Tchaikovsky Composer Study

This term's composer is Peter Tchaikovsky, probably best known (in America) for The Nutcracker! We love The Nutcracker over here at our house and I knew that this year I would be taking Louisa on a special trip to see the Joffrey Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker, so I intentionally chose Tchaikovsky as this term's composer. I was able to take Kailyn to see it a few years ago and we had a blast, however, Louisa hasn't really let me forget that she was not able to go so I decided that this is the year we would go! And here is our one (terrible) picture that we took of us:

Anyways, we had a great time at the ballet and Louisa was VERY excited to see it. It's a long performance and I knew it would be hard to sit through but she really didn't start to get antsy until the end.

So, for our Tchaikovsky composer study, we have been listening to Tchaikovsky's greatest moments (here via Amazon Prime music), and here for the Nutcracker music.

I must admit that Tchaikovsky has been much harder to listen to after Bach. My girls all grew to love Bach and his music. His is methodical and harmonious while Tchaikovsky's music is grand, very big, and all over the place. I am sure he will grow on us and listening to the Nutcracker sure helps. Kailyn also has been playing Swan Lake on the piano, so she loves him for that piece alone already. And, we didn't know that he composed the original Sleeping Beauty music!

We started off the term by listening to this program from Classics for Kids. They are always fun, short and interesting. I love the music added in to the program.

We also used this free printable last week (Nutcracker puppets to color) and the girls loved that. They colored them and cut them out while I read to them this book:

Honestly, I was expecting a little more about the creation of the ballet itself and there truly was very little mention of it. It was a nice book about that time of his life where he was traveling the world and creating ballets. We also have this book, which I am hoping will give a little more background to his life:

The other book we are currently reading is this Nutcracker version:

So far, we love it. It is not too simple (like so many of them are) and is the original storyline from Hoffman. The drawings are so beautiful, too! The girls are intrigued by the original story and it helps to make more sense of the ballet!!

So, apart from these things, we plan to simply listen to a lot of his music each day and I might see if I can find a good story book about his Swan Lake ballet, but that's only if there's time! :)

Our Advent gifts

I thought it would be nice this Advent for the girls to work on their "handicraft" skills, which have been very non-existent lately, and at the same time, do something for others in need. In the past, I have made items to donate to a local organization called, Giving Artfully, who in turn, sends the items to specific charities with real needs.  Anyways, I looked them up again to see if there was something we could make to give away and they had quite a few needs listed. So, the girls chose to make scarves and we will give them to homeless children and children on an Indian reservation who are in need.

They started their projects today and had a GREAT time doing it.

They both used the sewing machine to sew up the scarves and they did a great job with it.

Louisa was SO proud of that she completed one all by herself! It was very cute to watch and now they are excited to make more. We plan to make about 12 and mail them out before Christmas.

And, of course, Julia loved the scarves too.

Thoughts on our first term

Friday will be the last day of our first term homeschooling. It has gone quickly and I have some observations I wanted to make note of:

It's been more natural to homeschool than I thought it would be. This could be because I had spent so much time preparing and knowing what our days were planned out to be but it hasn't been weird or forced. I realize that when other moms tell me, "I could never do that..."  (referring to homeschooling) they think that homeschooling is on a different level than what we as moms do everyday. And it is- kind of. But the truth is that we are constantly teaching our children. And don't we, as mothers, teach our children about prayer, about God, how to write their name, how to count, have good table manners, tie their shoes, brush their teeth, how to get dressed, pick up their toys, etc? Don't we These mothers who say they couldn't do it don't give themselves enough credit. I was one of those mothers who never envisioned myself homeschooling but like I said, I have found it to be more natural than I thought. It's an extension of the teaching that we already do every day... just different subjects in an intentional manner!

Relationships have gotten better, not more strained. The other statement that is always followed by "I could never do that" is "I couldn't handle being with my kids all day" or "My kids would drive me nuts." Ha! Of course they drive me nuts! But the irony is that the more time I have spent with them, the better we are getting along. Before I decided to start homeschooling, one of my hesitations was that I already felt strain in one of the relationships with my kids. I thought that the decision to homeschool might hinder progress in our relationship instead of help.  The fact is, homeschooling has actually helped our relationship. I am not sure why other than the fact that we understand each other better now and have more in common. I really think she enjoys the family time together and appreciates the new learning atmosphere. She enjoys the connection with me as a mom, and as a teacher and we can appreciate the new relationship we have.

Sibling relationships are stronger. This is what I thought might happen and I am happy to say that things are improving. Don't get me wrong... it isn't all lovey-dovey around here (my kids still fight!) but the tone is definitely different than last year between the older girls. They appreciate each other more since they don't have a ton of friends to fall back on, and they get along better since they have more in common. This last point is huge.  I could sense a slight rift happening last year and a general lack of appreciation for the other sister, since they had friends at school and they were each doing their own thing (somewhat of a competition). Overall, they are more kind and thoughtful to each other and it is an improvement over previous years when they were away at school. 

Their capacity to learn and memorize is quite amazing. I am amazed at how quickly they can memorize and retain the memory work. We are two verses away from having Proverbs 3 memorized and I am so thankful we have this opportunity to do it together, the three of us. It is so much harder to try and do it during dinner time as a family since it obviously isn't the best learning environment but that's what we were trying to do when they were in regular school. But to have a regular part of our day be memory work is a blessing. They have also memorized two poems each and we are working on our third hymn being memorized (all verses!). Also, their desire to learn has grown since we have more freedom to learn and study what they want. "Education is an atmosphere", as Charlotte Mason says, and now I can see the wisdom in this statement after just a few short weeks of trying to give them that atmosphere. I hope to continue to give them resources that will encourage this learning and create an even better atmosphere of learning than we currently have, though I need to think through how.

Nature

We have really been enjoying our nature walks! Thought I would post some pictures for my memory's sake.

Cursive Resources

Did you know that the new Common Core standards don't include cursive handwriting? I really think it's a mistake. Cursive is a discipline and a skill and a beautiful form of art. One of my daughter's handwriting was quite ignored while in school (in fact, the teachers thought she had great handwriting!!) and I was always appalled at how she wrote her papers and what passed for good and legible handwriting. I remember, when I was in second and third grade, what pride I took in having the best cursive possible. :) A little peer pressure isn't always a bad thing. My friend and I were constantly trying to have the best handwriting possible and I think it spurred us to excellence. Not so anymore... kids are given an iPad to "practice" their cursive... does this even make sense to you? How can they practice without a pencil and paper???

Anyways, enough of my ranting... you can be sure that one of the goals I have for my children, is to improve their handwriting/cursive. Louisa is a little young to learn cursive but she REALLY wanted to and Kailyn was already starting to teach her, so I thought I had better show her the correct way before she took it upon herself to self-teach with cursive.

I was really surprised to find so many FREE cursive worksheets and teaching materials! In case you are interested, here are my top two resources that I use for printing off practice sheets:

Zaner Bloser font website (they have limited free access to their worksheets and the ads are pretty annoying but it's free and I can save them as pdfs for future use!)

Printable Cursive Handwriting - this site is pretty awesome. They have three different types of handwriting/cursive fonts and TONS of free printables that are in pdf form. I used their First Year of Cursive packets with Louisa and it has worked perfectly.

Another bonus I have found while typing up my own practice sheets is the girls get to copy Scripture! and poems! and fun, personalized things! I love that I get to customize this for them!

Picture Smart Bible

For our Bible study time, we are using the Picture Smart Bible and so far, I am very impressed with it! I found this resource when I was first considering homeschooling and was discouraged that there wasn't any time in our current days to implement this and so suggested it as a resource for our church's children's program.

I was thrilled to realize, after we decided to homeschool, that I could use this in our daily Bible time!! It is a survey of all the books of the Bible and is told through drawing and coloring. When I say drawing, I really mean tracing, as the outline of the pages are done for you. The teacher's part is very easy to follow and it makes me want to draw and color alongside them but I haven't actually printed any off for myself. The survey is done well and I feel that they have covered all major points/stories and are always pointing back to Jesus and looking ahead to how He will fulfill what was lacking in the OT Law, priests, etc.

We work on these for about 15-20 minutes a day and just finished the book of II Samuel today. The company has a version of this for younger students, but I am glad I went with the adult/older kids version. Louisa is 8 and in 2nd grade, but I feel it is quite appropriate for her and apart from the story of the Levite and his concubine(!!!) I have felt that all the stories are age appropriate. And yet, there are some stories that the girls do not remember or have not heard (e.g. Jepthah and his daughter from Judges 11) but are good for them to think about and consider.

A few things, in case someone is interested in purchasing this curriculum...

-I bought the CD with the downloads and while it is handy, I think I should have bought the instant download for easier use.
-The pages for the teacher portion are A LOT to print out. I had them spiral bound at Office Depot and put a cover and back on it.
-I bought the girls each a 3 ring binder and we just hole-punch the lessons as we get to them... I did NOT print the entire OT out at one time. Then they decorated the front how they wanted.
-Make sure you have enough paper and ink when printing this out!! :)

Noli me tangere

This term, we are studying Giotto and his works of art. So far, we have studied 6 frescoes that he painted, the most recent being this one:

Noli Me Tangere, Giotto

The girls are instructed to study it without talking for about 3 minutes. They are supposed to then narrate back to me what the picture looks like (they can also give me a rough sketch) and tell me what they notice, and what they think about the painting. Most of their observations are spot on. Kailyn is always noticing the trees, or greenery and usually tells me what she thinks they represent. Louisa is always first commenting on exactly how many people are in the picture and how many are wearing "halos."

After they studied this most recent picture, I asked Louisa why she thought Jesus was holding his hand up to Mary (she had already determined it was Mary Magdalene). She said she thinks Jesus is telling her not to touch him "like it says in the Bible" that he has to return to His father first. I was happy to tell her that she was right and that the title of this painting, "Noli me tangere" is Latin for "Don't touch Me." She was excited to read the passage in John that this refers to.

Jesus said to her, "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" John 20:17

The brave little deer

Check out what we saw in the woods a few days ago...

Louisa wanted to lure the deer with her flower petals.

And a pair of Downy Woodpeckers!

I don't think Kailyn will ever forget being that close to the ridiculously brave deer. :)

Proverbs

Today we were finishing up our overview of the book of Judges and the last verse reads, "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

I asked the girls what they thought about that verse and Louisa immediately told me that it wasn't good and after I asked why she said because the Bible says, "Be not wise in your own eyes; fear The Lord and turn away from evil." (Prov. 3:7)

 

I was so surprised that she had put those two verses together so quickly like that! (If you remember, we are memorizing Proverbs chapter 3 together so verse 7 is one we have said many times now.) I was so encouraged that she could easily recognize this truth and quote directly from Scripture!

Praise God that His word does not return void!

And as I am typing, I remembered that a few weeks ago, when we were studying Exodus, we came across chapter 34 verse 6 which reads, "The Lord, The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin..." These attributes "steadfast love and faithfulness" directly mirror the command in Proverbs 3:3, "Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you..." We are supposed to reflect the character of God through our steadfast love and faithfulness, by binding them around our neck and writing them on the tablet of our heart. The exodus verses are proclaimed when God is having to give Moses the new tablets since His children have sinned terribly. It is pretty amazing to think about God's steadfast love towards us, even amidst our sin.

Drawing

I have scheduled in 20 minutes of drawing each day for my children to do.  Charlotte Mason had her students draw each day and I have seen the benefits already. It teaches them to be careful, observant and intentional in how they draw.  They don't always love it (in fact, it is quite difficult) but I find they are very proud of a good drawing.

We are using the worksheets from Donna Young's website and do a row or two each day. This is not free-time drawing but intentional, copy work of an original design. They increase in difficulty and I didn't know it but I put Louisa into the more difficult section but she is doing fine.

On Fridays, I give them a break and give them one free hand drawing assignment like, "Draw a shoe," or "draw an insect." They like these much better. :)

Here is the link for the drawing pages in case you want to check them out.

Nature Journals

So far we have had a few intentional nature walks and the weather has been perfect! We are supposed to draw/watercolor in our nature journals during/after each walk and this is what the girls did last week:

It's hard to see the details but Louisa did a pretty amazing drawing of Queen Anne's lace!

Here's a peek at Kailyn's, who also did a great job!

Charlotte Mason says: "As soon as he is able to keep it himself, a nature diary is a source of delight to a child. Every day's walk gives him something to enter..."

“From the flower in the crannied wall to the glorious firmament on high, all the things of Nature proclaim without ceasing, ‘Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty.’ ” Vol 4 CM

Bach composer study

So, we're studying J.S. Bach this term (I love Bach!!!) and I knew that really all I needed to do was have the girls be immersed in his music but of course, I wanted to do more,  and I figured if I can be of any help to another mom who stumbles across this looking for ideas on Bach, wonderful!!

I looked at quite a few websites and tried to get an idea of what others were doing but I didn't want to pay for anything when I could come up with my own stuff for free.  I had the girls read Opal Wheeler's book, Sebastian Bach, Boy from Thuringia, and it was wonderful. I love her books and the girls really learned a lot and appreciated him so much more after reading the book. We also plan to read aloud Thomas Tapper's The Story of the Boy Who Sang in the Streets. It was a free download onto my Kindle app and is a shorter book but it has real life pictures in it which the girls might appreciate.

I also went to this website and searched for Bach and had the girls listen to the short stories during lunch. They loved this and really enjoyed the music clips played throughout.

I'm an Amazon Prime member, so I was able to stream free Bach music onto my iPad and we listen to that ALL the time. Pretty much on repeat. If I need a change of selection, I put on the YouTube channel with Bach's violin music but I prefer Amazon's streaming.

I also typed up a music history era page and printed it off so they could see where Bach fit into history and what his time period is called.

I think I am also going to have each of them learn Minuet in G or a simpler version (for Louisa) since they both play the piano and that's about the right difficulty level for Kailyn.

                    "The aim and final end of all music is none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." J.S. Bach

Memory Work

A great benefit of homeschooling is customizing your family's memory work! I was excited to pick out what the girls and I would memorize this year. They did memory work at their private school in the past but it was very short and scattered throughout the Bible. This year, I chose three longer passages (one per term) that we are going to work our way through.

First up is Proverbs chapter 3 (35 verses)- averaging 2 verses a week. We are doing a little more than that right now, and that's okay because review is good too. As of right now we have memorized 3:1-10 and have only been at it for 11 days!  The girls memorize pretty easily though! Probably better than I do.

Next term we will be doing Colossians 3:1-25 and then for our last term we will be doing Ephesians 6: 1-20 and then probably another shorter passage like Psalm 1, since the Ephesians passage is a little shorter.

In addition, I plan to have them memorize 2 poems each term (so six poems total)- of their choice from the selections we have been reading.

I also forgot to mention that we will all be memorizing six hymns (all verses) over the course of the year... those that I felt are important to learn and know.

AND !!! they are going to memorize their times/addition tables!!! I am shocked at how difficult this is... especially for one of them.  Anyways, hopefully this will help to shore up their basic math skills.

Our average day

Thanks to the internet and other well-experienced homeschool moms, I learned that I should create an "average day chart." This is meant to keep us all on task and give us a daily schedule so we know what in the heck we are supposed to be doing next. At first it was overwhelming to try and come up with a plan since I am also trying to work around Julia's nap schedule, lunchtime and get the girls going on their daily chores instead of waiting till after lunch to start... which we know will never happen.... so this is what I came up with and what will work best for our family:

7-8:15 am Eat breakfast and get ready for the day (including chores)

8:15-9:30 am Circle Time! This involves Bible survey, Bible memory work, poetry readings, copywork/handwriting/dictation, drawing exercises, picture study (1x/week), and hymn study.

9:30-10:00 am Louisa & I do math together; Kailyn reads history books & narrates when done.

10:00-10:30 am Kailyn & I do math together; Louisa reads history books & narrates when done.

10:30 am Snacks for everyone

10:45-11:25 am Science or Geography readings for both girls and Kailyn and I also study Plutarch (this term we are reading about Marcus Cato).

11:45 am Lunch for everyone

In the afternoons (when Julia takes her second nap) we read aloud a literature book and also have a rotation as follows:

Monday: Handicrafts and Kailyn types

Tuesday: Drill and Louisa types. We also do a nature walk on Tuesdays and Kailyn studies Latin with Steve in the evenings.

Wednesday: Drill and Kailyn types. We also learn one folksong each week.

Thursdays: Handicrafts and Louisa types. Kailyn studies Latin with Steve in the evenings.

Fridays: Drill and the girls also will be going to Enrichment classes.

In case you are wondering what in the world Handicrafts are - just think of lifelong skills and creative, useful things that you can be doing with your hands. This term we are working on a quilt - the girls each picked out their own fabric and will be putting it together as well as using the sewing machine... which may or may not have been more than I should have committed to... we'll see.

"Drill" is just like exercises.

That about covers it!

Let the learning begin

We officially began our first year of homeschooling last week and it went very smoothly for the most part (aside from a few protests about re-doing work!). The girls are both enjoying our new style of learning and especially Kailyn, is eating up all the reading she gets to do!! Louisa enjoys (so far) being home with everyone all day and they both get a huge kick out of J who does her best to distract us every waking moment.

We are following Ambleside Online's curriculum with Louisa doing Year 2 and Kailyn in Year 4. The only things I am changing from their curriculum are the composer/artist rotation, folk song suggestions, hymn selections, Bible readings, and Year 4 natural history selection.

For composers/artists, I chose composers that I am more familiar with (since this is our first year!) and artists that I could buy picture study resources from Simply Charlotte Mason's website. I didn't want to have to think too much about this and theirs seemed like a well-thought out portfolio, with easy downloads to my iPad.

For the folk songs, I bought an American Song Treasury book because I would rather my girls learn the old American songs & tunes that they might hear more often.

As far as hymn study goes, I selected hymns that I want my girls to know and learn and that are meaningful to our family. They are as follows (for anyone who's interested): I Sing the Mighty Power of God, To God be the Glory, Crown Him with Many Crowns, Once in Royal David's City, Holy, Holy, Holy, Fairest Lord Jesus, Be Thou My Vision, and My Jesus, I Love Thee.

Instead of reading through the Bible (both girls are already reading the Bible on their own and we have family reading time at dinners) I chose to purchase this great program called Picture Smart Bible that is basically drawing, coloring and surveying each book of the Bible. It was a little labor intensive with printing out all the teaching pages and collating the teacher's guide but I feel it was worth it. I didn't want to stare at a computer screen and read every day from it.

Instead of Year 4 Natural History assignment, Madam How and Lady Why, I last minute changed my mind about it. I just did... instead I replaced it with Ann Voskamp's Explore His Earth. I'm sure we will give MHLW a shot next year but this year I just decided not to pursue it.

And for my records, we are planning to study J.S. Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin for our composers and Giotto, VanGogh and Millet for our artists this year. So far, the girls are really enjoying Giotto and Bach. They did wonderful narrations about Giotto's Lamentation: The Mourning of Christ and are really enjoying listening to Bach and reading his story in Wheeler's book.

Anyways, these are our curriculum picks for the year!!