GHEA conference

My friend Sharon and I had the pleasure of attending the entire GHEA homeschool conference this year.  I went last year to shop only, this year they wanted to charge $20 to shop only and the full conference was only $45.  I am glad I was able to go to the the seminars this year.  The speakers were great and I learned a few tricks to help Tyler with his spelling.  Ken Ham spoke and of course he was great, super intense.  Voddie Baucham was AMAZING and spoke on how to keep your marriage strong through the homeschooling season of life and the important for dads to be involed in the schooling.  I YouTubed Voddie and ended up watching his speaches/sermons for way more time that I wanted to be on the computer haha!

I bought a few things that I needed to finish up our curriculum for next year also.

The activities books for Tyler and Trace's phonics prgrams (I found the teacher manual for both programs and the LLATL readers at our homeschool support group used book sale).

Double sided dry erase maps.  We use our large map on the wall so much to write on and these were only $1!  I got one for each boy. 

  

A praying mantis habitat, the kids think this is the neated thing since grilled cheese and beg me to order the eggs every day even though I tell them we can't get them in the mail until the weather is cooler.  We have been trying to catch some caterpillars to put in it over the summer but I think it is too late to find them.

April update

Treyton:
-"Mom, if you do your job half-assed you will get fired right?" I replied "buddy, half-assed is a bad word and I dont want you to say it again, but yes you probably would get fired"..."but mom, I said half-ASKED!"
-great speller
-loves history
-loves reading, about a 4th grade level
-math is at grade level
-struggles with grammer and writing stories
-very good on the computer and internet

Tyler:
-is reading at 1st grade level (as opposed to barely reading when we started homeschooling at the beginning of the year)
-is a wiz at math, I only have to teach him something once and he gets it right away, he knows all of his addition and subtraction facts to 18, multiplication facts, 0, 1, 2, and 5
-writes really funny stories but still doesnt spell well (if you can recommend a good 2nd grade phonics only program I would love to hear it!)
-catches on to grammar rules quickly and uses them correctly 90% of the time
-still very creative with his art
-likes to talk in accents
-loves to sing

Trace:
-"I'm not sleeping, I'm just dreaming"
-"just because I am mean to you, doesnt mean you can be mean to me, God says turn the other cheek!"
-does 1st grade math easily
-can do anything on the computer and internet, we sometimes wonder if he is hacking into the NASA data base
-is reading farely well, reads short words and can sound out most longer words.
-reads about 150 sight words, but has trouble with fluency with them in sentences. Includes colors, numbers from 1-10, and conjunctions, things like 'this' 'that' 'which' 'when' 'what' etc.
-One day he came up to me and said "Hey mom! you wanna see my pecker?"  mortified and hoping he actually said 'cracker' or something else that sounded like 'pecker' I said "what?" he replied "you wanna see my pecker"  shocked, I knew I heard what I had heard.  I turn around to hopefully not see what he wanted to show me.  He had made a paper airplane and colored it to look like a woodpecker, a darn good one too!  He was showing me how it was 'so cool' that the tip of airplane made such a great 'pecker' lol.  I informed him that its actually called a 'beak.'

Mylee:
-knows pink, purple, orange, brown, black, white, yellow, green and red
-counts to 4 with no prompting
-colors mostly in the lines but doesn't fill them completely in
-knows circle and triangle
-we call her a diva and she gets really upset and says "Im NOT a ZEBRA!"
-There was a guy working on the satelite on the roof behind our house. Mylee hollers out the screen door "Hey guy, What are you doing?! Don't fall!"
-likes to use my phone to "call her mom"

Where'd ya get that?

I was schooling the boys and haven't heard from Mylee in a while so I went looking for her.  She was just sitting on the couch reading The Old Schoolhouse magazine.  But wait... what is that in her mouth?  A pacifier?!  She has never taken a paci so she must have found this packed in her room somewhere...I'm afraid to see what her room looks like...

Writing eight

I just attended a homeschool conference and heard a GREAT speaker who

is a therapist who deals with learning blocks specifically.  She trains the brain to work differently to bypass the blocks.  She has a free exercise to correct dysgraphia (and the like) by connecting the two hemispheres of the brain. Since most kids are one side of the brain dominant they need to form connections between the short and long term memory and also muscle memory.  It is called the "writing eight" and it is a sideways figure 8 with a line down the middle and they trace it 3 times to stimulate the right brain and then write a letter of the alphabet once to stimulate the left.  They do this through every letter, tracing the eight between letter.  You do this four times a week for at least 3 months but recommended 6 months and they should have created enough connections for the 2 hemispheres to work together properly and they stop flipping letters and starting from the bottom, it also helps with coordination with sports and what not.  Here is her website if you want to check it out, she has lots of great techniques for teaching your left or right brained child and struggling spellers or readers.  www.dianecraft.org and she also has info on www.hslda.org/strugglinglearner

Tyler flips his letters horizontally and Treyton starts at the bottom while writing.  I am going to start this with Tyler first and add in Treyton next week when Tyler has it down.  I will also try to make the 'eight' a little better as well, maybe I can figure out how to make a perfect circle lol!  He didn't hate this so I am hoping we can stick with it and see if it works!

 

Tyler also struggles severely with spelling.  She also talked about ways to 'velcro' words into a right brained child's brain with jazzing up their flash cards only on the letters they are getting wrong.  For example, if they spell comb like 'com' make a card with the c-o-m in black and make the E with a picture of a comb on the back of the B  so they CAN'T forget the B.  Right brainers love pictures so when they think about 'comb' they will think of the picture of the comb on the B and wont forget it the next time.  I actually did this with a couple words he spelled wrong today.  Found and Have, he spelled them fawnd and hav.  So we put the correct spelling of 'have' on an index card with 'hav' in black and the E in blue, then he drew a hat on the E.  For found he turned the O into a ''big ball" from Wipe Out and the U into the pool with a man bouncing off the big ball into the pool.  I asked him later in the day randomly to spell have and found and he did it correctly the first time!  I was AMAZED.  The picture really did get the word to stick!  I am very left brained so I just look at the word a few times and have it down but he always got so frustrated and I felt like I was getting nowhere.  This really was amazing and I thought...DUH!  Why didn't I think of that!?

Whats awesome about homeschooling?

Super Dino is allowed in class!

Open wounds with flesh hanging out doesn't keep you from your schoolwork (okay I'm the only one who thinks thats awesome)

Backyard improv exploration...

of a bee with its guts squished out and a missing leg compliments of our loving cat, Jax

and math by juice pouch...(actually, she lined them up while waiting for me to get off the computer and help her open one...FYI-facebook makes you neglect your children, beware!)

Chocolate covered pretzels

Yum!

Stuck in a Rut

We haven't done anything fun...I'm ready for a break.  So, at the best time, the GHEA Homeschool Conference is tomorrow and I get to go!  Yay!  I will be coming home with lots of fresh ideas to amaze my readers with...or at least keep the kids from helping themselves to bubbles and playdough...we seemed to have gone through alot of that stuff this week!