March 15, 2009 - Shakespeare Studies for Our Homeschool

Sprite loves Shakespeare! Of course, she only know retellings of his plays, but the stories are engaging, and that's what she loves about Shakespeare. When she's a bit older, she can begin to read the original plays and learn to love Shakespeare's language without the added burden of learning characters and plot lines. Those she already understands!



We have a smattering of books, but mostly we use free Librivox recordings of the public domain retellings of Shakespeare's plays by Nesbit and the Lambs. (For all these links and printables, visit Shakespeare for Children.)

Each time we study a play (about one per month), I have Sprite write a narration of the story line. Then she copies it into a simple one fold minibook. Over time, we can make a Shakespeare lapbook.







For this one, I typed her narration for her.



Sprite is 9 1/2, so I'm slowly adding more lengthy written narrations. We still do a lot of oral narrations however.

We also watch the BBC's Shakespeare Animated Tales videos as a fun way to recap our study of each play. You can watch all of them for free on YouTube, but a good friend loaned me the entire set on DVD!

How do you incorporate Shakespeare into your homeschool, if you do at all?

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December 19, 2008 - Rotation Scheduling for our Homeschool

We are doing something very innovative in our homeschool lately. Instead of studying each subject each day, we're doing one main subject each week and doing a week's worth of assignments in one day.



So it breaks down like this:

Rotation week 1 -- language arts plus artist study & drawing
Rotation week 2 -- science & nature study plus composer study
Rotation week 3 -- history

Each day we still do spelling, Bible, math, and reading.

I've found this way of study is much more conducive to Sprite's attention span. She prefers to work on something for a long time rather than in short spurts. She is one of those creative types who can get lost in an activity and totally lose track of time. Having short lessons each day that drag out a single book to a four week study was actually boring her. She would want to go on and read more than the daily two assigned pages, but we had to stop because there were so many other assignments waiting to be completed. She was complaining about being tired of XYZ topic when I know that the topic is actually quite engaging. But the fact was that she was tired of nibbling on it.

Charlotte Mason suggested short lessons. And I've been doing that for over four years now. We would nibble on some math, and put it away. We would nibble on some science, and put it away.

But now that Sprite is nine years old and in fourth grade, I'm realizing that it's time for the "short lessons" to be a tad longer. She's not a first grader anymore. She's ready for more. And by making the lessons too short, I am actually working against her natural interest in the topic.

To use my food analogy -- she is nibbling on a nugget of cheese and decides it tastes great and would love the whole chunk. But I take it away and tell her she has to wait until tomorrow to eat another nibble. How frustrating and disappointing! I've decided to give her the whole chunk!

We've done five weeks of this schedule, almost two complete rotations. And I think it's working well. Each Monday, Sprite seems more excited, "What do we study this week?" And that momentum can carry us through to Friday.

This week is a good example. We studied the magnetism book in our Noeo Physics 1 curriculum. This 30 page book (and a few experiments) was scheduled to be stretched out over four weeks. But we did it in four days instead. Now we're done, and we can move on to a fresh topic.

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November 11, 2008 - Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival

I am pleased to be the host for the latest Charlotte Mason Carnival. Enjoy!



Keri has offered us another dose of Imagination posted at her wonderful blog Sunny.
 
OOPS! Keri's post for THIS carnival is about handicraft. It's a photo with a caption -- very simple -- but one you don't want to miss!

Mama Squirrel of Dewey's Treehouse shares Simple Folk Songs.

Mrs.Cuddles takes a break from her Cuddles On The Couch to offer us her thoughts on habit training. Read it at Putting Our Hearts and Habits in Homeschooling.

Cindy presents Living Math - Graphs Galore posted at On Our Journey Westward.

Do you dislike crafts? Do you ever wonder about the real learning value of crafts? Well, this post is just for you! Angelina McBride presents Thoughts on Crafts posted at Permanent Things. It will make you think and make you laugh!

Eeeemommy reveals the nitty-gritty details about organizing Poetry Recitals at her blog For the Sake of the Call.

Fiddler has compiled a nice bibliography of living science books in her post --Botany Books for kids at A Habit of Reading.

Lynn is doing something new with living books! Visit Picture Book Interactive Notebook at Eclectic Education for details, including a nice slideshow.

Suzanne lists the curriculum she's using in Home-school Curriculum Notes posted at Adventures in Daily Living.

Karin Katherine's nature study has included both pufferfish and rockfish! See pictures at Fishing 101 over at Passport Academy Homeschool.

Lynn Seddon presents What's a Homeschool Mum to Do: Part 2 posted at Raising Little Shoots.

Looking for some inspiration for composer study? Barb(Harmony Art Mom) presents Johann S. Bach: Composer Study for this Term.

My own contribution deals with artist study -- Mary Cassatt to be precise.

Faith Alterton shares a most creative post at Blessed Quietness -- And yet another use for mud. That got your attention, didn't it?

Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers tackles the socialization issue in Sheltered or Protected? posted .

Amanda is offering free printables in Nature Study Observation Calendars posted at Hearts and Trees.

Kimberly D. Garcia uses a well-known CM quote “I am, I can, I ought, I will” to encourage her children in SETTING CHILDREN UP FOR SUCCESS posted at Classical Reading and Writing.

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October 17, 2008 - Living Math Update - Fractions

I've been doing well with my living math resolution. Each week we put aside the Singapore Math textbook/workbook for at least one day and do math games instead. I cannot express how much Sprite's motivation has improved with this change! She adores the games and begs to do them again and again. Our last venture into math games was a result of cooking. While making cookie dough I realized that Sprite's understanding of fractions was almost nil. I made a mental note, and looked in my Family Math book the next day.



Using directions from the fractions chapter, we started work on a Fraction Kit. Then the next day we played very simple games with the kit. Using a special fraction die that we made, we took turns picking up the amount we'd rolled. The winner was the first to get to one whole.

I was utterly amazed at how quickly Sprite caught on. Before I even had a chance to explain things like 2/8ths are the same as 1/4, she was switching out the pieces herself to make equivalent values and saying, "I only need 1/16th more!" Wow. That was so amazingly easy. And fun!



I tried to throw her for a loop by then playing the game with subtraction -- we each start with one whole try to get to zero. No stumping her was possible! She grasped it fully. I asked her why. She said, "I can look at the pieces and see how they are the same or different." She is a very visual-spatial child, and I now realize how spending fifteen minutes making a fraction kit and playing games was so much more productive than using the textbook would've been.

No, we were not scheduled to learn about fractions this week. But we needed to know about them to make cookies. And that's living math -- using math in real situations in a hands-on way. I hope that next time we bake together that these concepts will carry over.

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August 16, 2008 - Some Homeschool Goal Setting

Even though the main curriculum of our school is all planned out until probably next March, constant evaluation is a good thing. So I’ve been making some goals.

1. To incorporate Drawing with Children into our homeschool.

I’m not sure how to do this yet. I don’t even have a plan. But I really want to do this. Because my daughter is so artistic, I feel especially bound to help her grow in this area. I’ll share my plans as I come up with them.  I will use Barb's blog and her Squidoo lens as a resource for sure!

2. At least one day a week our math lesson should be living math – games, hands-on, or real life problem solving.

We’ve done this for three weeks so far, and I’ve got to say that it’s a grand success in improving attitude if nothing else. (Mine and Sprite’s!) Playing games is simply fun. Time will tell if this style of math instruction is beneficial. I believe that it will be. By the way, I'm using Family Math for my game ideas.

3. Our study of Shakespeare must become more consistent.

Because my goal was one play per month, it’s falling to the wayside. Each week I think, “I’ll do it next week.” Then the month is gone and Shakespeare was ignored. To help myself out, I’ve printed the lovely templates I shared here and I’ll be sticking those into my planning book. (Can you believe that I made them and haven’t even used them yet ourselves? Ah.. good intentions!) For some reason a piece of paper that needs to be filled out is a good motivator/reminder for me. And I’m brainstorming other ways to become more consistent in this area. Maybe a big Shakespeare poster with a list of the plays that are in Nesbit’s and Lambs’ retellings? We can tick them off as we study them? I'm a box checker. And if that's what it takes to get me to follow through, then I'm willing to do it!

4. Give Sprite opportunities to work independently.

She enjoys that freedom, and she’s ready for some baby steps in that area. One easy area – all the fun websites that I want her to explore. I am trying something new next week. I made a lens just for her. It links lots of fun and interesting sites. One list is her “must visit” list. For those, she must leave a narration by way of a comment. The others are optional. My plan is to change that page for her each week as I find interesting things that supplement our studies or that are plain old fun! This will also provide more structure to her online time so that it’s not wasted on a lot of silly games. I’m not against silly games. But if she can spend some time learning, that’s good too!

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