Typing Software Choices from Sprysoft

November 22nd, 2006

I’ve said it here before - of all the things I learned going to public school, the two I appreciate the most now are reading music and typing. Here are all the software offerings from Sprysoft for learning typing. By the way, if you’re wondering about the “licensing” mentioned with each of the products, be assured that all you need as a single homeschool family is a “single.” This means it’s licensed for a single use. On the other hand, if you’re planning to share it with a homeschool group of 10 families, you really need to get the version that’s licensed for ten uses and split the cost.

Oh, yeah, have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING! (But, don’t eat too much!)

Online 3D Stereogram Generator

November 21st, 2006

Do you know what a “stereogram” is? It’s one of those neat “Magic Eye” pictures, where you have to mess with your eyes just right in order to see the hidden image. At this Online 3D Stereogram Generator, you can type in a word and it will generate one of these pictures for you. You’ll be able to see the word in stereo.

Calling it a “stereogram” has been reassuring to me. I love them - they’re almost like stepping into another dimension or looking into another world. So much so that they can seem a little frightening. Never fear, though. It’s just a trick of the eyes.

Thanksgiving Stuff from Activity Village

November 21st, 2006

Once again, the plastic trees, lights, and Santa’s are decorating our town before we’ve even bought our turkeys and cranberry sauce. In our town, Christmas lights go up as soon as Halloween lights go down. I really hate skipping Thanksgiving!

The stores try to turn Thanksgiving into a spending thing like the others, but it’s hard to be covetous and thankful at the same time.

Anyway, here’s a link to some Thanksgiving activities and printables for your little kids. These are courtesy of ActivityVillage.co.uk, a nice educational site I ran across recently.

Thanksgiving Pages from Story It

November 17th, 2006

Story It is a website that features help for kids learning to write. You’ll find free worksheets you can use with your children, along with other goodies. In the seasonal section are some nice things you might like to use for Thanksgiving. For instance, at this page, you’ll find a Thanksgiving border sheet. The neat thing is that you can backspace over the words in the middle and have your kids type in their own original poem, favorite verses, or whatever. Then you can print it off, have the kids color it, and use it for a placemat. (Be sure to choose “portrait” in your print preferences.) Grandma and Grandpa would love one of these!

music lesson plans, resources. and links

November 16th, 2006

Found this page of links to music lesson plans. You have to scroll down past a bunch of advertisement links first. There’s something for everyone here, and they all have to do with music. Didn’t the ancient Greeks consider music part of the basic requirements for an educated person, along with math and rhetoric? (Sorry - history’s not my thing!)

Need to Lose Weight?

November 15th, 2006

I know my timing stinks. Just in time for the holidays, here’s a FreeDietTracker.PDF . It’s a printable form for keeping track of diet and exercise. If you’d rather have more help tracking what you eat and how many calories you burn, check out SparkPeople, a huge online community centered on losing weight and getting healthier.

I can’t find anywhere that you have to be a certain age to join SparkPeople. The resources include a fantastic assortment of articles and exercises, and it’s all free. There are thousands of “teams” you can join so that you can interact via message board with other people facing the same sorts of challenges or having the same kinds of interests. (Including homeschoolers!)

While this might not technically fall under the category of education, there’s a lot here to help you teach home ec, health, and P.E. And yes, I know it’s almost the holidays. But New Year’s Resolutions are right around the corner! Get a jump on them today.

Family Togetherness and Technology

November 14th, 2006

Here’s a Yahoo! - Press Release that looks at how modern tech-savvy families attempt to stay connected. Yes, we have lots to do, and none of us wants to give up our time on the computer or Playstation. Still, technology can help us stay in touch. It also helps us multi-task and plan our days, so that we can spend more time together as a family.

Of course, we homeschoolers are somewhat ahead of the game, since we’re together through the school day. The trick is to use our tech gadgets as tools to save time for more important matters, instead of letting them take up our time. It’s about efficiency and not just entertainment, in other words.

For instance, mobile phones and instant messaging helps families keep on top of what is going on whenever we are called different directions. Email and instant messaging are particularly nice when the older ones fly the coop. Vacations or international youth trips are another time it’s nice to be able to communicate electronically.

The Yahoo article looks at Asian families as well as American ones. Asian parents were more likely to be concerned that their kids were not getting enough exercise because of their electronic entertainment. Perhaps we Westerners would be wise to pay a little more attention to this concern. It grieves me to see so many fat kids. Being overweight is such a hard load to carry, and it’s got to be really difficult for teens and children, especially if they are in a peer group that teases them.

Another way technology works into the lives of families with kids is through educational television. Many of the parents interviewed felt that educational TV had helped their kids with their education. It’s certainly not a complete education, but it seems to me like a selective offering of the best of public TV can certainly complement a homeschool curriculum.

Another finding in this study was that the Internet has become the number one source of information about many things, although TV is still tops for the news. I love being able to get the weather report any time I want it by just clicking on weather.com.

All this is kind of funny in a way, because our family has been homeschooling for a looooong time. In fact, when we started, we chose not to even own a television set because most of what would be on was not worth watching. We didn’t have a computer because, well, they were too expensive and most normal people didn’t have them yet. I think we had a little electronic game the kids could practice math facts on, and that was about the limit of our technology. We didn’t even have a CD player!

When my mom passed away, we inherited her TV and VCR, and movies became a favorite family activity. Educational, family oriented movies, that is. We still don’t watch network TV or have cable or satellite. Being away from the mainstream of communications helps, because we really can’t pick up television stations, and we don’t miss it.

And so what am I rambling on about anyway? Well, just this. Having techy stuff in your house doesn’t have to interfere with your family life. In fact, watching DVD’s can make a neat family night paired with a little microwave popcorn. Just be sure to take time to talk about what you watch. Not a “lesson.” Just conversation. And laughter.

I like the new way, frankly.

YUCK! Priced from $19.95

November 13th, 2006

Was perusing the science website of Steve Spangler, and just had to click on the link called YUCK! Priced from $19.95. Well, he’s got lots of neat experiments listed on his site, so you can have your yuck for a lot less, if you scrounge around the house for materials. (Which, of course, is the true homeschool way!)

World AIDS Day 2006

November 10th, 2006

World AIDS Day 2006
is December 1st. This link will take you to the website of World Vision where you can learn about the impact of AIDS on children around the world and what you can do to help.

Comment on Making Word Find Puzzles

November 9th, 2006

I got this nice comment from David Millar, and wanted to repeat it here where you all can see it. Thanks, Dave.

I use spreadsheet applications to design a lot of the puzzles on my website, www.thegriddle.net. I actually found this site while doing homework for my MS Excel class and had an idea. If you are using the puzzle for multiple children, there is a way to make the puzzle appear randomly generated when in fact it has the same positioning as the other puzzles. With this method there is a chance that the random letters could actually form one of the target words, but it’s unlikely with longer words. All you need to do is fill the grid with the function:

=CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(65;90))

Which will generate random letters (all caps) in the grid. Then replace the squares with ‘hard-coded’ letters where you want your answers to be, and voila, seemingly random grids! I hope this is helpful to someone, somewhere :)

Dave

PS: I did this in OpenOffice, but if you change the semicolon to a comma it will probably work in MS Excel as well. And did you know that Google has a spreadhseet application too? http://docs.google.com

Christmas Essay Contest Info

November 8th, 2006

Do you have kids who write better when there is some competition involved? Click on International Online Christmas Essay Contest for Students, Including Homeschoolers, to Gain Chance to Win Nintendo Wii to learn the details about this exciting essay contest.