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| Education Through Imagination Newsletter
______________________________ Vol 1, No. 6 - September 15, 2005 www.TriggerMemorySystem.com mailto: webmaster@triggermemorysystem.com Copyright 2004 Times Tales All Rights Reserved ______________________________ IN THIS ISSUE: -- "Welcome" -- The Old Schoolhouse Magazine -- Memory Tip of The Month - Memorize the Planets in 5 Minutes or Less! --A Pre-Reading Activity -- Keeping Little Ones Busy --What's New? ____________________________________________ Welcome Readers! I'm guessing that most of you are either back-to-school or quickly readying yourselves to do so. We started after Labor Day and so far, so good. The children are enjoying themselves and I try to remind myself to add some FUN to our school-time. I started off the year by standing before my three and saying, "Good morning, class!" in a sing-song voice. My oldest grinned and countered with, "Good morning, Mrs. Wood". It has turned into a daily ritual and they all respond in unison. In fact, I tried to skip it yesterday and my three year old said, "What about the Mrs. Wood, thing?" I tend to be serious and chart-driven and often need little reminders to keep the "home" in my "homeschooling". I love that they enjoy our time together and want to keep it that way. Dena @ www.TimesTales.com ญญญญญญญญญญญญญญญญ______________________________________________ The Old Schoolhouse Magazine http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com The website of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine is one you definitely MUST check out. It offers a multitude of resources from literally hundreds of product reviews to articles, homeschooling support and news and just plain old fun! Our church recently hosted a ladies night and I read The Hag, The Ogre, and The Chocolate Cake http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com/how_to_homeschool/articles.php?aid=69 to kick things off. We were howling with laughter before we even got started on the program! If you are interested in subscribing, the magazine is currently running an excellent special where you will receive 19 FREE gifts with a new two year subscription (good for the first 5,000 subscribers). I subscribed last time they ran the promotion and, being the skeptic I am, fully expected to receive a mailbox full of samples. I was pleasantly surprised to get many full-size products including a Draw-Write-Now book, Little Annie's Art Book of Manners, full sized novels, a puzzle and lots of other goodies. The items are different with this promotion but you can find a listing of what you'll receive here http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com/subscribe/promo_subscribe.php A few items subscribers will receive this time are; a $10 CBD gift certificate, a Sue Gregg sampler CD and cookbook, BJU Press Activity Book, Critical Thinking $6 gift certificate and lots more. Subscribe online or call 1-888-718-HOME. Be sure to check out the site and bookmark it as a valuable homeschooling resource even if you're not in need of a subscription at the moment. ______________________________________________ Memory Tip of The Month By Jennie vonEggers In order to remember the correct order of the planets in our solar system, just remember the following sentence. Mary's Very Easy Method: Just Set Up Nine Planets. Mary's- Mercury Very-Venus Easy-Earth Method-Mars Just-Jupiter Set-Saturn Up-Uranus Nine-Neptune Planets-Pluto Encourage your children to make up their own acronyms for other lists they are trying to memorize. _______________________________________________ Pre-Reading Activity By Dena Wood Quite often I struggle to find a "school" activity to keep my little guy busy while I work with the older children. I realize this tends to be a common thread among homeschooling Mom's everywhere! I thought I'd share one quick and easy idea that's usually good for at least a few minutes of uninterrupted time. When they are first learning their letters, I give the child a section of newspaper and have them circle all the B's or C's or, whatever. You can adapt it to capitals, lower case, etc. You can have them guess how many they'll find in an article and compare the estimation to the actual count. You can have them make tally marks for each letter found. You can even have them circle one letter first, then another letter, using a different color. Precede this by having them guess which letter they'll find more of and finish by seeing if they are correct. These are truly simple acitivites that my kids enjoyed. ______________________________________________ Keeping Little Ones Busy By Dena Wood A great site for all kinds of constructive pre-school activities is Paula's Archives. http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/preschool_activities.htm Paula shares a HUGE list of ideas along with instructions for making activity bags and also websites to find projects, coloring pages, for our little ones. You'll want to add this one to your "favorites" list. I've also found it helpful to keep many of our toys in the schoolroom (or any area out of the children's bedrooms) in separate plastic tubs. We have tubs for puzzles, Legos, Lincoln Logs, Zoobs, Tinker Toys, toy trains etc. It seems to work fairly well if I offer one box a day for my pre-schooler to play with. It also helps cut down on the mess and frustration inherrent with those types of toys. :0) Another idea that works well, if you have three or more children you are working with is the "Divide and Conquer" approach. My eight year old is eager and willing to teach my three year old. I have a tub of pre-school workbooks, letter and color flashcards, sorting items, etc. that she can pull from to work with him. This will often give me the 30 minutes I need to get through a phonics lesson with my six year old. ________________________________________________ Creative History By Jennie von Eggers Make History Hands-On & Fun with Legos, Army Men and Art! History is one of those subjects that people seem to either love or dislike. Unfortunately, when I was in school, I happen to be less enthused about history. Now that I am all grown up and teaching my own children, I have found that my attitude towards learning this subject has taken a turn for the better. Since I retained almost nothing from my years of "learning" history in school, I am excited to learn this subject all over again, the right way! What is the "right way"? Well, it is simply learning with an eager and open heart. The best way to motivate the desire to learn a subject (this case History) is to communicate the information in a way that speaks to your child's natural learning style. If you don't know what your child's learning style is, just look at what kind of child's play he or she can do for long periods of time. Does your child love to build with Legos or draw for hours? Figuring out what they love to do in "play" is a great indicator of their own special gateway to learning. The following are some ideas on how to turn History into a kid friendly, hands-on experience that will stick in their long term memory. I encourage you to think out-of-the-box and come up with your own creative History plan tailored made to your child's personal learning style. Visit us at www.CreativeHomeschooling.com and scroll down the main page to read more Creative Learning Tips for writing, spelling and reading! Artistic History -For the child that loves to draw! This way of teaching involves mom (or an older sibling) reading the history text or story out loud while the student draws the history story he or she is hearing about. They can either draw a time line, a cartoon sketch of the events that unfold, maps or the characters involved. Be sure to have them write what the pictures are about, the names of the people, or the setting. when you are done reading, discuss their drawings and make suggestions on things they may have left out. What's great about this method is that you can teach History all year long this way . Drama History- For the imaginative child that loves to role play! Act out the history lesson! This exercise is especially fun when you get several children involved. Have them act out a short dramatization of that days history lesson. Building History - For the child that loves to build and organize! For this exercise the child builds a mini geographic scale of the historic event that is covered for that day. They can use things like legos, blocks or popsicle sticks for the setting and miniature figurines such as army men or McDonald Toys for the people. Any important "props" needed can be things around the house or toys as well. Visit www.CreativeHomeschooling.com to read a example of how a child might Build History with Legos when covering the main events of the Civil War. ________________________________________________ What's New? What's new at Trigger Memory Systems this month? We are excited to have added several new products recently, including very cool blank game boards and blank books to be used for all kinds of creative endeavors. We should have the book Grocery Cart Math on the site soon, so keep your eye out for that. We are also finishing up our first unit study on Old-Time Toys that was created to go with our Limberjack folk toy, currently available on the site. You can check out all our goodies at http://www.triggermemorysystem.com/Products.html Oh! Our local third grade teacher (yes, we only have one!) heard about Times Tales and asked to come over and look at it. She preferred it over the program she was currently using and is now using it in her classroom. She even made big posters to decorate with and we gave her the display characters Jennie had made for the last convention. My daughter thinks it's pretty neat that all the kids in town will be learning multiplication the same way she did! (And so do we!) If you have a friend who would like to subscribe to our Education through Imagination Newsletter they can find subscription boxes at the follwing sites: www.TimesTales.com www.TriggerMemorySystem.com www.CreativeHomeschooling.com Have a wonderful school year! Blessings, The Times Tales Crew Dena, Jennie & Marillee |
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