by Donna | Jul 28, 2010
Being the author of over thirty language arts and composition books, I get asked quite often about penmanship. Unfortunately, penmanship is not my area of expertise. Language arts and composition are communications/English courses—penmanship, however, is art!! Smile… In other words, I didn’t do the greatest job at penmanship instruction, in spite of my two credit hour penmanship class during college. (I can, however, write fairly nicely when I have “my” pens and write slowly.)
Therefore, I will give you some insights that I have gained along the way—in case you have kids with illegible writing that needs turned around in the next four weeks before school starts! And after you read my meager attempts to help you with penmanship, please go to the link provided at the end. Those people know what they’re talking about when it comes to penmanship help—and maybe you will get the assistance you are seeking!
1. Penmanship and composition are two very different things. Composition is “writing,” in the sense of putting sentences and paragraphs together. Penmanship is, in my humble opinion, art.
2. Children do not “catch” penmanship. Trust me on this. It doesn’t just happen. Children need detailed, step-by-step penmanship instruction.
3. It takes forever for a child to learn to write—and even longer for a child to learn to read—cursive writing. Thankfully, there is a lot of research coming out lately arguing whether cursive writing is really needed.
4. Penmanship requires daily practice and thorough follow up. Once you check a penmanship page, the child will need a lot of help learning to form the incorrect letters right.
5. Penmanship should be done at a desk or table with the proper writing tool.
6. Penmanship needs to be done out of a penmanship book with the correct letters modeled and preferably with the stroke order given (i.e. start here, next go there, etc.).
That’s all folks. My limited advice about penmanship. It is one subject I wish I had done differently from the very beginning…so learn from my mistakes!
And now, the link to really help you with penmanship: https://bogartfamilyresources.com/FREEBIE/whataboutpenmanship.pdf
by Donna | Jul 27, 2010
Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.
~Richard Armour, “Library”
In the fun days of summer, we can often forget about one of the greatest places to spend hot afternoons (if you can’t go swimming!)—your local library. The boys and I just enjoyed a day of “library hopping”—where you go from one library to another throughout the day (stopping for lunch, of course!), losing yourself in books, audios, and more. We have two branches of our local library and another dozen or so branches of the “big” library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We love library hopping!
Every Monday I have a list of “to do” items to get my week started off right. One of those tasks is “Library online.” This means that I go to my two accounts (one at our local library and one at the “big” one), renew books that are going to become overdue that week, check to see if any holds are ready to be picked up, place holds for books that I want to pick up in the next week or so, and often write up a “teacher’s collection.”
The “teacher’s collection” is, to borrow the colloquialism, the best thing since sliced bread. It is an amazing service that our large library offers that I take advantage of as often as possible. With the “teacher’s collection,” you fill out a form (available online or at each branch) for the types, ages, topics, etc. of materials that you need. It is available to teachers as well as homeschoolers (though I am sure they would oblige any parents who want to use the service to help their kids at home).
Here are some recent “teacher’s collections” I have requested, to give you an idea of the terrific things they do for us:
1. Audio historical fiction for grades four through eight that took place in the US between 1800 and 1900—25 pieces
2. Newberry award winning audio books from 1922 (the year the first Newberry was awarded) to 1950—as many as available (we use a lot of audio books here!)
3. Historical non-fiction books about US history for grades four through eight about the years 1800 to 1850—25 pieces
4. All “Little House” books on cd
5. Book and cd sets that are Caldecott winners—25 pieces
Obviously, the Fort Wayne library main branch can do those types of collections because it is a huge library system. I am so grateful for their help with our kids’ education.
So…take some time out in the remainder of the summer to go to that wonderful place, the library.
by Donna | Jul 21, 2010
I have posted several links and ideas to help you get your kids ready to go back to school, but I wanted to share some “writing help” with you as well. Our publishing company/family ministry has many writing books and many language arts books that we write for homeschoolers and Christian schools.
At our website, we offer three week samples of each of our composition books, entitled “Meaningful Composition” (MC). We only have Levels 4th through 8th and a couple of high school books (though our Level 8 first semester and Level 8 second semester are considered high school beginning writing books) done so far, but you are more than welcome to go to our site, print off the samples of a couple of books and work through them with your kids over the next few weeks.
MC books are written to the student in what we call our “directed writing approach.” This means that they give step-by-step directions to the students in each assignment (as opposed to writing ideas or prompts).
For example, if your student does not understand the basics of what a paragraph contains, you can print the samples for MC 4 I (formerly 4+) and do those with him. If your student does not the basics of putting paragraphs together for essay or report writing, you can print the samples for 4 II and do those with him. There are several books in Levels 5 through 8 that have writing lessons for the middle grades. And if your student does not understand the basics of research report writing, try MC 9 I samples.
Go to our site and click MC samples—and see if you can find any help for your reluctant writer to get off on the right foot this fall in composition: https://www.tfths.com/samples.php
*Note: This page also contains links for our “Character Quality Language Arts” samples. This is our complete language arts program. Just skip on down below this for the “Meaningful Composition” samples.
by Donna | Jul 19, 2010
Summer is winding down….and you might want to dig in during the last month and work on getting ready for school. I have written extensively this summer about building your child’s reading skills (foundational to most all other learning). Today I want to introduce a company that is a homeschool provider—but has an added benefit to those desiring work on skill building in any subject area for a month or so.
The company is a huge publisher called Alpha Omega. Many homeschoolers and private schools use their material for their entire curriculum. But for our purposes here, I wanted to tell you about them because they have a workbook approach in which you may purchase one month of a subject at a time for only $4.50 a booklet in any subject area. This is an especially good avenue for working on specific skills in a specific subject or two.
This program is called LifePacs, and as I said earlier, is used in its entirety for entire curriculum. Here is how they can help you with your student’s summer “school” help:
1. The full curriculum for each subject area is available in ten worktexts. This means that each worktext has the teaching text and the student’s workbook in one.
2. Each worktext takes three to four weeks to complete.
3. A little known fact is that you can go to your child’s grade level (from this past year if you are looking to review), click on the subject area you would like to work on, and look at the titles and skills lists of each of the ten “LifePacs” for that subject area. Then choose the one that you think your child needs to work on the most, as follows:
a. If you can tell by the contents of each LifePac which booklet would best help you with the skills that your child needs work on, do it that way.
b. If you are unsure of the exact skills your child needs, but you know he didn’t have trouble until mid way through the year, considering getting one of the middle worktexts. (Or ending ones if he had trouble near the end of the year.)
4. You will probably need to call to order individual ones. (I didn’t see it as an option, but I called, and the saleslady told me that it is definitely possible.) So once you know that you want say 5th grade, LifePac for math #6 and 5th grade, Lifepac for grammar #8, you can call and just order those two for $4.50 each.
5. The worktexts are short and not the least bit overwhelming.
6. You might need to purchase the inexpensive answer keys for the entire year in order to check your child’s work, but those are not pricey either.
7. The first link here will take you to the LifePacs, then you choose the “look at this curriculum,” then the grade level, then the subject area: https://www.aophomeschooling.com/lifepac/overview.php
If your child seemed to drag near the end of the school year in a specific subject area, this is a great way to focus on just that in an inexpensive, non-stressful way. I highly recommend it!
by Donna | Jul 16, 2010
If you want to help your child increase in skills in a certain subject area, I do not recommend the “summer” type of workbooks. Those workbooks are just that—workbooks. They are not TEACHING books.
In other words, they are great for practicing already learned skills, but they are not so good for learning new ones. (The exception to this is if you are planning to sit down and “teach” the concepts on each page before your child does the workbook page.) They might have a sentence or two explaining the concept, but they expect, for the most part, that your child is using the book for review or for practice. So what do you do to increase your child’s skills?
Today we will focus on keeping and/or increasing your child’s math skills:
1. If it’s math drill you are after, consider getting our personal favorite daily drill—Calculadders. These drill sheets have the same exact problems for ten days, then move onto another set of ten, etc. (If you are trying to keep skills in math, you might want your student to just do each set two or three days in a row, then go to the next set. You can always use the extra pages for school breaks, extra help during the academic year, a younger sibling, or next summer.) https://www.homeschoolconnection.com/CalcuLadder-2_p_1583.html
2. If you know the specific math skills that your child needs extra help in, consider subscribing to a worksheet provider that has a good search engine and easily-maneuvering site. The subscription to the one that follows is a good price—and you can use the worksheets for multiple children, choosing what each child needs to practice, creating tailor-made worksheets. Here is what Timberdoodle says about this site:
“The Math Worksheet Site is an online math worksheet generator located at TheMathWorksheetSite.com . The Math Worksheet Site‘s subscription area currently has over 190 different types of worksheets with more added regularly. Each worksheet is unique and randomly generated within parameters that you select. Your child could work the same type of problems every day and each time have different problems, or have the same problems in a different order so he wouldn’t simply memorize the placement. Topics currently covered include the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. However, you get much more than just that: counting, fractions, sequencing, place value, percents, money, geometry, , exponents, Roman numerals, graphing, telling time, area, volume, and much, much more. Not only that, but each worksheet is very easy to customize. For instance, are you adding decimal numbers? Select how many digits you want to the left of the decimal, how many digits to the right, how many addends and print. Answer keys are readily available and even show the problems worked out.”
Amazing, huh? Follow this link for more info: https://www.timberdoodle.com/The_Math_Worksheet_Site_p/tmws.htm
3. If your child knows his facts but has application problems, consider these simple workbooks that do nothing but build word problem solving skills. These books are amazing for helping kids who do not seem to know which operation to use when faced with a word/story problem: https://www.timberdoodle.com/Daily_Word_Problems_Grade_4_Math_p/215-404.htm
4. If a workbook sounds too “schoolish” for you for the summer, consider a cd rom math drill program. Timberdoodle has one that they rave about and others seem to like it too: https://www.timberdoodle.com/The_Quarter_Mile_Math_Program_Grades_4_6_p/335-134.htm
5. If you have multiple ages of children and you want to purchase one cd for all of them grades three through nine, consider this cd drill, also available from Timberdoodle: https://www.timberdoodle.com/Number_Drill_p/383-383.htm
Tomorrow—content area helps for your student this summer….
