One element about the classical education model that I LOVE is copywork. Essentially you find excellent passages in great literature and have the child copy it word for work including punctuation and all. You also talk about it with them and point out different things based on the passage or what you are working on teaching your child.
So, they get to practice handwriting while also experiencing great literature. They get exposure and practice with using different types of punctuation like quotations, semi-colons, commas, etc and literary elements like metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia, etc. They also get to learn some grammar as well, through actually writing and working with well-written sentences!
I feel that it is a GREAT way of teaching them all of these skills, and the best part is, you can really use any book that you are reading...so we select great classic novels to read aloud for fun and then talk about the great writing while we read...and then they copy samples into their notebooks. No boring old workbooks for us!
For example we were just reading Ramona the Pest this week, and there's a passage where Ramona is thinking about the homonyms "which" and "witch". And it's cute and fun and uses both words several times. SO, I selected that as one of our copywork passages for the week.
Another passage (3 paragraphs long or so), talks about Ramona getting a new pair of shoes that go "trip-trap" and so she uses that phrase over and over to show the reader the sound her shoes are making. A great example of onomatopoeia! So she got to copy the great sentence structures and use of punctuation, practice her handwriting, and it was also a great little lesson about using onomatopoeia all wrapped up in one pretty little project.
Why do I call it "Golden Lines" though? Well, "copywork" sounds Awfully Boring! Who wants to do that?! But I came across the name "Golden Lines" in The Brave Writer guide and thought it was a great idea! I stopped calling it Copywork and started using the new term this week and I must say that my 9 year old is much happier adding "Golden Lines" to her notebook than she was about doing "Copywork". Sometimes motivating a child can be as simple as changing our terms! :) LOVE when that happens!
Best of all, I told her that when she is reading independently (either her fun reads or her assigned reading), she can feel free to add any Golden Lines she wants to her notebook. If she finds a great moral lesson or something that just strikes her as "Wow! That was a really great description", etc...she can add it to her book. She liked that idea too!
My plan is to continue doing this for each book we read...I simply use a pencil to mark the margin of any GREAT passage we come across, and we discuss it right then. Then that same day, I type any/all that we found and give them to my children. My youngest two use the short sentences for their copywork. My 9-year-old can either copy all that we found or I may narrow it down to one or two passages (depending on how many we find). And, because I think dictation is a long-lost art, I use the short sentences for dictation practice for her, and the longer ones for copywork.
I can't say enough about how much depth this has added to our homeschool time. I have seen such an improvement in my daughter's writing that I know it's worth the time and effort, and since we're using books that we're reading already, I don't really need to buy any more programs!
I did buy Writing with Ease already for them and we had been using it for all of our copywork, but I have found that it's better for us to do mostly our own passages. I do however love using WWE for our narration work and for getting the kids hooked on specific books that I think they will enjoy. We skip through our WWE workbooks and I only use the ones that I think they will enjoy reading the whole book later.
And, best of all, the work that I pick for my eldest daughter all gets saved in a binder, so that when my younger children read through the books that she is reading independently this year, all I have to do is pull out the page for them! :)
Friday, April 25, 2014
Gearing Up for Next Year....well, week :)
So we are coming to an end of our first year this week! We have ONE school day left of the 180 required days. Of course as I mentioned earlier we have no intentions of stopping because we've hit our "magic school day number".
And so, as we finish our WinterPromise history curriculum, I am getting ready to dive head first into my own history curriculum. After using their schedule and chosen books this year (we LOVED it!), I have decided that I can totally handle creating our own book list and writing/activity schedule. I am beyond excited!
While I was thinking a lot about jumping into Ancient History this year (since according to the classical curriculum model Belle should be starting her 2nd run through of history this year), I have decided it's just not for us. We have spent a year going through US History from the 1400s to about 1750, and will spend probably another year doing the last 160 or so years. Even though I want to get started with doing a "run through" of all of history, I feel like we've enjoyed this last year so much...being able to learn about the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Lewis and Clark expedition, etc in great depth, that I want to continue at this pace. We are spending time getting to really know the events and people who shaped our country. And let's face it, the events of the last 160 years impact their daily life much more than anything in Ancient History, so I want to really focus on this era right now. We can hold off a year or so to start back at the beginning! :)
I have come up with our book list...that at the moment consists of 95 books! We've read through 150 already this year in 10 months, so I think we'll definitely be able to handle the reading load....along with our 30 or so fun reads that we already have selected! :) Gosh I love that I have given our kids a gift of loving literature!
Something else I'm excited about is that I just received our first Homeschool In the Woods Time Travelers set for the Civil War! I don't know if we will go through the actual lessons that are provided in this set, but the projects look like a lot of fun! There's some map work, some role play, some creative writing and research....LOTS of great ideas! So I can't wait to delve in to that!
Here's my planned book list for the 2nd half of US History ordered by date:
It's a great mix of picture books and historical fiction novels, and some 2nd grade readers thrown in for my littles.
I simply went through some other homeschool curricula to determine what main events I want/should include by date and then spent a few hours on amazon selecting the best books I could find. Some ideas came from some of these other curricula and some I just stumbled upon, but they are all very highly reviewed on amazon and look GREAT!
My hope and plan is to be better this year about posting weekly or so about our progress and what we've accomplished. Wouldn't it be great to have it all online for them to look back on?!
And so, as we finish our WinterPromise history curriculum, I am getting ready to dive head first into my own history curriculum. After using their schedule and chosen books this year (we LOVED it!), I have decided that I can totally handle creating our own book list and writing/activity schedule. I am beyond excited!
While I was thinking a lot about jumping into Ancient History this year (since according to the classical curriculum model Belle should be starting her 2nd run through of history this year), I have decided it's just not for us. We have spent a year going through US History from the 1400s to about 1750, and will spend probably another year doing the last 160 or so years. Even though I want to get started with doing a "run through" of all of history, I feel like we've enjoyed this last year so much...being able to learn about the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Lewis and Clark expedition, etc in great depth, that I want to continue at this pace. We are spending time getting to really know the events and people who shaped our country. And let's face it, the events of the last 160 years impact their daily life much more than anything in Ancient History, so I want to really focus on this era right now. We can hold off a year or so to start back at the beginning! :)
I have come up with our book list...that at the moment consists of 95 books! We've read through 150 already this year in 10 months, so I think we'll definitely be able to handle the reading load....along with our 30 or so fun reads that we already have selected! :) Gosh I love that I have given our kids a gift of loving literature!
Something else I'm excited about is that I just received our first Homeschool In the Woods Time Travelers set for the Civil War! I don't know if we will go through the actual lessons that are provided in this set, but the projects look like a lot of fun! There's some map work, some role play, some creative writing and research....LOTS of great ideas! So I can't wait to delve in to that!
Here's my planned book list for the 2nd half of US History ordered by date:
If You
Were...Slavery – 1600 – 1850
Molly Bannaky –
1700s – Benjamin Banneker's grandmother
Dear Benjamin
Banneker – 1790
Brainstorm –
1790 – 1900 (read throughout unit)
Who was Mark
Twain? - 1800s
The Giant Rat of
Sumatra – 1846
Gold Rush Fever –
1848
Gold Fever –
1848
The Great Horn
Spoon – 1848
If You Grew Up
with Abraham Lincoln – 1840s
Uncle Tom's Cabin
– 1852
*Henry's Freedom
Box – 1850s
Trapped Between
Lash and Gun – 1800s
To Be a Slave -
1800s
From Slave Ship to
Freedom Road - 1800s
The Listeners –
1850
Prairie Skies –
1850s
A Family Apart - 1860
A Family Apart - 1860
Who was Abe
Lincoln – 1860s
They're Off! The
Pony Express - 1860s
The Last Brother -
1863
Two Miserable Presidents - 1860s
Two Miserable Presidents - 1860s
I Survived the
Battle of Gettysburg – 1863
What was the
Battle of Gettysburg - 1863
A Pitch in Time –
1864
If You Lived
During the Civil War – 1865
You Wouldn't Want
to be a Civil War Soldier - 1865
You Wouldn't Want
to be a Civil War Nurse – 1865
Growing Up in Coal
Country (PA History) – late 1800s early 1900s
Sugar - 1865
Immigrant Kids – 1900
Immigrant Kids – 1900
Who was Alexander
Graham Bell - 1900
Who were the
Wright Brothers – 1900
Story of George
Washington Carver – 1900s
The Wizard of
Sound Thomas Edison - 1900
I Survived the San
Fran Quake – 1906
Earthquake –
1906
I Survived the
Sinking of the Titanic – 1912
Titanic Sinks –
1912
True Stories of
World War 1 – 1914
After the Dancing
Days – 1914
Knit Your Bit: A
World War 1 Story – 1914
The Letter Home –
1914
Silent in an Evil
Time: The Brave War of Edith Cavell – 1914
The Donkey of
Gallipoli: A True Story of Courage in World War 1 – 1914
Road to War: A
First World War Girls Diary – 1916
Private Peaceful
(After Words) – 1914
War Game: Village
Green to No-Man's-Land – 1914
Christmas In the
Trenches - 1914
If I Die Before I
Wake: The Flu Epidemic Diary of Fiona Macgregor – 1918
The Night the
Bells Rang - 1918
Time for Kids
Henry Ford – 1918 – 1930
Click! A Story
About George Eastman – early 1900s
The Bread Winner –
1932
Who was Albert
Einstein - 1900s
Who was FDR –
1930s/40s
Who Was Anne Frank
– 1930s
Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon - 1930s
Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon - 1930s
I Have Lived a
Thousand Years – 1930s
When Hitler Stole
the Pink Rabbit – 1930s
Hitler's Daughter
– 1930
Who was Amelia
Earhart – 1932
The Night Crossing
– 1930s
Animal Farm - 1930s-1940s
Animal Farm - 1930s-1940s
What was Pearl
Harbor – 1941
You Wouldn't want
to be a World War 2 Pilot – 1940
Once Upon America
– Pearl Harbor – 1941
I Survived Pearl
Harbor – 1941
I Survived the
Nazi Invasion – 1944
Who was John F
Kennedy – 1945
Who was Helen
Keller – 1940s
Helen Keller –
Courage in the Dark - 1940s
Who was Rosa Parks
– 1955
Space Busters -
1955-1972
What was the March
on Washington – 1963
If You Lived
During the time of Martin Luther King Jr – 1960s
Ruby Bridges Goes
to School – 1960
Rosa Parks –
Early Reader – 1960
Freedom on the
Menu – 1960
A Sweet Smell of
Roses – 1960
White Socks Only –
1960
Freedom Summer –
1960
Sit-In: How Four
Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down – 1960
Through My Eyes –
Ruby Bridges – 1960
The Other Side -
1960
You Wouldn't Want
to be on Apollo 13 – 1970 (and movie!)
I Survived the
Sept 11 attacks – 2001
I simply went through some other homeschool curricula to determine what main events I want/should include by date and then spent a few hours on amazon selecting the best books I could find. Some ideas came from some of these other curricula and some I just stumbled upon, but they are all very highly reviewed on amazon and look GREAT!
My hope and plan is to be better this year about posting weekly or so about our progress and what we've accomplished. Wouldn't it be great to have it all online for them to look back on?!
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Home Stretch
Here we are within 5 days of the finish line of our first year of homeschooling. We are still LOVING it and treasuring our time together!
I have absolutely NO intentions of stopping either. I think the whole idea of taking a 3 month summer vacation is ludicrous. I mean, a child's whole job is to learn...that's all they really need to spend their time doing. And they do it through actually reading and being read to and talking and discussing said literature...but also through helping with chores, playing and exploring the world, writing and drawing, building and moving.
We have so much fun learning together about how the world works, events in history, etc., that why would we want to shut our brains off for 3 months anyway?
So, we will be continuing as we have been. For history this year, we have been studying American History from the Native Americans up to just prior to the Civil War. So, we will be continuing through Slavery and the Civil War, World War 1, the Great Depression, World War 2, all the way up to present day. I'm not sure how long it will take us...as I have just compiled our <ahem> short reading list....ok so it's not short at all! :)
Shouldn't be too bad since we've read more than 150 books so far this year and it's only been 10 months! Belle's read another 30 on top of that!
We also just got the kids a bunch of new books for Easter...and then they wanted to use their easter money they got from Nonni to buy MORE books! :) Gotta LOVE that!
So, for literature/fun reads, we are going to be reading:
Mary Poppins (books 1-3)
The Boxcar Children (books 1-4)
Little House on the Prairie (books 2-9)
Ramona Quimby Series (books 2-8)
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Hobbit
The Story of Dr. Doolittle
The Giants of the Land
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle
These should get us through a few months...I hope! We read 3 full chapters out of our two history books today, along with a chapter from Grandpa's Box (our Bible story book we're reading through now), and then started The Boxcar Children book 1 today...and the girls BEGGED and BEGGED to keep reading. I finally had to stop half way through the book! LOL!
Belle's also working through the Kingdom Keepers book series right now (working through the first book still I believe).
We are still working through the Math-U-See program and loving it. Belle is on lesson 18 out of 30 for the Delta book, and the littles are on lesson 6 of the Beta book.
As for writing, I'm switching from IEW (I just did not enjoy it at all and found it to be dull and boring, and while Belle enjoyed the videos and didn't seem to really MIND the work, she was so uninspired and got to the point where she just dreaded having to write). So, we are now using The Brave Writer methodology and it's going GREAT! She immediately went back to loving writing! So, I'm glad about that!
We will continue working through First Language Lessons level 4, but at a very slow pace. She's almost done the Winter Promise Grammar work, and so I'm not super concerned about getting lots more grammar in....so we'll just do 2 lessons a week or so until we get through the whole thing.
As for Writing with Ease, we are using that as more of a guideline now. I pick and choose passages for narration/copywork/dictation from it when I see good ones, but skip the ones I've either never heard of or seem boring. I instead/also am implementing a Golden Lines ongoing assignment now...instead of "copywork"...because it just sounds SO BORING! So now, we are digging through all these great novels for golden lines or nuggets that we want to remember. Might be because they make a really great point or moral lesson, or maybe just because it's really great writing, or it teaches a literary concept or spelling/vocab word that we need practice with.
As for science, we have switched to using Bernard Nebel's Building Foundations for Scientific Thinking as our frame work. Much like the rest of our "curriculum", it's really just a methodology for teaching, or a frame work to guide our topics, but we learn each topic through living books and responding in writing when appropriate. I love his methodology because instead of teaching all of biology, then all of earth sciences, then all of chemistry, then all of physics, he teaches them ALL sort of at the same time...you work through the building blocks of all 4 main branches of science simultaneously. It's pretty awesome!
We've been doing a LOT of art lately too. I found Mr. P on youtube and the kids love him! He's an art teacher down south somewhere and he's posted a lot of classes online....so we do art right along with him several times a week now. The kids beg for art time and reading time all day long almost every day now! :) We've done lots of drawing and some painting and pastel work.
As for music, well, I haven't been so great about this one being a structured class per se. We sing...a LOT around here, and I can tell you that it has been quite effective. Belle has really come a LONG way in her ability to not only sing but to match pitch and hear it! I've tried to get her to do piano lessons, but it doesn't seem to be of any interest to her....that's ok....we've spent some time listening to Colonial music since that's the time period we've been studying most of the year. And we've also listened to Michael Jackson's music....a lot....and have learned a lot about his life and the message that he put out to the world. And we've spent a lot of time learning about and analyzing the affect of having that much fame and money and how it really limits your ability to have people in your life that you can trust. We also have talked extensively about how the media portrays people and events completely differently than they are in real life...using his life and the completely made up trials that he was put through to ruin his credibility and integrity.
The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE legos and use them almost daily to build mostly for fun, but also to follow the big kits to make scenes from their favorite books and movies. We've also used them (and MineCraft) a few times for building models of time period things.
We have done away with a set spelling program, as I hate having the kids have spelling lists that have nothing to do with their other work. We have an online subscription to Wordly Wise that we pay $35 per kid for per year....but honestly, I am thinking about dumping that next year. We read SO MUCH, that I think they will have no issue with vocabulary! We'll see about that one.
We've done several trips this first year already....5 days in Williamsburg in May, a week in Virginia Beach in August with Nonni, Papaw, Aunt Tracy, Uncle Brian, PopPop and the cousins, a trip to the National Zoo with Grandmom, a trip to see Noah at Sight and Sound Theater again with Grandmom, another 4 days in Williamsburg in October with Nonni, Orlando in January with Grandmom, Nonni, and Papaw - of course we hit Sea World, Epcot, Wonder Works science museum, and the usual...Disney World, Universal Studios, and Hollywood Studios. We just got back from spending a week in Virginia at Nonni's house, and will be heading back to Williamsburg in the spring for a few days....and back to the beach in July! And, Belle got to explore and do some farm chores at a working dairy farm and an Amish farm the other day with Grandmom! She's also taking us back to Sight and Sound this summer to see Moses too.
So now we get to put together her portfolio that we will hand in to the school district and she will be meeting with our evaluator at the end of May for her year end evaluation.
All in all, I'd say we've been super busy this year but have had an absolute BLAST learning together! My kids have learned all about several different tribes of Native Americans, we've studied the many different explorers that helped to bring our ancestors to this country, we've learned all about the Colonies and the Revolutionary War and the Pioneers that headed out west in covered wagons. We've studied biology and have learned about the Plant and Animal worlds, and we started work on the human body (which we have tabled for now to wait til it comes up in the Nebel curriculum). We've read a lot....did I mention we've read A LOT?! We've done experiments about the different states of matter and talked all about classifying and organizing things into categories. We've copied lots of passages from great novels and Belle has been working on learning the art of dictation as well. We've learned all about nouns, adjectives, adverbs, subjects, objects, linking verbs, how sentences form together, how to punctuate said sentences, and how to get our point across in our writing. We've learned how to draw several animals using simple shapes, have learned how to shade using pencils and oil pastels, and have even created our own version of van Gogh's sunflower painting.
Let's see...what else? We've talked at length this year and last about nutrition and how to eat healthy. We again talk about the media and how journalists and big corporations distort things into "fact" like how many servings of dairy or meat you should have in a day and how this food or that food are good for you. We want to eat as much of what God gave us as possible and really limit our intake of all the other stuff that is man made. Period. We've learned about the digestive tract and germs and Belle and I read all about growing up and how our bodies change.
We've learned how to cook a few things. Belle is my "apprentice" now and is learning the fine arts of homemaking and cooking. We haven't done much of this the last few weeks, but she is learning how to cook some basic meals, vacuum, clean bathrooms, do dishes, and they are all learning how to do laundry.
We have read through and discussed the Jesus Storybook Bible twice already this year, after stopping another program we were going through. I prefer to read the Bible and talk about it. We will probably go back to the God's Great Covenant book that we were using. It's a GREAT book to help us get more out of our reading...I honestly only stopped using it because I wanted to read through The Jesus Storybook Bible at Christmas time, and of course we then decided to read through it AGAIN after that! And Now we are reading this book called Grandpa's Box that is pretty awesome too!
We have essentially cut out ALMOST ALL tv and video games/screen time. When garbage goes in it comes back out. Garbage meaning advertising/marketing, bad moral character, violence, profanity, etc. And it really makes life harder for Derek to have video games around. So we finally had to take the Wii down to the basement so it was out of sight...though not far out of mind. I do let them watch things occasionally for school, like the PBS documentary series called Liberty, all about the Revolutionary War. We also watched the Bible miniseries this year, and they have watched all of Season 1 of Little House on the Prairie (great wholesome tv AND it goes with our history content!), and they have watched all 20-something of the old Reading Rainbow shows that I grew up on that are on amazon prime! We still watch an occasional movie or tv show, but since Christmas it has been VERY occasionally. It's been so nice having the tv off! We don't even miss it! In fact, Nonni came to visit and suggested going to see a movie and none of the kids wanted to go! They said it rots their brains...I guess they are finally listening to us! LOL!
Julie and Derek have worked through almost 2 of the WinterPromise language arts programs now (each of half a year). They are just about half way through the 2nd one. We've enjoyed it immensely and Derek is now reading SO MUCH! Julie is still a little ahead of him, but he's catching up very quickly! He's trying to read everything now and is successful more often than not now! :) They've done the first 4 Explode the Code books also. It's been so great watching them grow in their reading, writing, and math skills! And to be able to say that I taught Derek how to read and he's already reading at about a 2nd grade level is so cool! :)
We did 3 weeks of swim lessons last summer (5 lessons per week), and they have all done a LOT of dancing this year (Derek takes tap, jazz, and hip hop....Julie takes ballet, tap, jazz, and lyrical...and Belle takes ballet, tap, jazz, and hip hop...and they all took tumbling for most of the year). And now Derek is also doing t-ball again this year. So we are absolutely keeping busy around here! That's such an understatement! LOL! :)
The kids helped plant our garden last year, but this year they will be more responsible for helping to plan, plant, weed, water, and harvest. We will be adding another 8x4 square garden, so we'll be up to I think 110 square feet of veggie space! That's a LOT of veggies! I can't wait! We already put some swiss chard, lettuce, kale, and collards out there and so far the frost/freeze weather hasn't hurt them! We will be doing spaghetti squash and butternut squash this year in addition to all our regular stuff.
I'm sure there are other things that I have simply forgotten at the moment, but we've done SO MUCH! I look forward to continuing on this journey with them each and every day!
As of right now, we have read all of these books this year together...more than 150 books in less than a year! And the kids remember most of them....they will hear or see something that takes them right back to many of these! Even ones that I had forgotten. They hear about or see a picture of Nelson Mandella or Gandhi and they get so excited that we read a book about him!
George Muller
Homer Price
Red Sails to Capri
School Story
The BFG
The Littles
Birchbark House
If you Lived with the Hopi
If you Were at the First Thanksgiving
If you Were on the Mayflower
Ben Franklin
Paddle By the Sea
The Jesus Storybook Bible
If you Lived in Colonial Times
Mayflower 1621
The First Thanksgiving
The Discovery of the Americas
Exploration and Conquest
The New Americas
Charlotte's Web
Liberty! Story of the American Revolution
If you Lived at the Time of the American Revolution
The Revolutionary John Adams
How the US Government Works
Who was Thomas Jefferson?
What was the Boston Tea Party?
Samuel F.B. Morse
Amazing, Impossible Erie Canal
The Trail of Tears
Escape North! Story of Harriet Tubman
A New Land! Early American Stories
If you Lived with the NW Coast Indians
If you Lived with the Cherokee
If you Lived with the Iroquois
If you Lived with the Sioux
The Fighting Ground
Little House on the Prairie
The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed
Pedro's Journal
Ben and Me
The Secret Soldier
Riding Freedom
Dolphin Adventure
My Father's Dragon
Battle with the Bugs (Immune System)
Respect
Words are Not for Hurting
A Pill Bug's Life
The Story of Snow
The Spider and the Fly
The Salem Witch Trials: An Unsolved Mystery from History
Deadly Praying Mantis
Scorpions
A Butterfly is Patient
Everybody Can Help Somebody
The Complete Book of US History
Thank You Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving
Sign of the Beaver
Indian in the Cupboard
When Jessie Came Across the Sea
There's a Nightmare in my Closet
Too Many Dinosaurs
Trouble with Trolls
The Rag Coat
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Uncle Jed's Barbershop
Mr. Rush
Little Miss Greedy
Little Miss Helpful
The Three Bears
The Three Little Pigs
Rumpelstiltskin
The Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah Sampson
Did I Ever Tell you How Lucky You Are?
Under the Sparkling Sea
Curious George and the Ice Cream Surprise
Curious George Saves His Pennies
Little House in the Big Woods
The Gingerbread Boy
The Gardener
The Quarelling Book
On a Beam of Light
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
There's an Alligator Under My Bed
There's Something in the Attic
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Where the Wild Things Are
Three Little Kittens
Jack and the Beanstalk
Chicken Sunday
Grandfather's Journey
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
A Band of Angels
Gandhi: A March to the Sea
The Incredible Life of Balto
The Eye of the Whale
Who was Laura Ingalls Wilder?
George vs George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Halfway Herbert
The US Constitution
The Boy Who Loved Math - the Improbably Life of Paul Erdos
My Great Aunt Arizona
Henny Penny
The Little Red Hen
The Velveteen Rabbit
You Wouldn't Want to be an American Pioneer
God's Design for Life - The World of Animals
God's Design for Life - The World of Plants
Who Says Women Can't be Doctors?
Clara and Davie (story about Clara Barton)
Mr. Fussy
Little Miss Naughty
Sir Cumference and all the King's Ten
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angle Land
Safe Kids - Fire Safety
Ender's Game
Wrinkle in Time
Nelson Mandella
The Matchbox Diary
Locomotive
Katie and the Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh and the Colors of the Wind
Vincent van Gogh: Sunflowers and Swirly Stars
van Gogh and the Sunflowers
Getting to Know...van Gogh
Music of the American Colonies (book and cd)
Getting to Know....Picasso
Just Behave, Pablo Picasso!
Under the Quilt of Night
Moses: When Harrient Tubman Led her People to Freedom
13 Artists Children should Know
Matter
Solids, Liquids, and Gases
Change It! Solids, Liquids, Gases and You
What Makes a Shadow
Air is All Around You
Freezing and Melting
What's the Matter in Mr. Whisker's Room?
Q&A States of Matter
From the Good Mountain: How Gutenberg Changed the World
Life of Fred - Apples
Life of Fred - Butterflies
Ramona the Pest
Grandpa's Box
The Boxcar Children (again)
Ramona and Beezus
And...ON TOP OF THESE....Belle has read these books by herself (I've read about half of them too):
Children of Noisy Village
Harry Potter 5
Harry Potter 6
Harry Potter 7
The Whipping Boy
More Stories from Grandma's Attic
Ralph S Mouse
Anne of Green Gables
Songbird
Guns for General Washington
The BFG (again)
Charlotte's Web (again)
Almost Home
Great Expectations (stepping stone book)
Les Miserables (stepping stone book)
Swiss Family Robinson (stepping stone book)
The Secret Garden
Little House in the Big Woods (again)
Return of the Indian
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankenweiler
The Secret of the Indian
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Grimm's Fairytales
Soft Rain
Summer According to Humphrey
Kingdom Keepers 1
Mystery of the Vanishing Coin
Blizzard on Moose Mountain
The Birchbark House (again)
Kingdom Keepers 2
She is to the point now where I give her a book to read that her curriculum said would take 2-3 weeks to read, and she's done in just a few days...sometimes just 1 day! She reads SO MUCH! But she also plays a lot too.....so it's not like she's reading constantly...but she's like her mama, just really enjoys reading all sorts of things!
And somehow, even through all this work, they still have time to just be kids. They play a lot every day....outside when it's nice, but inside with legos and barbies and other toys when we can't be outside. We go to the park occasionally or to friend's houses. We spend lots of time with our neighbors. Belle started a book club with Ashlynn 2 months ago and they read The Secret Garden together....not sure what our next book is. We're going to be going through 8 Great Dates with Your Daughter this year (and Ash will be doing this with her mom too!).
And of course, this should really have been listed as it's most important to our family...but our kids have gotten to spend a great deal of time with the girls from New Life for Girls. This is a ministry that our church runs (it actually led us to our church a year and a half ago). It's a Christian, live-in program for women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. And it's awesome! They have had so many success stories and it's so amazing having a front row seat to these girls' recovery process! The fact that God even uses us a little bit to love these girls and to model what life can and should be like is so awe-inspiring! We get to hang out with them at least once a month outside of church and other events. We used to go as a family to the center and cook for them and hang out for an afternoon and evening...but for the last several months we have invited them to our house instead for a few hours of respite, relaxation and fun. We cook for them, play cards, chit chat, and sometimes go out and play volleyball. It's a super special time that we all look so forward to. I even got an email just today from Sharon (who runs the program) and she said that next weekend one of the girls has a visit with her family and so they wanted to know if we could adjust the time of them coming to dinner because this girl really didn't want to miss Dinner with the Allports! :) And it's cool because our kids get to really bond with these girls/women and then they extend that into loving on them at church or other church events, etc. We get to go to our second New Life for Girls graduation this saturday night, where we'll see our friend Ferra graduate!!!! :)
It's amazing what you have time for when you stop watching tv and start hanging out and learning with your kiddos! I know I am so blessed to be able to be with them everyday and don't take that lightly...but man of man, I am just so grateful that God opened my eyes to what I was missing out on by sending them to school. And of course, this list is just the things that they and I were missing out on being able to do together....which is reason enough!
I can't wait to see what this next year brings!
I have absolutely NO intentions of stopping either. I think the whole idea of taking a 3 month summer vacation is ludicrous. I mean, a child's whole job is to learn...that's all they really need to spend their time doing. And they do it through actually reading and being read to and talking and discussing said literature...but also through helping with chores, playing and exploring the world, writing and drawing, building and moving.
We have so much fun learning together about how the world works, events in history, etc., that why would we want to shut our brains off for 3 months anyway?
So, we will be continuing as we have been. For history this year, we have been studying American History from the Native Americans up to just prior to the Civil War. So, we will be continuing through Slavery and the Civil War, World War 1, the Great Depression, World War 2, all the way up to present day. I'm not sure how long it will take us...as I have just compiled our <ahem> short reading list....ok so it's not short at all! :)
Shouldn't be too bad since we've read more than 150 books so far this year and it's only been 10 months! Belle's read another 30 on top of that!
We also just got the kids a bunch of new books for Easter...and then they wanted to use their easter money they got from Nonni to buy MORE books! :) Gotta LOVE that!
So, for literature/fun reads, we are going to be reading:
Mary Poppins (books 1-3)
The Boxcar Children (books 1-4)
Little House on the Prairie (books 2-9)
Ramona Quimby Series (books 2-8)
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Hobbit
The Story of Dr. Doolittle
The Giants of the Land
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle
These should get us through a few months...I hope! We read 3 full chapters out of our two history books today, along with a chapter from Grandpa's Box (our Bible story book we're reading through now), and then started The Boxcar Children book 1 today...and the girls BEGGED and BEGGED to keep reading. I finally had to stop half way through the book! LOL!
Belle's also working through the Kingdom Keepers book series right now (working through the first book still I believe).
We are still working through the Math-U-See program and loving it. Belle is on lesson 18 out of 30 for the Delta book, and the littles are on lesson 6 of the Beta book.
As for writing, I'm switching from IEW (I just did not enjoy it at all and found it to be dull and boring, and while Belle enjoyed the videos and didn't seem to really MIND the work, she was so uninspired and got to the point where she just dreaded having to write). So, we are now using The Brave Writer methodology and it's going GREAT! She immediately went back to loving writing! So, I'm glad about that!
We will continue working through First Language Lessons level 4, but at a very slow pace. She's almost done the Winter Promise Grammar work, and so I'm not super concerned about getting lots more grammar in....so we'll just do 2 lessons a week or so until we get through the whole thing.
As for Writing with Ease, we are using that as more of a guideline now. I pick and choose passages for narration/copywork/dictation from it when I see good ones, but skip the ones I've either never heard of or seem boring. I instead/also am implementing a Golden Lines ongoing assignment now...instead of "copywork"...because it just sounds SO BORING! So now, we are digging through all these great novels for golden lines or nuggets that we want to remember. Might be because they make a really great point or moral lesson, or maybe just because it's really great writing, or it teaches a literary concept or spelling/vocab word that we need practice with.
As for science, we have switched to using Bernard Nebel's Building Foundations for Scientific Thinking as our frame work. Much like the rest of our "curriculum", it's really just a methodology for teaching, or a frame work to guide our topics, but we learn each topic through living books and responding in writing when appropriate. I love his methodology because instead of teaching all of biology, then all of earth sciences, then all of chemistry, then all of physics, he teaches them ALL sort of at the same time...you work through the building blocks of all 4 main branches of science simultaneously. It's pretty awesome!
We've been doing a LOT of art lately too. I found Mr. P on youtube and the kids love him! He's an art teacher down south somewhere and he's posted a lot of classes online....so we do art right along with him several times a week now. The kids beg for art time and reading time all day long almost every day now! :) We've done lots of drawing and some painting and pastel work.
As for music, well, I haven't been so great about this one being a structured class per se. We sing...a LOT around here, and I can tell you that it has been quite effective. Belle has really come a LONG way in her ability to not only sing but to match pitch and hear it! I've tried to get her to do piano lessons, but it doesn't seem to be of any interest to her....that's ok....we've spent some time listening to Colonial music since that's the time period we've been studying most of the year. And we've also listened to Michael Jackson's music....a lot....and have learned a lot about his life and the message that he put out to the world. And we've spent a lot of time learning about and analyzing the affect of having that much fame and money and how it really limits your ability to have people in your life that you can trust. We also have talked extensively about how the media portrays people and events completely differently than they are in real life...using his life and the completely made up trials that he was put through to ruin his credibility and integrity.
The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE legos and use them almost daily to build mostly for fun, but also to follow the big kits to make scenes from their favorite books and movies. We've also used them (and MineCraft) a few times for building models of time period things.
We have done away with a set spelling program, as I hate having the kids have spelling lists that have nothing to do with their other work. We have an online subscription to Wordly Wise that we pay $35 per kid for per year....but honestly, I am thinking about dumping that next year. We read SO MUCH, that I think they will have no issue with vocabulary! We'll see about that one.
We've done several trips this first year already....5 days in Williamsburg in May, a week in Virginia Beach in August with Nonni, Papaw, Aunt Tracy, Uncle Brian, PopPop and the cousins, a trip to the National Zoo with Grandmom, a trip to see Noah at Sight and Sound Theater again with Grandmom, another 4 days in Williamsburg in October with Nonni, Orlando in January with Grandmom, Nonni, and Papaw - of course we hit Sea World, Epcot, Wonder Works science museum, and the usual...Disney World, Universal Studios, and Hollywood Studios. We just got back from spending a week in Virginia at Nonni's house, and will be heading back to Williamsburg in the spring for a few days....and back to the beach in July! And, Belle got to explore and do some farm chores at a working dairy farm and an Amish farm the other day with Grandmom! She's also taking us back to Sight and Sound this summer to see Moses too.
So now we get to put together her portfolio that we will hand in to the school district and she will be meeting with our evaluator at the end of May for her year end evaluation.
All in all, I'd say we've been super busy this year but have had an absolute BLAST learning together! My kids have learned all about several different tribes of Native Americans, we've studied the many different explorers that helped to bring our ancestors to this country, we've learned all about the Colonies and the Revolutionary War and the Pioneers that headed out west in covered wagons. We've studied biology and have learned about the Plant and Animal worlds, and we started work on the human body (which we have tabled for now to wait til it comes up in the Nebel curriculum). We've read a lot....did I mention we've read A LOT?! We've done experiments about the different states of matter and talked all about classifying and organizing things into categories. We've copied lots of passages from great novels and Belle has been working on learning the art of dictation as well. We've learned all about nouns, adjectives, adverbs, subjects, objects, linking verbs, how sentences form together, how to punctuate said sentences, and how to get our point across in our writing. We've learned how to draw several animals using simple shapes, have learned how to shade using pencils and oil pastels, and have even created our own version of van Gogh's sunflower painting.
Let's see...what else? We've talked at length this year and last about nutrition and how to eat healthy. We again talk about the media and how journalists and big corporations distort things into "fact" like how many servings of dairy or meat you should have in a day and how this food or that food are good for you. We want to eat as much of what God gave us as possible and really limit our intake of all the other stuff that is man made. Period. We've learned about the digestive tract and germs and Belle and I read all about growing up and how our bodies change.
We've learned how to cook a few things. Belle is my "apprentice" now and is learning the fine arts of homemaking and cooking. We haven't done much of this the last few weeks, but she is learning how to cook some basic meals, vacuum, clean bathrooms, do dishes, and they are all learning how to do laundry.
We have read through and discussed the Jesus Storybook Bible twice already this year, after stopping another program we were going through. I prefer to read the Bible and talk about it. We will probably go back to the God's Great Covenant book that we were using. It's a GREAT book to help us get more out of our reading...I honestly only stopped using it because I wanted to read through The Jesus Storybook Bible at Christmas time, and of course we then decided to read through it AGAIN after that! And Now we are reading this book called Grandpa's Box that is pretty awesome too!
We have essentially cut out ALMOST ALL tv and video games/screen time. When garbage goes in it comes back out. Garbage meaning advertising/marketing, bad moral character, violence, profanity, etc. And it really makes life harder for Derek to have video games around. So we finally had to take the Wii down to the basement so it was out of sight...though not far out of mind. I do let them watch things occasionally for school, like the PBS documentary series called Liberty, all about the Revolutionary War. We also watched the Bible miniseries this year, and they have watched all of Season 1 of Little House on the Prairie (great wholesome tv AND it goes with our history content!), and they have watched all 20-something of the old Reading Rainbow shows that I grew up on that are on amazon prime! We still watch an occasional movie or tv show, but since Christmas it has been VERY occasionally. It's been so nice having the tv off! We don't even miss it! In fact, Nonni came to visit and suggested going to see a movie and none of the kids wanted to go! They said it rots their brains...I guess they are finally listening to us! LOL!
Julie and Derek have worked through almost 2 of the WinterPromise language arts programs now (each of half a year). They are just about half way through the 2nd one. We've enjoyed it immensely and Derek is now reading SO MUCH! Julie is still a little ahead of him, but he's catching up very quickly! He's trying to read everything now and is successful more often than not now! :) They've done the first 4 Explode the Code books also. It's been so great watching them grow in their reading, writing, and math skills! And to be able to say that I taught Derek how to read and he's already reading at about a 2nd grade level is so cool! :)
We did 3 weeks of swim lessons last summer (5 lessons per week), and they have all done a LOT of dancing this year (Derek takes tap, jazz, and hip hop....Julie takes ballet, tap, jazz, and lyrical...and Belle takes ballet, tap, jazz, and hip hop...and they all took tumbling for most of the year). And now Derek is also doing t-ball again this year. So we are absolutely keeping busy around here! That's such an understatement! LOL! :)
The kids helped plant our garden last year, but this year they will be more responsible for helping to plan, plant, weed, water, and harvest. We will be adding another 8x4 square garden, so we'll be up to I think 110 square feet of veggie space! That's a LOT of veggies! I can't wait! We already put some swiss chard, lettuce, kale, and collards out there and so far the frost/freeze weather hasn't hurt them! We will be doing spaghetti squash and butternut squash this year in addition to all our regular stuff.
I'm sure there are other things that I have simply forgotten at the moment, but we've done SO MUCH! I look forward to continuing on this journey with them each and every day!
As of right now, we have read all of these books this year together...more than 150 books in less than a year! And the kids remember most of them....they will hear or see something that takes them right back to many of these! Even ones that I had forgotten. They hear about or see a picture of Nelson Mandella or Gandhi and they get so excited that we read a book about him!
George Muller
Homer Price
Red Sails to Capri
School Story
The BFG
The Littles
Birchbark House
If you Lived with the Hopi
If you Were at the First Thanksgiving
If you Were on the Mayflower
Ben Franklin
Paddle By the Sea
The Jesus Storybook Bible
If you Lived in Colonial Times
Mayflower 1621
The First Thanksgiving
The Discovery of the Americas
Exploration and Conquest
The New Americas
Charlotte's Web
Liberty! Story of the American Revolution
If you Lived at the Time of the American Revolution
The Revolutionary John Adams
How the US Government Works
Who was Thomas Jefferson?
What was the Boston Tea Party?
Samuel F.B. Morse
Amazing, Impossible Erie Canal
The Trail of Tears
Escape North! Story of Harriet Tubman
A New Land! Early American Stories
If you Lived with the NW Coast Indians
If you Lived with the Cherokee
If you Lived with the Iroquois
If you Lived with the Sioux
The Fighting Ground
Little House on the Prairie
The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed
Pedro's Journal
Ben and Me
The Secret Soldier
Riding Freedom
Dolphin Adventure
My Father's Dragon
Battle with the Bugs (Immune System)
Respect
Words are Not for Hurting
A Pill Bug's Life
The Story of Snow
The Spider and the Fly
The Salem Witch Trials: An Unsolved Mystery from History
Deadly Praying Mantis
Scorpions
A Butterfly is Patient
Everybody Can Help Somebody
The Complete Book of US History
Thank You Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving
Sign of the Beaver
Indian in the Cupboard
When Jessie Came Across the Sea
There's a Nightmare in my Closet
Too Many Dinosaurs
Trouble with Trolls
The Rag Coat
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Uncle Jed's Barbershop
Mr. Rush
Little Miss Greedy
Little Miss Helpful
The Three Bears
The Three Little Pigs
Rumpelstiltskin
The Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah Sampson
Did I Ever Tell you How Lucky You Are?
Under the Sparkling Sea
Curious George and the Ice Cream Surprise
Curious George Saves His Pennies
Little House in the Big Woods
The Gingerbread Boy
The Gardener
The Quarelling Book
On a Beam of Light
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
There's an Alligator Under My Bed
There's Something in the Attic
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Where the Wild Things Are
Three Little Kittens
Jack and the Beanstalk
Chicken Sunday
Grandfather's Journey
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
A Band of Angels
Gandhi: A March to the Sea
The Incredible Life of Balto
The Eye of the Whale
Who was Laura Ingalls Wilder?
George vs George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Halfway Herbert
The US Constitution
The Boy Who Loved Math - the Improbably Life of Paul Erdos
My Great Aunt Arizona
Henny Penny
The Little Red Hen
The Velveteen Rabbit
You Wouldn't Want to be an American Pioneer
God's Design for Life - The World of Animals
God's Design for Life - The World of Plants
Who Says Women Can't be Doctors?
Clara and Davie (story about Clara Barton)
Mr. Fussy
Little Miss Naughty
Sir Cumference and all the King's Ten
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angle Land
Safe Kids - Fire Safety
Ender's Game
Wrinkle in Time
Nelson Mandella
The Matchbox Diary
Locomotive
Katie and the Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh and the Colors of the Wind
Vincent van Gogh: Sunflowers and Swirly Stars
van Gogh and the Sunflowers
Getting to Know...van Gogh
Music of the American Colonies (book and cd)
Getting to Know....Picasso
Just Behave, Pablo Picasso!
Under the Quilt of Night
Moses: When Harrient Tubman Led her People to Freedom
13 Artists Children should Know
Matter
Solids, Liquids, and Gases
Change It! Solids, Liquids, Gases and You
What Makes a Shadow
Air is All Around You
Freezing and Melting
What's the Matter in Mr. Whisker's Room?
Q&A States of Matter
From the Good Mountain: How Gutenberg Changed the World
Life of Fred - Apples
Life of Fred - Butterflies
Ramona the Pest
Grandpa's Box
The Boxcar Children (again)
Ramona and Beezus
And...ON TOP OF THESE....Belle has read these books by herself (I've read about half of them too):
Children of Noisy Village
Harry Potter 5
Harry Potter 6
Harry Potter 7
The Whipping Boy
More Stories from Grandma's Attic
Ralph S Mouse
Anne of Green Gables
Songbird
Guns for General Washington
The BFG (again)
Charlotte's Web (again)
Almost Home
Great Expectations (stepping stone book)
Les Miserables (stepping stone book)
Swiss Family Robinson (stepping stone book)
The Secret Garden
Little House in the Big Woods (again)
Return of the Indian
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankenweiler
The Secret of the Indian
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Grimm's Fairytales
Soft Rain
Summer According to Humphrey
Kingdom Keepers 1
Mystery of the Vanishing Coin
Blizzard on Moose Mountain
The Birchbark House (again)
Kingdom Keepers 2
She is to the point now where I give her a book to read that her curriculum said would take 2-3 weeks to read, and she's done in just a few days...sometimes just 1 day! She reads SO MUCH! But she also plays a lot too.....so it's not like she's reading constantly...but she's like her mama, just really enjoys reading all sorts of things!
And somehow, even through all this work, they still have time to just be kids. They play a lot every day....outside when it's nice, but inside with legos and barbies and other toys when we can't be outside. We go to the park occasionally or to friend's houses. We spend lots of time with our neighbors. Belle started a book club with Ashlynn 2 months ago and they read The Secret Garden together....not sure what our next book is. We're going to be going through 8 Great Dates with Your Daughter this year (and Ash will be doing this with her mom too!).
And of course, this should really have been listed as it's most important to our family...but our kids have gotten to spend a great deal of time with the girls from New Life for Girls. This is a ministry that our church runs (it actually led us to our church a year and a half ago). It's a Christian, live-in program for women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. And it's awesome! They have had so many success stories and it's so amazing having a front row seat to these girls' recovery process! The fact that God even uses us a little bit to love these girls and to model what life can and should be like is so awe-inspiring! We get to hang out with them at least once a month outside of church and other events. We used to go as a family to the center and cook for them and hang out for an afternoon and evening...but for the last several months we have invited them to our house instead for a few hours of respite, relaxation and fun. We cook for them, play cards, chit chat, and sometimes go out and play volleyball. It's a super special time that we all look so forward to. I even got an email just today from Sharon (who runs the program) and she said that next weekend one of the girls has a visit with her family and so they wanted to know if we could adjust the time of them coming to dinner because this girl really didn't want to miss Dinner with the Allports! :) And it's cool because our kids get to really bond with these girls/women and then they extend that into loving on them at church or other church events, etc. We get to go to our second New Life for Girls graduation this saturday night, where we'll see our friend Ferra graduate!!!! :)
It's amazing what you have time for when you stop watching tv and start hanging out and learning with your kiddos! I know I am so blessed to be able to be with them everyday and don't take that lightly...but man of man, I am just so grateful that God opened my eyes to what I was missing out on by sending them to school. And of course, this list is just the things that they and I were missing out on being able to do together....which is reason enough!
I can't wait to see what this next year brings!
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Ugh!
I had been hoping to post things on here to document our progress, but I really haven't had the time...not because I've been drained of all my energy and passion, but because we've been learning and reading SO MUCH! I can't believe it but my kids love reading (not every book we read, but many of them), and will usually sit for 2+ hours a day just listening to me read to them - Bible stories, history, science, literature...it's been great!
I am working on creating our own classical curriculum for next year, based off of The Well Trained Mind, so I hope that I can post more things on here over the next year!
I am working on creating our own classical curriculum for next year, based off of The Well Trained Mind, so I hope that I can post more things on here over the next year!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)