Well today the girls were working well together. We have struggled at times to have the girls working independently on their own stuff within the same space. Mainly because NIK likes to talk her way through her work and JAHG likes it to be quiet. Today was a great day though as NIK concentrated on her cutting and pasting skills while JAHG busily went about her English and Maths work. Lets hope we get more great days in the near future!

Well I am happy to say that the use of Mathletics seems to be re appearing in our weekly learning. Yesterday JAHG and I created a new learning grid, which is designed to document all the required things she is to complete in a seven day cycle. It does not have time frames, or even set work for each day, instead it has 50 boxes with a single topic written in each. The idea is that JAHG can choose which activity to do and once she completes it she can colour in the box. The only requirement is that in seven days time everything has to be completed – or it will become carried over into the next weeks learning grid, on top of the usual activities.

If JAHG manages to complete the work in good time, then she will have more time to herself before she must start on the next weeks learning grid. The page is designed to have a fortnights work on it, split into weekly sections. This means JAHG also has the choice to move on over to the next weeks work if she wants so that she has more control over when and where the work is completed.

I must add that since JAHG received her learning grid yesterday the manner in which she has approached her work is great. She is always one to happily do what needs to be done, but the idea of being able to colour in the boxes and therefore see her achievements in chunks of an area on the grid, is enthusiastically pushing her forward to complete the tasks in record time.

Some of the tasks added are simple living skills and chores, like washing, set table and clean up. While others are more learning activities like, spelladrome, mathletics, writing, science, maths, spelling, English, research  and specific work books.

So through the introduction of our Learning Grid we have seen JAHG reintroduce learning tools such as Spelladrome and mathletics again into her daily life, which up until now have been more of a chore than a pleasure to participate in.

For Spelling we are using a series of Textbooks called Spelling Rules with our Children.

This is a great series, that has each book set up with a unit of work designed to be completed each week. The book contains 35 units in all. Each unit comprises of a series of activities based around a set spelling list. We have found that even though JAHG is extremely good at spelling and always gets the designated spelling words right, that the extended activities are great reinforcement for her learning. JAHG never gets bored of these books and enjoys the activities within each weeks lessons.

Most of the time JAHG will sit down and complete the unit of work in one sitting and often she will do more than one unit a week. We often also build upon the activities within the unit with extra writing, drawing and word games related to the topic of the unit.

Spelling rules is the basis of our weekly spelling. We do however build a series of other spelling related activities such as Boggle, Spelladrome & Focus on Text just to make a few.

The Spelling Rules series starts at Book A which is grade Prep level and continue through to book G for grade 6. It also has Two teaching books you can purchase if you wish to to help you teach your own children. however we did not buy these.

The best thing about these books is that they are made in Australia,

with Australian Spelling for all the words!

Teachers Spelling Rules books

Children s Text books

Other Interesting Links

Homeschooling with Spelladrome

Homeschooling  Workbooks

I thought that i would share with you all some of the books that we purchase for our children to use as part of their home educational experience.

We use these maths textbooks as a basis for their learning and then build upon what they enjoy with activities such as Cooking – for weights, measures, temperatures & Washing – for sorting, grouping, pairing, matching etc. We are only limited by our own imaginations as to how we can incorporate Maths into our daily life and routines.

One set of books that we use are called Mighty Mentals. This is a great series of four books, which are labeled ‘Book A, B, C & D’. They are geared for grades 3, 4, 5 & 6 of the primary school years.

JAHG is currently working through ‘Book A’ as she is in grade 3.

JAHG has never been the most confident child when it comes to maths, but since using this Maths textbook, she has found that she enjoys learning math and has even surprised herself with wanting to do more of the units within the book.

Each Unit is designed to be completed over the course of a week. It is broken up into 6 different sections one being designed to be completed each day Monday to Friday and then one over the weekend. We however find that JAHG prefers to sit down and complete the unit most of the time in one sitting and will often do more than one unit of work from the book each week.

Once JAHG finishes the first book we will just continue on to the Book B in the series and work our way through them.

Here are the other books for you to view if you like. I can not recommend this series high enough.

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Trying to Make Maths and Spelling Fun

Home Education Resources – Maths

Family, Homeschooling and Maths

More of our Homeschooling Pictures

More of our Homeschooling Pictures

More of our Homeschooling Pictures

Well dependent on how you choose to educate your child and your families philosophy on life, will have a definite affect on the types of workbooks, if any, you choose to use with your children. Our children like to have workbooks to do so we incorporate this kind of educational experience into their school day.

We have a huge variety of workbooks here ready for our children to use. Our intention was to photocopy the work from each book, and give the daily units required to be completed by the children to them. This way we could reuse the books again when it came time for the younger children to work at the level the workbooks are designed for. However we noticed something extremely interesting happening in our house.

The level of work dropped once we introduced worksheets in favour of the actual workbooks. Now this may not seem like much, but homeschooling was going along great guns, until we made this, what we thought was a slight change, to the way we gave our work.

Upon talking to the children we became aware that they preferred to have their own workbooks where they completed the work in the actual book. They felt more organised and could easily access and go over prior work if required to understand what was to be done next. They also liked the idea of being able to get to the end of a workbook and feel that they had accomplished something.

So we have reintroduced the children to completing their work within the workbooks that we purchased for their levels. They now (again happily) complete their work with a lot more enthusiasm and have a greater sense of achievement, Especially when others come to visit and they can show how far they have worked through a book or what they have been doing. They know where their work is kept and can easily move onto the next units of work as required independently, meaning they are less reliant on me to direct them.

This is a win win situation for us all. Initially the cost of homeschooling our children has gone up as we can no longer reuse many of the workbooks we have purchased for upcoming younger children, but the improvement in the childrens work ethics, enthusiasm and increase in their independence far out ways any small cost involved in repurchasing books when needed in the future.

Some of the workbooks we are currently using which the children enjoy are as follows:

Mighty Mentals Math Book

Focus on text

Spelling Rules

Grammar Rules

Comprehension Checkpoints

These books do change frequently as we finish one off and move onto a different one!

Homeschooling with Spelladrome

Home Educational Resources – Spelling Rules Textbooks!