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Middle and High School LinkUp #12

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Welcome to our Middle and High School LinkUp #12 for tweens, teens and their Moms! We are so excited to have a linkup for our children to have a creative writing outlet and for us moms to have a place to share middle school and high school homeschool tips and techniques.  The students are provided a creative writing prompt.  They write their article on their own blog on their mom’s blog and then link their articles below.

You can link up at any of the following co-host’s sites:

Amy at Homeschool Encouragement

Clara at Clara’s Blue Moon (teen co-host)

DaLynn at Holy Splendor

Jennifer at Royal Little Lambs

Laura at Day by Day in Our World

Trish at Live and Learn Farm

Vicki at 7 Sisters Homeschool

Wendy at Homeschooling Blessings

 

Middle and High School Linkup for Students and Moms!

 

If you are interested in joining us, linkup your article below. If you want to co-host, email me and let me know.  Our focus for the co-hosting  is for only moms of the teens, or the teens themselves to co-host.

guidelines for the linkup:

  • The link-up will be open Monday through Saturday evening.
  • Please link directly to the url of your post (permalink).
  • Please check back and visit at least one of student’s submissions and leave a comment for them.  Our job is to encourage writing, their Mom (or Dad) will take care of the critique :-)
  • If you don’t mind, please place the button and code in your blog post so others can find out about the linkup also!
  • That’s it!

and now it’s time for the link up!

For this week’s theme, let’s choose to write from one of these topics:

write a story that begins with one of the following sentences…

  • You’re digging in your garden and find a fist-sized nugget of gold.
  • Write about something ugly–war, fear, hate, or cruelty–but find the beauty (silver lining) in it.
  • The asteroid was hurtling straight for Earth…
  • There’s a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper…
  • He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. To his surprise, he saw…
  • Silvery flakes drifted down, glittering in the bright light of the harvest moon. The blackbird swooped down…
  • The detective saw his opportunity. He grabbed the waitress’s arm and said…
  • There are three children sitting on a log near a stream. One of them looks up at the sky and says…
  • There is a magic talisman that allows its keeper to read minds. It falls into the hands of a young politician…
  • And you thought dragons didn’t exist…
  • Write about nature. Include the following words: hard drive, stapler, phone, car, billboard.
  • The nation is controlled by…
  • You walk into your house and it’s completely different–furniture, decor, all changed. And nobody’s home.
  • Write about one (or both) of your parents. Start with “I was born…”
  • The most beautiful smile I ever saw…
  • I believe that animals exist to…
  • A twinkling eye can mean many things. Start with a twinkle in someone’s eye and see where it takes you.
  • Get a package of one of your favorite canned or boxed foods and look at the ingredients. Use every ingredient in your next piece of writing.

I found these prompts at Writing Forward. If none of these are of interest, feel free to choose your own.


Middle and High School LinkUp #11

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Welcome to our Middle and High School LinkUp #11 for tweens, teens and their Moms! We are so excited to have a linkup for our children to have a creative writing outlet and for us moms to have a place to share middle school and high school homeschool tips and techniques.  The students are provided a creative writing prompt.  They write their article on their own blog on their mom’s blog and then link their articles below.

You can link up at any of the following co-host’s sites:

Amy at Homeschool Encouragement

Clara at Clara’s Blue Moon (teen co-host)

DaLynn at Holy Splendor

Jennifer at Royal Little Lambs

Laura at Day by Day in Our World

Trish at Live and Learn Farm

Vicki at 7 Sisters Homeschool

Wendy at Homeschooling Blessings

Middle and High School Linkup for Students and Moms!
 

If you are interested in joining us, linkup your article below. If you want to co-host, email me and let me know.  Our focus for the co-hosting  is for only moms of the teens, or the teens themselves to co-host.

guidelines for the linkup:

  • The link-up will be open Monday through Saturday evening.
  • Please link directly to the url of your post (permalink).
  • Please check back and visit at least one of student’s submissions and leave a comment for them.  Our job is to encourage writing, their Mom (or Dad) will take care of the critique :-)
  • If you don’t mind, please place the button and code in your blog post so others can find out about the linkup also!
  • That’s it!

and now it’s time for the link up!

For this week’s theme, let’s choose to write from one of these topics:

Write a story that begins with one of the following sentences…

  • They used to tell me that patience is a virtue.
  • I wasn’t always afraid of the dark.
  • She couldn’t hear him over the sound of crashing ocean waves.
  • He spent hours waiting for the call, but it never came.
  • The moon was bigger than usual against the daylight.
  • You think you know someone, and then they leave you stranded in a desert with nothing to drink.
  • He had two thoughts before jumping out of the plane.
  • The street was slick with oil.
  • He ran his first two red lights that night.
  • After everything that happened that day, it was a jammed jacket zipper that finally sent her over the edge.
  • They heard his ringtone coming from inside the trunk.
  • Someone must have set me up – I was in the house all day.
  • Tommy had never learned how to change a tire, but knew he had better learn now if they wanted to escape.
  • She knew every inch of the town, and yet she’d never seen that house in her entire life.

I found these prompts at Udemy. If none of these are of interest, feel free to choose your own.


Middle and High School LinkUp #10

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Welcome to our Middle and High School LinkUp #10 for tweens, teens and their Moms! We are so excited to have a linkup for our children to have a creative writing outlet and for us moms to have a place to share middle school and high school homeschool tips and techniques.  The students are provided a creative writing prompt.  They write their article on their own blog on their mom’s blog and then link their articles below.

You can link up at any of the following co-host’s sites:

Amy at Homeschool Encouragement

Clara at Clara’s Blue Moon (teen co-host)

DaLynn at Holy Splendor

Jennifer at Royal Little Lambs

Laura at Day by Day in Our World

Trish at Live and Learn Farm

Vicki at 7 Sisters Homeschool

Wendy at Homeschooling Blessings

Middle and High School Linkup for Students and Moms!

If you are interested in joining us, linkup your article below. If you want to co-host, email me and let me know.  Our focus for the co-hosting  is for only moms of the teens, or the teens themselves to co-host.

guidelines for the linkup:

  • The link-up will be open Monday through Saturday evening.
  • Please link directly to the url of your post (permalink).
  • Please check back and visit at least one of student’s submissions and leave a comment for them.  Our job is to encourage writing, their Mom (or Dad) will take care of the critique :-) 
  • If you don’t mind, please place the button and code in your blog post so others can find out about the linkup also!
  • That’s it!

and now it’s time for the link up!

For this week’s theme, let’s choose to write from one of these topics:

  • Who do you admire the most in the world? Why?
  • If you could live as any one person for a day, who would you choose and why?
  • If time travel was possible, which year would you go back in time to? Give a reasons for your answer.
  • What is your favorite book? What did you enjoy the most about it?
  • Describe your favorite vacation spot. Give reasons as to why you enjoy going there.
  • If you could change any one thing in the world, what would it be and why?
  • Write a paper describing a favorite day you spent with your family. Give at least three reasons why you enjoyed this day so much. Be as specific as possible.
  • What kind of music do you like listening to? What are your favorite singers or bands? Give reasons for your choice. https://www.udemy.com/blog/expository-writing-prompts/ 

If none of these are of interest, feel free to choose your own.


Middle and High School LinkUp #8

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Welcome back to the Middle and High School (tweens, teens & moms) Creative Writing LinkUp! Well last week was not a stellar week here at Live and Learn Farm… I didn’t get a single post up from the Corlew boys. The sad thing is they are all written, they just need editing (mom) and I didn’t do it. So, I’m being real here… sometimes it is mom that slows progress down and not the homeschooled children.  Can you relate?

We are so excited to have this linkup for our children to have a creative writing outlet! And, of course, it is a place for us moms to sometimes share middle school and high school homeschool articles we write.  We have had some extremely successful writing prompts and some that have been more challenging! As we move are about to move into our third month, I am so encouraged seeing how my own children’s writing is progressing!  I hope you are seeing the same thing!

The co-hosts for this middle and high school linkup are:

Amy at Homeschool Encouragement

Clara at Clara’s Blue Moon (teen co-host)

DaLynn at Holy Splendor

Jennifer at Royal Little Lambs

Laura at Day by Day in Our World

Trish at Live and Learn Farm

Wendy at Homeschooling Blessings

Middle and High School Linkup for Students and Moms!

guidelines for the linkup:

  • The link-up will be open Monday through Friday.
  • Please link directly to the url of your post (permalink).
  • Please check back and visit at least one of student’s submissions and leave a comment for them.  Our job is to encourage writing, their Mom (or Dad) will take care of the critique :-) 
  • If you don’t mind, please place the button and code in your blog post so others can find out about the linkup also!
  • That’s it!

and now it’s time for the link up!

Please be sure to check out their articles and leave encouraging words for them!  If you are interested in joining us, linkup your article below. If you want to co-host, email me and let me know.  Our focus for the co-hosting is for only moms of the teens, or the teens themselves to co-host.

This week’s topic is “What could you invent to make life better?“  Get creative… identify a problem, a gap, and describe an invention that could/would solve it.

For next week’s topic, let’s try something new.  Here is a website with writing prompts for March.  Pick one and write about it. We have some students that have just not been inspired by the writing prompts of late… so maybe opening it up to a list to choose from will motivate the creative juices to flow!


Boost Your Blog in 100 Days Challenge

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Boost Your Blog in 100 Days Challenge

How exciting!  I am taking part in a fantastic challenge for the next 100 days,  if you are a blogger interested in growing your blog, I hope you will join us! It is an opportunity to work together to learn how to grow your blog with social media channels like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram.  I’m sure you have heard as many times as I have, content is king … and, to be honest, it is true.  Content IS king!  But we all know that getting the content in front of people who actually want to read it is just as important. So, meet the Queen of the Kingdom, Social Media. Once you are being just plain great with fantastic content, it’s time to start sharing  it with the world. But for many of us, Social Media is not so easy to manage.  It can become the highway to a-maz-ing growth, or it can be become the dam that literally prevents you from having time to write that fantastic content.  So, like most queens, she has to be managed 🙂 !  Honey and her friends had the idea to help others grow their blogs and I just happened to jump in on the tail-end! But, seriously, I’m excited to be a part of this wonderful group of women and look forward to learning way more than I contribute 🙂 So, without further adieu, let’s get to Boost Your Blog in 100 Days (or #BB100 ) and meet the hostesses.
Boost Your Blog

The series will cover multiple 10-day series like such as:

  • Topics to blog about
  • Twitter
  • SEO/Keywords
  • Pinterest
  • Growing Facebook Followers 
  • Getting more traffic.

Be sure to sign up to receive the emails so you don’t miss anything! Join us and let’s learn to grow our blogs with the Boost Your Blog in 100 Days Challenge #BB100!

Remember, anyone can participate.  You can do one or all 10 challenges at your own pace or follow along with us… whatever works best for you and your blogging needs.

Meet the Hostesses:

honey 400Honey Rowland, blogs at Honey’s Life about homeschooling, family life and green living.  With a passion for self-sufficiency and natural, special needs parenting you’ll learn about everything from natural, local foods to essential oils and homeopathy to gardening and farm life. Honey has also turned the constant ‘talks too much’ report card comments into a home business. She runs social media while obtaining new sponsors and advertisers for herself and other bloggers. So whether you’re curious about chickens or children, ask…’cause she’s dabbled and babbled in just about everything.

Michelle Simplify Live loveMichelle Marine blogs at Simplify, Live, Love where she shares down to earth tips for the thoughtful mama. Michelle. along with her husband, 4 kids and a bunch of animals, lives sustainably in barn on 5 acres in rural Eastern Iowa. Michelle is an avid gardener and from-scratch cook of real food; she cans produce, homeschools, and teaches community college classes in addition to blogging. Her husband is building their forever home to the German Passive House standards and they plan to live off grid yet still enjoy modern conveniences. Simplify, Live, Love chronicles their attempts to live sustainably and strives to remind people to live simply and frugally yet still enjoy life.

MartielMartiel Beatty from Amazing Success Academy specializes in helping artists build online businesses and blogs. She is a fiber artist, expert blogger, author of Blog Notes, and GIMP Wizard. She is also the founder of Sewmantra and started the Academy because she couldn’t find an affordable, knowledgeable and effective program that supported handmade, indie-artists. Find out how she can help you build your business today. 

lisa familyLisa Nelson from The Squishable Baby focuses on creating positive learning experiences through everyday life. I believe that learning about – and respecting diversity, different religions, other cultures, charity, and our environment – through play, through crafts, through lessons, through giving – will not only produce more empathetic children and adults – but will put a child on a path to a love of lifelong learning.

Thaleia 300 lightThaleia Maher blogs at Something 2 Offer where she is generous in giving advice and helping others find free resources that meet their needs; be it for homeschool or life! She is a BIG researcher who wants to encourage families on their homeschool journey. Wife to high school sweetheart. Mother of four (including 2 little reds!), Sister, Daughter, Christ-Follower, Talkative, Creative. Hoping to figure this whole life, blogger, social media thing out! So be sure to keep tabs on her journey of life.

Trish CorlewAnd finally, me, I’m Trish Corlew and I blog at Live and Learn Farm and am one of the co-owners of Hip Homeschool Moms. I primarily run the marketing and advertising of Hip Homeschool Moms as well as our Social Media. Oh, and by the way, this picture is FOUR years old now. Maybe one of our team members should write about using current pictures so folks can recognize you if they bump into you at a conference or something 🙂 I have been married for 17 years and have three sons (14, 12 and 10 years old) and we live in West Tennessee on a 40+ acre farm. In my spare time, I love to help homeschooling moms figure out how to best homeschool their families! I love to work in our vegetable garden and can regularly be found trying to learn something new, modeling that learning is indeed a life-long endeavor!

So here is the current schedule:

Days 1-10: Leave 100 Comments with Thaleia begins Feb 15.

Days 11-20: Grammar Mistakes Bloggers Make with Michelle.

Days 21-30: Using Twitter with Honey.

Days 31-40: Topics for 100 Blog Posts with Martiel.

Days 41-50: Figuring out your Followers on Facebook with me, Trish.

Ready to boost your blog #BB100? Join the 100 day challenge and we will get this party started! 

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Almost Montessori Unifix Cubes and Mathematical Patterns

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One of the concepts that is so foundational and part of the very core of Montessori is teaching abstract math concepts with concrete materials.  I’ll be introducing you to Almost Montessori Unifix Cubes.

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All of my boys are extremely advanced in math (seriously, my 10-year-old is doing Algebra) and I give 100% credit to the way Montessori teaches Math.  This approach to math is so very logical, clear and highly effective. The students internalize math skills with these concrete materials and the progress toward the more abstract concepts. This allows children to thoroughly understand and develop a solid foundation where they master the concept.  They then move to solving problems with paper and pencil while still working with the materials.  Finally, completely abstract, where they are solving problems with paper and pencil without the materials.  That is the goal.

Note, I offer a  word of caution here…  Remember the goal is to teach our children to think abstractly.  It is so easy to fall  in love with the materials and want our children to get the full benefit from using them that we forget to follow our children when they steer right away from the concrete materials to work abstractly.  I wrote a whole post on my love of Montessori materials and how dangerous it is to be in that place.  The goal is for our children is to work abstractly… not to work with the materials.  The materials are tools to get them to abstract thinking. Long as we remember the goal, we will keep the materials in their appropriate place.

Montessori really focused on introducing the patterns that exist in math.  InfoMontessori stated it well:

Arithmetic deals with shape, space, numbers, and their relationships and attributes by the use of numbers and symbols. It is a study of the science of pattern and includes patterns of all kinds, such as numerical patterns, abstract patterns, patterns of shape and motion…. Montessori took the idea that the human has a “mathematical mind” from the French philosopher Pascal. Maria Montessori said that a mathematical mind was “a sort of mind which is built up with exactity.” The mathematical mind tends to estimate, needs to quantify, to see identity, similarity, difference, and patterns, to make order and sequence and to control error.

Using the Unifix cubes is a fantastic way of demonstrating this concept of patterns in math. Multiplication tables, addition and skip counting all require an understanding of and proficiency in patterning.  Below are some wonderful ways to use the Unifix cubes to really demonstrate the patterns.

The first product is a labeled number line. You can certainly see how quickly you could see patterns on a number line 100 numbers long!

AM Unifix Track

The next product is essentially the 100 board but with a grooved grid that will hold the unifix cube in place.   Same concept, showing patterns, would be so visual and easy to see when learning to skip count, or working with evens and odds.  I love how this concept is grasped so quickly with these products.

AM Unifix Grid

You could purchase just the package of 100 cubes, which would be less expensive, but you would be unable to make the patterns consistent up through 100… which I think is absolutely necessary to see the patterns. So, even though this is significantly less expensive, it is not really viable.

AM Unifix cubes 100

Finally, here is a box of 500 cubes that gives you more cubes!  You may still need to get more than one set to accomplish the patterns to 100 (depending on what the pattern is). For instance, if you are showing even and odd, that is 50 of each color to get to 100.  Figure out the number of sets you will need to accomplish what you are teaching.

AM Unifix cubes 500

I see these serving as an extension to the 100 board work.  Many of the things our children do with the 100 board, you can do with this set. You could even label the unifix cubes so that you don’t have to use a 100 board at all… the grid could become your 100 board.

Disclosure

Below are some resources, website and blogs, to help you with implementing both the 100 board work and the pattern extensions.

First, I created a 100 chart for you to print and highlight the control chart for whatever skill you are teaching. For instance, if you are teaching skip counting by 3’s, you would highlight the 3, 6, 9, 12, 15…. or if you are teaching even patterns 2, 4, 6, 8 etc.  And if you are like me, you laminate it after you highlight it so you can use it for years 🙂  100 chart

Here is a video of the 100 board extension where she is teaching odd and even patterns!

State of Virginia has a 100 board pattern lesson and even has task cards!  So Montessori!

Here is another traditional school doing a fantastic job of teaching exploration of the 100 board! And this one is introducing multiplication and division patterns…   I love this lesson!

Finally, This lesson is great as well and covers quite a bit of ground!  From addition and subtraction to prime numbers.

I love to provide Strike the Imagination books to encourage our children to want to learn the concept.  So here are a few math pattern books and games to start with.


I hope these Almost Montessori posts are a blessing to you and your homeschool!  If they are, please help us get the word out by sharing them with your friends via your social media sites.

Until next time…..

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Middle and High School LinkUp #6

By: comment

Welcome back to the Middle and High School (tweens, teens & Moms) Creative Writing LinkUp!  We are so excited to have a linkup for our children to have a creative writing outlet! And a place for us moms to have a place to sometimes share middle school and high school homeschool articles we write.  We have had some extremely successful writing prompts and some that have been more challenging! As we move into our second month, I am looking forward to seeing how our children’s writing is progressing!

The co-hosts for this middle and high school linkup are:

Amy at Homeschool Encouragement

Clara at Clara’s Blue Moon (teen co-host)

DaLynn at Holy Splendor

Jennifer at Royal Little Lambs

Laura at Day by Day in Our World

Trish at Live and Learn Farm

Wendy at Homeschooling Blessings

Middle and High School Linkup for Students and Moms!

guidelines for the linkup:

  • The link-up will be open Monday through Friday.
  • Please link directly to the url of your post (permalink).
  • Please check back and visit at least one of student’s submissions and leave a comment for them.  Our job is to encourage writing, their Mom (or Dad) will take care of the critique :-) 
  • If you don’t mind, please place the button and code in your blog post so others can find out about the linkup also!
  • That’s it!

and now it’s time for the link up!

Our linkup is steadily growing, with new student-writers finding out about us each week. Please be sure to check out their articles and leave encouraging words for them!  If you are interested in joining us, linkup your article below. If you want to co-host, email me and let me know.  Our focus for the co-hosting is for only moms of the teens, or the teens themselves to co-host.

Next week’s topic will be the ultimate in open-ended writing prompts! Write about any subject you are excited and want to tell us about. Help us really understand why you love this topic, so give us lots of details and imagery! I am really looking forward to see what everyone writes about!

This week’s topic is “In 20 years….“


How to Teach Children About the Holocaust

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As a Messianic family that loves Israel and the Jewish people, this subject is near and dear to my heart. I’m grappling with how to teach children about the Holocaust. My boys are 14, 12, and 10, so shielding them from the atrocities is not really necessary, but obviously, we will approach the subject from an age-appropriate point of view.  But from what perspective do you teach it? There are so many facets that need to be covered and discussed, it is hard to determine the place to dive in.  How do you make this subject manageable?

How to Teach Children About the Holocaust

I have been teaching the boys about the Holocaust for many years, but this year we are trying something new.  This year we are joining our friends over at the Homeschool Roster for a field trip to see a play at Playhouse on the Square, Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank. We are going to examine how the Holocaust impacted one family, and really, just one girl. A girl about the same age as my boys. A girl who also attended a Montessori school. A girl who loved the same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In preparation for us seeing the play, we have started reading the Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank. As always, we purchased a Kindle version so I can share it on all of their Kindles and they can read along. However, I am reading it aloud to the entire family. (Yes, we still read to the boys!)  In order to really understand the Holocaust, our children have to see and feel Antisemitism. I think that is a hard concept to teach when it is impersonal. Teaching it from one person’s perspective makes it more “real” or identifiable. It makes it personal.  You certainly don’t have to use Anne Frank as your person  you follow, there are several biographies out there to choose from.  I have provided some of the well known biographies below that have great reviews.

Click here to see the books:


When teaching such a difficult subject, it helps to define your objectives clearly.  For a Middle and High School homeschool, your list of objectives might look something like this:

judaism1.  Acquaint your children with basic beliefs and customs of Judaism and the roots of Christianity.  This might be accomplished by visiting a Rabbi or synagogue to discuss some of the basic rituals and beliefs of Judaism. You can also purchase a children’s book on Judaism such as Celebrate, a book of Jewish Holidays or Judaism, a DK Eyewitness Book

2.  Acquaint your children with what antisemitism is. I highly recommend you create timelines depicting the major events of antisemitism. antisemitism Because this started long before Hitler. I can guarantee that you will learn something yourself with researching this topic. I did and still do every single time I study this topic.  I am horrified at what these people have been through.

WWII Europe19143.  Define:  democracy, fascism, communism, and socialism. Have your children list countries where each of these ideologies existed during the Holocaust. As a great extension for older children, have them list countries where these ideologies exist today.  A basic google search will provide the answers for this.  You might consider creating 3×5 cards for the various characteristics for each ideology.  And create Venn diagrams on where they ideologies overlap.  Mapping the countries involved in World War II (maps for the area and time and study guides to go with the maps) and defining their ideologies as we map them.  Examine the efforts of Roosevelt and Churchill in Europe during World War II.

4.  Your children should have a basic understanding of what the end of World War I was and the Versailles Treaty.  Be sure they understand WWIthe economic, social, and political conditions in Germany from the end of WWI through 1933.  Again, a basic google search will provide these answers.  Here is a comparison chart for WWI and WWII

nazi5.  Discuss Hitler’s rise to power.  Do the same for Nazi power and the basic ideas of Nazi philosophy and their Nazi control over the German people.  Books to consider on this topic: Adolf Hitler: Wicked History, The Life and Death of Hitler, Adolf Hitler: Evil Mastermind of the Holocaust.  The Nazis, Why did the Rise of the Nazis Happen?

Apathy6.  Recognize and discuss the effects of apathy and indifference.  Discuss why Germans may have done nothing when confronted with behavior they knew was wrong. How is not acting making a choice?

propaganda7.  Discuss examples of how propaganda was used.  Discuss if propaganda is used in the United States.  Examples include television advertisers, government, foreign government, political parties, etc. How do you determine if it is propaganda?  How do you refute it? What is rumor? How does it start? Why is it believed? Why does this belief often persist? There are some great logic books that will teach how to identify fallacies.  Fallacy Detectives and The Art of Argument

8.  Finally, be sure to look for the heroes.  We always end such a horrific topic with something uplifting and encouraging.  Varian Fry, Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler, Rescue: The Story of how Gentiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust, Rescuing the Children: The Kindertransport, Luba and hundreds more.

Disclosure

Some extensions we will be doing that go along with the Anne Frank Diary

 

We are using the Journal of Anne Frank as our immersion into the Holocaust.  So, below is how we will accomplish the objectives listed above using Anne Frank as our eyes and ears.

We are Messianic, so we keep the Biblical feasts and many of the rituals the Jewish people did already.  I think that helps us more fully grasp what the Jewish people experienced because we do some of the very things Anne Frank discusses in her diary.

As part of our History studies, we have become attuned at looking at the antisemitism aspect of the period throughout history.  We will be looking at the antisemitism this time from Anne Frank’s eyes and journal.  We will document what she saw and experienced.

Create a Timeline of Anne Frank’s Life on a poster board, under it create a timeline for The War and major political events, Inventions and discoveries happening at the same time, People, arts, theater, music, film, and sports items that were happening, our family history during that time.

Mapping Anne Frank family’s moves.

I hope this has been helpful for you to consider ways to teach this subject to your children.  These suggestions really apply to upper elementary, middle and high school students.  I would not necessarily do all of these suggestions, unless you are doing this as a complete unit study and have 4 – 6 weeks dedicated to the topic.

Until next time….

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Middle and High School LinkUp #5

By: comment

 

Welcome back to the Middle and High School (tweens, teens & Moms) Creative Writing LinkUp!  We are so excited to have a linkup for our children to have a creative writing outlet! And a place for us moms to have a place to sometimes share middle school and high school homeschool articles we write.  We have had some extremely successful writing prompts and some that have been more challenging! As we move into our second month, I am looking forward to seeing how our children’s writing is progressing!

The co-hosts for this middle and high school linkup are:

Amy at Homeschool Encouragement

Clara at Clara’s Blue Moon (teen co-host)

DaLynn at Holy Splendor

Jennifer at Royal Little Lambs

Laura at Day by Day in Our World

Trish at Live and Learn Farm

Wendy at Homeschooling Blessings

Middle and High School Linkup for Students and Moms!

guidelines for the linkup:

  • The link-up will be open Monday through Friday.
  • Please link directly to the url of your post (permalink).
  • Please check back and visit at least one of student’s submissions and leave a comment for them.  Our job is to encourage writing, their Mom (or Dad) will take care of the critique :-)
  • If you don’t mind, please place the button and code in your blog post so others can find out about the linkup also!
  • That’s it!

and now it’s time for the link up!

Our linkup is steadily growing, with new student-writers finding out about us each week.  Last week was a more challenging topic “What if I were President of the United States“, so we had fewer articles.  But the ones that participated were great.  Please be sure to check out their articles and leave encouraging words for them!  If you are interested in joining us, linkup your article below. If you want to co-host, email me and let me know.  Our focus for the co-hosting is for only moms of the teens, or the teens themselves to co-host.

Next week’s topic will be pretty open-ended! Sometimes it is harder to write with a writing prompt than it is to just write. Maybe a more open ended writing prompt will help. “In 20 years….“ Take it any direction you want.

This week’s topic is If you were an insect, what kind would you be and why?  These should be interesting posts!


Almost Montessori Nest & Stack Cubes

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One of the concepts that I found to be uniquely Montessori is to teach visual perception of dimension at a very early age.  It is important to help our children develop their visual perception skills because it is this skill that helps our children relate to their visual world. Our ability to process what we see is critical in every day life, and in learning.  What our eyes take in, our brain interprets;  and this interpretation creates a picture that renders meaning.  From that meaning our brains created, we then make action plans. An example would be, when you see stairs ahead, you prepare yourself to either step down or up, based on your ability to determine which direction the steps are going.  We interpret our world in a way that aids us in organizing the objects and space around us. So developing this skill early will not only help their motor skills, it will help our children with their ability to read, write and build things.  Because all these abilities are based on an understanding of how things go together, including symbols such as numbers and letters. Today’s item: Almost Montessori Nest & Stack Cubes. Nest and stack cylinders

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There are two sets of these.  The first set are cubes, which are 56% off with 5 stars.

Montessori Nest and Stack Cylinders

And this set are cylinders and these are 63% off!

In my mind, these are similar to the knobbed cyclinder work that is a traditional Montessori work, even though these do not have knobs.  It does have the base which will help children determine which item will go where, because the base has only one cut out that fits each piece.

Below are lessons on how to present the traditional work, knobbed cylinders, that you will need to adapt to use with these.

Wikisori has a video of the presentation, directions for the presentation and extensions.

Montessori World has a great written presentation for this material including vocabulary that will help children define these pieces.

Disclosure

Some fantastic “Strike the Imagination” books and games are below.


I hope this article will be a blessing to you and your homeschool!

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