This is another link courtesy of Southpaugh Homeschool - thanks Heidi! The site is called Storynory, and it is a site offering free audio versions of children’s literature. The site offers over 100 stories (many of them full-length books) read by Natasha Gostwick, a British born actress with a lovely voice that both engages and soothes at the same time.

This site is very colourful and user friendly. If you have older kids who find navigating a site like Project Gutenberg or Librivox a bit too difficult, they may just find they can manage at Storynory. Each audio file is accompanied by a colour illustration, and by the full text so kids or parents can follow along while the audio plays. For purposes of lesson planning, the length of each recording is specified, along with a brief summary.

Those who are very tech-savvy will appreciate the option to subscribe to a podcast for longer books like Alice in Wonderland, which has 12 chapters. Lower tech folk can download individual files in MP3 format & burn them to a disc or play them on a portable device. Or, just gather the family around the computer & play the files one at a time!

Storynory’s offerings are mostly classics and fairy tales. Look for works by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Perrault. There are also a small number of poems, novels by authors such as Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens, and a very few Aesop’s fables, Bible stories and Greek myths. At the time of writing, there were a number of recordings offered up as Christmas/New Years stories. Finally, Storynory offers its own stories about a frog named Bertie. Keep up to date by reading their blog, if the rest isn’t enough for you….

Storynory is a delightful site, whether you are a home educator or a parent who just wants to share classical children’s literature with the family. I expect that we’ll see a much expanded archive of stories by this time next year.

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Update 6 January, 2008: The Mayor of SpellingCity has contacted me to say that they are hard at work on the bugs, and they look forward to seeing a better range of spelling lists on the site in the near future. We’ve been invited to return to the site in 60 days, to see the improvements. I promise I’ll let you know what I find when I make my return trip!

***

I found SpellingCity.com through another home education blog. As mentioned in that entry, this is a free web site offering tools for spelling - through learning, testing & playing games. There are free word lists for grades K-8, as well as Dolch words, large numbers, American States, and Harry Potter vocabulary, among others. To make use of the existing lists simply click the link for “sample lists”.

The site is set up for students, teachers & parents - with the ability for home educators to register as “homeschool parents/teachers”. You can use the site without having to register - for example print out one of the sample lists as an educator, or as a student search for your teacher’s lists and use the games as a fun way to learn words.

Registration is free, and minimally invasive (they ask first & last name, city, state/province, zip/postal code - this makes it possible for students to find teachers’ lists.) Registered users can store their own lists, and can also import lists from other users. It is possible to print lists and also word searches.

Does SpellingCity.com really live up to the quote on its homepage, that “This is already the best site out there”? Probably not, but it does offer some services that are worthwhile. Here are some of the pros and cons, so you can sort it out for yourself.

Pros:

• Teachers and students can enter their own lists or use those supplied by the site or other users;
• Three games are provided to teach spelling in a fun context: “HangMouse,” Word Search and Unscramble;
• Students can test themselves, and then work on any misspelled words using the “teach me” or “test me” functions;
• The “test me” function offers both the word itself, and a sentence containing the word;
• There is an audio & a visual component - this helps with learning for all students and makes it possible for younger students to work independently;
• Educators who need an ICT component may wish to include this site, among others;
• After testing, students can print out a pretty certificate to show their score - a nice incentive for the younger ones and a help for record keeping too!

Cons:

• Although there are both student & teacher or parent accounts available, there is unfortunately no way for a home educator to track student use or progress with this site (there may be such available with the teacher account);
• Links are not reliable, for example the “teach me” link frequently brings up the test instead of the teaching screen - the “check me” button on tests also sometimes doesn’t work, which can be frustrating even for an adult after having typed in close to 40 words;
• I found the audio didn’t buffer well at all - there were really long delays which could cause a student to click twice, resulting in two broken audio clips playing, one on top of the other (apparently this is a Flash-related issue for Firefox users) - and some of the voices were not terribly clear especially with shorter words;
• Navigation from one section of the site to another is not always intuitive - one must often return to the main page (not the same as “my homepage” in the navigation menu) in order to find the desired page;
• When entering custom lists, the list is automatically capped at 5 words and then each successive word must be added with an extra click to add the space;
• All custom lists are assumed to be public, and must be “unpublished” after creation - NB students can only search for public lists, as there is no way to allow only certain users to access a list.

Other than the above, my general feeling was that this site was not created by folks who know about spelling or language arts instruction. The list of “cons” is mainly bugs that can be worked out, or extras the site may one day choose to offer. What was of greater concern to me was the fact that the sample lists were far too long (37 words for the very first grade one list!) and were arranged alphabetically for each grade above Kindergarten, rather than according to phonics/word families or degree of difficulty. Some of the sentences associated with the words might be too complex or distracting, as well. When I entered the word “and” in a custom list (obviously for beginning spellers) the sentence it gave was, “He can walk and chew gum at the same time.” The sentence for “bat” felt like a third grade science lesson!

I would avoid using the sample lists for spelling instruction. I would also not use this site as a primary tool for spelling instruction, even if custom lists are entered.

Good uses for this site would be:

1. To allow for extra practice, once words have been introduced with an instructor;
2. As a follow-up to a spelling test, rather than the old standard of having students write out words they’ve missed a certain number of times;
3. For older (e.g. adult literacy, or remedial) students will find it possible to input simple words and generate sentences which do not insult their intelligence;
4. Once a student has covered a lesson, if their writing indicates they may have forgotten a spelling pattern, they can be directed to an archived lesson for review;
5. Teachers and home educators may want to use the site to print lists or word searches, or also to share lists with one another.

Interestingly enough, among the games suggested for teachers (these are not all incorporated into the site yet) several originate on the BBC Schools web site, where you can find the Dance Mat Typing course I reviewed a few weeks back. I look forward to seeing more of these games integrated into the SpellingCity site, so they’ll function with the custom word lists. This would mean students could choose a broader range of activities for any given spelling list.

You might also find the following sites helpful for spelling instruction & practice:

Everyday Spelling
Scott Foresman - complete spelling lists for grades 1-8, printable puzzles, reference materials, links

Word Shapes Worksheet Generator
A to Z Teacher Stuff Tools - up to 12 words per worksheet

CanSpell & SpellIt! Spelling Bees
Both the Canadian & American bees offer online study zones with lists, lesson plans, puzzles, word of the day, links, etc.

BBC Schools Spelling
A selection of interactive activities that teach syllables, roots, prefixes, suffixes, homophones, etc.
NB: click on “Tutors” in any section for an overview of the module

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a
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Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

Are you a home educator whose kids are interested in The Golden Compass? Would you like the opportunity to get together with other home-schooling families to discuss the book? Join us! We are a group of families with kids of all ages, coming together to share the experience of reading this both celebrated and controversial book by author Philip Pullman.

The goal of the group is to give both children and parents a chance to socialize and to discuss our thoughts on the book. Come together to share resources, and to view each other’s presentations. Our first meeting was a preliminary meet & greet. At our second meeting we will discuss the types of projects each family (or child) will be doing (projects are optional, but highly recommended - you can just come to watch the presentations.) The third meeting will be the actual presentation of the projects. Finally, we have been discussing the possibility of going together to see the film. Watch this space for the next meeting dates. Even if you haven’t yet begun to read the book, there is still time to pick it up! Need to get a copy of the book? You can buy it in English or French, or borrow it from the library!

Meetings are to be held Tuesdays at 1:30pm, at the Mile End Children’s Library, 5434 Avenue du Parc (downstairs.) Access the library by taking bus 80 from Place des Arts, bus 160 from Beaubien, or bus 51 from Laurier.

The Golden Compass is the first in the trilogy of His Dark Materials by acclaimed author Philip Pullman. It is also available under the UK title Northern Lights. The books are an alternative recounting of the Fall, inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as by authors such as Dante and William Blake. The series has sold over 15 million copies. For Northern Lights Pullman won not only the 1995 Carnegie Medal for best book of the year (the only children’s book to ever earn the honour) but also the 2007 “Carnegie of Carnegies“, celebrating the best writing in the 70-year history of the award.

It was important to keep the chapel up to date, because Jordan College had no rival, either in Europe or in New France, as a center of experimental theology. Lyra knew that much, at least. She was proud of her College’s eminence, and liked to boast of it to the various urchins and ragamuffins she played with by the canal or the claybeds; and she regarded visiting Scholars and eminent professors from elsewhere with pitying scorn, because they didn’t belong to Jordan and so must know less, poor things, than the humblest of Jordan’s under-Scholars.

As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic, with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had dæmons just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to them. Lyra imagined the Chaplain speaking loftily, listening to the star dæmons’ remarks, and then nodding judiciously or shaking his head in regret. But what might be passing between them, she couldn’t conceive…..

The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide orange sky. The spires and towers of Oxford stood around them, level but no higher; the green woods of Château - Vert and White Ham rose on either side to the east and the west. Rooks were cawing somewhere, and bells were ringing, and from the oxpens the steady beat of a gas engine announced the ascent of the evening Royal Mail zeppelin for London. Lyra watched it climb away beyond the spire of St. Michael’s Chapel, as big at first as the tip of her little finger when she held it at arm’s length, and then steadily smaller until it was a dot in the pearly sky.

She turned and looked down into the shadowed quadrangle, where the black-gowned figures of the Scholars were already beginning to drift in ones and twos toward the buttery, their dæmons strutting or fluttering alongside or perching calmly on their shoulders. The lights were going on in the Hall; she could see the stained-glass windows gradually beginning to glow as a servant moved up the tables lighting the naphtha lamps. The Steward’s bell began to toll, announcing half an hour before dinner.

This was her world. She wanted it to stay the same forever and ever, but it was changing around her, for someone out there was stealing children.
~ Chapter 3

*****

Other resources you might find interesting:

My other posts on The Golden Compass, particularly
Golden Compass Activities

Read the first three chapters online

The Science of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials by John & Mary Gribbin
(A.A. Knopf, 2005, ISBN 0375831444)
| Library - in English or French | Purchase - in English or French |

The Magical Worlds of Philip Pullman by David Colbert
(McArthur, 2006, ISBN 155278617X)
| Library | Purchase |

Navigating the Golden Compass edited by Glenn Yeffeth
(Benbella, 2005, ISBN 1932100520)
Purchase

Exploring Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials by Lois Gresh
(Griffin, 2007, ISBN 031234743X)
| Library | Purchase |

Paradise Lost by John Milton, commentary by Philip Pullman
(Oxford, 2005, ISBN 019280619X)
Purchase

*****

Official movie trailer:

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a
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Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

This is a little gift from me to all of the other Moms who, like me, are still slowly sipping on their caffeinated beverages & staring bleary eyed at the computer screen in hopes of (soon!) recovering from the holidays. Get out your furry slippers and grab your mugs. This is too much fun to share with the kids, so get out your headset and turn the volume up. And remember, you are not alone!

For more wonderful entertainment, please visit Anita Renfroe’s official web site.

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

This is a one-hour swim & gym class especially for homeschoolers at the Pointe-Claire Pool. Kids will be placed in small groups, according to age & swimming ability. Classes take place on Tuesday afternoons, from about 13:00-14:30 depending on your child’s group.

The winter session runs from 8 January 2008 - 11 March 2008. The cost is $84/child, payable by cash or cheque made out to the City of Pointe-Claire. The pool is located at 98 Douglas Shand, near St-Jean.

Please note, most folks take this program for the full year, so only a few places are available for the winter session. Deadline to register is 28 December 2007. Contact Angie (angie@homeschoolinghorizons) in order to verify availability. You should be prepared to provide your name & phone number, along with your child’s name, age & swimming level in order to reserve a spot.

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!