing in their morning schoolwork . . . so if it took them a few minutes longer or shorter, there were no worries or pressure.

Since this was one of our most favorite writing projects to do, I wanted to make a short ebook about it, with lists of suggestions for topics.  So now, (drumroll, please) a "Fact Hunts" ebook is ready!  And even more awesome, it is also a freebie, available to anyone on our website.

Here is what the cover looks like; there are 12 pages total, with ideas given for 4 years of fact hunts.

Come and see! Please download and try these out, if this sounds like something you might like to include in your homeschool.  And also, please share the freebies page link (but not the ebook itself; we'd like people to be downloading it from the website) and let your friends know about this research writing resource!

A New Literary Device Every Week? The Writer's Toolbox

Have you ever heard of "synecdoche"?  How about "chiasmus," "epistrophe," and "metonymy"?  I had no idea there are so many different types of literary devices -- tools that can be used in writing, to give clarity and embellishmentsa to communication.

Most people are familiar with a few of the well-known literary devices -- like simile, metaphor, irony, and alliteration.  But if you'd like to be introduced to more, just take a look at The Writer's Toolbox, by Patricia and Megan Samuelsen.  This mother-daughter team has written a book that can be used in introducing students to thirty-- yes, THIRTY-- different literary devices.

The format is to give examples, using short excerpts, from various literary texts, and with additional explanations, for one literary device at a time.  After demonstrating how it is used, there are exercises to help the student gain greater familiarity-- he/she is shown more short excerpts and asked to comment on how these are using the literary device.  Then, in a further exercise, the student writes sentences using the literary device.

This book is to be used with high school students, but I couldn't resist using a few of the lessons with James, starting in sixth grade.  We went through some of the more commonly known literary devices, and after doing the book exercises, he made a sentence and picture to demonstrate each writing tool, on a small wall poster.  Here is his first poster; we added to the poster with each new lesson.

And here is his second poster.

We revisited these lessons this year (eighth grade), just briefly, introducing one more of the literary devices.  The book is interesting, and the lessons have helped James learn quite a few tools for writing.

I can see that if used at the high school level, learning these literary devices would be helpful both for writing and for analysis of literary works.  They also present some very unusual vocabulary-- words like "liotes" and "polysyndeton."

The devices are arranged in four groups, and there is a written review quiz at the end of each group.  An appendix gives definitions and examples for all the literary devices, in alphabetical order.  And in another appendix there are instructions for two games (for a group of students) that can be played to practice the names and definitions.

The Writer's Toolbox is available online, at www.writerstoolbox.net.

How about it-- would you like some "synecdoche" with your "personification" and "alliteration"?

Illustrated by Me! Story by McCollonough Ceili

Do you have kids who like to draw?  Here's a set of unique books where something is missing-- it is the illustrations!  These books are called "Illustrated by Me."  They have words to stories typed along at the tops of the pages, and large blank areas where children can draw in their own illustrations.

I think this would be a great way to investigate illustrating, drawing, and artwork while not requiring the child to compose a story him or herself.

The author of these stories is a homeschool graduate-- she was home educated from kindergarten through college!  She has Irish ancestry, and grew up on an island off the coast of Ireland, though now she lives in America; her name is McCollonough Ceili (pronounced Ma Call In Ah KayLee).  She has written various other books -- an autobiography, some poetry and literary fiction works, and some other children's books.

There are two books in this series.  Book One has three stories; Book Two has two.  Book One's stories are:

1- A Friend for Dinner (about a fire-breathing dragon who helps some hunters solve their problem of needing fire to cook with, and they help him, too)

2- Mama Has the Sleepies (about what happens when "the sleepies"-- with accompanying yawns-- spread through a busy family's day)

3- A Kitten for O'Malley (about a dog taken regularly to visit patients at a veteran's hospital who becomes friends with a new kitten his owner brings home)

Book Two's stories are:

1- The Remote is Missing (about a girl who understands that there is more to life than TV)

2 - Mama went to War (about a military family in which the mom is called to active duty, and she and her young daughter agree to both keep a LED candle nearby at night, as a remembrance)

My very favorite story is in Book One-- it's the one about "the sleepies"-- I think we can all relate to having sleepies sometimes, and this is one of those stories where the wording and actions just keep passing from one character to the next.  There would be lots of different drawings of people (family members, one at a time) in this book, as well as some of animals (family pets).

The concept of these "Illustrated by Me" books is similar to the writing and art work pages in Gentle Shepherd's printable ebooks -- My Alphabet and Number Pictures, Copy and Draw, and Picture and Writing.  I love to see activities that encourage creativity and making original artwork, and I think this storybook format is a great idea!

The drawings could be done gradually, as school assignments, and would eventually make a fun-to-read completed book.

Here is a link to McCollonough's Amazon writer page (all her books are listed there):

http://www.amazon.com/McCollonough-Ceili/e/B004V4RN0Q/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1/190-8856589-9860528

A Sampling of Hebrew Letters -- Hebrew Alphabet Flashcards

I have always been interested in foreign languages.  When I was a teen I wanted to learn at least some parts of every language in the world.  Now I know that's a starry-eyed dream that will never happen; there are just too many languages :)

But languages are still fascinating, and whenever I hear someone speaking in a foreign tongue my ears perk up.  I know some French and Spanish, and a smattering of bits and pieces in a few other languages.  The most recent foray into another language was when my son James and I took a look at the Hebrew alphabet.

Besides the word,"shalom" we don't know many words in Hebrew at all.  But we learned some things about the letters.  This ancient language was one of the earliest to have a written alphabet; the letters were developed from those used by a neighbor to the Jewish people, the Phoenicians. 

The Greeks had also borrowed the Phonecian letters, and the Romans adopted use of the Greek letters --- so in a roundabout way, Hebrew and our modern English alphabet have a common origin.  The word "alphabet" itself comes from "alpha" and "bet" -- the first two letters in the Greek alphabet.  In Hebrew, these are "aleph" and "bet."

Each letter name in Greek or Hebrew (or Phonecian) is actually a word that starts with the sound associated with that letter.  So if we said our ABC letter names like them, we might say "apple, butterfly, car . . ."  In Hebrew, the first 3 letters go with "ox, house, camel").

For our study, we practiced saying and writing some of the Hebrew letters-- focusing on just the first 10 letters-- these were also formerly used as numbers (modern Hebrew has changed to using the western digital numbering system).  So number one would be represented by the letter aleph, number two would be bet, etc. up to ten.  The next 9 letters were used for writing 20, 30 . . . to 100, and the final three alphabet letters were used for 3 more hundreds (to make hundreds larger than 400, they would put these together-- 200 and 300 together would be used to write 500 . . .)  

I think it would be interesting to memorize all the letters and how to write them, and then practice writing some different numbers.  It was fun to learn even just up to 10, though.

For this short intro to Hebrew letters, we used two resources-- one was a book we just happened to have on our shelf.  Don't know where it came from, but it was perfect for a study like this . . . called A Hebrew Readiness Book, by Joel Lurie Grishaver, this is a Hebrew alphabet workbook for kids.  There is info to read about each letter, along with a picture of what the word is that goes with the letter.  They also show some simplified versions of Hebrew letters, for writing.  Here is a page with my son's writing of the first 10 alphabet letters (which are also numbers 1 - 10).  

He wrote them left to right, which isn't how Hebrew is written-- but for a first try it's just a minor mistake.  By the way, this alphabet workbook is totally "backwards" for an English speaker-- It begins at what we would consider the back of the book, with pages progressing from right to left (although English sentences on these pages are typed left to right).  The publisher for this workbook is Torah Aura Productions.

Another resource was a colorful set of flashcards, designed by Dinah Ely of The Traveling Classroom.  

Dinah offers these through her Teachers Pay Teachers store.  The artwork on these cards is beautifully done in full color.  Aleph shows an ox, bet has a house, gimel a camel, etc. Letters are shown as block text and cursive, as well as the way the ancient Israelites would have written them (called "paleo letters'-- how Hebrew looked at its beginning).  Down in the lower right corner there is the numerical equivalent for each letter, along with the Hebrew word used to say the number (although alphabet letters can be used to write the numbers, they still have their own number names).  The flashcards come as a printable ebook, with four cards per page (6 pages).

The same images on the flashcards are available in full-page size, too-- you can use the larger cards if you'd like to have a bigger image to present when learning/practicing the letters.  

There are some other Hebrew language items in Dinah's TpT store, too (her Passover Bingo game uses pictures along with Hebrew words), and she has a wealth of interesting Hebrew pins on her "Ancient Hebrew" pinboard:

http://pinterest.com/dinahely/ancient-hebrew/

If you're interested in doing a larger study in Hebrew (expanding to more words, grammar, etc.) you might like this website with free downloads of study materials: 

http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/grammar.html

Have you been curious to learn more about Hebrew?  What do you think about doing a short (or long) study of the Hebrew letters?

Math With Fred

This morning James and I were reading his math lesson.  He's using Life of Fred textbooks, and is over half-way through the decimals book.  Just recently he started asking me to go through the lessons with him, even though they're written TO kids to read on their own (they are also written in a way that encourages kids to do all the correcting-- it's great!).  I'm not sure if he's asking me to read with him because he's needing help with math or because he wants someone to laugh with him about all the hilarious stories and language in this math textbook.

Huh, math textbooks funny?  Well, yes . . .  I wouldn't have thought so, either, because in my own school years, the textbooks we used for learning math seemed just barely tolerable. In teaching my own kids using many different programs and books, math has continued to seem like a necessary evil . . .

 . . . that is, until Fred came along . . .

Now, math is fun for me.  Not sure if it's always fun for James, as he still has to work all the problems . . . but it is much MORE fun than any other math book or program.

Thanks, Fred, for making math learning much more interesting and enjoyable.

And, you know what, since I've started doing these last few lessons I even remember things like how to find the area of a circle and a triangle-- things I NEVER remembered (beyond about 5 minutes) my whole life, whether in school math classes myself or in teaching math to my own kids.

It's said that laughter is a good medicine.  I think it's a good teacher, too. :)

Copy and Draw - Penmanship practice WITH Art

Copy and Draw work page e-books are here!  Do you have kindergarten or early elementary-aged kids who would like to draw pictures along with their penmanship practice? Here is a set of 68 work pages in PDF format-- can be printed out as needed.

For some examples of completed pages, see Gentle Shepherd's website art gallery.

With many drafts and revisions, this e-book project has taken almost a year and a half to complete-- from beta test stage to final draft.  And what used to be one set of work pages turned into SIX different e-books.  That is because there are 6 versions-- two different writing line styles multiplied by three different penmanship styles.

If you are using Italic or Manuscript for penmanship, Copy and Draw is available in both of those styles, as well as in the custom font it started out with.

Come take a look; you can see sample pages for all the versions by clicking the links on THIS PAGE.

Real Science! Really New E-books, too!

There are three new e-books on our Gentle Shepherd website!  These are review activities to accompany Gravitas Publications' Real Science-4-Kids level I science textbooks.  You can see sample pages for all three e-books (Chemistry, Physics, Biology) at http://tinyurl.com/8ynakws.

Africa

We have taken a look at a few countries in Africa so far this year. Here is our wall map of Africa; the countries we've studied have colors and names. Our map isn't exactly in correct proportions, but we have the general size and shape of things. Needed to make an extension for the horn of Africa, after had already drawn in a lot of the rest of the map!

This is an interesting study. We're using Expedition Earth, by Cindy Horton. It actually has a page for every single country in the world-- unless some new ones pop up (after March 2011), like maybe in Sudan?
There are some interesting facts to read, and for some of the countries there are recommended video/photo links. We enjoyed watching and listening to the drummers of Burundi, on the computer.

Along with this book and our wall map, we're using two books in a series: You Can Change the World, by Jill Johnstone, and You Too Can Change the World, by Daphne Spraggett with Jill Johnstone. These give stories about people who live in different countries, or are in different people groups. They also have specific info about the religion of each country/people group.


It took a little preparation ahead to plan a reading schedule for the stories from the "Change the World" books so that they will line up with our main geography text (Expedition Earth). Also have found some misc other supplementary reading. For each continent, the countries are presented in alphabetical order. That's why our wall map is getting filled in with what looks like random geography.

There are country flag flashcards and country shape flashcards that we've been using to match up and help with review. I think putting the shapes on the big wall map does help a lot, too, in being more familiar with each country's location and shape.

We aren't planning to go through every country in the world this year, though . . . because we want to go a little more in depth, and at a relaxed pace. So will be looking at Africa and Asia. Those are pretty big continents, with LOTS of countries so it will be easy to spend a year on them.

You can learn more about the Expedition Earth world geography text here: http://tinyurl.com/3dbxcgg

Stone Soup Homeschool Blog

Robin Foster Montoya of Stone Soup Homeschool Network has put an article I wrote as a guest contributor, on her blog and Facebook page. This is a more detailed account of our astronomy study, with lots of pictures made by Molly and James! Take a look!

http://www.stonesouphomeschool.com/1/post/2010/10/exploring-astronomy.html

Astronomy!

This winter we studied astronomy, and here is a picture of the balloon/small ball solar system model that has been hanging across our living room ceiling for the past few months. It was pretty easy to make-- Saturn was made by blowing up one of those extra long balloons and curving it around a regular balloon, attached with tape. All the balloons/balls were hung from thread and attached to the ceiling with pushpins. The dimensions were approximately to scale, except for being much closer together than in the scale of the real solar system, and Jupiter and Saturn needed to be bigger-- probably using a large punch ball would have been better for each of these planets. There was a handy list of approximate sizes to make each ball/balloon in the book we were using, Exploring Creation With Astronomy, by Jeannie Fullbright. We used a couple of small balls for the smallest planets--Mercury and Mars, and a large bead for Pluto.

New E-Books!

New Books! And a New Website!

I always feel much jubilation when I finally get another book finished! I guess that is because I have so many, many computer files for books that are pretty much ready to go, except for needing a little formatting and a cover design. And it seems like the cover designs are what take so much time, that making new books has gone very slowly...

So I am excited and happy to have these two new e-books available. My sons helped me with learning how to format the cover with computer text and graphics, but the underlying picture for these covers was a piece of marbeled paper that I and Molly and James made at the beginning of this school year, as our first craft project. We made lots of other pieces of marbled paper, too, but I especially liked this one. Will probably make some more covers with marbeled patterns, but using some different colors.

In case you don't know how marbeling is done, it's really very simple. You just put water in a rectangular pan, put some drops of oil paint on top of the water, swirl it only very slightly, and lay a sheet of paper on top. Then you lift up the paper and let it dry. And everyone who looks at these says, "Ooh, " and "Ahh."

Oh, ya, I guess I should tell about what's inside these new e-books, too!

These are writing prompt books. A topic is given, for making a picture, with a large box on the page for drawing in. There are lines for writing, under the picture box, so the child can write something about the picture or make a story about the picture.

There are two sets of these, because although we originally used these with 2nd to 4th grade kids, we later decided to try them with some of our middle school-aged kids, and found that they enjoyed them and did some very skillful and creative art and writing with them. Sometimes older school-aged kids don't have many assignments for creative writing; a lot of times their writing is mainly related to school subjects like history or science. But given an opportunity, like using these pages or other simple, open-ended projects, they will often come up with very imaginative ideas for both drawing and writing.

We needed to alter some of the prompts for the older ages set, and make more lines that are closer together for writing. There are 36 pages in each set. This makes it easy to do one page a week through one school year. Or, you can do one page every two or three weeks, and use the pages over several years.