Crash Course videos

Add this to your toolbox: the Crash Course YouTube video series from Vlogbrothers.  As of this posting they have made 64 videos, 32 each on World History and Biology.  The videos are silly, exciting, very visual, interesting, and extremely engaging.  Their geeky-silly style is akin to Bill Nye, Alton Brown, and Horrible Histories.  And through this unique combination, the producers are incredibly able to cram you full of more information in 12 minutes than you've probably learned in your lifetime on a subject, and have you able to not only understand but retain it all.  IMPORTANT NOTE: these videos are targeted toward older kids or young adults, and are sometimes quite blunt in their content matter, so you should preview each video before having your child watch it to determine the level of appropriateness.  But don't worry - they're so fun, you won't mind one bit watching the video a second time with your child!  ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: these videos are also blatantly secular in their perspective, so often there will be philosophies in them that don't line up with the philosophies of most conservative homeschoolers.  So again, preview each video first.  However, I still maintain that these videos are useful, despite some of the content, due to their ability to engage and interest the learner and effectively give them a big-picture understanding of a topic before delving into the topic for further study.  Please consider using them as a sort of preview of a subject, and following up each video with questions and conversation and further learning.  And for parents of younger children, or children for whom the videos aren't appropriate, parents should also consider watching them for themselves, so that YOU can have a working understanding of the topic at hand before you delve into it.  Or, you know, for pure entertainment, because these videos are CRAZY FUN!!

The list of videos to date, not in any particular order...

BIOLOGY

Your Immune System: Natural Born Killer

Evolution: It's a Thing

The Big Guns: Your Muscular System

Your Skeleton: It's ALIVE!

The Excretory System: From Your Heart to the Toilet

The Digestive System

Circulatory & Respiratory Systems

The Nervous System

Animal Behavior

Chordates

Complex Animals: Annelids & Arthropods

Simple Animals: Sponges, Jellies, & Octopuses

Comparative Anatomy: What Makes Us Animals

Taxonomy: Life's Filing System

Population Genetics: When Darwin Met Mendel

Evolutionary Development: Chicken Teeth

Animal Development: We're Just Tubes

Speciation: Of Ligers & Men

Natural Selection

Meiosis: Where the Sex Starts

Mitosis: Splitting Up is Complicated

DNA, Hot Pockets, & The Longest Word Ever

DNA Structure and Replication

Heredity

Photosynthesis

ATP & Respiration

Plant Cells

In Da Club - Membranes & Transport

Eukaryopolis - The City of Animal Cells

Biological Molecules - You Are What You Eat

Water - Liquid Awesome

That's Why Carbon Is A Tramp

HISTORY

Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution

Latin American Revolutions

Haitian Revolutions

The French Revolution

Tea, Taxes, and The American Revolution

The Amazing Life and Strange Death of Captain Cook

The Seven Years War

The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway Inflation

The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Columbian Exchange

The Renaissance: Was it a Thing?

Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Mongols

Venice and the Ottoman Empire

International Commerce, Snorkeling Camels, and The Indian Ocean Trade

Wait For It...The Mongols!

Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa

The Crusades - Pilgrimage or Holy War?

The Dark Ages...How Dark Were They, Really?

Islam, the Quran, and the Five Pillars All Without a Flamewar

Fall of The Roman Empire...in the 15th Century

Christianity from Judaism to the Constantine

The Roman Empire. Or Republic. Or...Which Was It?

The Silk Road and Ancient Trade

Alexander the Great and the Situation ... the Great?

‎2,000 Years of Chinese History! The Mandate of Heaven and Confucius: World History

Buddha and Ashoka

The Persians & Greeks

Ancient Egypt

Mesopotamia

Indus Valley Civilization

The Agricultural Revolution

Columbus, de Gama, and Zheng He! 15th Century Mariners

Horrible Histories, and much MUCH more!

Getting your child interested and engaged in learning a subject makes teaching and learning tremendously more effective and enjoyable. The "Horrible Histories" videos that were put out in the UK are a brilliant and fantastically comedic way to do just that - especially for one the most notoriously "boring" subjects ever. But be warned! The humor is crude and bluntly honest, and though there's no foul language or such, parents may want to preview these videos first to determine the level or appropriateness for their child (I recommend pre-teen and up). That being said, I reiterate, THEY ARE HILARIOUS!!! And full of interesting tidbits you never would have imagined. Here is a list of all the videos that were made, and they can all be found through a simple YouTube search such as this one.

There is also the related book series, which is equally comical, gruesome, and intellectually engaging.  My 10 year old boy is eating them up like candy!  Here is a complete list of the Horrible Histories books, which are available for purchase in many different combinations and formats.

And THEN there is the Horrible Science book series, which ds10 finds absolutely amazing!
And THEN there is the Murderous Maths book series, which ds10 finds utterly astounding!
And THEN there is the Horrible Geography book series, which ds10 finds incredibly intriguing!
And America's Funny But True History series, which we haven't read yet.
Oh, and we musn't forget the Boring Bible series - which makes learning about God's word anything BUT!  :)
...and several other minor book spinoffs that I don't have room to list.

There is also a Horrible Histories website, a Murderous Maths website, and a Horrible Science website, each with some fun games and bits of trivia on it, but IMHO they are utterly lacking compared to the books and videos, and not worth looking at except to preview the kind of material you are likely to find in the books.

Intelligent Design science videos

I love incorporating movies, documentaries, and fun educational videos into our homeschool lessons whenever possible. And usually there are great videos to be found on nearly any subject we teach. However, when it comes to the biology section of our science lessons, I've run into a limitation with just about all the science videos I've found. They all seem to be presented from a strong evolutionary viewpoint, some almost to the the point of feeling like a platform for evolution in the disguise of a children's video. This is a problem for us, since we teach "Intelligent Design" (a.k.a. creation science), and address evolution as only a theory, and a weak one at best. So in the past I've just left video watching OUT of our biology lessons. But what fun is that for the kids? So yesterday I went searching, and found a treasure trove of ID videos on the Answers in Genesis for kids website. They're not strictly biology, but they're mostly biology, and the rest can be shelved for later. And some of them may be a bit on the cheesy side, but what kids video isn't (hehe), and after all, they're better than nothing, so I'm happy. :)

Bill Nye resources

I don't need to tell you how useful Bill Nye's videos are in helping our kids get excited about science, and retain what they learn. The man needs no introduction. Instead, I'll just share with you a few useful links.

• A complete categorized list of all his episodes, including full descriptions of each episode.
• Links to free web-hosted videos of every episode - of which Megavideo has the best quality and track record. (Use "ctrl-F" to quickly find the one you're looking for.)
• A user-submitted collection of printable student worksheets to go along with each video.

Enjoy!

Latin endings memory songs

I'm attempting to teach ds9 Latin this year. Yes, I know this is a bit crazy. But I know of gobs of other kids his age, in public and private and home schools, who are starting their 3rd-graders in Latin, so I'm not the only crazy one. :) I hear it will be immensely beneficial to him at some point, *giggle*, but for the time being I'm just looking at it as tool to help him with English vocabulary, and a just plain fun challenge. We're using the Classical Academic Press curriculum, which seems to be a very well-balanced curriculum! I didn't discover this curriculum - I'm simply following the suggestion of my best friend who is teaching this curriculum in her class of 3rd graders this year. But it's a solid enough curriculum that I have no need or inclination to look further for something better.

But that's not my point. I'm getting to my point. :)

Latin is... CONFUSING. For each single word in English, there are some 6 corresponding verbs in 4 possible configurations, or 10 corresponding nouns in 6 different possible configurations - a total of 84 possible word endings. Just reading that sentence is probably enough to make your head spin. Well, the little third graders are supposed to memorize half of those this year. The curriculum I'm using comes with video and audio files of children chanting the words and endings in catchy rhythms, which does help, but songs always help more.

I LOVE memory songs, and ANY time there is something that needs to be memorized, I will search high and low to find a song to memorize it with, and will even write one if necessary. Luckily, having no prior knowledge of Latin, I am SO thankful that some creative people have written some awesome Latin memory songs for me. :)

First up: the Latin verb endings song. Cute video, catchy tune! EASY to memorize with this baby! According to the comments, the pronunciations are off on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th conjugations, but so what, because when all is said and done it's the tune and format that matters. The rest can be sung on your own. Note: this song WILL get stuck in your head, be that good or bad... :)

Second up: the Latin noun endings song, 1st, 2nd-m, and 2nd-n declinations, being sung by a homeschool co-op teacher and her class, to the tune of "She Will Be Loved" by Maroon-5. Talk about creative! The full lyrics are available here. And here is a karaoke version that I took the liberty of chopping all up and rearranging to fit the lyrics, and speeding up to a more comfortable pace. Feel free to borrow!

Third up: for someday in the future, when ds9 will need to know the rest of the noun declinations, here's a cute little ditty that this adorable old man and his daughter wrote and filmed. Lyrics available at the address at the top of the video. I'm so thankful for the creative people out there who put these songs together!

Note: I have SCOURED the internet videos for Latin memory songs. These ARE the best options there are, in video format. Know of any others? Let me know!

Geography memory songs

It's been a busy day, so I'm going to share a couple short and simple discoveries with you. Firstly, Wakko's states and capitols song. Ds9 and I learned this over the summer, and had a BLAST doing it. And yes, he now knows the capital for every state off the top of his head - it indeed worked! And see how adorable! Learning is best done when a kid is having fun, yes? :)

Second, is a simple U.S. states memory song, without capitals. Ds9 did this with his class last year before we started homeschooling, so I can't take credit for the discovery. But the format of this memory song is very effective, in that the song takes you across the northern, southern, and eastern borders of the U.S., and then fills in the remaining "middle". This format makes it very easy for navigation, and ds9 has no trouble finding his way around the U.S. map. The memory song his class used can be sampled and purchased here (note that each of the 4 song sections must be purchased separately). It's a little cheesy, but most memory songs are, and you have to remember that most of the time your child will be singing them alone or with you, and not necessarily with the annoying background music. :) Here is a video of a 3-yr-old child singing 2 of the U.S. border songs in their entirety, as well as a handful of songs naming the countries on various continents - adorable! All of the songs this little cutie sings are available from the same company, and can all be purchased here. Ds9 and I will be working on some of those world-country songs this year for sure. If you listen to the whole video, you'll see they also have their own "states and capitols" song, but I maintain that Wakko's song is WAY COOLER. :D So there.

It might be a few days before you hear from me again. Enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving week, everyone!!