Week Twenty One Wrap Up

You may observe as you read more of this post that our schedule has shifted. Last week the boys had a go at rearranging the schedule for project day and as that went so nicely and I wanted to make a change to the existing schedule I let them have a go at that as well, in their free time. We went about it the same with with slips of paper with each lesson title on it and they each fashioned what they thought was the best of schedules. Then they each took turns explaining their schedule and answering questions we each had about it. Then since they were all so similar we talked about the benefits and draw backs of each one.
After that there was a little bit of rearranging of lessons and they glued down the pieces of paper to another and turned in their ideas to me.
I changed only one thing and asked that the reading lesson be at the end of the day and they all agreed my reason for it was a good one so it was established. They all wanted to get the work done before lunch and have the afternoon to be more laid back, so I was very happy with that. They decided to split up art and music so one day we have art before lunch and the next day we have music after lunch because we usually read or listen for those lessons. When we have a work type music lesson it gets put before lunch.My ideas was to put the work t the front of the day and all the reading aloud after lunch and to the end of the day. Cool thing was that the boys all wanted to do that too. However I took the risk of letting them come up with the idea on their own. Makes the transition easier when we all want it.

Now we have a new schedule which I think works so much better than our last one and it gives us a good new feeling right in the middle of the year which refreshes us all. The new schedule is as follows...

Bible: Finished reading through 1 Peter, Next week we are on to 2 Peter. (still over breakfast with Dad)

Latin: Making paper soldiers the templates are part of the Minimus teachers manual. Most of the week was spent learning to read the dialogue in Ch. 7 called Do As You Are Told!

Aesop Copy Work: Max has just a few more pages to go before he finishes up his Aesop's copywork book, Zak and TJ are both done and enjoying some free time as a result of their hard work.

Language Arts: From Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl we practiced how to write letters. We even made our own envelopes and stationary pages.

And we had a conversation about what various animals and plants do to prepare for winter. We focus mostly in this lesson on answering orally in complete sentences.

Then the next day we did a picture study lesson and used the discussion about it as a basis for writing a story using the picture as a prompt. Below is Zak's picture and story. The picture is from Living books curriculum Primary Language lessons Workbook which we use oft and on for these language arts lessons. However I was just at their site and found it not there. Cynce's Place has also made a lovely workbook too and at a better price. It can be found here.

Math: Every Day Number Stories by Emma Serl and once a week we do The Matrix.

Art: This week we finished up our Ode the Matisse Mural... YEAH!!!! and we read Matisse Drawing With Scissors

Lunch

After lunch we read the following. Subjects with and astrix * were narrated.

Music: Robert Schumann And Mascot Ziff by Opal Wheeler

Science The Study of Insects: The Tale of Daddy Long Legs by Arthur Scott Bailey*

Geography: Our Little Carthaginian Cousin From Long Ago

Ancient Greece History: D'Auliers Book of Greek Myths*

Stories of Faith: Martyrs of the Catacombs Audio (this links to a free copy)

Reading Practice: Elson Reader Book Three. When they are through with this TJ wants to read Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff, Zak wants to read Twice Freed and Max wants to read Elson reader book four.

Piano Lesson with Dad

Bed Time Read Aloud: The Secret Seven Adventure Collection by Enid Blyton

Hope you have a good week!

Week Fourteen Wrap-Up

What a fun week we have had.  It wasn't a fun week because we did anything particularly exciting or new, or that all went really perfectly. It was fun because we were together and our lessons are finally gelling into place. I have made quite a few adjustments this year that I did not think I would be making but I am ever so happy I did. This week was fun for me because I did not adjust much of anything and have been riding along on the plans we have already made. I can see some of results of handing over my way of doing home education to Charlotte's wise advice and it makes those elusive smooth and easy days seem more tangible. Not that there were not trying moments in our week, for there were melt downs and discipline was still applied, but trusting in an idea and just hanging on until you see results gives a measure of peace and rest. In my own mind the days are smoother because I know where I am going, I know how I will handle it and most importantly I know why I am doing it.  I love this quote by Louisa May Alcott and the lovely way that Emily McDowell has rendered it in this poster. It sort of sums up why my week was so much fun, I am now enjoying the waves as they hit against my ship.

Bible: Genesis with Dad over a tasty breakfast. I made a huge (because I have a new range in my kitchen that is bigger than the one I had before) batch of granola with medjool dates which we all love. Makes starting a new day even sweeter. :)

Stories of Faith: We have begun a fun Christmas story called This Way to Christmas. It was part of the amazing deal I purchased last summer from Yesterday's classics. They are doing it again just now before Christmas too! I have always adored their selection of vintage books but with so many free online it was hard to pay for a printed book and feel good about it. I use my kindle a lot so when they offered their entire kindle collection for only $50 I snatched it up. This way to Christmas was in the package deal and we are now enjoying this heart warming tale.

Math: Much to the chagrin of the boys we are still doing a rotation of The Matrix and the Usborne Math puzzles book, we call it the caveman book. They are enjoying the math puzzles but they are getting weary of doing the Multiplication Matrix. So I read to them what the author of the matrix said about why he made it and we looked at some strategy to learn how to fill in the table faster and easier. Seemed to help. Here is a quote from the author:

"The history of this matrix goes back to the ‘70’s when my wife and I operated an individual learning center teaching reading, math, and English, K – adult. We used a lot of programmed-learning materials and audio-visual aids, computer, etc. Students beyond third-grade (even adults) were found to be shaky in their multiplication tables, which affected their insights into numerical relationships and their work in the higher operations. “The Matrix” became a standard drill until they could do one correctly in 2 minutes or less, three days in a row."

Our best time is 6 minutes so we are almost there.

We read about Albert Einstein in Mathematicians are people too Vol. 2 and began a longer book about the same guy by Kathleen Krull. This book is part of her giants of science series. We read her book about Isaac Newton last year and really enjoyed it, and we are enjoying this one too.

Ancient Greek History: Alexander the Great by John Gunther is our text this week and the boys are doing so much better at their narrations. They are better at summing up what the main ideas is and adding supporting details to explain that idea better. This is such a great tool for beginning to write. I am so glad they get to do this orally before they have to struggle with the mechanics of writing. Getting ones thoughts clear is such and important skill to have. Not only for writing but for basic good conversations with others. i count narration as I think about socialization skills etc.

It is still a great temptation for the little ones especially as they are not global thinkers to parrot back the information detail by detail. I think the open ended questions I have been asking after each narration  has helped. I do this because I watched a DVD of Eve Anderson a PNEU teacher who visited a CM school in Texas do this. She had pre-read the passage and thought of other information to add to it. She did not repeat information the children were to have retold but as one might do in a conversation she asked further questions about the information and added information that led to a wonderful discussion. I was a bit surprised as I have read that the teacher is not to interfere and she didn't she added more richness. I want to do this more too.

As we have been doing this the lessons which include narrations take on a different feel. They are less mechanical and more like a conversation aided on by help of the book. We add our thoughts about the passage and ask questions the passage brought up in us and we learned out loud you might say what the book is telling us. None of us are experts though I know more than they do they have good insights and I love giving them the chance to express them, question them and hear insights of others. I think this sort of dialogue makes the books more interesting and while they are interested they are learning to learn from a book and also to think about what is said. They get to participate. I also keep a good handle on etiquette for narrating and responding. They practice waiting ones turn, interrupting politely etc. so they participate with a measure of self control. All great skills for future conversations with others as well.

Geography: We are enjoying Our Little Athenian Cousin this week, also from the Yesterday's Classics Kindle package.

Aesop's Copy Work:

The paper Mache' armor has been put on hold as our original designs are not working. So after the holidays I think we will try again using some plans and ideas from this website, storm the castle.

Science Bird Study: This week we completed reading Blacky the Crow by Thornton Burgess and  have begun to read The Tale of Reddy Woodpecker by Arthur Scott Bailey. I am so pleased with these books. The stories are giving them more than just information about birds but more than that they instill a sort of reverence for living things and practical ways to care and respect them. In Blacky the crow Farmer brown's boy discovers a hunters duck blind near the big river. he discovers it is not only a blond but that the hunter has been baiting the ducks to come to this part of the river just before his blind with corn. Each afternoon he has been spreading the corn then after a few days and the ducks sense no danger he waits for them with a gun. Farmer brown's boy is outraged and decides he must do something to stop this unfair kind of hunting and devises a plan of his own. You will have to read the story to see just what he does. teaches the boys some right and wrong ways of dealing with the little feathered folk in our lives. I am loving reading these to them each day. :)

I found a fun website with patterns for making felt bird ornaments. All of the birds she has patterns for are well done and very close to realistic. Not to mention a great way for a beginning hand sewer to begin as the projects are small and can be completed in about 30 mins to an hour. We began with the robin and each of the boys has selected another bird to do next, results next week.

Nature Notebook: This week we stayed inside to learn to draw a cardinal and read a little from A pocketful of pinecones.

TJ drawing his cardinal and the photo of a cardinal in the background from DK Bird the Definitive visual guide.

Max is drawing his cardinal.

Max's final drawing and the drawing steps he used to draw the cardinal.

Language arts: This week was spent entirely on dictation. This is no longer their favorite lesson. I have decided to begin stretching them in this skill and have been dictating the whole sentence only once instead of dictating word by word. I also challenged them more so after dictating each sentence once I  then dictated all three at once. They did very well and on their first try they missed only one word each, but it was nerve racking for them to try it. Zak just about hyperventilated himself onto the floor. :)

Reading aloud still in our Elson reader book three.

Bedtime read aloud: We are again celebrating another Christmas with Laura and Mary, Pa, Ma and little Carrie and now baby Grace in On the Shores of Silver Lake. It fits nicely into our Christmas time readings.

Latin: We completed out letters written in Latin last week but not or rings and seals. So now our project is complete. Below is TJ's Letter to his grandma in Oregon. We sent her and Grandpa this note to see if they could dicipher it and they did! I am so amazed...so were the boys.

The directions for making these was in the Minimus Teacher's guide. I enjoyed having time to do some hands on projects without missing any of the good mid food in our daily readings and narrations. Perhaps we are discovering a way to fit them in after all. :)

Art/Music: We completed I Can Do All Things Drawing Lessons #11-14 drawing ellipses. And we are still enjoying reading about Fredrick Chopin and hearing his music.

Handicrafts:

Max's Felt frog on His felt pillow.

TJ's felt travel pillows.

Hope your week has been a good one!

Week Ten Wrap-Up

Bible: Ephesians with my dh.

Stories of Faith: We took a little break from The Adventures of Missionary Heroism this week and next so we can read The Stories of the Pilgrims by Margaret B. Pumphrey in celebration of Thanksgiving next Thursday.

Mathematics: We completed our times table lessons according the CM prescribed method found in Mathematics the Instrument of Living Teaching. The method has worked well for each of the boys. prior to the lessons when they recited story problems they were still figuring it out. Now, they spout off the answer as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Next week we will move along to something else that will further this acquisition of knowledge and sink init still deeper.

We read about Mary Fairfax Somerville from Mathematicians are People Too Vol. 2 on project day.

History of Ancient Greece: We read about Solon, Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles from the Children's Plutarch by FJ Gould. Max was particularly impressed with Cimon for he was so generous to the poor.

Aesop's Copy work:

History Project: We are beginning what will soon be a rather long project of making paper mache' weapons and armor. We began this week by first choosing whether we were going to make roman or greek armor and weapons. Then we built the cardboard armatures for each of the pieces. Next week we will begin to applying paper mache'

Our rough materials

Their inspiration

Science Birds: We completed our reading of The Tale of Bobby Bobolink by Arthur Scott Bailey and began to read The Tale of Jolly Robin by the same author.

Nature Journals: My dh has purchased ten chicks to raise into laying hens. Now they are our subjects for nature study.

Pocket Full of Pinecones: We read six chapters this week as they are somewhat short and the boys are loving the story. We do not narrate this book we just listen and enjoy it.

Language Arts: We spent four of the five days this week on dictation from Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl. I am not yet happy with our current approach to it for there is al lot of anxiety on the part f the boys. So I am re thinking how we go about this lesson and hope to try something different next time this comes around.

Currently I have them copy the sentence we are about to dictate three times. Then they look at the sentence and visualize the harder words. This usually takes about 5-10 minutes if they all get to work right away. Then I dictate the sentence one word at a time. I read the whole sentence back to them and they check their work. Then with pens down they self check their sentence to see if it is correct. If there are mistakes more than one or two I have them rewrite the whole sentence, visualize the words and we do the dictation again. If it is one word or two they copy just that word a few times and visualize it before we go on.

The difficulty seems to be that they do not yet know how to teach themselves the sentence. Inevitably they think they know it until the dictation and then there are often tears. Earlier on when the sentences were easier they loved this exercise. Now I will need to do something so they begin to teach themselves the new words successfully.

We also did an observation/composition exercise on trees. This they found enjoyable. They still marvel that answering questions in a full sentence can add up to a short composition. I love it!

Evening reading: We are half way through Sea Star by Marguerite Henry. Our evening readings are not narrated and simply for enjoyment.

Latin: First day of this week I had the boys highlight all the verbs in the dialogue from our Minimus Latin Book. Then I reintroduced the -o ending and the -t ending. Then I introduced the -nt ending used for "they". They found it fun to discover that they had not noticed the -t and -nt difference. They were delighted to have it pointed out. I used inductive questions to led them to the discovery and it is working very well. :)

The rest of the week was spent learning a new dialogue.

Art: We began our drawing lesson with a practice drawing sheet from Art Projects from Kids. The boys had not done a drawing lesson since last year and thus did not know that they could do better this year. They were so encouraged with the results of the drawing sheets for they could clearly see how much easier they found it this time as opposed to last time. We practiced drawing laces on shoes and Wally the worm and his family.

Max's drawing of my hiker.

Music: We are wrapping up Tchaikovsky this week. To complete our study of this fascinating composer we listened to Symphony No. 1 in G minor and drew what we imagined onto a music appreciation notebook page as we listened.

We filled in the composer info in our composer lap book.

We Placed Tchaikovsky onto our timeline.

Have a great week end!

The Best Work Is Not Visible

Via Tiny White Daisies Tumblr

"Miss Mason went on to say that the best work is not visible: it does not employ the reasoning here, the imagination there. It employs the whole mind, for the whole mind is a whole, not a parcel of faculties. One should not think that what is not seen does not exist: when the whole mind is at work, knowledge infallibly results." - Karen Andreola from A Charlotte Mason Companion pg. 149

Karen put this paragraph at the end of one of her chapters on narration. It was the idea that the entire goal of education is to nourish the mind and that the mind must be the one to do the work which recently has captured my interest. It was an idea I had up till now missed. Narration more than any other kind of lesson is a tool that uses the whole mind. We can not see how the mind is at work organizing the thoughts to put them in order to give a narration. As well, we can not see how the mind  is recalling names or dates or other specific info in the read passage. We are not allowed to interfere with the question it asks itself when narrating "What next?" In many ways this intrinsic necessity for our child's education is out of our hands and totally unseen. We can not quantify it or measure it as with other lesson types. But it does work. For the child must do the work to mine out the nuggets of nourishing knowledge he needs to feed his hunger by retelling it. We must trust him to do it, provide the opportunity, set the feast with nourishing foods and let him chew and digest it.

Via Tiny White Daisies

"The day the child begins using narration is the day he begins to become an independent learner....when we trust in a child's ability to become self educated with the use of narration and whole books, we are not expecting them to go it alone. We have great expectations that they will go it along with the help of the holy spirit and our direction." Karen Andreola From A Charlotte Mason Companion pg 127,129

Although it is a simple tool that Charlotte Mason commends in her method of education I have not found it an easy one to implement. Honestly, it takes time to do narrations. You simply can not lay it over the top of everything else and expect it to work well. It is foundational to Charlotte's method and it alone is enough to feed the hungry child's mind. For myself the rub came here, if narration takes of "x" amount of time then there isn't really time left for other kinds of lessons. You see, I am very fond of hands-on-learning as I am crafty and visual. I like teaching lessons which display information visually and require the student to be doing something with their hands. It is (art or visual presentations) a powerful way of communicating and idea, but I have discovered that through out Charlotte's writings that it is conspicuously absent when nourishing the mind is mentioned. Narration however is mentioned everywhere as the tool that uses the whole mind, thus producing true self education and nourishment for the mind.

"Another certainty presents itself, that we have not time for short cuts: The training of muscle and sense, however necessary, does not nourish the mind; and, on the other hand, the verbiage of a lecturer is not assimilated. There is no education but self-education and only as the young student works with his own mind is anything effected." Towards a Philosophy of Education pg. 224

I was crushed, but I was also relieved. I have had inklings already that the lessons we were doing were not producing what I was seeing in Charlotte's writings and results I wanted. I could also sense our lessons were more my work than their work. Narration, living books, and using the hands on methods she used I can change that.

As I scoured through her writings to understand her views I learned that Charlotte did include hands-on-learning in these subjects: handicrafts is an obvious one, nature study and nature journalling, math in concrete things before abstractions, geography; geo walking, in making maps and doing map drills, in artist studies when they drew the picture studied, history when they added a drawing to their museum books or book of centuries. So that is quite a lot of hands-on-type lessons.

Via Tiny White Daisies tumblr

However, as I read on I realized that her hands-on-lessons differ from mine in two respects: Firstly, her lessons are structured so that the child can do the work himself, not getting a predigested lap book and told to glue in the mini books and write what I or the lap book creator tells you. I am not saying that all lap booking does this, but that is how it went with my kids because the lapbook is a tool they cannot wield on their own presently. An older child may use this as a wonderful way to narrate in a written and visual form a certain bit of information. A nature notebook, a map drill etc they can do now. Secondly, my hands-on-lessons were replacing the act of retelling not in addition to narration. So my hands-on-lessons did not give them the knowledge they need, it simply worked the mind but it did not feed it. I needed to reschedule so that there was plenty of time allotted for nourishing meals of mind food to be served. Outside of that time we still do hands-on-projects the boys can do themselves.

Saving time is not one of my over arching goals, nourishing the hungry minds of children is. Time however can sneak in and persuade me to hurry up and then I  make decisions I regret later. However, putting this goal in front of me, to feed my boys good mind food, I have revamped my lessons to follow suit replacing time consuming busy work with time consuming lessons that nourish the minds of my boys. That inevitably includes narration of living books. I am loving the new focus and the disappointment I first felt is giving way to belief in the CM's methods as I see the hunger in my boys grow for more and more mind food and yippee skippy I am finally out of their way! They are educating themselves. Coincidently their joy regarding our lessons is taking off.

Via Tiny White Daisies

In making this switch there lies another potential pitfall. My children did not take to narrating right off. They balked, they dreaded the lessons and in short complained about how much work it is. The enjoyable hours we spent reading aloud together had now become work. This does not yet line up with what Miss Mason says in her writings about how children take to it readily offering copious retellings. This can give way to discouragement or disillusion. The pitfalls lies in returning to the easy path thus abandoning the ideal.

Via Tiny White Daisies

"Reaching our goal of having children acquire a wealth of knowledge and be able to to express it in good English seems distant-on some days utterly out of reach! Yet to have an ideal, to look onwards and upwards, is vital to our homeschooling endeavors."-Karen Andreola from A Charlotte Mason Companion pg. 144

I was encouraged to read that Karen's second daughter was a slow starter when it came to narration. Only is wasn't till after two years of hearing short, influent narrations that her daughter's narrating begin to really flow. That is good to hear, it is not something every child takes to readily or right off the bat.  So mine must be all right. I'll stick it out, keep the lessens short, go out on top, and above all trust. In our house I needed a good dose of patience and a firm hold on faith of the ideal applied daily to our lessons to continue along the way. After one year of beginning narrations my three boys have noticeable improvements. We began this year narrating one paragraph at a time, now we read three to four pages of good living books and they can do it. We are not yet like the children in Charlotte's writings but though I cannot see the invisible work that is happening in there, I embark on this journey into the invisible with a firm hold on the tiller of faith that Charlotte will be right once again and my boys will be getting the mind food they need and will enjoy their journey in self-education.

"Children brought up largely on books do better than those educated on fewer books and lectures. Wide reading produces children with generous enthusiasms, keen sympathies, a wide outlook, and sound judgement because they are treated from the first as beings of "large discourse looking before and after." They are persons of leisure too, with time for hobbies, because their work is easily done in the hours of morning school." Philosophy of Education pg. 305

UPDATE july 2013: more on Narration from Dr. Carroll Smith HERE. He is writing an entire series which is insightful and inspiring that you may want to read. In the post I linked you to above Dr. Smith discusses how to chose good living books for narration. Enjoy!

Week Nine Wrap-Up

Last week I wrote about our progress towards dropping the use of treats and rewards for lessons and I truly thought this week was going to be tough, however to my surprise the boys just slipped into line and followed my lead on this. I can count on one hand the times the subject of not getting treats was brought up and three out of the four incidents included the one who mentioned missing the treats to also remember we are not doing teats anymore and correcting himself. I am so pleased!

How could it have been so easy. I am not entirely sure, but a couple of things come to mind that I know were helpful. Firstly, I did eliminate treats for doing good work for their lessons but that did not mean I could not add in fun treats during our week just because. So I did. When I made a batch of strawberry ice cream in the morning before lessons to put away in the freezer I elicited their help to clean out the last bits in the ice cream maker. Spoonfuls of cool yummy ice cream just because. So I did not take good things away from them all together, I just reallocated them for a new purpose. They know I love to bless them when it is good for them, so they can trust me to be good and that the new change is ok.

Secondly, I realized this morning when I read a new post up over at Simply Charlotte Mason about too often the habit is a frustrater of the will, that I had a habit in place that was my ally not my opponent. 

"Habit is either the ally or the opponent, too often the frustrater, of the will." Vol. 1 pg. 326 

We have spent much of last year focusing on the habit of obedience, so this year when I made a change in the way I approached school they were already in the habit to follow me so the habit worked for their benefit and the switch was not so painful had it been if they were not already in the habit to just follow along. Yeah it is encouraging to see some of our hard work paying off.

The last of the flowers this year.

Bible: We are just about to finish up Acts our reading through the book of Acts, just a few more chapters left an we are onto read Ephesians. Both of these books go well with out study of Greece and Rome this year as many of the places mentioned are in Greece and Rome. In Paul's trips to Rome we are getting a new picture of the historical cities mentioned in our history lessons as it is told from the Bible and from the point of view of the Christians who wrote it and live during that time period.

Mathematics: Same as last week but with X9.

Stories of Faith: In The Adventures of Missionary Heroism we have been reading about John Horden, James Evans and The Riggs. They all working to share the gospel message to the indians of Canada and North America. We have gone from the hot places in Africa to the cold places in the Arctic. The boys like the stories but find the language and all the names of languages, people tribes etc very challenging. So we are taking the narrating slowly reading one paragraph or two before they retell it back to me. We could put the names on the board but they would still have a little trouble reading them just now, and it seems better at this point to be simply working on retelling the main ideas and not simply parroting back details. They are improving on this.

Ancient Greek History: We completed our reading of In Search of a Homeland by Penelope Lively on friday and will be moving on to The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Greeks by F.J. Gould next week. I am taking Charlotte's advice and spending five days a week giving the boys a feast of ideas depending only on the narration, living books, and their hunger to learn to be enough to feed their minds good "mind stuff," and thus educate them. Last year I did a lot of hands on narration type projects feeling all the while the lessons were more mine than theirs and wondering how I could get out of doing so much. By doing what I mentioned above I am out of the way and their minds are meeting daily with great writers more equipped than I to share with them the knowledge they hunger for.

"I soon perceived that children were well equipped to deal with ideas, and that explanations, questionings, amplifications, are unnecessary and wearisome. Children have a natural appetite for knowledge which is informed with thought. They bring imagination, judgment, and the various so-called faculties to bear upon a new idea pretty much as the gastric juices act upon a food ration. This was illuminating but rather startling; the whole intellectual apparatus of the teacher, his power of avid presentation, apt illustration, able summing up, subtle questioning, (perhaps even hands-on-activities instead of a narration) all these were hindrances and intervened between children and the right nutriment duly served (literary ideas in living books); this, on the other hand, they received with the sort of avidity and simplicity with which a healthy child eats dinner." -Vol 6 Book 1, part 3

Having said this we still do a day of projects at the end of our week. This is done after five days of nourishing meals of literary ideas much the way as CM did handicrafts in the afternoon. I am being careful to fill them up with ideas from a literary source and not to replace that feeding with activities. This is not to say that we all do not benefit in some way from a hands-on-activity or a questioning say in the socratic method, but we must be sure they are fed plenty of literary ideas for their minds to grow on and let them digest it on their own as they need it. As my children are growing older I can see they are preferring the 'mind stuff' over the other types of lessons we have done in the past which they often found wearisome. Not to say that they do not find narrating wearisome at this point too because they do, however not as much as cutting coloring etc we did last year. When we did hands-on-projects last year they begged to have something read as they worked. They are hungry for ideas.

Our history project this week was to do the armor of God hands-on-activity from The Homeschool in the woods New testament activity pack. To introduce the lesson I played The Full Armor of God You Tube Video and The Armor of God Song and this Armor of God Song while they worked. We also listened to this rendition of Ephesians 6:10-20 read by James Earl Jones.

Aesop's copy work: Another 'ping' for Charlotte Mason here. Last week I adjusted the lesson so that the boys had five minutes of quiet time to complete the copy work portion of the page. Thus having only one focus for their minds. Then while they colored the picture I read from Aesop and In Search of a homeland. This week while narrating from In Search of a Homeland Zak is called on to retell the passage. He looks up frustrated from his coloring and says, " I don't know! How can I do two things at once!" Caught. My desire to fit in all in has divided his attention. But I will give myself some credit here, for when I was first having them narrate last year I read the Ten Things to do with Your Child Before the age of Ten by the Bluedorn's and felt guilty because I wasn't allowing them to play with anything while we narrated. Have you ever been caught between two knowledgeable people who recommend mutually exclusive things and not known what to do? Well I had already been thinking it may not be a good idea to have them playing while we narrate, but wasn't sure. Zak gave me the final answer. On other readings they will start playing with something and if they do not narrate well they must drop whatever it is and just listen. With boys that means they begin squirming around in their seat, smacking their lips, moving all the time. I find it a bit distracting so I am praying again about just how to handle this.

Science, Birds: Our reading of The Tales of Rusty the Wren has been completed and we are onto The Tales of Bobby Bobolink by Arthur Scott Bailey.

Nature Notebooks: I began to read a little from A Pocket Full of Pinecones on the day we go outside to put an entry in our nature journals. I edit out some of the "teachy" parts written just for us mom's and just give them the story. Since literary sources for ideas stick best I am thinking that this little story may give the boys a fresh new idea about their nature notebooks.

Language Arts:  We spent most of this week memorizing the poem Lady Moon. Though we approached it much the same way as we have before I switched it up a bit for I thought the boys would memorize this one easier than the two before. So we began the week by reciting the poem aloud. First I read the beginning lines and they repeat. Then I read the beginning lines and the next section, there are four sections. We repeat this pattern until they have the whole of the poem under their belt. Then the following day they copied the first and second sections into their composition books and drew a picture. Same thing the next day with the third and fourth section of the poem. Then on the fourth day we orally recited like we did on first day. They had the poem down well. Even with funny voices and al lot of laughter it was well done. On the fifth day we did a simple exercise in Primary Language Lessons about was and were.

Latin: Our dialogue this week introduces verbs and the declensions for "I am" and "he/she is." So we spent most of the week listening to and reading and translating the dialogue. Once they had that down I asked them questions leading them to the discovery about when to use the 'o' ending for "I am" or the 't' ending for "he/she is" using inductive type questions used so often on our Primary Language Lessons.

On project day I read aloud to them the story of Pandora as the newest character in our dialogues is named after the Pandora in this famous story.

On a side note I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to learn to read Latin using the CM reading method. After all much of the use of latin in later years is to read the original text of those writing in Latin. I may try it next year with the boys.

Art/Music: 

Zak is busy cutting out and choosing three of his favorite art works by Paul Klee to add to his Artist's Notebook page below. Usually we use Dover art stickers but I did not have any for Paul Klee, so I made some and printed them off for the boys to cut out. They will be included in my newest Artist Helper for Paul Klee soon.

Below are two of the four pages we filled with Klee artwork. This is their art work Gallery. The idea for this was inspired by this post from Charlotte Mason Help. We use a three ring binder and plastic money collectors pages. Then I made the cards and they put them into the pockets as they like. If you would like a set of these they are here for FREE.

So this is our last lesson on Paul Klee. We go now to five weeks of drawing lessons.

In our lessons with Tchaikovsky we watched a you tube presentation of swan lake. It took us three lessons to finish the four act ballet. The boys really enjoyed it. They were ecstatic when the Prince went to the lake in act two with his cross bow. They have been reenacting that all week long. They couldn't wait to see the evil guy come in every scene asking when he would return again and again. It was cool they enjoyed it all the way through even some of the long uneventful parts. They asked lots of good questions like, "How do the girls get their skirts to stay up like that?" and "Are they really dancing on their toes!?"

Outside of school the boys are helping my dh to paint the wall around our porch. Zak takes his turn.

Hope you have had a great week!

The Well Nourished Mind

There is an aspect of Charlotte Mason's method which resonated with me several years ago when I was first looking into it a way to go about our home education. It was the idea that we nourish the minds of our children on a banquet of ideas. I could understand feeding their minds because I was already very accustomed to feeding their bodies and to translate that skill towards education made perfect sense.

"Our chief concern for the mind or for the body is to supply a well-ordered table abundant, appetizing, nourishing and very varied food, which children deal with in their own way and for themselves. This food must be served au natural, without the predigestion which deprives it of stimulating and nourishing properties and no sort of forcible feeding or spoon feeding may be practiced." (Vol. 6  ch. 4)

A well ordered table implies that we don't skip around feeding them a bit of Egyptian history one day and some Renaissance history another, but that we have a sense of order to our presentation of ideas. Ideally they should build on, or rather link one to another. Line upon line precept upon precept may not be necessary for each subject but it implies the right idea, the presentation of ideas should flow easily from one idea to the next so the mind can follow a path to new ideas.

This idea of having a well ordered table also implies that the lesson we plan have a sense of rhythm or routine to it. I heard it once said that routine in a day is like a string on which to hang the beads of the events of our daily life. I can just imagine a beautiful string of beads all jumbled up and wanting desperately to arrange them so that they look lovely hanging there next to each other. It may be the arrangement is done via the colors, but perhaps also the shapes can be put in to order in such a way as to convey balance. CM suggests putting subjects in order in such a way as to give the brain rest on one task while engaging in a totally new task but is different from the last. Such as listening to a portion of history and narrating after doing mathematics. Each task engages the mind but in different ways thus not taxing but nourishing the child's mind.

Abundant suggests to me that copious amounts of ideas in literary form should be presented. It is up to the child to take from the abundance of ideas which surround him on a daily basis and make them into food for his hungering mind. He does the chewing, and the digesting. We as educators take the risk that he will feed himself and get the nourishment his mind needs to grow and develop into the person he/she was created to be.

This year I have begun to take this to heart and let go of many of our hands on lesson for living lessons based upon "living books". I read more aloud to them from literary sources and I commentate very little. They narrate and tell me what they have learned, and I stay out of their way. I can see such a change in them. The eagerness to come to be fed is tangible. No need any more for twisting of arms or treats to motivate them. They come because they are hungry to know. I have made it a goal to feed them more and have them put out work less.

Appetizing, what a beautiful word to describe lessons which are appropriate for the child at his age and level of knowledge acquisition. It paints such a fun picture of tasty, beautiful, rich, well cooked ideas that entices the child to want it. Lessons which are short, full of literary ideas, filled with pictures for the mind to engage with. Lessons which link together and build. Lesson that use beautiful language.

I can recall reading a picture book to my boys a few years back. It was a picture book of King of the Golden River. The pictures were beautifully drawn and complex. The literary value was beyond what I could read easily but the words painted a picture for the mind to dwell on. I read a few pages and began to get a little worried I had picked a book that was beyond them but they surprised me in asking the read the book and then again and again. When I grew tired of reading it to them they asked others to read it to them. The beautifully written words were appetizing to their minds and they longed for more.

A child's mind is fed upon ideas, says CM. Thus nourishing the mind would involve lessons which are full of ideas. Ideas that convey a picture to the mind seem to work best. Ideas not books full of facts or factoids but ideas found inside of a story/narrative. Ideas built line upon line. Even at my adult age I notice my mind still thrives best and learns most readily from a story. I recently read The Harbinger and was delighted to realize how the author had utilized this idea of a narrative to convey his idea to the reader. Luckily, there are many 'living books' in all topics which can be used for nourishing the mind.

Lastly CM suggests we give them very varied foods. Literary lessons from all subjects. From history, literature, music, art, geography, all branches of the sciences, language arts, foreign languages, and even in math we are enjoying learning about the lives of famous mathematicians from the Mathematicians are people too Vol. 1 and 2. The method that Charlotte developed educates a person towards feeding the mind and not filling a bucket. This implies that some information will be selected for use and other bits left behind. But the varied education allows a child to touch upon all areas of  life and find his place in it. As well it allows him to interact knowledgeably with others increasing his social ability.

This abundant feast is to be served au natural. No need for handouts with comprehension questions, or hands on activities to draw out a certain part of the info from the literary meal served. There is no need for commentary or questionings from the teacher. The literary meal is rich with ideas the child's mind will work on long after the lesson is complete. The digestion takes place during the free hours of play that the CM education provides.  He is full, well fed from the morning of well prepared lessons. His mind now receives during the afternoon of play and digests from the meal what his mind needs.

Last summer I read Children of the Summer with my boys just before bed. We only read it for fun and did not narrate it. It is a lovely "living book" which excites any reader to love the dear little insects Fabre spent his life learning about. It was simply a small bedtime snack for the mind. I did not know if they were or were not getting anything from the book, but I decided to trust CM and simply feed them. Later that summer several weeks after we had finished reading the book I left my kids to play outside with some other kids for the afternoon while I did some errands. When I returned the mom told me how amazed she was at how much my children knew about insects. She proceeded to tell me all they had said and I recognized their knowledge had come from Fabre's delightful book. They had received something from those bedtime snacks....sometimes it takes more than a day to digest it or find another soul to retell it to.

I still do too much spoon feeding and other kinds of lesson other than those that feed the mind. But this year I understand more fully that my children's minds need to be fed and I am praying about how to change my old habits for new ones. It is still and small this sweet voice of comfort I hear speaking to me in the stiller moments of the day. It keeps saying.....simply feed them Sarah That is enough.

UPDATE July 2013: There is a wonderful post by Dr. Carroll Smith HERE that talks in more detail about laying a feast of living books that you may enjoy reading.

Just the Basics

Our school year is winding down. We have a few more things to wrap up in Egypt and in Astronomy and our artist study of Renoir is about half-way done. We finished all our other subjects including our phonics rule book and the second Elson reader, and now I have fun plans for the summer! We usually do school all year round unless we travel and it is just not possible...in the past that has been so, but this year even though we are traveling I have put together a "Just the Basics" homeschool for the road. It includes the three Charlotte Mason musts: Reading living books, narrating and copywork. We added some math. And simply for fun we are doing some nature study about bugs and birds and some art with Artistic Pursuits.

This is the 3R's bundle. In these two homemade books we get done math and reading, narration, and copywork. The boys keep the two books in their folders with a writing pen and we are set to go. A day of lessons looks like this:

• The boys read the story to me and then tell back the story they read. (narrate).
• Then they copy a sentence from the story. (see picture below)
• Then we do two pages from Everyday Number Stories.
• Then one day we do an art lesson, and then the next day nature study.
• I still read aloud to them at night, this summer we are reading through The Moral Compass compiled by William J. Bennett and other books like Children of the Summer and nature stories by Arthur Scott Bailey

The fun part about being on the road is that other people get to help out with the schooling.

Grandma is helping Zak with his reading lesson.

Using Peter and Polly in Spring (Peter and Polly in Summer follows spring and will soon be available at Currclick) the boys practice reading aloud, and then they narrate the story back to me. Both Everyday Number Stories and Peter and Polly in Spring are bound with a Pro-Click Binder. If we stay on schedule we may get to read both Peter and Polly in Spring and Peter and Polly in Summer before next year.

After the boys read and narrate they then copy a sentence from the story on this pre-made copywork page which is included in the Peter and Polly e-book along with ideas for nature study and a coloring page. We decided to just use the copywork pages.

Each day we also do two pages from Everyday Number Stories. If you like Emma Serl's Primary Language Lessons you may want to try this math book as Emma Serl wrote Everyday Number Stories too! 

I simply love this book. It is the perfect bridge for us to recall the addition and subtraction work we did this last year and to then introduce simple multiplication and division. Along the way we get exposure to fractions, measurement, days of the week, money and time.

Everyday Number Stories introduces each new concept first with a story about Frank and Kate using the math concept in real life. In the story above Kate is buying ribbon and she is inroducung the concept of 3 feet = 1 yard. Then on the opposite page the problems focus on doing sums with the info from the story. each time doing number problems are within a span, like number under 12 or under 24 etc.  it increases as the book continues until all numbers up to 144 are worked.

I also love that it is FREE!! Find it here.

For fun we are reading living books about bugs and birds and getting out in nature to observe them.

Above are the following tools the boys have in their back packs for our nature study this summer.

• Spiral bound notebook and a pen.
• small water color book for small paintings and a small paper pad for drawings.
•  a guide for bugs and a guide for birds. Pocket sized so they fit in their hands.
• Binoculars
• butterfly garden
• a bug jar with a magnifying top
• a butterfly net
• sharp eyes

We just finsihed reading Children of the Summer which is a delightful story about Jean Henri Fabri. The story is told from the point of view of his son Paul as he watched his father play "tricks" on different insects to see what they would do when Paul was a little boy. The illustrations are also fabulous!

Also for fun we are going to do many of the art lessons in Artistic Pursuits Grade K-3 Book Three and Child-sized Masterpieces Modern School for steps 6 and 7. So we get to explore painting, sculpture, junk fabrication, computer art and pastels. It will be a wonderful way to review the impressionists/post-impressionists we studied last year and bridge over to the post-impressionists/modern artists we plan to look at next year. After we do the 3R's we will alternate between doing nature study or an art lesson. Until then we are finishing up the subjects from last yet still undone. I love how home schooling can be so flexible!

I am so looking forward to this new fun schedule. Now if the weather would only get warmer.

When we are not doing this new schedule we have been doing this...

Climbing on the rock wall at the local Aquatic Center and...

Taking swimming lessons. This is Zak coming up for air and a big smile!