Ways to learn that worked for us....

HAHA ok so this could be consider trial and error:)

This year we did a lot of trail and error.... I had some successes and some failures. They were things I had heard worked for others but it just didn't click for us. Some of the successes were using familiar sites like Time4learning, Spelling City,  I Tunes U, Khan Academy, and for our animal loving family National Geographic.  The things that we also tried this year was educational songs, apps for the ipod, coop classes for Alex and some secular unit studies by other homeschoolers. Areas that we required more than my abilities this last year were Spanish, music and writing, these subjects I left to professionals both near by for Spanish and music. I used an online writing 8 week course for the boys with an actual teacher on the other end. The boys learned a lot from getting some outside the home resources. That is one thing that I can pass on to anyone who is new to homeschooling or maybe just homeschoolers who have less time to teach certain subjects... OUTSOURCE. You are still an awesome homeschooling parent!! And you can't do everything even though we all try!! Now I want to know what worked or didn't work for you this year... come on spill the beans!

Taking a little Spanish 101, here!

jpg from http://www.123teachme.com/learn_spanish/hello_in_spanish

It's amazing to me that the same ways I have taught the boys to figure how to spell words in English, is the same way our Spanish tutor, Noelia, is teaching the three of us to speak Spanish! She is teaching us by using syllable or segmenting activities, especially important for me, LOL. My Spanish is not so good, well you probably noticed my English is not so good either! hehe, but I am working on both of them!

I know, I know there are tons of freebie sites for teaching Spanish, more still that have foreign language games, and even more videos on YouTube. "But this is serious", (yes just like those lovable "Wonder Pets" use to sing when things got serious on the show), Alex is beginning 9th grade and it is important for him to learn his foreign language choice from every possible way we can find and afford! My visual learner needs all kinds of different media to learn something new, and Noelia is doing a wonderful job with us.  I have always wanted to learn to speak Spanish and now is my chance! I did take Spanish in high school as well, but do you know I don't remember a thing about it? I guess because growing up in Missouri you didn't hear too many others speaking Spanish too much. Also, the fact that I was well.... not the best student! (let's leave it at that shall we;)

Both the boys are enjoying the classes, as am I, and we started as you would teach a child (like Pre-K aged) with songs and the basics. Alex especially loved the song about "The San Jose Flea Market" or "La Pulga de San Jose" (well I tried to find the song for you all to listen to but of course I couldn't find any ones with someone else singing it;) Anyways, it talked about all the instruments that you can buy at the San Jose Flea Market, it was fun to say all the instruments and Alex really got into the song. We are still practicing about four or five songs that we were assigned along with other things. This week it is conversations, hello, how are you?, that sort of thing. This assignment scared me most of all because we were supposed to find a stranger that speaks Spanish and go up and say Hello, etc.! Later she revised it and said just to practice on someone that knows Spanish and US, so that they didn't start going into a long conversation with us left scratching our heads wondering what they were saying!

All and all, I love homeschooling the boys, not only for all I can teach them (with lots of help) BUT also the wonderful and interesting things that I learn everyday! It's amazing what you appreciate when you are older and learning something new is most definitively first on my list!