Vicarious Thoughts » Home Education

Question of the Week

Strudel — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:55:42 +0000

So I’ve joined an email group called Question of the Week about Homeschooling and Family, which as you can possibly divine from the name is about the posing of a question which needs to be answered.
So I thought I’d post my responses on here. This week’s question is:

What happens if you have bought a product for homeschooling that you thought would be fabulous and it just doesn’t work for you?

We don’t buy many brand new items as money has to go a long way and spending it on items that we end up not using is a real concern.
I try to mitigate this by researching items I think we could/should be using extensively, getting a gut feeling from people’s testimonies/feedbacks and hopefully garnering a peek at what the content is like. Then, and this is the bit of my process that really agitates me but is super worth it, I put my final decision(s) on a wishlist and let it sit. Often when I’m next getting a hankering for purchasing materials, I have another look at this wishlist and am able to edit it further, leaving just the items that we really can utilise.
This has worked well for us and I have few regrets over the items we’ve purchased online as a result of this.
But buying online isn’t our main source of homeschooling materials. The big booksales in the region are my primary source for books and despite my overpurchasing tendency I still have few regrets with the purchases we’ve made.
This probably has much to do with the fact we’re only in the early stages of homeschooling (our daughter being 6) and it is easy to say “well, she’s not really ready for this lot of materials right now and we can find out how useful they will really be when she is ready” and stick them on the shelf ready for that glorious day.
With the items that are found to be unsuitable for whatever reason, we return them to the booksale for some other person to discover or sell them online via Trademe, Sella or a homeschool sales email group.
Getting back to the original question though, there hasn’t been a product I was absolutely certain would be ideal for us that hasn’t turned out that way (as yet, it’s early days). Definitely we’ve had to switch courses to better meet our daughter’s needs but since we haven’t yet spent a great deal on a single item, it hasn’t been a huge burden to change tack after purchase. With the alternative materials we do have we will pass on once she’s grown out of their use ensuring that we don’t dispose of them before we’re certain we have no futher use for them.
I guess our situation is easier also as we have just the one child and so don’t have to consider the future needs of her siblings in the years to come. On the other side of the coin though, we don’t get the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) decreases that come with a product that is reusable with multiple children and this factor matches up to why we consider hard how suitable a sizeable purchase is for our child.

Stomping through the Jungle

Strudel — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:49:20 +0000

Apparently, that’s what we did today. After a rather frustrating morning, Sam and I went off to get away from it all for a few hours and I drove us to Pryce’s Rahui (Reserve) which is managed by Forest & Bird.
Either the grass has been growing super quick or I suspect we were the first visitors there in at least a week as the main gate required effort to open and close it against the grass and the 10 second drive to the picnic area reminded me of trying to do the lawns when the grass is taller than the lawnmower. The ground on the track was still a little muddy in places but was solid enough that Sam’s dainty weight didn’t make much of a dint in it and I was able to manoeuvre around it with little effort.
There are three tracks all linked to each other. The blue track is the shortest one I feel and we didn’t go on that one today. The red is meant to be the same length as the blue (20 minutes each) and follows for the most part the same track as the yellow which is the longest at apparently 1 hour long. I can’t tell you the times we did because we did the red and yellow tracks in a rather unconventional sequence. One day we’ll do it normally I guess.
We hung/hanged out in the picnic area for a good hour either side of the walk and so had a chance to get the full benefit of the local bird life. I saw a pair of Eastern Rosellas, heard and saw in the distance the squawking of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos, the almost baaing sound of Paradise Ducks overhead, saw Kereru doing acrobatics (flying up at a steep-ish angle and then “stalling” causing them to swoop waaay down low) and oh how I love the sound of them thumping along overhead, Tui’s skipping through the air (as a friend recently described it, which makes me smile), the call of the Shining Cuckoo, the cheerful flitting and squeaking of the Fantail, Seagulls (sorry no better description) flying in to check out the nearby newly tilled/ploughed paddocks, Yellow Hammers singing away (I can’t think of a good way of describing their call), the friendly sound (to me anyway) of the Kingfisher, and I know I have missed some birds off the list (like the Magpie – grrr I don’t like those birds, and the Thrush nesting at head-height right by the track and who I startled as much as they startled me.
Sorry no pictures this time. I decided to enjoy where I was firsthand for a change :)

Taking a night off

Strudel — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:06:34 +0000

Been feeling low today and not much has helped – killing an evening playing Lord of the Rings online helped me forget for a while but having quit for the night (see me practising moderation! :) I’m back to feeling low.
So I’m taking a night off from blogging whilst still trying to achieve my goal of blogging everyday this week.

I’ve randomly chosen (or rather picked the first link that jumped out) a site from my rss feeds.

Paper Toys is a website with free downloads that you can print and assemble for free. There’s a nice range of items including famous buildings like, the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House, Taj Mahal, and the Eiffel Tower. They also have various modes of transport (cars, buses, trains, aircraft), christmas themed items, and crowns (and a tiara). All in all, quite a cool site. (via Freely Educate)

Battle of the Birds

Strudel — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:05:15 +0000

New Zealand Forest & Bird launched their annual Bird of the Year competition during the recent 2010 Conservation Week.

The Forest & Bird blog has been publishing messages from each competing bird’s campaign manager and there are some interesting tidbits of information like; did you know the Grey Warbler is the weight of two 20c coins or that to be classified as a Native bird you need to have flown to New Zealand under your own steam and to have set up a family here, like our newest Natives, the Barn Owls in Northland, have recently accomplished.

This is a great opportunity to have a bit of fun and can easily be expanded into a classroom or homeschool exercise on campaigning for your own candidate for Bird of the Year! Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get the research muscles moving and then a bit of creative writing to persuade your audience that your choice is the Bird of the Year!

Voting closes on 13th October at 5pm. So don’t miss out!

Oh, and my pick for this year? The Morepork, or Ruru, for it’s stealthy flight, sharp hearing, and excellent night vision.

Image borrowed from The Nobles in New Zealand blog.

Kinda Daily Links for 10th and 11th April 2010

Strudel — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:52:14 +0000

Playing catch up at the moment hence the out of whack dates :)

Home Education

The first link is entitled When Rote Learning Makes Sense and I came across this blogpost via Why Homeschool and the part of the article they included in their blogpost really resonated with me as well. I can remember clearly being envious of people who were able to recite their favourite poems and passages when I was younger – and to be honest this has certainly not changed.
As far as our Home Education goes, we already do a little recitation each day with our current rhyme, song, and virtue affirmation. Haven’t quite got to learning poetry on top of this and I think I’ve been putting this off subconsciously until we’re comfortable with our current workload.
The original blogpost also included this passage:

Learning Aloud
Just as we use our mouths to repeat a phone number over and over to retain it in short term memory, other things can be learned in the same way. One key point here to remember is that the cycle of repetition must be short and quick and no less than three times.

Another point is that if students cannot pronounce a word, there is no way they can remember it. When reviewing flash cards orally, for example, students need to do it quickly, pausing only a second or two for recall.

If it doesn’t come, then they need to look at the answer and repeat it aloud, then go on. If done quickly, by the third or fourth iteration, most students can have 100 percent accuracy. The danger is when a student gets stuck on one card for too long, all of the other information in short term memory is lost, making the study ineffective.

One way to help students learn how to do this is to do the flash cards with them, modeling the speed and what happens if the student can’t remember: let them look at the answer, but making sure that that student gets a chance to respond correctly again. If the students are in a line (or even better, several lines), the first student answers a card, and then goes back to the end of the line while the rest of the students in the line give their responses to the cards one by one.

I’m keen to see how I can adapt this advice into the phonics part of the day, which right at the moment I’m experiencing some reluctance to even try – the alternative I see if all else fails is to back off for the moment, which I’m hesitant to do as I know how absolutely overjoyed she’ll be when she’s at the stage where she can read independently.

I should also mention that the comments on the original blogpost have quite a bit of content in them themselves.

Miscellaneous

Here is a blogpost extolling the uses of aluminium foil. I can testify that the tip on using it to Protect Young Plants works. I had a huge problem with slugs and snails grazing on my seedlings germinating in seed trays. No matter how high I would put them the snails would sniff them out. However placing the trays on a sheet of aluminium foil foiled those annoying slugs. The only caveat is that the tops of taller seedlings mustn’t be touching anything nearby as the snails will use it as a bridge into the tray.
I’m currently using aluminium foil to line the inside of a seedtray that I have filled with Jiffy-7 Peat Pellets (I purchased them from Bunnings) that I’m trialling at the moment. This works dually as a deterrent for the slugs and snails once again, and also because the foil is fairly strong I can water my seedlings by pouring water into the lined tray and the peat pellets soak up the water that way. And an added bonus is because there’s no spillage and no seedling mix involved I can keep my trays inside without any mess.
Some of the other tips are intriguing; I’m keen to see how well the aluminium foil ball works in the dryer – just need to wash something that creates static. I gave the tip to use foil to sharpen scissors and that one worked for me.

Well, think I’ll call it quits at two links for these two days. :)

Daily Links for 23rd March 2010

Strudel — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:44:29 +0000

Crafty Stuff

These bunny finger puppets (via Craftzine.com) are cute and the instructions are clear and make it look like quite a simple project, even going to suggest a set of them can be knocked out in an evening. The materials look like they shouldn’t be hard to find at our closest Spotlight – though I suspect I’ll be buying acrylic rather than wool or wool-blend felt there.

Here’s a pattern for a knitted cowl scarf perfect for the coming winter months (via Craftzine.com). It’s a knock off of a $US750 Burberry scarf which seems a horrendous amount to pay for nearly any piece of clothing, let alone a scarf.

Homeschool Stuff

This site also falls into my 101 in 1001 category as one of my goals is to have a better idea as to where all the countries of the world are. PurposeGames (via The Homeschooler’s Notebook) has timed map quizzes which I’m using to drill myself on country locations but also so much more.

Misc Stuff

Three articles drew my attention today about writing and they came from three different perspectives. The first, is entitled the Rare Handwritten Note (when was the last time you sat down and wrote a letter to someone?), the second is from about How to Blog When Youâ€™re Not a Writer, and the final article is in a similar vein but from a scrapbooking perspective, But I’m Not a Writer.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Analytics for whatever reason, I suggest you have a look at GoingUp! (via SmashingApps) It’s a free site and you can utilise it to do most of what Analytics offers but also stuff it steers away from, for example, Google Pagerank and keyword ranking for alternative search engines.

This is getting a little eclectic but I wanted to make note of three more posts.

This one from CSS Tricks talks about changing the layout of web forms so that the information the user considers to be most important (eg the message containing the information they want to relay to you) at the top and the boring, standard inclusions at the bottom of the form. This helps apparently, to thwart user fatigue when filling out forms and makes a lot of sense to me.

This post is entitled The Missing Step in Planning and gives us a great rundown on what you should be thinking about and putting on paper before getting to the dreaded business plan. This list certainly would have helped me with my initial planning for my last venture and though I doubt the author will like my saying this, if all you get done is that list then you’re better off than procrastinating doing a business plan completely.

I’m a big fan of the semi-cartoon-y landscape-y :) website design that is often accompanied by flash. Ajaxian highlights a new jquery plugin called Spritely which acts as an alternative to using flash in these kind of designs and I have to say my fingers are itching to have a play with it.

Daily Links for 22nd March 2010

Strudel — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:51:36 +0000

Well, this is actually favourite links from my rss reader for the last two days :)

Homeschool Stuff

Sam likes to jump around while counting so the idea of making a lifesize number line to practise addition and subtraction is sure to appeal to her.

I’m not a big fan of Easter as it seems a bit incongruous celebrating it in autumn, but at the same time it feels wrong to completely deny our daughter the chance to enjoy the holiday. So, activities like growing grass in eggshells (via craftycrow) seems like an interesting way to acknowledge the holiday of easter.

I’m not sure how close Sam is to being ready for this easter themed cvc reading activity, but it’s one idea for the pile of plastic eggs I picked up for a couple of dollars last year.

These Salt Crystal Trees look like a lot of fun to watch grow and I’m guessing with a bit of experimenting you could get a brilliant effect.

Misc

Trying to reduce our grocery bill by baking more is all well and good – but finding things to bake that are savoury isn’t easy. Luckily, Lifehacker highlighted this site which has a number of savoury recipes to try.

I came across this origami site a while ago but it got lost in my bookmarks, so Lifehacker again is to thank for this link. It’s a brilliant site to remind yourself how to fold the traditional origami designs and has a few I haven’t come across before as well.

Making a Geoboard

Strudel — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:17:01 +0000

What is a Geoboard?
Well, to paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, A Geoboard is a tool often used to explore basic concepts in geometry such as perimeter, area or the characteristics of triangles and other shapes. It’s generally a board with nails partly driven in, and students are encouraged to place rubber bands around the nails to model various geometric concepts or to solve other mathematical puzzles.
Bit of trivia from the same entry: Geoboards were invented and popularised by Egyptian mathematician Caleb Gattegno in the 1950s.

Different Types of Geoboards

Basic Square Grid (the most common for squares/rectangles/oblongs, triangles, octagons, kites, rhombus etc)

Isometric (for hexagons, triangles, 3 dimensional representations)

Circular (for representing the parts of the circle: segments, chord, diameter etc)

Virtual Geoboards (program or website where you can click and drag “rubber bands” around without the worry of getting stung by one)

Paper Geoboards (graph paper with just the dot grid, or a rubber stamp of just the dot grid – generally just the Basic Square Grid but Isometric can be found)

Materials
The end result will be a 9×9 nail board that’s pretty utilitarian and it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.

I’ve mentioned brand names and the stores I purchased them from in the hope this helps someone in New Zealand.

1x KaiserWood Standard Square Plaque ($2.99 from Spotlight)

81x Zenith Bullet Head Diamond Point Nails with Plain Shanks 1.2x25mm ($3.87 for a packet of 375 from Bunnings) If you don’t like how tall the nails I used turned out, don’t hesitate to choose a shorter nail.

1x sheet of graph paper (14K8 I had on hand – it’s 2mm Graph Paper with stronger lines every 1cm)

Assorted Coloured Rubberbands ($2 from our local Itzadeal). Warehouse Stationery didn’t have coloured ones. I suspect many dollar stores will have something similar.

How to make this Geoboard

1. Taking the sheet of graph paper, fold it along two perpendicular sides along one the strong lines so you end up with a square folded corner. Then take the square corner made, place it over one of the front surface corners of the wooden plaque and tape it in place. The end result is the top surface of the plaque is covered in graph paper so that the strong lines of the graph paper line up with all the edges and the graph paper doesn’t move around (though if it’s not taut it isn’t a problem).

3. Remove the tape holding down the graph paper and ease it up the nails and then rip it off. There’ll be a few fragments of graph paper left.

4. VoilÃ – your Geoboard is complete! Get out the rubberbands and have at it :)

There are a ton of activities, ideas and lesson plans available on the web so I won’t be elaborating on how to fully utilise your new Geoboard.

I have a circular plaque ready for making a Circular Geoboard which should be an interesting adventure. And for an extra challenge I could be convinced to make an Isometric Geoboard.

Thanks to Mama Jenn via The Crafty Crow for the inspiration to make my own version. :)
And if neither my version, or Mama Jenn‘s, suits your needs – there are plenty of tutorials on making Geoboards out there. Not to mention pre-made plastic Geoboards generally seem quite inexpensive.

Trying something different

Strudel — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:42:03 +0000

I’ve been trying to do this kind of post “for quite some time now” (sorry, The Matrix is playing in the next room) and try and move away from my content-thin blogposts of late (and early).

So without further ado, I bring you my rss feed picks for today!

Craft

These Goodie Bags look quite simple to make (which is always an important factor for me. I can see they could have other purposes – she says looking at a number of plastic bags containing home education resources. (link via WhipUp.net)

There are plenty of tote patterns available if you go hunting around the innumerable craft blogs. I particularly like this one from Film in the Fridge because the directions are particularly clear, it looks easy to construct but at the same time has a nice pocket and a removable solid base. (link via WhipUp.net)

Home Education

The theme for next weekâ€™s Unplugged Project is Happy. I hope we can organise a project to fit with this theme. Perhaps something that induces happiness like blowing bubbles, or an activity involving emotions.

I’m including this link to this nicely laid out Lapbook on Racoons from Classical Homeschooling while Hawaiian Dreaming in this post to remind me that Lapbooking (or our own twist on it) might be a good way of combining and storing the work we’re doing each unit)

Misc

This weekend we’re definitely going to try making Mozarella, and possibly Ricotta. I’m going to admit to being quite plebian and say I don’t remember ever using Ricotta so this should be interesting. This recipe from Living Green is the one a couple of people I know have used and will probably be slightly more helpful being a New Zealand based tutorial.

After reading this post from WebWorkerDaily, I’m going to remove some of the things I receive via email and receive them via rss instead.

This post at Harvard Business is well worth reading. The three main points are: Choose three important tasks to complete each day, Turn off your email client, and Set up a weekly 20-minute meeting with yourself. I’m already doing the last one (though more like 3 hours), and can testify that it helps define the week and gives a time to reflect on the past week, how you did, and what to concentrate on in the coming week. I’m finding it also helps me to realise I’ve only got a certain amount of time til I will be sitting down and doing this reflection so there better be something decent done to reflect upon.
Limiting the distractions while getting work done and Choosing only 3 taks is something I need work on. I’ve been trialing using post-it notes to score what I need to do next – creating a small stack of 5 or 6 small tasks and then having the satisfaction of unveiling the next task and chucking the just-finished post-it. (via unclutterer)

My 101 in 1001 list has an entry that I’d like to give podcasting a whirl, so this post from Perfomancing was a useful read. I’m spending quite a bit of time doing stuff while listening to various podcasts especially while getting the dreaded housework done, and have been doing some recording of my voice whilst I verbally jot down some ideas, but I’m not sure about listening live as I don’t get to spend a great deal of time uninterrupted at my desk these days.

And lastly, I just had to link to this post from BoingBoing called Big Tent Atheism as it resonated with the antics of some people I come into contact with regularly. Certainly the sentiment can be applied to more than just political parties and atheists. I’m sure there are many people who can identify this behaviour in all sectors of society.

Lifehack had an interesting post today about Assuming Positive Intent. This is something I really struggle with, and combine my cynicism with my sarcasm and I can appear to be quite a negative person. Ironically, I would estimate I spend just as much time being cynical as I do amused at the vagaries of life and I laugh, at the very least, once a day.

Well, this leaves my rss finds for the day down to 4 programming posts which I need to read and digest more, and 1 post that really needs a post of it’s own if I get round to it this week. Yay! This has also taken at least 2 hours (the counter may be out of whack due to a browser restart).

I’m going to have to do some research into how legal it is to include photos from the blogposts I’ve mentioned as this is just a mass of text! I also need to consider breaking this up into several posts based on categories. I know very few visit this blog but I am interested in, if this becomes a regular thing for me, how to present it. One worry I have is that presenting each blogpost I come across as it’s own blogpost on my blog smacks of big blog wannabe.

2009 – Year of …

Strudel — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:54:37 +0000

I decided to see how many themes for 2009 I could find as I tend to hear about them midway through the year – when all the cool events have passed.

I think the most exciting one is:
The International Year of Astronomy
which encompasses a whole bunch of anniversarys including a celebration of Galileo who created the telescope 400 years ago, 400 years since Kepler published his Astronomia Nova which contained the first two Laws of Planetary Motion and 400 years of the Telescope.
The New Zealand chapter of this theme has a ~~Secondary Schools Art Competition~~[linkdead] happening, where students can win their school a telescope.

On the 2-5 April there will be the Global 100 Hours of Astronomy Event which has the goal of giving as many people as possible the chance to look through a telescope. All participating groups and observatories will be providing this opportunity for free which is great. Looks like there will be some resources available to people who don’t end up with access to a local event, like the Live 24-hour Research Observatory Webcast.

The US have a National Year of Science this year (though a number of organisations around the world are joining in), which notably celebrates the anniversaries in the field of Astronomy as well as the 200th anniversary of Darwinâ€™s birth and the 150th Anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (British Natural History website), the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln (whose contributions to science include founding the National Academy of Sciences), and the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Burgess Shale by the paleontologist Charles D. Walcott.
They’ve also decided to break the celebration up by themes per month which sounds like an excellent idea to me:

January – Process and Nature of Science; Communicating Science

February – Evolution

March – Physics and Technology

April – Energy Resources

May – Sustainabililty and the Environment

June – Oceans and Water

July – Astronomy

August – Weather and Climate

September – Biodiversity and Conservation

October – Geosciences and Planet Earth

November – Chemistry

December – Science and health

It’s also the Year of the Gorrilla – though I haven’t been able to find much in the way of events or ways to participate (other than buying posters or cuddly gorrillas) for now – but it’s definitely an excuse to do a unit study on primates this year.

The International Year of Planet Earth – which is actually a triennium – is in it’s last year. Unfortunately, this is really all I could think of to say.

The United Nations website is a little thin on the ground for up to date details on events/special days/anniversaries for 2009 but I did find these 3 themes for the year:
International Year of Reconciliation – Rather than try and rephrase the information on the UN website, the gist of this theme is to provide countries the opportunity to reconcile their differences with other nations under the guise of “hey this theme was such a good idea we just had to join in”. If it works, good on the UN but excuse me while I have a moment of cynicism.

International Year of Human Rights Learning (beginning on 10 December 2008) – The Year is a chance to be devoted to activities undertaken to broaden and deepen human rights learning on the basis of the principles of universality, indivisibility, interdependency, impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity, constructive dialogue and cooperation, with a view to enhancing the promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development, bearing in mind the duty of the State, regardless of the political, economic and cultural system, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds. Sorry this is pretty much verbatim from the UN website as all I can do is blink each time I read it.

International Year of Natural Fibres – The Year is a chance to increase awareness of the importance of the diverse range of natural fibres produced in many countries which provide an important source of income for farmers and therefore play an important role in improving food security and eradicating poverty.

And of course a “Year of …” post wouldn’t be one without mentioning that the Chinese Year of the Ox starts on the 26th January.