Tip Tuesday- on Wednesday.

Sorry all. I am so busy right now. Please pray for me as I am really quite stressed out. I am having to do this blog at 6am after having gotten up at 5am, just so I'd have time to get a shower in. Oh well, I am thankful for the busy-ness though as it means my business is going well. The plaster project is still sitting in my draft folder, but it wants out very badly so please be a little more patient with that one.
On to today's matters...
Today I share with you the secret of my homeschooling success!

THE NARRATIVE FORM!


This is a generic form that you can use for any subject. There are two here to choose from with the only difference being the amount of lines and line spacing.You can use it for big kids or little. They can write it themselves or dictate to you.
If they are dictating and you are writing, I would use the form with more lines as someone else doing doing the actual physical part of the writing tends to free up their tongue and imagination a bit and many, many words flow sometimes. The most important (and fun in my opinion) is the drawing section. My boys have a whole ancient history book they have made themselves using these forms and narrating from The Story of the World.
To print these, just click on the image. A bigger version will show on your screen. Click on file at the top of your screen. Make sure to click on print preview to make sure you will get what you really want. You may have to scale down the image to make it fit all on one paper.
Right now we are using these to do chapter summaries of The Golden Goblet. My ten year old actually types his on the computer in Word and then once it is printed out he draws a picture. Many times the best thing is to have the kids draw the picture first and then write about it. A picture is worth a thousand words after all!


For Website Wednesday these are my offerings for you today.


Drawing Now-
Here you will find little step by step videos of how to draw many, many things. This link will take you right to the knight tutorial, but at the top of the screen you will see the tabs for many more options. My only hesitation in recommending this site is that the advertising on the site may not be your cup of tea and you may not want your child clicking on some of the links provided. My suggestion is to sit next to your child while they do these drawings or remain quite near where you can always see the screen too. The drawings range from detailed and complicated to very simple and recognizable cartoon characters including many Anime and Mange styles.( Just to be clear though, I am not a fan of these styles though my daughter is.)

Wild Weather Adventure!
This is a fun game all about weather. Each child gets their own weather drone and they must navigate through all sorts of weather by answering questions correctly. You can adjust the difficultly levels of the questions.

And a shameless plug, my Chagall lesson is also up over at KinderArt. Of course the authors over there have added much more to it in the form of info about Marc Chagall and the painting the lesson is based on. It is actually one of the features lessons in the slide show on their homepage!