Our Week Ahead -~ October 15 2012

This is our proposed week, starting October 15 2012

History
SOTW4
Chapter 35: The Cold War
Chapter 36: Struggles and Assassinations

No history outlines this week (our writing focus is all on WWS lessons this week)

We’ve already covered a good amount of material - books & documentaries – on The Space Race, & the assassination of John F. Kennedy so we won’t be pausing for further study on either of those topics ... but we sure seem to be talking up a storm about those topics☺

Read Alouds:
The Endless Steppe, our read aloud of the past two weeks, just wasn’t getting done thanks to too many other commitments which interrupted our ability to sit down and just read  - so we pulled out the audio version.

We’ve enjoyed having someone read this book to us - and completed the audio today - and pressed pause a time or five to discuss some of the content.  We all enjoy learning together like that.
While listening to The Endless Steppe the science of relations was really at work as Esther Hautzig invests in references to classic opera, poets and other literary works throughout the book!

Bobs was delighted to hear the author becoming acquainted with the works of Dumas (along with Shakespeare, Twain, London, etc..) as he is currently going through Alexandre Dumas’  The Three Musketeers.

Again, lots of discussion going back and forth over The Endless Steppe and some of the topics we've talk through have been - why we pray to God, others using fortune telling cards to "get" the future one thinks they want, following and obey instructions (from our parents) for our own safety and protection, making snap judgements about others without and we have yet to met them, & etc...

I’ll be starting The Family Nobody Wanted, by Helen Doss, sometime this week. The book is our switch in title for the dropped Cheaper by the Dozen.

Readers
Daisy: Catching Their Talk in a Box. This was actually a read aloud left over from Core 2/C.
Bobs: He has yet to finish Snow Treasure and will then start It’s a Jungle Out There.

Math
review and then the next lesson in MMM for Daisy.
Khan Academy for Bobs, & review.

Language Arts
AAS – review
The next lessons in WWS for Bobs & WWE3 for Daisy
We’re aiming to complete 2 lessons a day in Rod & Staff – very doable when it’s done orally with mum.

For the Next 4 weeks:
Hymn
Great is Thy Faithfulness – Amazing Grace book, pg 14.

Composers
Sergei Prokofiev Unit 15 (1891-1953).
Collection for children ☺

Igor Stravinsky Unit 14 (1882-1971)

I’ll create a separate post about the audio books we have lined up to enjoy in the days leading up to our last week of scheduled schooling for the year - which is the 2nd week in December. 
That is just seven weeks (!) of literature based learning for us to enjoy & complete.

28th May ~ Our Week Ahead

This was our line up for this week, and we've managed to achieve a good chunk of it:

Math 

Bobs: to work steadily through more of the Algebra course on Khan Academy.  He's doing really well with LOF, Advanced Algebra, so we'll continue with that.

On free-Friday, Bobs wants to go through some of Sal Khan's finance lectures... for fun.

Daisy: Continue to work through some more lessons in MMM, she'd rather just do her LOF, Goldfish, book but needs the extra computation practice MMM gives.  I've been switching her between some Khan courses and MMM - which seems to give her math time more sparkle.

She really enjoys Math-it and will use that on free-Friday.

Spelling

Daisy has 1 more lesson to complete in her AAS book, and Bobs has 3 in his. 
They are aiming to have those done tomorrow as mastered, and completed,  lesson books generate take out pizza for tea.

Grammar
(which ds calls Grandma because RnS has a very old fashioned flavour.)
Complete a lesson each day (4 each this week).
Both children like these grammar texts.

Writing With Skill
I think Bobs is doing very well with this writing curriculum, which he's dubbed Writing that Kills (Sorry Susan ☺) 
I wonder if perhaps some of the secret to the success for him is that we are purposely keeping the lesson times shorter, no more than 40 mins, and that seems to ensure that the writing he generates is "fresher".  We just stop if it looks like the lesson is going to become an epic one, he stops at a place that is comfortable for him to pick it up again, the next day.

Hymn
for the next 4 weeks: When the Roll is Called up Yonder

Composer
for the next 4 weeks: Antonin Dvorak
Unit 9 (1841-1904)

We're hoping, Daisy & I,  to camp down around some Russian Fairy Tales and Chinese Tales, I said Japanese somewhere else on the web ... those come later.

History
SOTW4 chapts 13 & 14
Builders of NZ pgs 128-131
(with our time focus being 1889-1896 and zeroing in on Russia and New Zealand)


SL books:
Mary Slessor SL5 (start)
Helen Keller R/A 3/4 (Daisy to complete)
The Terrible Wave R4 (Daisy - next reader .. might read this with her)
The Big Wave R5 (Bobs)

Tie-in Reader for Bobs: Helen Keller's Teacher

We should wrap up Maori and the Settler and then we have a few options to choose from.

Bobs is enjoying reading all the sequels to Wolves of Willoughby Chase (which is now a discontinued SL Core F title.  Thank goodness Susan Bauer includes lessons on it in Writing With Skill or I may have just ignored that book.)
It's nice to see him reading something other than non-fiction for free reading!!


Daisy's audio is The Wizard in Oz (again)
Her free reader (nearly finished) is Elsie at Roselands,  then she'll start Roller Skates (another discontinued SL title).

Bible Time & Hymns

Along with exposing the children to a select number of classical composers and their music we also like to introduce Bobs and Daisy to various lyricists of hymns and their hymns.

We've used various things over the years in an on again/off again approach and so this year I decided I'd really like us to take a more disciplined approach to learning new hymns and revisiting our favourites. Adding a little extra side comment here before I go on; We're also enjoying listening to the hymns that relate to the portion of history we are study from Diana Waring's cd All Glory, Laud & Honor ~ Acapella Worship (I've notated those songs/lyricists into our history schedule).

The best way to make sure we keep incorporating something like this into our home educating day is to find a space where we can realistically fit it into the learning schedule. If it's on my schedule there is a better chance of us getting electives done.

I found the obvious space for us to slot our hymn studies was during our 45 minute bible lesson time slot which we enjoy first thing, before any of our other learning time starts, and the hymn gets played randomly at other times during the day (helps support the regular & repetitive approach that works so well for Bobs and Dasiy).
Taking a very Charlotte Mason styled approach to our studies was the obvious and very natural method for us and customised it looks like this:

1: Select a few hymns for our 6 week term and learn them, really learn them by regular and repetitive exposure.

2: Introduce other pieces by the same composer.

3: Reading some living literature about the composer.

4: Employ narration exercises from our read aloud time (orally, only for us here).

5: Add the composers timeline figure and/or details to our book of time (we do this during our 5th week of learning).

Another natural extension to the above, is for us to read through the bible passages that helped birth, or support, the theme of the hymn.

Since our learning terms are 6 weeks long selecting 1 or 2 hymns to learn by heart is very doable.
(Our 6 week learning cycle: 4 weeks of focused work then the 5th week is to tidy up projects, then 1 weeks break.)

Selecting our current hymn and it's lyricist, I'll detail a little of what a series of lessons around one hymn/composer can currently look like in our home.

If we are already familiar with the hymn and the lyricist, or musical composer, being detailed in the book we have chosen to learn from (think John Newton & Amazing Grace) we'll read the excerpt from that book of choice, listen to the hymn, either on c/d or via you-tube, and move along to another lyricist or hymn we are not so familiar with.
Sometimes the hymn/lyricist/composer we are wanting to study is often not found in the book we have been using this year: Stories of the Great Hymns, so we pick and chose from a few other books we have. Stories of the Great Hymns is informationally lite for Bobs so we've been reading other information about the lyricists on wikipedia and through various hymn websites (comparing what different sources/authors believe is fact about a person creates some interesting discussions) and if we can easily access them, for Bobs, we try to find including reading through a primary source.

This term we are learning Soldiers of the Cross Arise and introducing Jesus, Lover of My Soul or O for a Thousand Tongues. Those will then complete our study on lyricist Charles Wesley whom we started learning about the previous term. The excerpts we are reading to go with the above hymns come from this book: With Soldiers of the Cross the companion scripture reading is Ephesians 6:10-20 (putting on the full armor of God) and here's a good spot for me to share one of our family's personal preferences :) ......... We like to use The King James Version for bible study and devotion time. The children have been exposed to the beautiful language in The King James bible since they were very little so it's not 'difficult' language for them. And for those interested, one of the WTM moms shared a link to this interesting article which extolls some of the literary benefits of reading the KJV.

Right, back to the topic of Soldiers & Armour - there are a good number of copywork sheets available to use with Ephesians 6 dotted around the internet .... if you don't feel like creating your own.

Along with with copywork sheets there are also some rather nice colour in pages and sunday school crafts, like this one ,that one can find using g.oo.gle and if you're looking for a Full Armor of God page for a girl don't forget to visit Nadene of Practical Pages page here.

Classical Composer Study for Haydn, Mozart, & Beethoven

Dawn of Our Nest of 3 blog has crafted, and then generously shared, a really nice study on Haydn, Mozart, & Beethoven. She has spent hours of work inserting lots of helpful links - I'm seriously impressed!

You can find her post with the links to her pdf, here.

Dawn's study is a perfect composer tie-in to go with where we are in our SOTW3 readings.

Haydn is slight review and Mozart is up for study next.

Artists, Masterpieces, Composers and Classical Music

I’ve got a small collection of potential blog posts just sitting there unfinished and figured I‘d best just start dragging them out of ‘draft form oblivion’ and just share them.

This one seems to have been sitting there the longest, other than the one with the rest of our Core K extras (opps, laughing) – and seems to be collecting a pile of blog dust around it (if there is such a thing) so I’ve dragged it forward, updated it a little-some and will just post the thing. It may be of interest to someone.

Be warned: This is a long post!! And for some reason the fonts seem to be having a small fit.

Our journey in wanting to introduce the children to fine art & artists, classical music & composers, has been done with intent from my side yet the approach appeared to be a casual & relaxed if-we-felt-like-it sort of journey from the children’s perspective.

For my piece of mind we have a set space scheduled out, time wise, in our week for when we would browse/discuss art & artists – and we’d listen to musical pieces as we went along.

Predominately we didn’t schedule out the pieces, artists or composers to all match in with the era of history we were learning about. Keeping it casual, more informal and enjoyable like this has worked well in our home.

(We also make regular visits to the museum and art gallery, and, attend local music shows or concerts. Nothing like a live performance or ‘real’ painting to make fine arts & classical music spring to life.)

Keeping it casual and more informal with an emphasis on enjoyable has been, & still is, the approach to these topics in our home – it works for us.

For those interested I’ll list some of the tools we’ve used to date:

For Art:

We looked through this book during the early years ages 4-6, it still got pulled out during cores 1 & 2

A few of the many story based books we've enjoyed.

We rabbit trailed off to have a look at the art and the artist featured in these next series of books:

The Katie series

Laurence Anholt’s books

(Through Sonlight) Come Look With Me

Animals

Children

Landscapes

World of Play

We just discussed pictures randomly out of the Come Look With Me books, and are still using them. In Core K (C) we scheduled in certain paintings to go with the theme we were meandering our way through at the time.

Art Fraud Detective Bobby likes this book
Discovering Great Artists      H  Hands on crafts & Artists

How to Teach Art Art technics & some art history - we’ve used this off & on the last 3 years.

Art History Sticker Book

Artistic Pursuits K-3 (used books 1 & 2 - we’ll use book 3 for Daisy with SOTW3)

(The above set of books is our ‘really preferred’ set of books for hands-on & art history go-alongs with our SL/SOTW history journey to date, we scheduled out some of the art history lessons to go with cores 1 & 2.)

Other Art links to note:

Practical Pages refer to links for artist, and , composers

AOL scroll down to subject resources for artists/composers

Composer/Artist notebook pages:

Notebooking Pages

Hslaunch various including lapbooks

Art & Artists:

Met Museum

Inside Art on line ‘adventure’

For Art/ Prints:

Fine Art

AO Art Prints Yahoo Group

Garden of Praise Lessons (includes printables & online games)

Art Games a collection of links to persue

The children really enjoy this one: Picasso Head

See then try: Kinder Art We still like this site.

A 'rogue' link: Judah Maccabe Cartoons   Bobby likes to create cartoons of the hist/paintings/artists etc.. we’re learning about, so I had to include this one.

And color me online is a well known site, but I’ll mention it again anyway.

Classical Music:

We’ve listened to classical music as a go-along sound while we craft, painted, drove in the car, crafted copywork (Bobby likes certain pieces playing while he does math copywork & Daisy will play any sort of music at any given moment in time).

I try to make a comment about each piece (before or after we’ve listened to it) detailing in brief, “This piece is called x,y,z, and was composed by a,b,c”.

Introducing classical music this way has helped our children to work out 'quickly' which pieces they like & those they don’t … and since they we’re little the William Tell overture was our tidy up time song.

I won't detail e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. we've used, or do use, otherwise we'll be trapped in this post forever (smile).

Story of the Orchestra (sold by SL) We really like this condensed intro to composers - and if the children liked a certain piece we’d find other pieces composed by the some composer. you tube was a great source for this.

Stories of the Great Composers #1 still using this

Beethoven’s Wig is Very Big (#1) We don’t listened to Can you do the Can, Can? Song #4 (the piece that plays the lyrics – the risqué tone is just not our cup of tea)

Classical Kids Series Still a favourite series since the approach is story format

Bernstein Favorites (sold by SL.) A funny story about this one ... the first time I saw it advertised in the Sonlight catalogues, I didn't really pay enough attention and added it to our cart as a last minute impulse purchase, sounded like fun to study classical music with the "Berenstain" Bears. (I thought it must be along the same lines as the Berenstain Bears Science book ) Well. Imagine my surprise, & disappointment, when I pulled a "Bernstein" disc out of the Sonlight box - LOL, not a Berenstain Bear in sight, the joke was on me.

Classics for Kids (& other musical c/d’s played quietly during art, or any time)

Amongst a random mix of things from above we are currently using things detailed in this post

Other classical music sites to note:

Composers:

List of music by period:

Composer List

Classics For Kids - Composer by Period

(Sara from over at TWTM forums put together this lovely schedule to go with some of the composers in the link above)

http://www.squidoo.com/charlotte-mason-styled-composer-study Lots of links of interest