Journal of a Busy Mom

living one day at a time

Simple Machines Foldable

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My son is taking General Science at our co-op this year. This week he was studying simple machines. We made a simple machines foldable this week to help him with remembering the formulas and names of the different simple machines. Kids with dyslexia struggle with remembering formulas, so I decided to create something to help him and his classmates.

First I found the picture of the simple machines:
screen-shot-2016-10-26-at-6-24-26-am

Then I used a blue paper (can be any color) and folded it into shutter:

Shutter

And then glued the pictures to the outside.

Then we watched the video clips in the Exploring General Science Multimedia Companion CD to write out each of the following:

Mechanical Advantage Formula

Drawing of the simple machine

And examples or other diagrams to help with solving mechanical advantage problems.

Here is what ours looked like:

Simple machine

Inside foldable

My son will be using this to take his Module 4 test.

Ligia

Note Taking App #2: Audio Note

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I shared previously that I am on a quest to find the right note taking app for my son. He has dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADD which makes it hard to:

  • listen and write at the same time
  • copy off a board
  • spell and write at the speed of the lecturer
  • focus on the speaker and notes, and everything else going on

These apps help because even if he doesn’t take great notes-even minimal notes-the audio recording will allow him to be able to go back to the lecture and listen to what was said.

I will be spending time teaching him to take notes. He has to learn how to do it properly, but that doesn’t mean that he will be able to do it at the rate that most non-LD can.

So here are two videos that I really liked about AudioNote.

 

 

Note taking App #1: Notability

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I want to teach my son to take notes using one of the Note taking Apps available. I watched several Youtube videos on the following apps: Notability, Microsoft Note, and Audio Note. I ended up like Notability and Audio Note.

 

I learned a lot from these videos. I then took what I learned and applied it. I recently went to the Handwriting Without Teachers seminars and brought my iPad with me. I used notability to take notes and pictures and it was amazing!!!!

I now have the three seminars in my  iPad with pictures and notes and sound (shhhh) I wanted to try out the record feature so I did record the seminar. It really works! There is a few second lag between what I wrote and what the presenter is saying, so what I did was I just went 10 seconds back on the recording. Since while she was speaking I was writing, my notes are note exactly in sync with her if that makes sense.

I am hoping to teach both my kids to use this app. My daughter does not have dyslexia  but neither did the girl in the video! I think this app will help any student.

For my son, I want to help him as he prepares for high school and college to take notes, but the reality is that he will never write fast enough to be able to take really good notes. This allows him to take minimal notes and record the lecture at the same time. He could even just draw his notes and the sound would still record and allow him to review what notes he did take.

Ligia