Author Archives: Adriana Zoder

Jan 23 2015

Teaching Mathematics At The Primary Level

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As homeschooling moms, we have favorite subjects we prefer to teach. Here’s an idea: if you really like a subject, you could totally extend the fun by getting an online degree yourself. Let’s take mathematics, for instance.

Mathematics are a core skill that everyone going through primary school will learn. It is fundamental to surviving in our modern world. Not only are mathematics useful, but the logical problem solving abilities that are gained by being able to process mathematics will resurface again and again. Teaching these skills effectively to young minds, then, is a task of critical importance.

There are methods and ways to improve the effectiveness of any teaching technique and of course gaining additional education is a huge help. By finishing a master of science in mathematics online one can be armed with exceptional analytical skills that are essential for teaching. Below are some tips on forming young minds in the area of mathematics.

 

Learn through Play

This is an effective method of teaching younger children and for creating an interest in mathematics basics. Using games, toys and other fun activities to incorporate fundamentals is a great way to lay down the foundations for more advanced concepts that will be taught later in life. Since a game is made of learning, the children are more receptive to learning and their attention can be kept for longer periods of time.

 

Activity Based Learning
While related to learning through play, activity based learning is usually geared towards an older student. In activity based learning, the students are engaged but the emphasis is more on learning and less on fun and games. Problems to solve and other mathematics based activities engage the student. Many of the same benefits exist, but usually more complex concepts can be introduced than through simple games. This would be the next step from a Learn through Play method of teaching.

 

Continuing Education

As with any profession, continuing education will serve to make you more proficient in your occupation. Our career is homeschooling our children. We should look at it in as professional a manner as possible. As with any master’s degree, a master of science in mathematics will allow you to narrow your field of study or delve into the specifics of your interests. The result is a better qualified individual with several areas of specialist expertise better qualifying you for your career as a primary school mathematics teacher. Getting this degree online is convenient.

These few tricks can only aid in your career of forming young minds in the ways of mathematics. Follow them if you are a dedicated homeschooling mom, a.k.a. a teaching professional who sets high educational standards and teaching etiquette.

Jan 22 2015

Thoughtful Thursday Week 4 – Guest Posting

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My word for 2015 is Less, so, this week, I will not post a long Thoughtful Thursday essay. Instead, I will give you links to guest posts I wrote for other blogs.

Thoughtful Thursday Week 4 - Guest Posting

They are as follows:

  • a post about how my children mix Romanian, French and English words in day-to-day life; the post is in Romanian for a Romanian blog called Despre Sufletul Meu. The title (translated into English) is Modern Education. Homeschooling is not legal in Romania and this dear blogger desired to introduce her readers to homeschooling and its many advantages.
  • a post about Multilingual Homeschooling through Books and Music over at Trilingual Mama, a blog written by my friend Maria, who speaks English, Spanish and French and lives in France.

I hope you enjoy the reading.

Jan 21 2015

Science in the Ancient World Review

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Berean Builders Publishing, Inc. produced Science in the Ancient World by Dr. Jay Wile. It is my privilege to write a review about this elementary science curriculum.

First off, this science curriculum is written by a scientist who is a Christian and believes in Creation, not evolution. Secondly, this curriculum can be used with multiple students on different levels. The review questions are written for three different types of students, from more mature to the youngest ones. As such, this curriculum keeps the family learning together and it exposes the young ones to vocabulary while challenging the older ones to grasp scientific concepts on their grade level.

science in the ancient world

Last summer, I attended a seminar by Dr. Wile regarding the teaching of science in grades K-6. In short, Dr. Wile gave parents permission to skip science and focus on math in these early grades. Why? Because science is all around us and math is the foundation of later studies in science.

Young children will ask questions about animals and plants, stars and planets. If you take them to the library and find books to answer those questions, you have just done science. Nature walks are another way to do science in the early elementary grades, of course. And if your budding scientist keeps a nature journal, that’s all the science you need in grades K-6.  Continue reading »

Jan 15 2015

Thoughtful Thursday Week 3 – Start Creating

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We have been talking about how to stop learning and start thinking. The next step is to start creating. Because in the process of thinking you open yourself up to the Universe or to God, depending on your belief system, creativity comes naturally.

Oscar-nominated composer Pharrell Williams shares with Oprah that he creates his music either in the shower (think sensory deprivation) or in the moment when he’s got no more ideas. In the case of his song Happy, Pharrell reached the point where he had tried everything and the movies executives still did not approve.

To be exact, Pharrell took eight different songs to those who hired him to do the soundtrack for Despicable Me 2. They pushed him to try again by saying, “Close, but that’s not it.”

Thoughtful Thursday Week 3 - Start Creating

Did Pharrell give up? Did he tell them to get another guy? Did he start thinking negatively? Continue reading »

Jan 14 2015

60 Ideas for Arts and Crafts

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Many people use “I’m not a teacher” as an excuse for not homeschooling. It’s a mentality they grew up with. I did too. I understand. I got out of it when I felt called to homeschool my children, slowly but surely.

The Industrial Age has turned all of us into specialized professionals along the assembly lines of the world. Each of us has been instructed to take care of only one job and so we go through life assuming teachers teach, bakers bake, pilots fly planes and architects design.

60Ideas

In fact, you CAN teach your child. You can! It’s as simple as picking up a teacher’s manual and reading the lesson the night before. In this post, I am illustrating the point by giving you 60 ideas for arts and crafts. I’m no artist. My kids can draw better than I can. But I teach them art with the right tools.

Even if you yourself are not that great at art you can teach your children art. To teach means to educate. And “educate” come from the Latin word “educare,” which means “leading out, taking somebody from here to there, guiding.” So you can guide your children through the process of discovering art. Take my case: I am not an artist, but I appreciate art. And, I discovered, it does not take much to expose my children to arts and crafts.

Here is a list of 60 arts and crafts you can do with your children:

1. Visit your local Museum of Art. For us, it’s Arrowmont in Gatlinburg and the Knoxville Museum of Art.

2. Visit your local children’s museum. The closest one to us is in Oak Ridge and we have not been yet. I have only heard good things about it, but it’s just been a little out of the way for us.

3. Visit your local science and technology center. Check this list out to locate one near you. They are bound to have craft tables, among all those scientific projects. If you travel, it would make sense to invest in a membership. That way, you can visit everywhere for free. We got a membership at The Muse in Knoxville and have already visited another science center for free (the Discovery Center in Charlotte, NC). That’s what you can do any time you travel.

4. Visit your local natural science museum. They usually have programs and tours for children which end up with a craft. We go to McClung in Knoxville for their free stroller tours.

5. Visit your local artisan shops. Sometimes they have artist at work demonstrations. Exposing the children to the creating process inspires them. We go to the Arts and Crafts community on Glades Road in Gatlinburg – 120+ shops to explore.

6. Visit the National Gallery of Art website for kids and virtual shop. You will gain four things: knowledge, inspiration, ideas, and pretty things to share with friends and family.  Continue reading »

Jan 12 2015

My Father Passed Away

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It’s the dawn of the third day after it happened and I finally reached the stage of tears and sorrow in my mourning, after shock and denial. I live on Romanian time, which is EST +7, which means I sleep for a couple of hours and I wake up in the middle of my American night. I talk to my sister who is there, in Romania, preparing the details for the funeral service. It’s mid-morning for her and she is running around with her husband, taking care of details one never wants to think about.

In short, I can’t make it there in time. My kids don’t have passports and my husband and I have nobody to leave them with for a week or so. I do not want to travel by myself and mourn on the shoulders of strangers on three different flights. Besides, Charlie Hebdo just happened and the US State Department issued a warning against international traveling.

So I mourn from a distance. My husband stands by me and I have finally reached out to a few friends and told them. Everybody is very supportive and sympathetic. Once I put it on Facebook and people started comforting me, I felt the power of everybody’s prayers.

Adrian Timsa

Adrian Timsa (August 27, 1948 – January 10, 2015)

I have not told my children yet. They are so small and lost another grandparent one year ago, almost to the day. I wrote here about homeschooling through tragedy. Death became real to them and I want to put them back into the time of their innocence again. The time when they lived without knowing about death.

I keep the schedule intact. We stay very busy during the day. I do my crying at night. It’s impossible to forget during the day though, even if I wanted to. Two huge flower arrangements in the living room remind me that something different is going on.

My kids never met my father. They spoke to him on the phone. I sent him pictures of them. I showed them pictures of him. My son played his violin for my dad, over the phone.

When I finally tell them he passed, my daughter says nonchalantly that we will see him in heaven. My son, tears in his eyes, gives me a hug and tells me he is very sorry for me. I have great kids. Continue reading »

Jan 8 2015

Thoughtful Thursday Week 2 – Start Thinking

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There is a time for everything: a time to think. It would help if you stopped learning, as I explained in my previous Thoughtful Thursday post. [tweetthis]Cogito ergo sum, right? I think, therefore, I am.[/tweetthis] If I stop thinking, I have ceased to exist.

The man who came up with that phrase was René Descartes, a French mathematician and philosopher. This phrase became a cornerstone of Western philosophy.

Thoughtful Thursday Week 2

In the context of homeschooling, how do you stop learning and start thinking? Well, how about not following the textbook to the teeth? How about using our minds to assess if our children are too bored or too intimidated by a particular curriculum? Thinking, in this case, is scary. What if you have to change curriculum mid-semester? Was that a waste of your money?  Continue reading »

Jan 7 2015

Wonderful Wednesday – Powder Days

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My son and I are taking ski lessons this year. Ober Gatlinburg offers a special program to homeschoolers in January and February. The age minimum is seven.

My son and I during our first ski lesson

My son and I during our first ski lesson

Oh, the lessons we learned as we went to our first lessons last Sunday! In no particular order, we learned how to:

  • pick up skis, poles, and helmets
  • rent a locker for our own boots
  • return said rentals
  • “park” said rentals so we could go have lunch
  • fall the right way
  • get up the right way
  • get into skis the right way
  • turn left and right
  • stop on a bunny hill
  • come to a stop on an intermediate hill
  • get back up a hill when there is no chair lift
  • persevere through the fear and discouragement
  • stop laughing at people who fall
  • help those who ask for help
  • make a phone call without cell signal

I can’t say enough about this first powder day. The fears we faced and overcame probably rank highest on my list of accomplishments so far this year. Many thanks to my son who was my  teacher in the subject of Perseverance. At seven, he knows how to persevere. He kept falling and could not even get back up. He got so tangled in his skis and poles, the teacher had to walk over to help him many times. And he got up. Again, and again, and again.  Continue reading »

Jan 4 2015

Story of the World, Vol. 1, Chapter 9

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The First Cities of India was a delightful chapter. We listened to it in the car on the way to an appointment. The kids were intrigued by the story of the quail. A week later, I played the chapter again on another trip.

They colored their maps. I chose not to have them color the ceremonial mask. It looks a little scary.

Map Work SOTW

My daughter with her mapwork for Ancient India

My daughter colored the picture of the statue from Mohenjo-Daro, but my son did not. I am beginning to see a pattern here. I really don’t like to enforce coloring for a boy who is into drawing more than coloring. So I let it go.

We made little bricks out of air-drying clay and let them dry overnight.

Rolled Out Clay

Rolled Out Clay

Because I did not press their corners down, the bricks dried up with one or two corners tipped up, which made them unstackable. Oh well… I guess we can recycle them into math manipulatives.

Air-Dry Clay Bricks

Air-Dry Clay Bricks

But I have to say, this project would have been daunting, requiring a lot of patience. The bricks are really thin and it would take a lot of them to build a whole village. Just my $.02.

Air-Dry Clay

Air-Dry Clay

We enjoy our history lessons, but other things get in the way. We will have to catch up in the next semester. But if the next semester happens to be just as busy as this one, we will have to finish our history curriculum during the summer. We homeschool year round anyway.

Jan 2 2015

My Word for 2015 – Less

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In 2014, I learned that it is trendy to choose one word for the new year and focus on it for the next 12 months, as a way to stay away from resolutions that fizzle out by April. So, in 2014, I chose “Gentle.” As I opened up to God and the universe through that one word, books like Attitudes of Gratitude and One Thousand Gifts plopped in my lap. I started journaling about gratefulness, i.e. jotting down 10 things I am thankful for every morning. I continued my journey towards gentleness through the step of appreciating what I have.

And then I had a couple of not-so-gentle episodes with the kids, in the fall. I was desperate to find a solution. Thankfully, there’s Google. I found The Orange Rhino. This book and system pretty much states everything I already found to be true about being patient and gentle with my kids. The author is funny (and she can use some language, just a fair warning) and human.

So, you see, it works. Choosing one word and focusing on it throughout the year will push you in that direction slowly, but surely.

Which brings me to my next point. My 2014 was crazy busy. I was burned out by August and I recovered briefly in September, when we went to the beach. October went by so fast, I thought it was a dream. Then, I got really sick at the end of November, due to too much work and not taking care of myself. No more.

My Word for 2015

My word for 2015 is “less,” i.e. less stress, less work, less activities. After much thought and prayerful consideration, I had to cut a few things out of my schedule. By doing less, I can be more. [tweetthis]After all, God created human beings, not human doings.[/tweetthis] If I do less, then I stress less, so I can be more patient with my children and the thoughtless remarks of people in my life. Continue reading »