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Character Ink Private Tutoring Offerings

 

Over the past year since Ray has “semi retired” (lol), he has expanded our class offerings, added a Half-Day Homeschool option for local families, and taken on dozens of private tutoring students. It has been a busy year for Character Ink!

We will be continuing the private tutoring options as long as we have spaces available for the upcoming summer and next school year.

We have also had success this year with Ray doing private math tutoring via Skype or FaceTime and Donna teaching small writing classes via an online classroom. Both of these options will be available next year as requested.

We offer tutoring in the following subject areas, but
we are also available for homework help in content areas (study skills, test prep, note taking, time
management, etc.).

Use this service in the summer to catch up or get ahead in a subject area. Or to stay on-task during the academic year in areas that are harder for Mom or Dad to get around to. Let us know what would help you the most!

1) Writing–sentence, paragraph, report, essay, story writing; all levels; Directed Writing Approach
to get non-writers writing immediately! Taught by a writing curriculum author of over 100 books
totaling over 50,000 pages!

2) Math–from elementary through twelfth grade….your curriculum or one of our choice; remedial,
brush up, SAT prep, and more. Taught by a math professional (former CPA and CMA).

3) Reading–from first grade and up; phonics, reading comprehension, reaching reading fluency,
and more. Taught by curriculum author, elementary education degree and master’s work in
Reading Specialist.

4) Grammar/Usage–taught in conjunction with writing or alone; parts of speech; punctuation;
editing; spelling/structural analysis; and more. Taught by curriculum author and experienced
teacher of over 100 students each year in grammar and writing for over 20 years.

5) Science–elementary through high school–basic science, earth science, physics, biology,
advanced biology, chemistry; taught by experienced science teacher who has taught all of these
subjects to many small groups for over 15 years and is a math professional/former CPA.

Private Costs: Private tutoring for Ray and/or Donna is $30 for a 55 minute hour for once a week;
$25 for a 55 minute hour for students who come twice a week, and $20 / hour for three or more
hours per week.

Minimum number of scheduled sessions must be maintained in order to take a
teaching spot.

 

Call or email today for more information! 260-450-7063 characterink@gmail.com

The post Character Ink Private Tutoring Online or In Person 2019-2020 appeared first on Character Ink.

There is a lot of talk in the world of “adulting” about emotional intelligence. People who are emotionally intelligent know how others are feeling. They know what to say and what not to say in a social media thread. They are aware of their surroundings, etc.

I recently came upon yet another list of commonalities of those with emotional intelligence. As I read through the list (they truly are good commonalities), I couldn’t help but think about how many of them were our goals for our children before we had ever learned about such a thing as emotional intelligence. (Many of them are, after all, grounded in the golden rule!)

In the article detailing seven traits of people with emotional intelligence (see article HERE), there were a few common threads that stood out to me as important for families to really drill down on as we are raising children.

These can be summed up in a few key traits:

A. Picking up on how others are feeling

B. Listening to others

C. Responding well to information, good and bad

D. Empathy (not just seeing how others feel but feeling for them as well)

I love these so much! Not just because they turn out great adults, but also because they truly make a family successful.

Here are some actions and habits we practiced in our home to help our kids develop this “emotional intelligence”–and make our home a more peaceful place:

A. Picking up on how others are feeling

1) Asking them all the time with their siblings (and others): How do you think that made them feel?

2) Having them find someone in church or a group who looked sad and talking to them/cheering them up (especially the elderly).

3) Having three kids in one bedroom and four in the other led to a lot of opportunities for conflict—and teaching conflict resolution!

B. Listening to others

4) Having them listen to the other person’s view of his own part to see if that’s how they saw it too.

5) Letting then tell us when they disagreed with us on something—even though they still had to abide by our rule (unless the discussion led to a change in the rule, which it sometimes did)

C. Responding well to information, good and bad

6) Being available every night from toddlerhood for them to talk to—and asking how they were feeling, the good and bad they had observed that day, etc.

7) Having them tell us THEIR part in an altercation with siblings before they were allowed to tell us the other person’s part.

8) Discussing everything we read or listened to together (which was nearly a thousand chapter books and way over a thousand audios on repeat!).

9) Giving expectations on the way to places so they would know appropriate behaviors and interactions based on environment, age of people there, and purpose for going.

10) Discussing on our way home from places, at the dinner table, during family meetings, etc., how people they saw honored or dishonored others (especially their parents and siblings).

D. Honoring Others

11) Having key words and phrases that we used to show that others should come first (like “Reishes always ‘pick up some floor'”–meaning give our seats to others and find a seat on the floor)

12) Graciously thanking our hostess, and, if appropriate praising or blessing her

13) Discussing the needs of the elderly, small children, people with disabilities when we were going into situations with those people

The post 12 Tips for Building Emotional Intelligence in Our Children appeared first on Character Ink.

It’s mid-school year—that time when we re-evaluate the first semester and try to make changes that will help us meet our goals for our classroom, home, and family in the coming year. For many homeschoolers, meeting some of our academic (and music, arts, physical, etc.) goals will mean securing outside teachers and tutors.

This isn’t a bad thing! In my thirty-two years of homeschooling, I either hired or bartered for woodworking, quilting, sewing, violin, viola, flute, piano, voice, science, electronics, art, worldview, debate, and much more! It helped my kids develop skills in areas that I was not as skilled in (okay…some areas I had zero skills in!), and it lifted the load for me many times!

So in this video today, I describe some of the programming we offer in our Teaching Center in Fort Wayne through Character Ink (including some new offerings this year!) and how you can join mid-school-year if desired.

Blessings on your learning, loving, and growing in 2019!
Donna

1) General Info

a. Classes start week of January 7th and run for 17 to 18 weeks depending on weather/cancellations
b. Three locations—Mondays First Assembly; Tuesdays Bluffton; Thursdays Aboite area/SW Fort Wayne
c. Half-Day Homeschool is in SW FW in our home and is in mornings only (unless you are a private or semi-private student—times vary)
d. Some new classes are starting; others have options of joining mid year with pre-requisites

2) New Classes

a. Jump Start II: Bluffton—students in grades 7 through 12 who are ready to write three paragraphs or more but haven’t written extensively (Tuesday afternoons)
b. Four Research Reports: SW FW—Upper Level High Schoolers who are ready to write up to 24 paragraph research reports (we start out with twelve paragraphs) using MLA approach to citation (Thursday mornings)
c. Private tutoring for all levels most subjects—locations and times vary
d. Online writing and language arts for existing groups or co-ops–contact us!

3) Two Semester Character Ink Cottage Classes

Click HERE

a. Mondays—complete language arts 7th through 12th grades; biology; chemistry; Spanish; speech and debate; middle school speech; junior high math—can join if complete language arts kids do four hours of videos at home to learn the program and if other subjects have the first semester done at home or elsewhere
b. Tuesdays—complete language arts for 2nd through 12th grades; can join if kids do four hours of videos at home to learn the program
c. Wednesdays–southwest FW–High school economics, advanced biology, world history–contact to see if your student is at the same spot we are
d. Thursdays— complete language arts for 2nd through 10th grades; can join if kids do four hours of videos at home to learn the program

4) Half Day Homeschool

Click HERE

a. All academics taught for you and most work done here with oversight by teacher most mornings from 8:30 to 12:00
b. SW FW
c. Can possibly join in January (call Ray for details: 260-450-7063)

5) Private Tutoring

a. Various locations and days/times
b. Few openings
c. Price based on number of meetings per week

6) Online Tutoring and Writing–groups and co-ops

a. As requested
b. Call for availability 260-450-7063 or 260-433-4365 

The post Thinking of Joining a CI Class or Program in January!?! appeared first on Character Ink.

For not really being “singers”—and for most of us not really knowing that much about music—we are a pretty “sing-ee” family! We love to sing hymns and worship songs while we’re driving or sitting around the living room. If one of our pianists is here (Kara and Cami), it’s even better! At Christmas time, we really getting into the singing spirit! We love to memorize a complete carol (all the verse) and sing it together; we love to drive around looking at lights and have someone lead out when a certain decoration or sight reminds him of a carol; we love to “sing through the Christmas story.”

Several years ago as we were sitting around singing carols, we challenged the kids to sing a song about a certain part of the nativity story (one part at a time). Before we knew it, we had compiled an entire “cantata” (roflol!) singing through the Christmas story. Cami quickly found the words to all of the carols and made a colorful song sheet on the computer for everybody—and we have since enjoyed “singing through the Christmas story” quite often.

Below are the songs that we sing in the order that we sing them, along with links to the words to each one. Obviously, there are others that would also fit, but these are the ones we discovered and have enjoyed singing. Happy caroling!

1. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#olittletown

2. “The First Noel” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#firstnoel

3. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#hark

4. “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#itcameupon

5. “Silent Night” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#silentnight

6. “O Come, All Ye Faithful” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#ocomeallye

7. “Away in a Manger” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#awayinamanger

8. “O Holy Night” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#oholynight

9. “We Three Kings of Orient Are” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#wethreekings

10. “Joy to the World” https://www.allthingschristmas.com/music/lyrics.html#joy

The post Singing Through The Christmas Story appeared first on Character Ink.

1. Use three key words to introduce sentence types. Sometimes just shortening longer words to their base can make them easier for students to grasp. I like to use the punctuation marks as part of the key word teaching in phrases like these:

a) Declarative–You DECLARE something. Just stating something.

b) Interrogative—Are you a suspect in an INTERROGATION room getting questioned?

c) Exclamatory—You EXCLAIM something in loud words with an exclamation point!

2. Use the graphic below enlarged or create a poster with the key words and samples (emphasizing the ending marks on the samples) and hang up in your classroom when working on three types of sentences.

3. Write sentences on cards that are laminated and have students practice putting the punctuation on with wipe off markers.

4. Write sentences on a worksheet for students to add punctuation to.

5. Write lists of sentences that should be changed from one type to another type.

6. Have “Sentence-Type Drills” in which students are to find a certain sentence type in their reader or content area book and read it aloud with the emphasis needed for that type of sentence.

7. Don’t ask students to write the three sentence types. Those words are not in their reading or writing vocabulary. Have them draw lines from those words to the sentence types on the other column or write D, I, E….and especially have them put the punctuation marks in the sentences.

8. Bring a Clue game out to use the characters or “weapons” for asking “Interrogative” sentences to each other.

9. Write instances in which a person would EXCLAIM something on cards and have students draw one and state an exclamatory sentence. Write these sentences on the board for them to see them written with the proper punctuation. (These could be yelling over loud music at a concert, calling out to a small child in danger, shouting surprise at a birthday party, etc.)

10. Write a short story containing all three types of sentences. Cut the sentences up into strips. Break students into small groups. Have them put the sentences in order for the story. Then have them read the story aloud, emphasizing the sentence types when they fall.

11. Have sentences on cards all around the room with removable end marks. Each day move the end marks around in the wrong places and have students put them all in the correct places.

12. Have sentences all over the room that need end marks added (cards, sentences on board, posterettes, etc.) and let students add with a white board marker.

13. Have students work in pairs to match the first half of a sentence with the end of it …helping them focus on key words at the beginning that help them know it is likely a question or exclamatory sentence.

14. Memory game with larger cards for unpunctuated sentences and smaller cards for end marks.

15. “Fishing” with a pole and string that has a magnet on the end. They fish a large card (magnetized) and a small card (punctuation mark). When they get a matching pair, they keep it. Winner is the one who has the most at the end of the game.

16. Finish the sentences with the rest of the sentence and its end mark. This can be done in worksheet form, on the board with students orally finishing the sentence and the teacher writing the rest (as well as the punctuation mark needed), or having students do it at the board one at a time.

17. Use picture cards to elicit oral sentences from students. Orally say a sentence about a picture and say what your end mark will be or which kind of sentence it is

18. Use Boogie boards or white boards. All students write a sentence with no end mark and pass them to the left. Students say the sentence and what end mark they added aloud. Erase the boards and do it again, continuing passing.

19. Draw a question word card (who, what, when, where, why, do, are, will, how, etc.) and students orally give a sentence that begins with that card and ends with a question mark. Again, this can all be oral work or can be combined with board work or writing on paper (depending on level).

20. Use magnetic words to have them create the three types of sentences with their end marks.

For more sentence teaching help, check out my four elementary Meaningful Composition books:

(To see the article about my theory of teaching three sentence types, check out my recent article HERE!) 

Love and hope,

Donna

The post 20 Ways to Practice Sentence Types With Elementary Kids appeared first on Character Ink.

Most second graders learn about three types of sentences—the declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory. Children do not have a lot of trouble with the three types of sentences—it is relatively easy to discover the difference between a statement (or declarative sentence) and a question (or interrogative sentence), etc.

Again, the problem most writers (of all ages) have is not determining what the ending punctuation should be for a sentence or determining if a sentence should begin with a capital letter or not. The real difficulty lies in determining whether a group of words is a sentence or not a sentence. We will examine that more closely as the next month progresses.

For today, we will introduce the three types of sentence first learned in grade school.

1. A declarative sentence is a statement.

a. It declares (tell or state) something.

b. It ends with a period.

c. It is sometimes called a telling sentence.

2. An interrogative sentence is a question.

a. It asks a question. (To interrogate someone is to ask him a
lot of questions.)

b. It ends with a question mark.

c. It is sometimes called an asking sentence or a question.

3. An exclamatory sentence is an excited sentence.

a. It is used to show strong emotion or excitement.

b. It ends with an exclamation point (or excited mark!).

c. It is sometimes called on excited sentence.

While these skills are way easier than teaching a student to hear the realness or “unrealness” of a sentence (i.e. distinguishing a sentence from a subordinate/dependent clause), here are some tip, s for teaching the three types:

1) I don’t like to add the “fourth” sentence type, imperative sentence, to the initial teaching for these reasons:

a. Students don’t have any “hooks” to hook it on. They don’t know what imperative means–though they might have heard of declare, interrogate, and exclaim before.
b. There are three ending punctuation marks for sentences. Add imperative sentences at first can seem like there should be another end mark.
c. Imperative sentences are really just declaring sentences but giving instructions. Technically, they could also be exclamatory sentences.
d. Beyond the initial teaching of sentence structures, we don’t really talk much about imperative sentences anyway!

2) I like to use three key words to introduce sentence types. Sometimes just shortening longer words to their base can make them easier for students to grasp. I like to use the punctuation marks as part of the key word teaching in phrases like these:

a) Declarative–You DECLARE something. Just stating something.
b) Interrogative—Are you a suspect in an INTERROGATION room getting questioned?
c) Exclamatory—You EXCLAIM something in loud words with an exclamation point!

3) Don’t have all of the student practice in the sentence types be their writing of the sentences. This can be laborious and long for young kiddos. Here are some practice options:

a) Write sentences on cards that are laminated and have them practice putting the punctuation on with wipe off markers.
b) Write sentences on a worksheet for students to add punctuation to.
c) Write lists of sentences that should be changed from one type to another type.
d) Have “sentence type” drills in which students are to find a certain sentence type in their reader or content area book and read it aloud with the emphasis needed for that type of sentence.
e) Don’t ask students to write the three sentence types. Those words are not in their reading or writing vocabulary. Have them draw lines from those words to the sentence types on the other column or write D, I, E….and especially have them put the punctuation marks in the sentences.
f) Bring a Clue game out to use the characters or “weapons” for asking “Interrogative” sentences to each other.
g) Write instances in which a person would EXCLAIM something on cards and have students draw one and state an exclamatory sentence. Write these sentences on the board for them to see them written with the proper punctuation. (These could be yelling over loud music at a concert, calling out to a small child in danger, shouting surprise at a birthday party, etc.)

h) Hang Three Sentence Types posters up during the time you are working on them.
i) Write a short story containing all three types of sentences. Cut the sentences up into strips. Break students into small groups. Have them put the sentences in order for the story. Then have them read the story aloud, emphasizing the sentence types when they fall.

The post Teaching Three Kinds of Sentences appeared first on Character Ink.

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By now, most of our local Character Ink friends have heard the news : We are starting a half-day homeschool in our home in six weeks (mid August 2018!). If you haven’t heard, you can see our original announcement here.)

So far, it has been such a joy to see the “exact clients” that we had in mind for our endeavor! They say the exact words that we felt would describe someone who wants this special service:

1) They love homeschooling—the lifestyle, the time with their kids, the home-centered approach to life that homeschooling offers, the relationships that are built through being with your kids way more waking hours than you are not (and knowing what is going on in their hearts through frequent interaction).

2) They value education—This can be said of most homeschoolers, but we are finding many parents who value education but felt that with their time constraints, work, and other commitments, they couldn’t give as much to their kids’ education as they feel is needed.

3) They are willing/able to spend a little extra on their kids’ education—They have the means for their kids to go to private school, but they want more control over their kids’ education—and they don’t want their kids to be gone 35 to 40 hours a week and don’t want to lose the home-centered approach to life that they have been enjoying through homeschooling.

4) They want the one-room schoolhouse feel that they offer at home–small teacher-student ratio that allows the teacher to know where his students are at all times in every subject.

5) They would like for someone else to keep track of everything academic—the teaching, the curriculum, the records, the grades, and yes, even the prodding some days!

We wanted to give some updates as Ray’s half-day homeschool takes shape with each enrollee. For example, we have found that high schoolers may or may not want to come every morning. Some of them don’t want the long drive. Others have jobs, etc. So Ray is altering the schedule for high schoolers who want to come longer some days and not at all other days.

While we have taught between 150 and 250 kids each semester for the past ten years in our four Cottage Class locations and have begun teaching dozens of kids online, this is new territory for us—being in charge of a student’s complete academic program and getting it all done by noon each day! 😊 (As Ray keeps saying with each plan, each book, each discussion—“Down memory lane again!” So many memories from our thirty-two years of teaching our seven kids at home! That has been so heart-warming.)

So we are tweaking, discussing things with our enrolling parents, and seeing what fits for each family. It is quite the journey—but a very exciting and rewarding one for sure!

This post is to give you some updates and let you see our registration information more fully. If you are near Fort Wayne, Indiana, and this concept appeals to you, Ray would love to chat with you and answer questions and explain our program more fully. Call him at 260-450-7063 or email him at characterink@gmail.com to set up a phone consult.

Check out the full registration document by clicking HERE!

In a nutshell…..

Character Ink Half-Day Homeschool will offer the following:

1) Responsible for teaching, assigning, overseeing, grading, and record keeping for ALL academic subjects for

2nd-12th grade students.

2) Teaching will be small group classes, block teaching, daily class meetings, one-on-one tutoring, and independent

studies all in our home at 11120 Aboite Center Road Fort Wayne and at First Assembly of God Church (on Mondays).

3) 180 days of instruction (and record keeping and accountability) (e-learning will be utilized for inclement weather)

4) Daily lesson plans, checksheets, and accountability (that Ray checks–not you!)

5) Curriculum found and laid out for each subject

6) Math, language arts, and reading taught by/planned by specialists in these areas. All academic areas will

be covered in various sessions, blocks, and independent learning.

7) Grading sheets every 9 weeks for all high school subjects and major subjects for 2nd-8th grades

Approximately 11/1, 1/15, 3/15, and 5/30)

8) Thorough, safe, and fun environment to learn

Check out the two weekly schedules for youngers (2nd-7th graders) and for high schoolers (8th-12th graders) below!

And thanks, once again, for your continued support of Character Ink blog, store, Cottage Classes, publications, downloadable products, online classes, parenting/homeschooling helps, and more! We appreciate you!

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