Posted in Homeschooling

I can´t believe that I am actually excited about one of my children going to school!!

But here is the situation.  We have been in Brasil for almost 2 years and Joshua wants to learn Portuguese but he needs more exposure to the language.  He already understands a lot of Portuguese but he just needs to speak it.  He needs to hear it on a daily basis.  We have talked about having friends come over and play but all of his friends at church are in school all morning.  So our solution is to send Joshua to school, a Brasilian Christian school.  He will start in the middle of the Kindergarten year, the schools run from Jan - Dec. here.  But we have asked them to put him in the class with the younger students.  Some of them are still 4 and there were some boys that are his size that are just like him (a little immature, just turned 5 and such)    He will go from 7:30 am to 11:30 am.  The school told us at that age they don´t do writing and reading.  So that falls in line with my goals for him.

 In the afternoon we may do some of the school work that I had planned but not all.  Since we plan to be here in Brasil for the next 18 years or so we want him to get a good foundation.  A year ago he was not ready for  a situation like this, he would have cried just talking about it but the time is right.  He is so excited.  The plans are to start him in August after the July vacation month here in Brasil.  We have plans to travel some ourselves.  I will take the camera and try to post some of the sites that we come across.

I´ll keep you posted on his progress and what I decided to do in the afternoons.  Nature study is still on my list but I may delay some of the other things.

Happy Homeschooling

Posted in Nature Studies

We are so far behind where I wanted to be in our Nature challenges but I am happy that we are getting back to it.  We have had a good time relaxing since the kids have been out of school.  This week we started some light work using the Work Box System.  But that is for another post.  I have a lot to say about a few changes in our homeschool and so I will have several post this weekend.

Posted in Curriculum

Because of supplies here in Bazil it is not always possible to do all the suggested experiments in our Apologia Science book.  A while ago Rebekah did the experiment about "natural selection".  The deer was the prey and the Cougar was the predator.  This was showing the correlation between the population of the deer and cougars.  It was very interesting to see how the numbers would go up and  down.

Here is Rebekah casting the Cougars among the deer.

(above) The cougar landed upside down and did not  "eat" any of the deer.  Poor thing he died. The cougar needed to land on/eat at least 3 deer to survive.


Here is a better shot of the cougars and deers.  This time there were 4 cougars and only one of them landed on/ "ate" 3 deers.  He survived and the other cougars all died. Each of the deer that were landed on all died (even if the cougar only landed on 1 or 2) .

I wish I had more pictures but at the time I was involved with the process and did not get many more.

Another activity was cutting out the map of the world and seeing how it may have been prior to the plates of the earth separating.


Here is what it may have looked like before the plates separated. The paper moved a little before my picture was taken but South America and Africa fit snuggly together.

We did not take pictures of all the experiments but we had fun getting everything together. And Rebekah did learn something in the process.  Out of the experiments that we were able to find the supplies I think they have all been a success so far.

Happy Homeschooling

Posted in Nature Studies

On May 15 I took some pictures of Joshua outside in our yard.  I took this picture of  one of our Banana trees.  Well Friday afternoon while I was outside taking pictures of Joshua and Abigail playing in the yard I noticed that same tree full of green bananas. 

Here is the Picture from May 15

Here is the picture taken on May 29th.

Can't wait to eat these sweet bananas.

Posted in Nature Studies

I came out the back door on Friday to see Miss Abigail sitting in a puddle of water in the yard. I thought she was outside chasing kitties (that is her usual interest) but no.  Here is what I caught on film when I quietly ran back into the house and came out again.



They had such a great time playing in the water!


I wish I had a video recording so you could hear her talking and having such a great time.


I think they enjoy living in the rainforest during the rainy season !!

They are enjoying nature!!  This was a fun afternoon!!

Posted in Homeschooling

Since I did not start homeschooling until February we only had about 12 weeks of school.  After trying to decide what to do in this short amount of time I decided to do the first Term of Ambelside year 4.  We are so excited that we finished this term last Friday and also finished some of our books this week.  We finished Poor Richard and Robinson Crusoe.  We have all our books for Term 2 & 3 and we will take a couple of weeks off and then start back with our core subjects, Language Arts and Marth and Science. Sarah will be joining us after she finishes this next week, her last week at the International School.

 Rebekah is determined to make up the year she lost by going to School (They held her back at the International School).  Her reading has improved so much this school year.  She has been reading her 7th grade Literature book to me out loud these last two weeks and she is doing great.  I am very proud of her accomplishment. We have a schedule to complete all her work by the end of January and then we will start her 8th grade work.

Posted in Curriculum

• A daily schedule for those who like to have a plan or would like their children to complete the book on their own
• Templates for written narrations, the notebooking activities and experiments
• Review Questions
• Scripture Copywork, with both print and cursive practice 
• Reading lists and additional activities, projects, experiments for each lesson
• An appendix with beautiful, full-color, lapbook-style Miniature Books
• Field Trip Sheets to keep a record field trips
• A Final Review with fifty questions the students can answer either orally or in writing to show off all they remember and know at the end of the course.

Botany: https://apologia.securesites.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=128 

 and 

Astronomy: https://apologia.securesites.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=127 

Jeannie is giving away four Astronomy Notebooking Journals and four Botany Notebooking Journals to bloggers who post about this on their site. Visit her blog to learn more about this contest: www.jeanniesjournal.com

I am excited about trying the notebooking journals out.  We will be doing Botany this fall!! So the journals are out just in time for us!!

Posted in Nature Studies

Posted in Homeschooling

When I first started Homeschooling in 1999 the first book I read was Sally Clarkson´s Understanding the Wholehearted Child.  I loved the book. She quoted Charlotte Mason´s writings a lot in this book.  This made me eager to read Charlotte´s book. This started my journey toward a Charlotte Mason Education for my children.  In 2003  our Mom´s group in Shelbyville started a reading group on Karen Andreola´s A Charlotte Mason Companion.  So I started reading that book and even though the reading group dissolved before we finished the book, I went ahead and finished the book and I loved her ideas and philosophy of education.

In 2006, I was looking for a way to homeschool closer to the way Charlotte Mason taught and I came across Amblesideonline.  While looking through the files I found the original Charlotte Mason Home Education.  I started reading it back then but I never finished it.  I picked it up a few months ago and I have started reading it again. 

This is such a meaty book. This is a quote from Charlotte Mason's book Home Education. Here she is talking about a mother:

"She must ask herself seriously, Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? And, How should they learn it? If she take the trouble to find a definite and thoughtful answer to each of these three queries, she will be in a position to direct her children's studies; and will, at the same time, be surprised to find that three-fourths of the time and labour ordinarily spent by the child at his lessons is lost time and wasted energy."

In some way I have asked my self these questions many times.  I have changed some of my answers over time.  When I started out home educating I followed the advise of a seasoned homeschooler in choosing my curiculum.  Over time I have abandoned most of those book and moved to a more pure Charlotte Mason style with living books.  The tried and true books have stayed.  For us it has been the Making Math Meaningful curiculum and Getty Dubay Handwriting.  We have continued to read living books which we began when Rachel started school.

We have such a long way to go to be 100% Charlotte Mason but we are so much closer now than we were when we started 10 years ago. Since starting Ambelside we have add nature study, artist and composure studies and hymn and folk songs studies. We were doing artist studies before but we were not focusing on one particular artist.

I am really excited about starting our new school year in July.  I think this will be our best school year yet.  I think the girls are looking forward to it also. All our books are purchased and have arrived (with only a few that will be brought this summer.). We are ready to go!