Archive by Author | Lisa McAfee

Just Readin’: Books for Middle School and Junior High

Aug15

Summer is such a great time to read! I am crazy busy during the school year and feel “guilty” if I sit down to read. However, during the sumer I allow myself time to kick back, relax and just do some readin’.

Among some of the books I have chosen to  read this month are middle school (4-6th grade) and  junior high (7th-8th grade) books. I scrapped quite a few that were recommended on websites. Twaddle (a Charlotte Mason term) is a word that best describes those titles and I ended up whittling the towering stack of books down to ones that I thought were either interesting, funny, or thought-provoking. All of these books can be found at the local library.

The Great Brain John D. Fitzgerald  *MS  This series is one of my all-time favorites. Tom, the older brother of the narrator, is always scheming to make money and in his little brother’s eyes he’s “The Great  Brain”. I have read them to students in third grade and sixth grade. These are books that are universally loved.

Far Flung Adventures: Fergus Crane, Paul Stewart, Chris Riddell  *MS  I loved this book! Very creative, funny and original. The illustrations are interesting as well.

Perloo the Bold, Avi  *MS Timid and fearful Perloo becomes an unwilling leader in this tale.

Because of Winn-Dixie Kate Di Camillo  *MS,*JH I enjoyed this book because of the transformation of the narrator. A great book to discuss.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond Elizabeth George Speare *JH Don’t let the title fool you, there aren’t really any witches. This is  a terrific read.

Calico Captive Elizabeth George Speare *JH Based upon a true story during the French and Indian War.

Bronze Bow Elizabeth George Speare *JH A Newberry award winner of a story of a young man whose life is changed after hearing the teachings of Jesus.

The Westing Game– Ellen Raskin  *JH A mystery with a twist that will keep readers engaged in trying to figure out “who dun-it” or didn’t!

Watership Down– Richard Adams  *JH An adventure story of courage and fortitude. This would be a great book to discuss character issues with your children.

Maniac Magee Jerry Spinelli *JH A Newberry Award winner about a young man who doesn’t see “color” in a town that is divided. I ended up crying although I didn’t expect to do so.

*MS= Middle School

*JH= Junior High

I realize that many middle school students can read older level books, but it doesn’t always mean that they understand the complexity of a story. Therefore, I listed some titles as junior high rather than middle school.

Career Explorations

Aug11

I love the fact that with home schooling we can customize our children’s education to fit their needs. High school can be used to investigate options for careers to help your student take the next step toward adulthood. I have a friend who taught a class at one of our local home school co-ops and she has given me permission to use an article from her blog about this topic.  I have edited it somewhat and added a few of my own examples. I have provided a link to her blog at the bottom of the page if you’d like to read it in its entirety.

Career Exploration is a Process, Not a Point
Learning the process is the goal in teaching a Career Exploration class. Express to your student that he or she may not know specifically what they want to be, but the class will teach them a process that allows them to search and plan better.

The 4 Step Career Exploration Process:

  1. Investigate-Discover your personality, abilities, skills and priorities
  2. Match possible careers to your personality
  3. Research potential careers to see if there is a fit
  4. Prepare a plan to pursue your career choice

By way of example, Ian found out when he took the interest survey that a possible career choice would be in radio. He volunteered for 6 weeks at a local radio station and decided that it would not be a career path he would likely follow.

Helpful Resources
The most helpful tools for teaching the Career Exploration process are a collection of several on-line interest surveys and personality quizzes (see Resources). Many are free or charge only a small amount. These surveys will direct your student to several career choices to research further. We used the least expensive and quickest quizzes in our class, the Jung Typology Test from Humanmetrics.com and the CareerKey.org test for $9.95. Some students took the longer tests, such as Career Direct and The Call. Each costs around $80 and is very thorough.

After picking four to six possible careers, a student should carefully research them. They should investigate the working conditions, skills needed, pay rates and future outlook for their chosen fields. For conducting research on-line, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a valuable site (see Resources). Consider having your student interview someone in their chosen field. They will greatly benefit from doing this as it either changed their minds significantly, or confirmed their career choices.

It would be beneficial to have your scholar  pick one book from topics that included career exploration, high school planning, college preparation, or study habits. Do What You Are and What Color is Your Parachute? For Teens are two books that are helpful in making career investigations. In the book, Do what You Are, the reader takes a personality test and then researches matching career choices. What Color is Your Parachute? For Teens has students consider interests, skills, personality types, and work environments to identify potential dream jobs.

Having a Goal
The last step for students in the Career Exploration process is creating an education and experience plan to meet their goals. Students need to think about what classes and part-time jobs they can pursue today to prepare them for their futures. If a student has a goal in sight, schoolwork and part-time jobs become more meaningful. Information can be found in several home schooling books on high school planning.

Your student should also learn the graduation requirements in your state, and also what most colleges expect. All of this information is on-line, and the College Board web site is also helpful. After undertaking these steps, your student can create a high school plan that is unique to him or her. Is your student crazy about math? Be sure to look at the college majors that concentrate in that area. Do you have a child who is talented in art? What kind of opportunities can be found while in high school? Perhaps your church has a VBS that needs an art coordinator or a summer camp that needs a craft counselor. (cooky name, but we had one at our camp)

Life is an Adventure
The Career Exploration experience may trigger something dynamic for your student. A metamorphosis can occur as students begin to chart a career path with manageable steps to get there. Encourage your high school student to consider carefully how they manage their time, what kind of classes they select and what kind of part-time jobs they work. Each decision in life can open doors that will lead them on the path to their goals and dreams. I hope enjoy guiding your student to investigate his/her personality, match them with potential careers, research occupations to find a good fit, and then execute a plan to reach their goals.

Resources for Career Exploration

Books:

Web Sites:

Carol Topp (CarolToppCPA.com) has had several careers including wife, mother, Industrial Engineer and now Accountant. She is currently enjoying a season of home schooling and running a home-based accounting practice. She encourages teenagers to investigate careers though starting a micro business at MicroBusinessForTeens.com

Science: Thoughts, Resources for Chemistry (Elementary)

Aug8

When I taught science at a local school the rate for me being able to successfully demonstrate experiments was nearly 0%. Oh, yes, I had a few that were successful, but only a handful. Part of the issue was that the textbook that we were using required resources that we really didn’t have available and I couldn’t afford to buy the supplies.  What stands out most clearly in my mind was me saying to the class,”Let’s read about the experiment.” Not very hands- on.

As you can imagine, the thought of teaching science with experiments to my own children wasn’t met with all that much confidence. But, I was determined that my children would not see my hesitancy when it came to doing them and I resolved to do better than when I taught my 6th grade students. Good news! I had a much better success rate teaching my sons and I actually looked forward to teaching experiments. In fact, I had such a confidence boost that I now teach Earth/Space Science to 8th grade students at a home school program and we do experiments. (successfully too) Victory- huzzah!

What is my secret to success? (For just 29.99 you can buy my book and find out- just kidding.) I started out slowly and simply. I began with elementary non-fiction science literature from the library, naturalist programs at parks,community science programs, and slowly ventured out on my own. I made sure I picked experiment books that had detailed instructions and explanations for me as well as my children. Did all of the experiments work? Of course not, but I just kept on trying. I figured some experiments are better than none and that failure is part of “experimenting”.

Some of my home school experiments make for great stories; I hope you don’t mind me indulging. My sons were about 6 and 9 at the time this science success/flop occurred. We had successfully completed the experiment where you have a clean empty 2 liter bottle and you put a small amount of vinegar in the bottom of it. You then fill a 9 inch balloon with a prescribed amount of baking soda using a funnel. After you have completed that, you hold the baking soda-filled balloon in one hand while keeping the ballon pinched closed and place the lip of the balloon over the opening of the 2 liter bottle. You release the neck of the balloon and proceed to gently shake a small amount of baking soda into the bottle so that it mixes with the vinegar. You stand back as the remaining baking soda falls into the vinegar and watch the chemical reaction that begins to occur. Ta-da! You have a terrific visual demonstration of carbon dioxide gas inflating the balloon. It worked beautifully and we were all beaming at our little inflated balloon.

But, I was a bit disappointed, okay, majorly disappointed because the balloon was so tiny. I thought to myself,”I have a bigger balloon than was called for in the experiment so I can just add more and really make that balloon inflate!” So, after I cleaned up the first experiment I decided to triple the amounts of vinegar and baking soda since bigger is better, right? 🙂 It was beautiful as the 12 inch balloon began to expand, growing larger and larger. In fact, the balloon had so much carbon dioxide gas that it began to lift off of the kitchen counter.

“Wow! This is awesome!” I shouted to my sons. Malcolm was just as excited as I was, while Ian on the other hand, wasn’t so sure.

“Mom, the balloon is getting pretty big! Don’t you think we ought to just pull it off?” he asked with an edge of apprehension in his voice.

“No, I am sure it’s just about finished. ” as I said while I continued holding the 2 liter bottle in my hand to keep it from floating in the air. “Don’t worry- the balloon won’t—”

BANG! A huge explosion sounded in my ear as the contents of the baking soda-filled balloon went shooting all over me and my kitchen like a fireworks display. Baking soda had spewed all over my hair,face, and clothing as well as all over the cabinets, ceiling and fan. The boys were safe as they had just moved away from me and my experiment just a minute prior to my reassurance. I did have a small amount of doubt and had them move for safety’s safe- good thing, huh?

“I told you!” was the response from Ian, while Malcolm said, “Cool! Can we do it again?”

TIP: Follow the instructions carefully- even if it seems a bit under-dramatic. Unless, of course, you like explosions and messes; you learn from them as well. 😉 You don’t need bunsen burners, graduated cylinders, but a pair of safety goggles would be a good idea. The main thing is to experiment. Make predictions, don’t be afraid to try,and get messy. After all, you can clean up later and if you have a crazy thing happen you can laugh about it with your science partners. (your children)

Science Books I used every one of these books with my budding chemists.

Fizz, Bubble and Flash!: Element explorations and Atom Adventures, Anita Brandolini   (grades 4-7) A great book I used for a chemistry overview. I even impressed the window salesman with facts about argon and kryptonite when he came. (Home school mom show-off!)

Super Science Concoctions: 50 Mysterious Mixtures for Fabulous Fun, Jill Frankel Hauser (grades 1-4) This is a fun book for exploring chemistry.

Janice VanCleave’s Chemistry for Every Kid, Janice VanCleave (grades 4-8) I love this series  ___________ for Every Kid (moms too!) Her experiments work and the explanations she gives make sense.

Here are some websites with fun, free experiments.

Fizzing and Foaming  A science experiment using baking soda and vinegar. You can create your own volcanoes as well.

ZOOM  Lots of fun experiments to do based upon the PBS Kids show Zoom.

Countertop Chemistry Experiments that be done in your kitchen with easily accessible ingredients.

Lesson Plans: journal entries (Part 4)

Aug4

I used  a journal format as my means of record keeping when I was teaching kindergarten. This was helpful with keeping track of the school year and traditional lesson plans weren’t the best way of recording our year. I had a yearly overview and curriculum that I used, but didn’t write out any formal plans as I discussed in my previous posts. There are a wide variety of journals and I picked a style that was most comfortable for me.  Here is an example of what I did:

Monday, August 22

Reading– Today Malcolm and I worked on singing the ABC’s. I had him write the letters in rice. (Note: This is done by having a plastic, resealable container of rice that little hands and fingers can write  their letters instead of paper and pencil.) I read aloud Ten Terrible Dinosaurs, by Paul Strickland

Writing– He wrote his name and the word policeman when he drew his picture for Social Studies. We are starting to make a book of community helpers.

Math-Sorting/ Counting/Graphing- Malcolm sorted M&M’s into colors and we counted how many of each color were in the bag.We made a graph for each of the colors and as a treat ate ALL of them! 🙂

Social Studies- Community Helpers We read People at Work, by Bobbie Kalman and Malcolm drew a picture of what he might like to do when he grows up.

Art-He drew a picture of a policeman.

Science/Health– We read My Five Senses, by Aliki  Malcolm had to guess five different items by smell only. I put them in plastic snack bags and had him close his eyes and guess what the items were. cinnamon, cotton ball with vinegar, cotton ball with cologne, a stick of spearmint  chewing gum, a fresh lemon slice. We discussed colds and how you can prevent them such as, eat healthy foods, get plenty of rest, wash your hands, sneeze into a tissue or the crook over your arm, etc.

Junior/Senior High

You can also have your junior and senior  high students keep a journal or blog of their studies. You can check progress this way and  be independent, while still having your input and guidance. One of my sons visited coffee shops since he is interested in having his own one day. He kept a blog about where he had been, likes/dislikes, what he had to drink, house specialties, and photographs of the shop.

I hope this series has helped you with your lesson planning. I pray your school will be filled with many days of laughter and awe-filled days as you teach your child(ren).

Lesson Plans: using library books (Part 3)

Aug1

Planning with Other Types of Curriculum

It’s just as easy to write out plans for other types of curriculum as it is with textbooks. The resources I have used in years past have been primarily library books and DVD’s. I have also used online courses, co-ops and educational programs where I dropped off my sons for a class, and have  had family,friends, and local parks teach classes to my sons as well.

Planning for  the Year

The first thing I do is decide what topics we are studying.  I then look for resources that go along them. For example, when we were studying Ancient Rome and Greece I had my son take a month-long online class on the Emperors of Rome.  At other  times I had my sons take online writing courses. Here I didn’t have a say as to when we were going to do it, I just worked my other plans around those classes. I would plug them into the schedule so I didn’t plan other things in that time slot.

I have written out an overview using multiple resources that you can view here Overview of Year Other Curriculum Note that all of the books and resources I have listed can be found at the library or online.

Planning for the Week

After I have made a tentative yearly schedule I believe the month is filled out well enough to give me a general idea of what should be covered so I don’t make a monthly schedule. I believe in less is best when it comes to paperwork.  I plan one week at a time, perhaps two if I am fairly certain things are going to be “normal” around my house. Here is a weekly lesson plan based upon the yearly overview listed in the above paragraph. Weekly Lesson Plan

Remember, do one thing at a time. Planning provides huge dividends and provides you with direction, a sense of accomplishment, and will give you more free time in the long run.

Part 4  Journal Entries The last in the series about lesson plans.