Delightful Things

Instagram

2017-05-01T08:07:00.001+01:00

I've got a new Instagram account, drop me a line if you want to follow me there!

Handicraft

2017-04-27T08:30:00.001+01:00

This term's handicraft for B8 is sewing. I last tried doing some with him when he was 5yrs old, and it strained his eyes and he didn't have the coordination for it; it quickly became evident that he was too young.
We recently retried sewing this term, and I was very surprised, he was a whizz, doing it very well with no problems! and even enjoying it

He started with simple running stitch. He drew a lego Ninjago head himself in pencil, and learnt to thread a needle and sew along his pencil lines.

finished creation!

He was very happy too with it!

Next project might be a bag for his nerf gun bullets (...so I don't keep finding them everywhere.....!)

You know you homeschool when...

2017-04-21T12:00:00.002+01:00

....on a rainy day, your physical education consists of doing jumping jacks, burpees, squats and running round in a circle in the living room all to the tune of Struass' Radetzky March!

(although, seriously, the Radetzky March is the best music for this!)

Exams Year 3, Term 2

2017-04-19T10:12:00.000+01:00

B8 did his Year 3, Term 2 exams a few weeks ago. As usual I recorded his answers on an app on my ipad and intend (eventually!) to type it up and keep it as a permanent record of his work.

The exams are still proving very useful in seeing how he's learning and how things are going. I'm actually very impressed with how much we're managing to cover, even though on a daily basis it doesn't seem like we do that much, but I suppose it all adds up over time. We are diligent with school work, not really skipping days, and I keep relatively firmly to our weekly schedule. So we're making good progress and I intend to have the school year wrapped up by the last week of June/first week of July, and then just carry on free reading over the summer to start again in early September.

The exam questions come from a mixture of Ambleside Online's exams, and also my own made up questions for extra/substitute books we've covered.

We read all of the original Jungle Book 1 and Jungle Book 2 this term, and one of B8's questions was to draw a scene he remembers from one of the stories in the book; he chose to draw Riki Tiki Tavi fighting Nag the cobra:

Easter Traditions

2017-04-17T10:41:00.002+01:00

unfinished drawing of the Risen Jesus, by B8

We have developed some lovely traditions over the years for Holy Week and the Triduum:

Holy Week: we opt to go totally meat free every day (to make our Easter lamb taste even better!) and try to be extra penitential in other ways

Maundy Thursday: Mass of the Last Supper in the evening (well, the kids haven't been yet, because it ends too late, but they will when they're older!)

Good Friday: hot cross bun lunch, stations of the cross, Service at 3pm at Church, visit to cemetery, minimal/no technology (no laptops, CDs etc), start Divine Mercy Novena

Holy Saturday: bake our traditional English simnel cake, decorate for Easter

simnel cake, with sugar lamb

the boys and I made tissue paper flowers

Lindt choc bunnies and mini eggs

we painted rainbow eggs (from our own chickens!)

Easter Sunday:
unburying the Alleluia

we bury the Alleluia at the start of Lent, and then unbury it on Easter Sunday

a special breakfast (some years it's eggs, bacon, sausages, pain au chocolat etc, but this year they wanted fancy cereals as we hadn't had cereals for a year!) some chocolate eggs for breakfast, Mass, and then, of course a great big feast for a lunch and daddy's special cheese board!

and of course celebrating with little treats every day of the Easter Octave!

Happy Easter!

Behind a waterfall...and inside a castle

2017-04-02T09:09:00.002+01:00

...was the highlight of a recent holiday to Wales, according to the boys! We hiked 45 mins in the rain to get there, and it was very slippy behind, but it was well worth it! We need to return another year when it's not so rainy, and then carry on the hike past this waterfall to see the half-a-dozen other waterfalls along the trail.

you can just see the boys and grandparents under the waterfall on the right

The other highlight of our visit was a trip to Caerphilly Castle, the second largest castle in Britain (after Windsor)

Outings

2017-03-24T19:55:00.000+00:00

We've had quite a few outings this Spring...

* Chemistry

B8 went to a chemistry talk on exploding and burning chemicals. Needless to say, he loved it!

* Wall climbing

A new twice monthly wall climbing group has started up for Home Educators, and the boys looooove it. (expensive though!)

* Forest group

Fire-cooked dinner, wood whittling and play in the outdoors

* Wind Orchestra Concert

So good

* A day at the Space Centre

They learnt a lot

inside a space command module

* A session learning about bread making

We watched the bakers mixing the dough, and then plaiting it into shapes

* The boys and I went to Sea Life

It was fascinating. A few years ago they were reeeeally into the Cbeebies cartoon called Octonauts; and oh my, this was like Octonauts come to life! We recognised so many sea critters from Leafy Sea Dragons to Garden Eeels, thanks to the Octonauts!

I got a photo of the underside of a ray

* Catholic Scouts

Just started up in our area

and that's all on top of our regular weekly activities, and having a language student staying with us!
phew, been a busy start to 2017!

How we do Shakespeare

2017-03-23T19:56:00.003+00:00

Form 1 (Years 1, 2 and 3) we've so far covered nine Shakespeare plays. How we do it is very easy:

1. Read a retelling. The two main books I use are
- Beautiful Tales from Shakespeare by E. Nesbit
-Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare

I prefer Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, but it doesn't have all the plays in.

2. Either as we're going along, or just afterwards, we do a character map, which shows the relationship between the main characters.

Today we finished Measure for Measure, and I thought I'd lay out all our character maps for a photo:

and slightly zoomed in view of some of them:

Next Year, when B8 is in Year 4 (Form 2) we'll start reading some of the actual plays.

Spring Handicraft

2017-03-18T10:22:00.000+00:00

The boys each chose a bird from one of our bird books and attempted to make it out of clay, once dried they painted them and they were displayed on our nature shelves

"There is joy in the spring when the birds begin to sing, in an English country garden."
(from our current folk song)

Ah, lovely lovely spring!

Why wait?

2017-02-17T11:39:00.000+00:00

Charlotte Mason recommended starting Year 1 at age 6yrs. That is what I did with B8 and will be doing with R5. So this year is his "Year 0" . I came across this helpful article on "why wait" till 6yrs old for Year 1:

----

"Year 0 is a lot more than just read-alouds. (In fact, read-alouds are really a very small part of it. CM didn’t recommend spending huge amounts of time reading to the children in the early years anyway. She wanted them to be up and around.) There’s so much more to focus on, including habit training and nature study (and lots and lots of time spent outside just running around), and those things are *extremely important*, not just nice-to-haves or something to kill time before the kids are ready for "real school". If you start doing Year 1, you may find that you are keeping the kids inside much of the time to "do school" and robbing them of the outside time they need. There isn’t really a Year 0 booklist; those books are just some suggestions to get you started. The Year 0 Yahoo group has some booklists, or you could use FIAR as many do. But I’ve found that as we’ve emphasized outside time more (the goal is 4-6 hours *a day* remember!) we don’t need so many books to read because we’re not inside reading.

One of the benefits to waiting until age 6 (or thereabouts) to start Year 1 is having time to get the extras firmly entrenched in your family schedule before you have the pressure of school. For instance, this is a great time to start doing art study, composer study, poetry, tea time, physical education, foreign language, hymns, folk music, etc. If you get those subjects going smoothly, then you can add in the Year 1 subjects without so much stress. Habit training makes life easier for everyone, and this is a great time to work on it intensively. You can still teach many of the concepts you want to teach without making it school. Math is easily covered through games, cooking, and other real life situations. Pre-reading and even early reading lessons can be done very casually, but you could even do a formal reading program without having to start Year 1.

Starting Year 1 early may lead you to have to slow things down later, when the readings get much more intense. That’s another factor to consider. In a few years the readings take a big jump in difficulty and in the maturity of the themes, so you may find that you need to do one of those years for two years to give your kids time to mature before moving on.

CM very strongly encouraged parents to delay formal education until approximately age 6, for a whole host of reasons. Children need time to really play, to imagine, to run and jump and breathe fresh air, to explore the world around them without interference, to let their brains mature without a lot of strain. She’s not alone in recommending this, and research supports her. So I guess I am just suggesting that it might be worth looking at this time not as "wasted" but as valuable preparation for the later years, even if the preparation doesn’t look like school. "

Two birds with one stone?

2017-02-15T14:20:00.005+00:00

I'm totally counting this as both 'foreign language practice' and 'handicraft'....origami from an Italian book!

by R5

Recall

2017-02-12T10:22:00.003+00:00

In a Charlotte Mason education the child's main work is narration. No fill-in-the-blanks, or scan the text to answer the questions, just narration. It sounds "easy" until you actually try it yourself, and then you realise that there is a lot of brain effort involved in ordering, sequencing, recalling, absorbing the language, and so on. The material becomes owned by the child in that way.

In Charlotte's PNEU schools the children would take exams at the end of every term, but they would do NO revision for them.

The trick to getting the information to stick in the children' mind is both narration AND constant review. At the beginning of every new lesson you must review what was covered in the previous lesson...and in the lesson before that....and before that. Not all the way to the beginning necessarily, but enough of the way back that the current lesson stands on a solid foundation and is linked to the previous lessons. That way the child builds up a deep and rich tapestry of linked knowledge in their mind.

Charlotte said, “Let every lesson gain the child’s entire attention, and let each new lesson be so interlaced with the last that the one must recall the other; that again, recalls the one before it, and so on to the beginning” (Vol. 1, p. 158).

You can read more here.

All trundling along, update in term 2

2017-02-05T13:48:00.000+00:00

We are almost half-way through Term 2 and all is going well and smoothly.

Everyday start off with Morning Time, which consists of:

Hymn (only 2 verses)
Bible (we're working through Matthew's Gospel, a little each day)
Bible memorisation (almost finished John 1:1-14)
Prayer
Hymn2 (only two verses)
Catechesis
Folk Song (this term we have Greensleeves, On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at, and In an English Country Garden)
Poetry (memorising various Sarah Teasdale this term)
Italian (conversation and learning little poems and rhymes)
Folk Song 2
Shakespeare/Composer/Artist/Grammar/SolFa (Taming of the Shrew/Mozart/daVinci/KISS Grammar & First Grammar Lessons by Charlotte Mason).

After this we move onto

Reading Aloud: this is when we get done whatever book work needs to be done. I turn to B8's schedule and either I read aloud from one of his books, or I send him to do his own reading on his own (and then he returns to narrate), and I do something with R5.

We are still doing Ambleside Online Y3 for B8 and it's brilliant.

As well as his work books B8's has to do daily: maths, handwriting, free reading, piano.

and once a week he has to do:
a drawing
fill in his timeline
draw in his nature journal
a handicraft (this term we are working on perfect bed making, bundling socks, and paper craft!)

Some changes from last term:

Picture Study:
At the end of last term I noticed that, although we were doing picture study every two weeks, somehow their memory of the pictures were a bit fuzzy. So now we look at a new picture one week, I leave it up on the white board all week, and the week after they draw it in their new art books, and the picture stays up for the rest of the week.

(see here for my picture study post)

This term we are doing Leonardo DaVinci and here's an example of a drawing:

Lady with Ermine

Memorization:We are doing this more formally and less haphazardly this term; Bible verses, poetry, songs (Hymns, folk songs & Italian songs) and Italian poems/rhymes.

R5 does daily reading out loud to me, maybe 5 minutes, and then one or two other bits of work weekly (since Sept we have been reading through one child a week from Children Just Like Me, and he has been learning the countries the children are from on our world map. He likes this a lot).
Once a week we also do some simple maths games for a few minutes (I follow this), and he gets read-aloud stories, but otherwise nothing else, No handwriting or anything else for him. As with B8, we are following Charlotte Mason's wise recommendation to allow children a "full 6 years" before the onset of formal work; time to get good habits in place, and develop a relationship with the world. and lots of outdoor time and playing. He will start Y1 just after he turns 6yrs old.
(But of course he is saturated in all the other things we do...artists, composers, shakespear, catechesis, read alouds, poetry...he listens to it all!)

So that's that! All is going very well in our home school, the children are learning and developing, which is good!

Out-of-the house we are busy as always; swimming, drama, scouts, multisports, park meet-ups etc etc.

Big brother finished doing a chalk pastel drawing tutorial online...so little sis climbed up and did her own thing!

And as for this little one: well, 16 months old and she is definitely an official Toddler now with and all that comes with it...climbing, pulling things out, leaving a mess...but also a good playmate to her big brothers!

2017-01-09T12:49:00.001+00:00

"..one of the secrets of the educator is to present nothing as stale knowledge, but to put himself in the position of the child, and wonder and admire with him; for every common miracle which the child sees with his own eyes makes him for the moment another Newton".

-Charlotte Mason, vol 1

Christmas Schedule

2016-12-22T10:34:00.002+00:00

We have had such a wonderful December so far. We're keeping up with reading for R5, and maths and handwriting daily for B8, and finishing up a few books, but other than that we've started a more relaxed Christmas schedule.

This is what we've been doing daily:

- Christmas Poems

- Poem Memorization (A Christmas Carol by GK Chesterton this year )

- Jesse Tree

- Scripture Memorization (Luke 2:1-20)

- Classic Christmas Story (every day a lovely story some from here others from here)
- Christmas Hymns Christmas Songs (The Holly and the Ivy, O Christmas Tree, Deck the Halls etc)

- The Way to Bethlehem: Inos Biffi
- Christmas crafting and cards

We've also had a busy social schedule with our home ed friends..... carol singing by the camp fire while roasting marshmallows, play dates, forest walks, den building, hot chocolate while watching The Snowman, acting the Nativity play in Classical Greek...and generally lots and lots and lots of playing and making happy cosy memories!

I have some photos I want to share, and hope to do so soon

Exams year 3, term 1

2016-12-06T08:03:00.001+00:00

Exams; Year 3 Term 1

exams,Year 3

We have finished up Term 1 of Year 3 with B8 (each term is 12 weeks long), and so today we did his exams to wrap things up.

The exams are actually proving to be very useful in showing up gaps and things I need to improve in order to help the children's learning. In particular:

:: Picture Study; I think the children need more deliberate exposure to the images in order to form a better memory of them. Maybe one week we look at the picture and narrate it, as we are doing, but then the next week they look at it again and do a rough sketch of it.

::Italian: As my mother is Italian and I speak fluent Italian, our Italian learning has been a bit...haphazard, but I think I need to systematically make sure I'm covering topic e.g like the weather, seasons, days out etc

::Drawing: I need to factor in more drawing practice, particularly of people.

::Independent reading: I noticed the detail in his memory for books he had read to himself vs. the books I had read out-loud to him, is the same. ..so I'm happy to keep up with his independent reading of his school books.

::Shakespeare: Doing a character diagram, as well as reading from Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, enhances memory and recall.

::Hymn & Folk Song: Make sure children are reading along with the words so they will actually remember more than just the chorus and three quarters of the first verse!

:: Thoroughly reviewing what was read last time, before moving on to a new chapter, is a big help in solidifying what is being learnt.

As before, I recorded his answers on a free app on my ipad, which gives it an official air! I then typed them up and printed them, so he can keep it as a record of his learning.

The questions are mainly from Ambleside Online's Exam page, and my own additions.

YEAR 3, TERM 1

Bible

1. What do you know about Moses' babyhood and early life?

2. Tell about Moses and the burning bush, or a story of Moses and Aaron.

3. Tell about Mary's visit to Elizabeth, or something from Jesus' childhood (i.e. newborn presentation at the temple or being left at the temple later).

4. Tell about the healing of the man who came through the roof, or of the centurion's servant.

Writing/Penmanship

Copy (in joined up) "The queen went stumping along in one shoe of stone and one of skin."

History

1. What do you know about Knights?

2. Tell what you know about William the Conqueror

3. Tell about Leonardo Da Vinci.

Tales

1. Tell your favorite part of The Princess and the Goblin.

2. Draw a picture from your favourite free read of the term

Emerald City and Yellow Brick Road

3. Tell me the story of Pericles or The Merchant of Venice

4. Why does Perseus embark on his dangerous journey, and what help does he get?

Geography

1. Tell about Marco Polo's journey to China.

2. Tell about Marco Polo’s stay with the Kublai Khan.

3. Draw the shape of the earth, and show where the hot countries are and where the cold ones are.

4. Tell me what soil erosion is. Tell me three dangers with soil erosion. Give me two solutions for preventing soil erosion.

Natural History and General Science

1. What is plankton?

2. What can you tell about how hermit crabs feed? or Tell about the grotto of eating trees.

3. Sketch and label three sea creatures we have read about this term from Pagoo.

4. Choose one of those sea creatures and tell me all you can about it

5. What is:

condensation

evaporation

capillary action - give me an example in nature

6. Why can a steel pin float on water?

7. Describe the nicest walk you have had this term. What did you find?

Reading Skill

Father selects a passage for student to read aloud.

Arithmetic

1. What number is made up of seven hundreds, four tens and five ones?

2. What is the sum of 69 + 57?

8. 5 x __ = 35

9. 8 x 6 = ___

Foreign Language

1. Recite or sing something you have learned in Italian

2. In Italian say something about yourself, using full sentences.

3. Translate the following sentence: I see the ducks in the park

Picture Study

Describe your favorite picture from this term's picture study of Giotto.

Recitation

Recite a poem you learnt this term.

Singing

Sing your favorite folksong and hymn from this term.

Handicrafts

Show some work in paper craft from this term and make another paper star

-------Some of his answers--------

Tell me the story of Pericles or The Merchant of Venice

Merchant of Venice. There were two money lenders called Shylock and Antonio and Shylock always wanted more than his fair share of money. Antonio was good, and his friend Bassanio wanted three hundred pounds to impress a lady called Portia because he wanted to marr her. So they went to Shylock who said, if you don’t repay me I’ll take a pound of your flesh. Antonio said, “ I will repay you because my ships are coming with money.” So he signed the bond. And Bassanio went and married Portia but then he saw that Antonio was going to be thrown in prison and Shylock would have a pound of his flesh because he didn’t repay the bond. And then Bassanio was very unhappy so he went. Portia then phoned a very wise councellor who said “you can have my robe”, and her lady Narrissa who had married Bassanio’s friend, dressed up as a clerk. I forgot to tell you that when Portia got married she said to Bassanio, “this is your ring, never part with it”, and Narissa said to her wife (edit: he means husband!), “here is a ring as well”. And so they went as councillor and clerk, and Portia said “the bond only says a pound of his flesh, NO blood!” and Shylock was furious and said “alright alright alright, I’ll have the money and not the bond.” And so half of his wealth went to the council. And the other half went to Antonio, and then Antonio said I will let you have this money back if you will give it to Shylock’s daughter who wanted to marry a Christian but Shylock didn’t want her to.
Portia and Narissa wanted their husband’s rings, but they were in disguise, but at last they got them and then when they went home they made joke about it and said “how dare you give away our rings”, and then Portia said “I’ll give you another ring” and Bassanio said “this is the same ring”, so then they told them the joke they had made and that they were the wise councillors!
And that is the end of the story.

Tell about Marco Polo's journey to China.

He met a lot of people; the people in Baghdad and Armenia, and they all looked quite different. I remember the part about the man of the mountains who made a valley and called it Paradise and made people drink wine and took people there and they thought they were in paradise. But then the soldiers came and killed him.

Tell about Marco Polo’s stay with the Kublai Khan in his summer residence.

He saw them hunting lions and they had an amazing tent made out of bamboo sticks. And he had a summer residence and a winter residence. And the Kublai Khan sprinkled the milk of the sacred mares in the airs so the spirits could drink it and protect the Kublai Khan.

Tell about Moses and the burning bush, or a story of Moses and Aaron.

Moses was sent out of Egypt because he killed an Egyptian. He became a shepherd and one day he was chasing he sheep up the mountain and he saw a burning bush and had fire but the leaves did not smoulder and burn, and Jesus..err..God’s voice came from the bus and said “Moses take off your sandals for you are standing on holy ground. Go with Aaron and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” And Moses said “How can I do that? If they ask who you are what shall I say?” and God said “I am who I am. I am Yahweh.” And that is all about Moses and the burning bush

Experiments

2016-12-05T10:03:00.003+00:00

We've been enjoying Science Lab in A Supermarket with B8, and have done some fun experiments.

How you know you're a home educating family....you have cups with celery +/- water all over the kitchen windowsills, next to crysanthenums in cups of food colouring and jars of sprouting beans...

Yellow cup is plain water, blue cup is salt water (notice egg is floating)

Getting our Chritmas crafting going

2016-11-26T09:56:00.000+00:00

Last year (when he was 7yrs old), B8 sewed these two pretty Christmas tree ornaments; a poinsettia, and a robin.

robin pattern from here (which has lots of other felt bird patterns)

Poetry memorization

2016-11-23T12:07:00.000+00:00

Ever since the kiddies were young we've done a lot of poetry and rhyme. We started off with lots of Mother Goose, A. A. Milne, Edward Lear, Stevenson and classic poetry anthologies for children. Along the way they have (with those amazing brains that kids have) memorized whole poems, chunks of poems, or just random phrases. But it's only been in the last year or two that we've started deliberately choosing poems to memorize with B8. (with R5 we enjoy poetry, but I'm holding off deliberate memorization till he is 6yrs old).

Ambleside Online have poets assigned for each term. I go about poetry memorisation as follows:

a) At the start of the term I print off all the poems for that term by that poet.

b) we spend the first few weeks of term reading the poems and getting to know them. We try and do a bit of poetry every day

c) I (or the child) then choose a poem that has been particularly enjoyable.

d) I print it out and slip it into a plastic wallet that is stuck on the back of the living room door.

e) Every day from then on when we do poetry, the child stands in front of his chosen poem and reads it out loud. He then turns his back to the poem and tries to say it all by memory.

Once he's done that once, we go back to the file of other poems by that poet and I read a couple more
for fun.

We keep this up, until the child can recite the entire poem by memory, and then it goes into his file of memorized poems.

Then we choose another poem by that term's poet and I do the same thing; print it off, slip it in to the plastic wallet stuck on the back of the living room door and the child starts trying to memories that.

He usually memories a couple of poems per term in this way.

Simple, yet effective. Poetry is the gift that keeps on giving, in so many ways, for the whole of the child's life.

Independent reading

2016-11-20T11:51:00.002+00:00

With my eldest child, B8, we are following Ambleside Online Y3's schedule (with a few minor tweaks).
I started off this term reading everything to him out loud, but as the term progressed I have slowly started giving him the responsibility of doing his own readings. I tell him which sections to read, sometimes writing down a few points that I want him to be aware of, and then send him off to read it. He then comes and narrates back to me what he has read once he's finished. I use the quality and detail of his narration as an indication of how well he has understood what he has read.
It is been very very successful, and has lifted a burden off my shoulders as well, as it frees me up to do some work with R5.

The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading. … This habit should be begun early; so soon as the child can read at all, he should read for himself, and to himself, history, legends, fairy tales, and other suitable matter. He should be trained from the first to think that one reading of any lesson is enough to enable him to narrate what he has read, and will thus get the habit of slow, careful reading, intelligent even when it is silent, because he reads with an eye to the full meaning of every clause. –Charlotte Mason

engrossed in Alice in Wonderland

B8 has been able to read well for many years, and (like many boys) he's always been particularly interested in non-fiction books.
A year ago, when he was just 7 years old, I lamented the fact that he didn't seem to have any interest in reading fiction chapter books. A veteran home schooling mother said not to worry, because there is a big difference between 7 year old and 8 year old boys, and that he will start reading more as he gets closer to 8yrs old....and that is exactly what happened. Of course, I do need to encourage him and free reading is on our daily timetable, but over the last few months he has read many of the free reads on the Ambleside Online for Year 3, and has enjoyed them!

Most of the work I do with R5 is reading. We make sure we do some every day. We are still using Reading Eggs, which I still recommend for any mothers who don't really know how to teach their child to read. This will do the work for you!
We are also working our way through the Treadwell Primer books and he is doing well and can read them. Some people wouldn't start reading with a 5 year old, they may start later, but R5 is ready now in a way that he wasn't a year ago for example, so it's working well and he wants to do it.

I am happy too, because I realise that helping them along the road of independent learning is to get them to be able to read. It opens a whole world up for them. Next year, when R5 starts doing Year 1, I anticipate reading everything out-loud to him, and similarly for Year 2, but when he is in Year 3 I hope to start transferring some of the work. And not having to read everything outloud to every child is, of course, the key to a Charlotte Mason mother's sanity and to lessen her workload.

Great article on independent reading from Brandy at Afterthoughts blog.

Back

2016-11-19T08:19:00.001+00:00

We're back after a short break, and it is now autumn!

Gorgeous fungi seen on our nature walk. Then we drew it
in our nature journals back at home.

B7 is now 8 years old, B8.

R4 is now 5 years old, R5

and baby M0 is 1 year old, so she's M1.

Home ed is trundling along and we're enjoying living an enriching Charlotte Mason education more and more.

People ask how long we spend on home educating per day; B8 spends about 3 hours a day doing his work, and R5 spends about 30 minutes a day.

I have lots of home ed stuff to share.....so watch this space!

and yet more fungi

A Charlotte Mason education

2016-08-11T10:05:00.000+01:00

One of the moderators of the Ambleside Online forums wrote this, which I thought was a helpful overview...

"A CM education is not so complicated as I see people making it... try just reading, narrating, discussing in small bites. sing together. Don't turn folk songs and hymns into lessons. Just sing. Don't turn poetry into a formal school lesson. Just read it. Rinse, repeat. Go for a walk. Enjoy nature. Get out coloured pencils and sketch something, anything, a few times a week over a year. Don't make big, elaborate plans. You need not duplicate your school experience. Don't bother with printable coloring pages and flash cards and timeline figures. You don't need them. You need your books or the computer or kindle, music and a way to play it, paper and writing utensils (or salt in a cake pan and a finger). Make a timeline figure from index cards onto which you trace a basic cookie cutter shape. Use beanie babies, legos, dolls, or more index card (or plain paper) paper dolls your kids create to tell the stories. Lighten the load. If a printable isn't recommended on our website, you can probably live without it. You could even thrive without it."

enjoying a local wildflower meadow

Too much, too young: Should schooling start at age 7?

2016-07-30T08:17:00.001+01:00

"A long-running debate on this question has been reignited by a letter, signed by about 130 early childhood education experts. It called for an extension of informal, play-based preschool provision and for the start of formal schooling in England to be delayed until the age of 7, from the current effective start at age 4.

This would bring it in line with the overwhelming evidence showing that starting school later is best, and the practice in many countries, such as Sweden and Finland. These countries have better academic achievement and child well-being, despite children not starting school until age 7.

The fear is that the English system – which was introduced in 1870 in order to get women back into work, rather than on the basis of any educational benefit to children – is now causing profound damage. A similar story applies in the rest of the UK, and there is pressure for greater formality in preschools in other countries, such as the US."

I too with my children have noticed a big difference in maturity and behaviour when the child turns 7yrs old. It's almost like before that point there is a gradual change, but suddenly in the year they turn 7yrs old there is a significant step-like change.

What our education system in the UK doesn't seem to realise is that more is not always better, sometimes less is more.

full article from New Scientist here.

"In New Zealand, several key investigations compared children who started formal literacy lessons at age 5 with those who started age 7. They showed that early formal learning doesn’t improve reading development, and may even be damaging. By the age of 11, there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups. However, those who started aged 5 developed less positive attitudes to reading and showed poorer text comprehension than those who had started later."

Exams!

2016-07-12T20:54:00.000+01:00

Home ed exams? Writing your own exams for your kids to do?
Unheard of here in England, but I have decided to start doing exams at the end of every term, as recommended by Ambleside Online (the curriculum we follow).

Last week B7 spent a couple of days doing an end-of-year exam, with questions incorporating topics we have covered during this academic year, since September 2015. No revision at all! He just answered them straight up as best he could remember. He did really well, considering the topics had only ever been covered once up to 9 months ago and not since.

(in future I will do end-of-term exams)

I put these questions together based on Ambleside Online exam questions, using suggestions from my favourite blog Joyous Lessons, and some I made up myself.

and now we are officially on summer vacation! hooray!
We still need to finished The Little Duke by Charlotte Yonge, and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle, but they are enjoyable reads and we'll continue them over the summer.

For interest, here is B7's exam. The questions are in bold. I used a voice recording app on my ipad to record most of B7's answers, and then typed them out underneath (some I didn't record). All the answers are printed out, together with the drawings he did, and in a file which he can keep as a record of his learning.

Geography

1. Draw a diagram to illustrate the water cycle. Tell me all you know about it.
First you have an ocean, and then the sun shines a lot, and it gets really hot so the water evaporates and turns into clouds. And then the clouds rain back into the ocean. And that is the water cycle!

2. What do you know about how a stream changes in the seasons.
In the dry seasons, if it is really dry the stream will dry up. Then in the rainy seasons streams are very full.

3. What are the four seasons? How do we get them?
Spring, summer, autumn, winter.
The earth tilts, and the part that is towards the sun has summer, and the other side not tilting
towards the sun has winter. And then when the part that is titling towards the sun moves round,
it has winter, and the other part has summer.
And spring is between winter and summer and autumn is between summer and winter.

4. Can you explain why the sun never seems to remain still in the same place in the sky?

Well, because the earth is turning on its axis and that makes it night and day, and that is why the sun never seems to remain in the same place in the sky.

5. Describe a compass. What does it tell us?
A compass is a magnet closed in a box which says north, east, south, west, and the magnet points
towards the magnetic north pole and tells you where north is.

6. Show me where Venice is on a map of Europe.

Arithmetic

1.      Add 405 + 1422.      Subtract: 378 – 63 3.      What numbers do X, Y and Z represent in this sequence: 3, 6, 9, 12, X, Y,   Z
4.      Multiply 47 x 4
5. Divide 147 by 3
6.      Use <, >, or = to make this statement true: 76 __ 69
7.      What is a quadrilateral
8.      What is the perimeter of a square with a side of 6 cm? What is the area? Write the addition and multiplication equations for each.
9.      Draw and define the following:
:: What is a parallelogram?
:: What is a hexagon?
:: What is a right triangle?
10. What is the gradient of a line if the rise = 16, and the run =4
11. Work out the answer to 31 x 24

Shakespeare

     1. Draw a detailed scene from one of our Shakespeare plays this year (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cymbeline, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest).
Narrate what the scene depicts.

(he drew a picture of Ariel trying to confuse Ferdinand).

Picture Study

1. Describe one of Monet’s paintings that we looked at (from memory).

I am going to tell you about the paiting of Jean Monet on his hobby horse. It’s a painting on Monet’s son, Jean Monet, and he’s on his hobby horse. And he’s outside in the garden. I’d say he’s about 4 or 5 years old. I can remember there are some red flowers in the background.

2. Tell me what you know about Vincent Van Gogh’s life.

Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and he painted, but only one of his paintings sold during this life. He wasn’t successful during his own life, but very successful after his life.

Bonus Question for L5 (who wanted a question to answer!):

Tell me what you know about Degas:

He was famous for painting dancers and horses. Sometimes he got a little bit fierce but he always apologised. He went blind so he had to do sculptures.

Piano/Composer Study

1. Tell me all you know about Beethoven’s life.

2. Name one of you favourite Beethoven compositions. Listen to it.
3. Play any piece from your piano book, in full.

Recitation

1. Daddy will choose a poem for you to recite from memory from our poetry memorization book.
2. You choose a poem you have enjoyed from Christina Rosetti OR one of our poetry books, Recite it out loud to the family as well as you can.

3. Recite two Bible verses learned this year.

Italian

1. Sing Jingle Bells in Italian, or the chorus from Il Pappagallo.
2. In Italian tell me what you do on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, using full sentences.3. In Italian tell me the Getting Ready to Go Outside series.

4. Look out of the front window, and tell me three phrases in Italian for what you can see.

Singing

Sing your favourite folksong and hymn from this year.

Literature

1. Tell your favourite part of the Wind in the Willows.

Toad was thrown in prison!

Stealing a valuable motor car: 12 months
Furious driving: 3 years
And then for the cheek, which was pretty bad, 15 years.

And that was 19 years altogether!

Then in prison there was a king girl who made toad give her aunt some pennies, and then she got a dress and he escaped!

2. Tell me what you remember about Betsy at the fair.

I remember when she had to do work. Betsy didn’t have any money to buy a train ticket, she had to work for money. She needed the train ticket to get back because someone was supposed to pick her up but they didn’t get to pick her up. She had to wash plates.

3. Draw one of the wishes the children made from Five Children and It. Describe what happened.

See drawing

History

1. Tell me about the life of one Saint who lived during the days of the Roman Empire
St. Felix. He hid in a hole when it was the Christian persecution, and a spider wove a web over the hole so that the soldiers couldn’t find him. He was the Pope.

2. Draw a picture of the Colosseum, and tell me what you know about it

It’s a place where there were gladiatorial games. And it was a large building with an open area in the middle.

3. Who was Charlemagne and what did he do in Europe?

Charlemagne was a King…King Charles the Great. He travelled around on his horse converting people to Christianity.

4. Tell me all you know about Pope St. Gregory the Great, and St. Augustine of Kent.

St. Gregory. He saw Angles tied up in a Roman slave market and he said “they’re not angles but ANGELS.” He was a Pope.

St. Augustine travelled to England to convert it to Christianity. He was a monk.

St. Gregory sent St. Augustine

5. What do you know of Harald as a little boy? Tell everything you can think of.

When he killed the wolf by throwing his spears. He was in a mountain in the snow and he threw his spear at the wolf.
And then the funeral of Halfdan. And when Olaf was telling him about how he came.

6. Tell me everything you know about William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings

William the Conqueror fought the Battle of Hastings because Edward the Confessor died without any children and they made Edward’s advisor Harold, in to the King. But William the Conqueror was not happy because he wanted to be King. He came from Normandy, and sailed to England and burnt his ships. He won the Battle of Hastings.

7. Describe one episode from St. Joan of Arc’s life

When she was taken to court by the English, they trialled her, and found her guilty. Then the burnt her. They felt sorry after that they had burnt a Saint, and she was innocent.

Natural History and General Science

1. Think of one flower you have seen. Describe what it looks like and where you saw it growing.

Moon Carrot. It glows in the dark and is very rare. It is a white flower, it has one main stem which branches off and makes little white flowers.

2. Draw an English bird of your choice.

He chose to draw a raven, because he's recently heard the Edgar Allen Poem "The Raven", and
"nevermore quoth the raven" has become a bit of a catchphrase around here!

3. Choose something you can remember from My Book of Bees and tell me all about it. Draw it.

When they add two hives together they put a layer of newspaper between the bee hives and the bees eat through the newspaper

4. Describe one memorable thing you saw on your morning walks with daddy to the park in autumn, and spring.

We saw a plant with poisonous berries called Lords and Ladies. But we saw that with Grandpa.
I remember also a tree where it is always autumn under it. And I remember a tree with eyes. I remember our climbing tree, which is a wing nut tree. It grows in different countries.

Catechism & Bible

1. Tell me everything you know about the Trinity.

The Trinity is three persons in one God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Like a three leaf clove.

2. Answer these Penny Catechism questions:
Who Made You?

God made me.

Why did God Make You?

To know Him, to serve Him and love Him in this world, so as to be happy with Him in the next world.

Of which must you take most care, of your body or of your soul?

I must take most care of my soul.

What is God?
The supreme spirit who is infinite.

3. Tell me everything you know about the wedding feast at Cana.

I know it was Jesus’ first miracle. Jesus went to a wedding party with his mother Mary. And they ran out of wine, and Mary said, do whatever this man tells you. So Jesus told them to fill the barrels with water. He blessed them, and they the water turned in to wine.

4. What are:

the Annunciation (what date is it celebrated?

It is when the angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her she was going to have Jesus. 25^th March

the Nativity (what date is it celebrated?)
When Jesus was born. 25^th December! CHRISTMAS! (clap clap!)

the Transfiguration
When Jesus made Himself look different to the apostles. He was white.

the Resurrection
When Jesus rirses from the dead.

the Ascension
When Jesus goes to Heaven.

the Assumption (what date is it celebrated?)
When Mary goes to Heaven.
(doesn’t know)

5.      When is the Feast of St. Joseph?
March 19^th

6.      Tell me the seven Sacraments?

(yes – all correct)

7.      Say your Act of Contrition

(yes - Correct)

8.      What exactly is “genuflecting?”

When you kneel down and your right knee touches the ground.


Myths and Legends

1.      Tell me your favourite Norse Myth.

I liked the one about Heimdall, the watchman of Asgard. He stands on the rainbow bridge and looks out for danger. And when he sees danger he blows his horn. and one day wheile he was watching he saw a beuatiul young lady come up, but it was really a witch in disguise, but eh didn't blow his horn and she walked right in to Asgard. The Aesir gods all started quarrelling about how much gold they were going to give her, and then Odin said that she must be a witch who should be burned, because she had brought so much quarrelling between her. So three times they tried to burn her but each time she rose out of the fire.

Tales

1. Tell me the story of Mr. Vinegar, or the Three Sillies or Bearskin.

Mr. Vinegar and Mrs Vinegar lived in a vinegar bottle, and one day their vinegar bottle got smashed so they had no place to live. and they climbed up a tree , and went to sleep. When they awoke in the night they saw a band of robbers under the tree and they were divinding the golden guineas they had stolen......(cant quite hear the next part on the audio recording...!)....."go to market Mr. Vinegar with these golden guineas and buy a cow". SO he went to the fair and bought a lovely cow, the best cow in the world. But after he bought it he saw a man playing bag pipes and all the children were following him, and he swopped the cow for the bag pipes. But he couldn't play a tune so the children did not follow him, so he decided to swap the bag pipes for a pair of gloves because he was feeling cold. Then he saw another man along the road, and he swapped the gloves for a stick...I cant remember why....then when he got home his wife nearly broke all the bones in his body because he came back with a plain old stick.

Handicraft
1.      Show Nonna how you fold a short sleeved t-shirt.

2.      Bundle together a pair of socks.

Passion Flower

2016-07-07T21:38:00.002+01:00

Out on a walk round the block and we spotted this passion flower growing along someone's fence....so we stopped while I took a photo and did an impromptu Catechism lesson:

"In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant, particularly the numbers of its various flower parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus and especially his crucifixion:

* The pointed tips of the leaves were taken to represent the Spear.

*The tendrils represent the whips used in the flagellation of Christ.

* The ten petals and sepals represent the ten faithful apostles (less St. Peter the denier and Judas Iscariot the betrayer).

* The flower’s radial filaments, which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower, represent the crown of thorns.

* The chalice-shaped ovary with its receptacle represents a hammer or the Holy Grail

* The 3 stigmata represent the 3 nails and the 5 anthers below them the 5 wounds (four by the nails and one by the lance).

* The blue and white colours of many species’ flowers represent Heaven and Purity."

(copied from here)

There are learning opportunities everywhere, if you harness them!