We had an awesome Christmas holidays!

The girls have been spending a lot of time playing with Christmas toys and games and enjoying family time now that their daddy is home from work over the holidays.

Here are some Christmas fun pics…

NyGirl enjoying this HUGE Christmas tree (not ours, by the way!)

So we tried our hands at a gingerbread house…it wasn’t too becoming   I am really not a “crafty mama” as much as I wanna be.

Chowing down on the gingerbread house…

After all the excitement of gift-giving, NyGirl decided she’d take it one day at a time with her gifts (playing with them, that is).
So by two days after Christmas she had finally gotten around to the box with the telescope in it. I can’t remember what I was doing that made me so busy, but after her constant “Mom!!!! Can you help me put this together???!!!!” she finally bounced off to our office with the telescope box and set of directions, and fifteen minutes later, returned with her telescope completely put together.
Here she is enjoying the fruit of her labors!

And finally, we couldn’t end the Christmas season without properly giving thanks to the One who came for us. Here are the girls holding our (battery-operated, of course!) candles which we lit for our family bible time the night after Christmas. We read from Luke about the virgin birth, about Jesus being born for all mankind, for our salvation. It was a wonderful family time and we enjoyed having daddy read us scripture pray with the family.

Finally, we sat in our home studio a few nights before Christmas and recorded some Christmas songs! Click on the link below to listen (be sure your browser enables popup windows).

I hope you had a joyous Christmas…and have a blessed New Year!!! — From the Techie Homeschoolers.

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All of my posts until now have been strictly about technology integrated into our home school.  Just so you know, our family does have a life outside of the realm of technology and social media…

On a more personal note, our faith is what keeps our school strong.

There are days that I ask myself why I’ve chosen to home educate my children, and I continue to answer that question when God gently reminds me of His faithfulness in leading me down this path even before my first child was ever born.  It was a prompting of interest, and then later desire that lead me to decide on home education as opposed to private or public schools.  There are many practical reasons we’ve chosen to home school as well.

I have been teaching my 7 year old at home since she was 2, and have recently begun homeschooling our newest 2 year old.  During this 5 year journey I have been tempted to select different options for her education, and have not been totally opposed to the idea of public school either.  But I continued to home school after really re-evaluating our family priorities.  After seeing the  social, emotional, and spiritual benefits in NyGirl’s life as a direct result of her being around us more as a family and having her education carefully handpicked and selected just for her needs, I don’t think I would want to have it any other way at this point.  If the day comes when we have to choose otherwise, she will be just fine in other settings and will transition well…  I KNOW there are wonderful public and private school educators out there, and I am so grateful for them.  But for now, homeschooling is the BEST option for our children.  And that is what we want essentially- all teachers and parents for their students alike.

So now that we are here, traveling down this road, I’ve also found myself attempting to decipher all the massive amount of choices available for homeschoolers in terms of curriculum and  educational style. How do I go about teaching my kids in the way that is appropriate for each of them in their unique learning styles, and in a way that I can easily adapt to my teaching style, and by using the best curriculum choices for them at the particular stage/age that they are in currently (knowing this, too, shall pass from stage to stage)?

It’s a big undertaking.

But a few things have been very helpful to me in this journey:

1. Resources to help me determine my route. I’ve sifted through tons of materials and resources at homeschool conventions, book stores, libraries, used book sales, co-op groups, online groups, etc.  While going through materials I kept in my mind that I needed to know what I was trying to achieve in my children and family.  Usually knowing this bit of info was key to helping me locate the right resources for that year.
2. Recognizing my children’s learning style. Each of my children are uniquely different and I must be adaptable to teaching things using different approaches.  I am starting to learn to think in “teacher mode” far more often.  As I’ve mentioned before, my undergrad was in Child Development, so my focus for the younger Pre-K and baby/toddler years was always to provide a nourishing and emotionally and intellectually stimulating environment where our younger kiddos always feel safe and secure and loved.  But as my oldest has gotten bigger and is now in the Big Girl stage, I’ve had to adapt my teaching style to that of a more structured approach, and have really been racing to keep up with her! Which  is good, by the way.  She is pretty flexible in how she can conceive ideas and learn content.  I can present them verbally and visually as well as kinesthetically and she does just fine.  In my book, though, I see the verbal/audio side of her peeking out more, so on that note, I’ve provided more audio books, videos, and lessons and books where I read aloud.
3. Realizing my own teaching style. Well if I must know my children’s learning style, it just goes to say that I must know my teaching style and be adaptable.  I’ve found that I’ve had to break out of my mold of too MUCh structure, and loosen up the reigns a bit to let her explore some learning on her own.  NyGirl has a capacity to learn that just blows me away…and I realize if I just show her a little bit, give her verbal directions, and trust her, she can usually take off with her and surprise me with a pretty cool end result!
4. Knowing the spiritual goals we have set for our children. This is probably the biggest of all the ideas that have helped me along my home schooling journey.  Contrary to the title of this blog, we are NOT just a tech savvy home educating family (as much as I totally digg the concept of integrating tech in schools)…but we are first and foremost a Christ-centered family with values.  We teach our children those values and all knowledge pertaining to our faith in Yeshua the Messiah – Jesus Christ.  We want our children to be aware of who they are as individuals, but they cannot function in society or know who they are unless they first have a CENTER and a FOUNDATION.  That is what our family provides them.  Learning math, grammar, social studies, science, technology, and the arts all comes secondary and ends up being a wonderful result and easily obtained and understood as a result of their security within the family unit.  I would like for their educational results academically to be strong…but I am more concerned of their spiritual status than I am of their academics.

Technology comes second.

God is first.

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Just traipsing around the net and found a really neat video educational site.
This is EXCELLENT for educators when needing that extra curriculum boost or resource that will go along with a unit you may be studying in science, history, or skills you might be building in math or language arts.

The videos are all a collection of online clips from places like YouTube, TeacherTube, and a few others.

Here’s what WatchKnow has to say about their site:

Just think: millions of great short videos, and other watchable media, explaining every topic taught in schools, in every major language on Earth.

Finally, imagine them all deeply and usefully categorized according to subject, education level, and placed in the order in which topics are typically taught.

WatchKnow—as in, “You watch, you know”—has started building this resource.

WatchKnow is both a resource for users and also a non-profit, online community that encourages everyone to collect, create, and share free, innovative, educational videos.

Check it out for yourself, and see if perhaps you could supplement some of your lessons with these educational videos.  (You can upload your own too).  It’s www.watchknow.org.

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Finally we have put together NyGirl’s power point presentation into our VoiceThread account. 

I will add, she did this project completely on her own (after a few lessons from me on how to create the Power Point slides).  She also took off on the remaining voice narrations after showing her initially how to do the first one in Voice Thread.  It was a fun project, and I think we’ll be doing a good bit more of these kinds of online presentations for our upcoming lessons.

Take a look (and don’t forget to press the play button):

Enjoy!

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We are still studying the solar system, and NyGirl has been enjoying some fun computer projects to show what she’s been learning.

Here is an image she created using Tux Paint.

In case you haven’t checked out Tux Paint, you might want to consider downloading this free computer art tool for kids.

Here’s a small excerpt from their site about what their software does:

Tux Paint is a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program.

I have had a blast using this with my daughter.  I may have to create a video  showing some of its features and how we’ve used it in our school.

This solar system project is really coming together with all of the online tools we are finding to help solidify her knowledge of each planet.  In my next post, I’ll attempt to show how we create a slideshow in VoiceThread using the Power Point we created on planets.

Until then…

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Voicethread is an excellent tool I just found online, as I’ve stated in one of my last posts…I plan to use it for NyGirl’s study on the Solar System to help her present her work.

Here’s a video on the VoiceThread website which shows what it does: http://voicethread.com/#home.b409.i848804

Essentially, you can upload documents or images your student has created (or that you the teacher have created) into a sort of slideshow, and create a voiceover narration for each slide. Then others comment on your slides and documents either by voice or text.

I am so excited that I want to create my first VoiceThread right now, but I am waiting until NyGirl has created most of her slides on the planets in Power Point first. The cool thing about VoiceThread is that it accepts different formats of uploads, or you can find images through the New York Public Library (integrated already in the system).
The possibilities are endless for educators. We can have our students use it for online projects, helping them to develop presentations that get “reviewed” worldwide. We can use them as teacher-to-teacher education, creating content that teaches others how to do things…or we can create materials online for older students to learn as well.

I am definitely looking forward to seeing how we integrate this special tool into our studies.

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In one of my earlier posts I talked about finding safe internet browsers for children.

Well…found one!

Check out Zoodles (this is especially created for the young student in mind).
When you sign up, you are given the option to be able to create your own parent dashboard which displays preferences for your child’s age, activities and suggestions geared toward your student. etc. You can also block ads and gain insight into what kinds of games your kids are playing that help with development in certain skills. But there is a fee for the extra service after the free trial.
So if you want, you can just sign up for the free browser and be done…which is what I did.

Basically, you need to sign up for a free account and then click on the download button and you’re set to go.

———
Well, I’ve just downloaded the software, thinking that what I had was an internet browser. But unless I am mistaken, it seems to be nothing more than a set of computer games which I have access to through a separate browser I’ve installed.
I think the games are VERY educational and I will be using them for my kids…BUT…I actually thought I was downloading a safe internet browser for kids, something similar to Firefox or Explorer. Not the case at all.

Regardless, I like the Zoodles web site and will be using it quite often to supplement lessons.

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NyGirl has really been interested in planets lately. We have a full unit covering the solar system in her Houghton Mifflin science book…but it is very limited when it comes to techie ideas (though the book offers a supplemental website with additional quizzes and games that accompany the unit).

So I decided to create our own unit.  I thought about lapbooking and then scanning in the images to create a slideshow…until i found VoiceThread.  So instead, I ended up creating our own Solar System unit in which NyGirl will create a complete Power Point presentation to upload and narrate via VoiceThread.  In the process, she is getting some typing practice (we use Sense-Lang.org for typing lessons), and a general overview on how to use presentation software and become familiar with computer icons, commands, and tasks.
So far I have taught her how to select slide templates and styles, add slides, add transitions and effects, change fonts, and add clip art.  The easiest part was typing  the information in for the planet Mercury.

This is going to be a fun project, I can already tell.

The thing is, once younger students are introduced to the concepts of productivity and presentation software, they can run with it and leave us in the dust.  I think it’s hilarious when some educators scoff at the idea of showing children in the lower elementary years how to use these types of software.  It’s perfectly do-able and absolutely equips them with ways to express their ideas and thoughts, making school projects all the more fun for them.

Anyway…I’ll be posting more updates on this project and the completed project at my VoiceThread account once it is finalized.

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