VA Homeschooling

With the New Year right around the corner, I want to wish everybody a safe and joyous holiday. Take this time to educate your children what New Year’s Day is and why we celebrate it. Questions children may wonder include, why does a year have 365 days, why do some years have 366 days, who created the calendar we use today?

Does your family do anything special to bring in the New Year? Does your family make resolutions? Do you share them with one another to help each other live up to the goal all year long?

If you plan to make a resolution, don’t make one so difficult that you already know you will not live up to it. Resolutions are not meant to be pipe dreams, but some small way you can change and improve your current way of living.

Holiday traditions are an important part of every family, but it is also equally important to understand why your family partakes in those traditions. Does your tradition teach your children a lesson? Does your tradition remind your family of a happy moment or a deceased family member? Is the tradition done just because it is done every year and you don’t want to “break tradition”?

One tradition our family has is to make baked goods and then pass them out to our neighbors on our small road. It promotes family togetherness and teaches our little one about sharing. People are delighted and even shocked when they receive their “gifts.”

Traditions should be cherished, but only if they are truly enjoyed. If you are not happy with your family’s current traditions, create new ones together. Dreading upcoming traditions is no way to celebrate this joyous time of year.

Happy Holidays

Apple Cinnamon Dough

Use this dough to make wonderful smelling ornaments to decorate your house with crafts that smell delicious! Let the kids have fun rolling it out and using cookie cutters to make all types of shapes. Use a straw to put a hole in the top before baking. When hard, glue on wiggly eyes, ribbon, glitter, or even fabric clothes.

These ornaments are nice for tying on packages, hanging in the window, or giving as gifts.

Ingredients:

1 cup ground cinnamon
1 cup applesauce
1/4 cup white school glue (optional)

Directions:

Add the cinnamon to the applesauce until you get a clay-like consistency. You may add glue for added thickness. Once the dough is mixed, create shapes with your hands or roll the dough out and use cookie cutters. Add glitter for fun! Let the dough dry.

This time of year can be very busy with preparations and family and friends, but here are some fun activities to do with your children this month.

 Read Aloud Together

Make this time as relaxed and enjoyable as possible, but stop to explain or discuss items that come up in the reading. Select a special book to read that will keep your family members interested and wanting to read. Take turns reading with expression and at a slightly slower pace.

Play Board Games and Do Puzzles

Board games and puzzles provide time for all family members to visit, interact, and have fun with one another.

 Take a Walk

In the winter, when you are not outside as much, walks are even more special. Besides being an excellent form of exercise, walking removes you from the daily scene of your life, and you can get a different perspective and a unique opportunity to visit with your children.  Really listen to your child, and ask about interests and thoughts.

Cook and Bake

Make something special. Make bread or cookies from scratch. Prepare a special meal with and for your family. Cook a meal, and bring it to someone in need or even invite a family over to enjoy your meal. Cook ethnic food

Visit the Lonely

Take a few hours to reach out to others. Visit some relatives you don’t often see. Volunteer at an assisted living home.

Clean Out the Clutter

Spend a few hours in one small area of your house. Use the four-box method: throw away, give away, put away, and store away.

Create Arts and Crafts

Make a craft for your family or for a gift to someone else. These can be decorative or practical items.

Go for a Drive or a Day Trip

If you live in the city, visit the country. If you live in the country, visit the city. Is there a quaint town or place you have thought about visiting? Now is the time! Visit a museum or historical home that is decorated for the holidays.

 Give Each Family Member Some Alone Time

Everyone needs a little alone time once in a while. Give your children some personal free time to follow their own interests. Get caught up on sleep. Do some writing or another activity you enjoy.

 Watch and Discuss a Good Movie

Find a good, uplifting video that will entertain and inspire your whole family. Then discuss what happened or could have happened to the characters.

Make Music Together

Play some instruments. Sing some song.It doesn’t matter if you know how–just have fun!

Facts About Vanadium

• Its atomic number is 23.
• It’s a transition metal so that means it has electrons in the two outer shells available for bonding.
• Vanadium has 23 protons and  23 electrons.
• Vanadium’s atomic weight is 50.94.
• It is a soft ductile silvery-white metal found as a powder, in fused hard lumps and in crystals.
• Vanadium is not found alone in nature but is found in 65 minerals and in iron ores and meteorites.
• Natural Vanadium does not exist in the form seen on the periodic table. It is actually a mixture of two of its isotopes, ⁵⁰V and ⁵¹V.
• It changes colors depending on its temperature.
• It’s used in rust-resistant springs and tools that must perform at high speeds and temperatures.
• It’s added to aluminum alloys to increase strength and heat resistance.
• It’s currently being studied bonded to Gallium for use in the superconductor industry.
• Vanadium powder is an irritant to the eyes and lungs. Other forms of Vanadium are irritants to the skin.
• Vanadium ores in America come from Colorado , Arkansas, and Idaho . Worldwide sources include Russia , South Africa, and Chile.
• It’s found in most crude oil and in crude oil ash. This may be a large source for Vanadium in the future.

History About Vanadium

In 1831, iron mining was a profitable business in Tagberg, Germany. To test the quality of the iron, muriatic acid was dripped on the iron. If it yielded a black powder, the iron would be brittle. Nils Gabriel Sefstrom took a large sample of this black powder to Stockholm to study it with Berzelius. After three weeks, they concluded their studies by finding all common elements already discovered plus one new element. After Sefstrom left, Berzelius continued to study this new substance and learned it was a very colorful and beautiful element. He named the element after the Norse God of beauty, Vanadis.

Activity

In honor of Vanadium, because it is considered the beautiful element, we will make a book of beauty. Keep in mind that not only are trees and waterfalls beautiful, but things at the cellular level and universal level are also beautiful. This book is Nature’s Beauty.

Create the blank book with paper folded over or cut and stapled, or construction paper with holes and yarn. Have your child include pictures of whatever things they feel are beautiful. Be sure to include Vanadium. Here’s a picture of a Vanadium mineral and a Vanadium metal.

Thankfulness does not come naturally to people. It is something that needs to be taught.

To teach children to be thankful, parents must first teach their children what thankfulness means and why people are and should be thankful. To be thankful, people must be thoughtful and consider the feelings of others. Think about other people who are less fortunate; show children that they should be thankful for what they have that other children do not have. Let the children come of with examples of when they have seen people be thankful

Once children know what thankfulness is and can give examples, read books with them about being thankfulness. Even Bible verses talk about this issue.

To establish being thankful as a habit, children should be taught that they don’t necessarily deserve things. If they think they deserve something, they will not be thankful for it. If children use courtesy words, such as “please” and “thank you,”  they can learn to be thankful for what they receive. Some regular activities where children can practice these courtesy words are by thanking the cook after each meal, thanking children for completing their chores, and thanking parents for working for the family.

Especially at this time of year, thank you notes can be important practice for children. Children can say thank you through a phone call, personal visit, thoughtful gift, act of service, or a note. These should be done in a timely manner and specifically mention what is being thanked for and why.

by Frank Burtnett, Ed.D., Education Now

Homeschooled students and parents will find no shortage of information about colleges, given the volume and variety of print and electronic sources. The challenge that information consumers face, however, is separating the good from the bad, the useful from the irrelevant and the current from the outdated. Consider the following evaluation criteria when using information about colleges for exploratory and decision-making purposes:

1. Who is the information source? Colleges and universities themselves are the “authority” behind print and electronic information that bears their names and identities. Be careful of parties taking their information and reproducing and disseminating it to consumers. Often, accuracy and completeness gets lost in the translation.

2. How old is the information? Both print and electronic information can become outdated and incorrect (website information less so because of updating capabilities). Information, especially descriptive facts and numbers (i.e., college costs, etc.), needs to be current to be relevant. Make certain you are using the latest information available.

3. For what purpose was the information created? Learn to separate the intent-to-inform from the aggressive, intentional, desire-to-recruit. Most colleges present a comprehensive overview of their institution, its academic programs and services, and the kind of students they are hoping to attract, admit, and enroll. Be sensitive to any information that looks like it is attempting to “sell” the institution or places too much emphasis on non-academic topics (i.e., nearby skiing opportunities).

4. Is there any way to validate the information? Resist reliance on a single source. College-bound students are about to head off to two, four, or more years at a college or university–one of the most important decisions they will make in their lifetime. Steps need to be taken to ensure that the information they use to decide where to apply and where to enroll (if accepted) is accurate and complete. Validate and cross check all information, especially those parts and pieces that arouse your suspicions.

5. Use the new information technologies to learn about colleges. Many institution websites offer interactive programming like video presentations and virtual tours. Others offer prospective students the opportunity to participate in chat rooms and webinars to interact with students, faculty, and admission professionals and get answers to questions. Information technology has created many opportunities for information exchange that you should use.

6. Is there someone to talk to? Weave human resources into the exploration formula. College admission and financial aid counselors can be vital information allies in the process of learning about and making application colleges and they are ready and waiting for your phone call or visit. Talk with current students and alumni. Leave no human information source unturned in your quest for quality information.

7. Refine the exploratory list and visit campuses of interest. There is no substitute for the hands-on experience of visiting a college, sitting in on a class or two, eating in the dining hall, and interacting with the students, professors and others.

Student and parent access to accessible, timely, and relevant information has improved dramatically in recent years spurred on by the electronic technologies that help deliver it. Some might even suggest there is too much information, making it difficult to sort through and use. That is why evaluation of college information is so critical and why explorers should be diligent in that evaluation!

Note: Dr. Frank Burtnett, president of Education Now former executive director of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, makes regular contributions to the VAHomeschooling blog on matters dealing with college and career guidance. He has written extensively on student transition, and his Bound-For-College Guidebook has received a “highly recommended for students and parents” review by the Library Journal. The guidebook is a step-by-step guide to college exploration, decisionmaking, and application, and it answers nearly 100 frequently asked questions about the transition from high school to college and offers a series of student exercises that will lead to an improved understanding of the college admission and financial aid process.

Go to Education Now to order Bound-For-College Guidebook, and receive a 15% discount by inserting promotion code 6S9HSA.

Two programs for teaching mathematics in the early grades—Math Expressions and Saxon Math—emerge as winners in early findings from a large-scale federal experiment that pits four popular, and philosophically distinct, math curricula against one another.

But the results don’t promise to end the so-called “math wars” anytime soon, according to experts. That’s because the two most successful programs embody different approaches to teaching math in grades K-2.

The Saxon curriculum is a more traditional, scripted program in which teachers offer explicit instruction on effective mathematics procedures.

Whereas Math Expressions curriculum integrates a more reform-oriented emphasis on student reasoning with direct teaching that is aimed at moving students to more-advanced mathematical strategies. “One of the things this says to me is that we’re not going to find a unique curriculum that all teachers can use with the same degree of effectiveness,” said Hank Kepner, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Involving 1,309 1st graders in 39 elementary schools, the four-state study is considered the largest experiment to test some of the nation’s most widely used commercial math programs. It was commissioned by the Institute of Education Sciences, the primary research arm for the U.S. Department of Education. Mathematica Policy Research Inc., headed up the project.

The eagerly awaited results come from the first of three reports on the 3-year-long study. It has since enlisted 71 more schools.

Besides Saxon Math and Math Expression, the researchers also tested Investigations in Number, Data, and Space as well as Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics.

In all, publishers submitted eight programs for the study, said Audrey Pendleton, the project officer for the study. An expert panel chose the four programs based on their popularity, publishers’ capacity to provide teacher training, and the diversity of teaching approaches they represent as a group.

The Investigations program, for example, is considered the most student-centered of the four curricula, while Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics is a basic-skills curriculum that combines teacher-led instruction with a variety of different materials and teaching strategies.

Researchers randomly assigned each of the programs to 10 different schools for use over the 2006-07 school year, and teachers later reported that the assigned curricula served as the backbone of their math instruction that year.

To determine how much math the students learned, the researchers used a nationally normed exam that was developed for the federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Roberto Agodini, Mathematica’s lead investigator on the project, said researchers chose that test because children could take it individually, and because it adapts questions to children’s abilities by adjusting questions’ level of difficulty. “Asking young kids to take a paper-and-pencil test would probably not be a good idea,” Agodini said, “and we wanted to capture the wide range of students’ abilities.”

At the end of 1st grade, investigators found, children in classes using the Saxon and Math Expressions curricula scored 9 percentile points to 12 percentile points higher on those tests than their counterparts in other classrooms.

Publishers were quick to note that students in the study were not nationally representative. Among the reasons: By design, the testing population included a high number of high-poverty schools.

While experts cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions, several said the results seem to validate the National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s call last year for integrating a focus on promoting students’ conceptual understandings of the subject with instruction on simple procedures.

“The math panel said it’s no longer at all sensible to talk about teacher-directed versus student-directed approaches; that quality infers both,” said Steven J. Leinwand, a principal research analyst for the American Institutes for Research, a Washington research group not connected with the study. “This confirms that,” he added.

For more information, see the Education Week article.

A study of 820 first grade classrooms suggests that many are not as warm, friendly, and academically stimulating as some experts think they ought to be.

According to the research, published in the Elementary School Journal, only 23 percent of classrooms could be judged to be of “high quality” in both their instructional practices and social and emotional climate.

Another 31 percent of classrooms—the largest percentage in the study sample—were deemed to have a positive emotional climate, but a low level of academic quality. Researchers judged 28 percent of the classrooms to be “mediocre”; the remaining 17 percent got a rating of “low overall quality.”

“In some sense, the glass is half empty and half full,” said Robert C. Pianta, a study co-author and the dean of the University of Virginia’s education school. His co-author is Megan W. Stulman, a senior research scientist at the school’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning.

“To find that 23 percent of classrooms are really top-notch is a good thing,” Pianta continued. “But it was surprising to see so many classrooms at the lower end, particularly since, on average, emotional quality in 1st grade classrooms is quite high.”

The findings are the latest to emerge from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a 17-year-long research effort financed by the federal National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (“Study Casts Doubt on Value of ‘Highly Qualified’ Status”)

To measure quality, trained raters spent a day in each of the 820 classrooms collecting detailed observations on the goings-on there. The classrooms were scattered across 32 states in 700 regular public, charter, and private schools.

Teachers who ignored pupils’ questions, for example, might get low ratings on the system’s sensitivity scale. On the instructional side, high ratings went to classrooms in which teachers engaged students in discussions, regularly provided pupils with constructive feedback on their work, and invited children to stretch their thinking, among other characteristics and practices.

For more information, see the Education Week article.

Earlier this year, on America’s popular show American Idol, homeschooling received some recognition for the value it can have for students.

According to the Arizona Republic, about Scottsdale resident Scott MacIntyre, “just everything about [Scott] is remarkable,” according to his former piano teacher from Arizona State University. Born almost completely blind, Scott was homeschooled and began training in classical piano at age five. He also plays the guitar and drums and is a gifted singer and songwriter.

After starting college at fourteen years old, Scott graduated from Arizona State University at age nineteen, summa cum laude, with a bachelor’s degree in piano performance. He was nominated by the College of Fine Arts as the outstanding graduate and received the Fulbright Scholarship to the United Kingdom where he obtained his master’s degree in performance studies from the Royal College of Music and Royal Holloway University of London.

Scott, his mother, and two siblings, Katelyn and Todd, have performed together in a vocal ensemble as the MacIntyre Family Singers. Their mother home educated her three children. Scott has traveled to cities in North America and Europe for performances and frequently donates performances for conventions, churches, charities, and stadium athletic events.

With all of these accomplishments, Scott can easily be considered a success. Scott is an example of a young person taking the education and training given to him by his parents and using it to make a difference.