love to paint

A funny thing about education is how people come up with new words for old practices...  For grades 1-3, I use Harcourt Trophies and the corresponding workbooks for the base of my children's literature curriculum.  In the workbooks, there are many pages that require students to fill in the appropriate word from a word bank at the top in a blank within a sentence so that the sentence makes sense.  These are called "cloze" activities. I've been noticing the use of the word "cloze" on many teaching resources over the past year, including many print books, and have puzzled about this word that I didn't use 15 years ago when I was getting my master's degree.  I just didn't bother to look it up.  Yesterday, I was looking at a book from fifteen years ago--that used that word and I asked my friend about it.  She explained that it's a practice that helps a child develop the skill of learning what sounds right together in a sentence.  Ah, that totall...

Last night, I came across a coloring book, but then discovered that the author had a website with tons of fun stuff on it!! The author is Samantha Snyder.  Here's a link to her main page:  http://www.doodle-art-alley.com/ She has tons of free coloring pages on it--for the older child (like me) who loves to color!  She also has a classroom doodles page   www.classroomdoodles.com where she has a page for each subject and some really cool ones for noise levels!  I'm going to use these with the writing class I'm going to teach this year.  I love the idea of "spy mode" and "ninja mode"! Oh, and if you have a child who likes Harry Potter, there are a bunch of pages on the main page that she did for Harry Potter Quotes!

A few days ago, I posted two links to some music history composer pages.  I spent part of this week putting together my plans for studying music history/appreciation for the next... however long.  We usually study this together as a family once a week for 30-45 minutes.  I realized after I put all of this together that this is my way of notebooking.  I know many moms collect resources through the year as they move from one topic to another, but I am not able to stay on top of that amidst my school year, so I have to have everything assembled before the year begins.  That's one reason I like textbooks--everything's all together! I read another post by a homeschooling mom that wrote a notebooking curriculum and labeled it as a high school curriculum.  The difference was that she required students to write a report on 2-3 composers from each music period.  I think the way I've set up my notebook, it can easily be adjusted to any grade (3-12).  For ...

Yesterday, I finished writing my daughter's study skills curriculum for this year.  I needed a VENN Diagram.  I have a binder for each subject that I stick resources in, but I couldn't easily find one, so I just opened up Open Office and made my own.   Just now I found a simple file online that has 10 graphic organizers in one place.  YIPPEE!  Here's a LINK .