More Math Fun!

Well it is Thursday again wow does the week fly by!


This week I am going to talk about another math program that we used for our High School Algebra. It is a program called Video Text.

I used this at the same time for my three older children. My oldest daughter has always struggled with Algebra and as I mentioned before I had tried the Math U See Algebra with her but it did not work for us at all.

This program worked much better. It is a DVD based program that has a teacher teach you the lesson for the day and then you have the assigned work to complete.

This was helpful by telling us more in detail the new concept.

The down side that we found was that it is very expensive. I found that I had to sit every day with my children to listen to the new material or it was very hard for me to be able to help them if they did have a question.

The upside with this program is that they do have a phone number that you can call for help which is why we had decided to purchase this program.

I do believe that it can be a great help to a student if they are good independent learners. This has not be our experience though so I do not know if I will use this program again with my younger children.

You can check their website for more information here at Video Text Algebra

On my next homeschooling post I will tell you about a wonderful math program that the Lord lead us too.

Have a wonderful day! God Bless, Kathy

I'm no Einstein

As I have mentioned in some previous posts we have been homeschooling now for over 13 years.

We have tried numerous curriculum's through the years and have tried many different styles of learning so I thought that I would write about one style or curriculum each week.

I will try to make this special posting on Thursday. I asked my daughter what to call this special day? They have Menu Monday, Frugal Friday, Wordless Wednesday. Hmmm. Any ideas?

Well any way today I thought I would talk about a math program that I have used.

This program is Math U See.

I did not start this math program until I was home schooling a for a few years.

I taught this program to our three older children starting in level 4. We went through until Algebra.

I really like this program.

Here are the positive things I found about the program:

The programs main premise is using blocks to help you see the Math problem. It makes the problem concrete to the child.

I love this approach. I am a visual person so this made a lot of sense to me.

They also teach skip counting early on in the program starting right in the Kindergarten level.

The skip counting has enabled our children to go right into multiplication with out a problem.

They see that skip counting is an easy way of multiplying fast.

This program also has fraction overlays which makes fractions make sense.

When our younger children began school I continued with this program and began with the first level.

I also like the fact that this program starts Algebra concepts in the very early stages. Finding what x is for 5x + 3= 13. Or telling them to find the area of a rectangle to just multiply base times height.

I have learned so much from this program and have often said why did I not learn this way?

Here is the down side that I found for our family.

We used this program through to Pre Algebra.



When I tried it with Algebra we did not do so well. It has been a long time since I did Algebra in school and I feel that the Algebra is not taught comprehensive enough for someone who does not know Algebra.

I feel that the Author assumes that all parents have a full hold on the subject but I am sure that this is not so true.

So I would highly recommend this program at least up to Pre Algebra. Unless you are an Algebra wiz!

You can check out their web site here.

I will talk next week of a curriculum I used for Algebra and how it worked for us.

If you have any questions feel free to email me rkmothersgarden (at) gmail (dot) com.

God Bless, Kathy

Our Decision to Homeschool Part 2 "The First Year"

In my first post "Our decision to Home school Part 1" I left off with my husband and I deciding to give home schooling a try.

So I thought I would write today about our first year home schooling our children.

At this time of my life I had been blessed with three children. Our oldest daughter was ready to enter 2nd grade and my second child our son was ready for Kindergarten. We also had a 3 year old son.


We decided to stick with the curriculum that Rebecca had used in school for the first two years which was the Abeka curriculum. I ordered all of the work books and teacher books and test books and quiz books, teacher keys and the readers. It was a bit overwhelming but I just figured I would need all of this right?

I went straight to work and set up a little spare room that we had at the time on the first floor.

Our Christian school just happen to be getting rid of some desks and chairs for school and I thought this is exactly what I needed so I was so happy to be able to get these and to place them in our little school room.

I bought our little flags , the Christian flag and the American flag, to make sure that we started our day just like they did in school with our pledges.

We posted our Large letter cards at the top of the wall along the room and I even made some adorable curtains with a school print for the two windows that were in our new school room!

Every thing looked great and we soon received our books.

I even had purchased our teachers lesson planner I was well on my way to a great year!

We started our school year at the same time as our Christian school did. I just figured we would follow their schedule and all would be great!

The first day came and we started out on this new journey. By Gods grace second grade was basically a review of everything Rebecca had learned in 1tst grade so this was a great blessing.

I did not learn reading with the Phonics approach so this was really new to me.

As I began teaching my second child I discovered very quickly that this was not going to go as smoothly as I thought it would.

He seemed to struggle with remembering what he had learned and I did not know how I was going to help him through this.

The other challenge would be to keep my three year old busy while the other two where doing school.

By Gods Grace slowly we began to work out the problems and things began to fall into place.

I discovered that I did not have to keep up with our Christian school and that one of the greatest blessings of homeschooling was being able to work at my children's own pace .

We are not entering into our 13th year of homeschooling and a lot has changed. The room with the desks are gone and the kitchen table is where we do most of our school work. The curriculum has changed some and by Gods grace I have one graduated!

If you are thinking about homeschooling and you feel the Lord leading you to do this then I would encourage you to take that step of faith and by Gods Grace he will help you to accomplish something for His Glory!

I hope to continue this series to share with you some of the bumps in the road and some of the many blessings!

God Bless, Kathy

(repost from 8/8/08)

Photos by J's Magic

Our Decision to Homeschool Part 1

I thought I would write about our homeschooling journey and how we decided to take that step of faith to home educate our children.

Back in 1992 my husband and I received Christ which changed our whole lives for ever.
At this point in our lives my husband and I had been married for 6 years and we had a daughter Rebecca who was 3 years old and a son Brandon who was 1 year old. Of course we were not really thinking about where our children were going to attend school up to this point but God definitely had a plan for us that He would reveal as time went on.

The church that we began to attend was a Bible believing church and they had their own Christian school so we began to think along this avenue. We did wonder how we would ever be able to afford Christian education on one income.

As our oldest daughter was drawing closer to school age we decided to enroll her in the Christian school at our local church. She attended there for Kindergarten and first grade. We noticed that she was starting to separate from our family and we were not pleased with her attitude that she was also developing. We knew that we really wanted to have more input in her daily life and that was not very easy to do when she was gone most of the day. Our son was approaching school age by this time and we really did not know if we could afford two in school.

Around 1995 the Lord brought a dear couple into our lives from our church. They had adopted a beautiful little boy who was my older daughters age and they had been homeschooling him.
I had never heard of homeschooling before so I had a lot of questions for them.
Why were they homeschooling? After all we had a Christian school at our church.
How were they homeschooling?
What about the law?

My dear friend was so wonderful, gently telling me about homeschooling and why they had decided to home educate their son.

I began to pray to the Lord about this. It was such a new idea for me. Could I really home educate our children?

I decided to talk to my husband about it.

My husband was not sure if this was really a good idea. It was new to him too.
He really did not think that this was a wise decision for our family. After all we had a Christian school at our church.

At this point I was also doing day care in the afternoon, and the Lord had blessed us with our third child, so it would be a challenge to manage school, day care and all of the many tasks of running a home. As I continued to pray about it my heart grew more and more burdened and I really felt like the Lord wanted me to take that step of faith and to trust Him.

I knew though that it would have to come from my husband to make this decision which was really hard for me.

As we continued to pray about it my husband and I decided that I would attend a homeschooling convention to learn more about homeschooling, and to see the curriculum that was available to parents.

I remember attending with my dear friend who was taking me under her wings. As the day went on every thing went very well until we attended a class about teaching higher math. As the class went on my heart sank and I know that it was very visible on my face. I began to think oh Lord how could I ever teach Calculus? Then I was reminded that my children were only going into 2nd grade and Kindergarten. What a great relief!

I went home that day with great excitement and shared with my husband all that I had learned.
We decided to give it a try.

Was I nervous? Oh yes! But I knew that the Lord would help me if I just put my trust in him.

In part two I will talk about our first homeschooling year.

(repost from July 7th, 2008)

Back to School!

Well we started school again this past week and things have been very busy!

I am homeschooling 6 of our children this year.

Our oldest son Brandon is in the 12th grade this year so we are hoping to get him through and graduated. Our son Collin is in 10th grade according to his age but he is doing the same work as his older brother.

Our daughter Stephanie is now in 4th grade and Jeremiah is in 3rd.

That leaves our 6 year old Matthew who is now in first grade.

Caleb our 4 year old and Katelyn our two year old are busy learning their colors and letters, counting and some phonics sounds.

In just this one week I can hear my two year old singing around the house her ABC's and counting 1,7,9 just so adorable!

Our day is very full and some times I wonder how I will ever get every thing accomplished but I know that I must trust Gods grace to help me get through each day.

This is our thirteenth year of homeschooling and it is always changing.

I often think what will it be like when our little ones are homeschooling as well?

Homeschooling with toddlers does make things challenging. Our four year old son is very busy! We have to keep a constant eye on him. I have learned through the years that sharing the responsibilty of playing with and watching the younger ones with my older children has truely been a blessing and a help.

Our oldest daughter is home this year and so she has been a tremendous help in this area. I also have my nine year old helping and our eight year old.

This enables me to have one on one time with each of the children in their school work.

Well I hope that you all have a great school year this year. Enjoy the time with your children, because it flies by so quickly!

God Bless, Kathy

History Comes Alive

Many people have dreamed of traveling back in time.
Books have been written, films produced, documentaries recorded about such an event as time travel. It seems an impossibility, doesn't it?

However, I know of a time Machine that exists in nearly every town: The local Library.
Reading historical fiction is my "little time machine", and it makes History come alive!
The library has so many little time machines!




Up until five years ago I didn't like history that much, it was "ok"
but not fascinating or captivating- I thought it was just a bunch of boring facts and dates.
I never thought that history could be interesting at all.







Then, one day I was in our local public library and came upon a book,
It was called "Voyage on the Great Titanic" and it was from the "Dear America" series. I liked the cover painting, and so I thought I would read it.

When I finished the small book a week later, I was hooked. This fictional diary was amazing! I felt like the girl "Margaret" was writing to me about her adventurous disaster on the Titanic. I even enjoyed the true facts and photos in the back! History from a girl's point of view who was about the same age as I was captivated me!







I went back to the library
and found a few more.

History was suddenly coming to
life right before me! I began to
check biographies and other books about the time periods of the diary I was currently reading.






Then I found another book,



I had heard about the Great Queen Elizabeth I, and since the Royal Diaries were from the same writers of Dear America I thought I'd give it a try.

Once again, I was captivated! And the best part was that these Royal diaries were about real girls, who lived and affected history. I looked for more, and found some!





These books were great!

But I kept coming back to the Elizabeth one, I read it over and over. I was so fascinated by the Tudor house, that I got out a whole bagful of books about her and her notorious father, King Henry VIII.

My Mother looked at a few of my books, and then we saw a documentary/film about the Tudors. Since that time my Mother and I have been studying the Tudor house. We have grown closer together, and have fun reading books, or watching films about this famous family.

I LOVE HISTORY!

There are so many stories out there, waiting to be read! If you have a child who is bored to death of history, try Historical fictions.

There are so many books out there that are historical fictions, and non- fictions that take dry boring facts and make them come to life! Most of these can be found at the local library.
God Bless, Rebecca.