All About Spelling giveaway

The folks over at Freely Educate are sponsoring a giveaway contest for the fabulous, IMHO, All About Spelling curriculum!!

Followers of the blog know that we seek out  multisensory and multiple intelligence strategies in our homeschooling approach.

Like many folks, we've had severe cutbacks in our income these past couple of years so we've been unable to purchase pre-packaged curricula and have been using lots of other spelling resources, but this one has been on the top of my wish list for some time.

The website at All About Spelling has a huge offering of FREE ARTICLES AND RESOURCES to offer home educators as well, including tips and spelling lists.  We've made great use of those free resources.  It also completed changed my perspective on "invented spelling."

Like this reviewer from Treasure Seekers, I too benefited greatly from phonics instruction as an elementary student and like this same systematic phonetics-based approach to spelling from All About Spelling.

You can get more insight about how one home educator has been using All About Spelling. You'll love her cool tricks for using free paint chips to teach spelling along with the All About Spelling board!!

Multisensory lessons for Math Education and learning Fact Families

Fact families are numbers that are related. For example: 3, 5, and 8 form a fact family because they are related through addition and subtraction. There are four sentences or "facts" that go with these related numbers: 3+5=8; 5+3=8; 8-3=5; 8-5=3

Here are some ideas for learning addition fact families with games and manipulatives.   

• Use giggle facts learning manipulatives (pictured)
• Play online game for practicing a range of fact families
• Make hexagon cards for practicing a range of fact families
• Build fact family houses (or ones with windows) for practicing a range of fact families
• Use dominoes to practice fact families
• Use stuffed animals to arrange fact families
• Use gym equipment and relay race to collect objects equalling designated sum

Specific fact family "partners". I like to work with all the fact families of one sum at one time. ( E.g. all the fact families with 3 as a sum are these: 0+3=3, 1+2=3, 2+1=3, 3+0=3, 3-0=3, 3-1=2, 3-2=1)

Here are games that focus on the pairs of numbers that equal one constant sum: 

• 0 through 12 fact families - Domino parking lot
• 10 fact families - block ten solitaire or tens solitaire (or solitaire pyramid modified where cards equal ten instead of thirteen. All face cards equal ten.)
• 12 fact families - Dividing two different types of objects in different ways into the spaces in a dozen-sized egg carton, e.g. 2 candy corn + 10 jelly beans = full carton (12)
• 13 fact families - solitaire pyramid 
• 14 fact families - re-arranging balls (can be used for fact families of any sum)
• 5 to 18 fact families - uses "partner pair" tubs

Personal note of caution: I would avoid using many of the fact "family" descriptions suggested. Many of the explanations I have seen describe the fact families as having a daddy (big number), mother (medium number) and baby (small number) with the daddy always going first or last in the equation to protect the family. This would seem to me to be a potentially emotionally charged situation and learning barrier for children whose family does not fit this pattern. Children of single parents, living with grandparents or guardians, with gay or lesbian parents, children with mother and disabled father, etc.

Free K-12 Life Science lesson plans

One of the MSU grad students from the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology referred me to this K-12 Life Science project from Oregon State University.  Thanks, Shannon!

There are lesson plans here for a variety of ages on these topics below.  I was impressed how the lessons integrated multiple intelligences and multiple subjects in the science experiments.

Free and low-cost resources for Unit Studies

Resources recently mentioned on my UU homeschool listserve:

Living Math! - offers resources for teaching math naturally and integrating math and history in the unit studies

Intelligo - offers thematic lessons that integrate math, science, language arts, etc. within the topic of interest

National Geographic Kids - Free games and activities and studies about people and places

More curriculum for multiple intelligences

I continue to be amazed at the number of curriculum resources for homeschool (or other purposes) that are focused on Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.

These types of curricula provide multiple ways of learning and using information to address a variety of learning styles and personalities.

I'm really intrigued by the Intellego curriculum resources. It looks like they are building an impressive array of unit studies to interest many different types of kids. Each unit includes art, writing, math, reading, etc. Check it out!