love to paint

In homeschooling, there are so many different ways to approach spelling.  Many people choose a line of yearly spelling workbooks that their children work through each year.  Others use Spelling Power as a guide. Last year, I wrote a post with my spelling plan.  I use Spelling Power as my foundation for my oldest daughter.  For the words that she misspells, I use a plan similar to what my students used when I taught in public school.  Spelling Power includes a long explanation of how to teach spelling in the beginning of the book (in very small font!).  This program has worked wonderfully for my oldest daughter who rarely gets a word wrong from the lists. My second daughter is a different speller and so she needs a different approach to spelling to help her.  I wrote this post   in August as I prepared to tackle spelling in a different way this year with her.  Much of it has been successful, but some of it has not.  I discovered as we...

A few days ago, I began blogging about my quest to help my children learn their math facts.  In my journey I found four math cds that I love, each for different reasons.  I previewed a lot of cds on Amazon before finding a few that I enjoyed for both the lyrics and tunes.  The first cd I hadn't heard at all before my kids and I began listening to it.  I had seen the words for one of the songs and I was curious. Contestant #1:   One Hundred Sheep, Skip Counting From the Gospels  This CD has been published by Common Sense Press, the same publisher who publishes Learning Language Arts Through Literature .  This cd has 9 songs.  Children learn to skip count by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, and 10s.  But, this isn't your normal preschool skip-counting sesame street cd.  The tunes are catchy and fun.   They are fast, though, so your children may have a hard time catching the lyrics at first.  The first time we listened, m...

As my second daughter entered first grade this year, I began thinking about ways I could potentially group my children's instruction for certain subjects.  For the most part, they each work in separate texts for each subjects.  They listen to each other's stories and Eli comes near to listen as we read from many of their books.  I would like to follow a core science curriculum, but break that up with two or three years in which I teach them altogether. Last year, I came across The Nature Connection , published by Storey Publishing which I love.  I plan on using this for Autumn's 6th grade year (Sami's 4th grade and Eli's 1st grade).  I love the look of the book and that it is very affordable.  All I will need is a book for each child and some nature guides. Recently I found two other curriculums that looked very promising.  The first was Great Science Adventures published by Common Sense Press.  Common Sense Press also publishes the very...