Johnny Tremain - Language Arts Pages
Since we like to try to combine, or review, as many topics as we can in our language arts time, this week our current sonlight read-aloud (audio c/d in our case), Johnny Tremain became the epi-centre for history, grammar, spelling and dictation, narration, and cursive handwriting.
Bobs and Daisy love it when mum gets seriously organised to nail the subjects down neatly all into one short, did I mention short :), written piece.
Our language arts sheets, in the Writing With Ease style, can be found over at hslaunch.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Notebooking Pages

We all enjoyed this Sonlight scheduled read aloud, though I have to say Dn and I saved our voices and enjoyed it via the audio book with the children.
On our customised, Story of the World 3 & Sonlight Core 3, schedule you'll find The Witch of Blackbird Pond slotted in on page 1c, SOTW3 chapter: 15.
(We've edited our schedule a few times since we placed that one up on hslaunch, I may have to upload the schedule we are using now).
We appreciated the character lessons and history detailed in The Witch of Blackbird Pond and so I went ahead and created a few (very plain) pages for Daisy to use to go with this book, namely: a copywork page and a colour in page.
HSlaunch: Witch of Blackbird Pond Notebooking Pages

Free Notepages - Prominent Figures in History

Free Notepages - Prominent Figures in History

I keep meaning to re-share this link:
Famous People Notebooking Pages from Activity Village.

It just saves a ton of time :-) to have pages "ready made" and easy to access on line when doing written dictation, written narration or copywork during SOTW, and Daisy is happy with alternate options to colour in during history read aloud time.

Actually... Jim Weiss has been doing all the SOTW reading for us so far, (smile) he's about to read us chapter 4.

Free Notebooking Pages for Story of the World Vol.3 ~ 1700's

Free Notebooking Pages for Story of the World Vol.3
Oliver Cromwell & Pre- French Revolution, or France ~ 1700's

We've just posted up some more free notebooking pages over at HSlaunch.

One of our children will use the pages as is; just purely for notebooking.
The other child will colour in to their hearts delight, on the pages detailing the bigger pictures.

With the Oliver Cromwell pages I've placed in various line size options and a title page .... for those that like to colour in (smile).
Notebooking & Colour in Pages for Oliver Cromwell 1600's
Only 2 options here ... I just wasn't feeling that inspired to create anything more than these few pages ... it's too close to christmas (smile).
Notebooking & Colour in Pages for France ~ 1700's

Story of the World Vol.4 Notebooking Pages

& Story of the World 4 Lapnotes

These next set of pages are generic SOTW4 notebooking pages, in so much that they can be used for any SOTW4 chapter and topic.

I'm not sure just where our children's writing finesse is going to be when we get to doing written narrations with SOTW4 & Sonlight Core 4, so I decided to toss a few options for 'line size' in there now.

Anyone interested in using our Story of the World 4 Notebooking Pages can find them over here at HSlaunch

And don't forget that other free American history notebooking pages can also be found here.

We haven't added any extra cut-n-craft or art options - they are just basic lapnote and notebooking pages.

The crafting queue for SOTW4 is in pause mode for now, yet knowing us, I'm sure I'll be making other pages to go along with SOTW4 and as Sonlight Core 4 extras when we get closer to using those curricula (smile), but this is it for the time being.

Language Arts Switch

By choice we delay starting 'formal' grammar until later, and so started grammar with Bobbi (who is now 10 & 1/2 yrs old) earlier this year - we started in March 2010.

We picked up Writing Tales which is a good thorough program that uses the progymnasta approach and, teaches grammar.

We've given it the good 'ole school house' try and while Bobbi has managed well with it both he and I are a little weary using the progym approach, it's just not for us long term- we tend to enjoy more diversity in our language arts tools so we've made a switch back to, a sort of, Classical Charlotte Mason approach which we like and seemed to keep jumping off the progym wagon to do.

This may also stop me from *needing* to create all those extra WWE/LA's type pages for the children to , ahem, enjoy .
My long-suffering husband will be so pleased.

I like to select our language art pieces for copywork, narration and dictation out of books the children are able to read themself and, WWE has always been a perfect match for that.

So here is where we are, going at an acclerated pace through Writing With Ease (WWE) & First Language lessons 3, our way.

We're finishing out 2010 using WWE text and any pages we may wish to do out of the last part of WWE2 workbook.

We are using longer readings out of the books and creating more involved pieces for dictation - I'm using those pieces to cover spelling and re-enforce grammar topics also.

(I'm not requiring Bobbi to write anything during history time at present with the reminder of SOTW2, he is just giving oral narrations and doing the map work for 'fun'.)

On the history front: Bobbi also reads The Kingfisher Encyclopedia tie-ins to himself at the table, while Daisy reads her allotment, if any, out of Usborne Book of World History. Then we all chat together. All done, next subject).
We're using scripture for; memorisation, copywork and be.a.u.ti.ful handwriting. The children also enjoy reading The King James Bible, with it's beautiful old english, out loud during bible time. (Ties in beautifully with our Middle Ages study too).
I mentally allocate this as part of their 'reader' to mum, along with their weeks pieces of poetry.

As an aside: Their other readers, chosen out of the book basket, are for them to read and then come tell mum about. Sometimes I'll get them to read a book aloud to me, more so with Daisy still, to hear how they are doing with their reading, and because reading aloud is such a valuable skill.
I don't seem to be asking them to do that too much though as, the lovely thing is that they'll bring their books to me so I can enjoy hearing a portion they've just read to themselves.

And now back to poetry, thanks to Sonlight, and my mother's gene pool - our children like it!
For our occasional piece of creative writing I've been getting both Bobbie and Daisy to create small pieces (a couplet, or haiku, or limmericks ) to go with a picture study.

We haven't had a chance to enjoy Story Starters like I wished to - we'll get back to that, soon.
It's nice to see the joy jump back into Bobbi's language arts time and, for now, to have language arts as an 'easy' subject for him.

With Daisy's language arts we've continued to enjoy WWE (our way) & Classical Writing Primer, picking and choosing the pages I desired her to learn with.
CWP is such a lovely program with a good scope of different topics and options.
Daisy likes the drawing/narration pages and the book selections.

We've just about finished CWP Autumn and for variety, just of late, I've been interchanging her language lessons with some variety by doing lessons orally out of Queen Language Arts books. I've chosen to just use the picture studies and the creative narration that goes with those, and discuss the grammar in Queens.

Dragons Kick Start our Week

Bobbi and Daisy were listening, yet again, to The Hobbit and enjoying the part of Smaug and since I was feeling a little lack lustre about being back-to-learning in the midst of Winter we decided to take a detour and declared it Dragons Week...

Bobbi was given the choice which piece he wanted for 'written work' and, going with his choice, we threw together a copywork page using Startwrite which means we're not able to make that available for others to use.

The Reluctant Dragon got listened to also - Dad and the children are Wind in the Willows fans .... 'nough said :)

Some interesting conversations happened with Bobbi while we listened to Kenneth Grahame's work.

I like this fun how- to- draw page which was a weekly freebie and it seems to be a perfect go along for T.R.D.

Daisy re-hooked back into My Father's Dragon as a reader so we threw some language arts pages together for her, a la WWE style - and yes, it includes some of the necessary colour in pages she likes.

We've included some light grammar and a little spelling work, copywork style, in those LA pages.
** Pop over to HSlaunch if you'd like to see our My Father's Dragon Language Arts pages. (We've now fixed the typo's in the copywork).
Here is a cute free audio book of My Father's Dragon we have this audio version and it's been enjoyed extensively since Sonlight introduced us to Elmer and his Dragon in Core K.
For those that like lapbooks, don't forget Amy's My Fathers Dragon lapbook it looks like a fun activity!

For art we pulled out the clay and crafted some Dragon busts. We all enjoyed that. Pictures now added, and we're just got the painting of them to enjoy.
Math for Daisy, we all played though, was Dino Math. I know it's a stretch - Dinosaurs and Dragons - but it works, and it's one of my favourite math games :-)

Middle Ages Notebook Pages , Lapnotes and Colour in Sheets

Middle Ages Notebook Pages , Lapnotes and Colour in Sheets

We've just flicked some pages together to use for our study this week (yay, so happy to be, finally, studying this portion of history) of The Middle Ages (Medieval Times) alongside;
SOTW2,
SL2,
The Magic Treehouse Research Guide #2 ~ Knights and Castles,
The Making of A Knight By Patrick O'Brien
A Medieval Feast By Aliki,
A page or two out of DK Eyewitness Knight,
and, Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History.


{update: also take a look through our free pages for extra notebooking pages we've made}

I'm not sure, due to copywrite on 1 or 2 of the pictures, if we can share all these  - here  and here are the pages that we can.
Two of the lapfolds, in the second photo below, can be found at homeschoolshare.

Pages to study and label ~ A Castle and A Knight's Armour

Lapnote and lapbook folds detailing a Knight's Code of Honour, How to Become a Knight, How to Treat a Lady, and, Samuari Colour pages.

Medieval Colour Pages, Notebook Pages and an Art Page 

ETA: Why is it that after we've finished a study I stumble back across a great site like this one ... with most of the pages, I thought we might need, already done :-)

Most of the notebooking pages the children completed.

Copywork and Narration Pages to go with Writing With Ease

While reading Sonlight Read Alouds we like to do our own spin with WWE, as out lined by Susan Bauer in this book. The children, and I, like the pages Susan provided in the 2 student books we have so we've continued on to make our own, very basic pages, with other literature.

(Copywork for Daisy is still being created in Startwrite's program.)

We inserted black line clip art to save ink :-) and also because Daisy does so like to colour in - anything she can.

Understood Betsy By Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Core 1 Read Aloud)

Peter the Great
By Diane Stanley (Core 2 History Read Aloud)

Tales of Robin Hood
Retold by Tony Allan (Core 2 Read Aloud)

Dr Dolittle Lapnote and Narration PagesDr. Dolittle & Chee-Chee the monkey.

We've pulled two pages out of our files and put them over at HS launch so others that don't frequent SL Forums can use them if the wish.

Dr. Dolittle ( Lions -science ) Lapnote Page here

Print out the lapnote page on cardstock, hole punch and then use both sides to complete a single sheet of lapbooking using lapfolds from homeschoolshare or anything else you feel like..... the lions page could be used with the Narnia Study :-)

Dr. Dolittle Narration Page here

Language Arts Sheets

We find some of these grammar sheets are good to use alongside Queen Homeschooling & Writing With Ease, also with the occassional reader, for early grammar review.
And these free grammar pages (scroll down) from Notebooking Pages are great to use for copywork or dictation, while practicing a grammar term.
Grammar Terms with sentence examples
Grammar Terms

Our current take on the art of Narration.

Our current take on the art of Narration.

Remember, we're not Charlotte Mason ‘purists’ and certainly not seasoned experts so narrating the way we do will irritate some. Yet it works so well here in our home.

For us narration is the pathway to effective writing, remembering that written narration is a taught skill which is so different from spoken narration, and to that end when we first started narration, it seemed so natural to ask our young listeners to narrate in ways other than just oral narration, since narration in any of these forms really does encourage the mind of our two children into thinking, in those early years the narration is given due to their enthusiasm to retell not by our asking them to.

Once they are around age six we ask for them to narrate, advising before hand that I really want them to listen and retell later as I did with Daisy & her "Gooney Bird Green' narration.

And here are a few of the alternate options we've used to date and still will, with Daisy. Jay has moved on to the next level and I'll get to posting about that later.:-)

-Drawing/painting a picture of a select portion of the story
(Jay & Daisy always wanted to explain what the drawing was about).

-Creating a basic diagram for ‘science’ or nature related topics

-Colouring in a blackline copy of a picture out of the book & selecting the colours mentioned in the story.
(My Father's Dragon springs to mind here – Daisy then 4.5 pleaded for a photocopied pict of her own of the dragon to colour just right).

-Their imagination comes to life & they play out the story.
(we often hear, “That’s not what happened next”, or, “XYZ said ….”).

-Put on puppet shows.

As we are growing into deeper levels of narration the skill & depth just seem to be developing naturally.
And I'm sure the more I read and ponder my understanding of how to use this powerful language arts tool the more effectively the children's usage of it will grow.

Last year, 2007, Jay then 7, gave four narrations that I typed up and his language usage certainly had grown as he pulled forward the language he had just heard in the book peppered through his own retelling of the reading.
The rest of the time we planned one narration every 6-8 weeks and used a few different methods, some of which are listed above. This science narration is from 2008's LA's work.
Whether it is correct or not :-) we don’t require our children to narrate word for word, to me that is memorisation and recitation, and is another facet of "narration" altogether.

What we are aiming for is for them to express in their own words, with their own personality fully engaged in what the narration piece is for them.

(As with The Wizard Of Oz, used in SL’s Core K, the same small piece of narration can be ‘soft & sweet’ from one child and ‘adventure and analyse’ from the other. When they narrate it is also teaching me to hear their thoughts and personality’s coming through – not just listen to garner a ‘correct’ narration).
This picture is Jay's drawn narration, done of his own volition, of Scarecrow's encounter with the Hammerheads.

& if you’d like to read another thought about narration here may interest you.
Or maybe pick up Penny Gardner's excellent book, Charlotte Mason Study Guide if you're not ready to jump into Miss Masons Original Home Schooling Series