Alanna the Practical

For a small treat today, I gave Allie a puzzle sheet that asked her to fill in the missing letters of some common Christmas-themed words. She found them to be very easy, and her perception of the season became apparent when she came upon the word

b _ lls


Allie put in an 'i'.

Jingles bills to you, too!

Homeschooling Language Arts on the Web

Homeschool Reading and Book Sites

Starfall
A very well-designed, colorful interactive children's reading course online...all free! Great for 4- to 7- year olds!

Scholastic Kids
Games, downloads, and activities for children's literature.

All Info About Reading Education
Lesson plans, activities, worksheets, and other helps for teaching young and beginning adult readers.

Book Adventure
A free site that gives children points and prizes for answering questions about the books they've read! They can earn enough points to get a subscription to Highlights for Children magazine, books, candy, temporary tattoos...Parental permission required, but the site is quite legitimate!

Book Hive
A searchable list of kid's books, with games, coloring pages, quizzes, You can search by subject, genre, reading level, etc. Each book is reviewed , and you may add your own review, Some have advisory notes for parents. A really fine resource!!

All Info About Teen Reading
Features reviews of good books, parent helps, worksheets, and much more!

Homeschool Writing Sites

Free Worksheets
Printable story starters.

Alphadictionary
A site for kids ages 7 to 13. If your child signs up (with parental permission, they will  e-mail her a vocabulary-building kids word-of-the day, called the Goodword Junior, five days a week along with tips and tricks to help her remember correct spelling and pronunciation. There are also games, puzzles, and other fun things to do here. A really great site!!

Family Education Printables
A wide assortment of pages with topics ranging from puzzles about classic kids' books to parts of speech to paragraph writing. This can be very valuable for that end-of-the-year portfolio, and the kids may really like some of the puzzles!

MLA Style Guide
Practice writing college-level reports.

Homeschool Grammar, Spelling and Other Sites

Learning Page
Free membership, and many free printables, including alphabet and handwriting pages in several styles, story ideas, etc.

Kids Page Archive
Many worksheets for kids ages 5 to 12. Vocabulary, rhyming, spelling, grammar, stories, etc.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves
The punctuation game...

Proofread!!!
An article about editing...with a great photo!

Mad Libs on the Web
By far the easiest and most fun way to learn the parts of speech!! Add words to stories...and read the silly results!!

Fun Brain
Online games to improve vocabulary, spelling, plurals, and other writing skills.

I Know That!
More online games, like Punctuation Paintball and Scrambled Stories.

Anagram Server
Play with your words!!

Don't Buy It!
A site about media propaganda and wise consumerism for teens. Eye-catching and fun!

Author Appearances and Reading Enthusiasm

Last Tuesday, I took Neal to the Columbus Public Library to see and meet John Green,the award-winning YA author who also does a great Happy Dance. I wish that I'd have had the time to really thank him for writing intelligent fiction for teens and others who love good writing. He obviously does not Forget to Be Awesome.

This was the second time that we'd been to see John. The first was hosted by the good folks at Cover to Cover Books in Columbus. Neal put on his UniYeti T shirt and we drove the 45 minutes and had a marvelous time. It also had a major impact on how Neal saw himself. Before the event, he had no interest in writing whatsoever. Getting a sentence out of him was exhausting, despite the fact that he has inherited his Dad's gift of conversation. After seeing that John Green is, in fact, a real, human person, Neal felt that perhaps he should give writing a try. He wrote several partial and finished short stories in the next few months. He now has a few blogs, and even a Twitter account for our kitten. His writing is getting almost as creative as his speech.

A similar thing happened when I took Neal to see Jeff Smith, graphic novelist extraordinare and creator of the Bone series. Neal's drawing experiments took over the dining room for a while. As an added bonus, Alanna was able to meet Margaret Peterson Haddix, which sparked her interest in reading books beyond the beginning chapter book series that she was a bit stuck on.

So watch your local bookstores and libraries for author appearances. They can be very valuable by providing a link between your child, the reader and the authors of the books she devours.

Also check out the online communities that some of the authors have going. Most have websites, and some innovators like the aforementioned John Green have major communities.

Side note to those who think that Neal is a bit young for Mr. Green's books: if a kid wants to read something that may be above his or her maturity level, I'd vote to let said kid go ahead, as long as it's not pornographic or super-violent. In my experience as a kid reader who read psychology texts and grown-up novels at rather young ages, and as a parent raising voracious readers, if it's really out of their range, they won't read far because it won't make sense and will be boring. If it is in their range, then it will make an excellent vehicle for discussion. It's nice to discuss important things like sexual values and ethics BEFORE the hormone rages have quite kicked in, and books are a good way to get the discussions going.

Besides, then I can rationalize extra reading time by saying that I have to read it in order to keep up with Neal!!

First Day, First Week

Monday was our first day of "official" school. So far it's all gone quite smoothly and happily, so here's a few things I've learned about my Students:

1) Allie tends to go to bed right after her story time (which is Book 3 of the Belgariad right now), so she has  no formal bedtime, but she gets in at about the same time each night. Neal, on the other hand, has no bedtime but he does have an arising time. As long as he can get up when he's supposed to and be relatively cheerful about it, I won't impose bedtime.


2) It's very nice to have Allie up for an hour or so before Neal gets up. That allows us to get through most of her academics without competition or interruption.


3) Neal believes that he is unschooling. While I'm sure that his definition wouldn't gel with some purists, he did pick out his subjects and books, and he studies mostly on his own, with a bit of encouragement. Sounds pretty close to unschooling to me.


4) I send emails to the kids most mornings with computer-based activities listed for the day. It may be a website to check out, or a workpage for their writing club, the The LOLcats and Phun Gnomes Society  (Club Oath: We will not kick gnomes, and we will respect LOLcats. Excellent free lesson plans for a  writing club)


5) Writing is much more fun on a laptop, even if it's Dad's. Having fun writing is more important than perfecting handwriting.
6)  Subjects that have Girl Scout badges to go along with them are great!

Writing time!

Alanna has blossoned into a writer! She's in the middle of a story about detectives (of course), and she's currently on page four and counting.

Neal  has so many story ideas that he's having to summarize them on Google Documents and leave them for when he has time to write them. 

So today I was getting books out for school, but we put them aside to work on our latest 'word babies.' Much better than assigning writing workbook pages!!

Wishlist for Santa

We've been having fun with a very silly writing assignment.

I found a stocking outline on Google Images, and copied it for my kids (and one for me!). Then I assigned them to write a Christmas Wishlist for someone else. It could be a friend, or a character in literature or popular culture.

We've done this a few times now, and so far we've had lists from Molly Weasley (who wanted a Gilderoy Lockhart charms bracelet and a weekly visit from a house elf), Drew Carey (who wanted to know whose line it really was, anyway) and both our cats.

IMs for Learning

Allie is a reluctant writer - or at least she used to be.

Until she discovered the joy of instant messaging.

When she is on the computer in the schoolroom, and I am on my laptop in the dining room, the messages fly.

-What are we having for dinner?

-I don't know. Any ideas?

-How about noodles? Or maybe-

Allie pauses to call to me through the open door,"Mom, how do you spell 'crepes?'"

Her spelling and written grammar have improved immensely in a very short time. Spelling now has a use - communicating with someone else.

I try not to be too much of a 'Grammar Nazi' at this point. I simply type back the correct form of her misspelled word in a question, like we tend to do with mispronunciations.

Short Story Character Sketch

Character Sketch
Describe your hero, villain, or sidekick!

Name

Birthdate

Home

Parents, Siblings

Hobbies

Likes

Dislikes

Favorite foods

Least favorite foods

Strengths

Weaknesses

Odd quirks

Pets

Favorite games

Favorite books

Favorite music

Favorite school subject

What makes him really MAD

What she does when she gets MAD

What makes her very happy

What she does when she's happy

What makes him sad

What she does when she's sad

Favorite kind of clothes

Hair

Eyes

Unusual physical traits

Fun Book Titles

FUN BOOK TITLES

Here are a few new books that may never come out on the market...

Try your hand at writing titles for them. Be sure to make the titles

interesting and maybe a bit wacky!

1) a picture book on what causes sniffles

____________________________________________________

2) a dictionary of words to say when you're mad

_____________________________________________________

3) a book for cows about what to do when they are bored

_____________________________________________________

4) a book about llamas living on the Moon

_____________________________________________________

5) a book of photos of mud art

_____________________________________________________

6) a book of names for pet caterpillars

_____________________________________________________

7) a travel guide for butterflies

_____________________________________________________

8) a book of plans for paper airplanes for fairies

_____________________________________________________

Writing Ideas

Writing Ideas

Some kids take to writing like a cow takes to clover, but many are a bit (or very, very!) reluctant. On these pages I've included many, many writing ideas for kids of all levels. I've not given them age ratings, since some teens still have a bit of trouble expressing themselves or would like an occasional easy, fun assignment from the Beginner section, while you may have a nine-year-old who is writing the next best-seller.

Mix up the length and complexity of the assignments, but try to get them to write at least a bit every day. If they have something that they wish to compose, by all means, let them, and save the ideas for later. But if they have no particular idea of what to write about, these lists could come in handy.

Try writing with your kids, and then sharing ideas and stories. Or, get a writing group together, either at a physical location or online.

Have a spelling dictionary and a thesaurus nearby. For younger children, a picture dictionary can be a great story starter. Use your child's mistakes as teaching moments. Help her edit her work and rewrite her favorite pieces, but allow her the joy of focusing on her imaginative outpourings most of the time.

One possible way to use these lists: print out the ones that you wish to use. Cut papers into strips, fold and put into a jar. Have the kids pull out their day's writing assignment. It' is a bit like a present...at least at first!!

Writing Ideas for Beginners

List five things that really scare you.

Try your hand at a a few similes. Similes are comparisons that usually use 'like' or 'as', such as "She was as nervous as a mouse cornered by a tabby cat."

• He was as sleepy as a _________________
• She was as bored as a _________________
• It was as noisy as a ___________________
• My dog was as excited as a _____________
• The cat purred like a ___________________
• The fire blazed like a ___________________
• The elephant loomed over me like a ____________

Now try metaphors. Metaphors are comparisons like similes, but they don't use 'like' or 'as'. For example, "Life is just a bowl of fruit cocktail' or 'Overripe bananas are fruity slugs.'

• The bowl of soup that landed in my lap was ________________________
• My cat's eyes are______________________________
• A hot day is ______________________________
• Thunder is _________________________________

Collect lists of words that you like, either as individuals or as a family. Try lists of words like :

• words about colors
• strange words
• words that are spelled oddly
• words that remind you of someone
• words that sound cranky or happy
• words that cheer you up
• words that make you want to cry

Make acrostics, poems that have each line beginning with a letter of a name or other word, like this one for Neal :

• Never idle
• Everywhere at once
• Always cheerful
• Losing teeth

Make up sentences that would make everyone stop and listen to you.

• Why is there a big hole in the windshield?
• Is that bison supposed to be in the living room?
• Can I give the mountain lion in the backyard a bowl of milk?

Pick a color and think of all the things it makes you think of. Write some of these into a short poem. It doesn't have to rhyme, but read it out loud to see if it might sound better if you change things around.

Finish these phrases:

• Don't you just hate
• Don't you just love
• Don't you wish
• Don't you want

Describe something - a watermelon, a cow, an old slipper - but don't say what it is. Give it to someone else and see if they can figure it out!

Listen to an instrumental song. Write what you think is going on or what it makes you think of.

Write a list of things not to say to someone who's having a bad day.

Pretend that you work at a newspaper. Write a headline about a party for giants...or a cow riot...or a car that came alive...or an ant that does fractions....

Writing Ideas for Middle Writers

Pretend that you work at an animal rescue center. Tell about an exciting day.

Write about a time that the lights went out. It can be a real event, or a pretend one.

You won!! Tell what you won, and the results of you good (or bad) fortune!

Pick a wise saying that you like. Write a fable to show what the saying means and what happens when you follow or don't follow it.

Write exaggerated sentences. For example : " I was so hungry after getting lost in the woods that I ate the forest!" or " His teeth are so shiny that the astronauts can see them from the space station at night." Try these for starters:

• That joke is so old that_________
• My dog is so fat that ___________
• His house is so huge that __________
• I thought I was a fast runner until I saw her __________
• My friend's rat is meaner than ____________________

Describe a thunderstorm. Write about how the air feels, what the thunder reminds you of, how your cat cowers under the bed...

Take a beginning reader and rewrite it with more exciting sentences. For instance, 'The Cat in the Hat' could become 'The Siamese in the Baseball Cap', and the story could go from there.

Ask an older friend or relative about the scariest or most embarrassing or happiest day of their life. Write this out as a short story, and keep for your family history.

Write a poem that has every line beginning with 'I dreamed...'

Write directions for how to paint a cat...or catch a lost hamster...or fly like a bee...or dance with a penguin....

Write a letter to yourself in the future.

Write a list of things that you will be sure to do or not do when (and if) you are a parent.

Invite someone to a historic event, or a time machine trip, or a monster makeover...

Make a list of ten words that describe an experience, like going on a roller coaster or mowing the lawn, Now write a paragraph about the same experience without using any of those words!!

Make a brochure for a camp for monkeys, or a tree-climbing expedition, or a cow-tipping party.

Start a family story. Write six sentences, then stop and pass the story to someone else to continue. Be sure to leave off at an interesting place!

Make a wanted poster for a cookie thief or a runaway gerbil or an angry hornet.

Writing Ideas for Accomplished Authors

Imagine riding on a bus with a really strange person. Maybe they are constantly singing oldies loudly, or talking to an imaginary ferret, or talking to dead historical persons on his cell phone.

You (or your character) have just entered the most disgusting diner on the face of the Earth. Describe the disastrous mess, the dirty, disgusting dinginess...

Remember games of 'Telephone', where people pass around a phrase by whispering in one another's ears, and the final result usually has little resemblance to the original phrase? Write a story about the extreme things that can happen when people gossip.

Rewrite a fairy tale, but set it in your family or homeschool group.

English novelist E. M. Forester stressed the need to make your characters 'round', that is, to make them so real by telling about them in great detail that they seem to walk out of the pages. Try writing a detailed sketch of someone you know, using enough detail to make someone else who also knows them able to tell who it is without being told.

Monty Python once had a skit about Olympics for unusual people doing strange things. There was a competition for being first to be eaten by a crocodile, hurdles for people who think that they are chickens, etc. Try your hand at making your own Olympic Events for the Odd.

Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has stacks of notebooks with background information about her characters, much of which have never made it into books. Develop a few characters yourself, even if you as of yet have no story. Include the person's (or talking animal's) age, physical description, talents, fears, birthday, favorite and least favorite things, favorite books, games, sports, ways to spend the day, friends, family, etc.

Fantasy authors David and Leigh Eddings started their Belgariad series by sketching a map of the continents of an imaginary land, and developed the stories from there. Draw your own land, complete with names of cities and geographical features. Then try writing a story sketch that could take place there.

We've all heard of the story that resolves itself by having the whole thing be a dream....what would happen, though , if you woke up tomorrow and found that your life now is really a dream? What kind of world do you really live in? Who are you, really?

Write about a time when nothing, and I do mean nothing, went right. Set it at a wedding, a trip to the zoo, a moon base, a cow pasture...

Imagine what could happen to you or one of your characters if they took up the wrong job. What if your little sister became a drummer in a rock band, or a college professor became a worm farmer, or a great explorer went to work at McDonalds.

What is your view on luck? Do you think that it is the main factor in most people's lives, or are work and thought more important? Write a short story illustrating the opposite of your view.

Find a book of baby names. Pick one that intrigues you and write a bit about the type of person who might have that name. What might happen if a person has a name that really doesn't suit them?

Scary Stories Writing Ideas

Write five things that creep you out.

Describe the scariest place you've ever been.

What scared you when you were little?

Survey at least five people and ask what scares them.

List ten good, scary words.

Think about five things that you want. Pick one and write a bit about something bad that could happen if you got it.

Write a short description of a story that takes something harmless or nice and turns it into something scary, like vampire hamsters or ice cream that freezes people.

Create a monster. Use Photoshop, or old magazines, or paints to create your vision of a frightening monster...or a deceptively nice monster!

Did your monster/villain used to be normal? What does your monster want? What hurts your monster? What makes him stronger? How can he be overcome? What does he eat? What does he like to do? Where did he come from? Do a bit of 'freewriting' (with no concern for spelling or whatever) and sketch out your monster's backstory.

What's the story on your hero? What is his favorite book? What unusual talents does she have? What is he afraid of? What are his strengths and weaknesses? What does she want?

List several places that you love to go. Write a short sketch of a story about a scary, strange event in one of them.

Choose a moment in history, and create a scary story for that time and place. What if a giant, genetically-engineered cow showed up at the launch of Apollo 11?

Create and do a character sketch of someone who is compelled to do something odd or dangerous every so often...

Using Photography in Your Homeschool

Bugs are really popular at my house right now...but thankfully they're the digital image kind, not the real creepy-crawlies under the sink! My two youngest kids spend their afternoon hunting little creatures and bringing photographic trophies into the house.

My husband is a photojournalist, so practically every room in our house has its own camera! Two of my sons are shutterbugs, and even our seven-year-old daughter has a small, inexpensive little digital camera. We use these in our school for art, but also for enhancing science, geography and history lessons.

Film cameras are nice, but developing gets very expensive very quickly. Digital cameras allow children to take many, many pictures and to experiment with various settings on their cameras and treatments on their photos. A really good free photo program that allows anyone to upload digital pictures and crop, change or redesign pictures is Google's Picasa, which comes with the free Google pack.

Our main rule: wear the camera strap around your neck at all times!!!

Crop, sharpen, make pictures pop. Get the free Google Pack.

General Home School Photography Projects

Take photos on field trips. This will give you not only a remembrance of the event, but also a way to remember academic facts that go with the trip.

Use family photos or assign children to take new pictures to use to make books with simple sentences for beginning readers. This is a good project for children who are a eight or older to make for a younger sibling, friend or relative who's learning to read.

Send kids on an educational scavenger hunt. Have them photograph arachnids, mammals, things that are alive, things that photosynthesize....

Use photos to document how things are made. For instance, show the steps in breadmaking, or water purification, or training for a race.

Write a family newsletter or Christmas letter to be sent to relatives and friends near and far. Illustrate it with your own photos.

Make an I Spy photo.

Make a memory book of the school year.

Add photos to your yearly evaluation folder.

Language Arts Photo Projects

Write photoessays for creative writing.

For a book report, assign kids to make several photos to represent various parts of the story. They might choose to show a scene acted by friends or siblings, or use symbolic objects.

Take a special photo for use as a story starter...or trade photos with a sibling or friend.

Illustrate emails to send to relatives or faraway friends.

Use photos to illustrate an autobiography.

Make an ABC or numbers book.

Science Photo Projects

Take photos of flowers or insects instead of killing the bugs or picking the flowers. In some parks, taking living things or picking flowers is illegal., but photos are usually encouraged.

Document experiments and put the photoessay on your website. Have the children write captions for the pictures explaining each step and the results. This is a report of sorts, but much more fun to write that a paper that few will ever read. If it's a video of their experiment, it might even become the Next Big Thing on Youtube! You'll contribute to the education of millions!

Have kids take photos of butterflies or other insects at different stages of their development, then make a poster or webpage about it.

Use pictures of an animal on your Treehouse of Life page.

Document the growth of a plant or a baby sibling!

Take a picture of the same tree every two weeks or so for a year.

Create your own field guide to the flora and fauna of your neighborhood.

Social Studies Photo Projects

Make a website about your home town, or submit photos to your town's site.

Document the building of a house in your neighborhood, or a building nearby, or the creation of a new park.

Make a historical event come alive by costuming everyone and re-enacting it.

Math Photo Projects

Send kids on a geometric scavenger hunt, searching for things in the neighborhood that are square, spherical, trapezoidal, dodecahedrons, etc

Make a time-telling book that has photos of what your child does at various hours of the day.



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BetterPhoto for Kids and Teens

Neal's Tale

As he walked down the path of an ongoing volley of trees and rocks, he was thinking hard about life, the universe and everything. He was searching for the missing part of himself that had eluded him for so long. Of course, he did only have one arm, but that's not the part he was looking for. He was thinking so hard that he couldn't bother to pay attention to where he was going. He happened to be going toward a freeway when he realized that he was in the middle of the freeway. He quickly ran to the other side of the freeway.

He was safe again: he walked back in to the trees. He was thinking again: oh boy, he was back in that state. As he walked down the path, he found a graffiti rock. It said things like: I will always love you Barbie, and GO!![insert sports team here] and mass amounts of random swear words, and stuff like, for a good time call Jenny at 867-5309. (Don't call it.) He moved on thinking some more.

There was something moving in the trees! It looked to be a donkey, but it was a legendary monkdonk, a cross between a monkey and donkey. It neighed at him from the trees. It jumped down from the trees and looked at him, and it sniffed him and brushed up against him, then looked again. As he bent down to pet this monkdonk, he decided to name him Old Gregg. He had what was missing: a best friend.

THE END