Ah, the dilemma…what to do with all that Halloween candy…besides eat it.

As soon as the kids get all of that candy home they will want to dump it all out into a huge pile and sort out what they like and discard what they don’t. The kids even like to make a game of trading.

Of course I don’t want my kids actually eating all that junk. 5 kids all hopped up on sugar and food coloring, no way!! I have been at a loss of what to do because I don’t want to be “that” mean mom that just takes away all that candy straight away. I used keep it around and dole out a piece or two every once in a while but then I noticed that one or two of the kids may have been sneaking it. It was a better idea just to get it out of the house or put it into storage until next season. If you have been trick-or-treating at my house you have probably gotten last years candy…

Really, I don’t  mind the kids eating a few pieces. To keep their minds off eating all the lovely sweets they have collected but still allow them to have fun with it, I devised this little activity. Ok, so I am sure I am not the first to come up with this idea..anyhow….

After the children have eaten a couple of their favorite pieces, I had them sort the remaining candy. They may sort it however they wish: by size, by color, by type- chocolate, hard, soft. My children all decided to sort by type.

Once the candy had been sorted the kids counted each pile and charted the numbers on a graph. I found this graph that I downloaded for free at abcteach.com.

You could even make your own graph that has a little more room and they could glue candy pieces or wrapper on something like this:

Juliana decided she didn’t have enough room so she stopped.  I may end up making a larger chart for my kindergarten aged son.

The kids got to have fun with all that candy they got and brushed up on some math skills at the same time. What do you do with all that leftover candy?

*disclaimer- I am not being paid or receiving any product or services from the companies in this post. They are companies/products that I actually use and enjoy.

I am not a musician. It seems kind of funny that I can’t play an instrument considering my dad is a fantastic musician. It was very important to me to give my children the opportunity to learn to play an instrument but as a family with five children it was looking to be very expensive. It wasn’t terribly expensive with only two children but this would be the first year to have four children playing. Considering first the expense of the lessons themselves, I started to weigh my options. My father doesn’t live close enough to teach the children, and I honestly have zero talent or aptitude for music so getting lessons for free was not an option. I didn’t really know anyone with whom I could barter (with)  or beg to teach my children to play.  I starting calling around music stores and studios and the average price for lessons was $20-$25 per lesson. That would be $100 per week (only 4 are old enough for lessons at this time) or roughly $400 a month not to mention the fuel costs so this was certainly not a good option for us.  Finally I found the Mobile Music Academy.  They come to our home and give instruction and because of the number of children taking lessons in one location we get a discounted price of less than $17 a lesson. Our instructor has a masters in violin, is very professional, she is great with the kids and they have clicked with her from the first lesson. We invited another homeschooling family to join us on our music day and they too take advantage of the discount. The lessons being taught in our home also works out for us very well because the children take turns having their lesson and they can continue their homeschool work without interruption and the toddler can still nap. I would definitely recommend Mobile Music Academy to anyone in the Nashville area. If you aren’t in the Nashville area, I would recommend calling a few different places and interview them first and even ask for a free lesson to see if your children like the instructor. Don’t forget to ask for a group discount if you have multiple children or could co-op with another family!

Then there is the expense of the instruments  to consider. When we began this year we already had two violins that we could use for our two younger children wanting to study violin. I had bought a 1/2 size Suzuki brand kit online about three years ago brand new for about $290 the best I can remember. It seems like it was not holding up well and we have had trouble keeping it in tune until we had some repairs done at Williams Fine Violins in Nashville. While getting the repair done and speaking to the staff there we decided to but our next violin from them because they were so knowledgeable and patient in giving us non-musicians good advice and guidance.  The other violin we picked up was a 1/4 size that was actually made at Williams Fine Violins and cost about $675. We have been completely happy with it and it has survived a beginning 6 year old daughter and now our 5 year old son handling it (along with the plucking of our 2 year old) without incident. I know that you can find less expensive violins online and even in stores but I was a little weary after our first experience. I think a good instrument is a great investment especially when it is being passed from child to child. In music equipment a lot of times you can recoup all of your money when you decide to sell, many fine instruments tend to hold their value. If you did not have the money or the inclination to invest immediately you can also rent them from music stores, find them in a pawn shop (especially here in Nashville), or even borrow one from a friend whose child may have lost interest or outgrown the instrument.  And I am sure once you find a good instructor they could also give you good advice on buying good instruments not to mention that they often get discounts at the music stores.

Two of our older children wanted to study the piano and we had one of those electric keyboards for them to use. I started to think a lot about the sound of a real piano and how much I would enjoy those sounds filling our home . I started to think about investing in an upright piano. I mentioned it to my husband and he thought it was a great idea and we started doing our research. We went into the local Yamaha piano dealer in Nashville and quickly realized we would either have to buy used or only afford their entry level piano, the T118 PE, which was a very nice piano but I just I wasn’t sold. I really liked the sound of some of the more professional (and expensive) models much better so we started to look online. There are so many different piano dealers online it can make your head spin. We called around to some of them and some sounded sketchy, some of the people didn’t seem knowledgeable, some seemed more like car dealers but then we found Piano Tek. Piano Tek is a small piano store that only houses about 50 pianos at a time. The owner answers the phone when you call, he takes his time to speak to you and is open and honest about pricing and very helpful to someone (like me) who doesn’t know a lot about pianos. Piano Tek was also very flexible with us about how we wanted to pay for our new piano which was also very helpful to us. We ended up buying a 1978 fully refurbished U3 model which is the top of the line model for $3,295 which was less then the brand new entry level one from our local store.

The study of music is food for the brain. I found this great information from Carpenter’s Music World:

The study of music at a young age increases the quality of the child’s early life experiences. Music can soothe, stimulate or entertain children. It provides pleasure, joy and an outlet for creative expression; it helps develop listening and auditory discrimination skills; it contributes to motor skill development (both large muscle and small muscle); and it increases the range and flexibility of the voice. Music can soothe emotions, invite enthusiasm and bring immense pleasure to the listener.

Eight Cool Things Music Does for Kids

1. Confidence and Poise: Music making offers children a chance to perform with and for others, and to develop confidence in their ability to make presentations for groups.

2. Perseverance and Commitment: As children become more skilled in singing, moving and playing instruments, they can see and hear the results of their efforts.

3. Coordination: The many movement activities associated with music experiences develop both small muscles and large muscles. The awareness of internal steady pulse, coordinated with external movements, helps children regulate their behavior.

4. Self-respect and Satisfaction: As musical skills develop, children feel a strong sense of satisfaction in their progress and develop a feeling of self-respect that transfers to other situations in life.

5. Creativity and Self-expression: Music experiences often invite individual creative responses and encourage children’s imagination in other creative endeavors.

6. Pride in Achievement: Sharing music with peers and family reinforces the value of each child in the classroom, and children develop a sense of pride in their musical achievements.

7. Concentration and Problem-solving: Learning about music requires concentration and focus. When children are asked to analyze, compare and contrast sounds, they are actively engaged in problem-solving experiences.

8. Fun and Relaxation: Singing, moving, playing instruments and listening to music are all enjoyable experiences. Music making can provide hours of personal entertainment and relaxation throughout one’s entire life.

Science proves the importance of music

Several recent studies show improved spatial-temporal task scores and pattern-recognition scores for children in different age groups who had received piano instruction as compared to the same-age control groups without piano instruction. These studies report that piano instruction is far superior to computer instruction in enhancing a child’s abstract reasoning skills necessary for learning science and math.

Studies also suggest that playing and listening to music at a young age improves learning, memory, reasoning ability, and general creativity. Research supports the theory that young children who are exposed to music develop enhanced cognitive skills. Music teachers are aware that influences of music go far beyond the intellectual and physical development of the child. Studying music contributes to the growth of a well-balanced child in sensitivity, expressiveness, and the spirit essential for functioning in a complicated world.

Call out: Children who received music instruction (including keyboard lessons) scored higher in spatial task ability than those who had not. –Frances Rauscher, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh and associates, February 1997, Neurological Research

Call out: Elementary school children who took piano lessons showed improved math scores. –Gordon Shaw, University of California, Irvine, March 1999 Neurological Research

Call out text: Early music education encourages abstract thinking, improves intellect, and helps develop the reasoning skills needed to learn math and science. –“The Effect of Early Music Training on Child Cognitive Development,” Sam Houston State University

Call out text: Exposure to music activities enhances cognitive processes involved in language and reasoning. –“Music Lessons Enhance IQ,” E. Glenn Schellenberg, University of Toronto at Mississauga

Call out text: Students with coursework and experience with musical performance scored an average of 51 points higher on the verbal portion of the SAT test and an average of 39 points higher on the math portion. –“Predicting Music Theory Grades: The Relative Efficiency of Academic Ability, Music Experience, and Musical Aptitude”, Carole S. Harrison, Journal of Research in Music Education

An historical perspective

Educators and psychologists from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present have attested to the value of music study on the development of the child. According to Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the noted Swiss psychologist, a child’s early years are the optimum period for intellectual development. He believed that children and adults think in different ways. During the “pre-operational” learning stage (ages 2-7), children begin to think and react through symbols (language, drama, drawings and dreams). This stage is perfect for starting the process of learning music.

Jerome Bruner (b. 1915), an important American cognitive psychologist, believes that the foundations of any subject can be taught to anybody at any age. In his theories, he places great emphasis on teaching the structure of the subject. He developed a spiral curriculum where general principles are presented and applied to various learning situations in ever-increasing complexity. Learning should be structured to serve the future.

The study of music at a young age is supported by the humanist theories of Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) and leads to a fully realized, complete human, person (self-actualized). Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner (b. 1943) sets forth a theory that some children seem to “think musically” at a very young age. These children represent a small percentage of our society, but Gardner suggests that the numbers might increase if music were taught at a young age. Young children have the ability to understand music intuitively through performance and/or composition. In addition, they seem to have a genetic predisposition to hear, remember and produce musical patterns regardless of whether of not they are products of musical environments.

They absolutely loved it.  My 11 year old pretended to be disgusted (she was so totally into it).

My 7 year old had a little complete and utter freak out, screamed, threw a skull across the room then burst into tears then started screaming “it…it…it was a skull,  I found a skull, I touched a skull..”.

She was soon over the shock and was thrilled to find not one, not two but three skulls in her little pellet.

Adi was probably the most excited to dig in though.

Look at her little freckled face

I decided that since Payton is only 5 that I would help him do his. His attention span is only about that of a flea which I assume is about .160949 milliseconds. He was playing with Legos .89028 milliseconds after finding this little jawbone.

My sweetie little Amelia was none too interested. She sat with us and played Pee-Doh (otherwise known as Play- Doh).

Isn’t she cute?

OH. Yeah, the point. Getting there.

Interested in doing your own owl pellet dissection?

From what I have notice a lot of mommas don’t have the stomach for it. If this is you, I would recommend a virtual dissection. Which you can find at KidWings.

Here is how I began.

I started off last week by hitting the library and checking out every owl book they had.

At this point you might want to go ahead and order your pellets to give them time to arrive. I picked up mine from a homeschool conference but you can also conveniently order your  Owl Pellet Dissection Kit – Mole Skeleton and the Owl Pellet Dissection Kit – Starling Skeleton and also the Owl Pellet Dissection Kit – Vole Skeleton. Don’t forget to get some plastic dissection tweezers and dissection sticks and a good MAGNIFYING GLASS 4 DIAMETER. You can even get a little foam tray to contain it all if you like.

By the way our favorite books were :

for reference:

Owls by Sarah Courtauld : an Usborne book

Owls by Adrienne Mason Owls (Kids Can Press Wildlife Series)

Animal World: Owls by Christine Butterworth

Owls: Zoobooks by Timothy Levi Biel. Owls (Zoobooks)

We read all of the books together and talked a lot about owls. A lot. And went outside to listen for owls. I guess we should try that at night. Don’t judge. We got a good thing going with our bed time. You don’t mess with that. much. ok, so we will do that tonight. sheesh..

Today I explained to them how to carefully unwrap the pellet and showed them how to also very carefully take it apart. I also made up these nifty little Owl Pellet Dissection Worksheets.  You will need a bone sorting chart like this. We had large pellets containing 3-4 skeletons each. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to completely dissect them. My children ranging in age from 7-11 had no problems in completing this on their own.

Tip#1: Do not do this at a table in which you normally eat. Even after being disinfected it still gives me the heebie jeebies.

Tomorrow we will be reconstructing the skeleton, mounting and labeling it.

Dissecting Owl Pellets- Part 2.

The best way to teach a young child to love to read is to read to them often, starting very young. I read to my kids even if I think they are not paying attention. Toddlers will mimic everything you do (good and bad) and it is no different with reading. There are tons of “teach your baby to read” and learn to read quick type things out there but I have found the very best tool to be books. Don’t waste your money on those silly programs! They are usually quite expensive and you don’t need them anyway. Stock up on good books instead!

You can make or buy flashcards with the alphabet on them and start teaching them a few letter sounds at a time. I usually shoot for a goal of 1-2 per week. I plan all kinds of fun stuff pertaining to that letter. I find books that start with the letter of the week. I make foods that start with the letter. Make it fun! There are all kind of crafty things you can do with letters. For example- cut a piece of green construction paper into four squares. Write the upper case B on one and the lower case b on another. Give the kid some glue and some beans and let them glue the beans over the lines of the letters. Viola, green beans. Get it? ! Green beans…beans start with B…B….B  Also when teaching kids the letter sounds don’t add -uh to the end like as in B says buh, or D says duh. Because they really don’t. Its an extra sound tagging on the end. Just say hard letter sound. It makes it easier for kids to sound out words if they do not develop that bad habit . Think bat. b-a-t  not buh- a -tuh . It takes much longer in my experience to be able to understand how to put the sounds together if they are in that habit of adding -uh to their letter sound.

When they know them all grab one of those beginning reading books and show them how to sound out the words. We absolutely love the Animal Antics series. I have taught 3 of my 5 to read out of them almost exclusively. Be patient when you are teaching them to sound out words. It can be very frustrating to a parent and then it only serves as to frustrate them. Label things in your house such as doors, windows, cabinets. Even if the word is too hard for them to read, they see that words are important. And put their name on everything that they use a lot, their cups, clothing, books, bedroom door..Kids love to see their own name.

I don’t think you need and English curriculum until about the second or even third grade. Before that they just need to learn to read and then be able to understand what they are reading. Once they are reading for understanding then you are rolling.

So lets talk about what I use.

Language Arts:

1) We are currently using Rod and Staff Reading and English curricula- this may seem a little dry or boring to adults but it doesn’t seem to have any problem keeping my kids attention. It is very thorough. It is easy to teach. And its cheap. They love it. I love it.

2) We have also used and loved Switched on Schoolhouse

4)  We use Spelling City for spelling work. Spelling is not the most important subject to me. I feel like if they can read well they will be able to spell well also. But if I need a few minutes of “busy work” I will have them hit the computer. Its fun, its free. I build the lists based on what the kids are learning across their curricula. Hubby thinks its fun to think of crazy hard words and see them freak out when the see their list.

5) One very cool writing program is called Writing Strands. My kids like it far better than anything else because they can be creative. I would happily use it and nothing else if I were not required by law to have my children take standardized tests.

6) The library is your friend! Use it! Plan a weekly trip. Go to story time. I let my kids all choose their own books but encourage them to choose books from different sections. I also pick a required reading book for them that is generally a little above their reading level. Usually it will be a classic. And I will ask them to write a report on it.

7) Books on tape are awesome. We have lots and lots. Sometimes they can be expensive. Look for them on sale or make your own! You can record a story your computer and burn a disk or even video tape yourself. Great for nights you may not be at home. ITunes also has a good selection of kids books you can download.

To be continued…Part 3 will contain information for History and Geography

When I started homeschooling , NumberOne was only about 2. I didn’t actually know that I was homeschooling, in fact I had never heard of it. One is a super-smart kid and totally in to everything so I was just trying to keep her occupied and out of trouble. By the time she was preschool age she was reading and knew her numbers and all that jazz, just from playing. She also could speak quite a bit of French thanks to the wonderful French family we befriended at the park. Hubby and I were starting to wonder where we should send her to school. At this time we were living in the bay area in California. We looked into the local schools and we even tried out a Montessori Academy. She already knew all the stuff that they were teaching, but all kids have to go to school, right? Honestly I felt like she was too little to be off at school all day. I missed her. At this point I had heard the term homeschooling but wasn’t sure how it all worked. I really started looking into it. I went online for most of my information because I didn’t know any other homeschoolers. In fact there weren’t any around! I gradually built up the courage to talk to Hubby about giving it a shot. At first he thought I was nuts. Seriously, I will never forget the look on his face. He was not going for it one bit. But I laid out all of the pro’s I could think of and quoted all the statistics that I had read online about how much better that homeschooled children fare on standardized test and such. That had his interest. Who doesn’t want their kid to be the smartest around? He finally conceded and decided to let me try it for one year.

That first year was pretty great. I didn’t have a curriculum. I didn’t know there was a such thing. I just made up little activities teaching her what I thought she needed to know and it was great! Hubby was convinced that this was the best way to educate our children. He was very pleased with how things went and was totally sold. The only problem was that it took a lot of time to plan all of the lessons. The next year I learned about this fancy thing called curriculum and I picked one up. That was the worst year ever. We decided to hang in there and try to find a curriculum that would work for us. I started curriculum hopping (for the next couple of years) and hated most of what I picked up. A lot of them were intended for schools and require too much preparation for just one student. Some of them were boring, some of them were too “New Aged” and some were just plain stupid. I spent hundreds of dollars on so many different programs that were supposed to make it easier for me. After all ,I was spending a whole lot of time planning all those lessons and by our third year I had four children so time was at a premium!

I spent many a sleepless nights planning out our schedule. I would plan for weeks in advance, and then someone would get sick and we would miss a few days and I would have to revise the whole schedule! On the other hand I didn’t want to unschool. I am really too much of a control freak for that! I just had to find something that would work for us and not be totally stressful. So after many trial and errors, I would like to share with you what has worked best for us.

Here are some of the things that have stuck and that we absolutely love to use:

* italics indicate quotes from the publisher

Math:

1) Rod and Staff This is a bible-based curriculum that is our top choice. It is hands down our absolute favorite. It teaches in the old

fashioned way. If you want your children to be able to understand math in a practical way, this is the way to go. And is also extremely

inexpensive in comparison to most others. Especially if you plan on using it for more than one child.

2) Switched on Schoolhouse Switched-On Schoolhouse is a comprehensive, Bible-based curriculum that offers computer-based learning

for grades 3-12. With 3-D animation, video clips, and other fascinating multimedia, Switched-On Schoolhouse is the perfect

homeschool curriculum for today’s generation. With this flexible, best-selling curriculum, you can customize student learning to fit

individual educational needs. This is great if space is limited or if you spend a lot of time travelling because all you really need is a

computer. It even keeps up with the amount of time children are spending on the lessons and most importantly it keeps up with grading!

We also like this website for fun, free activities:

www.arcademicskillbuilders.com

Part 2 is coming soon with tips on teaching your children to read and our Language Arts curricula.