Resource: Audible

Have you discovered Audible yet? We have been members for over eight years and have an extensive library! I am always in the middle of an audiobook. I listen when I walk in the mornings, sometimes when I cook, and when I drive somewhere without the Lambies.   One of my favorites series has been the Riyria Chronicles by Michael J. Sullivan.  It's not for little kids, but is good reading for teens and up who love fantasy, sharp wit and adventure.

Audiobooks have been very useful in my schooling, especially with a certain child who was not learning to read easily.  I had him listen to stories while reading along with the printed book, and that seemed to help him a lot.

Many, if not most, Ambleside books are available at Audible, including H. E. Marshall books, including Our Island Story, James Herriot's Treasury for Children, Churchill's History of the English Speaking People, Homer's works, and an amazing assortment of classics of all kinds. It's really a great resource! 

You can listen to the narration before buying a book and the narrators are all professional!  I have tried Librivox, and just couldn't find readers that I could listen to and enjoy.  

If you are intrigued by the idea, you can try Audible for free, and get TWO books completely free! Just click the link below (which is an affiliate link) and sign up! I don't think you will regret it.

Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks

You can get a 30 day free trial, get any two audiobooks you want from their extensive library. They are yours, even if you cancel your membership. Win-win!  

After 30 days, with the Gold membership, you get one book each month for $14.95.  Personally, we are Platinum members and get two books every month, along with other benefits.  You get 30% off any additional audiobook purchases and you can cancel any time. Again, all the books you have bought, you keep, even if you cancel. I love that my purchases are MINE!
   

Reverse Engineering

My youngest son is all about engineering right now.  He wants to know how things work and why they work that way. He wants to be an inventor. He is a master of Lego and Minecraft.  To help him develop this interest, we are doing a course in "Reverse Engineering".  Each week I stop by a local thrift stores.  While there, I scour the shelves for mechanical items. 

He has a nice toolbox with a selection of tools already, so he just need the things to take apart.  The first thing he "Reverse Engineered" was an electric can opener. He took it apart as far as he could, then reassembled it and it did still work!  Then he took it apart and kept pieces like the cord and motor, screws and a few other parts.  He plans to eventually build something from all the useful parts he scavenges from these sacrificial projects. 

Lego is perfect for future engineers and their siblings. We spend was much time as possible with them. 

Reverse Engineering is even better when friends are visiting!  Here they are dissecting a food scale. Lots of learning happening and LOTS of fun!  I have a toaster ready for the next session and have my eye out for a rotary phone. I am also watching for a weed whacker or a lawn mower for small engine repair practice.  Next year, I hope he's ready for appliances! 

Practical skills are SO important in todays world! Seeing how things work is an integral part of practicality.  

Other resources:

The Way Things Work

The Way Things Work Now (on our wishlist)

How It's Made (I can't recommend this series highly enough!)

Thing Explainer 

Friedhoffer books (this one and others!) 

Engineering for Kids (I haven't used this yet, but we will watch this series this school year.)

Lego Technic (We watch for clearance sales and have even found some in garage sales!)

Lego Mindstorms (if I was rich! LOL)

Playing Pick-It

One of my favorite things to do is pull out a game that we haven't played in a long time. I spied Pick-It in our game closet and decided to bring it out today.

This is a simple game that you can easily make at home.  Five small sticks (like matchsticks) and cards that show what position into which you try to build the sticks.  There are levels of play, from simply matching the pictures, to having a hand of five cards of building possibilities and having to move only one stick to make it match.  It can be played by one player as well as a group.

This works on fine motor skills, perception, memory, patterning and more. It's a great way to spend some time together and build skills!

Self-Motivated Desert Learning

If allowed, learning happens so naturally. My nearly eight year old Troubles is suddenly enamored with all things desert. If I had planned lessons on my timetable, they may or may not have produced some knowledge about the topic, but since it is self-motivated learning, it's ALL absorbed with enthusiasm!  He expressed interest in deserts last summer and we read a few books about them.  It's interesting how curiosity goes round and round.  

Some resources from this study:

Books:

Eyewitness Desert

Eyewitness Bible Lands

All About Rattlesnakes

Desert Giant

Cactus Hotel

Cactus in the Desert

Camels and Llamas

The Desert Alphabet Book

You Tube:

Nat'l Geo Rattlesnake Biography

Video of Rattlesnake vs. Cottonmouth

Roadrunner Kills Rattler

The Mojave Desert

Sailing Stones

First Aid for Snakebites

Images of the Mojave Desert

Deserts of the World Map

Buggy For Bugs

If your kids are anything like mine, they are love the four-footed furry animals, but they are also always bringing in new six and eight-legged friends.  We've been a host family to grasshoppers, locusts, an injured honeybee, praying mantises, a potato bug, a sun scorpion and many other buggidies.

I use a couple of different sites to identify new insects and spiders that we see.  The first I found was What's That Bug.  We found this one when we captured a sun scorpion and had no idea what in the world it could be.  We love the Bug-of-the-Month feature.

What's That Bug led me to BugGuide. Now I usually use BugGuide first, since they have a nice thumbnail feature that makes searching easier than by name only.

I'll often bring up one or the other site and let an interested child have some bonus computer time browsing around.  Yep, it's science!

Back-to-School Interviews

I have posted how I plan our school year before, and even once before that, but have never posted about our Back-to-School interview.  Today I will remedy that.

For the last few years, I have created a Back-to-School interview for my children.  I print it off and give each child a copy to complete.  Children who can not yet read or write get to do it orally with me.  I ask things like, "Which book you enjoy most last year?", "What would you most want to learn about this year?", "What did you least enjoy last year?" and "What do you need to practice more this year?".  There are usually 8-10 different questions of this sort.

After giving them a day to complete it, I call them to me one by one, privately, and discuss their interviews.  I find out what they didn't like about a particular book or subject; what their specific, personal interest is for the term or the year; and specifically what they think they need to work on more.  We pull books from the shelves according to their interests and later I begin working on their term work forms. I really enjoy our time talking together and getting some insight into their feelings about school.

I often craft a course specifically for a child's interest or need discussed in the interview.  For example, last year for my 10th grader, I made a Health and Nutrition course.  I chose three books for her to read and wrote down the specific requirements for her to earn her credit.  I will write out the specifics in a future post.  I made two copies of that page, one for me and one for her.  She was required to complete all the points before the end of the school year.  It helped teach her responsibility of time management and how to budget her work load throughout the Term.

For another example, one of my daughters loves to cook.  She has mastered making most of our normal meals and wants more challenge.  Therefore, this school year, she'll be doing a "World Cuisines" course. I haven't planned the entire study yet, but consists of an overview about a culture (Japanese, for example), a history of their geography and natural food sources (which greatly affect their traditional foods),  their 'stereotypical' dishes and if they are realistic or not, specific vocabulary relating to their cuisine (wok, chopsticks, etc) and choosing a few of their dishes to prepare and serve.

Our back-to-school interview makes this kind of planning easier because I can really get to know what they would like to learn about in depth.  It makes school so much more worthwhile than simply doing Math, Science and History blah-blah-blah.  To have a real personal interest to explore makes a world of difference!

Minotaur Tales

My kids love Greek myths and the retellings of them are an often-requested read-aloud.  The other day, my husband and I were at Toys R Us and, as usual, went to the Playmobil and Lego mystery figure bags.  My husband is incredibly good at using his "Feel-O-Vision" and getting the characters he wants.  I don't think he has ever been wrong when he decides a bag is worth buying.  This time, though, I was the one who found the cool character.  I felt and felt and was pretty sure that I had found the Minotaur we'd been looking for.  After we bought is, I opened it and I WAS RIGHT!  SCORE!

As soon as I revealed it to the children, my son, Jack, asked if he could play with it.  He promptly created this:

I'm counting it as a narration!

If you want to read the story that goes along with this playset, read one of these great books:

Adventures of the Greek Heroes
D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths
The Heroes
Favorite Greek Myths

Anatomy Dude

I've written before about how much Troubles likes anatomy. He's enjoying sitting in on Exploring Creation with Anatomy with the bigger kids. He's not required to do anything he doesn't want to, but he's listened to most of the lessons and participated in several of the "Try This's" and experiments. Today we got out Anatomy Dude to examine his muscles. Guess who has been playing Dr. Frankenstein all day?

I showed Jack and Troubles an Amazon page of anatomy models. Oh, how they want everything, especially the Anatomy Dude's Head, Skull, Heart and Hand! Maybe "Santa" will be bringing human models for Christmas!!

Shipwreck and Treasure Hunting Mini Unit

We watched a couple of episodes of "Treasure Quest" on Netflix last night. It's an interesting show that makes treasure hunting look very exciting! Today I pulled out some appropriate books and let the Lambies spend some fun time learning about various shipwrecks and treasure. I thought I'd share the books so you could share them with your family!

True Life Treasure Hunts by Judy Donnelly
Sunken Treasure by Gail Gibbons
The Treasury
Treasure Hunt by George Sullivan
The Mutiny on the Bounty by Russell T. Clement
EyeWitness: Shipwreck
Ghost Liners by Rick Archbold
True Tales of Buried Treasure by Edward Rowe Snow
True Tales of Terrible Shipwrecks by Edward Rowe Snow
The Vasa Saga by Bertil Almqvist
Vasa published by the Vasa Museum in Stockholm
The Swedish Warship Vasa published by the Vasa Museum in Stockholm
The Martyr of the Catacombs by an Anonymous Christian-found on an abandoned sailing ship in 1876

The Little Lambies made some treasure, too. Crowns, scepters and necklaces were made from paper and crayons, and lots of "what-if" stories were made up. The Legos are out, so I bet there'll be some sailing adventures soon. Their imaginations have definitely been sparked by this study! Too bad my camera battery is dead. I think we'll watch some Gillian's Island this afternoon.

We'll see where this interest takes them over the next few days! Do you have favorite books on the topic? Please share in the comments.

The Black Widow

My friend Ginger over at Frugal Freeda mentioned this course. DrawSpace.com is a full art course for the beginning student through the advanced level. My eldest daughter is SO happy with this find! She loves to draw, and now Freeda just supplied an elective credit for her 9th grade year.

EmBlem looked over the course and assigned herself the Intermediate designation. She did read a few tips and hints in the beginners lessons that were helpful. She chose to begin with a Black Widow Drawing, since we have so many of the dears around here. Here's the Lesson. Here's a picture of her finished piece.

We'll be shopping for the more specialized pencils that are called for in the lessons this weekend. She did this with a plain old 2B Ticonderoga (the best writing pencils in the world, by the way) on basic copy paper bought from Costco. Didn't she do a marvelous job?

A Worthless Piece of Junk? Never!

We had two non-functioning CD players hanging around. Before throwing them away, Polly and Jack decided to explore them. Out came some of Daddy's small tools and the magnifying glasses. I didn't note the time, but they probably spent more than an hour taking those players apart and marveling over the tiny pieces that were inside.



They compared the two and found the similar parts and noticed the differences.



Should I count this as "mechanical engineering" or "de-construction skills"?

Lego Mania!

I suppose all homeschoolers deal with it. Legomania, that is. All of my boys and most of my girls LOVE getting out the Lego.



Years of watching yard sales and swap meets carefully have netted us two very large tubs of Lego. We also buy new when the price is right. In addition, we have a tub full of the Lego that my husband had when he was young. The Crew is Lego Spoiled!

One thing that suffers from all the attention is the ever-popular manual. The schematics. The instructions. So many things that they make are freely built, but some Lambies in particular like to follow the visuals. That's hard to do with so few booklets.

Tonight, I discovered the motherlode of Lego-manuals. Every.single.one. is downloadable from Lego.com. I don't know how this nugget of information evaded me for so long. Jack is going to be so happy. PDF's are soooooo convenient!

Guitar Lessons

Two of the Crew have expressed a desire to learn to play the electric guitar. We had two or three acoustic guitars on hand already, so they began practicing. I had a few beginner guitar books also, so they began studying. Our friend from church, C., who is excellent at the guitar, showed them some chords and is helping them now and again.



The children saved and saved and finally were able afford a beginner electric guitar. They were so excited! My Honey and I found another at a local store clearanced from $199 to $49! We now have two electrics for them to practice on. Praise God for his provision!



C. is pleased with their progress. They practice diligently in their free time and have a few friends that play, too, so they are learning new things all the time!

My responsibility as a homeschool mom is provide materials when the time comes and the Lambies various interests are the best teacher of all! They are continually teaching themselves better than any scheduled lessons could ever.