Monday 4 January 2016

January Inspiration

Apologies for not posting earlier in the New Year. Life was busy with a big family gathering and then I spent a day trying to fight a minor lurgy that was removing my voice and get up and go. Anyway, today was back to usual work plus catch up! 

I've been thinking about yesterday morning's New Year sermon about Simeon.

Over the holidays, we have been having fun with a free app called Word Up. The youngest can manage the lower levels but some of the harder levels have kept us all puzzling and there is further still to go!

The British Council are encouraging people to learn a language for the New Year.   Elder Daughter had been telling me that Duolingo has just released its Russian programme so I've loaded it and done the first four lessons. I hope that I shall keep this up. Russian is my choice as Elder Daughter is studying this language and we know several Russian speakers. It is proving a bit challenging though! Duolingo is free and so far looks as though it would be a useful for children learning another language. I might well use this with the younger children in the next year.

Home educators often talk about children who learn to read late. This article is about schooled children but does fuel my concerns about these very late readers. 

I'm always looking for new book ideas particularly, as I run a book club for children. Book recommendations have recently been added and have been popular but this does mean that I need to have something to talk about each time so I was grateful to Sherry, at Semicolon, for her Baker's dozen of Middle Grade literature.

Gwen, at An Island Family by Grace, has a post with plenty of links about using art in home education. 

Happy New Year!



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4 comments:

  1. Good for you, learning Russian!

    My goal is to improve my Dutch and get the official European certification, and I'm using Duolingo. Duolingo is a great way to remember and consolidate things, but I have always wondered if it is good for learning from scratch. From your point of view it is.

    Thanks for the link to the reading article. I responded on G+. We have some issues with our youngest, and it's so hard to know what to do, but limiting screens and reading aloud really help. So does requiring an hour of reading a day beyond schoolwork, and requiring narration on all of the school reading she does.

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    1. Thank you, Annie Kate. I must say that learning Russian is stretching me but I'm enjoying the learning.

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  2. Thank you for mentioning my post Sarah :-) I appreciated the middle grade literature list, as our older two have got through all their reading again!

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    1. Delighted, Gwen. It is lovely but challenging when children get through their reading fast.

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