Go on a dig or a hunt!

  For years, my family rented a cottage on the Chesapeake Bay, near Calvert Cliffs, which are loaded with  fossils.  You can visit Calvert Cliffs State Park.  All of the nearby beaches have shark’s teeth.  Here is a field guide to those fossils.  There are places all over the world country where you can dig, gather, hunt or mine: Crater Diamonds State Park, Fossil Parks, Pan for Gold, Dig for Gemstones, Find Silver, or Rock Hounding.  Whenever I’m at a beach along the coast of Florida, I hunt for shark’s teeth, too.  Here are four U.S. locations.  Warning!  Hunting, panning, or digging are addictive!  I cannot walk a beach without hunting for fossils.  What do you do with them?  We made clay casts.  You could make jewelry, too.  Fall is ideal for fun home-school fieldtrips.  Why not plan a hunt?

Good Will Finds

 I love Good Will—both online and offline.  One interesting listing is for a set of Seeing Stars.  Here is more information.  From what I can understand, it looks as though it’s part of an intervention program for dyslexia.  Students should take a Barton Screening, with this link.  In any case there are several interesting listings on the Good Will site, including several LEGO Mindstorm kits.

Make sub plans!

 Have you ever had a week which was one crisis or another?  Plan ahead and make sub lessons.  I used Chemmatters and their teacher guides with questions as emergency sub plans when I taught in private and public schools.  Look at Ötzi and the teacher guides with questions, as an example.  The guides have answers to the questions.  Print a few articles with question guides.  You can do the same for literature.  Put aside a book and have literature questions.  For example, here or here are reading questions for Sarah, Plain and Tall and Heidi.  Make up an art kit with a Dick Blick lesson. Yes, you can tell your kiddo to work ahead in math or history.  But, why not have  a bin of free choices ready before you’re puking in the bathroom?

Add a little art to your curriculum.

 One easy way to add a little art to your home-school curriculum is to visit museums.  Find out when the museum has a home-school day or free day to visit.  Visit the gift shop after your tour and let the kids select a few postcards. I buy simple black or white frames from Walmart for about one dollar.  Sometimes, we print photos from trips on Snapfish to use as art, too.  The price of postcards does vary at museums; I don’t think I’ve paid more than $2 for a postcard.  The kids will learn about artists they like and have souvenirs which won’t cost a fortune.  Right now, I’m admiring Maud Lewis’s art from a museum in Halifax, Canada.  Your kids will be able to tell other kids about the artist and the museum collections.

Stobaugh American Literature: Pilgrims and Puritans

 My Co-op American literature class began last week.  The class meets once a week on Wednesdays for 90 minutes.  We’re following the book and did ‘Of Plymouth Plantation’ by William Bradford.  Last week our focus was on the significance of Bradford’s chronicles.  Our approach is to read, analyze, and then summarize in a paragraph.  This week we finished editing the paragraphs. We made a jump because a friend is going to teach Lesson 2, World Views.

This week, we jumped to Lesson 3 and read Upon the Burning of our House by Anne Bradstreet.  Dr. Stobaugh suggests comparing the poem to the Beatles’s song, Eleanor Rigsby.  I added Jars of Clay’s version of It is Well with My Soul.  We read the poem and listened to both ‘It is Well with My Soul’ and ‘Eleanor Rigsby’.  I added the verse from Job 1:21.  I explained the back story behind the hymn.  We did all of this before we made a comparison chart.  Next week, we’ll write a comparison paper—read paragraph.  All my teens are reluctant writers.  We spent last year just writing.  Now we need to learn how to analyze and distill the work into cogent paragraphs.  I’ll keep you updated about this class.

Let’s minimize AI!

  There have several news articles and opinion articles about the impact of AI on student brains.  Have you read the MIT article?    As a result of this evidence, I’m doing everything I can to minimize use of AI. ( I don’t encourage the use of AI, with the exception of  Grammarly AI , and only for  kids with profound learning differences.) How?  Kids are hand-writing their lab reports, homework, and tests.  We’re collecting data on paper and later creating spreadsheets.  I think we should resume using textbooks whenever possible.  Yes, I’m still using tech, such as slide decks.  But going forward I’m evaluating each assignment in light of these studies about cognitive decline and AI.

American Literature: Stobaugh

 Have you heard of James Stobaugh’s Literature courses?  I think they are terrific.  This year, I’m teaching American Literature with the local Co-op, in order.  (The same kids are taking American History.) The format is to read aloud and write paragraphs each week.  The teens all need help writing.  Literature is daunting.  So, we’re spending 90 minutes a week doing a survey course.  (Any grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure instruction is free.)  BTW, I am a big believer in combining the literature and history periods.  There will be overlap which reinforces both classes.  For example, we did a bit of history about early pilgrims before we read ‘Of Plymouth Plantation’.  I’ll keep you posted about the class.