Proposals For Weekly Lesson Planning Printouts

I've given some thoughts to the idea of Weekly Printouts.

Here are my thoughts and ideas:

There are 2 preferences of note: output order, and page breaks.

Output order would be whether the printout is by day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc OR by Course: Science (M-F), Math (M-F), etc.

Page Breaks would indicate whether or not Scholaric would force a printout between each of the above, it should be turned on or off.

Finally, I don't like the idea of a user having to click more than once to get to the printout for a student, so I'd need to store whichever you did last in your account, so the next time you click printout, it does it that way.  The problem here is whether you have a preference per student, or would all students be the same.  I'd like to assume all students would be the same.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts and ideas

jeff

Cognitius has been Renamed Scholaric

Cognitius has been renamed to Scholaric.

We'd like you to continue using the same homeschool planning, tracking, and organizing tools you've come to rely on, but at a new domain, scholaric.com

It is important that you switch to use scholaric.com, because the cogniti.us domain will soon point elsewhere.

Your lesson plans are available there right now, so make the switch today!

Thanks for your understanding and help during this transition.

The Scholaric Team

Homeschool Podcasts

3 Homschool Podcasts Which I listen To - and their RSS feeds

Uniquely Us is a talk show featuring Jeff and Lea, a husband and wife.  They've been away for a while and just started back again.  I've enjoyed their shows so far.

The Wired Homeschool is a solo podcast by John Wilkerson, who also does Jesus Geek.  The show is John reviewing products and giving technical advice for your homeschool.  Once in a while, he interviews someone (like me, once).
This is a seasonal podcast, and season one is having one more episode, so subscribe now and get a taste, and hear the old shows during the off season.

An Inspired Education is Donna Vail's podcast, where she interviews homeschoolers and other notable folks in education.  The content is great.

Do you listen to any homeschool podcasts?  Add a comment and let me know.

Our New Favorite Building System

We've used lots of building systems.  Lego, Erector, Zoob, Lincoln Logs, and many others.

Our latest one is called Keva Planks.  They are so simple that at first glance you might dismiss it as a joke.
These things are unbelievable.  They are sized with a perfect ratio of 1 x 3 x 15, meaning any way you build them they can align with each other at 90 degree angles.  There are no accessories - everything you use to build is the same.  This means no hunting for the right shape or color.
They claim to be "precision cut".  I'm not sure what kind of cutting tools they are using, but everything lines up and balances perfectly.  When building towers several feet off your surface, there is simply no movement at all in the structure.  And we aren't taking the time to line them up well.
There is something about simplicity of this whole system that draws the eyes and imagination to it.
So far we have built a house, several towers, a helix, a bridge, and some coasters, which guide a ball down through a track.

We consider building with Keva Planks worthy of Math credit as the kids are constantly offsetting their structures by a given number of planks to create a slope for example.
I highly recommend this addictive building system.