Halfway mark

I recently realized that we are halfway through our first homeschool year!!! It's gone fast! And at the same time it feels like it's been longer than that... If you know what I mean.

The hardest part has definitely been schooling with a baby who has turned into a toddler all of a sudden! A toddler who loves to be the center of attention, of course, and does not appreciate us working at the table without her. She is very cute as you can see... Especially in her pigtails...


But man, is she a distraction. The older girls are very easily distracted by her cuteness, her loudness, her naughtiness, etc. as am I and it has become my biggest challenge. I recently read of another wise homeschooling mom who said that she needed to stop viewing her babies/toddlers as a detriment to their homeschool but instead include them as much as possible. As I read it, I was thinking, "yeah right...not possible." But I have come to see that she is right and I need to include J as best I know how. Anyways, ask me at the end of the year how that went ... Not now.

In other news, we have made a few changes to our curriculum and I think it is really going to help. Ambleside Online (our Charlotte Mason curriculum) has us read a certain book (Parables of Nature-- I'm sure it's a great book!!!) for Louisa's year but it was becoming laborious and neither of us enjoyed reading it or looked forward to muddling through it. I'm sure it's a great read for many, just not for us. So, I substituted it with this book:

Among the Farmyard People, by Clara D. Pierson. It is so much better and already I love it. It is part of a series so I am looking forward to getting more in the series, too.

The changes for Kailyn were cutting out Plutarch this term because there just wasn't time for me to go over it in a thoughtful, quiet (key word here is quiet) sitting and we were already five weeks behind from when we cut it out for December/Christmas school.

Another thing... Charlotte Mason was a huge proponent of careful study and dictation. Dictation is the method of studying a selected passage (usually a paragraph) for punctuation and spelling, and then copying it down (after hearing it) in neat copy work fashion. Her ideals are reasonable, I do believe, in terms of dictation, but it just simply doesn't work for this daughter of mine. She can study a passage for 10 minutes and still spell incorrectly. She usually gets the punctuation correct but I think she is more of a hands on learner and seeing words spelled correctly or incorrectly does nothing for her. She is a very advanced reader and a very quick reader and sees words all the time, so it is more of an attention issue.

So we are back to spelling lists but done in a kinesthetic way. I am having her jump rope and spell out loud her spelling words. I am also having her tell me how many syllables a word has, and have her think of spelling in syllables. Another idea I came across is having her spell out the word with Scrabble tiles. I have also considered having her form the words in play dough and if she would do this and stay on task, I would be all for it but she is also an artist and will get distracted and want to created beautiful letters or ornate letters out of the play dough. Another one is passing a beanbag all the way around her body as she spells the word aloud. I hear this helps the brain work both sides of the brain and so better retains information.

I found a great website that I will be using for these spelling lists that incorporates Fry's 1000 most used words into grades 1-5. It's free and developed by a teacher. It also has dictation sentences that use the spelling list words for practical understanding. It's called K12Reader.com.

The last change is that I am having Kailyn listen (while reading along)to a Kindle read aloud of Kidnapped instead of us reading it as a family. We read Robinson Crusoe together as a family last term and that was great but honestly, the girls would rather play with each other or with their daddy instead. So I am assigning during her free reading time and it is going well so far.

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.