On Their Own

Via Flicker

This spring we were not at home, so homeschool took on an 'on-the-road,' loose sort of a look. I loved it! We did spontaneous things and less seat work. We were in the outdoors more (when it wasn't raining) which was therapeutic for us all. This kind of change in schedule satisfied the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants longings I have when I do execute a well planned day. Well this spring I got my freedom, for a time, and actually some good things came out of it.

I am posting today about one activity that I initiated but became kid driven as we went along. It began with a bird book and time to look outside. I purchased this beginning bird watchers book with stickers. I know it isn't a "real" nature journal like we usually try to accomplish at home, but it did accomplish something our 'real' nature journal making has not yet done....my boys asked to do it and got out their books on their own to do it.

My guess is that they felt confident that they could wield this tool of observation and the 'real' nature journal entries we have been doing are still beyond them skill wise. The skill they have not yet acquired with ease is drawing and handwriting. Just about the entire 'real' nature journal entry activity is either drawing or handwriting. They will most likely catch on later as their fine motor skills develop but for now the sticker book was just within their grasp so they used it. You know something is working because your children will use again and again. They will drain it to the dregs if it is the right tool for them.

They were not allowed to simply put the stickers onto the birds as they liked it was a unsaid rule that they must have seen the bird and had someone witness that they saw it. SO they began a sort of guy like competition to see who can spot more birds than the other. Typical. I love it when their 'boyness' really accelerates their learning because there are so many times when the 'schoolish' type things simply do not appeal to boys and thus make it seem they are just not so bright. But now in the wild they can hunt down birds and add a sticker and they could do it faster than the next guy. Enthralling.

They would often beg for help to fill out the info about the birds because THEY WANTED TO KNOW more about the bird they had found. They had developed a connection or relation to the birds.  It was fun for them to add in the sticker, learn more about the bird they saw and of course be first. I know this is not to be encouraged in a CM approach but I have yet found it detrimental to learning. There needs to be obvious sportsmanship rules but all in all I have found that good competition is healthy for boys. Also my boys are all within 1 1/2 years of each other with the oldest being 9 and the twins being 7 so there is room to spur one another on and it is truly a fair fight to the finish.

One activity that we did near the beginning turned out well indeed. I purchased a high quality molding clay in lots of fun bright colors. It is the kind of clay that never dries so you can reuse it again and again. It just gets better with time. However looking back maybe it would have worked better had we used an oven bake clay like FIMO because then they could have kept each bird they made.

We created several clay models of our birds but these are the only pics that survived some how. RATS! At first we tried going 3-D but that wasn't happening so the boys ended up making 2-D relief like images of the blue jays they saw in the park. The colors were very rewarding to work with and the way the clay moves in your hands makes working with it for beginners simple and successful. We still have the bags of clay at my mom's house which we can use again for another project. I love it how a simple resource like clay can become so many things over time.

Via Tumbler

We don't aways do education on the road or away from home and in the way we did this Spring but it worked for us for that season of the year. I have many happy memories of the lessons we did and the things we learned. It was truly relaxing. Maybe we can learn something from it too and let our children wiled appropriate tools so they can really do the learning for themselves without us grown ups always telling them how to do it.

Week Fifteen Wrap-Up

We would be half way done with this year but we plan to school the whole year round with a month of in May and part of June. So our halfway point is really in Feb-March. At that point we switch to Ancient Roman history and the study of Insects. I can't wait! But for now we took another day off to celebrate Max's 9th birthday!

Happy Birthday Max!

Bible: We are finishing up Genesis this week and moving on the the last book of the Bible, Revelation.

Stories of Faith: We finished This Way to Christmas as well this week and Have begun to read The Christmas Porringer.

Math: We have completed the Usborne math skills Multiplying and Dividing Puzzles and will begin to work through Everyday Number Stories in rotation with The Multiplication Matrix. We did work through Everyday number stories last summer but I know that this year now that we have had some good work on multiplication tables and division that the book will be much more beneficial. 

We are continuing to read about Albert Einstein from Kathleen Krull's book entitled Albert Einstein (Giants of Science series)

Aesop Copywork:

Ancient Greek History: We are reading Alexander the Great by John Hunter.

Geography: Our Little Spartan Cousin of long ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.

Science the Study of Birds: We are reading Reddy the Woodpecker by Arthur Scott Bailey this week. I am thrilled. The living books we have been reading about birds is igniting an interest and the boys are doing a lot of looking up birds on their own. Yesterday was a typical day in this area as Max had out the large volume of Birds the definitive guide by DK and finding birds he knew. Birds from Winged Migration a movie we watched umpteen times when he was only three-six years old or so, Birds from our readings, Birds form our yard and neighborhood. As he poured over the pages looking at flight migration paths and where each bird can be found he felt as if he was looking at old friends. At the same moment the twins were playing the birds of America concentration game I picked up at Good Will this summer and naming all the birds they "knew". Earlier this week I found them all three out in our yard with their binoculars searching the skies for birds and looking  up in the trees for nests. TJ finds the littlest birds nests often after they have fallen out f the tree where they were perched. We think it is the warbler who is making them.

And look what we found 'stealing' grain from the chicken pen.

I also found a handy link to many living nature books by Thornton Burgess and Arthur Scott Bailey over at Manybooks.com.

Nature notebooks: This week we learned to draw an owl.

Langaue Arts: We completed lessons #35-38 in Primary Language Lessons which includes work on has and have, a little dictation, an oral lesson about cows and milk where I focus on having the boys answer the questions in complete sentences. The lesson was about milk so we made homemade marshmallows and hot chocolate for a lunch time snack!

Bed time story: Little Town on the Prairie.

Afternoon Audio book: Narnia, The lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian several times over.

Reading aloud: Elson Reader Book Three, still working on two pages a day for each boy. They are getting much more fluent and it is more and more of a pleasure to hear then read.

Latin: This week we learned a new dialogue using adverbs and verbs. We have spent the week learning the new verbs and adverbs as vocabulary and as parts of speech and how they are used in Latin and in English. How to identify them and how to use them ourselves.

Art/Music: Drawing lesson #15 evolved into a multimedia painting. The lesson was about drawing ellipses which create a bowl with fruit in it. So their were examples in our drawing book of different fruits and how to draw a bowl. The boys practiced drawing a bowl and then I showed them this picture that I found on pinterest:

The foundation of all painting is drawing so it seemed an easy step to take our bowl drawing and make a painting out of it. Our source picture was created by Mrs. Anderson for her art class but there were no instructions on the website were it was pinned from on how to do it so we just winged it and had some fun. 

We began by mixing acrylic paint to get the color Mrs. Anderson had in her background. Then the boys painted that color onto a canvas panels. These are wonderful, They are much less expensive than a real canvas but it gives the feel and look of a canvas when painted. I love them. While the paint was still wet, with the back of our brush we drew swirls and designs into it. Then we set it aside to dry.

While the background was drying I printed off some paper with words on it. Any print will do. Then the boys drew fruit with pencils using the ideas from the drawing book to guide them. It was hard to think to draw the fruit big enough to make a presence on the painting but they got it in the end. Once the fruits were drawn they got out their gauche paints (opaque water colors) and painted them. Then those were set those aside to dry while the table top was draw and painted as well on printed paper.

Once all the printed fruits and table tops were dry the boys "glued" them onto their now dry backgrounds. done for the day.

The next day as we listened to Chopin the boys painted on the black outline of the table, the fruit stems and leaves, the q-tipped white dots (you can use the back of your brush too) and signed their names.

Merry Christmas!

Week Two Wrap-Up

I can't say enough about our new schedule...I just LOVE IT! We start at 11am do four lessons, break for lunch and then do four more lessons ending at 3pm or 4pm depending on the day. What I love most is having the time in the morning to get a lot done before we begin. By that time I have accomplished something or often many things and I am feeling I am ready for the boys. I am prepared to focus on them, be more patient, more relaxed and thus a better teacher and mom. I also LOVE having lunch right in the middle of the lessons to give us all a mental and emotional break. Seems to take the weight off of the day and allows us time to talk during the meal about things we have learned in the lessons. Often as they linger over the meal I read the next lesson while they are eating the last morsels of food. Ahh multi-tasking I love it too!!

This week we have been reading through Daniel. My dh does this over breakfast. We have heard the stories before many times but still I am amazed at Daniel's trust in God up to the last almost fatal moment. I would have cried "unfair!" "Enough!" when the satraps slandered him and plotted to usurp him even to kill him. But Daniel believed God would save him even though he was being thrown into a den of hungry lions. Amazing. How far would you let God seemingly ruin your life before you stopped trusting He is good enough to save you?

First lesson of the day is reading from Buchko. I read about two chapters before the 30 minutes for the lesson is up and we are moving along to math. (I changed the order of our lesson this week to to coincide better with my planner.) We are loving to hear how Bruce is telling the stone aged indians about the gospel. How he puts it into terms and ideas the indians can understand. I simply love the idea of tying my hammock into God and getting in with both feet. This is more challenging then it seems when you realize the Motilone indians he is speaking to sleep in hammocks 25 feet off the ground. Yikes! That takes a bit of trust to tie in way up there. It is also a way they invite you to be part of them. If a girl likes a boy she ties her hammock next to his and they are then officially married. Hearing ideas we know so well put into new terms makes it more clear to us. The boys all heartily agreed tying their hammocks  into God is a wonderful idea!

We are having a lot of fun with the skip counting songs in math. We moved on to the X3 and X4 songs this week. The X4 song is a country western tune which really resonates with my bluegrass heart. Yippe i kie aaaay we skip count every day! In addition I introduced the boys to Sal from Khan Academy. (Thanks Debbie for the pointer) He has been explaining to them about what Multiplication is and what a multiplication table is. Then we made our own tables this week. Max especially liked it. We played An old style version of Multiplication Bingo that I found at the Goodwill this summer for our game-activity-fun day.

After Math we are reading from the Story of the Greeks and preparing for our Saturday Scrapbook day. The boys want to scrapbook about the Greek Olympics. So we will be working on that theme for a few weeks. We did get our books started last Saturday, see Max's inside cover and title page below.

We are using a basic wire bound sketch book for our scrapbook. The map on the cover came from Homeschool in the woods packet of old world maps. The title page is from Notebooking Pages packet of Ancient Times pages. On the other cover of the book we plan to add the old world style map for Ancient Rome. Thus the book will open left to right for Ancient Greece and right to left for Ancient Rome. Somewhere in the middle they will meet. We did more this week preparing things for the pages on the olympics but the boys wanted me to wait to show you it all when they have it done. So I will let it remain a mystery until then.

Also last week on our 6th day/fun day we did our first nature notebook entry. Using Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Leslie Walker I introduced the boys to the scientific aspect of nature hikes/walks...recording your observations. Following Clare's advice from Chapter 2 "Beginning Your Journal" we entered our daily observations. There are eight of them noted on page 22:

1. Name
2. Date
3. Place
4. Time
5. Weather
6. First Impressions
7. Wind direction
8. Cloud Patterns

Then we drew something we loved:

Before we do an entry I read a little from her book that I think would help them form an idea about what a nature journal can be or  something that would inspire them. I love this quote form the book (Zak did too!)

"Think of a nature journal as a treasure hunt. Ask yourself, "what's out there beyond  the doorstep? What treasures will I find?" You will be amazed when you actually get outside at all the things there are to draw or write about." - Clare Walker Leslie

Following a reading from the Stories from Ancient Greece we  continue our reading through the Burgess Bird Book. We have met the fly catchers and the woodpeckers, the cow bird and many other friends of Peter Rabbit in the Old Orchard. There happens to be copious resources to go along with this book, but here are three of my favorite ones:

Audio version
Free Printables that go well with the stories
Burgess Book Companion Web site

I am however going to keep our reading simple and just read and look up birds in resources books I mentioned last week. Having said that I did decide to add one more resource, The Handbook of Nature Study. It was a DUH! moment when I realized I had the text on my shelf and the questions Max was asking could easily be answered by reading there. SO we are reading more from that book next week.

Lunch Break!!!

After eating is a Language Arts lesson or two. We have been working through a dictation lesson this week from Primary Language Lessons. The word SQUIRRELS was hard for the boys to master so we wrote the word over many times and did dictation a few days in a row on the same sentence until they got it! Boy were they proud! In the same book, PLL, we did an short lesson on when to use "is" or "are." They also wrote a short story about squirrels using "is" and "are" in their composition notebooks (which we picked up at Walmart for cheap). Take a look...

I recommend getting the teacher's edition to supplement the student text of PLL as it has some wonderful ideas for how to implement and further use the lessons. When it sugested writing a story or drawing a picture about squirrels I knew that would be  good switch from dictation. It also allowed them to use the word they had mastered their own way. I addition to the teacher's guide, I recommend either Living books curriculum layout workbook or Cynce's because it makes doing the lessons so much easier having places already set out to write your answers.

Here is Max's drawing from the poem "If I knew" (Where the box where the smiles were kept)

I enjoyed hearing the boys read out loud to me from Elson Reader book Three and narrate the story this week. They chose to go through this series last year and they still love it. I love it too, as the stories they read to me are good ones and though not modern they have timeless values woven into them which is refreshing. So I have them read two or three pages for me this fall. We were reading 5 to 7 this summer from Peter and Polly in Summer, but the words in these short stories are bigger, and more challenging to sound out. I don't want to tire them out, I want them to practice, so we read what they can get done in about 15-20 minutes. So far it has worked out very well. The truth be told...I don't know if I could do much more than that. Listening to three emerging readers for one hour is about my limit too!

To complete L.A. for the day we have one more lesson. Just before bed we are reading  The Wind in the Willows. Oh how I love this book! It is chocolate to the ears. To supplement my own readings I also play an audio version of the  chapters I have already read. (They just can't get enough) The audio version we have I picked up a garage sale for next to nothing. It is part of a set called The Children's Classic Library. It includes more than Wind in the Willows, it also contains  40 other classic stories like Treasure Island, Pinocchio and Heidi. I love that they are unabridged and dramatized. Gives my throat a break and they get their fill of good literature. Win win!

Onto Lain! We have made some good progress with our dialogue "meet the family" in the Minimus  Latin curriculum we are using this year. We must have listened to the dialogue about 7 times before the boys were able to read it all the way through making no mistakes and understanding the dialogue. Each time we listened to the dialogue more details became clear. Then each one was given a chance to read it out loud while the others listened. Once that was complete, we took about half of the vocab words at a time and wrote them onto 3 X 5 cards. The latin they wrote on the front and a picture of the word or the english word on the back. These flash cards that they are making for themselves was an idea from the teacher's manual. Take a look at Max's card for Feles (cat).

Once they had completed all of the vocab words we played a sort of spelling bee type of game to reinforce them. They stood up together in a line and I gave them first the latin and they gave me the english, then I gave them the english and they would give me the latin. If they failed at a word they sat down and the last one standing was the winner. We played several times and all won in the end. Today (Thursday) we translated a birthday invitation which was found at Vindolanda in an excavation.

You know a boy loves a book when he puts his legos aside just to listen. Well that is what they do when I bring out The Story of Peter Tchaikovsky by Opal Wheeler. Zak said, "I just love that horse boy."

Our look at Paul Klee this week has resulted in some fun drawings and paintings of cats.

Tj is painting a 'the cat head' based upon the coloring page we did last week called "The Head of Man."

Here is Max working on his 'cat head.' We began the drawing by tracing a bowl form the kitchen. Having the circle thus define the space made the rest of the drawing/painting a piece of cake.

We then morphed from "The Head of Man" to "The Cat head" to Klee's "Cat and Bird". There is a great site we used to guide in drawing this. You can check it out here.

Can you find their signature in the drawing? We used oil pastels to color these.

Zak said this is chocolate cat! And so it is.  I hope it is a chocolate ice cream cat!

That is all for this week. I hope you are having a good one too.

Week One Wrap-up

Yeah!!! Amongst all the messes and undone plans we had a terrific start to the year this week. Letting God take the lead in the schedule and the daily moment by moment decisions has led me to make two significant changes to our home education. They are to apply more of CM's education principles to our school and live by a new schedule.

What I have always loved about a CM education is all the good books. I like how she filled up young students with a rich banquet of ideas DAILY. I realized that I have been skimpy on the banquet of ideas putting in its place more hands on activities. And though my boys enjoy hands on activities some times, this year I have limited them and added many more living books rich with ideas for their minds to be filled with. I can see they are thriving already eating daily from a rich feast of ideas.

I have heard that boys need time to fidget or be active before they can settle down and do seat work. SO when we were discussing how to go about our schedule I was so happy when Max came up with the idea of doing school from 11am to 4pm with a lunch break at around 1pm right in the middle of the lessons. It has worked out beautifully!!! When the boys come to lesson time after having had time to themselves to fidget and work off excess energy they do much better in school. We do more learning and less discipline. I too am benefitting from the extra time in the morning to do my own things and get ready for the day before lesson begin. My only big adjustment is to be sure to prepare lunch before lessons at 11.

Our new schedule of lessons for this year looks like this...

We begin the lessons reading a story about someone's life who walked with God. We do this to get a glimpse of who God is, how He leads those who follow Him and to see what adventures people have do follow Him. This year we have begun with Bruchko.

After reading Bruchko we do a lesson from Minimus. In this lesson we listen to a dialogue between Minimus the mouse and each member of the family. Mininmus is asking who they are. The boys just about have the dialogue down pat and can read it all by themselves for the most part. Here is Max's work sheet on the members of the household we have met so far...

We will spend most of the year on this Latin book so I am taking my time to go through it slowly. In addition to add some background to Minimus I have been reading Douglas Bond's book Hostage Lands to the boys at bedtime. It is about a young Latin student in modern day Britain who accidentally finds a set of old Roman tablets on his father farm near Hadrian's wall. The story of Hostage Lands is the story he discovers as he translates the tablets with his eccentric Latin professor. Cool thing is that both the book and Minimus take place in Britain near Hadrian's Wall.

This summer I introduced multiplication and division to the boys via Emma Serl's wonderful turn-of-the-century math primer called Everyday Number Stories. Since they did not yet know their times tables they figured out the multiplication problems and division problems using addition. WOW they sure found that cumbersome, but they are NOW ready this fall to learn the times tables, so we are doing that. I began this week with the Original Skip Count Kid Audio songs for X2 and practicing the X2 on a multiplication table. Tomorrow for our catch-up-game-activity day we will play Loot the Pirate Ship and read about a Mathematician form Mathematicians are People Too Vol. 2. I love how fun math can be.

Loot the Pirate ship!!!

History this year will involve learning about Greece and Rome. I have collected a HUGE pile of books on this over the last few years at the Goodwill etc and will have PLENTY of material to choose from as we read the fascinating stories of these ancient peoples. We begin the year with The Story of the Greeks written primarily by H. A. Gruber, and enhanced by Christine Miller from Nothing New Press. It gives a wonderful overall feel for the story of the Greek people. This week I read aloud the stories as the boys fiddled with legos or colored their pictures of the family we met in our latin study. Once this lesson is complete we eat lunch.

LUNCH

BREAK

Our nature study focuses on birds and insects, so I asked the boys which one they wanted to study first...they chose the birds. SO we read from The Burgess Bird book by Thornton Burgess each day. When we want to see the birds he is describing or hear the songs they sing, I pull out these books to learn more about the birds introduced in our story.

Bird:The Definitive Visual Guide, 100 Birds and How They Got Their Names, and Backyard Bird Songs. Tomorrow we will be outside for a nature hike and we will have our eyes open to see if we see fly catchers, sparrows, wrens and phoebes the birds we read about. I hope to find a nest or two.

Ahhh... Language Arts! Spilt into three parts we rotate them around to fit our schedule. The three parts include: Reading out loud from the Elson Reader book Three including narration of the story(s), Handwriting or copy work, and lessons from Primary Language Lessons. This week was wonderful! I heard classic tales read aloud to me with easily given narrations of them. The lessons in the PLL have copywork in them but if the lesson does not I assign a sentence or two from their reader. PLL has a new lesson for us DICTATION. Surprisingly the boys loved the challenge of it. we only did two lessons but I am at THEIR pace so it is enjoyable for us all.

Modern artists are on the docket for art history this year. So we began with Paul Klee. This week we played Go Fish for Modern Artists to see him amongst other modern artists and then a few days later the boys colored one of Mr. Klee's famous paintings "Head of Man"

 Last but certainly not least is composer study. We begin this year with Tchaikovsky! Since Opal Wheeler's books were such a great highlight to our composer study last year I chose to read her again. So we began with The Story of Peter Tchaikovsky. What a lovely little boy he was!

Each day we complete all the above lessons except for art and music which rotate out every other day. We are planning on doing a 6 day week with the 6th day being a catch-up-game-actvity day.

I am excited for another year of discovery with more rich ideas to think on and a new schedule to live by.

This Year's Curriculum: Elson Readers

Another result of our pow wow about what to do about reading which I mentioned in the last post, This Year’s Curriculum: Phonic Rules Book, was that Zak fell in love with the Elson Readers. he said, "I love all the stories with kittens." I showed them the pictures and read to them one of the stories they would later read to me. I also showed them other books like the little bear series and frog and toad books etc. but they didn’t want to read them. Secretly, I was thrilled he loved them because when I saw them a few years back I fell in love with them too. I am glad I waited to use them though until they loved them too.

The Elson Readers are vintage books written in the early 1900’s. They are simply and sweetly done. The pictures are delightful. Experienced educator William H. Elson who also wrote the well known Dick and Jane books wrote the Elson Readers but the Elson readers were prior to Dick and Jane so they are of a higher literary quality and more rigorous. Some of the authors included are Shakespeare, Thoreau, Thomas Paine, and Homer.

“The real beauty of the these readers is the kind of literature within its covers: wholesome literature that views the world of nature with awe, upholds the ideals of service to others and our country, and encourages sound moral development in the reader.” -Quote from the back of the book

There are nine books in the Elson Reader series, The Primer through book eight. The series is intended to offer a complete reading course. The Primer through Book Three focus on basic skills, and Books Four through Eight focus on reading for content. All the Readers have either a "Word List" (for earlier levels) or a "Glossary" (for level Three and up) with updated pronunciation guides that reflect modern pronunciation. The selections progress throughout the series from adaptations of fairy tales to unabridged stories from authors such as Hawthorne and Dickens.

Each Reader has a teachers guide to go along with it. The Teacher's Guides have been newly created, using the original exercises as a base. The authors of the guides have teaching experience in both public schools and homeschools. The educational standards of the state of Florida are reflected in the guides, but it is noted that many states have similar guidelines. There are clear objectives listed in each guide.

The Primer where we will begin this year says it is geared towards beginning readers, however, I feel they are more for emerging readers who have had teaching in phonics and practice already reading. We plan to use this series to hone our reading fluency not to teach them how to read.

The Primer contains the following sections: Animals and Birds (15 stories, plus 3 "Review Stories"), Nature (5), Festivals (4, plus 1 "Review Story"), and Slumberland (2). The "Review Stories" reinforce concepts and words learned in previous stories. In addition, there is a page with the uppercase and lowercase alphabet and a 3-page "Word List" containing words that are to be emphasized for special study. Simple black-and-white illustrations complement the stories.

Near the middle of the book, you will find a 6-page story called "Little Owl." Here is an excerpt from page 88: "Little Owl lived with Mother Owl. One night Mother Owl, said, "Whoo! Big owls say 'Whoo, whoo!' You must say 'Whoo, whoo.'" There is a sweet illustration on each page.

The teachers guide lists the stories in order and includes the page numbers in the teachers guide and the corresponding page numbers of the story in the Reader. Under each story are the headings, words, phonics, and concepts, and a listing next to each heading of the particular target points covered in that story.

There is a 2-page "How to Use This Book" explanation followed by a clear listing of objectives. The teacher/parent is encouraged to collect pictures of items related to themes in the book (e.g., pigs, owls, windmills). Each story comes with a specific word list, as mentioned above. You are advised to teach these words to your children before reading the story. Suggestions include maintaining a vocabulary journal and/or using index cards with the words on one side and a picture of the word on the other side.

Comprehension questions are presented at 3 levels: literal (can be answered directly in the story), implied (clues and background knowledge are needed to answer the question), and creative (children can "dream and be unique"). You are advised to discuss questions orally with your children.

It is also recommended that you maintain a supply of lined and unlined paper and a variety of writing tools for your children to use.

There are 15 objectives identified for this level. The first two are as follows:

• The student will predict what a story is about based on its title and illustrations.

• The student will identify words and construct meaning from text, illustrations, use of phonics, and context clues.

In the Table of Contents, the following information is provided for "Little Owl."

• Words: night

• Phonics: ow, ou

• Concepts: sequencing, circle story

The teaching guidelines for "Little Owl" are on pages 70-74 (page 72 is mostly blank). The first two pages contain a longer version of the story than is presented in the Reader. You are directed to read this longer story to your child before presenting the shorter story in the Reader. There are five comprehension questions: two are literal, three implied, and one creative. The creative question is, "If you were Mother Owl, what would you do to protect Little Owl? Accept any reasonable answers."

For the phonics exercise, you and your child are supposed to "brainstorm" words containing the ow sound with both the ow and ou spellings. For the concept exercise, you are directed to cut out six little boxes on the bottom of the page containing events from the story and paste them in order around the circle at the top of the page (blank boxes provided).

“In general, I see this program as a fabulous collection of literature along with a useful resource to teach children how to engage with text. Each family must decide how much purposeful direction with literature their children should have...The larger question is one of philosophy. The literature is lovely and presents a wonderful opportunity for practice in narration. However, the activities in the Teacher's Guide run the risk of ruining the simple enjoyment of the stories. Also, I am not convinced that the level of interaction with the text is appropriate for the targeted age level, regardless of the state standards. Admittedly, there are individual differences among children, and some children may indeed be ready for these kinds of activities. I do think it is very helpful to purposefully teach a child how to interact with a text. But for me, the important questions are when and how and how much.” - Product review by Nancy Casari Dayton, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August 2008

I agree with Nancy's quote not just about The Elson Readers but about any curricu.um choice you make. It is more important to tailor it to fit your family than to try to tailor your family to fit it. We plan to use the Elson readers to practice reading fluency on a daily basis and we will pick and chose from the teachers guide extra assignments as they seem useful to our learning.

Thus far in this day we have read a faith building story, learned one phonic rule and put it into our book, and practiced reading. Now onto one of my favorite topics....Ancient Egypt!

The Seven Laws

I am starting a book called the Seven laws of Teaching by John Milton Gregory. It is recommended to all the teachers that teach at the Logos School in Idaho. This is a Classical Christian School. I purchased the book last year but have just not gotten around to reading it until now. After completing one year of schooling it seems fitting to digest the ideas in the book and see what could be useful for next year. I think I will need a whole summer to chew on this little gem.
It comes with a study guide with essay questions and practical exercises to apply the cool nuggets of truth in the book. John Milton Gregory wrote the book some time around 1919 so he is an old writer with old style words but really timeless helpful hints on teaching. Honestly it is taking my mind a while to get into his style and vocabulary. I hope to be finished with the study guide/essay questions soon and then mull it over a bit before writing about it here. Anyone want to join me??
Just to tantilize you, here are the seven laws......naked and unexplained.

The Seven Laws of Teaching

1. A teacher must be one who knows the lesson or truth to be taught.  (Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson you wish to teach; or in other words, teach with a full mind and a clear understanding.)

2. A learner is one who attends with interest to the lesson given.
(Gain and keep the attention and interest of the pupils upon the lesson. Refuse to teach without attention.)

3. The language used as a medium between teacher and learner must be common to both. (Use words understood by both the teacher and pupil in the same sense – language clear and vivid alike to both)

4. The lesson to be learned must be explicable in the terms of truth already known by the learner. (the unknown must be explained by the known.)

5. Teaching is arousing and using the pupil’s mind to form in it a desired conception or though. (Use the pupil’s own mind, exciting his self-activities. Keep his thoughts as much as possible ahead of your own, exciting his self-activities.)

6. Learning is thinking into one’s own understanding a new idea or truth. (Require the pupil to reproduce in thought the lesson he is learning – thinking it out in its parts, proofs, connections, and applications till he can express it in his own language.)

7. The test and proof of teaching done – the finishing and fastening process – must be a reviewing, rethinking, reknowing , and reproducing of the knowledge taught. (Review, review, review, reproducing correctly the old, deepening its impression with new thought, correcting false views, and completing the true.)

Creativity

"Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio or looked at a television. they had 'loneliness' and knew what to do with it . They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when creative mood in them would work." -Carl Sandburg.

Why do we homeschool? There are so many good reasons, personal reasons, religious reasons, pratical reasons and so many factors to look into in making this decision. Setting all those aside for now there is one main facet of this way of education I loved the first time I saw it, it was CREATIVITY. That is what I want to highlight today. Note these quotes written by a homeschool graduate who is now homeschooling her children. I read them one day as I was looking into the idea of homeschooling our kids.  

"From time to time I meet young mothers who want to start homeschooling, but they are terrified by their own inadequacy. They’re afraid they won’t remember how to do geometry or be able to help their kids through the schoolbooks. So what? That’s what answer keys are for. Homeschooling isn’t about knowing the right answers; it’s about FINDING the answers. Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t the kind who knew all the right answers – he was the kind who questioned the answers and looked for new ones. Creativity is far more viable than knowledge. It has no limits, no boundaries. Creativity will take you beyond the status quo; knowledge alone will not even qualify you for hourly wages.

What is creativity in a practical sense? Making up your own pattern for a dress instead of buying one. Making up your own ABC song. Taking a six-digit number and scrambling it into a brand new number as fast as you can in your head. Making up a rhyme or a song, writing a story, coming up with a brand new recipe, asking questions about anything you can think of and finding the answer any way you can. " Rebecca  from her article homeschooling a way of life.

A great way to encourage creativity....ask

What do you think???

"My mother rarely impresses people as being an intellectual. But I am absolutely convinced she is one of the best teachers on the planet. Mom taught as continually as she breathed. She counted everything aloud in a singsong voice; steps, apples, money, fence posts. We saw the world in numbers because Mom counted everything aloud. She sounded every sign aloud and pointed out the letters as we drove by. We played games of finding all the G’s on billboards and signs as we drove down the street. She asked questions continually: “How much do you think this weighs? Do you think that’s more than a quart or less?” “How long does a cow carry its baby?” “I wonder what that weed is good for? I bet we could eat it.”
She answered our questions as best she could – even if the answers were still over our heads. Mom enjoyed learning for herself. She was continually studying something. I remember many of her projects: growing mushrooms, making dye, making a quilt, herbs, soybeans, drying food, writing a book, harvesting cotton, midwifery, and on the list goes. Mom made homeschooling a part of my life, something I will never outgrow."

"I don't know, let's look it up."
"One of the best things my mom taught me was how to search the library for what I wanted to know. My husband added to that by showing me how to search the World-Wide Web for everything from detailed maps of foreign countries to recipes and tips on growing avocados. I remember the thrill that came over me when I realized that I could find the answer to almost any question I could ask, and do practically anything I wanted to do, if I worked hard enough. Give that thrill to your children, and you will have succeeded in homeschooling them. " Rebecca from her article homeschooling a way of life.

Thanks Rebecca for this breath of fresh air. Gives one courage to begin and way lay fears of not being enough.