Curricula

Curricula and Really Good Ideas (and a few Really Bad Ones, too)

HISTORY

Some of our favourite songs

• Gordon Lightfoot:
      Canadian Railroad Trilogy
      Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
• Arrogant Worms:
      The Mountie Song
      Wolfe Island Ferry
• Stan Rogers:
      Bluenose
• Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie:
      War of 1812

CANADIAN GEOGRAPHY

I found a very big map (at Chapters) of Canada for about ten bucks, and we have put it on our dining room table with a clear plastic tablecloth over it, and we'll be putting coloured sticker dots on various places based on the songs. There's even a song called Name the Capitals -- very helpful! "

      Kate M

LATIN

www.minimus-etc.co.uk

FRENCH

1. "Immerse" them by having French radio or television on as often as possible, so they get used to the sounds.
2. If there are any movies they have memorised in English, see if you can find them in French. Most of the Disney movies are available from the average library. Older things like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are also available. Dvds tend to have French dubbed versions on them, too.
3. Sing. Lots. Find French children's songs on cd and sing them 'til you hate them. Raffi, Fred Penner and Charlotte Diamond all have a couple of French songs. Carmen Campagne is "the" French children's performer, and she does a lovely, romantic, do-wap song about second-hand chewing gum being stuck to a mirror each night and being re-used each day. Move on to Kate and Anna McGarrigle, or Edith Piaf, or anyone else who tickles your fancy. French Christmas carols are easily found, too.
4. Label your house. Label *everything*. Once you have the basic labels, add some adjectives: colours, quantities, states of being (let them label the sleeping cat "le chat mort" and set yourself up for a little chaos).
5. The top 10 games can be found in French. I found most of ours in Goodwills, but you can find them online, too. Games like "Memory" are good for starters. Twister can be fun.
6. Usborne has some good starter books, some with stickers.
7. Add one new sentence a week, and insist they use it ("Bonne nuit, maman")
8. NEW We purchased the BBC program Muzzy French Level 1 & 2 on ebay and my kids love it. We have the DVD version and it also came with an English voice-over DVD (which my oldest son wanted to watch first). There are two CD-ROMS for the kids to play with on the computer also, and another DVD with just vocabulary review. If you added some french workbooks to this program it would be a complete package.

   My boys are ages 11, 9, and 5 and they enjoy the story aspect to this program, Muzzy is a silly monster and the characters teach vocabulary by talking to each other in different situations. My 5 year especially is picking up the words easily just from watching the DVDs... and my older boys who can read can choose to watch it with either English subtitles or French subtitles.

   It's fairly pricey if you purchase it new, but it was reasonable to buy it used on ebay (just be aware if you are buying the VHS video version or the DVD version).

   www.early-advantage.com

ENGLISH

Covers etymology from Greek and Latin. Grades 5-11. Works very well with kids who like words and playing around with them. Not so good for kids who don't find the English language entertaining.

www.epsbooks.com/dynamic/catalog/series.asp?seriesonly=2252M

MATH

I bought a whack of fake Canadian money at the dollar store, and drew a four column ( item, credit, debit, total) book keeping page in a notebook. The kids chose their preferred job, and found the approximate starting salary on the Internet. They looked up tax brackets for Ontario (again, approximate), and we discussed the reality of "take-home pay".

To begin, they were given $1000 from their fairy godmothers. They found adds for apartment rentals, bought starting furniture, dishes, clothes and groceries. Everything they wanted to have had to be cut out of the flyer and pasted in the back of their notebook, and the cost entered in the book keeping section. After that, they were "paid" weekly with the fake money, and had to pay me back for rent, food, clothes, phone bills, bus tickets, etc. After a little while, they chose a big purchase (car, motorcycle, ridiculously large television or computer), and added that to financing. We added pets, entertainment money, larger apartments, and other unnecessary things. Then I had fun and threw in a little reality: flood or fire, sick parents, sick pets, speeding tickets.

My general idea was to get them into debt, and see if they could find a way to get out: do you take money from groceries, or do you need to get a bank loan? I also wanted them to understand the general cost of living. While nothing is as terrifyingly realistic as facing a real, live bank manager with your bank statement in hand, it gave them a better idea of what adults have to do with money.

Mythmatical Cards

Dueling card game (similar to Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon) which is based on mythology, and requires the use of multiplication tables to win. While one wouldn't learn a whole lot about mythology, other than the names of some characters, it's a good way to get in a math class on a bad day. The characters are drawn from Celtic, Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology, and the multiplication tables are from 1-12.

www.mythmaticalbattles.com/home.html