Daily Diagram

Morning Time

We've been pretty consistent with Morning Time this year, and we're all really enjoying it and learning a lot!  We spend a few hours each day reading from several different books, parsing and diagramming a sentence, working a little on French, practicing reading aloud, scanning poetry, memorizing Scripture and poetry, and talking about everything!

Here's the list of what we're doing:

Scripture: We try to read the text of next Sunday's message; right now our pastor is slowly teaching through the Beatitudes, so we read and are memorizing them.

Grammar: We parse (according to Shurley Grammar and K.I.S.S. Grammar) and diagram one sentence each day.  We finished working through the Beatitudes yesterday, so this morning, I pulled a sentence out of Cranford, which the older kids are reading for humanities.

Psalm: We listen to one Psalm each day from the ESV Bible website (they have high quality recordings of every verse in the Bible), then we read the same psalm from The Sidney Psalter.  Finally, we sing it from our metrical psalter or from our plainchant psalter.

R. reads aloud.

Poetry memorization: We finished 'Charge of the Light Brigade' today and will start 'Five Kernals of Corn' tomorrow in honor of Thanksgiving.  In December, we hope to learn Isaac Watts' 'A Cradle Hymn' and the classic ''Twas the Night Before Christmas'.  I set up a project in the Index Card app in my iPad so that we continue to review what we've already memorized.  It's set up according to Charlotte Mason's method of organizing memory work.

J. reads aloud.

Literature: We're currently reading Sir Walter Scott's The Antiquary.  We stop a couple times each day, and someone narrates so I can be sure that the younger ones are following the story.  The next book won't have so much Scottish brogue - it's a killer!

Poetry: Using some of the tips and techniques in the 1952 book, Practice: A Pool of Teaching Tips, we do something to learn about poetry each day.  This week, we've been scanning 'Charge of the Light Brigade' and learning about dactyls and spondées.  Cool stuff!

Poetry: We read one poem each day by a poet in our time period; this year, it's Modernity.  We started with Sir Walter Raleigh and are currently working on William Cowper.  We'll move onto the Romantics when we've read some Cowper.  I wanted to start before the Romantics so the kids could have something for contrast.

Science: Benjamin reads aloud from Jack's Insects.  We often look up the insects discussed.

French: We're working through Ernest et Célestine, a French children's book about a bear and his adopted mouse daughter.  We look at, translate, and discuss one sentence per day.  I wasn't sure if this would be enough (and I'm still not sure, but time is at a premium), but today the kids read the sentence all by themselves, understanding that is was a second person formal inperative and recognizing most of the vocabulary.  There were able to understand it without much help from me.  Score!

Historical Christianity: We finished memorizing the Apostles' Creed today.  Tomorrow we'll start on either the Nicene Creed or the one I remember reciting each week in church as I grew up (I can't remember the name).

Faërie: We started by reading George McDonald's The Light Princess and now are reading through Solomon Kane.  I'm not sure where we're going after this, but I'm considering the Grimm Brothers, Pereault, Hans Christian Anderson, or Andrew Lang.  Suggestions?

Theology: Grace: God's Unmerited Favor by Charles Spurgeon

Memory work: This is when I pull out Index Card and we review whatever is on tap for that day, depending on the date and the day of the week.

Economics and Gov't: How an Economy Grows, and Why it Fails by Peter Schiff

Rhetoric: We work through a small section of Writing with Clarity and Style.  So far, we've learned parallelism, antimetabole, asyndeton and polysyndeton, how to emphasize parts of a sentence, and a few other schemes.  Because we take so long to work through each trope and scheme, we have lots of time to find examples in daily conversation, other reading, and even in some movies that we watch.

History: Empire by Niall Ferguson

At this point (except on Thursdays, see below), the older kids are dismissed and I continue on with the two younger girls.

Etiquette: Everyday Graces, edited by Karen Santorum (I skip her glosses and just read the literary exerpts and poetry).  On Thursdays, I read a short chapter from Tolkien's Ordinary Graces (the older kids stick around for this).

M. reads aloud.

Grammar: I keep a list of incorrect sentences from the kids' writing.  We put one on the whiteboard each day and discuss why it's wrong and how to make it right.

E. reads aloud.

For fun: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

This may seem like a lot (and it is!), but we try to keep each thing short and keep things moving.  The kids are great at asking if they don't understand something, and it's been great to see how the different threads in the various works relate together and give us much to talk about.  It's becoming my favorite time of the school day!

SDG!

Charge of the Light Brigade

We've been memorizing 'Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  Since the older kids have a poetic lament project coming up next semester, we've been using some of the tips from Practice: A Pool of Teaching Tips to learn a little about poetry each day during Morning Time.

Today, we scanned the first stanza of 'Charge of the Light Brigade' and learned about dactyls-appropriate for the poem as they sound like galloping horses!

All I did was Google 'stressed unstressed unstressed' and there was a complete list of the kinds of metrical feet used in poetry. Very cool!

Melody's and Eliza's Poems

A day late, but not a dollar short!

America

by Melody

Sun-bleached, sandy seashores,

With seashells in the sand.

The lazy, quiet rivers,

That run through the land.

The mossy, quiet forests,

With trees all around.

The snow-capped, majestic mountains,

Rising from the ground.

The green, perfect plains,

With the May, spring air.

People, who are loving and kind,

And at night would say their prayer.

America

by Eliza

The sparkling, white seashores

That glitter in the sunlight.

The broad, rushing rivers

That splash day and night.

The quiet, mossy forests

Of the majestic mountains.

The perfect, golden plains,

With the beautiful smell of jasmine.

The smooth and delightful melody

That hangs in the air.

The people who care for their families

With a loving heart.

They sputtered out a bit at the end because they were working on a deadline, but overall, I think they did a great job!

The next lesson also is poetic. Rebekah and Joel are working on them now. I'm dividing up the two poems for the little girls, so they're working on the first now and will write the second next week.

SDG!

English Assignments: poetry

School is getting off to a good start!

We began the Tuesday after Labor Day (even though schools here start in early August, I'll never think that's a good idea; fortunately, homeschoolers have the flexibility to do it our own way!)

Rebekah, Melody, Eliza, and Joel are working through IEW's U.S. History-Based Writing Lessons this year. The two olders will work through Volume 1 and Volume 2, while the two little work through Volume 1.

The first lesson was about strong adjectives and used a poem as the model, sort of. I must say I wasn't really impressed with this assignment and the kids thought the model was lame (not their word). It purported to be a poem, but had no instructions about rhythm or rhyme (since the lesson wasn't about that, I understand, but I think choosing a real poem as a model would have been a better idea). I know poetry without rhyme and rhythm is considered acceptable, but I've always had a hard time seeing blank verse as real poetry. However, I thought that, since it's only one assignment and things should improve as we go through the book, I wouldn't make a big deal about it.

The two older kids' assignment was due today. Rebekah had the same idea that I did - simply get through it, but Joel added in rhythm and rhyme. Here are their creations:

America

by Rebekah

Land of sunny, shell-strewn seashores,

Dark, mossy forests of evergreens,

Majestic, snow-capped mountain ranges;

Broad, rushing, and lazy rivers travelling

Among rolling, golden plains.

America, a land populated by thriving,

Independent men and women whose

Lives are paving the way for generations.

America

By Joel

Sparkling and sunny seashores,

Sandy and with shells galore.

Forests leafy, mossy, dark,

Mountains majestic and stark.

Rivers rushing, rocky, broad,

Plains great, created by God.

Men who fought for freedom old

Men, courageous, free, and bold.

I'll post the little girls' poems tomorrow. They've been playing with rhyme and rhythm, too! I can't wait to see what they've come up with!

Composition

I've struggled for years in trying to teach the kids how to write. I've let the perfect become the enemy of the good enough.

This year, I enrolled my two oldest in Camille Golston's Lost Tools of Writing class through Memoria Press. My goals were two-fold. First, I wanted them to get the instruction that I just can't seem to give them. LTW is being worked on continually, by I didn't think I'd have time to figure it out for my two oldest. My second goal was to learn how to teach the program. I sit in each week (either with Judith or Benjamin) and take notes on both the content and Camille's teaching. I think this is going to be a huge help to me. I'd love to enroll in Andrew's apprenticeship program, but it's just not doable right now.

For the younger kids, I bit the bullet and bought a couple of Middle Ages themed writing programs. I'm tweaking them, but I must admit that I'm enjoying having things laid out for me. The kids are doing more writing and I can adjust the checklists and the 'rules' as we go; for example, instead of simply banning certain words, we discuss propriety in using them (I can't ban said - too many great writers use it too often to simply ban it and I've read too many modern novels that avoid it and they're just ridiculous).

Here's an example of nine-year old Eliza's latest efforts:

A certain fox requested a stork come and dine with him. The stork came and the fox, who was planning to play a practical joke on the stork, gave his guest soup, which was in a wide and shallow bowl. The fox enjoyed his meal, but the stork, who had an extended beak, left for home starved.

In return, the stork kindly invited the fox to dinner. The stork gave his visitor minced-meat, which he served in a tall jar with a narrow mouth. The stork had a pleasant meal and filled his stomach. But the fox, because of his short and big snout, could not fit his mouth into the jar. And the poor fox left for home on an empty stomach. As he drove home in his car, he confessed that he was given what he deserved.

Moral: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

SGD!

French Update

We've slowed down in working through Barbier from the plans I posted last time, but lots of learning is going on.

Little girls: We're parsing and construing our way through their homework assignments, one sentence at a time. This is slow going, but I really think it's going to give them the best foundation for continued learning. We work on only about five sentences each day, so each exercise takes about four days, but this gives us time to continue with French Phonics, Madeleine, and their paradigms.

Older girls: We've slowed down here, too, but as we work through each sentence, the girls' understanding is growing by leaps and bounds.

I type up each homework sentence in Pages on my iPad (one at a time, so I don't have to work ahead). Then we go through and discuss each word, its part of speech, its job in the sentence, the various elements of each word (person, number, tense, mood, and voice for verbs; person, number, and gender for nouns; number and gender for adjectives and articles). We also color-code each word as to its job in the sentence and adjectives match the color of the noun they modify, but in italics.

We haven't really done any English grammar in quite awhile, but they're learning so much that I think we'll be okay. Even though we're not really discussing English grammar as a separate discipline, we do discuss it lots in their composition assignments.

An additional help: I let the girls change the colors of the words in the iPad - they think that's pretty cool! The touch screen is still pretty new for them.

SDG!

French

I've been struggling to teach the girls French for quite awhile. I've tried traditional curriculum, not so traditional curriculum, and graded readers and just not been satisfied with any of it.

I enjoyed our literature approach, but making up assignments was slowing me down. I didn't have that much time to work on them and wasn't that satisfied with what I did come up with. And I wasn't sure the little girls were really getting anything, even if the older girls were getting a little. I wasn't keeping them challenged and interested.

Then a friend suggested that I read Roger Ascham's The Schoolmaster. Ascham was Queen Elizabeth I's tutor. I read the preface to The Schoolmaster and was very impressed.

He was at dinner with the Queen and the Privy Council (as the Prime Minister and the Cabinet were called).

'I had strange news brought me,' said Mr. Secretary, 'that diverse scholars of Eton have run away from the school for fear of beating.' Whereupon, Mr. Secretary took occasion to wish that some more discretion were in many schoolmasters in using correction than commonly there is, who many times punish rather the weakness of natuare, than the fault of the scholar. Whereby, many scholars that might else prove well be driven to hate learning before they know what learning is, and so are made willing to forsake their books and be glad to be put to any other kind of living.

Mr. Peter, as one somewhat severe of nature, said plainly that the rod only was the sword that must keep the school in obedience and the scholar in good order.

Mr. Wotton, a man mild of nature, with soft voice and few words, inclined to Mr. Secretary's judgement and said, 'In my opinion, the schoolhouse should be in deed as it is called by name, ludus, the house of play and pleasure, not of fear and bondage.'

I said that young children were sooner allured by love than driven by beating to attain good learning.

That was a good start and got my attention. I kept reading and soon found myself lost in the old spelling and vocabulary, but the parts I could understand intrigued me.

Time to turn to the dictionary to find out what he meant by 'construe' and 'parse' as he described his method for teaching Latin. I figured out that he suggests that the tutor (he was a tutor, not a classroom teacher as far as I can tell) should read through a Latin text and then explain to his student the grammar of each individual word, both in general and in that sentence in particular, and then translate it.

He adds an interesting reverse translation, where he has the student take his initial English translation of the Latin and, on another day, translate it back into Latin and then compare with the initial Latin excerpt. I wish I'd been taught French and Spanish this way!

In the meantime, I'd downloaded several older French books from Google Books to look over (there are no corresponding, old Spanish books!). Several of them were too Latin, approaching French as if it were Latin, but French isn't as inflected as Latin and I don't know enough Latin to pretend that it is. I narrowed it down to Paul Barbier's Elementary French for Beginners, pubished in 1883. It would mean a lot more writing for the girls (but less trying to come up with lessons for me). The language has changed a bit in the intervening 130 years, but I can deal with that.

I wasn't sure how they'd respond to it, but I thought I'd give it a try. (I also found a French composition book that looks very good as we get farther in.)

M. Barbier starts with definite articles, gender of nouns, and feminine and masculine agreement between nouns and adjectives. Imagine my shock (and delight) when they all did great on their assignments, and also told me how much they'd enjoyed them!

When we went through their independent work, we parsed and construed the sentences together. For the first time, 9-yo Eliza recognized an adjective and 11-yo Melody recognized direct objects (we'd been working on both in English for quite some time). After the little girls finished their initial French to English assignment, I had them translate their English back into French. They did great and when we went through their work together, they were able to pick out their own mistakes (and giggled all the while!).

The older girls went through two lessons and four exercises, but now that we're adding in reverse translations, we'll slow down a little.

We're also working slowly through a little French phonics book so they can learn proper pronunciation and how to read correctly. The younger girls are taking Madeleine one sentence at a time (construing and parsing one word at a time, and sometimes diagramming sentences), and the older girls are working on l'Histoire de Babar, in the same way.

I finally feel as though I have a solid French program and that the girls will learn French and so much more!

With the lack of Spanish texts on Google books, I translated the first lesson from French to Spanish (and have friends who can help me with my rusty grammar and vocabulary, as well as a great Spanish dictionary on my iPad). Judith and Benjamin are working on the Spanish exercises, along with some phonics exercises from my old high school Spanish text and reading through Huevos Verdes con Jamón.

SDG!

P.E.

We went rollerskating last night. I was hoping to do so once each week in my efforts to get us up and moving more, but the price has almost doubled since we went last summer--what I thought was going to cost $15 ended up being almost $30. That won't work on a weekly basis, so I need to re- think this.

It's almost cool enough to spend more time outside (100 degrees is still too hot for much exertion), but soon. In the meantime, I'm just not sure what to do. Physical education has never been a strong area, but I want to do better, for both the kids' and my own health. I don't want it to be drudgery, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a blast.

Thinking ... thinking ... thinking ...

The Prodigal Returns

Life got crazy last year, especially through the summer, but things seem to be calming down now and we're getting off to our new school year, so I thought this would be a good time to begin to post some updates. (To see how I spend my summer, see my personal blog.)

One new thing we're doing this year for school is to learn the Psalms. I ordered a metrical Psalter from Crown and Covenant and downloaded three of the CD's they have that go along with the Psalter (the fourth, with all of Psalm 119 is due out soon). Many thanks to my friend, John Hodges, for the recommendation - I wanted something that wasn't too pop-musicuish and trendy, but that wasn't childish, either, and John came up with just the right thing.

We've been singing through about ten Psalms each day during Morning Time and we're all beginning to learn them. The harmonies are beautiful and I love that some have familiar tunes. We also enjoy the more ethnic tunes that some have been set to. It'll be awhile before we're able to obtain recordings of all the Psalms (they haven't been relased, yet), but we're well on our way.

I love that my kids are learning Scripture as they learn these songs, that the tunes are appropriate to the words, and that the kids are beginning to learn to sight-read when they sing. Our church uses an overhead with just the words during worship, so I've had to figure out a way to expose them to sight-reading as they sing. Learning the Psalms in this way definitely contributes to this.

We've also been reading the Psalms from the Sidney Psalter and the kids are beginning to be able to recognize them when they hear them (even though the words are slightly different and there's no tune to rely on).

We're studying Christendom this year, so this focus on the Psalms is appropriate, given the rise of monasticism that we're learning about (I've read that Benedictine monks sing through all the Psalms each week as they go through their daily offices). I'd love to incorporate more of the daily offices (the opus dei) and the monastic hours into our days, but it's tough alone at home and I don't know that I'm up to diving into it. A little at a time is probably a better approach.

SDG!

During our trivium time a few days ago, what one son affectionately calls 'Adventures in the Trivium', we parsed and diagramed the following sentence from The Wind in the Willows, which I'm reading aloud to the little girls:

Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way!

Today, we imitated that sentence together in preparation for the older four imitating it on their own. Here's what we came up with:

Spring! That was what they meant, that stirring zephyr, that scarlet crocus staining the snow, that robin heralding the break of winter's hold.

I'll post the kids' individual sentences when I get them.

We also began a little logic today, covering univocal terms. I only know a bit of logic, so we're taking it slowly, but I'm looking forward to adding this to our 'Adventures in the Trivium'!

SDG!

French - Littles

The littler three were having trouble keeping up with the grammar of Les Oeufs Verts and the French phonics were a bafflement, so I switched them over to oral French lessons until they're more solid with English phonics and spelling.

They're learning the same paradigms as their older siblings, but at a bit of a slower pace.

They've begun learning the parts of the body and left and right. We play Simon dites … or sing Alouette, pointing to various body parts. They've also begun learning the verbs lever (lift up), baisser (put down), toucher (touch), and montrer (show). Sometimes I'll ask them, 'Où est la main gauche?' and they answer, 'Voilà la main gauche!' while pointing to it or holding it up.

They're learning how to count to ten. I'll hold up fingers and they have to tell me as quickly as they can how many I'm holding up. I pulled out the old pre-school number flashcards and they use those for practice, too. I've heard them counting things in French - plates when setting the table, or cups of flour for a batch of pancakes.

Les Couleurs. I simply point to something or hold something up and ask , 'Quelle couleur est-il?' and they answer by saying, 'Il est …', naming as many colors as they can.

Yesterday, we also started working on the names of rooms in the house and parts of a room (floor, door, ceiling, window, etc.). They're most recent paradigm is aller, so we'll be able soon to talk about going into different rooms in the house or touching the wall or the floor.

I have a list of topical vocabulary I want to teach them, along with verbs and some aural constructions (il est … vs. ils sont …, la main droite vs. le pied droit, etc.). We'll simply move through them as we can. I'm also astounded at how much they're learning and how much they all seem to be enjoying it.

An added benefit is that I'm reviewing my French and am filling in some of those holes that have cropped up through my years of not using it.

SDG!

Negative Numbers

Benjamin has gotten up to adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. Some of it makes sense, but subtracting a negative has been a bear to wrap our minds around. If zero is nothing, then how can you take away even less than nothing? I was really struggling to find a real life example. Drew came up with a great one and a friend tied it into English for me. I'll be going over this with Ben today - we'll see if he sees it as clearly as I'm beginning to.

Drew's thought - He compared it to heating and air conditioning. Heating is positive numbers and cooling is negative numbers. Turning either the furnace or the AC up (more power) is adding and turning them down (less power) is subtracting. So, turning up the heat is like adding a positive and it gets warmer. Turning down the heat is like subtracting a positive and it gets cooler. Turning up the air is like adding a negative and it gets cooler. Here's the tricky one: turning down the air is subtracting a negative and it gets warmer. I can see this organized on a chart with up & down on the sides and heat & AC on the top (like Mendel's sweet pea genetics), but I don't know how to reproduce it here.

My friend reminded me that, just as in English, two negatives make a positive.

A bunch of other friends sent me other examples that I haven't had time to look closely at yet, but we'll tackle them this afternoon.

SDG!

French - Olders

We're reading Les Oeufs Verts au Jambon (Green Eggs and Ham). This was a great book to start with because of the sheer amount of repetition. I went through the book and listed out the vocabulary and grammar my students would need to know to puzzle out and understand each section. I pulled paradigms from the verbs in the book and homework assignments were transformations of sentences in the book or the composing of original sentences and questions using the grammar, vocabulary, and paradigms we'd already covered. We're almost finished. So far, here's the grammar we've covered:

basic -er verb conjugation and subject pronouns

negation with ne … pas (Je n'aime pas ce Sam-c'est moi!)

masculine and feminine nouns and articles

singular and plural nouns nouns and articles

making questions with est-ce que …

making questions by inversion

negative questions and subject pronoun placement (N'aimes-tu pas les oeufs verts au jambon?)

elision and liaison

using an infinitive with another noun (J'aime manger les oeufs.)

introduced direct object pronouns (les, en, me) and their placement

future tense

faux future

introduced passé composé

All this will continue to be reviewed as we come across it in our next book: Histoire de Babar.

Our paradigms, so far, include

aimer

vouloir

avoir

aller

être

The transformations I mentioned above were my friend's idea - I'd take a sentence from the book and have the girls re-write it according to a pattern. For example:

Je n'aime pas les oeufs verts au jambon.

The assignment would include:

make positive

change the subject to second person, singular

use est-ce que to make a question

make question with inversion

make the subject plural

make the subject third person, singular or plural

change to false future

change to future

change to passé composé

Sometimes we'd do it as a chain, after one change, the new sentence would become the basis for the next change. Sometimes we'd change the original sentence over and over. This is how the above assignment might look upon completion:

Je n'aime pas les oeufs verts au jambon.

positive: J'aime les oeufs verts au jambon.

2nd person: Tu aimes les oeufs verts au jambon.

question: Est-ce que tu aimes les oeufs verts au jambon?

inversion: Aimes-tu les oeufs verts au jambon?

plural subject: Aimez-vous les oeufs verts au jambon?

3rd person, s: Aime-t-il les oeufs verts au jambon?

false future: Va-t-il aimer les oeufs verts au jambon?

future: Aimera-t-elle les oeufs verts au jambon?

passé composé: A-t-il aimé les oeufs verts au jambon?

I'm stunned at how much we've covered in only six weeks and am looking forward to Babar. Since it was originally written in French, I think we'll all learn a lot! And we're having fun, which means we're actually doing it!

SDG!

French

I've tried different French curricula through the years, both for high school and for younger kids, and have hated them all! The books feel like a strait-jacket, sapping creativity and the joy of teaching (which definitely diminishes the joy of learning on the other side of it).

So, with the hand-holding and encouragement of a friend, we're tackling French differently this year and it's going very, very well.

I thought I could start my olders and youngers together and split them after about six weeks, but that didn't work. I ended up splitting them after only about two weeks, but it's been good. I'll outline what I'm doing for each level in future posts.

SDG!

Okay, so I haven't been planning on the blog. I've been playing around with Numbers and finally figured out how to use it (thanks to a friend who is much smarter than I am!).

School has been moving along well for 12 weeks now (with two Sabbath weeks) and I thought I'd post an update.

Our routine looks like this:

Morning Time: prayer, Scripture (the same one all week, the text of next Sunday's sermon if I can figure out what it is); reading from either Piper's Don't Waste Your Life or Spurgeon's All of Grace; either a paragraph of three from Plutarch's Lives or a few poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, our poet of the session. On Fridays, after reading Scripture, I hand out a copy of a work of art (associated with our history study, if possible, but not always) for the kids to sketch while listening to a piece of music I want them to become familiar with: this six weeks it's Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Spring.

English: altogether we parse and diagram one sentence, right now we're working through the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V; when we get to the figures, we'll do one each day. We needed to spend less time on this each day so we'd have time for their other work.

Spelling with the littles: I'm combining Tricks of the Trade, Touch-Phonics, and The Natural Speller; we do three words each day, one rule per child, but they all learn the rules the others need; we'll have a spelling bee soon, which the kids are really looking forward to. The kids look in their reading or other work for words to go with their particular rule.

Math with the little girls: I've been working with the girls, letting them solve their equations on the dry-erase board and attitudes are quickly improving, as are skills and enthusiasm for math; I'm also finding that it's contributing toward better relationships. And now that we've been doing this for several weeks, they're beginning to work more independently and do more in their books.

After lunch, we tackle French (both upper and lower levels - more about that in another post), reading aloud, reading silently, correcting math with the older kids, listening to history narrations, Gileskirk lectures, science lectures, and anything else we need to finish up.

Whew! It sounds like a lot, but we're getting so much done and enjoying the time together!

I'll try to post more about planning and French, soon.

This Week's Plan

We'll jump back into school on Tuesday.

My basic plan for our days is as follows:

Morning Time 
English 
French 
Spelling with my littles
Reading aloud 
Math 
History 
Science 

This order is based on the number of kids working in each discipline.  We all do Morning Time and English together.  I'm still not sure if Nathan and Ben will want to study French with us.  If not, they'll use that time for their Latin studies.  Then we peel off Judith and Rebekah while I work with Joel, Melody, and Eliza in spelling and read aloud to the three of them.  After that, it's independent work time for everyone.  If I can corral my teaching time into a solid block, it's more likely to happen consistently than if I try to break it up through the day.

Next week we'll start everything but science (still on order or undecided). Latin starts in mid-September.

I'm basically prepared for everything I'll be teaching. I hope to use the kids' independent work time for the next few weeks to get our physical surroundings more organized and de-cluttered. It's a slow, slow process.

School Starts Today

I thought I'd be starting school for reals this week, but something came up that'll take up most of Wednesday through Friday, so we're just starting math (after a week off) and Gileskirk (Antiquity this year).

We watched the first Gk lecture on Friday.  Second one this afternoon (kids are reading and working on vocabulary to prepare) and number three Thursday.  We're tackling as much math as we can this week, too.

Next week, we'll start English, French, and history for my middles and littles.   Latin doesn't start until mid-September and I'll finalize science sometime in the next couple of weeks and we'll start a little later.  We have lots of time.

I spent a lot of time this summer learning Numbers so I could set up more-easily maintained plan books and grade books.  I think those are practically ready (although I may need to tweak just a bit more).

We also started morning time, à la Cindy at Dominion Family, but with my own flavour.  After Nathan opened us in prayer, we read Psalm 107 (99% sure that'll be the topic of next week's sermon), which we'll re-read and discuss all week.  Also read a page of The Gospel Primer and finished a chapter of Fellowship of the Ring.

I wasn't able to attend the CiRCE Conference in July, but lots of friends did and have shared.  I'm inspired and encouraged and am eagerly awaiting my conference CD's, which should be here soon!

SDG!

Status

Yesterday went well, but not as well as I'd hoped.  We're still making progress, so I'll view yesterday as half-full, rather than half-empty.

I played with Numbers and am tweaking their gradebook template.  I think it'll work.  I'll play with it this summer and hope to have my gradebook settled by the time we start our real school year in August.

We had a great time in English.  We've parsed the first three sentences of Psalm 1.  We've diagrammed the first one and will diagram the next two today.  The three little ones are copying it for handwriting and our pastor will preach on it in two Sundays.  We learned about some cool rhetorical figures - antanaclasis (or a clashing of words) and hyperbaton (changing word order for effect and emphasis).  We're also looking at the difference between the seven basic parts of speech and the different jobs that are done in a sentence by words, phrases, and clauses.

We haven't tackled logic yet this week, and we have more economics to do.  We're about half-way through Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, reading it aloud and watching Jeffrey Tucker's interviews with various economists about the book.  When we're done with that, we'll begin watching the Teaching Company's Economics lectures and reading Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics.

We also started working on learning to sing in parts.  We're starting with 'Happy Working Song' from Enchanted and I'm thinking of adding in 'How Will She Know?' from the same movie.  And we've started doing some exercises that I remember from my high school theatre classes.  We may do a readers' theatre or else choose a scene or two from a play and block it as both a play and a film.

It's time to head to the salt mines!

New Session

Last week was a Sabbath week, and boy did we need it!

I spent some time messing around with PlanBook and had great hopes for it, but I don't think it's going to work.  I'm tired of writing our all the kids' lessons by hand in their planbooks, so when PB didn't pan out, I began messing around with Numbers and finally got it figured out - thanks to a friend who graciously answered all my stupid questions.  Now to see if I can get my money back for PlanBook - I'm not holding my breath.

I had hoped to audition for a summer play, but that didn't get off the ground.  I also had hoped to teach at least one film class, but I'm not sure if that's going to fly either (I'm still waiting to hear).

So, what to do with my summer?  I decided that I want to teach the kids to sing parts and I want to start doing some theatre exercises with them.  We'll also continue with English, math, logic, economics, and Latin review.

I hoped to get us up earlier so we could finish our academics and have time for extra stuff like sewing, more gardening, and baking.  Didn't work out yesterday - restless night on Sunday caused me to wake up late on Monday.  I didn't give up and we did some of what I had planned.

Today was better.  We started a bit earlier and I got more of my to-do list done.  We dove into Psalm 1 for English (our pastor is preaching on it in a couple of weeks), parsing and diagramming the first sentence.  Also discussed nouns: definition, categories (abstract vs. concrete, proper vs. common), and the many jobs of nouns in sentences.  Will tackle verbs tomorrow.

Began our singing with a lecture on posture, opening our mouths, and abdominal breathing, then warmed up and played around with singing different notes of a chord together.  Found that our 'Happy Working Song' sheet music has parts, so we started there.  Need to call Music Mart and order another song to work on.  Nathan is hoping for Handel's 'Messiah' (yeah, right), but the others are hoping for a song from a Broadway musical.  We'll see what Ross has to offer.

Also went through some stretches and posture and drama exercises - made the kids move across the room as if depressed.  I've got a few more in mind, but I found a book with theatre exercises for kids at B&N which I hope we can pick up tonight.

SDG!