“Cuddle Time”

November 30, 2008 at 3:34 pm · Filed under Art, Books, For Children, Home Education, Picture Books

When I chose Julie Vivas as our Picturebook Artist for this year, I requested a number of her books (that we didn’t have) from the library. Cuddle Time is one of those.

I have to say, I’m delighted by it (enough that I’m thinking about getting it for one of the kids for Christmas!) Very simply, it’s the story of two children getting up in the morning. It makes use of a little repetition, and some gentle rhymes (in fact, gentle is probably a good description of it as a whole). The greatest joy for me thoguh, is that Julie Vivas’ beautiful illustrations show the two children as being very similar in size to my big kids:-) So it depicts waking up as being very like our house (on a good morning:-) )

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“Half the Magic Dragon!”

October 24, 2008 at 12:20 pm · Filed under Art, Domestic Life, Puggle

That’s what Puggle was singing as we got into the car… I thought he’d misheard the song, but no, it turns out he’d drawn (on the magnadoodle, so I don’t have the image:-( ) ‘half the magic dragon’… the body and tail:-)

Now he’s all enthusiastic about drawing dragons and is poring (pawing?) over all our dragon books:-)

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This Week

February 3, 2008 at 8:04 pm · Filed under Art, French, Home Education, Language, Latin, Music, Plans, Puggle, Singing, This Week, Writing

Week 4, Block 1, Boronia Term
Language
Introduce phonograms ’s’, ‘qu’ (sandpaper letters and sand tray)
decem urnae (Ten [green] Bottles)
Gratias (Thank you)
Tête, épaules, genoux et pieds (Heads, shoulders, knees and toes)
Écoute!! (Listen)

English Studies
‘The Wonderful Tune‘ from The Lilac Fairy Book Andrew Lang
‘The Naughty Boy’ from The Complete Illustrated Stories Hans Christian Anderson
Narration: ‘The Kid and the Wolf‘, ‘The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse‘, ‘The Fox and the Grapes‘ (’The Boy and the Filberts‘, ‘Hercules and the Wagoner‘ ) from The Aesop for Children Ill. Milo Winter (He’s really a bit too young for Narration, so I’m mostly going to be keeping an ear out for re-tellings, or incorporation in play)
Recitation: Puppy and I A. A. Milne from When We Were Very Young

Art and Music
Folksong: The Drinking Gourd
Composer: Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Work: Scheherazade (I’d planned for us to move on to another piece, but I haven’t sourced it, and we haven’t really listened to this exhaustively… so we’ll continue)
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Work: The Virgin of the Rocks
Music: Loud/Soft (The Kodály Method 1 Lois Choksy) Clap Your Hands
Art: Watercolour
Wet Paper Effects (Art Ideas Fiona Watts)

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Progress

January 26, 2008 at 10:16 pm · Filed under Art, Domestic Life, Home Education, Progress, Puggle, This Week

Week 2, Block 1, Boronia Term

All in all, pretty good. Much reading and singing (not usually on the mat, but on the couch because Bilby has been awake). Having the books is so much better! He’s also done some watercolours, and much drawing. The latter wasn’t planned particularly, but he saw Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks and took it away “so I can learn to draw”. (He did a great “racoon and caterpillar with a shell”—which was an even better cocoon:-) )

I’m pretty pleased that we do the ‘formal’ part easily in 15 minutes, three days a week. He doesn’t always use the other activities I have set out for him (although, he’s been getting to at least one of them), but the idea is that they are there when he feels the pull.

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Drawing

January 22, 2008 at 9:44 pm · Filed under Art, Books, Domestic Life, Family, For Children, Puggle

I’ve been following Sarah’s artistic journey at Handmade Homeschool (well, I was following it when she was Poppins… but she’s at HH now), so when I was at the library, I thought I’d look around the art/photography section for some ‘inspiring’ books (or at least attempt to browse… a Puggle is still only partially conducive to that!)

Puggle was reasonably obliging—and joined me in browsing:-) He had to bring home this book so he could learn to draw:-) This morning, he decided he was going to begin. He got out pencils and paper, opened the book to the first page—some information about drawing eyes. The first demonstration was a circle for a face with two dots for eyes, and a mouth. So that’s what he drew!

This is his first ever attempt at a person:-) (There are eyes, but they’re dots, and in light green so they’re a little hard to see.) Pretty good I thought:-) He was quite keen to post it to someone, but instead, turned over and drew more people:-)

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This Week

January 20, 2008 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Art, Books, For Adults, For Children, French, Home Education, Language, Latin, Music, Picture Books, Plans, Puggle, Reading, Singing, This Week, Writing

Week 2, Block 1, Boronia Term
Language
Introduce phonograms ‘d’, ‘f’ (sandpaper letters and sand tray)
o mea Maria (Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary)
Amabo te (Please)
Frère Jacques
Viens! (Come)

English Studies
‘A Lost Paradise‘ from The Lilac Fairy Book Andrew Lang
‘Great Claus and Little Claus’ from The Complete Illustrated Stories Hans Christian Anderson
Narration: ‘The Frogs and the Ox‘, ‘The Dog, the Cock and the Fox‘, ‘Belling the Cat‘ from The Aesop for Children Ill. Milo Winter (He’s really a bit too young for Narration, so I’m mostly going to be keeping an ear out for re-tellings, or incorporation in play)
Recitation: Buckingham Palace A. A. Milne from When We Were Very Young

Art and Music
Folksong: The Drinking Gourd
Composer: Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Work: Scheherazade
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Work: Ginevra de’ Benci
Music: Loud/Soft (The Kodály Method 1 Lois Choksy) Hop Old Squirrel
Art: Watercolour
Painting a Wash (Art Ideas Fiona Watts)

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This Week

January 13, 2008 at 10:32 pm · Filed under Art, Books, Domestic Life, For Adults, For Children, French, Home Education, Language, Latin, Maths, Music, Narration, Organisation, Plans, Puggle, Reading, Singing, This Week, Writing

(I’ll update the sidebars very soon!)
Language
Introduce phonograms ‘a’, ‘c’ (sandpaper letters and sand tray)
o mea Maria (Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary)
Amabo te (Please)
Frère Jacques
Viens! (Come)

English Studies
‘The Fairy Nurse‘ from The Lilac Fairy Book Andrew Lang
‘The Tinder-Box’ from The Complete Illustrated Stories Hans Christian Anderson
Narration: ‘The Wolf and the Kid‘, ‘The Tortoise and the Ducks‘ ‘The Young Crab and His Mother‘ from The Aesop for Children Ill. Milo Winter (at this stage I’m not going to focus particularly on narration:-) )
Recitation: Corner of the Street A. A. Milne from When We Were Very Young

Art and Music
Folksong: The Drinking Gourd
Composer: Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Work: Scheherazade
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Work: Ginevra de’ Benci
Music: Loud/Soft (The Kodály Method 1) Bye, Baby Bunting
Art: Watercolour
Brushwork and Watercolour paints(Art Ideas)

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Planning for 2008

January 8, 2008 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Art, Books, Domestic Life, Family, Food, For Adults, For Children, For the Future, French, History, Home Education, Language, Latin, Maths, Montessori, Music, Narration, Nature Study, Organisation, Plans, Puggle, Reading, Science, Singing, Writing

General stuff:-)
As I was happy with the structure of our year in 2007, we’ll stick with the same thing in 2008. I have made a decision about the term names. This year we’ll have Boronia, Dorothea and Edith terms. They’re two great-grandmothers and one great-great-grandmother, covering three of the four branches of our family tree. We’ll start the week beginning January 13th. I have plans for a Cornucopia (as I believe they do in Germany at the start of the school year) containing coloured pencils, some new glue and scissors, more sticky tape, counters, and any other bits of stationery type things I think of to include.

Language (Including Memorisation and Copywork)
I have definite plans in this area, but I’m hoping to be able to keep a grip on myself! I’m planning to begin using Writing Road to Reading this year. I’m not necessarily thinking that we’ll use it as written, but I thought I would use their order to work through the phonograms, and aim to introduce them all this year… but mostly it will act as a resource for me—so I can look things up if I don’t know why phonograms make their sound (there were a surprising number I didn’t know when I read it a year or so ago!) As Puggle reaches the appropriate stages, I’m planning to be ready with I Spy, Moveable Alphabet, Object Boxes, Action Cards, and Reading Folders—the first two should be fairly immediate, the others I’ll work on making, so they’ll be ready when he is up to them. (I’m not going to link to all of the specific materials… I have posts planned when they’re made, or if you’re desperate to know (!) ask me in the comments:-) )
Otherwise, we’ll continue with Latin Nursery Rhymes (I have enough for two per Block!) and I’m going to add in some everyday Latin phrases (look, careful, listen, sit up etc.). We’ll start doing the same for French, so a nursery rhyme per fortnight, and everyday French phrases (I still need to sort out which comptines we’ll use).
For Memorisation, we’ll be using When We Were Very Young, by A. A. Milne. We’ll basically read and repeat a poem a week, and I’d like to pick one of the four (actually, I think it’s five per Block) to work on memorising. There are sufficient short ones that it should be possible from the start of the year.
We’ll begin Copywork properly this year. I’ll re-introduce the sandpaper letters when we do that phonogram, and I’ll also provide a Sand Tray for practice (still need to finish that). I also need to complete our ‘Metal’ Insets, which he can practice with. For these, he’ll use the ‘Lyra’ coloured pencils which are thick, triangular ones. Hopefully this will assist Puggle’s proper writing grip.

Maths
I’m basically intending a fairly Montessori style approach. I have a number of started Sensorial materials, (Pink Tower, Broad Stair, Square of Pythagoras), some completed (Red Rods, Geometric Solids—a Christmas gift, but still, ready to use), and plans to make some others Geometric Cabinet, Constructive Triangles, Binomial Cube, Trinomial Cube and Geometric Cards. I am similarly in progress with Maths materials, some complete (Number Rods, Sandpaper Numbers, Number Tablets and Number Cards), some almost complete (Spindle Box), and plans to make some of the rest.
My plan is to prepare the materials, present them as he seems ready, but just leave him to work with them as he sees fit. Obviously well also be talking about numbers as a normal part of our day (cooking, measuring and various number related books we read).
I also figured that my resolution to play more games can’t but help with maths:-)

English Studies
We’ll be reading all year from The Aesop for Children illustrated by Milo Winter. These are quite brief re-tellings, and this is the main place I’ll be working on developing Narration. I am hoping that we’ve both kind of got a grasp on it by the end of the year:-)
We’ll also be reading a selection of stories over the year from The Lilac Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book and The Olive Fairy Book by Andrew Lang. As a family read-aloud (so, not necessarily in Mat Time, and quite possibly starting to be some before bed reading—depending on the story!) we’ll be reading selections from Complete Illustrated Stories by Hans Christian Anderson for the first part of the year, and all of Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne for the last term (Edith Term:-) ) Essentially that will break down to three fables, one Fairy Book story, and one Family Read-Aloud selection a week—which I think should be do-able. I may in fact not do all the fables, but rather choose between them at the time. Certainly I doubt that we’ll be narrating more than one!

Health and Phys. Ed
We’re continuing with our weekly swimming lessons. I thought I might try introducing some yoga (through cards that he can do himself, once I’ve shown them to him). We’re working on making the ‘back’yard more contained, and we’re digging a hole for the trampoline. When he’s out there he rarely stops moving:-) I would also like to work (again!) on establishing regular Nature Walks.
(At his age I’m not seriously planning things here… But in the future I’ll need to consider this Learning Area, so I’m noting it now.)

History and Geography
We’re basically going to stick with geography for now. Puggle is really aware of maps, so we’ll make use of the Picture Atlas we have, and he got a pretty good world map puzzle for Christmas. I have plans to make a few more, plus some land and water forms (more of those Montessori materials!) We also plan to acquire a globe.

Science
I intend (once again!) to work on including a weekly Nature walk. I’m not going to worry too much about it until the weather gets more pleasant (so, not until at least March), as I figure it’s one thing to maintain a habit when the weather drops off… but it’s much harder to establish it. We will do some more gardening. We’ll also begin observing the weather.
Aside from these, I’ve been working on various ‘Parts of Animal’ cards, and I’ll finish those, and I have plans for some of the Botany Cabinet stuff.

Art and Music
After my library find earlier this year, I was really excited to discover a copy of The Usborne Complete Book of Art Ideas (a single edition version of the book I’d found, plus its companion volumes) by Fiona Watts in a local shop just before Christmas. It became a family present:-) I’m planning to use this for the practical side of our art curriculum—for some years:-) I’ve decided to stick to a theme per term (at this stage, media), so I’ve pulled all the watercolour and wax crayon/oil pastel ideas out. My plan is to prepare the materials for the activity, and leave that with the book (open to the page) on the sewing cabinet. Hopefully Puggle will have the opportunity to attack the idea multiple times if he chooses. (They’re not really independent things, but it is about the process… and I’m happy to assist or inform when he wants… we’ll see how that goes.)
We’ll continue following the Ambleside Online Artist study schedule, so that means this year will be Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan van Eyck.
When I was at my last school, I was good friends with the music teacher. She was a real Kodály afficienado. She lent me The Kodály Method I: Comprehensive Music Education by Lois Choksy which I read with great interest. (I can’t follow it all yet, but I find it very inspiring.) I’ve since got my own copy so I can read and mull (and work on!), and that’s where my practical music programme is coming from—I was already planning on singing:-) We’ll continue with our Ambleside based Folksong plan, but I’ll be sure to include a range of nursery rhymes as suggested, and make sure that we talk about and experiment with the ten aspects of music that are introduced in the Preschool year plan.
We’re also following the Ambleside Composer study schedule, so Boronia Term we’ll listen to Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Aelexander Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky. Dorothea Term will be George Frederic Handel, and Edith Term we’ll listen to works by Camille Saint-Saens and Hector Berlioz.

Technology and Enterprise
(This is probably my least consisdered area… bizarre given that it’s what I taught! I guess there are a couple of reasons for that. I just don’t think as an eary it’s as important as some of the others, but equally, I’m fairly confident of my ability to wing it for a while… no need to plan at all at this stage. I do have an idea of developing a woodwork curriculum for junior primary homeschooled kids… when we reach that stage, so a little way ahead of me for now:-) )
He got a toolbox for Christmas… so we’ll start some woodwork:-) And of course, more cooking:-)

(I could never be an unschooler! But maybe I should re-read my The Latin-Centered Curriculum… this seems as though it may be a little over the top…)

In the next week before we start, I have quite a bit of sorting still to do:-( Arranging equipment/books so that they’re accessible and making sure that we have all the bits (music, still need Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, and the French comptines are proving challenging:-( ) we need. I also have a long list of materials I plan to make (or finish) in the first half of this year… I’m going to be quite busy:-)

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Blogging Advent—Monday 10th

December 10, 2007 at 10:23 pm · Filed under Advent, Art, Books, For Children, Home Education, Picture Books, Season

We read Wombat Divine by Mem Fox. This is one of my favourite Christmas stories:-)

If you’re thinking there seems to be a lot of reading going on, you’re right… Puggle was sick at the weekend (and I’ve been feeling stretched this week), so I’ve done some rearrangement of the schedule so that we didn’t cook.

He’s continued to make cards though, and today we also did some more watercolours. This time it was red and blue—I had an ulterior motive… We have a funeral to go to, and I wanted to make sympathy cards for my cousins. We’ve now cut up his art to put on the front of the cards. They turned out wonderfully.

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Lanterns

November 11, 2007 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Art, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Puggle, Season

Today is Martinmas. There’s a tradition of making lanterns and going for a lantern walk. Well, thanks to daylight saving (:-() we won’t be going for a lantern walk… Puggle would never last until dark! But I thought we could make lanterns for the table (and then put them in the window after dinner). We also had wine (there’s a surprise:-) ) and nuts with dinner.

The lanterns were quite simple to make. I found empty glass jars with the lables removed. Then we took plain printer paper and cut it to the appropriate height (basically each page did two jars). Puggle and I used crayons to colour in every part of one side of the paper (colouring in heavily produced the best results).

We lay the paper, crayon side up, on some newspaper. Pour on a swish of oil and spread it over the whole page, then wipe up the excess. The paper will go translucent (and the faint crayon will disappear a bit:-( ). Attach your paper around the outside of the jars. I was a little worried that the oil would make the sticky-tape ineffective, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem—in fact, the oil makes the paper sort of stick to the jar.

I’m quite pleased with how these have turned out, possibly they would have been better with pencil, but I figured the crayon would give better coverage (Puggle ended up only doing most of one, because he had “run out of energy” by that stage). It’s definitely more effective to press firmly with the crayon!

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Pencils and Crayons

November 9, 2007 at 11:48 pm · Filed under Art, Craft, Domestic Life, Home Education, Organisation, Puggle

I have just bought some lovely Lyra pencils and some block crayons in preparation for next year.

I had also been thinking about getting some modelling beeswax… but I’ll wait on that until I get some input:-)

I’ve just started wondering about how the beeswax in the crayon will go over summer!

I’m addressing this to anyone in a mediterranean climate. How do the crayons (and moulding beeswax) go in your area? Do you need to do anything to keep them from melting? (I had all our pencils and crayons on tubs in a north facing window this winter and after one vaguely warm day I had to remove them because the crayons were soft and the colour was leeching!) Obviously I won’t be keeping them in the sunlight! But will I need to keep them in the fridge?

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Plasticene

November 9, 2007 at 11:01 pm · Filed under Art, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Puggle

I finally gave Puggle some plasticene today!

He made yellow sausages that would make you sick—not because they’re poisonous, but because they have light in them, and glass (he clarified that they were pretend!)

Then he was making food… (for the people on the aeroplane.)
“One day I might go on an aeroplane! And Dada might show me where the washroom [I have no idea where he got that from! I guess we can blame Aunty B:-) ] is on the aeroplane so I’ll know if I need to wash my hands, if I get dirty hands. I might get dirty hands on the aeroplane. They might let you have nuts on the aeroplane!”
“And you can stay and look after my babies!”

He’s very into babies at the moment… he has four or five. One of them (a parrot) died last night but there’s another baby (also a parrot) in his thigh.

Later he was making the plasticene into an elephant’s trunk. He folded up a bit of it, and realised he’d made a mouth…
“This statue elephant has no manners, he opens and closes his mouth when he’s eating. (He’s just a pretend elephant.)”

He had a fabulous time playing with it (I was able to do my own thing beside him for more than an hour!), talking the whole time!

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Progress

October 27, 2007 at 1:25 pm · Filed under Art, Bilby, Books, For Children, Home Education, Picture Books, Progress, Puggle, This Week

A fairly basic week. We did manage Mat Time on 4 days (which is as many as I would anticipate), although, on Swimming day it was rather abbreviated! The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse is significantly shorter than many of the other Beatrix Potter stories! ‘Thumbelina’ mentioned Swallows, so we spent some time on the Birds page of Richard Scarry’s European Word Book

We’ve missed the folksong completely—I couldn’t get past my inability to fit it in a readable size (from the couch), on one page. There are other long songs coming up, so I’ll need to find a solution for that. We did introduce a new Latin song Ardet Roma (Rome Is Burning) which Puggle’s enjoying (he just saw the page as I uploaded it and told me he can already sing it himself… it was pretty good!) We also began experimenting with some opening songs, so that Mat Time has a definite start.

We had another watercolours session, and we read Ruth Hellar’s Color (and also Jane Yolen’s How Do Dinosaurs Learn Their Colors, which Puggle chose from the library—and Bilby is finding very interesting:-) ).

We even got the ukeleles out a couple of times:-)

A reasonable week. He’s asking for Mat Time now, which helps me remember it:-) I think I probably need to find a basket to pack at the start of the week, with all our Mat Time books, that will make it quicker to start.

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Watercolour Again

October 24, 2007 at 10:00 am · Filed under Art, Books, Craft, Domestic Life, For Children, Home Education, Picture Books, Puggle

This time around we used yellow and blue (starting with the lighter colour:-) )

Puggle remembered a lot of what we talked about last time, he was generally good about taking care of the ‘beards’, and he certainly remembered about mixing the paint and water, and cleaning off the brushes. He was able to be dramatically more independent than last time!

We talked about the way the paint moved across the paper, and the way the colours mixed.

Just this week we’ve been reading Color by Ruth Heller. Recently Katherine reviewed some lovely language books (also by Ruth Heller). They sounded quite interesting, so I did my usual, searched the library and requested all the Ruth Heller books they had. I’ll post separately about the language ones, but one of them was Color—and it’s fabulous! It’s probably mostly beyond Puggle at the moment, although, it includes colour mixing so that much works for now. But it’s a book I could see benefiting in the long term. It’s written in rhyme, and the images are gorgeous. It is a good introduction to the language of colour, but it also talks about colour and print.

This is one that I’ll probably add to our wishlist!

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Painting By Numbers (Not!)

October 9, 2007 at 8:32 am · Filed under Art, Craft, Domestic Life, For Adults, For Children, Puggle

In all the recent art talk I’ve been noticing watercolours with interest. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Alice posted her family’s lessons (and I’m hoping there will be more!) I really like what she did, but I’m very aware that her children are much older… so I can’t just ‘follow’. Then the last time we went to the library I picked up The Usborne Book of Art Ideas. It has a number of really cool projects. But more importantly, it included some more information about about basic watercolours.

And today we gave it a go:-)

(I got set up while Puggle napped—I wasn’t at all sure what I was going to do… so I did an experiment first.)

We each had brushes, a palette and we shared a couple of water jars. Before we began I told Puggle how the brushes are like gnomes and don’t like their beards being wet, and how they need to be dried carefully. We sponged the sheets of paper (140gsm card… it’s what we had around that seemed most appropriate). I then put a dab of yellow paint in one hollow, then showed Puggle how to mix some water with it. We then attempted to do a wash on half the page. We then had a go with the red on the other half.

[In the photo you can see clockwise from top left, the pencil swirls, Puggle's effort, my demonstration, and my experiment.]

Puggle painted over the whole thing with the red, because he ran out of yellow:-) We then dabbed off some of the paint with a paper towel.

We were still having fun, so I got out the Aquarelles to add some details to my experiment. Puggle has wanted to try using them, so today he had the opportunity. We both did some swirls and squiggles on the page. Then we went back to the table to add water to our work. And then we both cleaned up. I was amazed at how easy it was to achieve something that looked beautiful!

It was a very satisfying afternoon’s work. Even though he was still enjoying himself at the end, I think I’ll stick with one picture… he was beginning to hit too long on task. The next couple of sessions we’ll do the same with blue/yellow and blue/red, then probably repeat with perhaps more of a focus on mixing. Then we might have a go with all three primary colours, at which point it might be possible to use some of the activities Alice did in her first lesson:-)

And then there’s a whole pile of ideas from The Usborne Book of Art Ideas that I’d love to try with him, but they use other media so they can wait for now.

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