RECENTLYIn an earlier post, I mentioned "smorgasboard days" of homeschooling. These are days in which you set aside textbooks and select random things to study. These are days when much real learning takes place! My oldest son used to refer to these days as "Milk and Honey" days. My youngest son calls them "Salt and Pepper" days. With much excitement, we set aside our textbooks today.
We began our day with Bible reading--a good way to start any day! As my son ate his breakfast, I read aloud from an excellent book by children's author Jean Fritz called, THE GREAT LITTLE MADISON. I highly recommend anything written by Jean Fritz whose genre is biographies and historical fiction. In particular, this book by Fritz has truly enlightened us as to the difficult beginnings of our country. We may be inclined to think that once the Revolutionary War was won, our Constitution was ratified and Washington became president, that it was smooth sailing from there on. Not true! There were attempts by various New England states to secede from our Union. Presidents Jefferson & Madison had to constantly to battle with Federalists who desired a government more in the style of Great Britain's. We had continuing problems with England and France at the same time eventually leading up to the War of 1812. God's hand was upon our country in holding it together through tenuous times. This wonderful book provides detailed information about the early days of our country.
Back to our smorgasboard day! My son & I walked around our house pointing to common & proper nouns which ended up in somewhat of a race. Next we moved onto an outline map of the world where he filled in the seven contintents and four oceans. We tossed a coin onto a large world map & wherever it landed that is the country we had to look up & discuss. Or coin fell upon Greenland, the largest island in the world. We'd known about Greenland's beginning during the time of Eric the Red, but we learned other interesting facts about this little-known country.
My son LOVES professional football & is in a fantasy football league with his dad & some other homeschooling fathers & sons. I clipped an article out of yesterday's paper about the Dallas Cowboys/New York Giant's game. I handed him a highlighter pen & asked him to highlight the most relevant facts in the article. Then I asked him to narrow it down to the five most important facts. Next he pointed out nouns and verbs in the article. This is great note-taking practice should he attend college. You have to be able to condense what an article or a teacher is stating. Finally, he had to figure pass completion percentages & percent of total yards in passing for each team. He loved this! And just think--it's actually MATH!
We also got out our Bibles & took turns calling out Scriptures & practiced quickly looking them up. Out of that activity, we were reminded of a beautiful verse in Zephaniah. How many of us would say to ourselves, "I think I'll read something in Zephaniah today?" I know I wouldn't be inclined to do that yet it yielded this gem of a verse: "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." v.17 How many of you have a need to be "quieted with His love?" I certainly do!
As we ate lunch, we watched a program on the Travel Channel called "Passport to Europe." I love watching this show. Today the host was touring the Tuscany region of Italy, mainly Florence. She toured the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio(important place in Renaissance history), a museum housing Michelangelo's statue of David & gave information on the foods of the region. We put in our picture disk from my daughter & her husband's recent trip to Florence & found the very same locations shown in today's program. One exception: these pictures held the beautiful faces of my daughter & son-in-law.
Before we called it a day, we played a game of "Rummy Roots" which I'm sure most of you are familiar with. Knowing some basic Latin is a great thing! It is truly a vocabulary builder. My son won today!
Will we continue to do textbooks? Yes, we will. But we will regularly combine it with days such as today that provide us with the variety our spirits need & more readily make allowances for the Lord to lay things on my heart to do with my son that are educational, as well as fun.
In closing, some of you know I am going to be a grandma for the first time. This is more exciting than I could ever imagine. The ultrasound was last week & it is a BOY!!! This makes number 11 grandson/great grandson for my mom. My son-in-law is one of eight boys so this makes number 9 boy for their family. The only problem I have is that since I found out, I am finding it difficult not to shop. I found the most adorable outfit in Baby Gap, some blue jeans and a fleece at Old Navy and a few other things @ Target. I know, I know, they grow quickly, but I'm the grandma & I can't contain myself!
We just had grandson #2 for dh's parents in April. The 1st grandson is 14. So she went a big wild with the shopping too.
By the way, what does the 1991 mean? That is the year I graduated from college and is what actually drew me to your blog. :)
Mish