I'm still working on my list of memorization things for kids, and I came across one poem that I think is great for kids in grades 2-6. It's really short, and has lots to talk about. Here it is:

Stupidity Street

 

I saw with open eyes

Singing birds sweet

Sold in the shops

For the people to eat,

Sold in the shops of

Stupidity Street.

 

I saw in vision

The worm in the wheat,

And in the shops nothing

For people to eat;

Nothing for sale in

Stupidity Street.

 

~ Ralph Hodgson

You can see if kids will get the moral: why are there now worms in the wheat? And talk about the whole idea that you reap what you sow, and you shouldn't do things now just because they look fun or neat without thinking about the consequences. Anyway, that's what Katie's working on now.

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It seems that every year we start out with such high hopes--we're going to all learn to speak Latin fluently this year, and conduct dinner conversations every second Thursday in Greek! We shall write a novel together! We shall build our own telescope!

You get the picture. But somehow by the middle of the year we lose steam. I think what I need to realize after six years of homeschooling is that THIS HAPPENS EVERY YEAR. So what does that mean?

It means we should take advantage of September and October, when we're fresh and enthusiastic. That's the time to launch the big projects, to tackle the hard subjects.

It means that we should take the winter months a little bit more lightly. We've cancelled swimming lessons for the next two months just to give us more time to hang around the house. We're going to go skating twice a week, though, because the kids love that. Scheduling in things the kids love is very helpful.

It also means that I need to realize that we all have our ups and downs, and that that's okay. Things will be up again, probably in direct proportion with the thermometer. Until then, I'm going to drink lots of hot chocolate, and concentrate on the subjects we like. It's okay. The enthusiasm will return.

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The kids put the Christmas tree up this weekend when I was away speaking! I went to do a Christmas outreach event at a local church, and when I got home all the Christmas stuff was up! It was awesome. They did a great job, too. They decided to try to colour coordinate this year (can you tell they're both girls?), so they put only the blue and silver and purple balls and decorations on the tree, and the other stuff went in bowls elsewhere. It looks nice.

So now we start out December homeschooling. We'll be much more low-key. Katie's already 2/3 of the way done Saxon Math 6/5 for the year, so we're going to back off entirely. She'll still do spelling, but she's almost done her Grammar book, too, so we'll back off that.

What we will do is the special unit study I bought on Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, probably The Best Book Ever Written That Was Not Written by Jane Austen, in my opinion. We're going to have a lot of fun with it.

With Becca we're just going to work on a few essays, and let her quiet down a bit. She's worked hard.

We've been collecting knitting machines to ship over to the Children's Home in Kenya that we support and that we'll go work at again next year (we were there last year), and I think I might pull one out and do a few sweaters on it this month, too. But all in all, I'm just glad it's December.

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I was just visiting Home Grown Kids blog, and she was posting about how kids learn when they need to. I totally agree.

I read a magazine article today about "what your kids will learn in each grade". I picked it up just to see how my kids were doing. My seventh grade daughter has excelled in everything except "should be able to converse freely and knowledgeably about STD's and AIDS". Guess we skipped that part.

My fourth grade daughter has missed out on quite a bit, because a big thing was "is able to use a variety of sources, such as maps and encyclopedias and the internet, to write reports" and "can make a bibliography". We haven't actually had her do projects like that. We've been focusing on summarizing from one source and on composition.

But if she ever had to do that, it's not hard to figure out. We never taught my older daughter, but she knows how to do it. We figure if we focus on the basics, the rest will come when it needs to. And that's good enough.

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I have two very bright daughters. But sometimes I fear that they don't put enough effort into their written work. I'm an author by trade, and I was worried that maybe I was expecting too much out of them. But it's hard to get a handle on what a third grader is supposed to write like, or a sixth grader, or a ninth grader.

So I found a site with writing samples from Grades 5, 7 and 10. They have samples for four different kinds of writing (narrative, expository, persuasive, and I forget what the other one is) and at four different levels (below standard, partially meets standard, meets standard, exceeds standard). It's really very helpful to read through.

I'm going to give it to my seventh-grade daughter so she can see. When she sees what other kids her age are doing, she almost immediately improves. It's that sense of competition thing, you know? And I hate always being the bad guy, saying you have to try again. This, I think, will help. So if you wonder how your child's writing fares, check this out.

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So I was browing over at hrlabonte 's blog, and she was bringing up the point that we should never do some curriculum just because we feel we have to. We should do it because there is a point to it.

It reminded me of what happened with grammar with my kids. I've always been one of those "the basics come first and thou must not skippest on anything that art of great importance" kind of people. But last year my fourth grade daughter was doing A Beka grammar and my older daughter was doing their grade 7 grammar. To my surprise, everything that was in fourth grade was retaught in seventh grade. It was very repetitive.

Now they were teaching new things as well, and building on what they learned previously, but it was all there. So we've made a decision. Once Katie's finished the fourth grade curriculum (she started halfway through grade 3) we're stopping grammar. We're going to do two years of just composition, where we'll reinforce grammar she's learned, and then when she's in grade 7 we'll do the grade 7 curriculum.

I think composition is fun, anyway, and she really seems to like writing poetry, so let's go with what she likes! You'll learn grammar by practice.

We also have cut out a lot of middle school curriculum for Rebecca and just gone straight to high school. If they get it, they get it. No point in making them go over it ad infinitum.

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We've been studying early church history and the Creeds with Rebecca, my 11-year-old, this fall, using the Omnibus II program from Veritas Press. One of the exercises it recommended doing when talking about heresies in the early church was to talk to some Mormons. I didn't know any, so I figured that was that.

Today two knocked on my door. I think they were rather taken aback by how happy I was to see them! The poor dears, they were in their early 20s and I don't think they knew what hit them. I invited them in and got them all comfortable and dragged down all our textbooks and began asking them questions.

I usually talk with members of different cults when they stop by our door because I figure if someone wants to talk about Jesus, who am I to send them away? Especially if I can direct the conversation.

So we talked about who Jesus is, the nature of faith vs. works, and the purpose of life. All very interesting. And I made Rebecca answer a few questions, like how we know that we get to heaven by faith and not works (Ephesians 2:8, 9) and what that means. I told the Mormon guys the concept of Jesus "imputing" his righteousness on us, so that when God looks at us, He doesn't just see us as people without sin--kind of neutral in the goodness department--but as people with all of Jesus' righteousness. We are given His good works credited towards us! That's pretty cool. I don't think they ever knew that.

Anyway, we weren't getting very far going back and forth on theology, and I wanted to let Rebecca hear what they actually believe, so I let them talk for a while. They said how they believe that Jesus appointed twelve people to lead his church, but these twelve were killed so the true church died out. Very interesting. I said, "what about Paul?". They didn't know what to say. He wasn't among the 12, was he? They said that only those 12 had the authority to baptize, but I brought up those verses when Paul criticizes the churches for saying "I was baptized by Paul" or "I was baptized by Apollos".

And when they left, Rebecca and I reviewed what we learned about the endurance of the message from the early church onwards. Great lesson to bring home the message of Eusebius! We really slogged through that work, but now we can see how it actually still is practical.

So I would really recommend the Omnibus program by Veritas Press. It's great. And talk to a Mormon!

Oh, one other thing. Whenever I have people in to talk, I always ask to pray before they leave. I pray that God will give us all wisdom, and that He will put in our hearts a sincere, courageous desire to know the truth, whatever that truth may be. And that we will be able to hear His voice. They always seem impressed to see that I can actually pray, and then I figure that God will honour that prayer.

Take care everybody!

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For years we didn't actually use a Bible curriculum. I didn't want anything too "hokey", and we always figured we could make it up better ourselves. And we did a very valiant job trying.

But somehow Bible always seemed to fall through the cracks. The kids were memorizing verses and doing devotions, but not really studying the Bible as a subject to understand it.

So we broke down this year and finally admitted we needed help (that's the first step, right? :) ).

And we bought Veritas Press, Grade 4, Chronicles through Malachi for Katie. Rebecca's getting Bible through the Omnibus program.

I thoroughly recommend it. It's very rigorous, and by the time Katie is through she will really understand the prophets and the major stories in order. A lot of the stories she's studying now are really interesting, but they haven't learned them in Sunday school.

A problem we often run into in Christian teaching circles is that the girls get the same story over and over, but miss out on some of the not as well known stories, even if they're very informative. So they've done Jonah a bunch of times but never really Jezebel and Ahab. They've done Daniel, but not Elijah. That sort of thing. So this is really rounding out her knowledge.

The program stresses memorizing the names of the stories in order, so they really get a sense chronologically of what happens.

Each week we have four sessions: one we read the summary card and talk about it; two, we read the story out of the Bible and complete a worksheet; three, we do one of the projects (there are usually two for each week, but we skip one), and then four, there's a test. The test is a good chance to check her cursive, too!

I'm a big believer in learning stories in context. For instance, you learn about each king, rather than learn about the concept of grace in the Bible, or famous kids in the Bible, or even famous creeps in the Bible. I think when you understand the point of the Bible, it makes more sense. So I would highly recommend this!

You can visit Veritas Press here.

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I put a new thing up on my sidebar listing all the stuff we use for curriculum. These are only textbooks, of course; the supporting books are something else.

I've had a number of emails recently asking what we use, and I figured this would be the easiest way.

I'll start posting reviews on some of it soon. Anything anybody in particular want to know about? We really like Omnibus from Veritas Press, and I'll write more about that in a few days.

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So mamma1420 asked in the comments in the thread below how I chose my poems, and I thought I'd reply in another post.

We got started because The Well Trained Mind talked so much about memorization, and I really believe in poetry memorization because poems can convey meaning and emotion far better than anything else. They also teach really good writing skills!

We use Abeka for Spelling and Grammar, and they have poetry memorization as part of their curriculum for spelling. But I wasn't overly enamoured with most of their selections. They weren't bad; they just weren't necessarily the Great Ones, as far as I can tell (the exception would be The Owl and The Pussycat, which really is a lot of fun!). Katie also memorized a few of their other selections from last year.

But the rest of the poems we've just chosen from books I have. I have a lot of antique schoolbooks and antique readers, and those have a ton of poetry in them. Not all are good, but quite a few teach really good values, so we chose some for Katie for last year based on that.

Then I have my favourite poems, which I absolutely must have them memorize, but those are more for the older grades, like the ones I mentioned above.

I did search some sites for "great poems for kids to memorize" and didn't come up with a very good list. That's what I'd like to try to compile here, with everybody's help.

I don't think, though, that any list is going to be exhaustive. I think poetry is highly subjective; you should learn what you love. But there are some truly great poems out there. I would just check old schoolbooks to see what poems they have listed.

And then leave some more comments here!

I also have them memorize lots of Bible work, but this is something separate.

So what do you all think? Any of you have any favourites?

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I just love poetry, and I love getting my kids to memorize it! They're not always happy at the time, but they're happy with the results!

Anyway, we've done a number of poems over the years, and I thought I'd take a poll and ask what are your favourite poems to have kids memorize?

Here's what we're working on this year:

Rebecca, my 11-year-old, is finishing up The Cremation of Sam McGee. After that she'll move on to The Highwayman. We're talking epic poems  here! She has to perform them once she's got them.

Katie, our 9-year-old, is doing The Jabberwocky. Earlier this year she did The  Owl and the Pussycat, and The Eagle, by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

I'd like to have them memorize the Road Less Travelled as soon as they hit 13. Sort of a "welcome to the adult world" initiation.

We'd also like to do:

• A Shakespeare sonnet or two (especially the one quoted at length in Sense and Sensibility: Love is not love if it alters when alteration finds, or beds with the remover to remove...")
• Some of John Donne's poems
• The Bull Moose

Anyone else have other suggestions?

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So we're doing history as the Well Trained Mind suggests, and we're using the Kingfisher Encyclopedia of History as our jumping off point.

Well last week our topic was "Anglo Saxon Britain", or Britain from around 400-1000. I was so disappointed in the Kingfisher synopsis. It was just a rundown of who took over what area when. It was dry as anything.

And then we raided a little used book on our bookshelves: The Junior History of Britain, a school textbook from about 1920. It just tells the story of Britain.

Is it ever amazing! It's just this old dusty thing, but it is so exciting. It tells it like it's a suspense story, and it doesn't ignore the Christian elements. For instance, King Alfred the Great was a Christian, and his relationship with Christ was the main reason that he was such a great king, and as humble as he was. The regular textbooks don't mention that. This one goes into great detail about his beliefs, and talks about how he was responsible for bringing Christ to Denmark.

It just reminded me that I need to make use of all those antique schoolbooks I collect more often. They really are hidden gems.

I think the problem with modern day books is that they're so scared to offend that they leave out the exciting parts. You can't really tell the neat parts of Alfred's story without reference to his Christianity, so they just fail to tell it altogether. It's sad really. I think most kids, especially those in the public system, studying history think it must be the most boring thing on earth. I'm glad my children know differently.

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I've been reading around the homeschooling blogger world and found lots of amazing things people are doing in their coops! I read about Bible Meet Quizzes, and Writing days, and all sorts of things.

This fall we've had a disappointing time with our coops because it's been hard getting teachers. I'm teaching debating to the 11+, which I'm really looking forward to. (If anyone has any great tips or good websites, let me know!). But other people aren't teaching. So it's a drag.

Does anybody have any tips for sites that might give great ideas of things to teach, lesson plans, or great ideas for co-ops? I'd so appreciate it!

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We generally follow a classical education, and believe in concentrating heavily on the "Great Books". This year, for my older daughter who is in Grade 7, we purchased Veritas Press' Omnibus II. Basically it combines history, bible, composition, and a lot of English literature into one subject. It's quite intensive, and the reading isn't fun (although it's a good chance to teach speed reading; good skill in college), but boy is it great.

We're doing the Well Trained Mind, and this year was our year for the Middle Ages, so we skipped to Omnibus II, even though it's meant for Grade 8. It seems to have worked out, though. Rebecca needs a lot of help, and she certainly can't do it independently, but she's learning a lot.

She's typing essays on the computer, and we've been learning a lot about structuring her writing. She gets fiction assignments, too, which she's very creative with. And some map drawing things, and lots more. I really like the breadth of the type of assignments they get.

And best of all are the questions they ask. Things that there aren't necessarily right or wrong answers for, but just to get you to think. For instance, after reading Eusebius' History of the Church, one of the questions was "is it okay to rejoice in the downfall of your enemies?". Eusebius did. David did. But we don't. When's the last time you heard a hymn in church talking about how great it was when they dropped bombs in Torra Borra? Or when they got Zarqawi? We just don't sing about it. We somehow feel kind of guilty.

I was curious to see which side she'd come down on, since I haven't fully resolved it herself. She said go ahead and rejoice, and made a good argument for it biblically, and using Eusebius as an example.

The point is that it makes them think. And figure things out for themselves, not necessarily the way you would decide things. We've really enjoyed it, even with the heavy readings. I can't wait until they finish their high school curriculum, because they have amazing books in it. I only wish they had included To Kill a Mockingbird. We'll have to do that ourselves, I guess...

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I've joined the Well-Trained mind webring! Just click on the link at the right side here called "TWTM" to find other bloggers.

If you're here from the Well Trained mind, you might want to take a look at my post below on Pro-Islamic bias in the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. I was quite surprised by it!

Take care!

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We follow the Well-Trained Mind model for history, and we're loving it. We're on our second go-through, after doing all of history in four years. We're now on the Middle Ages again. And I noticed something very interesting.

Here is how the famous Kingfisher History Encyclopedia explains Mohammed:

When he was 40 years old, his life changed: he saw the Archangel Gabriel in a series of visions. Muhammad then wrote down the Koran, the Muslim holy book, under dictation from Gabriel. (page 106).

Just to make sure we're all clear on that, Kingfisher is explaining that Muhammad actually saw Gabriel (they're stating it as a fact), and that this angel actually dictated the Koran.

Now, let's see how Kingfisher handles Jesus. Drum roll, please....

At about age 30, Jesus began publicly teaching, and it is said that he performed many miracles, such as healing. The Jewish authorities accused him of blasphemy and he was tried before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, but his followers reported seeing him alive after his death. His "resurrection" formed the basis of a new faith...

Everybody get that? "It is said" he performed miracles. "his followers reported" that he rose from the dead. His "resurrection" formed the basis....

So the Kingfisher is reporting Jesus' story as something the followers said, whereas Muhammad's story is something that factually happened.

Now, even though I'm a Christian, I wouldn't change the way they worded the story on Jesus. Not everyone believes these things, and what they wrote is accurate. His followers did say Jesus rose from the grave.

My problem, then, is not with how they presented Christianity. It's with how they presented Islam and the double standard there. Why not simply say "Muhammad claimed to see Gabriel in a vision"? That would be accurate. It would be factual. And it would provide balance.

It's really sad to see a history book that is so used by homeschoolers this biased. I'm really disappointed.

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It's time to start the school year again, and I've decided that this year we are going to get serious about having devotional time at the beginning of the day, and praying together. Maybe you guys all already do that, but I found we were really haphazard and it was falling between the cracks. We taught Bible in school, but we weren't necessarily reading it ourselves. Only as a family.

So I bought a few cute kids' devotional books, but my youngest daughter doesn't like them very much. So I found this site on the web that has a nice Bible reading plan for kids that you just print out. They have to be able to read on their own quite comfortably, but it's good. It doesn't do the whole Bible, and skips over things like Lot's daughters sleeping with him, and stuff like that, so it's age appropriate.

Anyway, if you want to find it, just go here.

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Hi everyone,

We're using The Well Trained Mind for history, and my kids are quite used to doing the outlines and summaries described there for History.

We're going through ancient history for the second time this year, and we decided to do something different for ancient Greece and Rome. Instead of summaries, they're doing a bunch of projects, including crafts, oral reports, writing plays, making maps, and stuff that's "more fun", so to speak.

Anyway, I came across this great website for lesson plans on understanding the governance and problems facing ancient rome. My oldest is in grade 6, so it fits in great with her. We're going to start having discussions on the three "problems" he presents, and then I'll have them choose one to write up the solution.

I think it's a great idea. If you have any other creative ideas that involve writing for ancient Rome, I'd love to hear them! Just put them in the comments.

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I just read this article about a wonderful midwife in Auschwitz who worked hard to rescue the babies who were born. She couldn't do much, but what she could, she did.

It's so inspiring. You always think, "what would I do in that situation?". I hope and pray that I would be that brave, but you never can tell. But it's so important, especially in this day and age, that we don't forget what has happened in the past, and remember that it is still happening in all too many places today.

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I have two children that are polar opposites. My 10-year-old is at a high school spelling level. She's exactly like me. She's always been able to spell, even as a small child. She could just see it in her head.

Her 8-year-old sister is amazing with numbers, but with spelling she's just average. Not that there's anything wrong with average, but when your sister's above average, it's a pain.

Anyway, it's been hard to motivate my 8-year-old to spell. But recently I was in a second-hand bookshop and came across a book called "The Word Game Book" from 1932. It was a family game book, and it has these words on each page, and each family member plays and tries to make as many words out of the letters in that word as they can. The scoring is based on how old you are, so a younger child could win. For instance, on the word BANKRUPTCY, children rank Good at 65 words, and adults at 90 words.

We do a different sort of scoring: I have to get 2/3 more than my older child gets, and twice what my younger child gets, to win. And my younger child is actually better at this than my older one, often almost tying her.

It's great, because it teaches word families, rhyming, all kinds of things.

Whenever we're having a particularly bad period in a day, I often bring out this book and we all do a word for 10 minutes. The kids love it, and it often turns our day around.

I thought I'd share with you some of the words that you can do with your kids. The number in brackets is the number of words the author of the book found in these words. Words must be at least 3 letters, and plurals are not allowed. You can only use each letter once in a word:

INVALIDATE (125)

JEOPARDIZE (90)

THREADBARE (100)

PERIWINKLE (83)

CONVALESCE (100)

INGRATES (136)

FELLOWSHIP (92)

THOROUGHFARE (163)

ADVERSITY (131)

MELANCHOLY (106)

HAUGHTINESS (157)

KLEPTOMANIA (234)

BANISHMENT (136)

PROVOCATION (113)

ACKNOWLEDGE (176)

OBLIGATORY (120)

TAMBOURINE (250)

CLAIRVOYANT (163)

SPHERICALLY (242)

NEIGHBORHOOD (137)

FORCEFULNESS (153)

HANDSOMELY (173)

Have fun and good luck!

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