Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Who is a Better Queen? Marie Antoinette vs Esther of Persia

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Who is a Better Queen? Marie Antoinette vs Esther of Persia

by Katie Denise Fischer

 

In my opinion, I think Esther is a better queen. Esther and Marie Antoinette were both queens. They were both in an arranged marriage. Marie Antoinette got married because her mom wanted her to marry Louis Auguste of France. Esther was married because the King of Persia thought she was so beautiful so he chose her as his wife.

 

Marie Antoinette was a bad queen because she spent all her people’s money on herself while her people were poor and hungry. Esther saved her people from Haman who plotted to kill the Jews. Esther was also heroic because she used her influence to convince her husband that someone was plotting to kill her people. While Marie Antoinette did not convince her husband to give money to the poor. She was greedy and selfish.

That is why I think Esther is a better Queen. What about you, who do you think is a better queen?

References:

Daynes, Katie. Marie Antoinette. Usborne Publishing Ltd, 2005.

Writing

The Amazing Rescue – A Play by Katie Fischer

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Katie wrote this play after reading several plays from Storyworks Jr.  My kids love the plays and so far their favorite is still Yeh Shen from the October 2016 issue.

I love Storyworks Jr. because it inspires Katie to write and be creative.  She wrote this play out of her own initiative. She even made several copies so she and her friends can ask their teacher if the can perform it in class during show and tell.

 

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Preschool, Reading, Writing

Yeh Shen, A Chinese Cinderella Story

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I have multiple subscriptions to Scholastic magazines. I recently posted my review on Geography Spin. Go read it if you haven’t already! This post is about Storyworks Junior.

Storyworks Junior has several great articles in different genres. It was very difficult to decide which one I should do first with the kids. For several nights now, the kids have been asking whether my husband and I would like to watch their doll show. They usually ask when it was bedtime, so we always said no. This morning, as soon as they woke up, I asked them if they would like to do their doll show. Of course, they said yes. So, I picked a play from the October 2016 issue of Scholastic’s Storyworks Junior: Yeh Shen, A Chinese Cinderella Story. One of the good things about Storyworks Junior is online access to archived issues; even though I haven’t been subscribing since October 2016, I still have access.

Both of them were already familiar with the Cinderella story so they picked out the characters. They decided which Disney dolls would play the characters in Yeh Shen. Katie had read the play so she just explained to Jessica that there’s only one step sister and they didn’t need two dolls for step sisters. After picking out the dolls, they decided on a costume for themselves. They only have one Mulan costume, so one of them became Elena of Avalor instead. Katie said, “let’s pretend that I’m attending a Cinco de Mayo.” Next, we read our lines for practice. Jessica can’t read fluently yet, so I told her the lines and she repeated them. After our practice, I made the video. The finished product is below.

The kids said it was a lot of fun and they would like to do it again. It took us about four hours for just one article. Storyworks Junior comes in 6 issues per year and each issue is 32 pages. I don’t know whether the classroom teachers who have subscriptions are able to go through the whole magazine with their class in two months. The good thing is that if they don’t, the kids get to keep the magazines and can share it with their families for more fun activities at home.

After our first activity using Storyworks Junior, we’re going to try to do all of the plays first. Currently, there are 6 issues available in Storyworks Junior so there’s 6 plays. I think this is great training for the future, for when I plan to ask the kids to write their own play. They are already coming up with impromptu plays (which they call “doll shows”) on their own, but having exposure to plays written by professionals would enhance their play writing skills.

The magazine is marketed to 3rd graders, 2nd-grade readers and struggling readers in the upper grades. However, I think this would be a perfect resource for gifted first graders as well. Most of the kids in my daughter’s first grade gifted class have been reading chapter books but they were reading decodables at school because all first graders are issued the same books, gifted or not. Storyworks Junior would provide highly engaging material to gifted first grade readers. For $7.85 per year per student, this is a great bargain for gifted first grade classes.

The magazine also comes with a teacher’s guide. So far, all of the skills sheets that I have seen in the teacher’s guide are language arts related skills. I have been looking for arts integration into the articles like the coloring sheets that other Scholastic magazines have, but so far, I have found none. The plays could be a lot more fun if there were cutouts for kids to color and pretend to be the characters in the play. However, even without any changes, I think Storyworks Junior is already great for its price. You get more than what you pay for.

Math, Reading, Science, Writing

Afterschooling My First Grader

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When my daughter started kindergarten two years ago, she was initially excited. It was her first year in a “big girl” school. However, it didn’t take long before she got bored with the lessons at school. She was able to read and write before she entered kindergarten, so most of the lessons were just a review to her. By the time half of her kindergarten year had gone by, she didn’t like school at all. She wanted to be homeschooled because she said that she wasn’t learning in school. She told us that they were doing baby stuff in kindergarten. So, I looked into homeschooling and decided that I really didn’t want to do it. I loved going to school when I was a kid. It was fun to hang out with the other kids. I don’t want her to miss that experience. But at the same time, I do not want her to hate school either so my husband and I found a school for her that offered a gifted program.

The school that Katie is in for first grade is a lot better than her kindergarten school. Her teacher provides her more challenging material than the regular class. However, when we had our first conference with the teacher, she suggested that we move Katie to a gifted magnet program. She needs more challenging lessons and she thinks it’ll be good if Katie can be with other kids who are closer to her level. There’s probably two or three other kids who are about the same level as Katie in her current class, and while the rest are advanced compare with the students in the regular class, the variation in skill level is still wide. Fortunately, her teacher is awesome so Katie is not bored in class. When Katie finishes her work, she does not give Katie more of the same work just to keep busy. She let Katie play with educational toys that she has in her classroom, or read books.

What Is Afterschooling and How We Do It

For the past year, I have been afterschooling Katie. If you haven’t heard of the word afterschooling, basically, it means homeschooling after kids go to their regular school. Katie has been reading chapter books since kindergarten. She likes reading a lot. I subscribe to Raz-plus.com so I just let her choose any books that she likes. She also has great comprehension. Raz-plus.com has comprehension questions, which she gets right most of the time. The good thing about Raz-plus is that the books are for K-5th grade so Katie can choose any reading level she wants. She tends to pick books from 2nd grade and higher. The books are longer so they have more interesting story lines. I also take her to the library and let her choose any books that she wants to read. If a child is reading books that are interesting to them, you won’t need to force them to read. Since her reading and comprehension skills are several grades ahead of her math skills, we mostly focus on her math skills. She uses a program called ST Math, which is a visual game-based program. We play math games such as monopoly, abacus, card games, ten-frame blocks, legos, and etc. It is a lot easier for her to remember her math lessons when she is having fun so I try my best to find materials that would make math learning fun. Below are some of the items that we use for our math lessons. In addition to her afterschooling, she also goes to swimming lessons and piano lessons. She loves to play in the water with the other kids. She gets a lot of exercise while having fun as well. I love her swimming lessons because it helps regulate her sleeping schedule. The school that she’s going to does not provide music lessons in first grade, so I just signed her up for piano lessons for half an hour a week. It’s quite interesting to hear her play. She also has Bible lessons from me. I want her to learn about God. We have been listening to the NIRV version of the Bible. We listen to Bible stories, and recently, we started memorizing Bible scriptures. Go to the bottom of this page for a list of products that I am using and have used in the past.

Benefits of Afterschooling

I believe that parents are their children’s primary educators. In my case, I afterschool my child in order to provide her with lessons that are interesting to her and for her to continue her growth. She goes to a class where the reading levels of the kids span multiple grades. Even if the kids in her class are advanced, most of them are not as advanced as my daughter. Her teacher is amazing. But it is quite difficult to provide instruction that would make sure each child is challenged to his/her level. The core curriculum that the school provides is for their grade level. Schools do not have the budget to provide multiple grade levels that would be just right for all of the kids. Imagine: if your kid starts reading at first grade level at the beginning of the year and decides to keep reading at home for pleasure, chances are your kid will be reading at a level that is higher than the other kids who were not reading at home in just a few months. At home, I can easily look for programs that match my daughter’s level since I do not have to consider whether twenty four or so other kids would benefit from it. I can also tailor the content to whatever subject my daughter is currently interested in. There’s a lot more individualization that I can easily provide at home compared to she gets from school. No matter how great the teacher is, it is quite difficult to know each kid at the same level that a parent can.

If you are reading my blog, chances are you and your spouse are working full-time because I usually put the links to my blog in Facebook and most of my friends are working. So, if you are interested in afterschooling, my best advice to you is do it every day even if it’s just 5 minutes a day. Find something that is interesting to both you and your child because it’s quite difficult to keep on doing something in the long term if one of you is not interested in it. You will be surprised at how much of a difference five minutes each day can make.

Finally, if your first grader is still not reading chapter books, please check out my posts How to Convert Your Reluctant Reader to an Enthusiastic Reader and How My Non-Reader Child Came to Read Charlotte’s Web in 8 months.

List of Products

Headsprout.com has two components: early reading and reading comprehension. For kindergarten, Katie used the early reading section. For first grade, she is currently using the reading comprehension. The reading comprehension section of Headsprout is for 2nd-5th grade level readers. I like that they introduce different genres. It includes fiction, non-fiction, poems. It also teaches map skills, analyzing charts in addition to reading strategies.

ST Math is an online game-based program that teaches math. Katie is a visual learner. This program has definitely helped her understand math concepts easily.

Raz-plus.com is an online reading program. It literally has thousands of books. It has both fiction and non-fiction stories. I like it a lot because the stories are very interesting.

This NIRV audio Bible is great for little kids. It’s an easier version. It’s a great introduction to kids to the Word of God.

STEM Toys

I love these toys. I bought them because I figured if my kids are not interested in them, at least someone else would be. It turns out that they like them as much as I do!

Writing

Common Core Math Is Hard… Or Is It?

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Before my daughter started school, I read news articles and viral Facebook posts about Common Core math questions. One question was 5 × 3 = 15. The student was penalized because he answered 5 + 5 + 5 instead of 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3. Here’s the link to the article.

At the time, I thought that it was really stupid. Now, my daughter has been in school for more than a year, I have bought multiple math programs based on Common Core math, I have read the standard itself… and it seems like a lot of the Facebook posts that were supposedly Common Core math were not, in fact, Common Core math. This is why it is important to read the standard itself.  Here’s the link to the Common Core State Standards Initiative for your reference.

As for the problem above, Common Core specifies the commutative property of multiplication so the student’s answer is right.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.OA.B.5

Apply properties of operations as strategies to multiply and divide.2 Examples: If 6 × 4 = 24 is known, then 4 × 6 = 24 is also known. (Commutative property of multiplication.) 3 × 5 × 2 can be found by 3 × 5 = 15, then 15 × 2 = 30, or by 5 × 2 = 10, then 3 × 10 = 30. (Associative property of multiplication.) Knowing that 8 × 5 = 40 and 8 × 2 = 16, one can find 8 × 7 as 8 × (5 + 2) = (8 × 5) + (8 × 2) = 40 + 16 = 56. (Distributive property.)

Continue reading “Common Core Math Is Hard… Or Is It?” »

Writing

Why Learn Cursive?

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I found out that cursive is no longer taught in schools, so I decided to find out if there are benefits of learning how to write in cursive.  One of the articles I read was “How Should We Teach Our Children to Write?“, which, among other things, mentions that cursive helps kids to learn to read, and helps prevent confusion between b and d, and p and q. Katie has had difficulty with b/d and p/q. Also, it’s faster for me personally to write in cursive than in print. So, I decided to try to teach Katie how to write in cursive. After two and a half months, she was able to produce the document below. The article was originally printed using Times New Roman font and I asked her to convert it to cursive instead. It definitely took a lot less time to teach her to write in cursive than to print. But this could also be because she’s a year older when I taught her cursive, and she has already learned to print. I have also noticed that indeed, she does not confuse b and d when writing them in cursive. Jessica hasn’t learned how to write yet, but I will definitely try teaching her cursive first rather than waiting a year like I did with Katie.

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This is the workbook that Katie used, Cursive Writing Program Workbook.