History, libraries

This week the news talk is all about protests against library closures. Some pompous individuals have been voicing their opinions that libraries are no longer needed as everything is on the internet now, and anyway books are so cheap people can just buy them.
I use the internet a lot, but if I do a search on a topic to find out information to help us with a project I mainly find two categories of sites. If I just put in the topic I get long academic style results, which are too detailed and written in language that is too complex for my children to use. If I enter the same search topic with "for kids" added, I get something bite-sized and superficial, which may do fine as an introduction but which doesn't offer more than that. (And Wikipedia, which is OK for certain quick fact finds but not good for everything.)Maybe its just me being inefficient at searching, but I don't seem to easily turn up material pitched correctly for our purpose.
As I'm currently reading " A Tale of Two Cities" to the boys I thought we'd do some history study on the French Revolution" at the same time. I also thought that I could use a little history study to start developing some new study skills with the boys, as history is a subject area they enjoy.
Of course, the first thing I need is a good supply of information that is accessible to their reading level. I could spend ages trawling the internet trying to find something, or I could just ask the librarian to order in everything in the county's junior non-fiction section on the French Revolution. The librarian finds 5 books. One is a Danger Zone book, which is a bit of fun, they read then we return. I'm left with four good, informative books. Plenty of text, but clearly explained.
Next step, I read to them the introductory sections and we talk about it. I make reference to the way Dickens illustrated some of this information in his novel. Dickens has painted some personalities for us, the boys can imagine the situation better, can imagine the nobility and the poor. It may not be 100% accurate, but it helps them get a feel for the period, which makes it easier to understand.
Next I ask them to write short paragraphs to describe each of the three estates, and another to summarise the nature of society in pre-revoluntionary France. I give them three of the 4 books to do this from. (The fourth book was the easiest one, which they read through the week before last as an overview and timeline). They need to look through the relevant bits of the three books to find where the information they need is best presented and take their notes from there. I could just tell them to look on page 6 of one particular book, but that wouldn't be the same thing at all. The point is to develop a basic level of research skills. So, I need more than one book.
If I didn't have the library I wouldn't be able to afford to buy more than one book on the topic, (even then it would be hard to know from just looking at Amazon which book would be most suitable) and as I said before my internet searches do not yield just what I'm after.
So, the library is invaluable to the way I home educate, and for so many more reasons than those I've used as examples above.

Learning to read

I had a couple of brief conversations today which made me think about the way in which my children have learnt and are learning to read. Often the question comes up about either phonics or look say methods. I can't say my children have been keen on phonics, they usually find it quite dull, and they don't like the silly, often meaningless stories that come in phonic readers. I continue to use the extra old Peter and Jane books, the same edition which can be viewed in a museum case. It works for us!
However this doesn't mean no phonics at all. I do the initial sounds and basic blends, through workbooks generally. But, maybe the main way I involve the phonic aspect is through the way I hear the child read the old Peter and Jane. I don't expect them just to memorise the word, I do expect them to have a go at sounding out the new words as they come up. When a word does not conform to the phonic rules, I just tell them that and they learn it as an exception. If the new word was "shop" and the child hesitated I would not just say shop to them, but rather I would make a "sh" sound and wait a moment, then I'd say "sh" "o", and so on. Often the child then gets it and finishes the word off. This is how I prompt them on words which they forget, so while we use the look say book, I try to show them the methods of working out new words, but I do this as the words occur, rather than teaching the sounds separately.
For us this works because it means that the children get to read books with actual characters and some kind of story, while learning how to use the various tactics needed to get round all the inconsistencies of English!
I also like the fact that the Peter and Jane books quickly have a full page of words to read, rather than just a brief sentence or two per page. I think this gets the child used to having plenty to read, so they don't get put off by lots of text on a page later on. Lots of text, but its easy to read, so nothing to be afraid of there then! Alhamdulillah.

Maps

As part of geography this year with Ia I'm using the book Mapstart 1. Mapstart 1 begins with the different ways we can look at objects and then a room. There are questions on every page and I'm just working through these with Ia orally, as the point is to learn about maps and plans, not to write comprehension answers! Most of the questions at the beginning of the book are very easy anyway, asking the child to find things in the picture and using the language of direction (next to, on the right of etc).
On Friday we reached the page showing the model Lego town and then the plan of the model. To follow from that I asked Ia to make a model of part of a town, which is shown in the picture above. After that she drew out a plan of the model, with labels.
I remember that when I did this with the boys we did a really big model, covering our table. It was a good model, maashAllah, but they tired a bit of drawing out such a big plan, so I scaled things down for Ia!
This is a fun activity, whether or not you are using Mapstart!

Reading this week

I'm trying to integrate some whole book studies into the boy's shedule. I'd like to assign them some reading through which they can learn something about history or society etc. The idea is that they will read the book one week, then do some written work on it the following week, probably in the form of several short essays.
I'm going to have to put some effort into sourcing material for them, but at least for this week I have assigned "Lost Riders" by Elizabeth Laird.
The book is about child exploitation, with poor boys from Pakistan traffiked to Dubai to work in camel racing. In the preface it is mentioned that the UAE has passed laws to prevent this now.
The story is shocking, but written in an easy style. I think the boys found it quite compelling reading as they each finished it in a day, maashAllah.
(By the way I'm not planning to only post here on Wednesdays now, it just seems to have turned out that way recently!)

Couple of links

Today we watched one of this year's Royal Institution science lectures on iplayer. (Tomorrow, Thursday, is the last day these are available). For the first time we did not watch an iplayer programme gathered around the PC screen because the boys now know how to watch the iplayer on a normal tv, via the Wii console.
As kids get older they are a real help with technological matters, maashAllah!
I thought I'd post a couple of links to other online stuff they've discovered and experimented with recently:
Sumo Paint This is free and you don't need to download it. It works in a similar way to the old Paint, found on most PCs, but with more features. The boys have been trying out designs on there.
CamStudio This one allows you to video what you are doing on your screen, like the print screen button, but in video. You might not think there is much use for that, but the boys sought this tool out for a specific task they had in mind, and it seemed to work out for them, maashAllah.

Sometimes I have tried showing them things online that I've found links to on home ed lists or on blogs, but usually they don't take those up. They need real tasks, which they devise for themselves, to get themselves searching for and using tools like these. I suppose that is more like "real life" anyway!

Different Maths

From time to time the media report a decline in standards, or state that exams are getting easier etc, and there are some who agree and others who refute this every time. I can't comment on that, but I am finding that the modern maths curriculum for keystage 3 is different from what I experienced in my school days.
For a start I don't recall needing a scientific calculator as early as year 7. I'm pretty sure we still had to use primarily mental calculation at that stage. Also I'm sure I did not cover some of the topics the boys are now working on through Conquer Maths, for example statistics. In today's lesson the "sigma" symbol came up (I don't know how to keyboard that!). I don't remember that symbol at all, or other terms used in this topic. I can remember mean and mode, but that's about it! I don't think its just my memory failing, even if I can't remember much about something the keywords will usually jog some distant memory. I think statistics wasn't on the curriculum I followed.
I'm not too worried however! The wonderful ConquerMaths explains it all excellently, so the boys don't often need my less than helpful input on this subject! They work independently through the lessons, alhamdulillah, but if I'm called upon for back up I just watch the lesson myself and take it from there. Sometimes the methods differ from what I learnt at school. I'm pretty clear when it comes to working with percentages for example, but I found my methods were not the same as those on the programme, although I was still getting the same answers (phew).
One thing I'm glad about though is that I followed a maths curriculum through the primary years and built up the boys basic skills and maths knowledge, at a stage when it was all familiar and easy for me too! I think that it is because they have that behind them, alhamdulillah, that they are ready to take on the Conquer Maths independently. The programme does take for granted that you know the basics.
The way I see it the primary maths curriculum is a direct preparation for secondary maths, in a way which does not hold true with most other subjects.
With maths in the primary years I was always (and still am with the girls) plodding and methodical, sometimes repetitive, as the curriculum was just a bit like that. At the time the boys did not like maths too much, but now it has paid off in my opinion, as they enjoy it much more now. Maybe its a bit like learning a foreign language. When you plod through lots of vocab lists and basic sentences it can feel quite dull, but once you can actually speak the language and find yourself really using it, it is so much more enjoyable.
For me having the boys ready to take on unfamiliar maths topics independently through Conquer Maths, means that secondary maths is "doable" at home, even for me as a non-maths person and with a very different looking curriculum. Alhamdulillah.

Still here!

Long time no post!
Well, we are still here, still home educating alhamdulillah. We are in the winter work mode, so ploughing on with the basics while outdoor opportunities are scarce.
It has been kind of "no frills" around here lately, but, inshAllah lots of learning still goes on and no one is complaining, maashAllah.