Living Math Books

I think this topic really crosses every area I blog. It is obviously homeschool and Charlotte Mason but living math books are wonderful for building language and understanding for those that are hearing impaired as well; including those that use ASL or spoken English as their first language. Too many times we focus on 'skills' versus general understanding and both are important. Books are probably the single best way to increase your knowledge across a variety of subjects and increase your vocabulary. Living books make it interesting.

First, there are lots of living book definitions out in cyber land. For me, a living book is a story that brings a topic to life. Here is a detailed definition. It could be social studies, history or math just to name a few. There are also oodles of lists on living math books. This past few weeks we have done an impromptu unit on money. I have found lots of great resources that I already own!! Here are just a couple of great 'living books' on the subject of math.

If You Made a Million teachers the the 'power of the dollar' through a brief introduction of the concept of 'interest.' It starts out with what you might purchase for a penny and works it's way up to a million dollars. It discusses how many pennies, nickels etc.. it might take to make various amounts of money and why 'checks' are important as well as how checks are processed.

Another fun book we have read is Money Troubles by Bill Cosby. In this book, Bill desires to save up for a telescope which costs $100. He learns the value of hard work and then in the end a social lesson is learned as he determines that other people have greater needs than he does.

We are reading two books which are not living books but are wonderful resources and written in a very 'learning friendly' style. Larry Burkett's All About Money discusses how banks work and a bit of history behind money. Kids' Money Book by Neale S. Godfrey is chock full of history, the workings of economy and much much more. I love it so much that when I couldn't find it on my bookshelf I repurchased the book!

If you are interested in more living math here is a website for you and another here.

We also added a bit of practical workings to our study of money. A few weeks ago Andrew ran a lemonade stand and was able, with a donation from mom and dad to buy Babo. We decided to institute an allowance; a nickel here, a quarter there and three weeks later Uglydog was able to join the family.





If you are interested in Uglydolls you can peek at the archives of Andrew's blog.

Living Grammar Books in the Public Classroom

My mom is a retired public school teacher. I inherited many books from her teaching days. Some are geared toward classrooms but I am coming across some real gems. I keep them stashed away and each year I go through and see what I might be able to use. Way to go Mom! You really used some nice stuff! I know not all teachers go to the trouble to 'think outside the textbook.' I have found oodles of living math books and am going to put them in my librarything. I will update the blog after I do that.

Today I came across a wonderful 'grammar' resource in my stash from mom; Dear Peter Rabbit by Alma Flor Ada. Andrew learns grammar mostly by osmosis during reading. We have (rarely) done formal language arts and when I do it doesn't really stick. We have also had pen pals from time to time and that has helped a bit but mostly Andrew absorbs through reading. This wonderful gem of a book is a series of 'letters' written to and from various fairytale characters such as Peter Rabbit of course but also Baby Bear, Goldilocks, Pig One, Wolfy etc... It has proper letter formation throughout the book. We have not read yet but plan to add it to the book list this summer.

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note: For a long definition of a living book see here. For a shorter definition look here. The following excerpt is taken from the short version.

Living books, often called "classics," are the kind of books that joyfully enliven the imagination of a child. They are written by individuals -- not committees -- and display imagination, originality, and the "human touch." Living books do not talk down to a child's level or omit odd and interesting vocabulary. Children take to living books more than textbooks for these reasons; because such books are not crammed with facts and information at the expense of human emotion.

2008-2009 Schedule

I've finally narrowed down our resources for the next year. For those that might be reading from DeafVillage and are working on 'listening' exercises, you may find the music history and poetry resources interesting and helpful- something different than typical listening work.

I will say I am probably 'more' eclectic than 100% Charlotte Mason. A suggested schedule on SCM indicates heavy history and not starting science, other than nature study, until 4th grade. After much prayer and looking at Andrew's interest, I do plan to do a full science curriculum and use history and literature to 'practice' our reading. I will likely move back and forth between non-fiction history living books and literature, at least at the start, as I think doing everything every day would be too much for us to handle.

Math: We are going to stick with RightStart for the first half of the year at least. We still have half of book B to do. I also have a few other math resources tucked away for variation. (ie: I purchased way too much last year but can draw on it as needed.)

Science: I blogged about this a week ago. Since then I have discovered NOEO Science Kits and I am going to purchase the Chemistry I kit and supplement with additional books as Andrew desires- and as I find on ebay;)

Copywork: I am going to use resources from Simply Charlotte Mason, Scripture and verses from God's Wisdom for Little Boys. I plan to use paper from Donna Young. I am also going to purchase StartWrite software. I have looked at this for several years and think it would be useful at this point. Oh and I almost forgot; we do typing. We are using Type to Learn which has worked quite well. To some degree it is out of the 'zone' for Andrew; however, he has started using the internet and I would like to cement good habits vs. the hunt and peck method. We will be taking it slow. We have been doing the program all year and only made it to level 6. And I just took him back to level 2 to cement more good habits.

Poetry: A Child's Introduction to Poetry has a CD that is played with the book. Any chance I get to introduce another's voice, I take it. I will also be using various poem books including A Llama who had no Pajama. I found this while cleaning the "books from last year." I may have forgotten to mention that Andrew loves poetry. Check out his blog for his latest creations.

Music and Art Appreciation: Hymns for a Kids' Heart part two, The Story of the Orchestra, and Can you Hear it? .All of these come with a CD. The Hymns also have sheet music included in the book. The last book also contains famous pictures of art paired with appropriate music. I have written about this on my art and music blog. I am also considering Art Through Children's Literature.

Art: Drawing with Children. It is for the novice to teach. Enough said;)

OK...so what's missing...History, Literature / Reading, and Bible. First on Bible. As I was praying over everything and what to do next year I really thought that Bible shouldn't be a 'subject' but should be wrapped up into everything we do. That said, I plan to start the day with some sort of Praise and Worship and some Bible reading. I will have additional books lined up in addition to the Bible to help us. I am going to also download some music to the ipod that he enjoys. He thinks classical music and hymns are 'too pretty.' I am still going to do them weekly but daily I want to put on praise and worship music that he really enjoys. He likes things along the lines of "This is the day the Lord has made."

Second, History; I keep going back and forth in my mind on what to do. I think I will purchase the D'Aulaire packet from Beautiful Feet and call it a year. I love those books and even though we have read Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, I would love to re-read them. (So much for reading a book one time as outlined by Charlotte.) I was planning on continuing with SOTW but it just isn't right for us.

Third, Literature and Reading; I have a list of books 'left over' from my Sonlight core curriculum that I purchased. I am going to start with these and see where Andrew's interests lie. I will post these as I go along. We are reading in EVERY subject and will use narration to ferret out where he is at for reading and for listening.

I am continuing to refine our narrating activities. They will be oral this year but I will have Andrew draw pictures as a way of narrating and I also plan to use graphic organizers as a way for us to keep track of longer stories.

As a final note; We are going to continue to work on listening by using hearing journey exercises. I need to tackle speech with Andrew and will probably start with the Straight Talk program that I already purchased. I also have the Balametrics program which is similar to BrainGym in nature. We can call that PE. And of course there are all the sensory activities in the various SI books that are on the shelf.

As I type this I see that it will be a challenge to do everything although we obviously won't do every subject every day. And I am not even focusing on things such as language arts and spelling. As I map out the semester and weekly schedules, I will likely pare things down, at least in the beginning.

Deaf Village...

There is a great new website called Deaf Village. It brings together folks of all 'walks of life' as it concerns the Deaf and hard of hearing. I am one of the blogger links on there so I thought I would write just a bit about ourselves and how I may end up contributing.

Our hearing history:
My son is almost eight years old. We found out he was deaf through newborn screening. The doofusses (how is that not in spell check?) did the test and said it 'might be water in the ears.' The pediatrician said "check it again in two months because he may grow into his hearing." Dorks! So on Halloween of 2000 we found out Andrew was indeed Deaf..profoundly. We immersed ourselves in activities of all kinds....we learned about oral, ASL, Deaf community, cochlear implants. (etc...) We went from Deaf events (churches, scrapbooking weekends) to cochlear implant seminars. I HIGHLY recommend EVERY parent, Deaf or hearing, to attend every sort of event they can in the first year of their child's life to determine the course that they might want their child to have. There is only ONE wrong answer...the one you let someone else make for you.

We decided to proceed with a cochlear implant at 13 months old. We chose Advanced Bionics. We started with Auditory Verbal Therapy. Again- personal choices, based on MUCH prayer, work and involvement in Andrew's first year of life. There are oodles of posts on all this stuff elsewhere on the WWW.

the "other."
As Andrew developed we knew there was 'something else.' Prior to the implant we did a CT scan so we knew Andrew had malformed semi-circular canals which would delay his physical development. But there was again...more than that. Two AVTs said there was 'something else.' One had no idea what to do and the other suggested an Occupational Therapist. But you see, the first OT we saw in the schools said 'it's just the malformation of the semi-circular canals. There is no need for other therapy." Note: Never listen to just one person...and don't be stubborn in your thinking. There is a verse in the Bible that says, "Test everything. Hold on to the good." 1 Thessalonians 5:21 In the Bible that is referring to prophesy primarily but I think it holds here too. When people ask how we have made decisions, the primary answer is prayer. We KNEW there was something else from day one. It took awhile for that knowing to take root in action when it came to the 'other' issues.

We were in a FABULOUS oral preschool. There were a few hard fought IEPs even before this class but once we got here we thought it would be great. The problem was, the teacher was an HI teacher with HI kids...and Andrew had 'other.' After many evaluations we did a MET and he was labeled as having autism. His developmental pediatrician says he is 'autisticish' in that he dances around it but never quite enters it formally. Regardless, he has sensory, attention, and social issues way beyond the scope of an HI room.

Homeschool
We looked around for an appropriate program for Andrew. I have always had homeschooling on my heart, even before Andrew was born. But we did want to keep our options open. As we looked toward Kindergarten our options were 1) HI room, 2) Autism room or 3) Mainstream. Andrew is "pretty smart." Let's just say that when I went in and saw there accelerated reading program I almost laughed out loud. In the autism room I saw kids lying on the kids licking toys (and escaping while I was left in the room with the other kids.) In the mainstream room they were 'included.' I witnessed the teacher say, "Go tell Billy Happy Birthday." Billy was the autistic student. Does that sound like inclusion? So...we homeschool. (Yes I know all my rights, I know I could fight for the prefect situation...but homeschool is what we feel is the best option for him right now.)

Our inclusion for homeschooling is hit and miss. Some folks bend over backwards to include. Some folks..well...not so much. Because autism manifests itself in behaviors, some folks see it as 'bad parenting.' And the cochlear implant has been incredible. Andrew reads above grade level. He can communicate in incredible ways with people one on one. I recently had my neighbor say, "you are doing great with him." This was after a conversation directly between Andrew and her. This is incredible for a kid born deaf and also with 'other.' Still Andrew's behaviors prove challenging. We went to Nana's funeral service today and Andrew didn't want to listen to the 'pretty music.' Is that the autism? the way the implant transmits music? or just plain stubbornness? No idea....


Academics is challenging in that I try and formulate our day to best fit his needs. We do the Charlotte Mason approach with an eclectic mix. I am in the process of formulating our fall curriculum but no matter what the materials, it will consist of short, high interest lessons. We will add in low interest lessons as a way of improving attention but those lessons will be VERY short. For autism we informally do RDI so I prefer to call it Mediated Learning or Guided Participation. We do not do ABA because we don't believe that has a long term lasting effect for most children with autism. There is controversy everywhere;)

So what will be my contribution on Deaf Village? Well, did you know that ONE OUT OF SIXTY Deaf kids is autistic????? That is well above the one out of one-hundred or so in the general population. And many people- deaf, autistic and combo end up homeschooling. So it is a uniquie niche that I fill. I have two other blogs. Settings of Silver focuses on our household; we do allergen free and are trying to organize our house to maximize attention and sensory input. I also have Our Art and Music Blog. I put, well, our art and music stuff on there that we do for homeschooling. Charlotte Mason is heavy on those subject areas and it is a great way to work on listening as well. I think that may be of interest to some folks here. It will probably be updated more frequently once the school year gets rolling. so....that's us....thanks for stopping by. leave a comment...or just enjoy. Oh- my OLD blog is Growing Fruit ONE. I moved here for a variety of reasons but you can check the archives for various hearing and homeschooling activities we have done!

Plans for Fall- Science a work in progress

I am in the planning process. I am just a wee bit tempted by Sonlight again as I would love to just be able to open the curriculum pages and go to work. But we did try it in the past and it didn't work out so well and I don't think we are quite ready to go that route again. (And a secret...I enjoy planning and researching what to do.) I have not been happy with what we have done in the formal science area over the past years. We have oodles of experiment books- but the choice is too big. We tried Apologia Zoology and that didn't work. I thought it was content, so I moved to Apologia Astronomy- but that didn't work. Andrew just wasn't interested in the format and you can't force information into kids. That is, of course, one of the joys of homeschooling. You don't have to cram a certain format because that is all you are allowed to do. So I prayed, and researched and prayed.

Last week I happened upon AtHomeScience blogger. I believe I found it via the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival. As I read her blog, and reviewed her LibraryThing I realized that we have done quite a bit of science as we have read many of the books she has on her LibraryThing. My first step in planning was to scoop up all my science books and put them in my own Librarything. I am still doing that but have around 50 books in there right now.

The next step was to decide what to do in the fall. Andrew has a large interest in Chemistry. Typically biology is the Elementary School subject of choice but I truly feel that I will be able to capture Andrew's attention better if I focus on chemistry- at least for fall. But it will be a bit more of a challenge since good living books are not written at that level for that topic. Below is what I am looking at using. I have requested most of them from the library so that I can take a peek at them myself and then I will probably buy 'a few.' I won't put links but you can find most of them on At Home Science's Librarything above.

Books:
Super Science concoctions: 50 Mysterious Mixtures for Fabulous Fun. by Jill Hauser (req from Library.)
How to Think LIke a Scientist (req from library.)
Fizz Bubble Flash (buy from Amazon)
A drop of Water (req from library)
What's smaller than a Pygmy Shrew (req from library)
Backyard Science Series 2- req from library
What is the World Made Of? All about Solids, Liquids and Gases (req from library)
Bubble-ology (req from library)
Picture book of Chemistry (not avail- look for used)
Eyewitness: Chemistry (buy from Amazon)
Magic School Bus Gets Baked in a Cake.
All about snow and ice (req from library)
Science in the Kitchen

As At Home Science notes, most elementary science living books seem to be toward nature. That is probably because nature is a natural science teacher and it also gels with Charlotte Mason nicely as that is part of her overall educational philosophy. Our nature study is still in the infancy stages. It is noted in various quotes throughout the Handbook of Nature Study that;

In nature study the work begins with any plant or creation which chances to interest the pupil.

and

As soon as nature- study becomes a task it should be dropped;

So we will continue with nature study as part of our science indirectly but I plan to have this be a self-directed activity so that he will keep with the enthusiasm. This was our first year of nature study and we are (both) still pre-schoolers in this area!

I will be updating a more concrete book and experiment book once I review the books from the library. (I have..um..53 books out right now and I think almost 30 requested. Yes...tax dollars at work!!)

Retelling an article on retelling....part one...

This post is my narration / retelling of the article Improving Reading Comprehension Through Retelling as written in the Summer '08 Charlotte Mason Educational Review. This is part one...focusing on the background and current brain research.


There are five paths to long term memory

• Semantic - understanding words


• Episodic - associated with location


• Procedural - repetition of movement


• Automatic - conditioned response triggered by a stimulus


• Emotional - feelings

Teachers rely on semantic but emotional is the most effective. The article gives potential reasons for this but I prefer less specific banter..It is what it is...I've seen it. In addition to reasons, the article also lists ways to enhance learning. Here are some we have done and will continue to enhance learning to make emotional connections.

• Act out the book with "characters"


• Do real world math. Just yesterday at a birthday part a kiddo was adding up his loot for a future trip to target. 15+10= $25 bucks man! I have to caution myself on this. Sometimes just play should be play....it is not ALWAYS a lesson
  
• Field Trips (more on that below.)
  
• Draw during narration
• Build Models- we did this as part of a homeschool lego class
• Experience Books
  

Here are some things I WANT to do:

• Graphic Organizers
• Use various techniques such as videotaping to encourage narration
• Ask less, listen more
• Build a peer group, of just a couple of kid, to see if this encourages narrating. (More on that in a later blog as peer narration is talked about extensively in the article.)
  
• Build more models
  

Making Connections

Another interesting point made is that those who are experts in a certain area tend to put info in much larger chunks. I know Andrew is a 'global' thinker. I recently blogged on my arts blog about how Andrew made a connection between waves in a puddle and the vibrations on musical instruments. I don't think this way- but i'd like to. I have a short long term memory. Aut-2-B-home recently directed me back to the Childlight Reviews and an article on scaffolding learning. I had read it, printed it, and even narrated on it via my blog...and still I forgot quite a bit. But I do have the general sense in my brain. I wonder how you make those global connections better as an adult??? I guess just doing it more helps you get better;)

The next section in the article tells us more on this- the HOW to make connections.

The best way to relate information read or presented is to correlate it to personal information. This could include graphic organizers or even pictures from a field trip. We have done oodles of Experience Books so perhaps I will pull these out even as we re-visit the same places over and over again. . Other ideas to cement things to personal experience includes field trips. I ponder how the public schools do field trips all the time- but what do they DO at the field trips??? I have seen them at Cranbrook, the Detroit Zoo, and the Detroit Institute of Arts with clipboards, worksheets and pen answering specific questions as related by the teacher or instructor. I think providing direction is important and it often frustrates me that Andrew wants to go off in his own direction; but when he does that he often finds his own connections. I need to continue working on the GUIDED participation as I don't feel that is cemented yet but it is sometimes nice just to go for a walk and see where it takes us. It is difficult to toggle back and forth between the two. (Any suggestions are welcome.) But these connections / discoveries are much greater for the child when made by the child. We need to provide the scaffolding but let the child remove the tarp to discover what is underneath.

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References

Spencer, Jennifer. (2008) Improved Reading Comprehension Through Retelling. Charlotte Mason Educational Review. pg 13

Wolfe, P. (2001). Brain matters: translating research into classroom practice. Alexandria, VA. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.