Christmas in the Trenches

During the Christmas season I try to read as many Christmas books to the kids as I can squeeze in. It’s not possible to read every night, due to other holiday going-ons, but the kids take turns picking out which story they want to hear when we are snuggled in at home.

Tonight Blake chose Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon. This is a book I picked up at ,where else but,  a thrift store a couple of years ago and  it remains one of our favorites. The author first wrote a song, then a book was developed from that. The touching storyline is loosely based on a Christmas truce that occurred during WWI.

The book also contains a brief author’s note on how he came to compose the song and a historical note on the actual occurrence of the truce. The last pages of the book are the lyrics to the song, itself.

So, to wrap up our story time, we found a video of the author singing the song and watched that. If you have the time, it’s worth viewing, especially at this time of year.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Nature Study News

I took the opportunity on Wednesday to snap some pics of the boys at their nature study class. They weren’t exactly thrilled, but I managed to sneak a few in.

    

Connor decided to act just a little goofy for the camera.

Their subject this week was a Burr Oak Acorn. Their teacher, who is a friend of mine, also, has a backyard full of them, so she brought a few in for an up close and personal study.

We have found these on our walks around the neighborhood, but never knew what they were. They kind of look like regular acorns on steroids.

Here are their sketches.

Connor                                         Blake

Next week is the final week of class. The co-op is considering either a leather working class or a writing class using Story Starters by Karen Andreola. Either one would suit us just fine!

Apologia Science

The boys are enjoying their Apologia science books. Blake has been working through the Apologia Botany book by setting his own pace. This works well with him as he tends to want to read ahead. Last week he learned about classifying plants by sorting shoes from our closets. This was a great hands on project since he could visually see how the shoes ended up grouped when he was finished. 

                                                  

Connor is doing well on his Apologia Land Animals book. He’s working more on his own this year. It still takes some prompting to keep him on track, but once he gets going he’s very diligent in his work. Last week his notebooking instructions were to create a newsletter about dogs. Instead of handwriting it, he asked if he could type it. So we opened up a template in Microsoft Publisher and he went to town! I was really impressed, especially since I’ve never typed anything in Publisher! Here’s the final product. Punctuation and spelling still needs to be worked on.

                                                   

Laina is finishing up her first module in Apologia Biology. She’ll take her test in a couple of days, so hopefully she’ll do well. I’ve decided only to grade on the tests this year and not on the study guide questions. This will simplify things quite a bit on my end, and hopefully enable her to have better information for studying. I also am not requiring the labs, unless it is one that she absolutely wants to do.

That’s all for now~

Back to School

It seems I’ve stretched summer out as long as I could, and so today it was time to embark on a new school year adventure. I can’t honestly say I’ll be more faithful in blogging this year than last, but I’ll do my best to keep updating.

How is it going so far? A bit stressful. Right now is the kids quiet reading time, so I had a minute before laundry and errands to catch up. Settling in after having an unstructured summer will take a little while. But, I’ll tweak it as we go, and all should fall into place.

Laina is in 9th grade this year! A freshman! Does having/teaching a high schooler scare me? Not really. It’s more the life lessons she needs to learn that I’m worried about. I’m willing to teach, but she also has to be willing to learn. She is enjoying the SPCA still and has started taking piano lessons from a neighbor across the street. She absolutely loves that and acquired a keyboard from some friends to practice on. This year she is working on completing her Math-U-See Algebra, and then will move on to the Stewardship program. On Wednesdays, we have the opportunity to join a homeschool co-op, where she will be working on a financial class. She’s also doing Apologia Biology, Practical Proverbs Bible Study, Simply Charlotte Mason Spelling Wisdom, Epikardia Essays for High School, Spanish and a whole slew of reading. Whew!

I’m still taking the Charlotte Mason  approach, but am throwing in a bit of the Robinson Method in providing the kids with a booklist for history, geography, literature, additional science, economics, and character building and sending them on their way!

As a family we’ll be doing scripture memorization, bible study, poetry, hymn study, map study and current events, along with a read aloud.

Blake is officially a junior high kid now. He’s in 6th grade. He loves military and hunting stuff. Guy stuff. He’s already said he will probably go into the military after  high school. He chose this year to start Motherboard Books, Computer Science, Plain & Simple. He’s also working on Math-U-See Zeta, Apologia Botany, Simply Charlotte Mason Spelling Wisdom, a personal Bible study, and writing which I will assign. His choices off the reading lists to begin with today were: Narnia-which he’d already been reading, an autobiography by a former prisoner from Alcatraz who is now a Christian, The Hole in Our Gospel-by the CEO of World Vision, and Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers. Quite an eclectic choice.

Connor is now 4th grade and that just doesn’t seem possible. He asked to do an art class this year, so he’ll be starting How Great Thou Art. He’s also working on Math-U-See Delta, Apologia Land Animals, Cursive Copywork, Queen’s Language Lessons,  and a personal Bible Study. Both the boys will be attending a nature study class through the co-op for the next six weeks.

As I type it out, it sounds like a lot, but a lot of it is reading and if it needs to be pared down, I’m not afraid to do it. I really want my kids to understand that this is about teaching yourself to learn, not just cramming a bunch of facts into their heads. I want to build their character and life skills, and have them love God. It can be as simple as that. I wrote more about Homeschooling Their Hearts in this post.

I apologize for not including links to products/websites/pictures today-I’m out of time! I’ll update my sidebar with the kids school pics that I took this morning real soon!

Thanks for visiting with me!

Time for Planning

I started reorganizing my school/office supply cupboard today in preparation for our new school year. I should have taken before and after pictures, but I wasn’t thinking that clearly. I actually have a whole row of cupboards in the schoolroom that I want to go through, but the main one I tackled today was the one that I had been chucking all our new curriculum in! I had also been using it to hold the supplies & photos for a scrapbooking project I really want to work on. It also was housing some mailing and packaging supplies for some items I’m planning to list on EBay.  Each time I opened one door to shove something in, things would fall out the other door!

Now, I have a current list of all my supplies and they are neatly organized, including the mailing materials. The kid’s new schoolbooks are in three separate piles on my table, just waiting for me to go through for planning, and the scrapbooking is settled in another area where I have some other crafty projects waiting on me.

I feel so much better! Tomorrow I’ll be moving down the line of cupboards and drawers, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll take a look at one stack of the curriculum!

A Beautiful Day

The weatherman was calling for rain today. It didn’t rain. It ended up being a springy-feeling 77 degrees. Not a single cloud in the sky.

                                          

We took advantage of the sunshine and spent some time on the playground at the local elementary school.

The cutie on the spinner with Laina is a friend of ours.

Blake played some soccer and frisbee with his dad.

Connor got some pointers on the basketball court from one of our friends. He actually shot his first basket today!

                                       

How was your day of rest?

Weekly Wrap-Up: January 28, 2011

                       

It’s been a while since I’ve updated, so I thought a good way to do so would be by participating in Kris’ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-Up.

We officially started back from our Christmas break on January 18th.  Unfortunately, I’ve been struggling a bit with some anxiety, so we’ve just been plugging along trying to get the scheduled items completed. So far, so good.

We have been cooped up a bit inside, due to the weather and my issues (Yes, I have some issues. I can share more later.), but this week was much better so we managed to spend some time out of doors.

We decided to explore Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park that lies just on the outskirts of town. We found it has a couple small play structures, suitable more for toddler age, and a larger, wooden playground set that the boys loved. Even more exciting was the fact that the park houses two baseball diamonds, a basketball court and a nature trail.  There is plenty of room for the kids to run around and even to ride bikes if we choose to take them out there.

On Wednesday they spent some time on the playground and on Thursday we loaded up some bats, gloves and a ball and the kiddos took some time for P.E.

My husband found a snakeskin in a shed while he was working, so I took the boys to see it. Blake, of course, started to touch it and examine it, while Connor yelled at him, “Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!” They are two totally different little boys! Blake then informed me that it was an old snakeskin because when snakes shed their skin, their eyelids come off with it and the eyelids were no longer visible on this one. Just in case I was concerned they weren’t learning anything being homeschooled!

Inside the schoolroom, we’re continuing our Ancient Egypt study and have begun reading Exodus. Just for fun, they watched The Prince of Egypt yesterday afternoon.  I’ve also decided to start with some early American history, mainly for Connor’s benefit, so we’ve started reading the Landmark book, The Vikings and will continue on from there.

That will do it for this week. I’m hoping to get back into some sort of regular blogging again soon!

Hysterically Funny!

I just have to share this link to Carol Barnier’s post on her Sizzlebop blog. These are some entries in her “I’d Never Thought I’d Say That” contest. If you want a good laugh, hop on over and read this post!

If you are not familiar with Carol, just let me say, you should be! She is the hilarious author of How To Get Your Child Off The Refrigerator and On To Learning and If I’m Diapering a Watermelon, Then Where’d I Leave the Baby?

I noticed she has some new books out that I haven’t read yet, but will definitely be ordering. Her refrigerator book was the first one I read about homeschooling a “spirited” child when it was time to start schooling Connor. So, if you have a “sizzler,” as she likes to call these energetic kiddos, I would recommend perusing her website.

Enjoy!

How I Incorporate the “Extras” Part V: Composer Study

This is the last in my “extras” series. I’m going to be honest and tell you that of all the  subjects, I have the hardest time with composer study. Our composer for this term is Chopin; however, we have yet to listen to anything by him!

I have this scheduled for Thursdays. Ideally, I would like to introduce the composer, read a short bio on him, put him in our Book of Centuries and listen to pieces by him. Our day tends to get busy and I don’t bother to put on the music, though. So, if you are interested in trying this out, it should only take a few minutes a week. You could play the music while the kids are working or even in the car if you have a cd to listen to. The website www.classical.com has several pieces you could listen to over the computer also. I used it last year while studying Bach.

Happy studying!

How I Incorporate the “Extras” Part IV: Hymn Study

I don’t know about you all, but there are so many hymns that I am not familiar with, nor are my children. These are songs that are not sung as often in church (at least in mine) as they used to be. I liked the idea of introducing my kids to the old fashioned hymns, while learning some myself.

We do hymn study on Wednesdays. It only takes about five minutes. I use the outline provided by SCM. The Center for Church Music offers a lot of the words, music and history for the hymns Sonya recommends. If I couldn’t find one that was on her list, I just substituted another. The site also offers a devotional you can read if you choose to.

I print out the words ahead of time for the entire year-six hymns total. Then the first time I introduce one, I have the kids listen to the short (about 4 minute) history for the hymn on the website. The narration is interspersed with the hymn being sung. So the kids read along with the song and get the history all at once. In the following weeks they listen to the hymn a couple of times through. Usually by the 3rd week they’re singing along; although, sometimes they get a little silly in trying to keep up with the high notes!

As a side note, I also do our Trial and Triumph reading on Wednesdays, and we come across hymns written by some of the martyrs that we’ve read about. It’s a neat way to tie the history of the songs into the lives of the people we’ve read about.

How I Incorporate the “Extras” Part III: Poet Study

Along with Shakespeare, we also do poet/poetry study on Tuesdays.

Again, I referred to SCM’s poetry study recommendations in choosing our poets for the year. We’ve begun with Robert Frost this year, as last year we studied Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll. I’ve chosen to study one poet every six weeks, so my list will be much more extensive than SCM’s over the years.

I use www.famouspoetsandpoems.com to choose my poems and obtain a biography if I haven’t picked one up at the library. I choose one poem by the author for each week, six in total. On the first Tuesday, I read about the poet and pass out the poem for the week. Each of the kids take a turn reading it aloud and then we just discuss what it meant to them. This gives them a chance to practice oral speaking, pronunciation of new words, etc.

We read poetry from other poets throughout the rest of the week, just so the kiddos can see the different styles of poetry writing.  Some of the poetry books we’ve read from are: Favorite Poems, Old and New by Helen Farris;  The Earth is Painted Green; A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson; choices from  The Book of Virtues and Everyday Graces; and we have even enjoyed some Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky and Goop Poems!

There your have it-our poetry study.

Enjoy your day!

How I Incorporate the “Extras” Part II: Shakespeare

We’ve never attempted to study Shakespeare before this year; however, it seemed pretty easy to tackle by following SCM’s recommendations. Sonya suggests a play every other year. I’m going to try and tackle a play each year. We’ll see how it goes!

I have scheduled our Shakespeare reading for Tuesdays. I’ve broken our study up by six week terms. The first term we’re reading a condensed story version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare. We read half of it last week and we will finish it next week. Because it’s relatively short, I don’t mind drawing it out over a couple of weeks. The kids are actually enjoying this story. Probably because it contains fairies and such. After reading, I just have them narrate back to me. Dover publications has some great coloring books, so I may get one for the kids to color. Even Laina enjoys these because of their details.

For the next six weeks I plan on reading the full version from a Complete Works of Shakespeare book I have.

After that I would like to obtain an audio version and either a play on video or a movie based on the play for them to watch.

And that’s it! An easy introduction to Shakespeare.

How I Incorporate the “Extras” Part I: Artist Study

Part of what drew me to the CM technique, besides all the living books I get to use, was the teaching of what I’ll dub “the extras.” The extras are subjects that were commonly taught back in Ms. Mason’s day, but not so common in education today. These include our artist/picture study, poet/poetry study, Shakespeare, hymn study and composer study. Now, these are not necessarily topics that are of utmost importance to my husband or myself, but they are ones I wanted my kids to have some exposure to, and the CM style fits right in with this.

One of my readers asked if I could share how I incorporate these into our school days, so I’ll do a short series of posts describing what we do for each subject.

Basically, I schedule one subject per day of the week, with the exception of Tuesdays, when we do both poetry & Shakespeare.

Artist/picture study is scheduled for Mondays. I like doing it at the beginning of the week so that once we’ve discussed the artist and picture, the kids have all week to enjoy the current painting.

I chose the artists based on the Simply Charlotte Mason curriculum guide, module 1. We actually studied Audubon and Cassatt last year, so I’m using a couple of my own choices to make my six artists for the year. I will use one artist for each six week term I have scheduled.

If I’m well prepared, I’ll check a short book out from the library on the artist and we’ll read this the first Monday to familiarize ourselves with him/her. If not, then I’ll just read a short bio off the internet. I choose six pictures ahead of time that we’ll study and print them out. I try to pick ones that have enough detail or that will be appealing enough to the kids to generate good discussions. I don’t have a certain website I used. I just googled the artist’s name and browsed the pictures.

On Monday, I will set out the picture, we’ll read about the artist, I’ll give the kids the name of the picture and then have each one look at it for a short while and then narrate to me all that they remember from it. That’s it. Very simple! I then post the picture on the wall and by the end of the six weeks we have six pictures to compare. We’ll have a discussion usually about what is similar in the pictures, what the kids think they mean, which one did they like best, etc.

A couple other things I have done are:

• Print a coloring page and have them color it similar to the artist’s style. Again, I usually just google the artist name & coloring page and print off what I can find. I don’t have a specific website I use.
• Create a small lapbook page that we adhere to a folder to keep track of the artists we’ve studied. I think I received this free from www.homeschoolinthewoods.com, but I’m not entirely sure!
• Add them to our Book of Centuries.

We are currently on Monet, and I happened to find a large book of his work that included a biography for $2 at a thrift store. So I’m also leaving the book out in case the kiddos want to browse through it.

I hope this helps!

What We’re Using for School This Year

We’ve been back at school for two weeks now. They haven’t been full weeks by any means, so we’re still trying to get back in the flow of things. Here’s a little peek at our curriculum for this year.

For our family (group) time we’re using:

• History/Bible/Geography: Simply Charlotte Mason-Genesis through Deuteronomy and Ancient Egypt
• Read Aloud: Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder this term, then Charlotte’s Web, Wind in the Willows, Hans Brinker, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and Pippi Longstockings
• Artist Study: Monet, Christian Riese Lassen, Maxfield Parrish, P. Buckley Moss, Diego Rivera and Durer (one every six weeks) Using www.famouspoetsandpoems.com for poetry and bios.
• Scripture Study: Starting in Genesis using SCM’s scripture memory system
• Poet Study: Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning, Rudyard Kipling, Tennyson and Carl Sanburg (one every six weeks)
• Hymn Study: Selected hymns from SCM recommendations. Using www.songsandhymns.org for music, lyrics and brief history of hymns.
• Nature Study: Using ideas from www.handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com and things we find in our own backyard!
• Composers: Chopin, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Williams, O’Connor and Stravinsky (one every six weeks)
• President & State Study: Read about one per week and complete notebooking page.
• Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream-reading and watching the play on video. Maybe listening to an audio version if I can find one.
• Church History: Continue reading one story per week from Trial and Triumph.
• Fridays are reserved for art and field trips.

Laina is now 8th grade. I can’t believe I’ll have a high schooler next year! She’s using:

• Math: Math U See Algebra I
• Science: Apologia Exploring Creation w/Physical Science
• Spelling: Using SCM’s Spelling Wisdom Book 3 for copywork & dictation
• Grammar: Daily Grams and Easy Grammar with Blake
• Bible: Discovering Doctrine from SCM
• Character Building: Beautiful Girlhood
• Literature: A list of books to choose from. She is currently reading A Day No Pigs Would Die and just completed The Diary of Anne Frank
• Typing: www.goodtyping.com
• Also doing written narration twice a week.

Blake is 5th grade. He’s using:

• Math: Math U See Epsilon-continuing from last year. When he’s completed he’ll move on to Zeta.
• Science: Apologia Exploring Creation w/Zoology-Swimming Creatures and Christian Liberty Press Nature Reader 5
• Spelling: Using SCM’s Spelling Wisdom Book 1 for copywork and dictation
• Character Building: Prudence and the Millers
• Literature: A list of books to choose from. He just finished James and the Giant Peach.
• Typing: Typing Instructor Deluxe
• Cursive: Queen’s Pictures in Cursive Book B
• Written narration twice a week

Connor is now 3rd grade: He’s using:

• Math: Math U See Gamma-although I’m not using the workbook, I am using the teacher’s guide to plan his lessons and the worksheet generator on their website. We are reading living math books and playing games.
• Science: Finishing SCM’s 106 Days of Creation then reading living science books and Christian Liberty Press Nature Reader 3
• Copywork: Queen’s Copywork for Little Boys
• Grammar: Queen’s Language Lessons for the Very Young Book 1-we will finish this and start on Book 2 this year.
• Spelling: Using copywork and dictation found on SCM website.
• Character Building: Wisdom and the Millers
• Literature: A list of books to choose from. He is currently reading The Matchlock Gun.

We are using the Charlotte Mason methods more full time this year. Lots of reading, narration and copywork. Connor really enjoys it. A few months ago he declared he was going to give up reading. A few days ago he exclaimed that he loves reading! 

I may have forgotten a few things, and I know this looks like a lot to do, but we don’t do every subject every day. This week will be our first full week and I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes!

My New Schoolroom

It took me all of yesterday, but I took my new schoolroom/office/scrapbook/game/craft room from this:

To this:

Things are not organized exactly how I would like them; however, I did manage to get everything out of the boxes and put on a shelf or in a cupboard before our first day of school today!

I do need to invest in another bookshelf to store the kid’s current school books, which are now being housed in the three red crates. I also want to put all the craft and coloring supplies out on a shelf where they will see them and have ease of access. Right now the supplies are under the cabinets, where they will probably be forgotten.  Once those couple of things have been rearranged, I’ll have room to put my scrapbooking supplies in a cupboard, since they don’t need to be out continually.

The one corner of the room that I did not take a picture of contains a table with our computer and office supplies. This is also temporary until we find a desk, or at some point my husband will redo this room to include all built-ins, which should give us better storage/working options.

Now it’s off to some errands. School is done. It was a fairly easy first day!

What is That Thing?

A couple of days ago we found our first Texas bug to identify.  My husband was outside working and called for me to “Come out and see this.” I wasn’t sure what “this” was going to turn out to be. It turned out to be-this:

                                        

Handsome guy, isn’t he? I think he looks kind of like a stinkbug on steroids.

We called the boys out to take a look and they were pretty impressed. I went online and discovered this is commonly known as a  Leaf Footed Bug, from the True Bug family. They have thick thighs with spikes on them and make a loud noise when they fly and can emit an odor when bothered. I’m glad we didn’t bother him, other than to snap his photo.

Not a bad way to start off our nature study for the year!

How Exactly Do I Homeschool Their Hearts?

Hmmm….Interesting question.  Not one I’ve been asked by other people, but one I’ve been asking myself lately. 

In my Charlotte Mason planner, there is a section where parents rate which subjects are most important to them.  My husband and I rated these together and agreed immediately upon which were the most important.  The subjects were  not math or reading, both of which I feel are absolutely necessary. The top three were Bible, life skills and character.  This got me thinking….

If my kids can do algebraic equations, read at college level and recite every president in the exact order, what does that matter if their hearts are not right?  This is where homeschooling their hearts fits in.

I want my children to be able to take the head knowledge they acquire concerning the Bible or character traits and apply it as heart knowledge.  It’s not enough for them to be able to parrot back to me the facts I’m teaching them. I want them to take the Bible verses and lessons Jesus taught and actually live them.  I want them to stop and think “What would Jesus do?” before a word is spoken or an action taken.  I want them to understand what character traits are desirable to possess and use them to minister to others.  I want them to think of others before themselves.  This is homeschooling the heart.

If I see an incident that requires correction, I need to stop what’s going on in our other lessons and use that as a teachable character moment.  If I receive and inappropriate response from the kids, I need to stop what we were involved in and immediately remedy it.  There are times I wonder if I need to halt planned lessons altogether and focus strictly on ways of the will and character.  I know I need to teach to their hearts more than I do.

It’s not just about filling their heads with “stuff.”  It’s more about teaching them to learn on their own.  It’s teaching them how to open a book to find facts they are interested in. It’s about encouraging hobbies and learning how to search out information on a subject they are interested in. If they know how to learn, they will be fine in the future. It’s homeschooling their  hearts.

Life skills are taught as the opportunity arises.  My daughter takes it upon herself to try out a new recipe for breakfast one morning and decides to iron her own shorts.  Blakester helps his uncle stack firewood (for pay!).  Conman helps with Sunday house cleaning.  I’m constantly on the lookout for new skills to teach them.  It’s about preparing them for their future as responsible adults.  It’s homeschooling their hearts.

After thinking on this, I really feel I need to spend time this summer focusing more on their hearts.  Slowing down and taking the time to mold that character and teach them how to deal with their wills is definitely on the roster for this season.

Please feel free to leave a comment and share with me- How do you homeschool your children’s hearts?