Can I just say how much I love The Old Schoolhouse? This company is an amazing resource for the homeschool community, and they’re offering an unprecedented subscription sale for those who act NOW!

1776 was a spectacular year, and it’s a smashing, save-more-money price!

Grab your subscription to The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine during their four-day Fourth of July sale, and check out the craziest price on July 1 only!

You’ll get:

• A 2-year subscription! (either new or renewal)
• Free Homeschooling with Heart tote bag! (I LOVE mine!)
• Five FREE E-Books!

And all that for just $17.76! You save a bundle!

[UPDATE from TOS]

We don’t want to disappoint our customers who are coming into the Schoolhouse Store to see that the tote bags are already gone. So, through midnight PST on Friday night, July 2, we are offering the May 2010 Expo To Go, a $19.99 value (higher value than the tote bag!) as the bonus gift.

Here are the sale levels through midnight on July 4:

• July 1 only: For $17.76, enjoy 2 years of TOS, 5 free E-Books, and the May 2010 Expo To Go.
• July 2 only: For $17.76, enjoy 1 year of TOS, 4 free E-Books, and the May 2010 Expo To Go.
• July 3 and 4: For $17.76, enjoy 1 year of TOS and 3 free E-Books.

The sparks are flying at TOS Magazine . . . join in the celebration and savings! Get the details here.

While supplies last. U.S. and Canadian residents.

This little article is a gem. Who knew Twitter could help you improve your writing skills?

I love that NaNoWriMo also has a Young Writers Program that’s open to children 17 and under. The challenge? Pump out a novel in 30 days.

According to the website, “The only thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The high-velocity approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

Free Resources

NaNoWriMo offers some great resources to help your students along their writing journey—”new and improved, 100% awesome, non-lame” Young Novelist Workbooks.

You can download the workbooks here absolutely FREE! Choose from:

• Elementary Student Noveling Workbook
• Middle School Student Noveling Workbook
• High School Student Noveling Workbook

Ready for a crazy, roller-coaster November? Register here for the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program!

FREE Resources to Download Now

Right now, TOS is offering two excellent—and free—digital resources!

The Old Schoolhouse Guide to Examining Curriculum will help you better discern how to find your way through the maze of homeschooling products. Includes helpful articles, tips, and suggestions for understanding book reviews and shopping for curriculum. Also includes a number of product reviews.

Homeschool 101 is the perfect place to get a broad overview of homeschooling in general, or enjoy reading up-to-date articles from some of the best authors and homeschool companies. With almost 200 pages full of articles and resources, you won’t want to miss this . . . and you don’t have to—it’s totally FREE!

More TOS Opportunities

The Schoolhouse Expo virtual homeschool conference was a rousing success. Did you miss it? That’s OK. Expo To Go! will provide you with all the sessions from the Schoolhouse Expo—you can listen to the MP3s of 36 different sessions.

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Vote now and be heard with the TOS 2010 Excellence in Education Awards. Take this brief survey to vote for your favorite homeschooling products. The results will be featured in the Spring 2011 issue. At the end of the survey, you will be redirected to a page where you can download two free gifts just for taking the time to vote!

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For a limited time, TOS is giving away this great tote with a subscription to The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. You get 9 issues for the price of 8, the Homeschooling with Heart tote bag, E-Book: Dreams and Designs–Homemade Supplies to Complement Your Homeschool, and the July through December 2009 Schoolhouse Planner modules. It’s a $146.65 value for only $39.

A gaggle of geese.
A school of fish.
A flock of sheep.
A nest of hornets.

These animal groupings are called collective nouns, and I’m sure they’re well known to you and your kids. But have you heard of any of these?

A murder of crows.
A crash of rhinoceroses.
An unkindliness of ravens.
An exaltation of larks.
An implausibility of gnus.
A memory of elephants.

I love these! Could word usage be any more fun?

If you want to take a humorous trip down vocabulary lane, check out this link and learn all sorts of interesting collective nouns people have attributed to birds, fish, and mammals. From what I’ve gathered, some of the terms date back to the 1400s. Many may be archaic, but for the most part, they’re purely entertaining!

Fun with Words: Collective Nouns for Animals

I think it would be great to encourage your children to write a poem using these unusual animal groupings. Maybe we could call our collection a ponderance of poems.

Do you have a few favorites from the collective animal nouns list? Share them in the comments. And while you’re at it, why not make up a new collective noun of your own? I think a ponderance of poems is a great place to start!

[Edited: Sherri alerted me to a wonderful song by Carrie Newcomer called A Crash of Rhinoceros, about how Adam named the animals. You just have to check out these fabulous lyrics!]

Spring brings out the poet in me. I’m so rejuvinated by the deepening green of our lawn, the cheer of birdsong, and the cascade of fuchsia bougainvilleas along the garden walls that I can’t help but toss out lovely words like blossom, bloom, and bud.

Every day, clumps of feathery alyssum grow rounder as they fill in the bare patches of earth. Thanks to April showers, March’s seed is giving way to tender blades of new grass. And my perennial coreopsis is shamelessly showing off in the front flower bed.

Are you reveling in spring too? Have you been buying new garden gloves and seedlings? Planting vegetables and flowers? Eyeing a new fountain or bench for your yard? Are you savoring the sights, sounds, and smells of spring? Are words like garden, ladybug, and hollyhock rolling around on your tongue?

Then you’ve got the bug—and you’ll want to know about Horticulture Magazine’s Garden Verse Poetry Awards and a chance to win up to $250!

Poems about Spring

For inspiration, check out these websites and savor some spring poetry.

• Poems children will love
• More spring poems

Enter the Poetry Contest

Enter here. The deadline has been extended to May 3,  2010 so you have a whole week  to write a garden-themed poem. There’s no age limit, so why not make this a family activity? Linger over our Spring Word Bank for even more ideas and motivation.

Above all, enjoy the journey.

We writing and grammar geeks can hardly contain ourselves as two fabulously nerdy events collide. Today, National Grammar Day meets Words Matter Week.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I’d like to bring you a fun little way to teach your students to find and fix comma splices.

I know. Your enthusiasm—like mine—knows no bounds.

The Problem with Comma Splices

When a comma joins two independent clauses or sentences, it’s called a comma splice. 

Example 1: J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he also wrote The Lord of the Rings.
Example 2: The bridge collapsed into the river, fortunately no one was injured.
Example 3: Maya arrived late, her car wouldn’t start.

These two examples demonstrate the typical comma splice. Since it’s one of the most common grammar errors, I encourage you to devote time to helping your students identify and learn to fix comma splices in their own writing.

Suzanne Cherry, director of the Swamp Fox Writing Project (South Carolina), finds that relating the concepts of punctuation and grammar to real-world experiences—in this example, through an intriguing demonstration involving electrical tape—helps students recognize and correct their errors successfully.

Cherry uses a unique object lesson to explain the comma splice error to her students. Showing the class two pieces of wire, each with the last inch exposed, she says: “We need to join these pieces of wire together right now if we are to be able to watch our favorite TV show. What can we do? We could use some tape, but that would probably be a mistake as the puppy could easily eat through the connection. By splicing the wires in this way, we are creating a fire hazard.”

Turning Wires into Sentences

The students usually come up with a better alternative: to use one of those electrical connectors that looks like the cap of a pen.

“Now,” Cherry suggests, “let’s turn those wires into sentences.”

She reminds her students that if they just splice them together with a comma—the equivalent of a piece of tape—it creates a weak connection, or a comma splice error.

The answer is to use the grammatical equivalent of the electrical connector: either a conjunction (and, but, or) or a semicolon. Either option “shows the relationship between the two sentences in a way that the comma—a device for taping clauses together in a slapdash manner—does not.”

[In addition to Cherry's suggestons, I would add that a period also makes an effective repair for a comma splice, as it separates the two independent clauses into distinct sentences.]

Here, our three example comma splices have been repaired:

Example 1: J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. He also wrote The Lord of the Rings.
Example 2: The bridge collapsed into the river, but fortunately no one was injured.
Example 3: Maya arrived late; her car wouldn’t start.

“I’ve been teaching writing for many years,” Cherry says. “And I now realize the more able we are to relate the concepts of writing to ‘real world’ experience, the more successful we will be.”

Read more: Keeping the Comma Splice Queen Happy

Source: National Writing Project, 30 Ideas for Teaching Wriing.

During this season of hearts and chocolates, here’s a fun way to spread some Valentine cheer among your kids—while encouraging a bit of writing along the way!

Make Some Valentine Mailboxes

These cute mailboxes belong to four of my grandkids. My daughter Karah found plain mailbox-shaped tins in the dollar bin at Target, which the children decorated with stickers and paint pens. 

Unfortunately, by the time Karah decided Mom and Dad needed mailboxes too, Target had run out. So instead, they decorated Chinese take-out containers, available at most party supply stores—and a great alternative to the tins!

Share the Love

The six mailboxes sit on a small table, along with a stack of paper squares and a few pencils. From February 1st through Valentine’s Day, everyone has fun writing little notes to each other and hiding them in the mailboxes.

The tins shown above have an especially fun feature: you can raise the flag to announce that there’s mail waiting inside!

Get Creative

Everyone can get into the act. And the fun doesn’t have to stop at plain white notes! Try some of these ideas:

• Set out a supply of inexpensive Valentine cards—either store-bought ones or printable cards like these, these, and these.
• In addition to plain white, you can cut squares from pink and lavender paper too.
• Add stickers to some of the notes.
• Include colored pens, crayons, or fine-tip markers in the pencil cup.
• Invite grandparents or others to write notes too (I snuck some in during a short visit today).
• From time to time, hide a little treat in the mailbox: fruit snacks, a chocolate heart, a quarter, or a trinket such as a Valentine pencil.

More Resources & Links

• More Valentine mailbox ideas
• More free printable Valentine cards
• Adorable Valentine cards to make with children

I’ve always been a big fan of writing across the curriculum. After all, it just makes sense to tie writing into as many subjects as possible. Why separate the two when they’re so much happier married?

It was’t hard to assign related writing when studying history, art, geography, Bible, or literature, though I must confess that dovetailing math and writing was a stretch for us. (I did sometimes have the kids write their own word problems. That counts, right?)

My new friend Jimmie at Jimmie’s Collage took up Math Mama’s challenge to write a poem that puts a positive spin on math. I think it’s a brilliant idea, and both she and her daughter Sprite wrote some very creative math poems. Here’s one by Sprite. Isn’t it clever?

Untitled, by Sprite
Dividing is divine,
And four plus five is nine.
Adding is just fine,
Four plus five is nine.
Negative and positive are always great.
But four plus six is is not eight.

There are no prizes involved, and no deadline, so why not plan a time to squeeze this activity into your homeschooling—and join Math Mama’s challenge. And if you’d like to share your poems here as well, you know I’d just love to see ‘em!

Meanwhile, you can visit a page filled with fun number poems you’re sure to enjoy. Here’s the first one to whet your appetite!

Money Poem
Penny, penny, easy spent,
Copper brown and worth one cent.
Nickel, nickel, thick and fat,
You’re worth 5. I know that.
Dime, dime, little and thin,
I remember—you’re worth 10.
Quarter, quarter, big and bold,
You’re worth 25, I am told.
Half a dollar, half a dollar, giant size.
50 cents to buy some fries.
Dollar, dollar, green and long,
With 100 cents you can’t go wrong.

Edit: Jimmie duly chastized me, wondering where MY poem is. So I too am rising to the challenge! Here’s my humble offering.

Of Sides and Angles
Geometry, ordered and tidy,
Pyramid, circle, and locus;
Precision of sides and of angles,
A midpoint that keeps me in focus.

Symmetry, area, compass,
Diameter bisects a chord;
Distance, dimension, and drawing,
You see why I never get bored.

Parallel planes and perspective,
The measure and tilt of a line;
Volume and ratio and surface,
Geometry suits me just fine.

~Kim

We parents give an awful lot of thought to what our children will do once we’re done homeschooling. Will they go to college or university? Take a vocational track? Enter the ministry? Will they become scientists or mortgage lenders? Clerical workers or nurses? Entrepreneurs or educators?

One thing seems clear: No matter the profession, studies show it’s more important than ever that your teen develop good writing skills if he or she hopes to get—and keep—a job.

Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . or a Ticket Out

According to a 2004 survey polling 120 American corporations (whose payrolls include nearly 8 million people), an employee’s writing skills can either hinder or advance him in the company.

The survey may be a few years old, but its ramifications remain relevant in 2010. Here are some of the survey’s findings:

• People who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired and are unlikely to last long enough to be considered for promotion.
• Two-thirds of salaried employees in large American companies have some writing responsibility. “All employees must have writing ability,” said one human resource director.
• Eighty percent or more of the companies in the service and finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors, the corporations with the greatest employment growth potential, assess writing during hiring. “Applicants who provide poorly written letters wouldn’t likely get an interview,” commented one insurance executive.
• Half of all companies take writing into account when making promotion decisions.
• More than 40 percent of responding firms offer or require training for salaried employees with writing deficiencies. Based on the survey responses, it appears that remedying deficiencies in writing may cost American firms as much as $3.1 billion annually. “We’re likely to send out 200–300 people annually for skills-upgrade courses like ‘business writing’ or ‘technical writing,’” said one respondent.

You can read the entire report here.

Focus on Key Writing Skills

What does this mean for your child? Simply, it doesn’t matter whether or not she’s college-bound. If she expects to succeed in the workplace, she’ll need to demonstrate better-than-average writing skills.

So make sure you’re focusing on basic but key writing skills throughout junior high and high school to adequately prepare her. Minimally, by the time your teen graduates from high school, she should know how to:

• Write a clear, well-organized essay.
• Write a business letter.
• Use correct grammar.
• Use proper punctuation, such as correct use of quotation marks and apostrophes.
• Use good sentence structure, including avoiding run-on sentences and sentence fragments.
• Avoid using slang and shortcuts common to texting and instant messaging.
• Properly site sources (avoiding plagiarism).
• Self-edit and proofread her own writing.

Helpful Resources

If you’re looking for a place to start or need a few supplemental resources, check out some of these links and products:

• WriteShop - Solid composition and essay skills for junior high & high school
• How to Write a Business Letter
• Editor in Chief  – Practice with editing and proofreading skills
• OWL at Purdue - Proofreading and self-editing tips
• The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation - Practice, reinforce, or teach grammar and punctuation skills
• How to Cite Your Sources - A great resource!