Rediscovering Hooda Math and PBS Math Educational Resources

My 15 yr old used Hooda Math for years.  When he got in the higher grades, he stopped using it, and I forgot about it.  I rediscovered it while looking for fun Math games for my now 11 year old.  She loves it, and I find games to be an excellent way to learn.  Not all day, and not all the time, but 15-30 minutes of educational games is a nice brain break, and different way to learn.  One thing I have noticed, since I decided to use Common Core standards, in our homeschool, is that I think it is harder for one because they don't allow kids to memorize math facts such as multiplication, and division before moving them on to harder concepts using those facts.  This slows kids down incredibly.  I think they need to learn those math facts first, before being forced to learn something their poor little brains just can't comprehend.  That is what I am doing anyway.  One of the beautiful things about homeschooling, is I can go at my child's place, even if the end goal is still to achieve the harder standards.  It isn't even that they are harder, just they want them to learn is harder.  The method has changed, not what they learn in the end.  Caitlin has improved immensely in the last 6 weeks, since I took her off the total Common Core method, and started letting her brain learn in a more sensible manner.

Along with OpenEd, I have started using PBS, and their media Math resources.  I then reinforce the videos with worksheets, discussion, games, and hands on learning.  Fridays, I evaluate how much she has retained with a test.  I can not say how much I love Flash Cards, for learning the math facts I mentioned above.  We use an app, and that makes it just that much more cool.  Cool Math, is another website, I used to use, and will be looking at it again for my daughter.

I will be looking at the Writing on PBS as well, though I love the Michael Clay Thompson series we have been using, and am already looking at purchasing it again for next year. 

NIV Living Bible and End of First Quarter Homeschool

Do you like to win things? I love to win things, though it does not happen very often. I won this beautiful NIV Kid's Living Bible, on Zonderkidz on Facebook. As a side note, I did not win because I agreed to do a blog post. After I learned I won, I offered to share the Bible here on my blog. You can visit their Facebook page, and win something too. They are giving away books very often. This will actually be a gift for my 9 yr old for Christmas. It is too young for my 13 yr old, so I am still hunting for a beautiful boy's Bible. For many years, I didn't teach from a Biblical perspective, and I still don't as far as basic subjects. But we joined a local church this past year, that has a wonderful children's program, and they have now shown more interest, so we have added Bible lessons to our school work. We have been using CK12.com for Math and Science online textbook. Today, he used Quizlet for the first time, to review and test himself. This is a website that is great to study with and use for test practice.

We are in our tenth week of school, end of the first quarter, and we are testing all week. Caitlin is basically just doing Math and Writing challenges, but DJ is testing all week on material he has learned in the first nine weeks. Below are the websites I am using to test him. I also made a writing and special History final exam. I will share those later.

http://reviewgamezone.com/game-list.php?id=27&name=Wind,%20Air%20Pressure%20and%20Atmosphere
http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/language_arts/
http://quizlet.com/4379075/middle-ages-quiz-1-flash-cards/#
http://quizlet.com/27682644/english-first-quarter-exam-eighth-grade-flash-cards/

Quizlet

Next week is the last week of our first quarter of school.  That means review and test to see what was learned and what was not.  Of course I prefer online quizzes, if possible, to save on printing ink.  I hate buying ink all the time.  While I was browsing around looking for online quizzes, to suit what I need to test on, I came across Quizlet.  I actually think I had found this site before, but it was still in development and was not working real well.  I checked it out and it is quite an awesome little site.  Not just for quizzing but for learning and studying.  I like it, and plan on using it a lot in the future.  Check it out.