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Teaching Financial Literacy

Aug4

 

Photo illustration of one hundred dollar notes in Seoul

While a financial literacy course is now a requirement for the state of Ohio high school graduates, it is never too early to begin teaching fiscal responsibility to our children. This topic can be taught as part of your mathematics curriculum.

Dave Ramsey has a wide range of curriculum, beginning with the Financial Peace Junior for ages 3-12, all the way through high school graduates. He also has homeschool curriculum that can be used for a high school credit  for students grades 9-12. To see this specific program, CLICK HERE.

The Secret Millionaire’s Club has animated webisodes that teach the basic principles of financial and business problems to solve. There are 26 episodes in the series and it can be used at home or in a group setting. Each episode has an activity guide that accompanies it for further discussion. Activity Guide

Money as You Grow is a website that was created by the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability and has objectives and activities for children from preschool through senior high school.

Financial Literacy, a website sponsored by the United States Mint, has activities and lesson plans, as well as additional resources.

~Lisa

 

Help with Writing

Jul7

imagesHaving used a variety of writing curricula over the years,  I am inclined to believe you have to find an author who most closely aligns with your style of teaching and philosophy since people approach writing through a variety of avenues.

Some authors prefer to be formal and have specific elements that are to be present in each of the piece that is written. If that is your style and thinking, then here are a few programs to research:

Institute for Excellence in Writing, Andrew Pudewa This program is tried and true with a DVD set to help you understand and teach writing. Areas of study include: outlining, summarizing, research papers, essay writing, and creative writing. Multi -age and multi-grade level, beginning in elementary and continuing through senior high school, this program will serve your student well in communicating in a clear and concise manner. Essay writing will be a breeze and research papers will not be a daunting task since students are taught how to do this easily with this program.

Writing Strands, Dave Marks, is a veteran teacher and home school dad created a multi-grade program for students. The four strands of writing (argumentative, explanatory, creative, and report writing) are explained and modeled for students. Short lessons for students to practice after each lesson with humor are sprinkled throughout the  lessons.

Are you interested in an incremental writing program? Two that I recommend are Jump In and Write Shop.

Jump In is a writing program from Apologia that can walk your writer through a step-by-step process of even the most daunting writing tasks.  The writing steps are small with a practice section for the students after each skill is taught.  The process is explained in a conversational manner that a junior high student could read it on their own and you, the teacher, can  discuss  and monitor the work that is being produced. Students of various writing levels and grades will enjoy using this curriculum.

Write Shop has programs beginning in kindergarten. The nice thing about the primary books is that you can do them orally with your beginning writers. Having used the middle school program,  students enjoy the topics they are given to explore. Giving students the opportunity each time to write about something they enjoy enhances the program and involves the student even more in the writing process.

Are you looking for online programs?

The Potter’s School has classes for writing beginning with 5th grade and continuing through 12th grade. Not only can your student take a writing class, but they have a wide selection of classes in every academic area. There are summer and year round classes from which to choose. In the past have worked with several of the outstanding tutors and I highly recommend this program.

Write at Home can either be used as an a la carte program that your student submits individual papers to be read and graded by a teacher, or your child may enroll in a full-time class beginning in the fall. Their classes begin with middle school (5th grade) and continue through 12th grade. One of my friends used it exclusively for their a la cart program and her daughter loved it.

Home2teach offers high quality, challenging, college-prep online writing classes to homeschoolers ages 8 to 18 world-wide.  While I have not used this program, it does look like a terrific option for students.

If you have found a program that I have not discussed here, please leave a comment.

~Lisa

Morning Knowledge Nuggets

Jun30

Screen Shot 2014-06-24 at 6.38.22 AMAngela sent me these wonderful ideas after she read last week’s guest blog post that Suzanne wrote on Character. This was too good to keep to myself so I asked her if I could share this with you and she said, “Yes”! I have included links for the resources that she has mentioned.

My “Morning Knowledge Nuggets” (a title the kids and I came up with last year when we started homeschooling) is my chance to “start the day in the right way” and get in some “tidbit” lessons that I might not get a chance to otherwise.

We begin with our prayers and a daily devotion/bible verse.  Then we do our “Character Connection” with a lesson or activity for the character trait of the month.  I also include an Etiquette lesson (the kids love the book from the Etiquette Factory) and an “Ethics” lesson where we try to tie it all in and talk about morals and values (I discovered at the end of this year that the kids loved hearing Aesop’s Fables and trying to guess the moral of the story…great discussions).

Sometimes I’ll throw in a “Sticky Situation” from a book I have by the same title that is a devotional.  It depends on what day it is, as we do each of these things on one day of the week (or take more as a situation presents itself).  There is also a second book, Sticky Situations 2

After “Character Connections,” we do our “Grammar Game.”  This is something short to reiterate grammar basics.  Sometimes we take a sentence for the week and  do something different with it each day, like Monday-label parts of speech, Tuesday-label sentence parts, Wednesday-label sentence type, Thursday-talk about capitalization, punctuation, and review the week, and Friday-“quiz”-apply what we’ve learned to a new sentence of the same type.  (btw, this all came out of a need to desperately improve our grammar fundamentals!!)

Other weeks, I’ll do something short and “fun” (although the kids don’t always think so!) to reiterate a difficult concept, what we’re learning that week, or something new that isn’t quite covered in our lessons.  Then we do a bit of German and end with our journal writing!  Sometimes we are done in a half or less, other times it takes an hour for all of it.  But I always feel like our day is a lot more complete when I can get in these “other” important things!  🙂

Maisy Mouse

May26

imagesI want to do a series of blogs for preschoolers and beginning readers so that all of the skills that were learned over the school year are continuing throughout the summer. So, here is the first one. I am sure your child will enjoy this little mouse.

Maisy Mouse is a book series that is appealing to preschoolers through early elementary. If your child is just beginning to read, then this is a good collection to have your child enjoy getting to know. The difficult words are repeated and there are pictures to help give “clues” too. The characters are cute and the pages are bright and colorful.

Maisy Mouse and her friends have all sorts of adventures such as going to the grocery store; going on a camping excursion; taking a trip to the library; and  visiting the museum. There are even other books in the series that children might experience such as going to the hospital. The hospital isn’t such a frightening place after seeing Maisy getting her broken leg set, sharing toys with a fellow patient, and spending the night.

If your child is enjoying Masiy and her friends there are UTube videos and a fan club too! To find out more about the club, click here. I hope your early reader enjoys these books. 🙂