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The Thoughtful Spot
Friday, August 14, 2009
In response to Susie's comment...
For Canadian Geography in Year 1, I used a book called, If You're not from the Prairie... by David Bouchard. The illustrations by Henry Ripplinger are absolutely beautiful. We also read Paddle-to-the-Sea, By Holling C. Holling, a book about the Great Lakes. I am from Alberta and we travel back there every now and then, so that is the best living geography we could have. I haven't chosen a specifically Canadian geography book this year, mostly because I haven't found anything I liked yet.
We started history with Our Island Story, considering Canada's roots are there. I am including some French history this year as well. We also read Leif the Lucky when we got to that point in history in Our Island Story . This year, we will add My First History of Canada by Donalda Dickie, and read the chapters that fit in historically with Our Island Story.
P.S. If you click on the category "Year 1" under the title, you can see a few things we did last year, including the programme from one term (my categories aren't very well organised - sorry!). I can email you the other term's programmes, if you like, just let me know.
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
Our Island Story
Katja saw the Our Island Story on my desk. “The Britons!” she cried (She always called it "the Britons", even after they were "Anglo-Saxons" ).
“I laughed and asked her, “Do you miss the Britons?”
“Oh, man! I do!” And she packed it off under her arm.
Our Island Story is probably Katja’s favourite school book. We finished the reading we had scheduled for the first year a while ago, and she has really missed it. We usually took two days to read through each chapter, and she narrated each reading. Then, on a third day, she made a page for her “Book of Time.” I use this instead of a timeline on the wall, due to lack of wallspace in the kitchen. She made one page per ‘character’ or major event. The book is divided into two sections : B.C. and A.D. She draws a picture about the chapter, and then writes on the back what the picture represents. We also included our Bible readings in the Book of Time. Every once in a while, we would look through it together, and she would tell me what the pictures were. Each page is the size of a large index card. Here are a few sample pages, with links to the appropriate chapters: (clicking on the pictures will take you to a larger view)
Jacob and Esau - Genesis 25:27-34.
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Friday, March 7, 2008
Défimaths
Katja and Annalissa are working together through our new math programme from Défimaths. The programme for home educators is sent out by email – and it’s free! Unfortunately for Anglophones, it is only in French, but for us, that is a bonus. The girls both told me today that they like doing the exercises better in French, “because [they] speak mostly French, so it’s easier to think in French.” They find the activities interesting and amusing.
So far, the programme seems to be in line with Charlotte Mason’s methods. I was even more encouraged in that respect after reading an article called “Making Math Meaningful” in the W inter 2007 issue of the Charlotte Mason Educational Review (which I recently discovered with delight!). The programme is manipulative based, encourages talking about math, and guiding the student to think through problems, as opposed to showing her how to do things. (For more on Charlotte Mason and math in the early years, see pages 254-264 of Home Education.)
For an idea of what we did in the first chapter a couple of weeks ago, see Vers l’opératoire (.pdf file - remember, it’s in French!) It was interesting to see the reactions of both of the girls to the problems presented to them. The purpose of these activities was to discover how the children think – the authors expressly mention “ …avoid any attempt to alter the concepts of the students. You [i.e. the parent/teacher] are the only person who should learn something during these activities.” For the first activity, a bottle is half filled with coloured water. I showed them the bottle, first standing up, and then lying down, asking them to pay attention to the liquid. Then I asked if there was more water in the bottle when it was standing up, lying down, or if there was always the same amount.
In another activity, they looked at two different lines of buttons; one line of twelve placed close together, and another line of nine placed farther apart. Then I asked them, if they were chocolates, which line of chocolates would you rather have? If you ate those (the line she chose) and I ate the others, who would have more? Both girls thought there were more in the longer line, even though they were spaced farther apart. I wasn’t really surprised by that, but when I spaced the line of twelve out more so that it was longer than the line of nine, and they both changed their answer, even though they had been watching me, I was astonished. Interestingly, I did another similar activity with Annalissa just this afternoon. I placed two lines of chocolates on the table, and asked her which she would rather have. She chose the longer line, even though there were less, just as she had done before. When I asked her why, she answered that that line was longer. When I asked her which line had more, she immediately counted them, which she had not done before, and discovered that the longer line actually had less chocolates.
We finished Chapter 2 today. Using raisins as counters, we worked thorough some subtraction problems. I gave them each five raisins, for example, and kept five for myself. Then I divided the raisins between my two hands, keeping them hidden. They were asked to tell me how many raisins I had in each hand, and not give any answer until they were absolutely certain they had the correct response. Of course, they couldn’t do that (which served to show them there was a problem that needed solving), and so I gave them another piece of information so that they could solve the problem, by opening one hand and letting them see how many raisins were hiding there. From there, they were able to tell me how many were in the other hand. After the first problem, they found the others quite easy. Annalissa used the raisins in her hand mostly to figure out the right answer; Katja used hers to prove to me how she got her answer.
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Friday, January 25, 2008
Arithmetic
Math is not our favourite subject. In fact, Katja asked me today if we can start every day with math “to get it over with.” Drilling number facts does not go over well at all, but things go much better if she has “real life” problems to solve.
Here is an example of the arithmetic problems we’re working on:
We’re making matching skirts for Grandma and Katja. Grandpa gave Grandma $12 to go to the fabric store.
For each skirt, we need three buttons. Each button costs $1.
Grandma needs 3 metres of fabric for her skirt and Katja needs 2 metres. The fabric $2/metre.
Did Grandpa give Grandma enough money? If not, how much more do you need? Or, how much change will you give him back?
We worked through this problem together, Katja doing all the calculations as I wrote it out on the board. In the end, she correctly calculated that she had to go ask Grandpa for $4. She does problems like this all the time with little difficulty, but ask her 5+3 - she has more interesting things to think about!
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Monday, November 12, 2007
Math Game
I adapted this activity from Family Math. It gives us a bit of variety for our math lessons, and also adds spelling and writing practice.
We wrote the alphabet down the edge of a sheet of foolscap, then assigned a letter to each number:
A – 1
B – 2
C – 3; etc.
We have only gone up to three to keep the numbers low, but you could go up to 26 for older students.
Then I chose a word to write, and then we calculated how much the word is “worth”.
Example: if A – 1 and N – 2, then “AN” is worth 3. You could keep score, I suppose, but my little student found it exciting enough to find out how much the words added up to.
*edited because I counted wrong! Math isn't my strong point....
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Programme 2
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This is our Progamme for Term II. In most things we are just continuing where we left off, but I have made a couple of changes. (Sorry about the formatting! It's the best I can do right now without retyping the whole thing! )
*Edited Music apprecation and hymn study May 17
École Soli Deo Gloria School
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| « À Dieu ,seul sage, notre Sauveur, soient gloire et magnificence, |
| force et puissance, et maintenant et dans tous les siècles! Amen (Jude 25). » |
| FORM I (B) |
Programme II - May - July 2007 |
| Bible Lessons |
Old Testament: |
Genesis |
| New Testament: |
Luke |
| Psalms: |
at random |
| Parables From Nature - Mrs. Gatty |
3 chs. |
| Missionary Stories for Children - Applegate |
| Writing: |
A New Handwriting - M.M. Bridges |
Left-hand half of card 4 |
| one letter to be mastered each lesson. To be able to write, or print, letters |
| and words from dictation as weell as from copy. (HE p. 234) |
| Tales: |
Aesop's Fables |
| Lettres de mon moulin - Alphonse Daudet |
| Les Malheurs de Sophie - la Comtesse de Ségur |
| English History: |
Our Island Story - E.H. Marshall. |
pp. 56-89 |
| Geography: |
Ambleside Geography Book, Book I - Charlotte M. Mason |
pp. 12-25 |
| Paddle-to-the-Sea - Holling C. Holling |
ch. 10-19 |
| Natural History: |
Keep a Nature Notebook; Find and describe: (a) 6 flowers |
| Watch, if possible, and describe (b) ten birds; (c) five other animals |
| Exploring Creation With Botany- Jeannie Fulbright |
chs. 2 |
| Canadian Wildflowers - Catherine Parr Traill |
| James Herriot's Treasury for Children |
in French |
| Only One Woof; Moses the Kitten; Bonny's Big Day |
| OR Among the Meadow People - Clara Dillingham Pierson |
| Burgess Bird Book - Thornton Burgess |
6 chs. |
| A Handbook of Nature Study - Anna Botsford Comstock |
(for reference) |
| Picture Study: |
Picture Studies from Great Artists - Lida M. Williams;
6 paintings by J-FMillet
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| Arithmetic |
Ray's Arithmetic |
| Parent Teacher Guide for Ray's Arithmetic - Ruth Beechick |
| Family Math |
| Swedish: |
Songs; everyday words and phrases; online stories… |
| Art: |
Drawing With Children - Mona Brookes |
Lesson 1 |
| Illustrations of Tales and history tales; illustrations in nature journal |
| Recitations: |
Recite a poem (student to choose), learn two hymns |
| (one French, one English according to music schedule), and two passages |
| of six verses each from (a) Genesis 1 and (b) Luke 2; a Psalm |
| Reading: |
Reading as taught in Home Education, using selected Biblical passages |
| and poetry and prose; in English only |
| Dick and Jane readers |
| Music: |
Music Moves for Piano, preperatory book - Marilyn Lowe |
| Teacher's Guide for Music Moves |
| Musical |
Programme of Mozart's music |
| Appreciation: |
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| Stories of Hymns We Love - Cecilia Margarte Rudin |
| Hymns by William Bradbury |
| Singing: |
Music Play - Wendy Valario et al. |
| Sånger till herrens lov |
Kärlekens Konung |
| Hymns according to schedule |
| Physical |
Bicycle |
| Education: |
skipping rope |
| Work: |
Help in house or garden. |
| Housekeeping for Little Girls - |
| The Mary Frances Sewing Book - Jane Eayre Fryer |
| Paper and Scissors in the Schoolroom - Emily Weaver (Paper folding) |
| Reading for |
Treasures from Grandma - Arleta Richardson |
| Aumusement: |
(To be added to as we go…) |
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Friday, April 7, 2006
I've nearly finished...
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I’ve made some changes to our booklist, especially in the area of history. We’ve decided that it would be better to begin at creation, using Bible readings as history readings together with other books, instead of starting a bit later as Ambleside curriculum does. Many thanks to lindafay for her help with history (and many, many other things!). One more trip to the library and I should be done...
New Year One Booklist
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Thursday, March 23, 2006
Our Booklist
I'm working on our booklist for year one. I am using Ambleside Online as a starting point, but I will make several changes, since we are Canadian and bilingual. I'm trying to add as many French books as I can, but I have yet to decide which ones I'll be using. I may substitute some translated books if I can't find anything else appropriate, but in general I prefer to read books in the original language. It's a big job, and I still have a lot of research and praying to do. It's a good thing I still have almost a year to work on it!
I was reading through my notes from a conference that Catherine Levison gave here last year, and she said to use the books you have instead of choosing a topic and looking for books. I don't have very many French books, but I'm thinking that what I need to do is spend some time in our library looking at what is available.
This is what I've got so far : year one booklist.
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Sense & Sensibility ePatterns