Satori Smiles

Last weekend I had all Sunday to myself, so I compiled a list of favorite series offered by Discovery Education Streaming. Almost a whole year went by before we really started taking advantage of this vast resource. It is subscription-based, which makes it all the more important to utilize it if you got it!

There are several thread over at WTM regarding this service, and I took people’s favorites and put them in this list. Clicking on a series will take you to a page listing the episodes in order, as well as a short description. There are several great shows on history, math, literature, science, grammar and much more.

We’re currently using Elementary Spanish and now Satori loves The Number Crew for math! Although I limit video, I do look forward to planning our curriculum and utilizing more of these resources.

Head on over to Smrt Mama’s blog SmrtLernins.com where she is having her first ever contest! Upload a picture of what you think a homeschooler looks like in her “You Look Like a Homeschooler” contest.

I love her blog. She’s got a sense of humor and wit that I could never achieve, but I do like to enjoy by visiting her blog every week. I should actually visit more than once a week, she’s one of the few homeschool bloggers I know that blog more than I do! She’s got a picture of herself in a dunce hat, and has cute misspelled words, but make no mistake, this mama seems to be one of the most intelligent homeschool parents I know.

I splurged today.

I had recently sold an expensive camera lens (I’ve been busy selling tons of books and photography equipment to help pay for homeschooling stuff), and for months now I’ve been mulling over getting a Discovery Plus Streaming annual subscription. If you live in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, you get this for free. But if you’re not that lucky, you can still save 40% by purchasing it through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op.

Here is the main website for this, I do think they have a 30 day trial period:

Discovery Education Streaming Plus

I have heard some great things about this subscription, from great Spanish language lessons to Magic School Bus episodes. I wanted it for the science and history videos. Other people using it touted that it has tons of those, but also you can print off worksheets to go with the videos.

So after asking around to see if this is worth it, I finally took the plunge and purchased it through Homeschool Buyers Co-op. Within minutes, I was able to log-in to the site and watch videos!

Take a look at their 143 page Title List. WOW! Want to know more? Check out this great review that is posted on the Homeschool Buyers Co-op.

We immediately watched some great videos on Ancient Egypt, a story about an egyptian cat, a video on states of matter… Satori and I were enthralled. The advanced search makes it so easy to find what you’re looking for, by age, subject, media type. Some people get this hooked up to their TV, but we’re computer people anyway. When I watch it on Windows Media Player at 700 kbps, the quality is fine for me (to be honest, I was expecting horrible quality).

We’re so excited about this and it is going to be the perfect supplement to much of our curriculum – especially science, history and language!

We also have Netflix, and we do watch their Instant Movies on our TV. But the educational selection is not as vast as Discovery Education Plus.

==================

On a related note, also earlier today I checked out my local library FREE audio book service, and I’m very psyched about that too! I already checked out Treasure Island, which I’m reading aloud to my family this month. It is hard for me to read, and now I don’t have to!

I’ve uploaded our SOTW Lesson Plans on my Google Docs as public today. This is a work in progress and just helps me visualize the lessons in one handy place. Maybe this will help others too that are using Story of the World and the Activity Guide.

Also, I’ve found some great free resources! First up, a free Story of the World workbook that you can download immediately. Use this to write down narrations, illustrate drawings, keep a list of related books you’ve read, store photos of your activities, and more. It has a handy 2-day week, which you could easily extend to a 3-day week. (You’ll need to already own the Story of the World book and Activity Guide.)

The above workbook will help you build the ultimate history binder. I suppose you want a suitable cover and spine for your binder? No worries, download the free cover here or purchase one for just $1.50!

http://barefootmeandering.com/homeschool/ (Scroll down for the free covers.)

Want more to choose from? Kathy Jo has over 70 Notebook Covers for all your homeschooling needs, from History to Science to Language Arts and more.

Need some interactive quizzes? No problem thanks to Elizabeth Stapel! She’s got chapters 1-34 covered, and some great reviews.

http://www.bradenbryce.com/homeschool/

If you’re a homeschooler and want to be a free beta tester for a very awesome curriculum website, hurry and sign up now! Everyone who has checked it out is amazed at how detailed it is. There are currently 672 Pathways in Science, History, Reading/Phonics, Math, and Language Arts.

Lesson Pathways

Classical homeschoolers (like us) can pick and choose from the pathways to correspond for the appropriate lessons in history/science and such. There are fun activities, projects, learning tools, go-along books and more for each pathway, it is so thorough I cannot believe it.

For example, for their Unit on Egypt, your child will learn about King Tut, the Nile in Ancient Egypt. Activities include crafts like Crown Yourself, How Big is a Pyramid, Design a Sarcophagus, Mummy Experiment, Egyptian Death Mask. It includes links to free learning material like “The Importance of the Nile”, “Sarcophagus Images”, “Print your Name in Hieroglyphics”, Games, Videos, Books, and so much more.

I do not know how much they will charge once your free year is over, but I can already see that this site will save me weeks, perhaps MONTHS of planning time, so it will be worth it!

Check it out now! The free membership is open to Monday, August 10 at midnight only!!!

Two blog posts ago I showed a picture of our first glimpse of Walden Ponds. A salt-caked, dried up sight. We discovered this last summer, and it did have lots of water, shady trees, and a nice boardwalk to view frogs, turtles, various wildlife and tons of birds. We’ll visit again in a month or so and hopefully it will be more as we remembered. If it wasn’t for oasis like these and the mountains we live in, I would hate dried up Colorado.

Walden Ponds map

Although we didn’t visit all the ponds that day, we did see a few that actually had water. Armed with binoculars (next time we will bring stronger ones) and 4 bird books, Satori had everything she needed to identify the birds she saw. I opened it up to water fowl and shore birds and had her identify the birds themselves.

First was the Canada Geese. We see these all the time, even when we lived in Minnesota, but it was fun for Satori to actually find them in her books!

This pair was very curious and friendly with Satori.

We also saw some mallard ducks and turtles sunning themselves.

As we walked along the ponds, we met other birdwatchers and photographers. Some grandparents with their grandchildren told us they’ve visited Walden Ponds for many years, and they keep getting drier and drier. The water in the area goes to the farmers and city first.

Angela also got to chat with photographers with big cameras. I brought my 70-200mm lens which got me a closeup view of the birds, but I wish I could afford an $8500 600mm telephoto lens! I’ll just have to settle for a teleconverter or two.

Here is the mountain range you can see from Walden Ponds.

I should’ve lined this up better and taken it at f/22 or so, but here are the actual mountains behind the sign. (Again, you can see the dried up salt marsh behind the sign.)

Walden Ponds is a great place for bird-watching near Boulder, and we will be visiting many times later this spring and summer!

Satori has really been wanting to learn how to read and I’m not completely prepared for that yet! Today I learned about a great reading website – readingeggs.com. It normally costs $14.95/mo, but I joined their free 14 day trial. Satori loved it! What I liked about it, is that it focused on the lowercase letters, not many tools do that that we’ve used. Also it introduced letter sounds and words in many fun and creative ways. Below is a screenshot of our progress.

We got to step 7, and if I can remember correctly, we went over the sounds: m, s, am, t, b, and at. Simple sentences like “I am Sam” are covered. As we progressed, Satori won reading eggs, and could use them to buy games. What a fun way to learn!

We’ll be updating how this is working out. She is begging to play right now!

Due to the huge success of learning our sounds with the Letter Factory, we watched the “Talking Words Factory” tonight. Not as fun and memorable as Letter Factory, how could they top that anyway. I just asked Satori if she enjoyed the DVD, and she said yes, she can’t wait to see it again. I’ll have her watch again this week as I plan out our next FIAR book rowing.

We have 3 more DVDs from this Leapfrog series.