I've been spending time creating a set of history lessons for the youngest years. It's been fun, but a lot of work. Finding books that satisfy my criteria (picture books that could easily be read in about 15-20 minutes, max; at the Open Library; fit a history period; etc.) is challenging! But this looks like something I can focus on for a while and feel like it would be useful to...someone. Perhaps me! We shall see. |
0 Comments
I added to the elementary literature section - specifically the poetry today. And I created actual lessons! Rhyme Schemes and Dictionary Skills and Dramatization of poetry! I'm rather proud of my first foray into lesson-making, but of the 4 I've written up, most don't seem to fit an early elementary level, so I'll have to wait to make a older elementary literature section and put them there. That's a project for another day though.
In personal news, there's a second baby on the way, so I'm seeing my future free time recede into the distance. Honestly, I figure this is going to be a web site that will take years, if not decades to get close to 'done', so I guess I don't feel like there's a huge rush. Having older children that can actually DO these sorts of lessons will make it far easier to figure out how to position them in a time line anyway. Right now, I just guess and go "eh, this seems 4th grade-ish" or whatever. Once I get an actual 4th grader, maybe I'll change my mind and think "Nope, 6th grade it is." Right now it's 9 p.m. Bedtime for tired Mamas! There are now several artworks up on the Art Appreciation page and I'm trying to make a decision on whether to include some art with nudity or not. I don't particularly care for art that is too sexual or which might be considered objectifying people, and I'm sure that most parents would not be thrilled to have their young children exposed to that sort of thing... but there are several incredibly famous pieces which are nudes. Like the David statue or the Creation of Adam painting. I can't see myself excluding those completely. I've begun adding links to 3 coloring pages per animal on the preschool animal pages. Ideally, I'd find some other age-appropriate ideas to go along with coloring pages. I found something for hummingbirds and grizzly bears, but I have my doubts that some of the other animals will have anything (and doing paw prints for every animal seems a bit boring).
Still more work on what's already started. I'm continuing to link up the movie pages to IMDb and Amazon. I'm expanding the Animal pages. I've decided to split the animal pages up into three different pages (maybe four) to cut down on loading times. There will be about 50 animals per page. It's been a bit tedious to preview all the video links beforehand, but it's important. I've discovered so many that I just don't think are appropriate for various reasons. YouTube is espeically unhelpful. Most animal videos I've found are very shaky home videos of people feeding the wildlife (not the kind of thing I'd want to encourage a preschooler to do) or otherwise crude and unacceptable animal (or people) behavior. And horrible music/voice-overs. There's an occassional gem, but it's few and far between. If the Arkive website didn't exist, I'd be hard pressed to find anything worth linking to for a lot of animals.
I've made some progress on the animal pages, but where I've really made a dent is in the movies section. I guess that's not surprising since I've had lists of movies complete for some time now. It's now just a case of copying and pasting the images and links. I'll have to go through later and double check all my links since there's a better than even chance that I've flubbed one or two along the way. I'm currently hemming and hawing over whether to divide up the Elem. movies over the course of 2 or 3 sections. I'm leaning towards only two, but I worry that pages that are too graphic intensive will be difficult to load and (if anyone ever notices this site) would click away before getting to the good stuff.
Movies are probably the least important pages to make - most parents have no difficulty finding something for their kids to watch. But I enjoyed making the list, so I might as well post it. Who cares if no one ever uses it? Okay, now for the real reason that I make blog posts: Art! It's an excuse to find something beautiful and post it here. Seriously, if there wasn't a backlog of art that I wanted to 'collect', I probably wouldn't write anything. Maybe I should stop rambling and just insert the picture now... I have discovered how to link to a particular section of the English lessons (which is a skill I can use for other types of pages later, but that's where I made it work). I was worried I'd have to create an entirely new page for every lesson for every subject (which would be overwhelming, organizationally) or would have to have a page a person needed to constantly be scrolling down and down and down to find the right piece. Instead of doing any of that, I discovered that I could use a blog-style page layout and put each lesson in a different month. Then I go to the published site (this site the way the public can view it rather than my editable version) and filter that blog page based on the month (or maybe the tag?) and use that address to set my link to. It may seem a silly little thing, but I'm pretty pleased that it works correctly. I also think I've figured out what I'm going to do about the Art Appreciation problem. Rather than have a separate page for every grade level, I'm going to do a single page with multiple pieces of art which every grade links to. On that page, I'll have each art piece have different grade level questions. So, for the above picture of Jasmine, I might do something like this:
Youngest: What colors do you see in Jasmine's dress? What is she holding? Where is the bird? Etc. Middle: How did the artist make the palace in the background seem far away? What things do you see are repeated in this painting? Etc. Older: What medium do you think the artist used? How does that medium effect the mood of the art? What is the focal point of the painting and how does your eye flow across it? Etc. Since I'm not an art major, I'll probably need help with creating this page. Hopefully it turns out well. I've been making inroads into the preschool animal page. It's slow going since I have to find good representative pictures of each animal, then preview the videos which I'll link to (and give the links appropriate names). I've only 'finished' maybe three or four animals - and by 'finished' I mean gotten a photo and several videos up (I still plan to do more than that!). I've also been tweaking some of the banner art so each page has something different. And I added a few notes to the preschool literature pages. I've still got to go through and count how many books I have up there...I think I have a few too many, which means I'll have to pick a few to remove (oh, the agony!). I've continued to work on the English (reading and writing) part of the preschool program. So far, I've come to the conclusion that what I was previously working on was actually more of a Kindergarten level. So I've switched some things around to reflect that. I've also begun to re-do the practice sentences in the lessons. I found a list of phonetic letter blends that recommended approaching them in a certain order (easiest to hardest), and I think that is much smarter than my ramshackle initial approach. So I'm happier with that organization than I was before. It's tough since I'm sort of building this from scratch, without a kid to test it on. Am I setting things up to go too fast or too slow? The whole thing may be completely unrealistic and unhelpful to anyone. Which I suppose is fine. It's been helpful to me to organize the stuff I've collected. Now, if I ever do get a kid of my own, I'll have a better handle on how I'll plan to approach learning to read and write. I'll get everything I am considering doing for the subject collected in one spot (hopefully). Other than the English, I have also made some progress on the animal's page. Again, I'm not sure it'll be terribly helpful to anyone in the end, but I have plans to have my child watch a few videos of animals every day - it's educational and fun! I just have to hunt down some good ones. There's a lot of garbage out on the internet after all. Doing this ahead of time means that, should I ever get around to using this, I won't need to weed through hundreds of videos of 'foxes' to get ones that are interesting and age appropriate. Today I was working on the reading/writing concepts for preschoolers. The initial outline is done. I'm pretty sure I know how I'll need to arrange things in order to make things make sense. I'll probably spend some more time today creating a couple of the individual Letter Blend pages. I haven't exactly completed the picture book list yet. I'm about 10 books under my limit and am dithering on what to end with. It just feels so...final to lock up those last slots. So I haven't done that yet. Still, I'd say I'm fairly pleased with the progression I'm making. I've discovered some things I'm not too impressed with Weebly about. Like vertical line divisions. (They don't exist), or the concept of having more than one image in a body of text (you can't do it). Otherwise, I think this hosting site will be acceptable. It's free, so I can't complain too loudly! I haven't yet finished adding in the picture books (I'm close!) for preschoolers, and I'm considering what to do next. Eventually I might want to add discussion questions to go with the picture books. I certainly need some notes to go with the books (I feel disclaimers need to be added so people don't think that the version of, for example, Cinderella, is the ONLY version acceptable...although that may be self evident). I also have a list of preschool appropriate movies that I want to list out. There's so much to do! But what I think will get my attention next may be the art. There is a site called Twisted Sifter that I absolutely love! They post a new photo daily, plus have links to the most amazing artwork. Everything from hundred-year-old bottles of sand art to modern street art. I am simply amazed at what they find. So my thought is to create a page that depicts (and links to) many of the art pieces found there. I had already planned to do something a bit different and include art-appreciation, but my initial idea had only 'famous art' (Like Van Gogh or Da Vinci). Now I'm re-thinking that idea so now whatever I do would incorporate both those famous pieces and some of the amazing 'new' stuff. I'm not sure enough of how this site works yet to know the best way to go about doing something like this. Perhaps I'll have...52 art works each year? Or maybe just copy and paste my favorites randomly here and there on the site (like this blog post). The 52 art works idea has merit, but then how would I decide what went where? Should a preschooler view the Mona Lisa, and then never 'study' it again? Should I have repeats over the years? One big page that encourages someone to pick and choose...somehow? I love beautiful, creative art and definitely want to nurture a love of such things in my (future) kids, so I know I'd do something, even if it's not the perfect method. I suppose that's a philosophy I'll carry over into this site. It may not be perfect, but I'll try something anyway. I find it unlikely that anyone besides myself will actually view this site, but I love organizing materials for my (currently imaginary) children. I've made lists and lists and eventually decided that I might as well do something with the material besides store it on my flash drive. So here I am, trying to create something that other people might find helpful too. I'm still figuring out how this is going to work. Since I don't have children of my own (although I've tutored a homeschooled student in the past and have a close friend with a homeschooled preschooler), most of what I come up with is only theoretical. I'm not sure yet how to organize the material so that a parent can pick and choose at the level appropriate for their own child, yet not make it so convoluted that a person gives up before they get to the fun part. I think I may separate out subjects into tracks. So a Language Arts category with progressively more mature material, but not tied to a specific grade. A parent could then go as slow or as fast on that track as their child needs without reference to, say, their math or history progress. On the other hand, I like organizing down to a minute level and writing up specific schedules appeals to me. Perhaps I'll end up doing things both ways... Some of the challenges I am finding with creating this site is trying to strike a balance between being original (and not plagiarizing other people's work!) and yet needing more than my own opinion on what books or topics are relevant and necessary. For example, in studying Ancient Egypt, it seems fairly obvious that a young child could build a pyramid from blocks/Lego/couch cushions/etc., so suggesting such a thing wouldn't step on anyone's toes, but not everything is so straight forward. I guess I'll just do the best I can and be satisfied with that. This site is just a baby at the moment. I have a grand total of one page (possibly) complete, and a few more started. In case anyone does later stop by and wonder what order I designed things in, right now I'm working on building up the preschool literature pages. I scoured the internet and looked at dozens (literally) of 'best of' web sites on picture books to figure out what to include in this category. It was a whole lot of fun! As a bit of trivia, the top three picture books (based on frequency the book showed up on various 'best of' lists) are: Where the Wild Things Are, Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Good Night Moon. I am picking 360 picture books, and it's harder than someone might think to limit myself to only that number. There are far too many good books out there! |
AuthorLives in the NW USA and spends far too much time on the computer. Archives
May 2019
Categories |