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Robin Khoury

Homeschooling Mom For 16 Years

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The Values Driven Family



    • Robin: Thanks so much, Dena! You are a sweetheart.
    • Dena Wood: Hi Robin, I love the look of your site. I’ll be checking back often!
    • admin: Thanks, Malia! We are putting up new stuff day by day. Oh, and I like your site very much, too! Robin
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    • Easy Bible Teaching For Homeschools: Ohdave wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptDuring my sixteen-plus years of homeschooling, I taught the Bible to my boys in various ways. When they were really young we read Bible story picture books along with the Bible. We memorized Bible verse songs and made charts of verses …


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Logo Adventures

Logo Adventures

Using Microworlds Logo Software for Homeschoolers ages 8-12

Move your turtles, do some math, and make a game! This is just some of the stuff kids do in this beginning computer reasoning curriculum by Phyllis Wheeler. If you are not familiar with programming, like me, the name might be deceiving. You might think that Logo Adventures is a beginner’s book on logo creating. Turns out that Logo is a programming language that was developed at MIT to teach reasoning skills to elementary children. During the course of the one year program, kids will learn computer commands to make drawings and animations, and put together a computerized board game.

Since I am such a, well, blonde, I enlisted the help of my next door neighbor, Zachary, for this review. (He is nine years old, and the median recommended age for this study.) I thought he would be perfect because he is brilliant like so many homeschooled children, (though not homeschooled.)

Logo Adventures contains two parts, the Microsoft Microworlds software and the Logo Adventures curriculum manual. (The Microworlds software and manual run anywhere from $76.98 to $121.98, depending on your operating system.) The curriculum is available at www.MotherBoardBooks.com. To get started you just install Microworlds. Then Phyllis asks you to go to Motherboard books for a mini-tutorial in how to use the software. Simple enough, even for me!

Next we got started. When we first opened up the software, there was this little turtle sitting in the middle. As we typed code sequences into the command center, the turtle did different things. In this lesson we learned to make the turtle move, draw lines and objects, and save sequences of commands for future projects. One of my fears was that I wouldn’t be able to figure the lesson out on the fly. Well, I just read Phyllis’ instructions straight from the book, and with very little help from me Zach blazed right on through.

Things really got fun when we opened up the Drawing Center. Zach had a great time drawing his own pictures and learning to use the tools. Next he experimented with all of the fun pictures that you can put on your turtle. (So if you put a car on him and then type in the right commands, you can make your car go.)

I am horrible at math and generally steer clear of anything that has to do with numbers and sequences and stuff like that. But I had a ball doing lesson one of Logo Adventures with Zach. I am going to keep going just for fun! I highly recommend Logo Adventures by Phyllis Wheeler of Motherboard Books.

Review by Robin Khoury of Help For Homeschool Moms online magazine   www.help4homeschoolmoms.com