Book Review: Who was Here?: Discovering Wild Animal Tracks

For those kids who loved the little board books of who owns that tail or ears or eyes with a picture and then you guess and turn the page, there is this offering of a book for the older set. On each page is a picture of a footprint left in sand, mud, snow, etc., and clues about the animal. Then, you turn the page, and you are given a paragraph of factual information regarding the animal such as weight, habitat, body characteristics and so forth. Some pages have two sets of animal tracks typically seen together, such as a wolf and moose, with clues for both and then info for both on the next pages. This was just the first amount of text for my K-age and 3rd grade children, and they really enjoyed this book a lot. I loved the illustrations myself too. It was a great evening read for us and would be excellent for a classroom or homeschool study of animal footprints or animal habitats.

Reading with Zachary

Reluctant writers ... I have one, or actually more than one. Last year, we were fortunate to outsource our writing instruction to our local on-site charter school two times a week for my oldest two children. The teacher for this class was just fantastic, managing to even get my most reluctant writer enthusiastic and interested in some of the assignments. I couldn't have been happier. This year though that didn't work in our schedule, so we are back at home for writing instruction. Zach, age 13, is my hardest to encourage to write. He is wonderfully intelligent and creative, and will talk for hours on topics of interest to him. Getting him to write out that information though is like pulling teeth and always has been. He is and always has been an avid reader as well. So, in an effort to find a way to encourage him not only to write required items for history, science and so forth but also write more about things he is passionate about, just to keep the ideas flowing and practice getting those onto the page, his year-long assignment for this school year is a book review blog. He reads several books each week anyway, so this doesn't put any extra load on that. The new component is he needs to choose one book per week that he already read for pleasure and share it with people. Again, this is something he already does. He likes to recommend good books to his friends, discuss books and get their opinions. So hopefully this will be the easiest route for him to just practice the act of writing. He also loves technology, so his blog will also be his technology project for the year. So far, he has just worked with layout and backgrounds, but he is finding new features in blogger he wants to try and ways to utilize his HTML, etc. I'm guessing he will far surpass me in that regard by week 3 of the school year or so. haha. Anyway, I wanted to share that his blog, Reading with Zachary. He is 13 and reads primarily action/adventure/sci-fi in the young adult genre and occasional adult sci-fi if it has been vetted by an adult as okay content wise. He finds some really good ones, so if you or your children have similar tastes, he might offer you some good recommendations. Conversely, maybe he will get some comments of new books he can also try. My question to my homeschooling readers also is what you do for creative assignments for your reluctant writers in the middle school age grouping? Anything interesting?

Book review: Pedro's Journal

Rereading this 8/31/15 with a new crop of youngers: Still love this one. It is a first-person, journal-style account of our fictional ship's boy (Pedro) as he travels on the Santa Maria headed for India. As we know, that is not where he ends up. It is fictional obviously, but a great introduction to traveling to the New World for the youngest readers (2-3rd grade probably) and even younger if you are doing it as a read-aloud. It is short enough to be engaging but not exhausting, and the first-person through the eyes of a child helps reach the audience. I love using this one as a lead-in to the nonfiction parts of this era of history, as well as talking about diary or journal style writing. Other reviewers mentioned portraying Columbus in a negative light, and that is pretty true. My philosophy is presenting a wide array of fictional and nonfiction accounts from different perspectives and talking about them. Especially as you go back further and further in time, you are left with subjective assessments of what really happened, and especially of the personality of those portrayed (well, that is true even today).

Book Review: Africa is Not a Country

Lily is using some of the level 6-8 Moving Beyond the Page curriculum this year, and there we came across the book Africa is Not a Country. I just have to take a moment to rave here. Lily is my third to be doing the whole exploring the geography of the continents and learning about different cultures thing that pretty much every curriculum includes in the early years. It is important, but I have always been kind of "meh" on most of the books we have encountered over the years. They are either not detailed enough but interesting (thinking more fiction) or very detailed but very dry reading for the early years. With that, I was very very pleasantly surprised to see this one.



The illustrations are drawn rather than photos but detailed. The front has a string of kids holding various flags of the countries within Africa. It has a map of Africa in the front with all the countries labeled, but it does break it down into more manageable pieces for the elementary imagination. Example: "If you drew a picture of Africa's landscapes on a large pie and cut it into ten equal pieces, only one pieces would contain all of its rain forests. Four pieces would represent the deserts ...." This is something a kid can understand. Following this, each 2-page spread shows a nice illustration of a family and some about that family in narrative style. The cultural information is nicely included into the text with the focus being on the children described and not the list of details, i.e., "The boys kiss their parents' hands and respond 'Yekenielai,' which means 'thank-you' in Tigrinya, a widely spoken language in Eritrea." In the sense that each page turn encompasses a different region, it reads similar to Children Just Like Me by DK Publishing. That, by the way, is our second favorite for teaching about world cultures to children.



Africa is not a country though is (obviously!) just about Africa unlike the DK book, and it is much much less dense. I think for my family the DK book is better for 3-6th grades, child the Africa Is Not a Country book is suitable for the younger set, down into pre-K. The back does contain a summary of each country with population, capital and so forth for reference, but the focus is really reading it aloud for youngers. Lily really really loved this one for learning. The prior study was Asia, and we did use Exploring Asia by Kalman, but as mentioned above it was data dense and a little dry though still good. This one on Africa though really stands out among the crowd for interest in the youngest students so I had to put that out there!

Kindle Freebie today: Gold Rust California

Saw this to share, good for teaching the gold rush era or as part of a history of California study, which we are doing currently with Noah as part of the typical 4th grade year state study for him.

Moving Beyond the Page: Culture Unit

We have been dabbling in using Moving Beyond the Page here and there for a couple years now.  I started with just individual units for Zach, mainly literature units to supplement what he was already studying.  Then, as I mentioned earlier in the year, I purchased the entire age 4-5 curriculum for Eden.  That is going really, really well given that I also got the supply kit.  I cannot emphasize what a stress reliever it is to have everything I need for her all organized and ready.  Without that, I think she would fall right through the cracks of daily life in terms of our homeschooling.  As pre-K, she is last priority this year in terms of concrete curriculum. 

Given that the above was going so incredibly well, I got a unit for Lily too this semester.  She usually just tags along with Noah for most things, keeping my life a little easier, but her social studies of Medieval Times, while fun this year, was sometimes a little hard for her personally.  This Culture Unit seemed just the thing for her age, and I have started it on the one day a week when the boys are in on-site classes but she is home with Eden and me.  We are going to look at geography and world cultures geared for age 6-8. 

Our first day, we are looking at an intro to geography and maps, and opened with this book:



A little Armadillo from Texas decides to take a trip to find out where in the world he actually is.  He starts out on foot, mailing postcards back to his cousin in the zoo in Texas.  He travels across plains to cities, further out, meets an eagle who lets him fly higher to see further, onto a rocket ship to go higher, etc. 

The words are rhyming, keeping interest of the kids, very lyrical to read aloud.  Each 2-page spread has great illustrations. 

This book is obviously most interesting if you are from Texas or Amarillo, but for any elementary child it can serve as a jump point to talk about geography and location, a common thing to teach around 1st grade or so.  The book goes from ground to city to state to country to continent to planet, etc.  That is exactly how we used this book, a fun fictional account to lead us into our study of geography with a 2nd grader and a pre-K child. 

The book actually reminds me of a more updated version of this book we found used and have used as a fun fictional account of world geography:



Both books are excellent to introduce geography in a more engaging way than just - this is a map, blah, blah, blah.  Some kids really are into nonfiction and want just the facts, but most of mine I found loved the fictional stuff.  In terms of Moving Beyond the Page, they used our Armadillo to lead up to an Usborne title, Usborne Children's Picture Atlas, which actually is good too.  Lily is absolutely loving her first day of this though, and I couldn't be happier.

Brother printer - today's Amazon Gold Box Deal

I had to share today's Amazon Gold Box Deal because it is the printer we use, and it has saved us a lot versus the old inkjet we had.   The price today is $55, good deal, but anyone who does a lot of printing knows the cost is really the ink not the actual printer.  Though I will say this has lasted us without issues or problems, either directly connected or via wireless connections to our Mac (problems in the past with that with other printers).   I use off brand cartridges from Amazon without problems, so it is fast, does duplex printing and is economical. I miss the color ability sometimes but not too much really.  Just sharing for those in the market for a new printer. 

The Little Island

This is Eden's craft of the morning.  The other three are all taking on-site classes on Mondays, so it is just the two of us.  So quiet!

She is working on Moving Beyond the Page Age 4-5 this year as her curriculum, and we are just loving it.  There is a book each week, and activities surrounding that book.  This week is The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown.  This is a cute little book, simple enough for the preschool set to listen to and enjoy, but meaty enough for some naturalistic learning.  There is a little island in the ocean, and we see the visitors to the island throughout the seasons, very cute.  In Eden's craft for today, she created her island (the white is the island, blue the water around it), and then placed the correct number of die-cut trees and bushes on the island - practicing her counting of course.  She cut out her rock for the island, and then added the firefly stickers.  This one was a huge hit for her.  I can't say enough good about Moving Beyond the Page.  We got the supplies kit, and I love pulling out the baggie of activities for the week with my stickers, die-cuts, etc.  Left to my own devices, I would not be hunting up die-cut trees and bushes.  This is just such a good blend of literature, crafts and more traditional learning for us (letters, numbers, etc). 

As I mentioned, we are working on "notebooking" this year for science and history, more interactive way of taking notes and documenting.  This is a picture Zach worked on from his Elemental Science Logic Stage Biology.  We love Elemental Science.  They provide nice student pages with space for notes and places or outlines of sketches.  I had him copy the sketch into his laboratory notebook and then label and add color.  Then, he did his laboratory writeup in the pages afterwards for the week instead of doing them in the student pages.  We used the student pages last year, and they were certainly adequate, but with our focus this year I wanted more and chose to go this way.  He continues to do his lab with a buddy each week, which adds some extra fun into his studies. 

Book Review: Turn of the Century by Jackson

My kids loved this one. Each 2-page spread is about a child in that time period, beginning with 1000 AD. We used this in our introduction to the Middle Ages. My kids are 4, 6, 9 and 12 at the time of reading. All of them enjoyed it, even the 4yo, though her mostly the pictures. 

The kids depicted in the book ranged from about 8 to 12 I think. There was a narrative as if written by that child, followed by a bullet point list of facts about that time period. It was kept brief and entertaining. The art style was excellent. Some of the facts though were a bit gruesome (chamber pots, illness, life on board ship including eating rats, hanging), so read first if your kids are sensitive, but it was honest, keeping with the brutality of the times. It wasn't presented in a depressed or glorified way, but rather to educate.

This one gets 4 stars from us for excellent entertainment value with a nice balance of factual information.  With the range of ages we have, it is sometimes hard for us to find books that appeal across the group, and this one did a very good job.

The Fall of Freddie the Leaf

We did a little more in Science Through Children's Literature today, this time talking about seasons and leaves falling, and read a book, The Fall of Freddie the Leaf.  This was an incredible book for all of us, one I hadn't seen before today.



I can't say enough good about this book.   The youngest got a little from it, but it really struck the 12yo.

Freddie is a leaf on a tree in a public space.  He tells us about himself and his friends, the other leaves.  He tells us about the spring and summer, the winds, the people who come to enjoy the shade.  Then he starts to change colors in the fall, and tells us about that.  He questions his wise friend, Daniel, another leaf, about what is next.  Daniel explains to him that they are changing colors and that the leaves are dying and falling in the winter, but that it is okay, they are all part of Life.  Freddie is frightened about dying, and Daniel reassures him and comforts him. 

On the surface this book is about the seasons of the tree.  But, of course, that is not all.  This book is about Life and Death, passing from one season to another in a year and in life. 

There are pictures of trees as the illustrations, a picture for most 2-page spreads but not every set.  There is a paragraph or two for most 2-page spreads.  This is a wonderful picture book for the elementary into middle school years really.  It is a beautiful story for all ages. 

Science Through Children's Literature

We love teaching/learning through living books and always have.  Below I talked about Art Through Children's Literature, and now I'll share some of what we are doing with Science Through Children's Literature.  The science has two levels, beginning and intermediate.  We are working on the beginning one with all, Zach for review, the rest maybe some new information.

Today, we talked about trees, using A Tree is Nice as the introduction story.  Honestly, despite this being a Caldecott Winner, I wasn't terribly impressed with this book.  The shape being tall and narrow like a tree was an interesting feature, and the illustrations (alternating color and pencil) were nice, but the vocabulary and sentence structure were bland to the extreme.  It read like one of those tortuous level 1 readers kids try out when first learning to sound out words.  Needless to say, my kids were a bit bored with this one. 

We are notebooking this year though as our note taking activity, so we all then got out the science notebooks to write down something we learned.  Lily made a beautiful picture to illustrate her coniferous/deciduous distinction in her notebook. 

Art 2014-2015

Here is where I admit that art is not a subject we do each year systematically.  I have used art curriculum in the past (Artistic Pursuits), plus we have done occasional informal co-op classes with a friend who is very artistic, on top of the usual casual arts and crafts kids produce. 

As it is summer and we are actually taking off this year for the most part, I decided to focus a bit more on art before the start of the core subjects again in September.  After thinking, I didn't want to go back to Artistic Pursuits, though we did enjoy it.  I decided to try Art Through Children's Literature: Creative Art Lessons for Caldecott Books




We did the first lesson today, which used pencil, paper and a library copy of Abraham Lincoln (Bicentennial Edition) Each child then tried to replicate the lesson, which was creating a log cabin with shading to attempt to show dimensionality. It wasn't the greatest success, but they tried and had fun. :)



Zach had lots of detail but skipped the shading entirely. Oh well, he enjoyed doing it and produced something.

Lily's attempt was interesting in her shading attempts but she also had a good time, and they are looking forward to tomorrow's book and lesson.

Planning time! Preschool version

What's new with us? Planning, planning and more planning. We are going to be teaching 4 this year, ages 12, 8, 6 and 4. Whew. That equals approximately 7th grade, 4th grade, 2nd grade and pre-K. I wasn't going to do really anything for pre-K to be perfectly honest. My tune has changed a lot since my first was 4 years old and I had energy to burn on formal schooling of that child, eager to get started. Now, it's all about the play and a few fun workboxes at that age, or so I thought. Until she grabbed pencil in a really nice grip and started producing letters and saying their sounds spontaneously. Yep, those educational videos do work. But now she wants to write and read, so that laid back pre-K year is not really going to happen. I could slow her down, but I can't bring myself to ignore that passion and enthusiasm to get started.

I did Sonlight with my two oldest, starting with my oldest before the P3/4 I think they call it was even out. By my third child, honestly that had gotten old. We still have many of the lovely books around, and still read them, but I was past the snippets of several books each day. And I couldn't face another child with their learning to read/write program.

So for the third child we went way the opposite way and did Funshine Express with her. It was pretty much all crafts all the time with some learning in there too of course. It is really set up for daycares and the like, but worked fine for us. We did even a little of the Buttercups with the younger. The price though was really outrageous for our use. Since it is set up for daycares, you get your month at a time package, and the cost really adds up fast with shipping charges by the month with no option to get the whole year at once. Really a daycare would not want that option. So, while it was well organized and fun, it wasn't going to happen again for this fourth child.

I was stumped for a while, but then I saw Moving Beyond the Page had a new age 4-5 curriculum. We have used individual literature units from MBTP but never a whole level for a child as the core. We use it as add-on to our basic classical 4-year history cycle. Looking deeper into that 4-5 age curriculum though, it seemed perfect for us. It has the strong literature focus I loved from Sonlight but with a ton more hands on that I loved with Funshine Express. It was that ideal middle of the road thing for us, and was still open and go for this mom who honestly is tired some days and not up to planning out fun and exciting preschool crafts that week. So, late last week it finally arrived in our hands, and I'm excited to teach this! We got the Materials Kit and the curriculum. Being she is a fourth child, we already own a significant portion of the literature, and what we don't have the library does. There might be a book or two I need to order from Amazon or whatever, but that is fine. It came to just under $150 for the entire year, which is quite good as that included shipping on the box that was larger than my pre-K child.

Check it out with me, materials kit first:




Oh yeah, all organized and tidy in little baggies. This is looking good, right? This is the entire year in the box. Let's look at a single item or two. Each baggie is labeled for when it is used.



Random bag of dirt/sand? Huh. At least it's provided for me! LOL


Then there are the written guides, one for the parent and one workbook for the child. The parent one is broken out by week and day, open and go format. Perfect for me. The student one is just that ... the worksheets for her. As she is a young age 4, I plan to use the page protectors over some of the letter pages so she can practice then more than once. When she is confident, she can complete the page in her book. Sometimes too, the option of dry erase just adds an extra element of fun to her work.



So that is her main lineup. I also have some tag-along stuff she will do with her older siblings in their studies, little lapbooks she can do as they do harder lapbooks for their level. But her Moving Beyond the Page is set up to be 30 weeks of curriculum, 26 letter units and 4 holiday special weeks. That is perfect for us, and we will be getting started in September. My next posts will be about my olders and their studies, so more to come!

Free Kindle Version: Battle with Bugs (Human Body Detectives)

There is a great freebie today, Kindle version of Battle with the Bugs of the Human Body Detectives line. These books are always a great way to liven up learning science.

Book recommendation: The Tree Lady

The Tree Lady is a brief biography of Kate Sessions, a female teacher in the 1800s who had an interest in science and nature, unusual for the time period.  This describes her education, move to San Diego and her subsequent search for trees that would grow well in this region, along with her influence of the tree planting of Balboa Park in time for the World Fair in San Diego. 

The writing is all appropriate for preschool or early elementary age students, and the illustrations are just beautiful.  This is a 5 star read for us, and especially applicable as it relates to our home city.

We used this as part of social studies as we live in San Diego.  My kids were very interested as we live near a park named for her, as well as visiting Balboa Park often and appreciating the trees there.  This was also wonderful from a science biography for younger kids as well. 

Another freebie: Golden Mane

Free find for Kindle on Amazon today, with good reviews there and on Goodreads.  It is the first of a series.  Looks good for Zach and maybe Noah, but Noah is hesitant on paranormal stuff, finding it a bit scary, so I'll have  Zach read it first.  Has anyone already read this series?

Kids freebie: Puddly the Penguin

Saw this Kindle freebie this morning and picked it up for Noah.  He loves stories about animals, and this one looks good.  You can read the first few pages inside Amazon to see if you/your kids would like it, but it's hard to beat free for a price.  Happy Friday everyone!

Book review: EKHO: Evil Kid Hunting Organization

My rating 3.5 stars out of 5

Elvis and his three friends, Levi, Jordy and Jackson, are 4th graders now, and have been bullied by the same bullies for several years. This year Elvis decides to do something about it, and enlists his friends to form EKHO, the Evil Kid Hunting Organization, to stop the bullies of their school. All four main boys have characteristics that make them the targets of bullies, Elvis having muscular problems, being wheelchair bound in the past, and still with a limp.

The good about this book: Strong boys who are bullied but not beaten down, good friends, who want to help all the bullied kids in school. Elvis talks about his mom and his extended family with love and pride. His mom loves him, and stands up for him. Elvis and his friends are true to themselves and proud of it. Mentioned are adaptive PE, IEPs and all kinds of other things typical public schooled kids would encounter and possibly make fun of.

The author, Marie Jones, also covers a lot of important topics as privacy when the EKHO agents start "spying" on kids. Elvis' mother points this out clearly so no reader could mistake it:

"EKHO has my blessing, but within certain boundaries. [She had described no video taping in bathrooms, teachers picking their noses, etc.] Those boundaries are breached and the only echo you'll be hearing is an empty bedroom with no computer, gaming gadgets, and the rest."

The spy gear, internet/tech stuff, gaming references, social media references, etc., etc., are all things to draw kids into the book. And those are presented in really a pretty positive way in this book. There is humor appealing to kids of the age group.

And there is a good mystery going on for the kids here ... with a bit of a cliffhanger ending to keep kids coming back for that next book.

My dislikes:

Too much of a focus on liking girls at times.  Again, these are 4th grade boys.

Lastly, too much specific name dropping - iphone, Halo, on and on. That might be specific to rope in reluctant readers, but it takes a book so fast. I doubt kids even a few years from know are going to recognize "Cake Boss," if they even do now.

Overall impression though is a good start to a series, and I might appeal to many kids. The wider the selection the better for kids ... keep them reading and enjoying. I feel the good messages in this book, explicit and implicit, far outweigh my dislikes above, but I do note those for parents and teachers. As for the mystery, I too want to know more about "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley in order to provide an honest review.

Free ebooks for kids!

Free ebooks for adults (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc) abound, but the number for kids is much smaller and a bit harder to find IMHO.  It occurred to me to share a few I have found lately.  My older two (ages 11 and 8) read on Kindle, and the youngers read theirs on ipad as our Kindles are not color/fine graphics (i.e., Kindle Fire) but rather just for reading. 

For younger ones, we picked up these freebies lately:







Those were obviously for Eden and Lily (ages 6 and 3).  For Zach, I found this freebie today:



He has read one in this series before from the library and really enjoyed it. 

Obviously, my links may not be free when you read this, but they are as of this posting so hope you get a chance to grab them if you want them, and keep an eye out as books for kids do go free occasionally, or at least discounted.