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!!