his easy peasy science notebook

 

 

Recently I shared what her Science notebook looks like while we’re following Easy Peasy’s Zoology.

It’s only fair that I show you the 7th Grader’s notebook too.

 

While there are less lapbooks for the older students…there are still some printables.

My 7th Grader likes the look of layered lined paper. So he writes on loose leaf and then we cut & paste it in.

We also like to find google images to match what we’re studying and print them out to add a little color to our pages.

He is really enjoying this curriculum. Some of the things I’m loving are watching his face light up as he learns new things and watching him develop study habits as he’s encouraged to research independently.

For instance, with the habitats he had to search a lot of the info out on his own.  He was SO into it too! Annoyingly into it! He’d stop and give me the play-by-play with each habitat!  

A great supplement to go along with this course would be any of the Apologia zoology books.

We’re reading Swimming Creatures for our read aloud time and it’s a great addition.

 

The more Easy Peasy we incorporate into our homeschool…the more we love it!

 

…danielle

we’re using Easy Peasy for Science

 

 

If you’ve been homeschooling for a bit by now then I’m sure you’ve heard rumblings about Easy Peasy or All in One Homeschool.

 

 

I’ve slowly been replacing other curricula with Easy Peasy.  Science being one of them.

 

 

Honestly, there is so much to love about this program. It’s well laid out and easy to follow. It promotes independent learning. It’s written to be aligned with PA homeschool standards. PA is among the more stringent states which helps me feel confident that what they’re learning is robust. Also, my kids are having fun! That’s not my guiding light when making educational choices for them…but it is a nice perk!

Learning is a blend of both online activities, readings, games and printables. Click here if you’d like to peek at the full Scope & Sequence.

 

 

Printables, like lapbooks, are linked in the daily schedules. This makes it SO easy to implement! I’ve always wanted to incorporate more lapbooks but I’m the girl that drools & thumbs her lips in the big box stores because there are too many choices! Too many choices paralyze me and trigger my “second guesser” instinct! That’s how I’ve felt about lapbooks. Easy Peasy makes it so…well…easy. And peasy!

I have found that for us using notebooks (rather than file folders) works best for our lapbooking. This way I can include other projects right into the same book. Plus, we’re enjoying the scrapbook-y feel. And it looks so neat and tidy! I have a thing for organized and tidy. This year I’m using composition notebooks. I like them best. Maybe it’s nostalgia?

 

 

The only thing I’m adding to our Easy Peasy Zoology studies is using Apologia’s Swimming Creatures as a read aloud. And that’s really only because a friend offered to let me borrow it.

 

Overall, I’m really enjoying this program and we will definitely continue to use it next year!

 

…danielle

my favorite curriculum choices this year

 

All About Spelling

If you’ve been homeschooling for any length of time, chances are you’ve heard of All About Spelling.

 

I decided to buy the first two volumes (pre-owned) to use with my daughter this year.  Also, to have on hand for my youngest who has special needs.  I’ve heard so many special needs mommies rave about the program that I thought it would be a good investment.

And I have NOT been disappointed when it comes to my daughter.  We used Abeka for her first two years at home and while she did okay…it wasn’t easy.  Especially with the spelling piece.  If had been keeping grades she would have flunked every spelling test.

 

This year has been SO much better!

 

I love that AAS doesn’t have weekly memorized lists and focuses instead on learning spelling rules.  Each lesson is fully scripted and organized.  Each lesson includes review…review…review…and lots of practice!  And the best news is…she’s successful!  In today’s lesson she wrote two sentences with a total of 15 words (we counted) and made ZERO mistakes!  She rolled her eyes at my excitement.  But I’m pretty sure she was feeling proud of herself too.  We’ll definitely be sticking with this curriculum next year!

 

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Math U See

My 3rd Grader was actually doing wonderful with Abeka’s math program but I decided to switch her over to Math U See this year anyway.  A friend was giving away a couple teacher’s manuals and dvds.  All I had to buy was the student workbook and manipulatives.  I couldn’t resist!  This was another program I’ve been eyeing with Trevy in mind.

 

My daughter is thriving with the program.  We both love the dvds and manipulatives.  We’re in Gamma this year and she’s getting the hang of multiplication. 

I’ve loved it SO much for her that I bought a used Primer set to use with him too!  I consider my youngest blended schooled.  He attends a wonderful public school program in the mornings.  And we do a lot of work at home evenings and weekends and snow days.  We’ve had a lot of them this winter!

 

Below is a sample of the Math lesson I did with him for today’s snow day!  I love how he added the 10 to the number line. 

We will definitely be sticking with Math U See!

 

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Homespun-School.net

I stumbled on Homespun-School in a FaceBook forum.  There was an ad sharing a free 6 week digital learning class.  Psssst…the next one starts on February 10th!

 

I was sold on the idea of a FREE computer class taught by someone other than me.

 

I wasn’t super sure what to expect.  And to be honest, in the beginning both my 7th Grader and I were quite overwhelmed.  But we stuck with it and went from overwhelmed to in love.  My son is learning SO much.  More than that…he’s LOVING what he’s learning!  It’s one subject he doesn’t complain about how much time it takes to complete.  He’s created his own website and is now learning how to create animations like the cartoon below.

He’s totally proud of himself.  I couldn’t be more happy we stumbled on HSS.  In fact, we’re enrolling in a Spring course!

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Draw Write Now

 

I love Draw Write Now because it combines art with penmanship/copywork!  Genius!  I’ve been borrowing the books from our library and perpetually renewing.  I should probably think about buying these!

 

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The Care & Keeping of You

A girlfriend mentioned how much her daughter was loving this book.  I thought it looked like a good choice for “Health”.  I had NO idea how addicted she was going to be!  She really doesn’t put it down except to hide it from the boys’.  We’ve had a lot of interesting conversations.  The topics range from hygiene to puberty to relationships.  Gotta hand it to American Girl on this one.  A great book for a tween-y health choice!

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Easy Peasy Homeschool

We’re using Easy Peasy for a number of things this year!

 

Science.  Reading.  Grammar.  Writing.  Spanish.  Thinking.

Easy Peasy is so great because it’s FREE!  But not just that…it’s quality.  Lee Giles, the developer, has spent a LOT of time & energy making these lesson plans available to moms like me for FREE.  It’s such a beautiful gift and I appreciate it to my toes.

A little sample of some poetry (above) and Spanish (below) that they’ve been working on with Easy Peasy this year.

We will definitely continue using Easy Peasy next year!

 

 

…danielle

our MOH timeline notebook

 

 

 

A homeschool mommy friend saw this picture (above)  in my Homeschool FaceBook album and asked if I’d ever done a post on our notebooking timeline.

 

 

Turns out I can’t remember!

 

 

 

So just in case…here we goooooo…

 

 

Side Note:  I posted the pictures above as evidence that we don’t always do school in our jammies!

 

 

But it is a homeschooling perk of which we take full advantage.

 

:: smile ::

 

 

So History is one of our Togethers. Meaning both kiddos and mommy (ie. me) and sometimes even Trevy meet together three times a week (ideally) to explore the history of the woooooorld.

 

We’ve used a variety of curriculums in the past.  ACE.  Abeka.  Little Pilgrims.  And we’ve enjoyed them all and still explore history outside of our formal curriculum.  But I really wanted something that starts at the beginning and would work for us to do together.  Through my online researching I fell in loooooove with Mystery of History.

 

 

We’ve been working our way through Volume I this year.

 

 

 

In true Chronic Complicator form, I’d started our timeline notebooking by previewing the lessons and writing in questions and such to help expand learning.

 

 

Totally UNnecessary.

 

 

The MOH book has EVERYTHING you need! Seriously. Well, except for those cutsie timeline cut outs. I bought those on the side from their store.

 

Also, the 1” inch binders.  I provided those separately too.

 

But cross my heart, the MOH book has everything else!

 

 

The point of our timeline notebook is for an easy hands-on project to reinforce our learning.

 

It gives the kids a little art and we always have fun talking about whatever we’re learning.

 

 

We typically do our notebooking pages on Fridays as a review of the lessons we completed that particular week.

 

 

I have the kids cut out the appropriate timeline figure and paste it into the page. I then have them label which lesson number it goes with. We can usually fit two timeline peeps on one page.

 

We then fill in the empty space around the timeline figure with stuff we’d like to remember about that lesson.  It’s kinda like a memory cards and timeline Mash-up.

 

 

Sometimes I’ll get creative (see my MOH Pinterest board) and have more crafty stuff for them.  They do love the crafting thing.  But I’ve promised myself no Mommy Guilt if I can’t squeeze it in!

 

Plus, it’s always really fun to watch them think up creative ideas on their own!

 

 

The Timeline lives in the front of the book.

 

 

Behind the divider we store any extra printables I’ve found.

 

 

And last comes their mapwork.  We haven’t done a ton of mapping.  But they do love it whenever we work on them.  More mapwork is on my to-improve list!

 

 

We did start the year with a wall timeline.  But I wanted something more hands on so we switched to the notebooking.  I think it’s working great.  I totally see us continuing with it in the Fall.  Of course, Bristel asked me today why we aren’t doing the wall timeline anymore and how we really should.  I encouraged her to go for it on her free time!  She wasn’t impressed!   :: haha :: 

 

 

…danielle

spicing up Saxon Math

 

 

Let’s face it…

 

 

Saxon Math, while wonderfully rich with the math learning piece, can also be wicked boring with the actually working through the book piece!

 

 

One way that I’ve modified it for my 6th Grader is to have him work through his daily drills using BigIQ rather than the Saxon drills.

 

 

I love love love BigIQ!

 

He has 50 mixed operations problems to work out daily.  Being timed helps keep him motivated.  As does earning a game coin!

 

I love that I don’t have an extra paper to grade, that all the games are educational AND I get notified every time he achieves mastery!

 

 

 

Another funsie I’ve added is having him create a Math Notebook.

 

This is where I must insert – I LOVE PINTEREST!

 

Here is my Math Pin Board just in case you’d like to peek.

 

 

He’s using Ms. Smith’s online interactive notebook as his guide.

 

I have him add (we started right at the beginning) two pages daily.

 

He spends about 10 minutes on both BigIQ and his Math Notebook.  This leaves him 40 minutes to work on his Saxon.  We bumped him up to Saxon 1/2 this year and it’s been proving to be QUITE challenging for him!  Although some of that is mental…because he keeps reminding me that he should be in 8/7.   

 

The thing is, I found a super affordable Saxon 1/2 with the DIVE disc and the testing indicated he was (by the skin of his teeth) ready.  Soooooo…

 

I added the Math Notebook to help lighten things up a bit.  And he only has to work for the 40 minutes.  I don’t make him do a whole lesson every day if it’s too much

 

Plus, Daddy tutors him in the evenings as needed.  Learning AND bonding!

 

Since we started using BigIQ and doing the MathNotebook there has been WAY less complaining!  I think just having a change of scenery helps.

 

Lastly, another thing I’ve been working with him on is keep his books NEAT!  He’s a South Paw and a boy…soooooooo

 

this is how his notebook (we have him using a notebook rather than writing in the textbook) looks.  The floating numbers make me positively cranky!

 

 

So then I had the brilliant idea (which may have been Pin-spired but I’m not sure) to have him use grid paper! 

 

And look at the difference?!

 

 

My eyes are SO happy!

 

And the thing is…he thinks it’s cool to use grid paper too!  It’s a win-win!

 

 

…danielle