Life of Fred: A Love Story

Prologue

“I can’t wait for Calculus!” my then 6 year old girl sighed wistfully. 

In September I hosted 5 extra children in my house for a homeschool day.  The preschoolers played in the living room while 6 elementary students sat around my dining room table for Morning Time.  I wondered how these bonus children would respond to Life of Fred.  I asked my daughter to explain Life of Fred.

“Well, Fred is a 5 year old Math professor at Kittens University.”  Giggles all around. “He sleeps under his desk in his office.  He has a doll named Kingie.  He just recently found a stray cat and took him back to his office.”

“Are you sure this is a math program?” the extra kids wanted to know.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. 

“And how can he be only 5 years old and teaching math?”

My daughter sighed.  “We have to get to Life of Fred: Calculus to find out.”

What is Life of Fred?

Life of Fred is a series of books written by Calculus professor Dr. Stanley Schmidt.  Dr. Schmidt has written Life of Fred books from his elementary series through the third year of college (Linear Algebra is currently the last book in the series, which is studied after two years of calculus.) I’m going to talk about the Elementary series because we are in the thick of it right now. We have two more lessons in LoF Farming (the sixth book in the elementary series).

The Elementary series consists of 10 books with 18 or 19 daily lessons in each book.  It is possible to work through the entire series in one year.  Each book costs $16 new. (Z-twist books is the publisher. You can also purchase them from Educents, which also has an adorable Kingie doll for sale. Guess what I want for my birthday?!) The book titles are alphabetical.  The first book is Apples, the next is Butterflies, the third is Cats, etc.  When I first heard about the series, I didn’t want to invest $160 in a math program, but what I didn’t understand is that LoF Elementary is cyclical.  Dr. Schmidt says the best way to use the program is to repeat all the lessons from Apples to Jellybeans several years in a row.  If you start with a first grader, you probably will not complete the series the first year.  You might get to Cats (book 3) or Dogs (book 4).  Then in second grade you may start again with Apples.  Even an older child should start with Apples.  They can do more than one lesson a day until it gets challenging.



Student completes a Row of Practice

Each lesson has a six page story about Fred’s crazy life as a 5 year old math professor.  He encounters a lot of math in each lesson.  At the end of the lesson is a Your Turn to Play.  The YTTP section has a 4-6 math problems to solve.  Many of these questions are in story problem form. The books are not consumable.  The children answer the YTTP on a separate sheet of paper.  Many of the lessons also include A Row of Practice.  These are just simple arithmetic problems.  Starting in Edgewood (book 5), if a child misses one of the five Row of Practice Problems, he or she needs to try them ALL again.  I’ll be honest.  We had TEARS.  So many tears.  When she questioned me about the need to do them all again, I told her she could email Dr. Schmidt (That’s right folks!  He hands out his email address and tells parents to have their children email him with questions, complaints, or mistakes they found in the books.) We have not emailed him yet.  My daughter eventually got used to it, and now her arithmetic is much more accurate than it ever was even with the drill and kill workbooks.  She even checks her work before looking at the answer key!!!!

From start to finish a LoF lesson takes about 15 to 20 minutes.  In the upper books, it may take more like 30 minutes because children have to practice multiplication facts before they earn the right to read the chapter.

What I like about Life of Fred

First things first.  You guys, there is no prep in this math curriculum at all.  None.  Pick up the book and read the next lesson.  That's it.  The only supplies you need are the books, a pencil, and a piece of paper.

Dr. Schmidt published LoF: Calculus first, then worked his way down.  His books were so popular and refreshing that there was a demand for an elementary series.  When he wrote the Elementary series, he had the end in mind.  In the Elementary series, he exposes children to more upper level mathematics than I have ever seen in a math textbook.  He loves to teach set theory.  My children can tell you the cardinality of a set, and they are learning to find the union of two sets.  I don’t think I learned that until Algebra 2! One of my favorite things about Apples is that right away, Dr. Schmidt dangles the promise that when the students get to Life of Fred: Calculus, they will find out how Fred came to be a Math professor.  Dr. Schmidt also shows students what a calculus problem looks like.  I love that.  I love showing children that things exist in this world, even if they don’t understand it yet.

In Apples, the first book, the only arithmetic used are the numbers that equal 7.  For example, 0+7=7, 1+6=7, 2+5=7.  These are the ONLY math facts that students encounter in the entire book.  Many homeschooling parents look only at Apples and decide LoF isn’t challenging enough for their students.  But what they don’t see is all the math that is covered. In Apples, the students learn how to subtract a number from 7.  They also learn some basic algebra like x + 2 = 7.  They explore geometry and set theory.  Here is a sample from Life of Fred: Apples.

In Butterflies, Dr. Schmidt adds other math facts, and students play with numbers using a very limited amount of arithmetic. 

Dr. Schmidt gradually adds math facts until all are covered and practiced in Farming (book 6).  In Honey (book 8) multiplication is the focus.

By the end of the elementary series, children should be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with confidence. They will also explore some basic fractions and decimals, solve basic algebra problems, and be exposed to many upper level math concepts. Here is a sample from Life of Fred: Ice Cream.

I know I said this before, but Dr. Schmidt wants children to email him with questions, complaints, or when they spot a mistake in his books.  What other math publisher does that?

The story is zany. Fred meets interesting people and animals, adopts 30 dogs, his doll is a world renown painter, and Fred is swindled multiple times by crook C.C. Coalback.   

Dr. Schmidt also puts in short essays about random things in his stories.  He says he doesn’t teach math, he teaches students.  He has taught my children about the Titanic, Orien, asterisms, and so many other things.

*One thing to note is that Life of Fred does not use very many math manipulatives.  Before Life of Fred, I would have said that any math curriculum without manipulatives will not teach children conceptually. Life of Fred is the only curriculum I know of that does teach math conceptually without heavy use of math manipulatives. 

Life of Fred is not for everyone

I believe that finding the right curriculum for homeschoolers depends largely on two factors: 

1. It must appeal to the student.  I know that not everything we have to learn in life is fun.  However, if a child loathes a certain curriculum for some reason, find another choice.  I had to do this with a Bible curriculum I was using.  I loved it.  My daughter did not.  It wasn’t worth the daily arguments.

2. It must appeal to the parent. If you or your child would rather do worksheets and not have all the “story fluff” of Life of Fred, then it isn’t for you. That’s ok. 

Also, can I just say that Dr. Stanley Schmidt is a genius, but he is more than a little eccentric?  Look up his tv show from the 90s.  He has been known to wear a toga while teaching philosophy.  His eccentricity might be a turn off for some. 

If you do not want a Christian math curriculum, then you might want to skip Life of Fred.  Personally, I love the Christian references.  They are subtle and natural.  I have always felt like some Christian math curricula seem forced.  Have you ever seen a curriculum that has word problems like- “What is the sum of the elephants and zebras on the ark?”  LoF isn’t overtly Christian, but just seems to be a natural outpouring of the author’s belief system.  For example, on a Your Turn to Play one of the questions is to name a set with three members.  I named my three children as an example.  My daughter named {Larry, Mo, Curly}.  In the answer key, Dr. Schmidt gave the example of {the trinity} as a set with three members. 

 

How NOT to use Life of Fred: The Evolution of my LoF Implementation Plan

1. When I first heard about Life of Fred, I bought Apples and Butterflies.  We read through Apples and Butterflies. Great math exposure. Little math computation.  Funny stories.  My overall feeling: Meh.  It’s missing something.  We switched to Rightstart Math.  Moral: Don't just buy the first two books. 

2. A couple years later I bought Cats, Dogs, and Edgewood.  I supplemented Rightstart with Life of Fred when I felt like it.  I think we got through Cats.  My overall feeling: The kids didn't retain very much. Dr. Schmidt is a genius.  I wish there was more math computation. Moral: Be consistent.

3. In January of last year I tried to make Life of Fred the spine of our math, and I supplemented with worksheets for extra practice.  My third grade daughter was really struggling to remember subtraction facts so I thought a daily drill and kill worksheet would help.  We got through Dogs, and my daughter was in tears because of the daily worksheets.  She continually made subtraction mistakes or forgot subtraction facts.  Moral: The Row of Practice problems can be just as effective  (or more so) than 25 problems each day.

The Best Way to use Life of Fred: Dr. Schmidt's Way

This year I dropped the other curriculum and I use Life of Fred daily.  We sometimes double up lessons, especially in the books we have repeated a few times. I never skip a day of Life of Fred.  My children are doing amazing things in math. I do still supplement the math occasionally, but I try to use math games more than workbooks.  My second grade son really likes his Star Wars Math workbook, so he does that a couple days each week. 

A few more thoughts:

 My daughter is behind.  She is in fourth grade, and she doesn’t know all her multiplication facts. She has dyslexia, and I’m wondering if she also has dysgraphia.  Math facts are harder for her to retain than typical children. She can solve multiplication problems because she can skip count numbers up to 15 (Thanks Classical Conversations memory work!).  I think that if I had used Life of Fred as our main math curriculum a few years ago, my daughter would have retained more of her subtraction facts.  She still needs to learn a lot of math before she is ready for long division, fractions, and decimals.  But it will come.  She has become a subtraction master, and I trust Fred and Dr. Schmidt to carry her through.  

Not ready to commit yet? See if you can borrow LoF books from a friend.  This year I have lent my LoF books to three friends.  We stagger when we start Apples so multiple children can use the same set.  Another option is to check your library or use an inner library loan.  The books are $16 with free shipping from the author’s publisher. I buy them used for $10-14 each.  They retain most of their value, so you can always resell them.

 Struggling Math students would benefit from Life of Fred.  The curriculum is zany enough that even a struggling 7th or 8th grader would benefit from the elementary series.  Let your student work through them in the summer. An older child could breeze through one book each week in less than an hour each day.

Students are ready for Life of Fred: Apples when they can write and recognize numerals, and have a basic number sense of the numbers 1-7. For example, when they see five Legos, they know there are five there.

Looking to the Future



Students use "Fred Bucks" in denominations of the
powers of 3 ($1, $3, $9, $27, $81) to buy things and make change.

Our plan is for my daughter who is 9 and my 7 year old son to go through A-J this year.  I hope my daughter will be ready to start the intermediate series (Kidneys, Liver, and Mineshaft) this summer when we start the next school year.  If she struggles through the multiplication and division books, I will have her repeat those before going on to K,L, M.  At this point, I would love to take my children through Calculus.  We will finally know how five year old Fred came to be a math professor.

Epilogue

And they all lived happily ever after.



How to Homeschool Your Child When You Feel Like You are Never Home

I am so thankful that 2017 is behind us.  My 7 year old son with Spina Bifida was burned by a space heater in January and needed two skin graft surgeries.  Then he had 4 scheduled surgeries in April.  He spent the rest of the year fighting infections due to complications with his April surgeries.  Since January, he has had 6 hospital stays, all lasting a week or more.  Homeschooling with a special needs child can be complicated.

A hospital stay won't stop this cool kid from dabbing

 

 

Even if you don't have a child with special needs, you may have ballet and piano lessons, orthodontist appointments,  Bible study, errands, library programs and a exercise class during the week.  Am I the only one who feels like homeschooling should be called On-The-Go-Schooling?

Many people have asked me how I schedule my school day around doctors appointments, therapy, and hospital stays.  Every year is a little different, but I have started viewing my homeschool schedule the way I treated scheduling in the classroom.  After I graduated from college, I taught second grade at a Christian school on the island of Saipan.  When I moved back to the states, I was a fourth grade teacher at a Christian school.  In both cases, I had to apply a chapel schedule to our Wednesdays because we spent 45 minutes or so with the rest of the school in a chapel program.  Also, we had several specials such as PE or Art.  Usually one day a week, we would have two specials.  If I hadn’t planned a 2 specials schedule, we could have lost a lot of valuable teaching time.  Teachers have to do this every year.  I really think that homeschooling is no different.  Let me give you some examples of how I rearrange my day and our homeschool priorities so that I can make sure my children are continually learning and progressing according to their needs.

First, let me tell you about a PERFECTLY scheduled day in which we have no interruptions or appointments. (As you well know, there is no such thing as a perfect day.)

I learned from Classical Conversations Foundations program the value of having Crisp Components.  The Crisp Components I use in our homeschool day are different than in the Foundations program.  This is our “Normal School Schedule.”  When Classical Conversations is finished for the year, we will have a different school schedule and will study some different things.

 Here are our 5 Crisp Components:

1. 7:45-8:30 Foundations Review

I don’t want to spend a lot of time explaining the Classical Conversations Foundations program right now, but basically each week for 24 weeks we have little tidbits of information to memorize in 7 subject areas- History, Science, Latin, Geography, Timeline, Math, English Grammar. 

I put on the Foundations Memory Work CD, and we listen to it as we wake up, get dressed, clean up the house, and get ready for the day. My son with special needs requires a little more help getting ready in the morning.  We sometimes play review games, but usually just listening to the CD daily is enough for the students to memorize the information. 

How I tailor Foundations Review when we have appointments: 

Everyday, we have to get up and get dressed, so I don’t usually skip the CD.  Some families spend a lot more time studying and reviewing, but I’m pretty happy with just listening to the CD.  For geography, we have started using Draw the USA. 

2. 8:30- 10:00 Morning Time

This looks a little different every day, and it is an area where I can tailor it to fit our day’s schedule.  During Morning Time, the children eat breakfast.  In a perfect world, I have already eaten mine.  I usually get a big latte mug of coffee (I’m a Harry and David’s Chocolate Cherry Decadence coffee fan!) While they are eating, I always start the day with Bible.  We are reading through Long Story Short, which goes through the Old Testament chronologically.  I really enjoy it because it always has one lesson a week that links the Old Testament story to Jesus.  After Bible, we enjoy poetry. I’m using How to TeachYour Child Shakespeare.  We have been studying Twelfth Night.  I love teaching Shakespeare to children! Are you familiar with the book Wonder?  I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I love the book!  The author, R.J. Palacio wrote another book called 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Brown’s Book of Precepts.  Each day, we read the precept that corresponds to the date and discuss the meaning.  The precept for January 3 is from Henry James: “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; the third is to be kind.” Then I read from The Story Book of Science, and A Child’s History of America.  This is the only formal Science and History that I do right now.  My children do a Science Project every week at CC.  The combination of CC History, CC Timeline, and what my daughter learns from her IEW History Based Writing is enough for us right now.  I also take this time to read a chapter or two from a read aloud book.  I used to try to read at night, and I was so tired that I didn’t make it a priority.  I have dyslexia.  Reading aloud when I am tired is not an easy feat. This year we have read The Secret Garden, The Tale of Despeareuax, Holes, Rush Revere books, and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. I end Morning Time with a chapter or two from my absolute favorite Math Curriculum: Life of Fred.  We are currently working through Life of Fred Farming.  If we have no commitments, here is what Morning Time looks like:

Coffee and My Stack of books: The Essentials of Morning Time

Bible

Poetry
Precepts
Science
History
Read Aloud
Life of Fred

 

Morning Time is the heart of our school day.  All three of my children and I sit around the table as we learn together.  It sets the tone for the rest of the day.  The students are allowed to color, play with Legos, paint, play with play dough, or other quiet activities while I read, as long as they are listening and participating.  I have gradually been adding things to Morning Time. A few things I would like to add are an Artist or Composer study, Greek Mythology, and some fairy tales from The Blue Fairy Book.

 

How I tailor Morning Time when we have appointments:

If we have a busy day, we will only do Bible and usually Life of Fred.  I am happy when if we do Science and History 3 days a week.  Do you see how easy this is to rearrange according to our needs?  

 

3. 10:00-10:30 Workbook Time

Teach Your Child to Read
in 100 Easy Lessons

My 9 year old and my 7 year old each have 3 workbooks that they can usually do somewhat independently.  We use Spelling You See, Kumon or Star Wars Math workbooks, and handwriting.  In a perfect world, they do their workbooks while I work with my five year old in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and RightStart Math B.

 

How I tailor Workbook Time when we have appointments:

Workbooks are easy to pack with us.  My 9 year old likes to do them in the car on the way, but my 7 year old would rather work on it in the waiting room.  If we have appointments, I sometimes do not work with my 5 year old.  He also enjoys doing his lessons at night.

 

4. 10:30-11:30 Reading Time

I like to hear each of my children read out loud for 15 minutes each day. This gives everyone a little bit of a break while I work one on one with each child.  While I’m reading with one child, the other children play with toys.  No electronics are allowed during the school day.

My five year old is not able to read yet, but he is part of our library’s 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program.  So far, I have read 400 picture books to him.  We hope to finish before the summer.

 From about 11:45-12:00 We also do our geography lesson during this time.  I know it has nothing to do with Reading, but I tend to group Geography and Reading together.  I love the  Draw the USA book.  It’s been a really great way to teach drawing as well as geography.

 

How I tailor Reading Time when we have appointments:

I have found that my children get a little embarrassed if I ask them to read aloud in public.  Instead, I will listen to my children read in the evening.  I love the flexibility of homeschooling.  We are usually finished with school by 2:30, but if we need to do some school in the evenings, it is not a big deal.

 

 

12:00-1:00 LUNCH.

We are usually ready for a lunch break after Reading Time.  We take about an hour for lunch to eat, clean up, and play.  This is a good time to go outside if it is a nice day.  My 9 year old usually fixes lunch while I attend to my 7 year old’s medical needs.

 

5. 1:00-2:30 Writing and Grammar. 

My daughter's Essentials Notebook

My 9 year old daughter is part of the Classical Conversations Essentials program for 4th-6th graders.  We study Grammar for about 15-30 minutes each day.  Then she works on a writing assignment in her History Based Writing: United States History from Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW).

 My 7 year old son works on his assignments from IEW’s Bible Heroes program.

 

Each week, both children write a paper and illustrate it.  At the end of the year, I want to take all their papers and illustrations and bind them into a book.

 

How I tailor Writing and Grammar Time when we have appointments:

My daughter has to turn in assignments each week.  I have found that she can usually get her assignment done in 3 days, so we can skip one day a week if necessary.  There have been times when we have to work on the writing assignment on the weekend to get it finished.  I don’t worry very much if my son doesn’t finish his lesson.  We just work on it the next week.  It may take him two years to finish Bible Heroes, and that is perfectly fine with me.

 

I use this schedule four days a week.  On Wednesdays we go to our Classical Conversations classes.  We school year round, so on days where we spend the entire day at the hospital, we take the day off.  We started this year in June, and even with all our interruptions and 3 weeks of hospital stays, we are on day 112 as of January 5.  In our state, we have to have 180 days of school.  As long as we don’t have any major surprises, we will finish in April this year.  Even if we do have some  surprises, we still have enough time to finish before June.  As I mentioned before, the above is our “Normal School Schedule.”  When Classical Conversations ends for the year, we will go to our “Summer School Schedule.”  We will not do as much CC memory work or writing, but will instead focus on Latin and Science. 

A Final Note:

Don't be afraid to make use of your car! We have listened to several audio books on our trips to the hospital and other appointments.

 

I know that every family is different.  Your “Crisp Components” will probably be different than mine.  What does your day look like?

How to Teach a Child to Read

My 4 year old son is learning to read.  He has already started to show some early signs of dyslexia, so I haven’t rushed him.  I have many friends who are afraid of teaching a child to read.  I was terrified when I began reading mechanics with my children, so I thought I would post some tips.

My four year old is excited to start reading!

1.       Give your child play time with letter manipulatives.

Children learn through play.  My motto has always been, “You might as well teach them something while they play.”  There are many letter manipulative toys on the market.  You can buy many of them at the dollar store.  Refrigerator magnet letters and foam letters are readily available.  Purchase lowercase letters if you can.  Lowercase letters make up 95% of what we read.  Uppercase letters are only used at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns.  For some reason, the toy market is slow to understand this.  Many of the letter toys are uppercase. It won’t hurt anything for your child to play with uppercase letters, but they will read easier if they have more exposure to lower case letters.  Here area few of my favorite letter manipulatives. (Notice that some of them are uppercase because that is what is available).

 

2.       Read to your child. 

Reading with your child is such a great bonding experience.  My children and I are currently reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret as our evening read aloud.  My four year old and I love to read picture books together.  When I read to him, I try to point to every word to model the left to right reading method.  He has started to understand that letters make up words.  When he picks up a book, he now points to word and tracks from left to right while he makes up his own words.  This summer we are going to use Five in a Row as our literature curriculum.

 

3.       Wait for signs of Reading Readiness.

Some children are just not ready to learn letter sounds.  My youngest has been slower than my other two children to be ready.  Just about a month ago he started to pretend spell.  He says things like, “Mom, can I have some E-R-G-H?” Apparently ERGH spells ice cream according to my 4 year old.  His use of letters to make words, even though they were incorrectly spelled, shows me that he is ready to learn.  Other reading readiness signs include finding letters in a book, tracking while pretending to read, and trying to write.

Be careful with motivation!  Some children are more than ready to learn to read, but they do not want to do the work.  My youngest is motivated by the iPad.  I allow him 15 minutes of screen time AFTER he does a reading lesson. 

4.       Focus on letter sounds over letter names

Beginning to read is so much easier when you focus on letter sounds.  I’m not suggesting that we ignore letter names all together.  Children will need the names of the letters to spell out loud.  But let me explain why letter sounds aid reading.  If children have only been taught letter names, they cannot sound out the word “sat”.  It would be ESS-AY-TEEE.  If they are taught the sounds, then they can blend them to make the word sssaaat.  Then they can say the word quickly as “sat.” When I teach beginning letter sounds, I ONLY refer to the sounds the letters make.  I do not use the names of the letters until I have introduced them much later in the curriculum.  When we write in salt or paint, I ask children to write the mmmm sound instead of asking them to write the letter eM.

 

5.       Teach lowercase letters before capital letters

I touched on this before.  About 95% of what we read is in lowercase.  It is easier to teach uppercase letters after the child has made some progress in reading.  I even start out with sentences that are not capitalized.  “see me sit” is one of the first sentences the children learn to read.  Notice that it is not capitalized.  I gradually introduce capital letters at the beginning of the sentence and for proper nouns as the student has gained some confidence. 

 

6.       Don’t reinvent the wheel!

There are many good curriculum options available to help you teach reading.  I have used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with two of my children.  (My middle child was a spontaneous reader and did not need any instruction.  I didn’t believe children could actually teach themselves to read until my middle child proved me wrong!)  I also like Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading.  Several of my friends have had success with The Reading Lesson, but I am not quite as familiar with it.  When we finish with 100 Easy Lessons, we start Spell to Write and Read.   Another note: Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is NOT 100 Easy Days.  You may have to repeat a lesson several times before your child is ready to move on to the next lesson.  Do not be surprised if it takes 6 months to a year to complete the curriculum.

7.       Reinforce the Letter sounds with Writing. 

Use as many of the senses as possible! Reading uses the senses of sight and hearing.  When you write the letter, you use the sense of touch.  I don’t care at this point about beautiful handwriting; I just want the mind to know what a /t/ FEELS like.  It makes a huge difference to write the letter sounds as you introduce them.  My four year old almost always chooses to write them in salt, but finger paint, shaving cream, sand, or crayons are some of the other options.

 

What are some of your favorite tips to teach beginning reading mechanics?

Dealing with the February Blahs

 

There is something about February.  February causes all sorts of burn-out for children and teachers in school and homeschool.  I read somewhere that homeschool moms are most likely to consider enrolling their children in traditional school during the month of February.  I haven’t done a study on this, and I have no facts or charts to prove this, but I believe it.  We are all ready for a change in February.  (Let me pause to clarify something.  I am pro-education, not necessarily pro-homeschool. I am a teacher, and I loved teaching in public and private schools. We have chosen to homeschool in our family because I enjoy teaching my children at home. I don't think there is anything wrong with enrolling a homeschooled child into a traditional school if that is a better fit for your family.  But don’t let the gray days of February be a factor in your decision.)

My daughter with our morning "pins."

My secret to enduring the long, gray February days is adding something new to the routine.

Remember our loose schedule during our J-Term? It was time to get a little more structured, and we were all dragging our feet.  This February, I decided to implement some “pins.”  Pins are habits that you “pin” to another activity that you do daily to help you to remember to do it.  We always eat breakfast, so I decided to make “Breakfast with the Bible” time.  We are reading The Golden Children’s  Bible.  I also like to teach Bible verses through Seeds Family Worship.  The songs are pure scripture, and unlike many other children’s Bible songs the tunes are catchy and the singers do not sound like chipmunks. (If you were a child of the 80s and grew up in church you probably remember Psalty. You know what I’m talking about.)  Now let me be clear: We were already studying Bible, but since I pinned it to our breakfast, it helps us start our day.

After Bible time, I added another new pin.  We are reading 365 Days of Wonder.  This book is a companion to the fiction book Wonder by R.J. Palacio, but it can be used as a stand-alone book to teach precepts.  For every day of the year, there is an encouraging quote or maxim.  Most of the quotes come from historical leaders, but some are from unlikely sources (one was from a fortune cookie.)  Each quote contains words to live by that encourage my children to make better choices, be kind, and find their way in the world.  It takes us 5 minutes to read and discuss the quote.  Not only do the precepts encourage better living, they also encourage my children to think about the meaning and will be a great resource of quotations for when my children write papers.  It will be great when they start using The Lost Tools of Writing in Challenge A.  We have read quotations from several people we have studied in history.  Some of these historical leaders include Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and Confucius.



Using Shopkins to teach multiplication and division

Directly after 365 Days of Wonder, I added two math pins to the morning routine.  We spend about 10 minutes studying multiplication and division facts using Times Tables the Fun Way.  (Click on the See Inside link in Amazon to see some of the illustrations). This book has stories and illustrations for the multiplication facts.  For example: 4x4 = 16 has a picture of a boy driving a jeep up a mountain.  The story basically says that you have to be 16 to drive a 4x4.  We also use counters (unifix cubes work, or beans, or beads, or what ever you have: My children like to use Shopkins or Lego men) to show what multiplication means.  4 x 4 is 4 groups of 4 and there are 16 total.  I love Times Tables the Fun Way, but you are doing a disservice for your child if you only teach them to memorize the facts instead of teaching them what multiplication is.

The last 10 minutes of our morning “pin” time is spent with Life of Fred.  We are currently working through Life of Fred: Cats. (Click Here for a Sample of LOF: Cats).  I love Life of Fred because it is math in story form.  Fred is a 5 year old math professor at Kittens University.  He comes across all sorts of math issues and solves them.  The lessons are 6 pages long and then there is a “Your Turn to Play” section that my children write on a separate sheet of paper.  The answers are on the following page.  It is important for your child to read through the answer section, not only because they go over the answer, but also because they expose children to all sorts of higher level math.  For example the problem might say “There were 4 vending machines on one side of the hallway and 5 vending machines on the other.  How many vending machines were there altogether?” and your child would write 4 + 5 = 9. The answer on the next page would have that math fact, but it also says 4v+5v= 9v;  4abc + 5abc=9abc, ect. Sometimes the problems use Greek symbols, sometimes they use square root symbols.  I love this.  The author dangles the promise of telling the whole origin story of Fred when they get to study Life of Fred Calculus.  When we read the first Life of Fred book, my then 5 year old daughter said, “I can’t wait for Calculus!” Neither can I!

The rest of the morning is spent with each child doing separate subjects.  We start with their Kumon math books.  My 9 year old is working through a multiplication book and my 6 year old is working through an addition book.  Then we do spelling, reading, writing, and study our memory work from our homeschool group.  I teach a Chemistry class in my home so we use that as our Science, and this year we have been studying British History and Literature with Our Island Story.



Shakespeare Campers perform Hamlet

At lunch we have another “pin,” although I haven’t been as consistent with it as with the morning pins.  We pin poetry to lunch.  I love poetry.  I have a whole set of Poetry for Young People Books that I bought when I was teaching 4^th grade.  We are reading the poetry of Robert Frost right now.  This summer we will be using How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare again, this time focusing on Twelfth Night.  I usually run a Shakespeare Camp at my home each summer, but I will not this year due to my son’s upcoming surgeries. 

Building Fairy Gardens on a warm February day

The afternoon is usually free.  My children practice piano and guitar and play.  I try to clean and do some chores.  My daughter especially takes advantage of warmer days, building fairy gardens and running outside.

My only other pin is a read aloud at night time.  We are currently reading The Wizard of Oz.  My daughter and I are building a paper chain with all the read alouds we have read during the year of 2017. 

Here is our schedule:

8:30ish: Breakfast with the Bible (Today we are getting started at 9:30 instead of 8:30)
8:45 365 Days of Wonder
8:50 Times Tables the Fun Way
9:00 Life of Fred
9:15-12:00 Individual subjects
12:00 Lunch and Poetry
1:00 Piano, Guitar, Free Time
8:00pm Read Alouds

The changes in our schedule added only a few minutes to our school day, but the pins have made a big difference in our attitude.  Life of Fred and Times Tables the Fun Way are quirky and fun, and my children enjoy them.  Another fun way to change the schedule due to February Blahs would be to add an educational game to the routine.  Just do something different.  We were homebound this February due to my son’s surgery recovery, but in past Februarys we have spent a lot of time going to museums, or visiting family and friends.  Playdates lighten our souls!

What do you do to conquer the February Blahs?

The Truth About Sight Words

As a child, I struggled with spelling and reading sight words.  I was told over and over that English is crazy and I just have to memorize them.  Memorizing sight words works for many children.  There are long lists of high frequently sight words that children are encouraged to memorize.  I’m not saying that memorizing the sight words is a bad thing.  It’s is very efficient.  When you read this sentence, you are probably not sounding out every word.  You have probably been reading for many years and have taken some short cuts to read quickly.  I certainly don’t want to get into a Whole Language verses Phonics debacle.  The longer I work in education, the more I see that one size does not fit all.  Personally I use a classical approach to education with phonics instruction and a focus on spelling rules, but I know that there are many children that benefit from a more traditional approach.  Let’s not get into an argument about educational methods today.  That isn’t my goal.  

I want to tell you something that I discovered just recently,  years after I struggled through spelling and reading in elementary school,  years after I studied to get undergrad and graduate degrees in education,  even a few years after I stopped teaching in a classroom.  To my former students: I’m so sorry.  I would have been a much more effective reading mechanics and spelling teacher if I had known more spelling rules. Let me be clear: I learned a lot of phonics in school, but phonics alone does not a good speller make.

Fonix ulon duz not a gud spellr mak.

In school I learned the basic spelling rules: i before e except after c, and when one vowel goes walking the other does the talking. Remember those? I knew a few rules about when to double consonants, or drop the e. That was about the extent of my spelling rule knowledge.  Throughout my school years and college, I felt like I was drowning when trying to remember how to spell basic words like experience, bulletin, and field.  How I wish I could have learned more about English spelling.

Students learn the silent e rules with Super E! Who is that masked woman? The world my never know.

Here is the truth:

 

There are very few English sight words that are complete rule breakers.  Most sight words follow either a phonics rule, a spelling rule, or both.  

 

The word “have” has bothered me for years.  It looks like it should be pronounced with a long A (like the A in Acorn) doesn’t it? The A should say the long A sound because of the silent e.  The only explanation I ever received about the word "have" is that it is a sight word.  I had to remember it.  English doesn't follow the rules.

 

But at the age of 33, I learned that there are  9 different reasons for silent e.  In the word have, the e must be present because English words do not end in v.  The word “have” uses that rule instead of long vowel sound rule. 

Now I know that these obscure spelling rules sound intellectual and not very practical, but as a child with dyslexia, I would have LOVED to hear a reason why the word  “have” had an e.  I may have even remembered to spell it correctly.   



This student used Legos to build the phonogram
"oi that you may not use at the end of English words" 

I learned all these spelling rules, 28 rules all together, from a curriculum called Spell to Write and Read (SWR).  Truly, it moved me to tears to hear the English words do not end in i, u, v, or j rule. (I am not making up the bit about the happy tears...I’m very passionate about spelling rules as it turns out.)  Spell to Write and Read can be dry and not always flashy and fun, but this simple curriculum has helped me teach more than a dozen children to read.  I highly recommend using it for a struggling child.  My daughter has used it for years.



We have recently switched to Spelling You See for a change of pace, but the rules and phonics we learned from SWR have stayed with us.  I use the phonics and spelling rules daily, even with a different spelling curriculum.

If you have a child who is struggling to read or spell high frequency sight words, teach them WHY they are spelled that way with a curriculum like Spell to Write and Read.  SWR is not always teacher friendly.  It takes a while to get your bearings, but once you know what to do the weekly schedule stays the same.  Need more help? Here is a video teaching all 70 phonograms. I have several videos showing how to teach SWR, and I usually teach a beginning spelling and reading class for kindergarten and first graders in the summer.  How have you used SWR?

A Glimpse into our J-Term (J-Term part 2)

In January, our family does a J-Term (January Term) instead of our normal school schedule.

Our J-Term Schedule
8:00-9:00 The children are allowed to sleep in a little bit.  They wake up between 8-9.  I turn on the Classical Conversations Memory Work CD and they listen to that while they eat breakfast, get dressed, and get ready for the day.  They know their morning chores must be finished before the CD is over.
9:00-11:00 Read aloud and Research, grammar, spelling and language arts focused on research topic
11:00-12:00 Math games
12:00 Lunch
1:00- Free Time (No TV) I usually clean out a drawer or closet while the kids played with toys or went outside.  I let them listen to a Classical Conversations Memory work CD from past years.  It is a nice review.  Sometimes they listen to other music or poetry on CD.
3:00- The 8 year old made dinner several nights because she chose cooking as her hobby
7:30-8:30pm Math games and Read Aloud as a family (My husband even plays the math games with us

There is a lot of wiggle room in this schedule.  Sometimes  our free time was filled with piano and guitar lessons, or with our weekly homeschool group, or my private tutoring so every day was a little different.  But every day we got all of this accomplished, even if it wasn't quite the same times as listed above.

Our J-Term Focus
This year our focus for January was research and report writing.  My children each picked a topic to research.  My 8 year old wanted to research dolphins. My 6 year old wanted to research dragons. (He ended up focusing mostly on the Loch Ness Monster and now wants to go to Scotland.) I teach a British History and Literature class for third and fourth graders so my class took a break from our normal routine to learn how to research.  We learned how to write a bibliography, make note cards, make a mind map, and write a report using the cards and map. 


The 6 year old reads about St. George and the Dragon to his Lego Minecraft Ender Dragon

My 8 year old has really struggled to master subtraction facts.  In addition to her math curriculum, CTC math,  she has been drilling subtraction facts daily in a Kumon workbook.  She does ok, but it is tedious and it wasn't really helping her remember the facts. I was looking for a game to help her practice her skills.  Subtraction Splat has been a life saver! Every evening as part of J-term, we play the game.  There are two types of cards.  Most of the cards in the deck are basic flash cards with the subtraction problem unsolved on one side.  The other cards are the numerals 0-12.  The player turns over 6 subtraction problems.  Then you turn over one of the numeral cards and have to see if it is answer to one or more of subtraction problem cards.  If it solves one of the six subtraction problem cards, then you turn it over.  The object of the game is to turn over all 6 cards before the other player does.  To make it more complicated we play with 9 or 10 subtraction problem cards.
)

The 8 year old sharpens her subtraction skills using the Subtraction Splat game.

What I love about Subtraction Splat is that every time we turn over another numeral card, my 8 year old solves all the cards that are face up again to make sure that she knows the answer.  She drills the same problems over and over through out the game.  This has really helped her to memorize some of the facts.

Yesterday, I had my 3rd grader do two Kumon subtraction pages for the first time in over a month.  It only took her 15 minutes to do both pages!  (It normally takes her an hour).  She still does not have all her subtraction facts memorized, but she was much more comfortable using some of the solving strategies that she has learned.  She was VERY proud of herself.  I am proud of her, too!

My six year old also played Splat, as well as our favorite addition game Super Genius. 

This month we participated in Sarah McKenzie's Read Aloud Challenge.  Each child had to read out loud for 15 minutes daily.  My 8 year old has become a very confident reader because of this practice! It was just the boost she needed! She is now CHOOSING to read aloud to her dolls.   This is my sweet girl with dyslexia who is now reading ABOVE grade level! I'm so proud of her hard work!

Every evening, instead of watching endless Netflix reruns, our family sits around the dining room table while I read the Secret Garden aloud.  My 8 year old has become really involved in the story, talking to characters while I read aloud. She's been saying things like, "Don't do it, Mary! Don't tell Colin about the Secret Garden!  It's a secret! Stop talking to him!" I've never seen her so attached to the characters and setting.  On a rare warm day this month, she decided to plant her own secret garden, spending the entire day outside looking at things, and playing with sticks.  It is so nice to see her inspired by literature.

J-Term has been a great way to sharpen some skills in many areas.  I have seen amazing improvement in both of my elementary students in just one month.  I'm really glad we took the time to do J-Term. 

What is J-Term? (J-Term part 1)

It is so hard to get back into the swing of things after Christmas break.  My kids stay up late, sleep in, eat too much sugar, and watch a lot tv during the holidays.  When it comes to starting school again, January can sometimes be a rude awakening.  Last January my friend Claire told me her plans for the month.  She was excited to become an intern at our children's hospital.  She was able to do this because of J-term at her college. It was her experience that inspired me to incorporate J-Term into our school year.



Claire's experience during J-term led us to incorporate J-term into our homeschool.

J-Term has become one of our favorite parts of the year!  J-Term (which stands for January Term) is something that many colleges and universities choose to do instead of starting the second semester in January.  Students have many options.  This year Claire, a junior at Franklin College, spent most of January touring Europe and studying the Holocaust.  Another college friend, Samm, spent the month interning with an insurance company.

While my children are not quite ready to backpack across Europe or become an intern, I felt there was value in stepping away from our normal curriculum to focus on something they were interested in for a little while.

The Components of this year's J-Term (I'm sure it will be different next year)
Each day the children spent a good deal of time in research, reviewed our CC Memory work, the read out loud for 15 minutes as part of Sarah McKenzie's Read Aloud Challenge, played math games to help sharpen math skills, worked on a hobby and chore, and listened to me read The Secret Garden aloud.

In the following blog posts I will explain how we carried out our J-Term, what I loved (and didn't love about it) and how we dealt with a major curve ball that landed us in the hospital.