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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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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A Beginning

January 14, 2008 at 7:30 am · Filed under Books, Domestic Life, French, Home Education, Language, Latin, Music, Organisation, Puggle, Reading, Singing, Writing

Puggle is waking up to this…
(filled with the books we’ll be reading, a writing/drawing pad, new scissors, new glue, a watercolour pad, brushes and dinosaur counters),
and this…
(sand tray/sandpaper letters, limited Metal Insets, Moveable Alphabet, World Map Puzzle, paper—and you can just see the Art book open at the left… I need to re-think the layout of the art/craft materials),
and this… (the front of our TV cabinet… on the left door the Drinking Gourd, Ginevra de’ Benci [in black and white because I forgot to get it printed before hand] and Frère Jacques; on the right the French and Latin phrases, Corner of the Street, Bye, Baby Bunting, o mea Maria).

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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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Progress

September 29, 2007 at 8:18 pm · Filed under Bilby, Domestic Life, Home Education, Latin, Organisation, Progress, Puggle, Singing, This Week

Week 2, Block 8
It’s been a pretty good week. I don’t know that Puggle has made much progress on the folksong (it’s another mournful one:-) ), but I certainly have:-)

I put that down to the recent innovation of blu-tacking the words to the front of the TV cabinet. (Funny how ideas stick with you:-) Sometime in the last year or so I started seeing a number of posts about fridge learning. I thought it was a reasonable idea, but then forgot about it. Now I’ve ‘re-invented’ it, by sticking things on the TV cabinet:-) ) Bilby is very distractable when she nurses, so it’s difficult to read books—but things on the cabinet are very do-able. Currently I have our folksong, our weekly poem, and our latin song. I’m thinking that it’s probably going to be a good idea to also print out the weekly painting (although, probably better to do so in colour!) to add to the display. I’m considering adding days of the week, and the weather in some format—although I may leave that till next year.

The other innovation this week has been in response to various discussions on Waldorf education. There are many things I find problematic about it overall, but it definitely has some appeal. There’s a focus on rhythms, nature and art/crafting that speaks to me strongly (actually, the latter two are part of the reason I’m a CM fan:-) ). In one of them, someone mentioned Circle Time (which once again reminded me of something I read a while ago, and considered implementing, but didn’t at the time. Cindy starts her school day with Morning Time to do a certain portion of their Ambleside schedule, which always struck me as a fairly workable formula. I’d only figured on doing it once we started with Shakespeare—and I guess, once I was working with more than one child:-) But, here I am, re-inventing the wheel!) So we’ve started ‘Circle Time’ (although, it’s hardly a circle with just the two of us as Bilby is usually asleep… so I’ll need to re-name it). We roll out one of the mats, light a candle (nice way to use some of the fancy candles we have:-) ) and sit around to recite the poem, sing some songs and do some reading. Puggle seems to be really enjoying it—possibly because he gets to blow out the candle at the end:-) We’ve also managed to read a number of our intended readings:-) I think one improvement will be to include all the relevant books in a basket, then we can move the location outside (although, without the candle!), which would also be a nice touch. Currently though, we are still using printouts for a few things.

The latin song is another addition. We had our last latin lesson for now earlier this week (and wouldn’t you know, now Puggle starts counting to ten in Latin at the drop of a hat!) I’d like to maintain our position (basically some pronounciation), so I figured we’d continue to sing the songs we’ve learnt—and learn some others. In the next while (or next year possibly) I’ll add some french songs into the mix as well. So for now we have Parva Casa in Silva (In A Cottage, In A Wood) from the Minimus website on the TV cabinet. (Puggle has really enjoyed singing ‘In a Cottage, In a Wood’ at each KinderClassics lesson, so it seemed like a good choice:-) )

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Why Latin?

July 15, 2007 at 12:42 am · Filed under Classical, For the Future, Home Education, LCC, Latin, Organisation, Philosophies

(Because Purrdence asked why Latin rather than another LOTE! This was my reply—with some expansion!)

*grin*

A whole other post (and here’s a little one:-) )!

There are many reasons. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, which is I guess what started me thinking about it.

I see Latin as a great beginner for other Romance languages, from a vocab perspective. It’s a great beginning place for grammer, because it’s a declined language—and the pronunciation is much easier than Russian! (Ancient) Greek could also be another option, but the resources for Attic (as in Homer etc) are apparently very sparse, and not good for self-teaching, Koine would be workable, but I don’t think we’re going to be reading the New Testament in the original, which seems to be the source material that is used. We could do German, but it’s not something I’ve ever been particularly interested in.

Latin for me is as much about the mental discipline as the fact it’s a LOTE (and that depends on your moderator… some of them won’t accept it I believe). We’ll be introducing French shortly (should have done so before now, but I fell down on getting myself in the swing early:-( ), but my plan is to continue Latin as far as possible.

(Very Euro-centric I know, but that’s my language background. Paddington and I have both done Indonesian, but not as much as I have French, and he’s also done some Japanese. I doubt we’ll stay solely with European languages, but it certainly was where I planned to start… and once you’ve learned one LOTE, I’ve found others much easier to approach. In the house there are French, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian and Swedish learning materials, and a Zulu dictionary. There’s also lots of books about computer languages:-) )

Poppins has a great quote, (which appears to have disappeared off her site)

“I choose it because a mind that has been asked to follow a rigourous learning plan is never out-of-date. My goal as an educator is to equip my students with the tools they need in order to learn whatever it is they want to do in life, whether it’s how to work a washing machine or draft architectural drawings. I believe that with a classical education my children will have the mental equivalent of a gymnast’s body-strong, flexible, well-honed, practiced.”

At this stage my plan is to follow the Latin-Centered Curriculum, which works from a less is more background (unlike a _lot_ of others, which involve jamming in as much as possible!), and I’m hoping that Latin will help us in that simplification (I know I’m prone to trying to do too much!)

The other thing is that this opportunity landed on our doorstep:-) We’re going with the flow:-) I am however, not certain that we’re quite ready for this. As I said, it may be too formal. We were (are) planning to begin French this year. But our plan with that was getting together with another family of children and hiring a native (or near native) speaker to come and play with them. We’d have a craft and obviously toys, and maybe they’d do a nursery rhyme or two, but not so much of the sit and listen to teacher (he is aware of their ages, they don’t sit long.. but they do sit around a table and listen to ‘lectures’). (If anyone knows someone like that… who is free some weekday mornings so we can try and find one to suit, and wouldn’t be put off by travelling to Wanneroo… we’re looking to employ someone!) I’m still hopeful that we can find a play leader for the French idea, and at that point we’ll think about finishing the Latin (for now… I was planning on leaving it till he was five:-) There are a couple of courses that apparently work well with kids that age, and can be taught at home—I’m not relying on this for socialisation!)

I do plan to blog more about my longer term plans/goals—but I’m wary of putting too much of it down too soon… I have outlines and sketches, but I’m pretty much going with the flow for this year and the next, planning, but then seeing what eventuates. You’ve probably noticed that there’s quite a discrepency between our plans and our reality:-) I’m hoping that they get a little closer together towards the end of next year… I’m conscious though, that no plan survives contact with the enemy. So although I do have plans, I don’t want to get them too fixed, because they may well not suit our children.

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A Month of Carols

December 11, 2006 at 12:13 am · Filed under Advent, Christmas, For the Future, Home Education, Latin, Music, Season

Here’s something for those of you who are Latin mavens. A carol for every day of December—in Latin… (Thanks to Drew.)

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Why study Latin?

June 9, 2005 at 12:56 pm · Filed under Classical, For the Future, Home Education, Latin

Sarah says it so well.

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More Classical stuff

January 5, 2005 at 7:46 pm · Filed under For the Future, Home Education, Language, Latin

The American Classical League produces this.

There’s a National Mythology Exam (American, obviously). They have sample questions online.

There’s also an Exploratory Latin Exam.

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One man’s planned journey towards Latin with his daughter

January 2, 2005 at 2:07 am · Filed under For the Future, Home Education, Latin

Mungo’s Mathoms: Latinitas.

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Language learning

January 2, 2005 at 1:56 am · Filed under Language, Latin

The language that will never die

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More Latin

January 1, 2005 at 10:16 pm · Filed under For the Future, Latin

Latin Phrases

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More for George

January 1, 2005 at 5:44 pm · Filed under For the Future, Latin

The News

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For George

January 1, 2005 at 5:43 pm · Filed under For the Future, Latin

Weather in Australia

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