ProfunDitty: The Weighty and the Commonplace in Homeschooling

Interactive Music Experience for Classical Kids

julesnpebbles — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 02:53:10 +0000

Creative Kids Central – An interactive site for music appreciation. Absolutely beautiful and fun games like making up your own opera using Hansel and Gretel. Even my 8 year old Cayden liked learning about Chamber Music by Brahms in the 1890s! There are teachers’ helps, quizzes, lesson plans that you can print out. You know I have a weakness for this stuff. :-)

Free Sheet Music and Theory Worksheets

julesnpebbles — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:14:20 +0000

Free Piano Sheet music! They offer different levels for beginner and intermediate levels with notable pieces like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Bach’s Inventions, and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. You can listen to the pieces, though they are the cheesy MIDI recordings, at least you will have an idea of what the music should play like (notes, tempo, speed, beat etc.).

They offer a really nice music theory section with worksheets, flashcards and circle of fifths sheets. There’s a section for exercises to strengthen those fingers! What a great resource! I love finding this stuff!

Great Character-building resources

julesnpebbles — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:37:02 +0000

I love Doorposts products. They have wonderful character building books, studies, stories, activities, etc. etc. I have almost everything that they sell – accumulated over the years. One of my favorite study guides is “For Instruction in Righteousness”. I’ve given away about a gazillion copies of this. They have a new blog up and are having a huge giveaway! 10 days of giveaways with one grand prize of ALL their products.

Doorposts Ten Days of Biblical Parenting Giveaway!

Church History and Korean

julesnpebbles — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 18:13:41 +0000

I wish I had found these activity pages before Reformation Day but they are way cool for any day! The Church History ABCs have coloring pages, Pin the Beard on the Theologian game, cursive writing pages and more! Thanks to mskelli for this!

Center for Church Music

My husband, Anthony is taking one of our sons to visit his grandfather in South Korea. This has piqued our interest in all things Korean and I’ve found a really neat website that has free language lessons. They call these ‘flashcards’ and you can subscribe (free!) to any one of a dozen languages. So if you’ve ever wanted to learn French or hey, how about Swedish – you can check out these flashcards!

Korean Flashcards

French-flashcards

Swedish-flashcards

Watch for another post with resources you can use to do a country study!

Preparing for Advent

julesnpebbles — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 04:29:43 +0000

I received this today from Homeschool Library Builder for those of us who want to do something for Advent but think of it at the last minute:

Each year around Dec. 2 do you find yourself lamenting that you were going to do an Advent this year but you forgot about it and with no time to get started you set the idea aside for next year…again?

Well, consider yourself REMINDED! Start this wonderful way to usher in the birth of Christ today! Get everything ready before Thanksgiving so that come the first day of Advent, NOVEMBER 28, you will be ready!
There are books and sites to go to about the Advent—find them today! HERE is one site that has lots of ideas from which to choose. (The calendar on the website is a 2008 one).

Our family has made more of an effort the last few years to be reminded of Christ’s birth! Every year, we’ve set up the Jesse Tree from Ann Voskamp. I can’t find it at the moment. Maybe the website is down. If I find the web-page, I’ll come and update it. It’s wonderful!

We’ve also read Jotham’s Journey last year and are looking forward to either reading it again or one of the other two books in the series.

How do you celebrate Advent?

Skool iz spelt F-U-N!

julesnpebbles — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 03:07:54 +0000

Ok, I’m just being silly…

My kids and I are enjoying Geography more and more lately. I’ve put a World map up in our kitchen so that we can pinpoint the location on the map as we read through the latest edition of God’s World News. Practicing our CC geography is a breeze when there’s a map ready in the kitchen. To further our practice, there are multi-level geography games by Sheppard Software.

Don’t just stop at the Geography games though! Your kids (or you!) could spend hours on this website. There are games for other subjects as well – like Brain games, Food Chain Game, SAT vocab quizzes, Comma Chameleon or Math Madness. Health, history, science, grammar – come on, you’ll have a hard time pulling your kids away from school if it’s this fun!! Definitely worth checking out!

Always on the look out for interactive and educational games on the internet, I’ve come across this simple but helpful website that helps your kids with identifying and reading music notes. Let’s just say that I’m glad it didn’t take TWO years for my boys to learn how to read books – because that’s how long it’s taking to learn how to read music!!

So you wanna be a mensa…?

julesnpebbles — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:38:46 +0000

Move over Wii, Puzzles.com to save the day! My kids scramble to waste oodles of time on the computer playing seriously mindless games. Maybe, just maybe they’ll get hooked onto games that actually take a bit of work like the ones on Puzzles.com. I used to spend hours playing logic puzzles and who knew that they’d be useful for the LSAT and other brainy activities!? Here’s a great site to look around. I’m pretty excited about this one!

Beginner Puzzles

Advanced Puzzles

Family Brainstorms

Back to School!

julesnpebbles — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:07:41 +0000

If you have a child with learning challenges, Counter-cultural School is a noteworthy blog. You will be amazed at the amount of info she’s put on here.

School has started up and your home resembles a verbal WWF ring rather than an idyllic one-room schoolhouse, listen to her great podcast called “Building Loyalty Between Siblings”. I’ve already listened to it twice and am going to take notes. I love her gentle yet firm, godly approach to sibling dynamics. Scroll way down and it’s on the right side bar. (Thanks Hannah!)

And how about an online Spelling site that your kids will be begging for? Big IQ Spelling Game is a free spelling program for kids from 4-84! Check it out! (Thanks Anne!)

How To Teach Science has neat coloring pages of the Periodic Table. How neat is that? And to further explore the elements here is another website by Ellen McHenry: Basement Workshop. (Thanks Annemarie!)

Last, but not least, saving up to buy this awesome-looking book called “The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.” Big claim, cool book!

Major List of Free Curriculum

julesnpebbles — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:10:55 +0000

Jackpot!!

Tons and tons of free curriculum and websites. Awesome!!

The Teaching Home

julesnpebbles — Tue, 04 May 2010 05:18:07 +0000

In 2001, we were living in Durham, NC for a year. My husband and I were really considering homeschooling our children (ok, let’s face it, only my husband was convinced – I was far from it!). I was really nervous about taking on this enormous responsibility and was worried about such a radically different educational approach. Enter “The Teaching Home” magazine. My friend and mentor, Beth gave me a few copies to peruse and I read all of them cover-to-cover. I was intrigued by article after article of godly advice, Christ-centered articles and challenging topics. It gave Anthony and I the comfort in knowing and forming the “why” to our home educating decision.

So, I want to highlight this website that hosts the archived articles from previous Teaching Home print editions. I am thrilled to see that they have it easy for the new homeschooler to navigate. Check out “Getting Started” for answers to your many basic homeschooling questions and concerns. They have a neat Resource Directory to enable you to find curriculum and resources that you might have heard of. Check it out for yourself and remember to browse through the 200+ free articles they have up!