Week Sixteen/Seventeen Wrap-Up

This week and the last we have been ankle deep in Celtic soldiers and Famous Figures from Ancient Times action figures. The celtic figures above came from our Latin lesson of all places. Aren't they fierce looking? We were studying a dialogue about Britons are Best/ Romans are Best when this celtic warrior grabbed Zak's heart. He has colored, cut out and assembled a whole army of them. (25 or so) Coloring different ones different colors to signify rank etc. The celtic warriors above are the foot soldiers. No pun intended. :)

Bible: We have been reading through the book of revelations over breakfast these past few weeks. And because I had it on hand I put up this amazing painting made by Michael Pearl. It depicts the flow of the happenings with references to where in Revelations the images come from. I sticky tacked it to the wall about the head height of the boys so they can really get a good look at it.

Stories of Faith: This week we began to read Twice freed by Patricia St. John. It is a historical fiction novel written around the character Onesiumus from the Bible, a run away slave whom mets up with and is befriended by Apostle Paul while he is in Rome. To be honest, I am a glad to be finished with David Livingston and  H.M. Stanley as the many odd African names came up quite frequently in our book about him and made reading aloud a bit daunting for me. The boys were however not fazed by it one bit. Between this read and the greek myths and greek names in our geography books I am getting my fair share of education right along side the boys.

Arithmetic:  We have begun a new schedule with our math exercises this week. I made the change as I could see the boys were getting TOO familiar with the Matrix and the meaning and use of it were fading. This was apparent as no one was beating their old time or cared to work to achieve this. I had to freshen things up a bit. Making a change in schedule can often bring a fresh feel to things so we talked together and I gave the boys two choices of schedules I felt comfortable with and asked which one they would prefer. They chose to do Everyday Number Stories five days a week and on project day do the Multiplication Matrix. We will see how this goes. Personally I am happy with their choice as the work in the Everyday Number stories will give them great practice in understanding the ins and outs of the factors they are memorizing for the Matrix Table. I feel the understanding is more important than the time. The time simply reflects how easily it is for them to come up with the answers but understanding shows they know how to use the answers.

We continue to read about Albert Einstein in Kathleen Krull's delightful book about him.

Aesop's Copy work: 

Alexander the Great and a Hoplite Soldier action paper dolls from our Famous Figures of Ancient Times book.

Some of Max's finished action figures.

Ancient Greek History: We have been reading through The Heroes by Charles Kingsley.  Maybe you like us like to be careful how myths and 'gods' are introduced to your children, then you may enjoy the preface as much as I did. Reading it first, before I read the book to the boys gave me some good ideas for how to place the myths and the greek gods into our faith framework established on God and what we know is true from the Bible. Here is a quote form the final bit of the preface:

"But you shall hear how the Hellens said their heroes worked, three thousand years ago. The stories are not true, of course, nor half of them; you are not simple enough to fancy that; but the meaning of the is true, and true for ever, and that is- Do right, and God will help you." Charles Kingsley at Farley Court Advent 1855.

I am interested also to read another book by Kingsley entitled The Good News of God to see just where he is coming from.

This portrait of Medusa the Gorgon from our Mythology Pocket download went into our History notebook along with this pocket including a short version of the myth we read in Kingsley's book.

Max's Notebook pages.

Geography:  We have been reading through Three Greek Children by Alfred J. Church.

Science of Birds: Another lovely book by Arthur Scott Bailey has been on our reading list for science the past few weeks, The Tales of Solomon the Owl.

Nature notebooks: To catch up here are the last two entries the boys made in their nature notebooks.

Drawing by Zak.

Drawing by TJ

And we are not yet done with A Pocket Full Of Pinecones, perhaps in a few weeks.

What we found this week in the yard.

Language Arts: Seasons of the year writing assignment, and dictation, see, saw, seen writing assignment, Memorize The Brown Thrush by Lucy Larcum. all lessons from Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl.

Reading Practice: Elson Reader Book Three. I have been assigning the boys two pages a day from this reader, they can chose to read more but not less. I set the bar a little low for I wanted to allow them the chance to challenge themselves or let the story pull them into reading more. For after all we read to know not to fulfill assignments. This past month I have seen it happening and it is fun! They all read passably well, but not yet do they have enough skill to find reading a pleasurable pass time. Now however they have all taken the lead and chosen to read more either to beat their brother or because the story beckons them on to find out more, not every day but often. This is what I have been waiting for.

Bedtime read aloud: Last week we read Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff and have begun another by the same author this week The Silver Branch.

Latin: We are in Chapter 6 of Minimus: Starting out in Latin. A good place to be as we are about midway through the year and midway through the book. These past few weeks we have been looking at a dialogues about britons versus Romans and going to York to go shopping. The boys are catching much better to the way Latin reads and being more confident in their translations without my help.

I also did a little research on Minimus Secundus the next book in the series and found a helpful website with reviews of loads of classic literature and curriculums. Here is an excerpt about Minimus Secundus:

"Further evidence of the book's success is found in more than 1,000 letters Bell has received from children containing highly unexpected remarks such as "Latin is cool" and "Latin is the only thing I go to school for."

Art and Music: 

The enjoyment of Chopin's music and story goes on still.

Our drawing lessons have ceased for now and we have begun a study of Henri Matisse and continue our study of Chopin. The boys colored this painting/coloring page from The Artist Study Helper I made last year. One reviewer said this about it:

"What an enjoyable study this is. I'd never done an artist study before and honestly never really saw the benefits in it. This download has just about everything you need to complete a study on this particular artist: lesson plans, montessori cards, biography, full page picture study, notebooking pages, coloring pages and art lessons. It even says there is way more material included than you could ever fit into a 7 week study. Honestly, I think it'll take us 9 weeks to finish this but we're having fun. The guide outlines an 7 week study but of course you can make it last longer or cut it short if you need to. It nicely outlines what activities are included and how to complete them. A great feature for a mom very new to artist study. I recommend this for Kindergarten and up. I say "and up" because artist study can benefit all ages. A fun and neat study and it's affordable. The only drawback I see is that if you print out the works of the artist it takes up alot of ink. I would suggest possibly viewing it from the computer screen or checking out a library book that include his works. But that's not enough of a drawback to give it less than 5 stars."

 After they colored this we spent a few days watching this Youtube video about Matisse. However I had to do quite a lot of editing so be forewarned the nudity is prevalent and it is wise to preview before you show it to your kiddos. Other than that it is a wonderfully done documentary about his life and work.

Afternoon Audio: The rest of the Narnia stories, The Silver Chair, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the Last Battle.

And that sums up our last two weeks of lessons, Thanks for dropping in...Have a great week!

Week Five Wrap-Up

The weather is cooler this week now that fall is finally decided to show up. We still have some green leaves on the trees making for some lovely shade in our garden which I adore. Before it gets too cold I still plan more outdoor dinners and time to take naps on the trampoline...makes for a great hammock!

We are just about finished reading The Blessed Child by Ted Dekkar and Bill Bright. It will be sad to end yet another heartwarming story to move on to the next one. We all have enjoyed this glimpse into God's miraculous nature that The Blessed child has revealed.

We are also completing our memorization of skip count song X6 about the monkey's in the jungle and will be learning X7 next week. I have been implementing more living math methods in our approach towards multiplication. So now that we have arrived at the X6 tables I am slowing down on how much new stuff I am presenting them to be sure they are really understanding the why of the table.

“The child may learn the multiplication-table and do a subtraction sum without any insight into the rationale of either. He may even become a good arithmetician, applying rules aptly, without seeing the reason of them; but arithmetic becomes an elementary mathematical training only in so far as the reason why of every process is clear to the child. 2+2=4, is a self-evident fact, admitting of little demonstration; but 4x7=28 may be proved." (Vol. 1 pp. 255, 256) 

So next week I'll explain how we did this. In the handbook Mathematics: An Instrument for Living Teaching gives some guide lines:

“To help the children to see the rationale of the multiplication table, they at first construct each one for themselves with the teacher’s assistance, e.g., suppose it were 4 times, the teacher begins ‘I write down one 4 on the board with a small 1 above it, to show how many fours I have. Then I write down another four, how many have I?’ ‘Two.’ ‘How much have I now, two fours that is?’ ‘Eight.’ Put eight down underneath the second 4. Now write down another four, we have three fours or 12, similarly four fours or 16, five fours or 20, and so on to the end of the table, 12 fours or 48, until the whole table stands: 

(Stephens, 1911, p. 10). 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

equals
4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48

They will see ( I trust) how the skip counting helps with the table and how multiplication is a simple way to do addition.

Much of my time this week has been spent preparing a lapbook centered around The Iliad by Homer. We have been reading Rosemary Sutcliff's version (Black ships Before Troy) of this epic poem which is actually written in a narrative form. On our next pass through this fascinating portion of history we will read the poem written by Homer.

To prepare the lapbook I print off the pages, cut them out and assemble parts that would be time consuming and irrelevant to the point of the book. Some things by doing them the boys will learn more about the story, other things are just busy work, I save them that. So once the mini books are ready I put them into a plastic pouch and save them for the boys. This time I fashioned the lap book to fit into our spiral bound scrapbook.

Just a glimpse of the mini books all out of the pocket.

The boys spent time coloring the pieces that made up the two front covers before we pasted them onto the cover and then into the spiral bound book. We limited the colors used to just browns and yellows to see how the colors will tie the whole lapbook together visually. This was an unpopular suggestion on my part and though the boys did it, they asked that they could decide on the colors next time. So though it looks great this way it is theirs and next time you will see the colors they choose.

Here is Zak's completed covers pasted in the notebook. We now have a lapbook in a note book. I am not sure if we are lapbooking or notebooking but probably the former rather than the latter. Either way it is working rather well. :)

We did put the mini books together and into place, but we have not yet written in them, colored them or done any sort of real study using them. In the end we will have understood better who killed who, who fought with the Trojans and who fought with the Greeks. We will know the family tree of the Greek gods and which gods played a part in this story. And last put the story on the map.

More entries made this week in the Aesop copywork book. Zak really caught onto this assignment and though I require only one fable a day he has been doing two or three hoping to get more and more treats for good handwriting. Very cute!

The boys are all sad that the Burgess Bird Book is drawing to a close. They are counting the pages that are left and savoring them. I suggested we read the book again, for there are so many things you can do to compliment this book and dig a little deeper into the information he so wonderfully presents about birds. I am strongly considering this but have not yet decided. What would you do? The boys were intrigued. I mean really, who said you can only read a book once? And then there are the issues brought up in my mind regarding illustrations and CM's methods. I like this quote from this article and am pondering just what part adding more to the reading of the story will play in their minds.

Our senses, it seems to me, are some of the tools we have for taking in information, but they are not the primary tools for learning.  This is a major problem in much of the world of education today.  There is much talk about learning styles, and I suppose it is helpful to know one’s learning style, but the fact is, taking information in is not the same as processing that information, or, as Mason said, “labouring with the mind.”   This is the step that many children never get to take in their learning process.  This is the purpose of narration, which Mason called “the act of knowing” (p. 17).  In fact, we may have preferences as to which sense we prefer to take in information (visually, kinesthetically, aurally, tactically, or odoriferously), but this is not the same as owning new information.  Mason says, “We trust much to pictures, lantern slides, cinematograph displays; but without labour there is no profit.” 

I'll tell you what I came up with next week. 

Another thing we completed this week: Memorized the Poem "A Secret." We did it the same we memorized the first poem, with drawing pictures, copywork and lots of reading and repetition. Now we are off to do some dictation the boy's favorite exercises. No really, it is!

We are getting to the end of Toad Triumphant too. This week seemed to be a week of many endings.  Thus I am soooo excited for next week which will be full of beginnings. :)

We veered away from the dialogues this week to look into the grammar of Latin. It was just a peek. I printed off cards with nouns (animals), cards with adjectives. The first day we simply played concentration with the animals to learn their names in latin.

On the second day we together matched the adjectives with the animals according to their gender. SImply collectively making up funny sentences with just the nouns and adjectives.

Then on the third day I hand printed two cards for each with the verbs we know thus far, erit (will be) and est (is). They first took the pile of adjectives and separated the masculine ones from the feminine ones, then I gave them each an animal and they created sentences matching the gender of the noun with the gender of the adjective. Then they read out their sentence in Latin and translated it to us using the words to help sheet below.

The cards for the animals and the adjectives were from the Minimus Teacher's guide, but the Words to Help sheet I made myself in Publisher.

To enhance the Klee inspired 3-D cities we painted last week we added some black lines, wow, they look so much better. These are Max's paintings.

Mostly this week we have been working on drawing and coloring 'inchies.' of Paul Klee's art works. Each square is 2 inches by 2 inches. We plan to make twelve in all and so far the boys have made 6 each, so we are halfway there.

Last week we finished reading A Day with Tchaikovsky so this week we listened to Tchiakovsky Comes to America a production by Classical Kids. Now onto a long look at the NutCracker Ballet. The boys will love this!

Lastly this week we went indoors to add an entry into our nature notebooks. Is wasn't because the weather was bad, but that it seemed a good time to add in a little skill training to our nature observation. We used basic contour drawings to develop the eye and train the coordination between what you see and what you draw. 

We did go out to get something to draw and then we drew the contour or outside edges of the specimen we selected. Then on another sheet of paper we tried a blind contour drawing looking only at the specimen and not at our papers. I did it first to show them how silly it will look and so they would not be afraid to just give it a go. This technique develops the best hand eye coordination needed for drawing. It was hilarious, fun and relaxed us all. Then they drew their specimen having had a good look at it now adding in as many details as we could see.

Hope your week was a good one too!

Week Four Wrap-Up

"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's "own" or "real" life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life-the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one's "real life" is a phantom of one's own imagination." - C.S. Lewis

We have begun a new read aloud this week entitled The Blessed Child by Ted Dekker and I am soooo pleased how well it is enhancing our study of Acts. I did not plan this but followed the Lord in little decisions and it led us here. Both books speak of God's ability to be above the natural laws of science. Caleb in our story of the blessed child says it is simply putting things right. His story enhances the truth of the bible and brings the power from back then into the present encouraging us in this era to believe in Jesus as they did at the beginning of the first century.

"The great difference between present-day Christianity, and that of which we read in these letters (of the new testament), is that to us it is primarily a performance' to them it was real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code or, at best, a rule of heart and life. Perhaps if we believed what they believed, we could achieve what they achieved."-J.B. Philips in the intro to his translation of the New testament.

Skipping right along to our arithmetic lesson on skip counting. Reading Mathematics: An Instrument for living teaching this last week has encouraged me to add one more element to our current mathematics lessons. In Section two entitled: The teaching of Mathematics this quote by CM inspired me towards change:

“Therefore his progress must be carefully graduated; but there is no subject in which the teacher has a more delightful consciousness of drawing out from day to day new power in the child. Do not offer him a crutch: it is in his own power he must go. Give him short sums, in words rather than in figures, and excite in him the enthusiasm which produces concentrated attention and rapid work. Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring” (Vol. 1, p. 261).

  The highlighted part gave me cause to think...my lessons are short, but are they in words rather than figures, and are they rapid  producing concentrate effort? I decided they were not, so I added in twice a week a new lesson where by I read out story problems from Ray's PrimaryArithmetic book that I used last year for addition and subtraction. We play at the number questions like a spelling bee one day and on another day using the Storm the castle game board. We play with the dodecahedron dice we made last year to keep them game moving and the lesson is still short. The challenging part is that the answers in both games must be given in a full sentence.

So our week of mathematics now looks like this:

Day one: Review and sing all the skip counting songs we have learned.
Day two: Review last two skip counting songs and fill in a skip counting sheet for the latest one this week it was X5. Look for patterns in the table.
Day Three: Play math-bee using Ray's Arithmetic  multiplication problems.
Day Four: play skip counting song X5 and preview X6.
Day five: fill out the multiplication table up to number 5. (Next week up to number 6) Look for patterns in the table.
Day six: Read from Mathematicians are people too Vol. 2 and play storm the castle with Ray's multiplication problems.

The Story of the Greeks we have finished, so I am beginning to read aloud to them from The Black Ships Before Troy a narrative version of Homer's poem The Iliad. There is a wonderful audio of Alfred J. Church's The Iliad for Boys and Girls which I play for them at night as they are going to sleep. We alternate now between The audio of The Wind and the Willows, The Burgess Bird book and now this one. A good story should be listened to again and again I think. :)

Here are some pages from our Aesop's copywork books.

Their handwriting is improving with the challenge of not having any scratch outs of mistakes on the first attempt to gain a treat. I love it!!

More pictures below of our scrapbook activity The Ancient Greek Olympics. The pages in the slide show are from various sources, but predominately from History Pockets: Ancient Greece.

I found a new resource to go along with the Burgess Bird book...videos of each of the birds mentioned in the book. Check it our HERE. The posts are in a backwards order beginning with the last chapter, but you can easily sort it out. The boys are still absolutely loving this book. They work extra hard during our reading of The Black Ships before Troy to finish up their Aesop copywork so they can just sit and listen to the stories spun by Mr. Burgess.

In our lessons with the Primary Language lessons we have been doing a bit of dictation this week and some preliminary work on a new poem called "A Secret." Below is a snap shot of Max's drawing and copywork form the first two lines.

The boys are reading on in the Elson reader book three. At night before bed I read aloud to them from  Toad Triumph the sequel to WInd in the Willows.

 "I am so glad the stories are continuing on mom," says Max. " I just love that little mole."

Latin with Minimus has been so much fun this year. I realize now that we have begun with it how easy it is to fit it into the CM method.  Keep the lessons short, begin with oral and move to writing, copy what is right and visualize the vocabulary etc. We learn the dialogues much as we might a poem by hearing it often and reading it together. This week we have been getting the nuances of the dialogue understood and retained by playing vocab-bees. 

We end this week with a project we did painting Paul Klee cityscapes in 3-D. One side is day and warm colors, and the opposite side is night painted with cool colors. The first day we paper mache'd an old printer ink cartridge box. We have a bunch lying around the spare room. Then we drew our city and painted it with warm colors. The next day we drew our city again and painted with cool colors.

AND

An observation lesson using the willow tree in the back yard.

Have a good week!

Psalm 91

This year we are working on just one passage of scripture to memorize. I gave the boys a choice of three different passages and after looking at them they were unanimous in choosing Psalm 91.
Here it is with pictures.

1. He who dwells in the shelter of the of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the almighty.

2. I will say of the Lord he is my refuge and my fortress my God in whom I trust.

3. Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence.

4a.  He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge;

4b. his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

5.  You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day

6. nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.

7.  A thousand may fall at your side, ten thouseand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

8.  You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

9.  If you make the Most High your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, 

10.  Then no harm will come to you, no disaster will come near your tent.

11.  For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;

12.  They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

13. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra, You will tramble the great lion and the serpent,

14.  "Because he loves me," says the Lord, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name."

15. "He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.

 16. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation."

To begin, each week, twice a week we spent 20-30 minutes learning one verse. I got a great idea for how to learn verses while observing a  friend teach memory verses to his Sunday school class.

This is what he did:
1.  He wrote the verse on a white board and then all the kids repeated the verse with him.
2. Then one child was selected to erase one word.
3. Then the verse was repeated again.
4. They continued to do this until all the words were erased one by one.

While I watched the class do this I saw eyes brighten, eager hands rised to erase, and best of all each child was paying attention for the first time that morning.

So, we did the same thing in our homeschool. (my boys did not always pay attention but most of the time it was better than other methods I have tried) The boys aim to erase the biggest words first, which I found humorous. The first lesson they erased one word at a time then at the second lesson they erased two words at a time.
Sometimes when we said the verses together we use funny voices,
Sometimes only one guy says the verse by himself.
Sometimes I gave rewards if they can say the verse PERFECTLY when we are all done erasing words for that day.

Always, we recited the verses together from verse 1 up to the verse we were learning at the front of the lesson.

We just finished this week with verse 16. For the rest of the year, (we have 5 months still left in our school year) I have this plan in mind......

Next, I plan to use Montessori cards with the pictures above to become more familar with each verse, and how they follow each other  in the passage.

To become familar with the verses we can  play games with them like go fish and you have to say the whole verse to get the pair, or concentration with the same rules the verse must be said to get the pair. We can also cut a set apart and practice matching the picture with the verse.

To begin learning more than ne verse at a time, we can put the verses in order (then the number of the verse will be marked out) and practice saying two or three verses together.

After that I have made a copywork notebook called  My copywork notebook of Psalm 91 for the boys to write the verses. By this time we should be almost finsihed with our Mcguffey readers so we could do  A Charlotte Mason Reading Lesson of Psalm 91.  Along side all of that recitation at breakfast of the verses as they are learning them should show if they really have it in their heads and I hope their hearts as well. First we recite verse 1, then verse1-2, then verses 1-3 etc. until we have the whole chapter under our belt.

 I used my pro-click binder to bind these. The front cover and last page are printed onto  heavy cardstock and finally a plastic cover on the front and the back.

If you look at the fine print you can see we use Fine Print to print these out. Fine print is FREE and it is a very useful tool in printing out documents. It has three features which I love.
1. you can easily delete pages you do not want.
2. you can easily format to rint double sided
3. when you create edge margins etc. you can easily see what it will look like before you print.

 On the very back page which is cardstock I added a library pocket to store the Montessori/memory cards in.

I'll blog about the results at the end of the year. Happy memorizing!