Category Archives: Ambleside Online

Wrapping Up Week 2 (2014-15)

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weekly wrap-up

As we finish up our second week of school, I am more excited than ever about this year.  I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the first year of our history cycle as much as some of the others, but that was actually one of my favorite parts of this week.  We had a lot of fun exploring different books related to our history and science subjects, as well as watching a couple videos (always Ian’s favorite part).

Bible

During our morning Bible time we continued reading Wisdom and the Millers. We read chapters 21-24 and would have finished the book except we skipped one day when we went on a field trip.  Ian would love to read multiple chapters each day, but I like to keep him wanting more.  After our chapter we always read a few verses in Proverbs.  This week we read Proverbs 13:12-14:10.

We’re on Week 77 in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, which continues the story of Ezra, so we didn’t move ahead in Bible Road Trip Year One (which only spent one week on Ezra).

Math

Ian finished up Year 1 of the Mathematics Enhancement Programme.  We took a break partway through his Kindergarten year when it got a bit frustrating, so I wanted to be sure we finished that before diving into Year 2 for 1st grade.  (The years are a bit confusing because the program is from the UK and doesn’t follow the US grading system.  I’ve heard of people using Year 1 for 1st, but initially I had read that it was for Kindergarten so we started it then.  If it gets to be too challenging I may stretch the material for Year 2 beyond 1st grade.)

Common Core, Super Hero Double Digit Addition With and WitWe also did some work on learning to add 2-digit numbers using a really fun supplement called “Superhero Addition” created by a friend of mine.  Ian loved it and did really well!  It turns out he knows his addition facts much better than he lets on.  I was so surprised by how fast he flew through the pages we did–without a single mistake!  Evidently superheroes are highly motivating.  He was eager to do extra math pages all week.  (Thanks, Katie!)

Literature (Ambleside Online)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4123T2C8FAL.jpgFor poetry I took a break from A Child’s Garden of Verses to read poems to go along with our history lesson.  Prayers from the Ark and The Creatures’ Choir by Carmen Bernos De Gasztold, translated by Rumer Godden contains poems written from the perspective of various animals.  We made a fun game of it where I would read the poem and then the boys would guess which animal it was about.  They really enjoyed it and we read at least six or seven each day.

I’m so thankful for Ambleside Online’s weekly schedules.  They take a rather daunting booklist and break it down into really manageable chunks, spreading some books out over many months, which I think will really help Ian remember them better in the long run.  We read everything scheduled for week two and finished “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” in Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book on the additional free reading list.

IMG_20140715_143928In addition to readings for AO Year 1, the literature program we’re reviewing had us spending the week with The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  It was perfect timing, because the Skirball Cultural Center, which we decided to visit for a history field trip, happened to have a special exhibit on this book!

The kids loved seeing the familiar pictures and learning more about the author.  I wish we’d had time to stay longer.

History Cycle

I’m generally following the lesson topics for Mystery of History, Vol. 1, though I’m not necessarily using that curriculum as designed.  (Do I ever?)  Week 2 covers:

  • Noah and the Flood
  • Ice Age
  • Dinosaurs

That’s a lot to pack into one week, especially since we could spend a lot of time on each one!  I prefer to use living books to teach topics whenever possible, only resorting to the textbook (which I paraphrase) when I can’t find an appropriate book.  Here’s what we read this week:

Noah and the Flood

We have lots of books on this topic (see below), but I focused on Noah’s Ark by Jerry Pinkney.  It’s very well written with beautiful watercolor illustrations.  My favorite page is an underwater scene where sea creatures are swimming through the ruins of buildings now submerged by the flood:

“The water rose over cities and towns. Whales swam down ruined streets.  Schools of fish darted through empty windows.”

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We repeated many of the things we did last time we covered Noah, since the younger ones didn’t remember much.  We read several of the books below (and had them all out for the children to look through on their own) and watched Greatest Adventures of the Bible: Noah’s Ark. We also talked about how people groups around the world had flood legends that seem to point back to the story of Noah.  We read a page in Dinosaurs by Design by Duane Gish that shared some of these different legends, which Ian really enjoyed.

IMG_20140715_133305The highlight of our week was definitely visiting the Noah’s Ark Exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center.  Ian has been asking to go back ever since we first went two years ago.  We noticed many new things and used up every minute of our two-hour time slot.  The boys are already talking about “next time,” but since it’s well over an hour away, we may have to wait all four years until our history cycle comes around again.  Then at least Nicholas will be old enough to remember it too!

Here’s our collection of Noah/Flood Books (some of these are basic preschool level books I read with Arianna and Elijah):

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The Ice Age

I read the page on the Ice Age from Dinosaurs by Design by Duane Gish.  It was just an introduction to the topic, but that’s all I wanted this time around.  I ordered Life in the Great Ice Age by Michael J. Oard, but since it hasn’t arrived yet, I think we’ll probably just save it for the next time through the history cycle.

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Dinosaurs

There are so many possibilities when it comes to studying dinosaurs.  I considered extending our time on this subject into next week, but Ian isn’t especially fascinated by them so I think once he’s had time to create a page for his history notebook we’ll just move on.

I tried to keep it simple this week so that dinosaurs didn’t overwhelm the rest of our schoolwork.  We read through What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? by John D. Morris and Ken Ham.  Then we watched The Creation Adventure Team: A Jurassic Ark Mystery and Buddy Davis Adventures: I Dig Dinosaurs! (I like the second one much better, but Ian really likes them both.)

Science

In The World of Animals (part of the God’s Design for Life curriculum from Answers in Genesis), we went deeper into our study of mammals.  Ian made a collage of mammal pictures for his notebook:

 

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We read in the textbook about spiny anteaters (echidnas) and the platypus, mammals that are unusual because they lay eggs.  Ian was interested in that, so we read a little more in a book we have that also happens to be called World of Animals (by Martin Walters) We also watched an episode of Wild Kratts called “Platypus Cafe“.

Later in the week we read in the textbook about primates.  There was a special section about the intelligence of primates, which reminded Ian of Koko, whom we read about in Koko’s Story by Francine Patterson.  In Ian’s notebook he wanted to record that Curious George is not a monkey because he has no tail (which would make him an ape).

After reading About Mammals by Cathryn Sill, Ian also wanted to read About Rodents, so even though they weren’t covered in our textbook, we spent a little time talking about rodents.  He really enjoyed learning about them because we see lots of squirrels in the park near our house, and he was processing what we read with what he’s observed there.  The Life Cycle of a Beaver by Bobbie Kalman was full of great information.  (We’ll be finishing it up this weekend, and then I’m planning to let the kids watch Wild Kratts “Build it Beaver.”

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We still have quite a bit of time left on mammals, so I’m sure Ian will have no trouble finishing up that last notebook page.

As you can see, it was a busy week!  I really enjoyed exploring these subjects with Ian and was reminded once more how glad I am that we get to homeschool!

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Wrapping Up Week 1 (2014-15)

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weekly wrap-up

Our first week flew by!  I’ve decided that this year I want to write a weekly wrap-up of what we’re doing.  One of my main purposes in blogging has been to have a record of what we do, and I’ve found myself looking back to old posts more frequently than I thought I would when I want to find activities or links to go with certain books or Bible studies.

So I apologize if these posts are tedious to everyone else, but they’re really going to help my scatter-brain keep track of the things we cover this year!  Here’s what we did this week:

Bible

Morning Proverbs: Wisdom and the Millers (Chapters 16-20), Proverbs 13:1-12 (We just read 2-3 verse each morning and discuss them.)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512TaSUF%2BrL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgStory: The exiles return to start building the temple (Ezra 1-4).  We read Week 76 in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, which lined up well with Bible Road Trip Year One Week 30.  We did the BRT research, but we didn’t get through all the Bible reading because it covered the whole book of Ezra, which we’ll finish up next week.  We watched the first episode of What’s in the Bible Vol. 7, “Ezra and Nehemiah,” and some extra research in the Rose Guide to the Temple.  (The boys love the pictures in the Rose Guides.)

I want to do quite a bit of “notebooking” with Ian this year, but I’m holding off on a Bible notebook for now.  We’ll wait until we start the New Testament in a few weeks.

Arianna and I started reading through The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, but I’m not sure if we’ll be able to keep that up.  She loves the pictures, and we read through several pages at one sitting, but it’s hard to schedule anything consistently with her.

Literature (Ambleside Online)

I’ve been looking forward to starting Ambleside Online Year 1 since Ian was a toddler, and our first week did not disappoint!  P1030480He really enjoyed the poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses each day as well as most of the readings.  (He didn’t complain about any, but some he was definitely more into than others.)

We’re using Leslie Laurio’s paraphrase of Parables from Nature by Margaret Gatty because I had heard many people saying their children had a hard time with that book.  I was surprised by how much Ian loved the story of the caterpillar learning to have faith about becoming a butterfly, so I think it was a good choice.  I’m hoping that later on perhaps we can read the original version, once he’s gotten more familiar with the book.

Ian’s already a fan of Thornton W. Burgess, as the boys have been listening several of his books on their iPod for the last few years.  So when we started reading The Burgess Bird Book, Ian was delighted to discover familiar characters were part of his school work.  After we read about Jenny Wren we listened to recordings of what wrens sound like.

Grandma recently returned from a trip to the UK, so it was fun to start Our Island Story, though Ian was a little confused by the mythological beginning.  I know we’ll come across many references to Greek and Roman gods in classic literature, so it was a good introduction.  (We’ve talked a lot about false gods during our study of the Old Testament, so it wasn’t a completely new idea.)

We continued picking away at the Year 1 “free reads” with The Velveteen Rabbit.  (We started working through this list a few months ago with Little House in the Big Woods, Peter Pan and Charlotte’s Web.)  Since there wasn’t a scheduled fairy tale this week, we also started “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” in Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book.

I was so thankful I had gone ahead and purchased the bundle of 225 ebooks from Yesterday’s Classics a while back.  Many of the books we’ll be reading with Ambleside Online are included, as well as lots of other wonderful choices for free reading.

In addition to our AO reading, we’re also reviewing a program called Lightening Literature 1st Grade, from Hewitt Homeschooling, which had us spending the week with Madeline, an old favorite of ours.

History Cycle

In addition to the Ambleside Online history selections, we’ll be lightly covering Creation through Christ in preparation for doing our own history cycle next year starting with the early church through the Reformation.

This week we read the Creation story and talked about early man.  We read chapter one in Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World, Vol. 1 a few weeks ago, so I didn’t do much more this week besides listening to several selections on the CDs that go with Diana Waring’s History Revealed curriculum.  P1030476(I purchased the Ancient Civilizations full CD set from Answers in Genesis and am really enjoying the fascinating information she shares!) They were more for me since they’re not quite on Ian’s level, but I chose to only have them on when he was around and I know he was listening and picking up on quite a bit.

We started a history notebook, which is going to be really simple this year, just including pictures from the Homeschool in the Woods History Through the Ages-Collection CD, which has timeline figures from every period of history.  I won’t be doing anything fancy with Ian’s history notebook this year, but I wanted to start developing the habit.

As a fun extra, we watched Buddy Davis Adventures: Extreme Caving, which is a fun, Creation-based DVD that teaches a lot about caves and even has a segment on early man.

Science

This year we’re going through the God’s Design for Life curriculum from Answers in Genesis. (There are 4 years to the God’s Design for Science series, so if we like them I’m planning to use it as a cycle until all my children have gone through it at least once.)  I really like the way this curriculum is designed to be used from 1st-8th grade with specific readings and activities for younger and older students.  We’re going to stick with the suggestions for the lower grades unless there’s a subject Ian wants to spend more time studying.

wofAThere are three books to go through in God’s Design for Life , which fits well with the structure of our year since Ambleside Online uses three terms.  During the first term of this year we’ll be going through The World of Animals. This week we read through the introductory chapters and began studying mammals.  I plan on having Ian keep a science notebook as well, but we only got as far as labeling the first section.  We’ll be reading about mammals for the next couple weeks, so he’s got plenty of time for notebooking.

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Plans for Our 2014-15 School Year

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Keyword: “Plans” (Every thing in this post is subject to change!)

Recently I was part of on online conversation with some other homeschool moms and someone brought up the topic of “planning.”  It’s amazing what a wide range of planning goes into different families’ school years depending on how many kids they have, what style of education they lean toward, personalities, etc.  Some of them literally just go day to day, following a “delight directed” learning approach.  Others want the support of a curriculum that lays out what they’re going to do each day over the 36 weeks of the school year.

Plans Collage

For myself, I find it incredibly helpful to have at least a rough outline that shows me where I want to be in each subject each week if I plan to complete something by the end of the year.  I usually allow a lot of flexibility with weeks scheduled in for catching up, and I’m not a slave to the schedule.  I just find that it really helps me to see everything laid out.  (I’m a visual learner and have a hard time functioning without some sort of plan that I can see.)  Plus I find that we accomplish a lot more when I have things written down.

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I have found the easiest way for me to plan is to use a blank calendar.  There are many available online, but this year I printed mine up from www.calendarlabs.com.  I ignore the days of the week and instead use those columns for different subjects.  (In the Sunday column I number the week of school that we’re on.)

The only subjects I’ve scheduled for the whole year are history and science.  We’re currently reviewing a program that uses children’s literature so I’ve written in those books for this month as well as where we’ll be in our Bible study, just so I can see what we’ll be learning about at the same time.  Sometimes when I see a holiday or break is coming up I’ll try to finish an extra lesson or break from a subject early just so we don’t stop right in the middle of something.  (For example, in August Ian has a week of baseball camp and then a week of music camp, and we’re hoping to get away for a week in September.  So I tried to make sure our science units got squeezed around those weeks.)

I didn’t write on the calendar any of the reading assignments from Ambleside Online Year 1 because those are already so nicely laid out for me it seemed like a waste of time to try to write them out again.

Here’s what we’re planning to use for 1st grade with Ian:

IMG_20140707_150943 Bible/Character

  • For morning devotions we’ll continue going through Proverbs and the Miller family books.
  • For study, we plan to finish Bible Road Trip – Year 1 (review coming soon!), which will correspond somewhat with our family Bible time as we go through Old Story New by Marty Machowski
  • I’m sure there will be quite a few We Choose Virtues discussions as well.

Literature

  • Right now I’m reviewing Lightening Literature for 1st Grade, but I don’t plan to continue it past this month.  (We’re revisiting a few of our Five in a Row favorites with it, so it’s a fun way to start the year.)
  •  Ambleside Online Year 1 – I don’t plan on using everything from AO as written, but I would like to try to get through all their literature and poetry selections this year.

Writing

  • Spelling You See – We did the first half of Level B- Jack and Jill last year, and I think we’ll go back and finish at least that level once we finish the Lightening Literature program.  (I tend to lean toward a Charlotte Mason approach when it comes to writing, so we won’t be doing much composition unless Ian expresses a desire.)

IMG_20140707_151040History/Geography

  • I’ll be loosely starting our 4-year history cycle, covering Creation through Christ.  I’m not going to be using any particular program, but I’ll be covering various stories from Mystery of History and Story of the World and incorporating several other resources to help Ian become familiar with some of the important people and events from that time period.
  • For various reasons we won’t spend as much time on our history cycle as I plan to in the future, so I think we’ll also do some of the history and geography selections from Ambleside Online Year 1.

Science

  • I’ve had my eye on the God’s Design for Science series from Answers in Genesis for a while, and I decided to give it a try this year.  We’ll be doing God’s Design for Life which has 3 books:
    1. The World of Animals
    2. The Human Body
    3. The World of Plants

 Math

  • We’re finishing up the last week of Year 1 in the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (since we took a break mid-year when Ian started getting frustrated).  Then we’ll start right in with Year 2.
  • I’m currently reviewing two supplemental math programs, one online and one software program, and I’m sure we’ll continue using at least one of them until Ian has mastered his addition/subtraction facts.

Foreign Language

  • Ian has been looking forward to getting back into our Salsa Spanish lessons using the Salsa materials from the Wyoming Department of Education.  Luckily there are still plenty to take us through this coming year.

Arts

  • Hymns: Ian is learning about 1/month on the piano, so we’ll focus on those.
  • Composers: AO selections
  • Music: piano, choir, hand chimes
  • Art: ARTistic Pursuits (finish K-3 Vol. 2; possibly start Vol. 1)

I’m considering this a “Jr. Kindergarten” year for Elijah (who won’t be 5 until well into the fall) simply because he’s already doing so much Kindergarten work on his own and reading really well.  I don’t insist that he join us for any part of school (sometimes it’s more helpful if he’s off playing with Arianna), but he manages to pick up quite a bit and I have no interest in pushing him beyond that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Kindergarten Our Way

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P1010509bThis year we “officially” start our homeschool journey as Ian begins Kindergarten.  We’re joining a local co-op, and it’s odd feeling like a rookie when in some ways we’ve been at this for a couple years.  Yet there’s definitely a difference now that he’s old enough to be in school. For the past few years we did school how we wanted, when we wanted, and if we wanted to skip it altogether, who cared? Whereas now there are expectations.  Still, I’m excited about this new season.  I love the pride I hear in his voice when he tells people he’s in Kindergarten.  For the last few years when people would ask him if he goes to preschool he would quietly answer, “We homeschool,” and I could tell he felt like it just didn’t count, even though most of our friends homeschool.  This “Kindergarten” label makes him feel like he has joined the ranks of all the big kids in his life.

If anyone were to glance at our lesson plans, however, they would probably be a bit surprised, as they look rather different from what most people think of as Kindergarten.  I’m not a big fan of traditional curriculum.  Philosophically I tend to lean more toward a Charlotte Mason approach of using living books and narration (though I’m not a diehard CM follower who quotes her books chapter and verse).  Also, I can’t follow a curriculum to save my life.  I’m constantly tweaking and adapting things to suit our needs, and so I just couldn’t justify spending a lot of money on a well thought out curriculum that’s only going to really be used as a reference.  I’m about 80% sure that I’m going to use Ambleside Online as our core starting in 1st grade.  (My only hesitancy is that I’m considering putting together our own 4-year history cycle rather than AO’s 6-year cycle and doing that subject all together as a family.)  So I wanted to model our Kindergarten plans after what we’ll be doing once we start AO’s Year 1 next year.

The wonderful advisory board at AO has provided a list of quality books to use before children start Year 1 (they call it Year 0), but that wasn’t going to suit our needs for Kindergarten for a few reasons.  First and foremost, we’ve already read most of them many times over the last few years.  Not that it’s bad to repeat quality literature, but it really wouldn’t help Ian feel like he had had moved on to the next stage of life if we just kept reading the same stories.  Also, he’ll be turning 6 mid-year, and I feel like he’s ready to handle a little more structure.  So we’ll be doing what many refer to as a “Year 0.5,” which I’ve tried to design to be similar to Year 1 as far as subject matter, lesson length, and frequency.  (There’s no official list for Year 0.5, but many families have put together similar plans and posted them.

We started school this past week.  (Many schools in our area are year-round and begin in July. Plus I plan to take at least a month off after our baby arrives in September and I wanted to establish some habits before then.)  I was surprised at how smoothly our transition went.  We haven’t done any math since before we moved (months ago!), and even then we usually only did one or two lessons a week.  We’ve also been working on learning to form letters, but only doing it about once a week.  So it was a bit of a shift for Ian being asked to do these things every day (except Wednesday, when we go to the park with other families from our co-op).  By the third day, however, he didn’t question it at all, just sat down and did it.  He even seemed to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment he got when he’d completed his work.  Most of what we do, however, is reading aloud.  I’m starting to introduce him to Charlotte Mason’s method of narration, but not pressuring him on it.  After he turns six I’ll probably start to ask a little more of him.  For right now I’m just asking him to tell the story back to me when we’ve done a reading that seems fairly straightforward (and prompting him more than Charlotte Mason purists would approve).

To help me keep straight what I want to accomplish through the week, I wrote up a chart listing the subjects and what I want to do for each day.  I check them off as we go, and often we’re not done until dinnertime because we don’t ever sit down to get it all done in one chunk.  I try to let him play through as much of the day as possible, but if he asks to watch a show or seems to need something to do, then I offer to read to him or have him sit down to do his copywork or engage in a math activity.  The chart will be a work in progress (I already tweaked it a few times as we went through the week), but I think it’s going to be a good way for me to keep organized.  Here’s a picture of my marked up copy from this week, and here’s the actual document (HTS Kindergarten Chart updated) if you want to create something similar to use for your own family without starting from scratch.

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My plan is to keep these marked up charts for my records.  Across the top I’ll be keeping an ongoing count of how many days we’ve “done” school.  I’m not legally required to keep any records this year since Kindergarten isn’t mandatory in our state, but I want to have an idea of how we match up with the legal requirements so I’ll know if I need to make any changes for next year.

If you’re interested in what resources we’re using this year, I’ve listed them by subject below.  Many of the books I chose are part of the Yesterday’s Classics e-book package (225 books for $99.95, but often on sale for $49.95), but many others are available free for Kindle.  Here’s our (slightly daunting) list of books and other resources (edited over Christmas break):

Bible:

Copywork: finish learning letters.  Start Bible verses.

Writing: (Start 2nd term) Journal pages (color a picture, write a sentence about it). Relate to other parts of curriculum, field trips if he can’t think of what to write about.

Reading Instruction:

Math: MEP Year 1, Miquon (see this post for more)

Science/Technology/Nature Study:

Literature:

  • Classics: Fairy Tales (from Andrew Lang’s color books–not Red and Blue since they’re in AO-Year 1, recommended Uncle Remus stories)
  • Poetry: The Rooster Crows; Mother Goose; A Child’s Own Book of Verse, Book Two (After starting Book One, I realized most of it consists of nursery rhymes and traditional verses that were included in the other books we were using, whereas Book Two has longer, less familiar poems.)
  • “Free Reads”:

History/Geography

Fine Arts:

  • Music Appreciation (Ambleside Online: 1 folk song, hymn each term)
  • Piano Instruction: finish Yamaha Junior Music Course, then either the next Yamaha course or private lessons at home with mom
  • Composer Study (AO schedule: 1 each term)
  • Art Instruction: Five in a Row lessons, finish My First Book of Drawing from Kumon, start ARTistic Pursuits K-3 Book One The Way They See It – ARTistic Pursuits Preschool.  (I have been eyeing the books from ARTistic Pursuits for a couple years, but Ian is so artistically challenged I hesitated to even buy the preschool book up until now.  I thought we’d be okay jumping in with the K-3 series, but after looking through it I decided to save it for later and go ahead with the preschool book so we can hopefully include Elijah as well,.)
  • Artist Study (AO schedule: 1 each term)

Foreign Language (start 2nd term): Salsa Spanish (3 weeks per episode) Unit 1 (Episodes 101-106) (lesson plan materials from Wyoming Department of Education)

Physical Education: Family Time Fitness

It sounds like a TON of work for a Kindergartener, I know, but it’s actually not that bad.  Most of it just means being intentional about what I choose to read aloud (and there’s still plenty of time to read his choices as well–right now he’s really into The Littles series by John Peterson, currently on Book 3).  There are a lot of books listed here, but most of them we’re only reading a couple pages from each week.  (He often wanted to keep going, but with the exception of The Japanese Twins I didn’t give in.  I’d like to keep him wanting more!)  Also, many are available as free audiobooks (booksshouldbefree.com), and Ian often requests them in the car or at bedtime (especially fairy tales).

And just as a final note, this is NOT a plan I will be attempting to follow with my younger children when they’re in Kindergarten.  They can listen in on things like science, history and literature and won’t need their own books assigned for those.  It’s just that as the oldest Ian doesn’t get a chance to benefit from hearing older siblings’ lessons, so this is my way of exposing him to things he wouldn’t have a chance to catch otherwise.  I’m not chained to this “curriculum” I’ve put together.  We’ll be flexible.  Some we’ll get to; some we won’t.  I’m not overly concerned with what Ian achieves academically at this point in his life.  But if I didn’t have some sort of plan we wouldn’t be accomplishing much of anything, so at least this gives me something to look at, something to shoot for.

Happy Back-to-School!

Posted in Ambleside Online, Charlotte Mason, Kindergarten

Learning as we play…and drive…and live

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I recently realized that so much of our day could qualify as “school,” but I don’t necessarily think of it as such because it’s just life for us.  I’m talking about the audiobooks and read-alouds that Ian listens to throughout his day.  Yes, we listen to the iPod playlists I put together for our Bible lessons, and sometimes he requests other Bible stories too.  But I realized I had the opportunity to introduce some quality children’s literature through my iPod as well.

It started when I stumbled upon some recordings of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.  I have always loved the stories and thought I’d see if Ian would enjoy listening to them while he played as much as watching the movies.  (He’d found my old VHS tapes and was asking to watch them far more than I wanted to have the TV on.)  They were a big hit from the start.  He started listening to them at bedtime.  And in the car.  And playtime.  Everyday.  I liked the initial recordings I’d found, but they were a dramatization, rather than a true reading of the book.  Different actors (big names like Stephen Fry, Judi Dench, all fabulously talented!) read the parts of the different characters and they were so much fun to listen to, but I missed the full flavor of Milne’s writing.  So I bought a complete set of A.A. Milne’s Pooh Classics recorded by Peter Dennis.  They are everything I hoped they would be, and even now after a year of listening to both sets of recordings, I’m still not tired of Pooh.

I did want to expand Ian’s horizons a bit, however, so I started introducing him to other stories as well.  I found some fun CDs at the library, such as Stellaluna, Thumbelina, and other classics like The Three Billy Goats Gruff (from a wonderful collection read by actors like Ben Kingsley and Holly Hunter).  I knew there were tons of classic books out there that I wanted to share with my kids and I didn’t want to be limited by our library selection or my wallet, so I started looking at free recordings of books in the public domain.  There are so many great books available at librivox.org! That’s where I downloaded Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess.  (I’d never read anything by Burgess, but some of his books are part of the Ambleside Online curriculum I’m planning to use later on, and someone had said their 3-year old enjoyed these stories, so I thought we’d give them shot.  I was surprised at how even after one listening Ian recalled details of the stories and requested them for bedtime that night.)  There are several books of “Mother West Wind” stories (all about the escapades of various little animals), so I downloaded some others as well.  I tried Uncle Remus stories (remember Br’er Rabbit?), but the dialect was a little hard for Ian to follow and he didn’t get into them.  I decided to save those until he’s older and his grammar is better established anyway.  I’m going to try him on some of the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy stories once we need a break from the animals in the Mother West Wind books.

The other free site I like for audiobooks is Lit2Go.  They don’t have as wide a selection, but I like they way they put their info at the end of the book rather than the beginning.  Sometimes Ian has lost interest before we even start a new story because he had to listen to the long promo for librivox.  This is where I got a great collection of Beatrix Potter stories (like “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”).  Podcasts are also a great source for children’s stories.  I really like Tales from the Forest, but there are a number of good ones available on iTunes.

We rarely drive anywhere without listening to stories.  As the boys play in the living room, Ian usually asks for stories.  And every naptime and bedtime he likes to listen to stories before he falls asleep.  Is he a little too addicted?  Yes, probably.  Especially since we also read picture books throughout the day.  He (and Elijah, who is constantly bringing me books to read) is proving to be a lot like his mama when it comes to a love of books.

Still, I think all this listening has been SO good for Ian’s language development.  I catch him using words and phrases he can only have picked up from the stories he’s heard.  It gives us so many new things to discuss (though sometimes I have to clue Daddy and others into what on earth he’s talking about!)  In addition to our audiobooks, I’ve started adding chapter books to our bedtime routine.  We’ve always spent time reading a few picture books before bed, but now we read a chapter from whatever novel we’re going through as well.  We started with Beverly Cleary’s Ralph Mouse books.  I thought the first one The Mouse and the Motorcycle would capture Ian’s attention because of the subject matter, and boy was I right.  As soon as we finished it, he wanted to keep going, so we moved on to Runaway Ralph the next night.  Now we’re a little more than halfway through Ralph S. Mouse.  I think we’ll try Stuart Little or Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White for a change of author.

So now you know our secret.  Our days are not just Ian, Elijah, and Mommy hanging out alone at home.  We have lots of friends like Pooh, Peter, and Ralph who share life with us throughout each day!

Posted in Ambleside Online, Homeschool Resources, Our Vision

The Parting of the Red Sea (part 2)

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It felt good to be getting back in the swing of things, though I didn’t do the greatest job of it.  Monday slipped by before I knew it.  On Tuesday we told the story of Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea in a number of different ways (as I talked about in my last post).  We started with the flannel board, read in several Bible storybooks, and ended with a clip from the Prince of Egypt.  Later that day Ian watch VeggieTales: Moe and the Big Exit, but I’m not sure if he saw any connection.  We talked a little bit about the story over the next couple days, but life was busy, and not until today (Friday) did we get back into it.  And really all we did was talk about the story a little as we worked on the page for our Bible notebook.

We started with this craft from DTLK-bible.com.  Ian glued the pieces on cardstock (some of our pages have proved to be too flimsy, so I think that’s what I’ll use from here on out) and let Ian add some fish stickers we had lying around.  Then for a special touch, we painted over the water sections with blue glitter paint.

We did the verse from the ABC Jesus Loves Me week 8 lesson: “My God will supply all your needs.” Philippians 4:19.  As suggested in the lesson plan, I sang it to the tune of “London Bridge.” I sang it over and over while we worked on our craft, since I’ve neglected it since Tuesday!

“My God will supply all your needs, supply all your needs, supply all your needs. My God will supply all your needs.  Philippians 4:19.”

Luckily we’ll review it every week when we read through our Bible notebook, so I know he’ll get it eventually.  This was definitely a minimal week.  For some reason iTunes wouldn’t open for me and I never got around to reinstalling it.  So we didn’t have a playlist to listen to.  I had a Before Five in a Row book picked out to do along with our Bible story (and even had an activity planned) and we never once opened it.  On the other hand, we had some great “nature study” yesterday.  We went to a park with a lake, watched the ducks and some turtles, even found the dead body of some small crustacean that just fascinated Ian.  I’d love to be more intentional about including nature study in our schedule.  Ever since reading Charlotte Mason’s Home Education*, I’ve been determined to make it a part of my children’s education.  All that to say that our days without Bible lessons weren’t a total loss!  Weeks like this make me really thankful we’ve started trying to get into the “school” habit long before we need to worry about “officially” homeschooling.  It’s definitely going to take a while to make it a more solid part of our schedule!

* You can find the text for all Charlotte Mason’s writings for free online at Ambleside Online.  I downloaded the modern paraphrase and then read it on my Kindle.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Ambleside Online, Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason, Preschool

Other things floating around in my brain

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After I finished that last post about the different curricula I checked out (I really don’t like that word “curricula”, but “curriculums” just sounds wrong, so I’ll stick with it for now), I realized I’d left out a whole other side of my thought process in landing where we are.  I was all prepared to start describing what we’re currently doing, but the picture would be incomplete if I didn’t share some of the other ideas floating around in my brain.  Hence the title of this post.

I guess I can really boil the rest of it all down to this: Charlotte Mason.  How I ever got through a Master of Education program and a teaching credential without hearing her name, I just can’t understand.  Charlotte Mason is pretty much a hero in the homeschool world, but since she actually taught in schools, it seems to me like “traditional” schoolteachers could learn a lot from her writings as well.  If you want to find out more about her, here is a good place to start.

There is so much I like about Charlotte Mason’s methods.  I love the idea of including artist and composer studies in our school work.  Nature study seems like such a wonderful thing to include as well, especially with boys.  (I’m very prone to just wanting to stay inside and do desk work.) I’ve never been much on poetry, but reading Charlotte Mason’s books encouraged me to give it a try, and Ian LOVES reading poems together. I’ve also started thinking about how to incorporate foreign language study into our preschool learning time.  Finally, Iknow I did my best learning growing up through the many “living books” I found at the library, and this is one of the key parts of a Charlotte Mason education.

I have a feeling that when Ian’s ready to start first grade, I’ll probably be using Ambleside Online, a Charlotte Mason based curriculum, as my main source for inspiration, much like I’m using ABC Jesus Loves Me for preschool.  I looked through their booklists for the first few years and fell in LOVE.  So many of my old favorites were on there, and I love the idea that those can BE our schoolwork, rather than trying to squeeze them in on top of schoolwork!  But as I’ve said before, I’m a tweaker, and I doubt I’ll do everything quite as laid out.

The one thing I did do was compile a massive list of books I want to be sure to read with my children while they’re young.  I took all the books used in Five in a Row (including B4FIAR and volumes 1-4), the Ambleside Year 0/Kindergarten list, the Simply Charlotte Mason Early Years Booklist, and the Kindergarten list from An Old Fashioned Education and looked to see which books were on more than one of these lists.  Those were the books I decided I really wanted to make sure we got to.  Then I picked the ones that seemed best for younger kids and pencilled them onto our school calendar for the next year.  I’m not going to share that list, because to be honest, it’s just too much evidence of how obsessive I am about books.  (As if describing the process I went through didn’t already reveal that!)

Can you see how I’m having a hard time not centering our school around books?  That’s why I’m so thankful for ABC Jesus Loves Me .  I make the Bible story the first thing I plan, the first thing I teach, and the center of all we do throughout the week.  Then instead of using the “book of the week” in the curriculum, I take one from my own list (many of them are actually on both).  That way I’m still touching on the literature I want to share, but I don’t spend a lot of time each week thinking about it.

Okay, so I think that’s all the background stuff.  Next time I’ll start sharing a little about what we are actually doing.

Posted in Ambleside Online, Charlotte Mason, Our Vision
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