Quick Update...

So I haven't kept up with my blog lately but it really wasn't entirely my fault. It all started almost two weeks ago when I was going to post a worship article on a Wednesday morning. That was the morning my shoulder decided it did not like living in it's socket. So that put me out of commission for a few days. (I did the bare minimum that I needed to get stuff done.) Finally Monday rolled around last week and I thought I would spend the evening getting some writing done. Apparently that was not to be as I started to feel pale while waiting in the line of the bank and ended up with a full on Stomach Virus that landed me in bed all day Tuesday. Felt better on Wednesday and had to play catch up with our homeschooling and I had to work in the afternoon and Church that night. Thursday I was still feeling pretty run down but I thought I was on the mend, that was until Friday morning when I woke up with a scratchy throat and a runny nose that wouldn't quit. So now It is Tuesday and I am finally starting to feel better. Hopefully I'll get an opportunity to get some writing in either tonight or tomorrow. This Friday is the first day of our Homeschool Co-op's Spring Semester and I will be teaching 2 classes this time around. The first is a music class for 2nd and 3rd graders focusing on percussion instruments. The second is a class on the Ten Commandments for 3rd graders. should be fun.

Until next time...

Teaching Tuesdays: Making Music

So this semester at our homeschool co-op I will be teach a music class to 2nd and 3rd graders focusing on percussion instruments. This got me thinking about all the ways you can incorporate music into our homeschool programs. First off I think we can all agree that music is highly beneficial to our children's learning, both from an cultural and educational standpoint. Music is one of the few things that can unite people of different cultures all over the world. Studies have also shown that music helps with cognitive ability and logical reasoning.

So how do we introduce music to our children? Many of us have little if any musical background, but that is no excuse in our modern day and age. With the internet we can research almost any topic, music included.

The first thing I would recommend is letting your little ones drum. give them some pots and pans and some chop sticks or pencils and let them experiment with different items. Let them discover that each item has a distinct sound. Older children can learn to repeat patterns and eventually create their own rhythms. 

Musical instruments don't have to be expensive either. Sand pails make excellent drums and don't discount those toy xylophones when teaching about toned percussion. Again older students can use them to create their own compositions. Also inexpensive kits that include tambourines and hand bells are great for little ones to express themselves.

Music can also help to enhance learning especially when it comes to memorization. Set a list of facts to a well known nursery rhyme and you have a powerful mnemonic. For example sing the following to the tune of This Old Man:

North America

South America

Europe, Asia, Australia

Africa and Antarctica

I mean how many remember School House Rock. You can still get them on DVD and there are plenty of Geography and Bible memory song CDs out there.

So next time your homeschool lessons seem to be dragging try adding a little music to the mix and see where it goes.

I would love to here how you use music in either your homeschool or classroom. Leave a comment below!

Happy NaNoWriMo

Yes, it is National Novel Writing Month. The premise is to start on November 1st and finish by Midnight on November 30th. The total word count should be no less than 50,000 words, but the Young Writers Program (YWP) allows you to set more reasonable goals for students. The idea of writing an entire novel in a month is intriguing and well, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. I will be blogging about my experience as the month progresses, I'm getting into this late but hey, I'm a bit of an overachiever so lets see what happens. Also going to be using the YWP program with my daughter (pray for her as she does not like to write :P)

Want to write a novel yourself you can check out the program and sign up at:
http://nanowrimo.org/

Want to get free curriculum to use with your students goto:
http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

Happy Writing!

Teaching Tuesdays: Election Day

So Today is Election Day, and as in past years we have been discussing the importance of voting and in making an informed decision. Part of our homeschool philosophy has always been to use the events of our everyday lives as a jumping off point for learning. After all we are trying to raise our daughter to be a responsible adult. I know that this year isn't a major national election but that doesn't mean it isn't important.

If you are considering a study on the electoral process (whether you're a homeschooler or not) the following resources may prove helpful:

• Election Lesson Plans Page 

• Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids

• Learn about Elections and Voting (From USA.gov)

• Electoral College Map (from C-Span Classroom)

Managing Mondays: Mason Jar Crafts

As I said last week, we have been very busy around here. Part of that business is due to some upcoming craft fairs we will be working. With that in mind I thought it would be fun to show off some of our wares.

These are just a couple of the mason jar luminaries we have been working on. the first one is a fall themed one. I stippled yellow, orange, and red paint in vaguely leaf like shapes and then attached a silk leaf using jute.

The next one I used paint pens to draw snowflakes and added a blue snowflake ribbon and blue stones around the candle.

I hope this gets you inspired. You might even want to try these with you kids.

Teaching Tuesdays: To Snow Day or Not to Snow Day

That is the question isn't it? As homeschoolers do we keep going when everyone else has no school due to the snow or do we allow ourselves to take some time off to enjoy all that wonderful white stuff?

I don't think there is any right answer to that one. It really all depends on what works best for your family, and that may even vary from year to year. One of the joys of homeschooling is the flexibility it gives us to do school around our lives and schedules and not the other way around.

So if you feel you need to do school even though public schools are closed then go ahead, (that is what we are doing this week as we have a big family vacation coming up next month and our homeschool co-op is also staring up next month so I don't want to fall behind anymore than we already are (-: ). On the other hand if you feel it is more important to your children to go outside and make a snowman or go sledding then by all means do that. We've done both and we have even taken a snow day or two even when the public school is still in session.

Our days off don't have to line up with the days the public school are taking off. We can manage our school schedule to fit the circumstances of our own individual families. So go ahead and do what is best for your family and stop worrying about what other schools and families are doing, and remember you can even do "school" while having fun. Field trip to Sea World anyone?

Like I always said when I worked as a Training Facilitator "Let's have fun and learn something!"

Teaching Tuesdays:Board Games

Who doesn't like games? Why not use that love of games to help our kids learn things?

Some of my favorite games also teach some basic and not so basic concepts. Today I want to go over a few of my families favorite games and what makes them so special.

Carcassonne

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne

My daughter began playing Carcassonne at age 6, though much of the games mechanics were lost on her at first (she really liked to complete roads so that they looked pretty.) No at 14 she can give me and my wife a run for our money. So why is this a great learning game? Well, let's start with the whole scoring system that involves basic addition and multiplication. Then there is the spacial reasoning and also the ability to plan ahead. Resource management is also something to take into account. You could also go extra geeky and look up the actual city of Carcassonne on which the game is based.

Made for Trade

http://cathyduffyreviews.com/history-geography/made-for-trade.htm

So my next pic is Made for Trade. This game is designed to be a learning tool, but unlike most games of this nature was actually entertaining to play. The game includes 4 different levels of play and is based on collecting items in a barter economy. This is definitely a great addition to any study of colonial America.

Stone Age

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34635/stone-age

The last game I want to mention is Stone Age. This has fast become one of our families favorite games. The game revolves around collecting resources in order to build your village and develop tools and agriculture in order to survive. This game makes the list due to its involved scoring system in which makes use of multiplication and division as well as addition. It can also spark conversations about history and the development of civilization.

This of course is just a sampling of the many games that we have used, usually without my daughter realizing it, in teaching.

Teaching Tuesdays

So, what is 'Teaching Tuesdays'? Teaching Tuesdays is going to be the heading under which everything related to homeschooling gets placed. It may not make it on the blog every week, but it will quickly highlight that article as relating to homeschooling. These articles will consist of reviews, lesson idea, homeschooling philosophies, etc.,. So, that being said, I need your help. I'm looking for submissions for this new feature. Do you have a favorite curriculum you would like to tell me about, how about a great lesson plan idea, or how about a virtual field trip. If you would like to submit an article for the blog send it to knaptihuved@yahoo.com

So the breakdown of the site is now as follows:

Managing Mondays
Articles dealing with running a household, as a guy many of these things do not come naturally so if I discover some new idea or recipe I figure others may want to know about it too.

Teaching Tuesdays
Articles dealing with homeschooling and education.

Worship Wednesdays
Being a Worship Leader is a great honor and it is also one of my passions.

Fun Fridays
This is where I'll share things of a geeky nature, I'm not just a Homeschooling Dad or a Worship Leader. I'm also a gamer and technophile.

Managing Mondays: First Day of School

So, we officially started our school year today. All I can say is "Wow"!

I'm just amazed how much my daughter has retained from our previous years of school. I'm also just a tad proud of her attitude toward school this year. In her own words, "I'm taking school serious this year," and she should. She is starting her 9th grade year so that makes her a High School Student.

I hate to admit that I was a little apprehensive coming into this year, but seeing her attitude toward school this morning gave me some hope for the next 4 years. Maybe we can do this. What am I saying, with God all things are possible, and homeschooling is no exception. speaking of God we have instituted a new tradition this year where we will wait to do our Bible lessons until lunch time. In the past it was the first thing we did, which made sense as we wanted to start the day with God's word. This year though we wanted to find a time when the entire family could do Bible together. Lunchtime makes sense for us as my wife works 2nd shift. That means she isn't home most nights for dinner and she isn't really awake at breakfast time. So we started to day, using our newly purchased copies of Balancing the Sword, and it was some of the best devotional/family time we have had in a while.

I highly recommend taking the time as a family to eat together, pray together, and study God's word together. It doesn't matter when you do it, just do it, and do it often.

Managing Mondays: This Year's Homeschool Choices

I get a lot of questions about what curriculum we use in our homeschool. So, I thought I would give a brief run down of our choices and some of the reasons behind those choices.

Let's start with our core subjects:

Language Arts:

LLATL: The Grey Book (8th Grade)

We are returning to the series we love. We took a break from this series last year to focus more on creative writing. So, instead of skipping the 8th grade book we will be picking right up where we left off. There are only 2 High School level books in the series so it will still work out fine in the long run.

I really enjoy this series as the teachers guides are easy to use and they incorporate passages from actual books in all the lessons. The Book Studies this year are particularly interesting as two of the books deal with smuggling Bibles.


Science:

We will be using Apologia's Exploring Creation with Physical Science this year. I love this curriculum as it is written from a creationist view point. The Science is also very sound and the experiments are designed to use common household items to demonstrate the concepts being learned.







History:

Beautiful Feet Books Ancient History is our choice for this year in history. This will be our second time through this wonderful study, having completed The Junior High section of the guide we will now be starting the High School section. This study uses actual literature to teach history and has proven to be a favorite with my daughter, who is an avid reader.

Managing Mondays: Teaching Character

My Pastor started a new series of lessons on Wednesday night. The first lesson was about "Living with Character." That got me thinking about teaching character to our children. He based his lesson on the Beatitudes, and I thought that would be a great thing to teach to our children. Then it dawned on me, how many of us have actually studied the Beatitudes ourselves. I studied them a long time ago, but truth be told I have seldom looked at them since.

So I have decided that I will start a series of my own on the Beatitudes and how to teach them to our children. I think this is probably one of the most imortant things we can teach our children.

Managing Mondays: History Pockets Review

I absolutely love arts and crafts type projects to reinforce what we are learning. Throw that together with my love of history and I just could not get enough of History Pockets. Each workbook in this series comes with full instructions to create a series of pockets made out of construction paper. Each pocket is devoted to one aspect of the historical period or civilization being studied (i.e. while studying Greece there are pockets for History, Politics, Military, etc.) The workbooks contain all the reproducible sheets for all the projects as well as a list of all the additional supplies needed for those projects.

History Pockets on Evan-Moor's Website

The Workbooks themselves come in two categories based on grade level (1-3 and 4-6) and cover a wide range of historical civilizations and time periods with multiple workbooks devoted to the different stages of American History. The pages are fully reproducible and the workbooks are also available in PDF format so you can print them out as you need them.

I actually used these in conjunction with our primary history curriculum in a similar fashion to a lapbook and the results were amazing. I highly recommend them.

Managing Mondays: Sometimes Something Has to Give

So originally I was thinking that I would write a review of one of my favorite pieces of software. I even carved out sometime in my schedule last week to really do a thorough job. But, as some of you may already know from my VLOGs all week, we had VBS at church last week. I knew VBS would take a lot of my time last week but forgot to factor in how much energy it would take.

As some of you may be aware I suffer from Fibromyalgia Syndrome or FMS. And sometimes when I'm feeling good I forget how easy it is to push myself too far. The problem is that when I start to feel like I may have overdone it, it is already too late, sometimes it's too late before I feel it. What I'm saying is I need to really pace myself to the point of feeling like I'm moving at a snails pace at times.

Needless to say I did not get the review done, I didn't even look at the software all week. So, here I am typing away trying to figure out what to write about today, when it hit me. I'm already saying what needs to be said. Sometimes, something has to give. Sometimes, I just can't do it all, and that's ok. Trying to live, never mind homeschooling and managing a household or trying to publish a blog and operate a YouTube channel, with a chronic illness isn't easy and sometimes you have to accept your limitations. So the laundry didn't get folded or there are some pans in the sink, is that really what's important.

Take my daughter's education. Do we get to do all the academics I have planned out for the year? No. Do I get to mold her character and prepare her for life as a responsible and caring adult? Yes. So we didn't finish her science book (we still get more done than the public school) and we didn't learn much about Algebra, but she did learn the importance of family and responsibility.

So, Will I ever do that review? Maybe, maybe not.

Does it matter? Not really.

In the long run I chose to use what little energy I had last week, serving God by being a blessing to over 50 kids at VBS. I think I made the right choice.

Managing Mondays: Beautiful Feet Books Review

When I was in school, one of my favorite things was when we would get to watch a historical movie. Movies and miniseries, like Blue and the Grey and Becket still rank among my favorites of all time. I loved historical fiction such as Killer Angels, and A Farewell to Arms, but when it came to actual history I would tune out. I hated all the momorization, I just couldn’t keep it all straight. I realize now as an adult that my problem wasn’t an inability to memorize fact but rather that the facts had no context. There was no meaning behind the places, people, and dates.

When we decided to homeschool I desperately wanted a history curriculum that told history more as the great story it was. I found that curriculum in Beautiful Feet Books. Each Study Guide gives projects, and assignments around living books. Real literature and stories that take place during the times and places that are being studied. When a people, such as Lewis and Clark are studied, children associate more than just places and dates to the names, but come to appreciate what they accomplished in spite of the hardships they endured. Ancient Egypt comes alive by reading fictional stories that highlight the daily lives of that civilization. And most of all, history is studied more as a flowing stream instead of a list of disjointed and unrelated events.

Beautiful Feet Books Study Guides are also fairly inexpensive and the majority of the books they use can be found in the public library. They do offer discounted bundles of all the materials needed if you want to go that route. Based on the Charlotte Mason Method of notebooking, the curriculum provides a flexible fairly inexpensive quality history education.

M is for Mondays and Math

So with the start of the new week we are starting our new format. Mondays are now going to be categorized under Managing Mondays, where we will be discussing varrious topics having to do with managing a homeschooling household.We will have various product reviews, recipes, and maybe even some organizing tips.

Anyway I thought I would give a review to one of my favorite subjects: MATH!!!



Spectrum Math 



Spectrum Math was the first math curriculum we used and still remains as one of my favorites, though they are simple workbooks, they are easy to understand with plenty of problems to reinforce concepts being taught. Best of all they are fairly inexpensive and can be found in many office supply and discount department stores.If you are looking for an affordable way to homeschool, Spectrum is definitely the way to go.

Oh BTW they also make Phonics, Reading, Writing, Language Arts, Science, Geography, and many other workbooks as well.

The Road Less Travelled

Road less travelled? Yeah right. Been more of a trek through the outback with no compass or canteen. Being a stay at home dad is tough. Laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc., (OW, OW, OW, my head is going to explode!!!) come on ladies, fill us guys in how do you get it all done???
Seriously I know that things would be easier if I wasn't in such constant pain, but sometimes it's all just way overwhelming. I'm seriously considering hiring a maid after my wife is done with school. Anyway, am I the only guy out there that feels like this??? My wife tells me she felt the same way when she stayed home, but I still feel inadequate when it comes to all this house work. This is kinda uncharted territory in many ways. Yes, we've been homeschooling going on five years now, but this past year was my first as a full time stay at home dad. Prior to September I was still working part time at a Dunkin Donuts early in the morning, but my FMS (Fibromyalgia Syndrom) really started to take its toll. I try not to let it get me down. After all I'm still alive and kicking, well maybe not kicking, but you know what I mean. I'm just gonna have to keep reminding myself that the Good Shepherd is taking care of me, and as the psalm says I shall not want.