The Imagination Station

A while ago I bought a nice little collection of books from a series called 'The Imagination Station'.  In each book a pair of children travel through time and get a glimpse of something of that timeline.  This year I've started reading them aloud to all the girls.  So far we've done the first four of them.  They are quick and easy to read and I usually space them out over a period of two days.  They're written at a Grade two level, so if you don't want to use them as a read aloud, you can just have your child read it for themselves.  { I originally bought them for Chloe who was 7 at the time for her to read to herself. }

1.  Voyage with the Vikings

Join cousins Beth and Patrick as they travel back in time to Greenland circa 1000 to find a Viking sunstone! While visiting Whit's Soda Shoppe, the cousins find a mysterious, old letter in Imagination Station asking for Viking sunstone; if the sunstone isn't found then someone named Albert will be imprisoned. Beth and Patrick race through time, meet the Vikings Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson, and locate the sunstone.but when they return to the Soda Shoppe another note is waiting for them requesting a silver goblet. 96 pages, softcover from Tyndale.

2.  Attack at the Arena

The adventure continues! Join cousins Beth and Patrick as they travel through time to fifth-century Rome to locate a missing silver cup. After returning to Whit's after finding the Viking sunstone, another letter is left this time requesting a silver cup that belongs to a monk. If found, this cup may prevent the mysterious Albert from being imprisoned.

Emperor Honorius is hosting a gladiator battle at the Roman Colosseum in honor of a war victory. Beth attends as a slave and Patrick attends as a monk's apprentice, until he is taken prisoner and sent to fight in the arena. While in Rome, the cousins meet Telemachus, a monk that believes fighting is wrong and who is willing to give up his life to stop the killing.

When Beth and Patrick find the cup and return to their time, a new letter is waiting for them with information on the mysterious Albert's fate.

3.  Peril in the Palace

The place?-China in 1271. The quest?-the golden tablet of Kublai Khan. The problem?-just about everything!

The Imagination Station adventures continue as cousins Patrick and Beth are kidnapped by Mongol warriors. Only the friendship of fellow traveler Marco Polo saves them from harm. They are brought to the Mongol palace where the Kublai Khan dislikes both their gifts and their message about Christianity. The tension grows when the Mongol magicians challenge the cousins to a spiritual power showdown. As war breaks out, Beth and Patrick are locked in a secret room to prevent their escape.

How do the cousins get the golden tablet they needs to save Mr. Whittaker's friend Albert? How do they escape the city and find the Imagination Station? Ever the perilous palace and find out!

4.  Revenge of the Red Knight

In this Imagination Station adventure Patrick and Beth find themselves as guests in a beautiful castle in 15th century England. Through a series of events, the steward of Lord Darkthorn's castle finds the cousins with three artifacts collected in their previous adventures: the stone, the cup, and the golden tablet. They are accused of being thieves and locked in jail. Beth escapes and discovers the identity of the real thief, leading to a jousting contest with a surprising outcome.

Set during the War of the Roses in England, Revenge of the Red Knight will teach readers about the Crusades, the integrity of knights and the vows they took, and why men would choose to risk their lives to fight for Christianity.

• Author/s:  Marianne Hering, Paul McCusker
• Ilustrator:  David Hohn
• Format: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 96
• Vendor: Tyndale House
• Publication Date: 2010 - 2011
• Dimensions: 7.50 X 5.00 (inches)
• Ages: 7-12
• Series: Imagination Station

You can purchase these from Christianbook.com for $4.49 each.

This week I'm joining up with my friend Chareen from Every Bed of Roses for her book linky:

I hope you will join us.

Reading and Copywork

We started Hannah's { 4y1m } school day with some tracing work ( the easiest form of copywork that I could think of ).  I just took a sentence out of her reading book and used one of my trusty dotted school fonts that I have to whip up a quick worksheet.  As we were going along we also briefly ran past any multiple phonograms as well.

Then we got out her current reader: Rod and Staff, Grade 1, Unit 2, Lesson 5, and she read this for me.

Then in the afternoon we had a go at doing some straight copywork.

We are still in an experimental stage.  What works.  What doesn't.  Still finding my footing with the copywork and dictation.

Copywork & Dictation with an Aesop Freebie

     Since I'm wanting to get rather serious about copywork and dictation I'm starting to look around and gather materials.  In addition it's been quite some time since I posted a freebie here on the blog so I thought that I would endeavor to supply one.  Worked out well, two birds with one stone and all.  Freebie down the page.

     While I've got you here though, can I ask you some questions?  Like, do you use dictation in your homeschool?  Does the child read or copy the passage before you use it for the dictation?  Or do you dictate it before the child has seen it?  Do you stop mid way to have the child correct any mistakes?  Do you correct it after the dictation is finished?  How often do you use dictation in a week?  Daily?  How much dictation do you use?  I'll be using it for 6 & 8 year olds.  Should I just make it one sentence per school year?

     Oh - by the way, I have been desperately wanting to ask you all WHERE do you all get your copywork and dictation materials from?  I'd like to have a little variety if I can.  Please let me know.    Am I really going to have scour all the material myself?  Are you sure there aren't some cut shorts that I can use?  What can you tell me about copywork and dictation overall?  What type of ratio should I have in regards to different styles of writing to use?  Should 50% be from novels, 30% from Aesop, 70% from the Bible.  What's your ratio?  How do YOU do it?

     I have some solid ideas but I want to have them guided and assisted by people who are already walking the path.  I've been traveling the net tonight and my trusty bookshelf too, but I'm always open to additional insights. 

So far my Language Arts courses are reshaping up as follows:

Spelling

     Websters 

     Spelling Rules with examples

     Rod and Staff - spelling by Sound and Structure

Grammar

     Rod and Staff

Reading

     Grade appropriate readers

Writing

     Dictation x 2 times a week

     Copywork x 3 times a week

     Writing Strands x 2 times a week

     Penmanship { perhaps this can be included in the dictation and copywork }

Oral Narrations

* * * * * * *

At any rate, thanks for reading and here's a little piece that I prettied up.  Aesop is a pretty handy guy to have around the homeschool.  :o)

 I've listed 10 different things that one can use the material for.  If you think of any others please let me know so that I can add them too.

Please help a girl out with ideas and need to know information on copywork and dictation.

Today I am linking up with:

Thanks so much.

Language Arts in a Classical Model

     Here's how I'm putting our new classical Language Arts course together:

{I've lost a little of the formatting by copying and pasting it here but you can get the idea.}

Daily Language Arts

Chloe { 8 }	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri
Spelling – 15 mins
Grammar – 20 mins
Reading – 30 mins
Writing – 20 mins
Dictation – 5 mins

Daily Language Arts

Phebe { 6 }	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri
Spelling – 10 mins
Grammar – 15 mins
Reading – 20 mins
Writing – 15 mins
Dictation – 5 mins

     Basically I've made myself a little tick list so that it'll be easier to keep track of.  It's set to cover a full fortnights worth of school.  That way I only have to print them up once every two weeks.  Just tweaking a little here and there to accommodate what we need as we go.

     I've based the subject list and times ( a little tweaked ) by what's discussed by Susan Wise Bauer in 'The Well Trained Mind'.  I've had the book for YEARS and it has always been extremely useful, so I highly recommend it.  If you can get a copy, please do.

     Thanks for visiting.

Spelling

     This week I've been revamping our whole entire language arts for the girls.  I wanted to go back to doing copywork more seriously and get real on dictation too.  So I figured one of the best ways to do that was to just go classical.  I'm not sure what I'll do with the remainder of our CLE workbooks for the duration, but they'll probably get used somewhere along the line when we need a break from the rigors of the classical model.

     This presented a need to select a spelling course.  Normally the spelling component is included in the CLE Language Arts course and now that I was shelving it we needed another spelling avenue.  It's a good thing I'm a bit of a curriculum junkie and keep all sorts of things laying around.  As it turned out we had Rod and Staff Spelling for Grades 2 and 3.  Perfect for my 6 and 8 year olds.

{ Grade 3 cover }

{ Sample lesson }

{ Grade 2 cover }

{ Sample lesson }

As you can see in the photo, when initially going through the word list with Phebe I marked up all the words according to the multiple phonograms, and short / long vowels.  I firmly believe that this helps the child to sound out and remember how to spell a word.

In addition to the workbooks here, we are adding spelling rules and doing dictation as well.

What do you use for spelling?

Thanks for visiting.

Chicken Noodle Vegetable Soup

Here's an almost vegetarian soup for those "lite" nights.

{ Vegetable Chicken Noodle Soup }

{ Ingredients: }

Carrot

Celery

Cauliflower

Broccoli

Chicken Noodle Soup packet mix

Cornflour

{ Method: }

Cut all your vegetables up and put on to boil.  When the vegetables are almost softened - try not to over soften them, place in a separate saucepan the chicken noodle soup with water ( use less than what the packet says ) and add 1 tablespoon of cornflour for each pkt of soup you use. Bring to boil.

Drain vegetables and then pour the chicken noodle soup mix over vegetables.  Mix well and serve.

Too easy.  My type of cooking when you're tired in the evenings or feeling slack at lunch.

May Currently

What.......It's a brand NEW month?~!!  Yep, it's MAY already.

1.  Little Miss 22 months is really taking off with her speech.  Now even though she's doing really well in the talking world I still hear a lot of those "mummmm's" coming out.

2.  You know, online shopping is awesome.  So comfy to order books from home without having to travel overseas.

3.  I have been seriously struggling recently.  I have a LOT to juggle and a LOT to do and I'm a bit wiped out.  

4.  Recently all my lessons have been totally crashed by constant interruptions all the way through and if I do get a lesson done without an interruption then I have a crazy thing or disaster waiting for me.  My last 4 gasp for air discoveries while I got a lesson done include:

a.  the little girl playing in the toilet with a cup { scooping toilet water and splashing are so much fun }
b.  the little girl stripping a made bed to pieces { nothing like having to do the same work twice }
c.  the little girl climbing up to the kitchen sink and playing in it.  { Sure I love changing her clothes just because she can't stay dry }
d.  the little girl climbing up over the stove top. { I think she may have been headed for the fruit bowl }

So, as you can see the little girl is giving me a run for my money while I get distracted with teaching.

5.  Sleep.  Sigh, what can I say?  It's almost chronic.  I wake up nearly every night somewhere between 2 and 4 am.

6.  My winter bucket list is short.  I have to keep it short to make it doable.  I figure that if I can get at least one ski in - it will be an awesome winter.  

Well, time to go and see what I've got waiting for me while I did this little post.

Don't forget to head over to Farley's blog - Oh Boy 4th Grade and join in this months fun.

Thanks for visiting.