My intro

[Karenwith4]

I'm Karen

I have 4 kids - ds10, b/g twins who are 7 and dd 4.
My daughter Emily (7) was diagnosed in late November 07 with type 1.

We are a homeschooling family from Canada.

Karen

[3js]

Hi Karen:) I enjoyed chatting about volunteering the other day:)

[My_Dana]

Hi Karen,

I enjoy your perspective on things. Very refreshing and open minded.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes -
"Minds are like parachutes, they function best when open."

Ed

[StillMamamia]

Hi Karen,

I enjoy your perspective on things. Very refreshing and open minded.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes -
"Minds are like parachutes, they function best when open."

Ed


Gotta agree with you there.

BTW, Love that quote!

[Caydens_Mommy]

Thanks for sharing some info with us.. It sounds like you have your hands full!!

[Karenwith4]

Hi Karen:) I enjoyed chatting about volunteering the other day:)

I did too!
Karen

[Karenwith4]

Gotta agree with you there.

BTW, Love that quote!


Hi Karen,

I enjoy your perspective on things. Very refreshing and open minded.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes -
"Minds are like parachutes, they function best when open."

Ed

Thanks!
Karen

[Karenwith4]

Thanks for sharing some info with us.. It sounds like you have your hands full!!

On some days more than others :D
Karen

[Nancy in VA]

Hi Karen! http://www.public.iastate.edu/~wsthune/cps/traditional/wave.gif

We homeschool too - finishing up our 2nd year and I'm trying to decide what to do for next year!

[Karenwith4]

Hi Nancy

What style of homeschooling to you ascribe to?

We fall into that nebulous relaxed eclectic category until I freak out and go all WTM on the kids for a week until I realize that doesn't work so well for us and go back to our relaxed approach again :D

Karen

[Nancy in VA]

Karen:

That sounds like me. I love the Well Trained Mind approach but haven't gone nearly that classical

We use Sonlight for History - love Sonlight.

I use a WTM recommended science - My World Science - but my oldest is moving out of that (its elementary level)

My son uses Horizon math and daughter uses Saxon math

I have used a variety of LA programs and that is my biggest struggle - we have used Sonlight LA this year but I've enrolled the kids in a IEW writing workshop next year, so I want to move to more of a grammar curriculum (Sonlight is more of a writing focused curriculum)

I throw other things in there for good measure

[Karenwith4]

We love a combo of Bravewriter, Junior Great Books and the Deconstructing Penguins (http://anikonowner.blogspot.com/) approach for literature. My eldest uses a grammar book I found at a teacher store which plays to his strengths and interests. For my younger ones who are still just early readers and spellers we just read grammar picture books and watch a lot of schoolhouse rocks :D

I collect math programs like some people collect china. We have Miquon, Singapore, Hands on Algebra, Living Math History, and the Challenge math series. I love them all for different reasons and so we use them all for different reasons but sometimes I think I might have a math version of ADHD. lol.

For science we mostly build our own unit studies. We've done biology with RS4K but I ended up supplementing a lot. It's spring which for us means biology - caterpillars, tadpoles, etc living on our dining table.

[twodoor2]

I collect math programs like some people collect china. We have Miquon, Singapore, Hands on Algebra, Living Math History, and the Challenge math series. I love them all for different reasons and so we use them all for different reasons but sometimes I think I might a math version of ADHD. lol.

OOOOOO, "Living Math History" - what is that all about?? Sounds interesting.:)

[KeltonsMom]

Karen, your photo "Fog in the streetlights" is wonderful!! I have picked out at least half of your pictures that would look fabulous on my wall:)

[twodoor2]

Um, yes!! Why aren't you making a ton of money doing this? You are extremely talented, and you have an amazing eye for the beauty in nature. You should use some of those pictures in your avitar!!

[Karenwith4]

You guys are really very kind - thank you!

Marsha the Living Math History is a program from this website (http://www.livingmath.net/). Living Math is a homeschooling approach whereby the kids learn math through living books (which distinguishes them from textbooks), games, hands on activities etc. The woman that runs this website sells a math program that teaches math in a chronological format beginning with the mathematical discoveries of ancient civilizations and moving through time.

We have her Ancient History program which we (sort of) tag into our history studies. It's a fun way to explore math (especially for my history buff) and exposes kids to some pretty big concepts in an interesting hands on way. Often children can understand concepts before they have the computational skills to play with them. The context of history also helps kids see the progression and the next step of math and provides some real world applications for these concepts. (great for those "why should I learn this" types of questions).

hth
Karen

[twodoor2]

Karen,
Thank you for the program, I'll check into it.

[Lee]

OK - I wanna see the pictures - I went to your page, but saw nothin - did you post them somewhere?

[Karenwith4]

Hi Lee

I posted my blog in Keltonsmom's intro - we got talking about photography. She posted a link to some of her beautiful work as well - it's definitely worth it to go find that link.

Here's my photo blog which I updated because I was embarrassed about how neglected it was - lol

Karen

[OSUMom]

Um, Karen your photos look like professional work we use in math textbooks (my job)!!! Excellent - wow!!!!!!! I'm not sure how you submit, but we use work from istock.com, etc...

[taximom]

Simply beautiful photos Karen.

You are truly a gifted artist.

[Karenwith4]

Um, Karen your photos look like professional work we use in math textbooks (my job)!!! Excellent - wow!!!!!!! I'm not sure how you submit, but we use work from istock.com, etc...

Simply beautiful photos Karen.
You are truly a gifted artist.


Thank you both
Karen

[twodoor2]

Um, Karen your photos look like professional work we use in math textbooks (my job)!!! Excellent - wow!!!!!!! I'm not sure how you submit, but we use work from istock.com, etc...

Wow, those must be some of the prettiest math books on the planet. I have a billion math books in my collection, and no pictures:(

[OSUMom]

Wow, those must be some of the prettiest math books on the planet. I have a billion math books in my collection, and no pictures:(

We work for just the major publishers - Glencoe, McGraw-Hill, CORD, etc... A recent project I was just working on was with photos so I've been looking at lots recently. :)

[Burlew]

Nice to meet you Karen!

[Grace]

I collect math programs like some people collect china.
ROTFLOL! I can relate! I collect ALGEBRA programs rather than just math, though. My teens finally finished Algebra 1 - we started the first program *three* years ago. :eek: :p

We tried VideoText and BJUP first. Bust. Total bust. Then, during The Year of Major Illnesses (ds's D and my dd had a wicked kind of pneumonia) they were doing Jacob's. Didn't get very far and wasn't really working for the 14yo anyway. My son finished Jacob's a couple of weeks ago and my dd finished Saxon last week. Whoo hoo!

[OSUMom]

You math lovers would probably beg, borrow or steal for this part-time job I have. ;)

[twodoor2]

You math lovers would probably beg, borrow or steal for this part-time job I have. ;)

I'm still trying to get over the fact that math books have actual "pictures" in them. You should see my math books from college, nothing but formula after formula after example, and then more formulas. Even inside the covers there are formulas!!

BTW, there's some great math courses on YouTube. There's this one math teacher that's hosted a ton of videos. Get your kids to watch those as well.