Homeschooling

Junk Drawer Geometry

December 4, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

Pretty soon my lad will be taking a geometry course, so imagine how delighted I was to get a review copy of Junk Drawer Geometry. I now have 50 hands-on activities to help my son make sense of polygons, mobius strips and angles.

From the cover:

Geometry is a hands-on subject. What better way to explore the concepts of area, perimeter, and volume than actually measuring area, perimeter, and volume? With this helpful resource, you will polygons out of pipe cleaners and flexible drinking straws, explore Mobius strips made from index cards, model the Pythagorean theorem using cheese crackers, and much more. Junk Drawer Geometry proves that you don’t need high-tech equipment to comprehend math concepts – just what you can find around the house or in your recycling bin.

What you Get:

Divided into three chapters

Geometry tools: 14 sections such as Pencil Compass, Right Angle String, Unit Circle Glove etc.
Geometry labs: 18 sections such as Inscribed Angle Circles, Straw Triangles, Thumbs Up etc.
Fun Geometry activities: 18 sections such as Math Triangles, Circle Art, Tangrams etc.

There’s not an area of Geometry that this book doesn’t cover. Shapes, theorems, tangents, graphs, compasses, calipers, area and volume and so much more!

It was ever so helpful that each project comes with a materials list. I found that most materials are easily found around the house, OR easy to find at your local dollar or hardware store.

Step by Step instructions walk you through exactly what you need to do. The pictures clearly showing what you need to do, eliminating confusion.

I particularly appreciated that math behind the activity was clearly explained. From understanding the importance of circles, the relevance of figuring out area, why it works to your hand to measure items at a distance, and why marshmallows work so well to understanding volume.

$Junk Drawer Geometry$

My Thoughts:

Junk Drawer Geometry follows a similar pattern to Junk Drawer Engineering. Grayscale images with clear instructions make it so easy for the student to complete the activity. There is an excellent range of activities, some very simple, and others that are a bit more complicated. Step by Step instructions along with understanding the math behind the activity. Robert Mercer brings geometry into the real world for his readers. All of the activities are quite doable and you should have no problem finding the materials to make them. Definitely worth adding to your study of Geometry.

Junk Drawer Geometry: 50 Awesome Activities that don’t cost a thing
Bobby Mercer
Chicago Review Press
Ages 9+, 208 pages
STEM Challenges, Math, Geometry, Hands-on
Trade Paperback
Series: Junk Drawer Science

Reviewed for Chicago Review Press.

Colborne Lodge

December 4, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

When we were on vacation we needed something to do before we went to our airbnb apartment. Enter in Colborne Lodge in the southern end of High Park in London. Our guide was wonderfully informative and very personable. You’ll have to pardon me if the pictures are a bit dark, no flash was allowed.

Colborne Lodge was the home to John and Gemima Howard. Mr. Howard was an architect and engineer originally from England. The house holds a number of pieces of art work that he did himself. A lot of the art work he did involved ships on the water, usually in trouble.

They had one of the first indoor toilets. There was a small replica of it so that we could see how it worked. This area of the house was built in such a way that when the door was closed it looked like a solid wall. If I recall correctly, it was because not everyone was accepting of indoor toilets.

Our tour guide walked us through all the different areas of the house, telling us about each of the paintings. She gave plenty of time for questions to be asked and answered. The Howards lived a fair piece out of town. The house was comfortable for them.

They had this rather neat picture frame sitting on the mantel. I can’t recall if this one is authentic to the house. They needed to do a fair amount of work on the house as it had merely been shut up when the Howards’ had passed on. Vandalism and theft had happened before the house was turned into a museum. I loved the intricate detail on this picture frame and how it fanned out like a peacock. It would have been neat to see photos in it. I would happily have this in my house.

They had these tiny corner closets. I have not seen closets like this before in these early homes. It’s hard to imagine only have three or four outfits to wear.

We were walked through the various bedrooms, seeing their vanities, dresser drawers and the like. There were paintings throughout the house, most done by the Howards, and the odd one by friends.

It’s hard sometimes to know what our student understands, so when he stops to take a picture I wonder what caught his attention. I never did figure this one out as when I asked he just flashed a grin at me.

It’s a fair sized house with a basement, main floor and upper floor. It has a greenhouse or summer patio attached as well.

Oh, I almost forgot this part. They are buried on the property, but not really close to the house! We needed to cross the access road to get to it.

All in all it was a lovely visit with a good tour guide. We learned so much! If you are the Toronto area, take in Colborne Lodge.

Parallelism with a Twist

December 3, 2018 By Annette1 3 Comments

Parallelism. Do you know what it is? Have you figured out how to use it effectively in writing? Do you know how to give it a bit of a twist to give your words more punch? Walk with me through this chapter of Writing Tools. Let’s become better writers eh?

What is Parallelism?

Parallelism is the use of identical phrases, words, clauses, and grammatical structures in a sentence or paragraph.

What you do is set up a pattern. Can be any sort of pattern.

For instance: Rabbits are known for their cute faces, wiggling noses, and fluffy tails. Rabbits are a common pet, ranking fourth after freshwater fish, cats and dogs. They provide companionship, therapy, meat, wool, fur and sports partnerships.

Why use Parallelism?

The reason you want to set up pattern is for several reasons:

Lists and sequences. Keep the grammatical structures the same.
Nouns joined by coordinating conjunctives
Phrases joined by correlative conjunctions (either/or; neither/nor; both/and; etc)
Chronological events
To remove needless repetition
Clarity

The advantage in using parallelism (use of identical grammatical structures for related words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence or a paragraph.) is that is makes your writing more forceful, interesting and clear.

Not only that it helps to link ideas that are related, and to emphasize any relationships between them. Once you have that pattern put into place, your reader doesn’t have to work as hard to understand your thoughts and meaning.

I turned to the world wide web in order to gain more understanding, and one website I was at said that a sentence like this : Adam enjoys jumping, skipping and dancing. That sentence is using parallelism, whereas if I said “Adam likes to jump, to skip, and loves dancing.” then that is a faulty parallelism. What I know is the first sentence reads better than the second, that very fact, that you can read it better, makes it a better sentence.

You can add a twist

Then you can add a twist, for clarity, shock, or emphasis.

So I tried another:

I found a car, a lovely car
I thought it would go fast
I found a car, a lovely car
It should be such a blast
I found a car, a lovely car
and then it fell apart.

Use structures where you can, and then… add a twist. This twist that you add gives emphasis and makes what you say more memorable. (This honestly is where I got lost).

Some examples

One of the examples give was how Superman doesn’t stand for truth, justice and patriotism, but rather for truth, justice and the American way. I DO NOT see the parallelism. I do see how the second sounds better than the first

Another example used was Martin Luther King Jr. did his let freedom ring speech, this one section:

And I say to you today my friends, let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

He repeatedly used “let freedom ring”. Then the last three lines he switched it up, moving from general regions to specifics. There he pointed out specific locations of racial injustice, thereby bringing clarity. I kinda get it with this example which is why I showed it to you. 🙂 The other examples….. well .. go read the book! 🙂

But seriously here. It makes sense doesn’t it? To use parallelism. It will save you words and time and it reads better. Aaron likes to hunt, fish and swim. That sentence reads much better than Aaron likes to hunt. Aaron likes to fish and also swim. Or to read Aaron likes hunting and fishing but dislikes swimming. Parallelism is just another way of using your words in a way that helps your readers better understand and be impacted by what you have to say. It’s worth learning don’t you think?

Animals in World War One

December 1, 2018 By Annette1 1 Comment

Over the past two weeks my lad and I have been learning about animals in the war. Camels, horses, dogs, donkeys, mules, cats, dogs, elephants and pigeons. I also heard about a monkey and a turtle that were morale boosters during the war. All these animals helped people in the war effort.

What Animals Served?

The imperial war museum tells of 15 animals that went to war. Bbc talks of some of the unusual animals like Winnie the Pooh! 🙂

Horses, donkeys, mules and camels carried food, water, ammunition and medical supplies to men at the front. Dogs served sentry, medical, messaging, and scout work, as well as raising morale. They also killed vermin. Pigeons carried messages very swiftly to high command. Canaries detected poisonous gas.

Great war animals in the world war. Elephants, dogs, pigeons and horses.

Camels

Camels were part of the war effort. The Imperial Camel troops that served in the Middle East. There were many good reasons to use camels in battle, but also some dangers as you can learn about at this site.

Horses:

Horses were used for a variety of tasks in the war. Pulling weapons, carrying officers, bringing in supplies and more. I knew gas was used during the war, but never thought of the need for horses to have gas masks.

Some of the pictures in this videos were hard to view. It was SO hard for the horses. They suffered terribly right alongside the men they served with. The soldiers did the best they could for the horses, but conditions were absolutely horrible.

Cats

Cats that were part of the war effort. Mostly as vermin control and morale officers, but some cats were trained to detect gas. Learn more about these amazing felines here.

Dogs:

Then of course we have the dogs of the war. Sentries, scouts, companions, mascots, medical dogs, message runners and more. Dogs were SO very useful in the war.

Stubby the dog “Sgt stubby an American dog” There is a cartoon version which the lad and I watched. It was pretty good. The full movie can be found on youtube.

We learned about a dog trainer in Scotland named Major Edwin Richardson. His name was mentioned in one of the videos so we looked him up. He started the first British War Dog School. Learn more here.

We also learned about other famous dogs of World War 1.

Elephants!

I have to admit I was shocked to hear about elephants in the war. It seemed that most of them were used for publicity stunts. None the less, elephants were definitely used in world war 1 by both sides.

Pigeons

Pigeon training, homing pigeons. The lad was curious about how you train a pigeon to race home or carry a message.

Pigeons in world war 1. In 1915, as stalemate and trench warfare set in, communication became very important. Pigeons became important to the war efforts and homing pigeons were used to carrying message to High Command. More than 100,000 pigeons were used. Some of them received medals. They overcame cut telegraph wires and other communication difficulties, though they did face their own challenges of hawks, shell-fire and more. Learn about some pigeon heroes’ on this page. A Story about a brave pigeon that may or may not be true can be located on this site. Some stories and pictures here.

We even ran across this innovative idea for gathering information.

In case you couldn’t guess, my son did his research paper on pigeons and how they were used in the war. He’s not quite done, but he’s been fighting a nasty cold this week and having a hard time managing his time.

Before I Go

This information was so cool to learn! Look at this: EVEN SLUGS were used!!!!!

Slugs
By the time soldiers noticed the presence of mustard gas on the battlefield, it was often too late. Dr. Paul Bartsch of the Division of Mollusks ……discovered that slugs could detect mustard gas well before humans could. The slugs would visibly indicate their discomfort by closing their breathing pores and compressing their bodies, and soldiers in the trenches would quickly put on their gas masks to protect themselves from harmful levels of gas. The “slug brigade” ended up saving many lives. Source.

It’s been a great couple of weeks learning about Animals in the war. I was surprised more often than I care to admit, but it was great.

Spiritual Education In Homeschooling

November 30, 2018 By Annette1 6 Comments

For families that are faith based homeschoolers a question that often arises is how does one fit in a spiritual component to their homeschooling. The question arises What is Spiritual Education? How does one approach it?

Is it part of the homeschool day, as in, is it subject that is completed once a day just like math, science, art etc. OR is a more generic part of the day NOT considered a subject in the curriculum. The question then begged is, how do you as the parent teacher help your children understand the difference?

I admittedly am not sure of the answer but want to take the time to explore it. Personally I’ve done it both ways, where it’s one or the other. Currently I’m doing a mix of both.

Faith in every Subject

Spiritual education can be woven into every single subject that is taught. That’s a given in a faith-based homeschool due to the fact that as believers we understand that God is in all and through all and manifests himself throughout the entirety of the world. He does. So when we teach art we understand that God is the first artist and shows himself through the things he has created. The more we understand how God put things together, the more we understand how much he cares for this world. All the details he holds in place show us his omnipotence. But does weaving faith facts into lessons teach our children how to have a daily devotional time? Does it teach them facts about the bible which they should understand?

I don’t think so. It does teach them the relevancy of God to every subject and area of life, but it doesn’t actually teach them to dive deep into God’s word and to think meditatively about spiritual things.

Meditative Study

The way to really understand a subject is to take the time to read and think about what you are learning. So as you do math you learn that 1 + 1 = 2 and then can bear that out with practical application. To understand Shakespeare you read his works, consider the time period that he lived in, figure out what the words he used actually mean, and therefore are able to understand his works. The same goes for understanding God. You actually need to stop, read his word, consider the history and time period, consider what you already know about him, and really think about the verses that you are reading. What do they tell you about God, what do they tell you about people (including yourself). It’s important to learn these skills early so they translate into continuing these skills as adult.

Curriculum or Outside of Curriculum

The challenge I find is this. Having a devotional time as part of your homeschooling day, means it won’t be forgotten. Do your math, your science, have your devotions, do your English. It’s just part of your learning time. You know it will get done. But here’s a risk involved: your children will see this only as a subject to be completed, not a life skill to develop.

BUT if you separate out your devotional time what do you do on those really busy days when it’s hard to fit everything in? Then you risk your devotional time being forgotten, or laid aside, in the busyness of life. The risk you run is teaching your children that sometimes all the running around we do is more important than learning more about God and his will for our lives. How does one counter that?

Combination?

This is why I see combining the two methods as win-win. Your child (as a subject) learns the books of the bible, or learns memory verses, or works through a Sunday School lesson. A regular study time that teaches without necessarily the meditative aspect of a personal devotional time.

And then at a separate time (like at a meal or first thing in the morning) you can have a family devotional time, or take 30 minutes after (or before) you start your homeschooling day to have a personal time of reading God’s word and talking about it. To that end, in our day, we do a couple of things. First as I go through the book of John I talk with my lad about what I’m learning and get his insights as well. I’ll read verses to him and say “Hey, this is what I’m thinking and learning. What are your thoughts?”

At supper (almost every night) we are working through the book Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds. We are doing this with our international student which gives us a lots of reasons to stop and just talk as we want him to understand what we are learning too. We take turns reading scripture and then applying that to what we have learned. Sometimes we are so amazed.

What Others Do:

I know from talking with other moms that they have their own routine. Perhaps they will start their day with 20 minutes of quiet bible reading, or a morning circle time, and as part of their bedtime routine. We each, through trial and error, find our own way. It’s important to do so though. God gives us life and care. His son died for us. It’s the very least we can do to take time to know him, our heavenly Father, just a wee bit more eh?

Top of the Pack Crew Reviews

November 27, 2018 By Annette1 6 Comments

Over the past year I have reviewed 18 products for the Homeschool Review Crew. I don’t review a whole lot for the crew (some have reviewed some 50 products!!!) but I live in Canada and only have one child. 🙂 I’ve also learned to be a bit picky. There are the odd products that I want but don’t really need so am happy enough to let others have first dibs at them. There are usually four or so that I REALLY WANT but can’t get because I don’t live stateside. It’s part of being part of a State side crew though eh? Here are my top of the pack, our blue ribbon winners!

Anyways, I just thought I would talk a bit about my son and I’s favourite reviews and link to others that we had an appreciation for.

My son’s top reviews

Drive through history. It wasn’t stale, Dave is interesting to listen to. It was interesting that he actually travelled to places so you could see real pictures of everything.

Code for teens: they put together well, I like how they formatted it together. I’ve learned a lot and I find it interesting to learn coding.

My Favourites

Drive through History. I liked this program because Dave is funny without being an idiot. He walks you through different places and gives small ancedotes about where you are as well as giving a good history lesson. He connects scripture and art into history seamlessly. The worksheets are just an added bonus. We still watch episodes weekly.

Home School in the Woods and also the game that we received. Why do I like them? It will make our study of world war 2 much easier. Less material to look up, built in hands on projects to keep a lad intrigued. YET not so formatted we can’t expand the learning as desired.

Contenders:

Silverdale Press: this is a high school level course that teaches rhetoric and the art of persuasive speech. We really liked how it was set up but the work load was a bit beyond what my lad was up for. We are using the reading speeches and talking about them as part of our World War Studies.

Nature Glo Math-Art: The way the Glo runs her course clicked with my lad. It was so much fun watching him dig in her math/art/science/history courses. The conversations we had about the things he was learning filled me with delight. If you have an ecletic learner I urge you to check out her e-science courses.

Picta-Dicta. My son is actually annoyed with me that I keep forgetting to do this flashcard Latin learning app. He faithfullly works on it and is making great progress. I can see getting another in the series for him to follow up with.

CursiveLogic. This is a handwriting course that my son took a firm liking to. He has plans to follow up with how to do capital letters once our lives stop being quite so busy. He’s worked at them off and on but wants to gain more confidence in writing them. He very much likes how they do this course.

Books of the Bible. Laid out in a straight-forward manner, each book of the bible is presented in a clear format. Verses and stories for each book of the bible.

I urge you to check out what reviews were favourites for other members of the crew. We each have our own and for our own reasons. Who knows, you might find your next favourite resource waiting for you. 🙂 See the other top posts here.

Dinosaur Museum

November 24, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

Do you have a person in your life who likes dinosaurs? Well.. I have this GREAT book for you today. Seriously, Lonely Planet Kids has done an amazing job with Build your Own Dinosaur Museum. In it you will find 5 prehistoric pop-ups to make and display. Loads of interesting facts pepper the pages as you uncrate dinosaur bones to build your very own dinosaurs.

From the Book Cover:

Calling all dinosaur experts! We need your help.
We have just received a crate of dinosaur fossils – and they need assembling! Fast! Can you find the right room for each skeleton and build them in time for the museum’s big opening? There are five pop-up dinosaurs to put back together, including a Triceratops, Stegosaurus and T-rex. It’s going to be roar some!

Lonely Planet’s Build Your Own Dinosaur Museum is an activity book with a difference, where you get to play chief paleontologist. The museum rooms are ready, but there aren’t any skeletons to display. It’s up to you to figure out which one is which and where they need to go.
Fun, interactive and with lots of facts to discover, this book is perfect for any dinosaur fan, budding biologist or model maker.

What you Get:

When I opened this hardcover book I discovered several pages in the front of the book that were taped securely closed. Being the curious duck that I am I immediately opened up the tape. By the way, the tape sticks over and over and over again. I tested it about 15 times and then my lad did a couple more times for good measure.

These pieces are colour coded and easy to tear out. They also give instructions so you know which page goes with what display page. The pieces have bends in them so once you put them in the book they will indeed pop-up. This is excellent for young dinosaur enthusiasts.

It does follow the evolutionary theory of the earth’s development, and how animals came into being. I find this is pretty normal with most dinosaur focused books. I learned many new facts like did you know there was a triceratops group? This is a group of dinosaurs with a similar head shape but the horn count was different! I learned how some dinosaurs found safety in numbers, and some dinosaurs were like ostriches…dependent upon their speed to elude predators.

Five of the pages were dedicated to the pop-ups, where-as other pages had spots for adding in interesting details, like this egg.

There are so many builds for the dinosaur enthusiast, they should be kept busy learning and playing for a good amount of time. The great thing is, the text is interesting enough they they’ll keep coming back to it to read it again.

The reader gets to learn about

What dinosaurs are
Triceratops
Dinosaur defense
Stegosaurus
Plant eaters
T-rex
Predators
Marine Reptiles
Liopleurodon
Flying Reptiles
Pleranodon
Where in the World?
End of an era

My Thoughts:

I am enamoured with this book, there is so much information, and so many things to keep busy hands well… busy, it’s just great! From a homeschoolers’ perspective this book would be an excellent addition to a dinosaur unit. Helping students to hone their attention on five specific dinosaurs and learn how they were put together. Big bones, small forearms, land moving, earth shakers, flyers and more.

This book is a perfect companion to Dinosaur Devotions that I reviewed last week. AND.. if you are a member of SchoolhouseTeachers there is a great dinosaurs and the bible program you could work through. Seriously, you should invest in it, it has so many programs that would be helpful to you and your students it’s amazing. BUT anyways, Build your Own Dinosaur Museum is a must have for the young dinosaur enthusiast in your home. It would make an excellent Christmas present don’t you think?

Build Your Own Dinosaur Museum
Jenny Jacoby
illustrator: Beatrice Blue
Lonely Planet Kids
6-8 years, hardcover, Pop-ups, Build your own
Dinosaurs, history, science, biology
Nature, how it works, archaeology

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.

Other dinosaur books for you to check into:

Homeschooling

Junk Drawer Geometry

From the cover:

What you Get:

My Thoughts:

Colborne Lodge

Parallelism with a Twist

What is Parallelism?

Why use Parallelism?

You can add a twist

Some examples

Animals in World War One

What Animals Served?

Camels

Horses:

Cats

Dogs:

Elephants!

Pigeons

Before I Go

Spiritual Education In Homeschooling

Faith in every Subject

Meditative Study

Curriculum or Outside of Curriculum

Combination?

What Others Do:

Top of the Pack Crew Reviews

My son’s top reviews

My Favourites

Contenders:

Dinosaur Museum

From the Book Cover:

What you Get:

My Thoughts:

Amazon Affiliate information

Tinker Crate Affiliate

Homeschooling

From the cover:

What you Get:

My Thoughts:

What is Parallelism?

Why use Parallelism?

You can add a twist

Some examples

What Animals Served?

Camels

Horses:

Cats

Dogs:

Elephants!

Pigeons

Before I Go

Faith in every Subject

Meditative Study

Curriculum or Outside of Curriculum

Combination?

What Others Do:

My son’s top reviews

My Favourites

Contenders:

From the Book Cover:

What you Get:

My Thoughts:

Want to Stay Informed?

Thank you!

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