The Genial Hearth

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Archive for Narration

Planning for 2009

January 11, 2009 at 4:02 pm · Filed under Art, Bilby, Books, Domestic Life, Family, For Adults, For Children, For the Future, French, History/Geography, Home Education, Language, Latin, Maths, Montessori, Music, Narration, Nature Study, Organisation, Plans, Puggle, Reading, Reflection, Science, Singing, Writing

General stuff:-)
This probably seems like a fairly full on year, for what is essentially Puggle’s pre-school year (most of this is for Puggle, although I do have some plans for Bilby included). My plan though, is that we’ll start with this, and it will take as long as it takes. We’ll stick with the three term year, each being made up of three blocks of 4 weeks on, one week break (plus the Christmas block/term).

Language (Including Memorisation and Copywork)
For Puggle, I’m planning a second run through The Writing Road to Reading, actually beginning to focus on writing the letters. I’ll combine this with the sandpaper letter/phonograms, but he seems fairly interested in writing at the moment. This (and his name) will probably be all the copywork we do for the year. I anticipate using a timer (for somewhere in the order of three to five minutes), because he’s very keen on quantity—and in copywork time I’ll be more interested in quality:-) I’m hoping the second run will sort out the phonemes he hasn’t really grasped. We still have the Fitzroy readers, and I anticipate them being used fairly regularly:-)
We’ll be reading Complete Nonsense Poems by Edward Lear, and this year, I’ll be trying to encourage Puggle more in the direction of memorisation. We’ll be focussing on the same piece for a fortnight, which may help:-)
We’ll continue with the Latin nursery rhymes, but this year we are going to begin Song School Latin. It includes a number of songs, and some day-to-day phrases, so I’m not going to worry so much about using my own:-) We will attempt to continue with the French comptines, and I suspect that Puggle will listen in with Bilby’s French:-)
Over the year, we’ll be reading from The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus by Aliki, The Orchard Book of Roman Myths by Geraldine McCaughrean and Egyptian Myths by Jacqueline Morley.
Bilby isn’t at quite the same stage as Puggle was two years ago (she’s effectively 6 months younger), so I don’t think she’s ready for everything I did with him:-) We’ll still do the Nursery Rhymes, and read the poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses.
She’ll join us in the Latin and French nursery rhymes, but this year, we’re going to try reading a number of (generally familiar) picturebooks in French:-) La Chenille Qui Fait Des Trous, Devine Combien Je t’Aime and Ours Brun, Dis-Moi for starters:-)

Maths
We’ve finally made the decision to go with RightStart. It’s a very hands on programme, which should appeal to Puggle (basically I think the manipulatives approach is a good idea for the early stages of maths).

English Studies (including Narration)
We’ll continue the Aesop’s Fables for Children with Puggle, and later in the year we’ll begin Fifty Famous Stories Retold. These will be where we begin paying attention to Narration. I might actually try some with him this year:-) We’ll also be reading The House At Pooh Corner, The Muddle-headed Wombat and The Loaded Dog, along with the Orange, Green and Brown Fairy Books. I plan to try Bilby out with Beatrix Potter The Complete Tales and the Blue, Red and Yellow Fairy Books, but these are where I think we’ll probably skip bits.
Obviously, we’ll be including other read-alouds as they occur to us, but they will include The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Doctor Doolittle, The Favorite Uncle Remus and The Wind in the Willows.

Health and Phys. Ed
We’re continuing with Waterbabies (swimming) this year:-) Or at least we’ll continue with Puggle for now. His class will probably collapse soon (they only take them until they are five), so then we’ll be looking at other swimming classes.

History and Geography
I’m looking forward to this a lot:-) We’re going to begin The Story of the World: Ancient Times. I’ve ordered the Activity Book as well, so we should be doing lots of stuff—I keep hearing good things about it:-)
We’ll also be reading Geography from A to Z: A Picture Glossary . I figure we’ll do a page or so each week, and I’ll print some colouring in pages for each word.

Science
Unless Puggle has particular things that he wants to immerse himself in, I think we’ll be doing most of our science through the garden:-) I do hope to do Nature Walks more regularly (well, once the weather settles down a little), and I think this would be a good year to start recording the weather, but otherwise we’ll try and do a lot of planting and feeding and watering and seeing what happens. I’ve ordered The Tiny Seed and Une Si Petite Graine (one of the French picturebooks for Bilby:-) ) and I thought they should tie in nicely:-) I might pull out some of the How Things Work and Backyard/Kitchen Science books though, and leave them lying about, in case something appeals:-) (Edited to add: I’m also hoping that Keeping a Nature Journal will help inspire our nature observations!)

Art and Music
I’m going to try and be more regular about having family music nights:-) This year we’ll begin recorder (Bilby as well—because I don’t like my chances of doing it with Puggle and leaving her out:-) ). Our composers this year are Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Liszt and Gustav Mahler/Anton Bruckner. And of course, we’ll sing:-)

I think I’ll probably repeat my art plans from last year… we didn’t really do much of them, mostly because I ended up putting the stuff away:-( I’m working on keeping art materials in a more accessible way. Our artists this year are Sandro Botticelli, Caspar David Fredrich and Vincent Van Gogh.

Technology and Enterprise
Cooking. By the end of the year, I’d like Puggle to feel confident about preparing one dinner:-) When he’s (quite) a bit more independent in his reading, I thought I might start letting him choose recipes to try:-)

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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/Geography, 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

October 6, 2007 at 9:43 pm · Filed under Home Education, Narration, Progress, Puggle, This Week

Week 3, Block 8
This has seemed to be a fairly productive week. Around us, it’s school holidays, so we have a break from our usual organised events which has definitely helped. It’s also been our first week without Latin.

The Mat Time is definitely working for us at the moment. Puggle happily unrolls the mat, brings the books, we light the candle and then we sing and read and recite.

This last week, he loved ‘The Gardener‘ and often asked me to tell it to him at other times. We ended up reading ‘The Pie and the Patty-Pan‘, which I’d had on the plan for earlier in the year, and it somehow slipped away. Puggle has been narrating it back to us (I’m choosing to use ‘narrate’ for ‘adopting quotes into his daily life’). So my cooking has been accompanied by “Gammon! Ha HA!” and the like.

And we have sung much, and often (not just at Mat Time). Puggle often entertains Bilby with a song or nursery rhyme. Parva Casa is continuing to be a big favourite (one of the reasons I chose it—Puggle loves ‘In a Cottage, In a Wood’, so I thought it would be popular:-) ). We can probably replace that one soon.

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