The Thoughtful Spot - Homeschool Blogger

Playing Math

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:10:00 -0600

Rebecca and I played a fun little game today. I found it in the DéfiMaths Preschool section, and it’s called “Seven in a Row.” We don’t have playing cards in our home, so we used Dutch Blitz cards instead.

Each player (2-4) receives seven cards, which she lines up face down in a row in front of her. The remaining cards are placed face down in the centre, and one card is turned over beside to make the discard pile.

The goal is to be the first player to complete her row of seven.

Player one can choose to:

use the card that has been turned over and place it face up at the appropriate place ( in the example given it is a four). The card that was originally at that spot is then returned to the discard pile, face up.
take the card at the top of the pile and place it in the appropriate position. If that place has already been filled by a card that is face up (1-7), the card is immediately placed on the discard pile.

If the face down card that is replaced by the new card is one that can be played (i.e. one that she needs to complete her row), she may play that one also. When she can no longer play, it is the next player’s turn.

We had a lot of fun with this quick and easy game! I hope that makes sense. You can see a picture here, (.pdf file) but the text is in French. Feel free to free to ask for a better explanation if it doesn't.

La Ronde des Jours

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:07:00 -0600

One of this past week's projects:

The girls were even more excited about these than I anticipated. I downloaded the template from this page, and we substituted a pretty front page made from scrap-booking paper. It's the first addition to our lap book about time (more on that later!).

What have we been up to?

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:39:00 -0500

We've

reminded ourselves what some common math symbols mean.
followed Christian a little farther on his pilgrimage, and learned that it is easier going out of the way when we are in, than going in when we are out.
finished one Swedish book and begun another.
read about Robert the Bruce and added a page to the Books of Time.
made a couple of cute mini books.
learned a little bit more about our tree.
learned a poem and a passage of Scripture, and begun working on others.
listened to some Mendelssohn and gotten to know a new painting by Cassatt.
read a few chapters in Charlotte's Web, which we are all enjoying immensely.
made a couple of pages in Rebecca's ABC book and Annalissa and Katja's Swedish word books.
talked about shapes and colours.
learned to be a little more patient and work a little more carefully.

Annalissa has also earned the right to have a hymn book in church by learning to read the hymn "Voici l'enfant nous est né." (The rule in our house is that hymn books are reserved for those who are able to read them.)

A Thousand Things Better than Words...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:45:00 -0500

People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

Felix Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn, the "Mozart of the 19th century," is my sentimental favourite (in fact, it seems to me I've used that quote before here...), and he is the focus of Music Appreciation this term. We listened to our first selection today: Piano Trio, D Minor, Opus 49 - I - Molto Allegro e Agitato. (Performed by the Gryphon Trio. You can also listen to a recording on the Analekta label, where you can also read a description of the piece and it's importance among Mendelssohn's works.) We listened to only the first movement today, but you can listen to the entire piece at those links.

Music Appreciation is just that: appreciating music. The more children listen to music, the better they understand it, and the more they appreciate it. I gave them a little bit of information about the composer, but not much. Before we listened to the piece, I told the girls that we were about to hear a piano trio, and asked them to listen for which instruments made up the trio. They identified the violin and the piano, and I told them the other is a cello. We talked about the mood of the piece (is it happy or sad?), and I asked them if it made them think of anything. Then they could draw a picture, if they chose to. Katja drew the instruments that make up a piano trio, including a very nice violin.

I have some works by Mendelssohn on CD, but I was hoping to find some others that we wouldn't have heard before, and my web search lead me to these places:

Concerts on Demand at CBC Radio 2 is a wonderful listening resource. The link will take you to the "Concert Finder" where you can filter concerts by keyword. Just type in the composer or the artist's name.

Another great resource I found today is the Analekta website. I found a new CD to add to my wishlist: Concert Parisien. You can listen to full-length selections from the CD on this page, and even download one movement from a piece by Rameau. Music to fill your soul with a thousand things better than words.

*editing to add one more link: Heifetz with Rubistein in piano and Piatigorsky in cello play Mendelssohn Trio in D minor.

Foreign Language learning � la Charlotte Mason: Part II

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:56:00 -0500

In a post at the beginning of the school term, I wrote about Miss Mason’s method for learning a foreign language. We ordered some picture books from Sweden and began our Swedish studies this year with the book En liten stund, by Anna-Clara Tidholm, a sweet little book about a little boy rabbit who makes too many pancakes. He wonders who will eat them all up, and then a little girl rabbit comes over to his house. Kom in och ät pannkakor! he invites her: Come in and eat pancakes! She later brings a little piece of pie, and ends up staying for "a little while" - en liten stund.

We read the book over a few weeks. First, I read a couple of pages, and then we translated the sentences that had been read. I drew attention to a few key words, read it again, and then asked the children to tell it back. We read only a few sentences per day, and each day we began again at the beginning of the story, with one of the children telling the story so far, and others giving the names of some of the objects in the pictures. Pannkakor (pancakes) quickly became an everyday word in our home! By the time we had worked our way to the end of the book, I was admittedly astounded to hear Katja narrate the entire book, in the style of the text, with no help whatsoever. The younger children weren’t quite as accomplished, but they all knew the most important words in the book, and could say some sentences.

As a final narration project, we made what we have come to call “Nino books.” (Click on the pictures for a larger view.)

They drew various pictures from the book on each square, and they can name everything they drew.

I am so pleased they did so well!

Book template from Making Books with Children

For the Children's Sake

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:48:00 -0500

The children and I attended an interesting webinar by Jim and Sheila Carroll of Living Books Curriculum. We listened live, but you can still see the replay here: Education in a Box

The following is the invitation I received a little while ago.

Here are the highlights
On November 5th I am leaving for Lagos, Nigeria to further train the teachers at in the use of Charlotte Mason's educational methods. Another important part of the trip is the establishment of a training center at the site of our lab school near Lagos.

As believers, we know that it is important to reach out to less fortunate children and making available to them the same level of Christian education and discipleship opportunities that our children are blessed with.

For the Children's Sake--A Webinar
As you prayerfully consider your tax-deductible support of this mission, we invite you to watch a short, 35-minute webinar so we can share with you our vision for educating the children of Africa and other Third-World nations using the Charlotte Mason method.

Solution

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:28:00 -0500

I have written before about the "Book of Time" the children keep as a kind of loose chronology of characters in our history studies. They really enjoy working on these little books, and I find they help them remember the people we read about. The only difficulty we had with them was how to keep them together in a way that still allowed us to easily add new pages each week. Last week, at Making Books with Children, I found the solution: The Stick and Elastic Book! Perfect!

Front cover:

(clickable)

opened:

Our First Week of School

Mon, 7 Sep 2009 19:39:00 -0500

The first week of school is already over! We took our time getting into the new school year. I think everyone is glad to be back into a routine, after a very busy summer. We rearranged the entire house, except the kitchen, which got some new coats of paint. The only piece of furniture in the house that didn’t move is the piano! We are still getting our new school nook organised, but everyithing is settling into place. Gabriel used his new toolbox to help fix our whiteboard.

Our little handyman.

I want to empasise notebooks more this year. We will do most of our academics in the morning, and the girls can spend some time working on their notebooks in the afternoon. Especially important, of course, are our Nature Notebooks. I’ve managed to collect a few printable notebook pages, and I purchased a pretty set for copywork from Notebookpages.com. I debated about whether to use pre-printed sheets or just have them draw and make their own, but I finally decided to at least begin this way. I don’t want to get carried away with themed sheets, but I’d like for them to have a neat, organised and atractive way to record information. Eventually, I plan to move away from printed sheets and they will be doing their own notebooks on plain paper.

We started working through “Une méthode de lecture pour tous les enfants”, by Marie-Christine Olivier. For the first term, we are working on French word-building (phonics). We reviewed the pure vowel sounds for a-u-i-o-e and é. It is a good book and very user friendly, although there are a few things I don’t like about it. Silent letters are printed in a different colour, and also, since it is from France, sometimes we don’t pronounce phonemes the same way. That isn’t a big problem; it’s most often just amusing. Katja loves to say “bulles” the French way! They wrote a word or two representing each letter sound and drew a picture in their notebooks, using a page from NotebookingPages.com.

Lissa

Katja

For Nature Study we began a year-Long journal of a tree in our yard. Katja chose the crabapple tree on the front lawn. We took bark rubbings and leaf rubbings, and next week we will look at the fruit and seeds. We will come back to the tree in each season to observe and paint it. Our nature study focus this term is trees and fruit.

Rebecca

And Rebecca, collector of all creepy-crawlers, found a big green caterpillar.

Annalissa has moved up to Form IA (grade 2) and now does mostly the same work as Katja. The first time I took out Pigrim’s Progress, she said, “Oh, I’m not ready for Chrisitan!” She didn’t want to narrate the first couple of readings, but in the end she did fine.

We were all excited to order some books from Sweden this year, and all the children helped to choose. This week, we began reading, translating and narrating the book, “En liten stund” by Anna-Clara Tidholm. It’s a cute book about a “kaninpojken” (boy bunny) who needs someone to come help him eat up all his pancakes. Anything with pancakes is popular with my little boy: his answer to the question, “What should we have for supper?” is always “Pancakes!”

Festive Posies

Mon, 7 Sep 2009 10:18:00 -0500

Just sharing a quick link! These posies from Marie-Madeleine Studio are too cute!

Festive Posies

P.S. Their sewing patterns are on sale until Wednesday!

Foreign Language learning � la Charlotte Mason:

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:41:00 -0500

' Children in Form IIB have easy French Lessons with pictures which they describe, but in IIA while still engaged on the Primary French Course children begin to use the method which is as full of promise in the teaching of languages as in English, that is, they are expected to narrate the sentence or paragraph which has been read to them. Young children find little difficulty in using French vocables, but at this stage the teacher should with the children's help translate the little passage which is to be narrated, them re-read it in French and require the children to narrate it. This they do after a time surprisingly well, and the act of narrating gives them some command of French phrases as far as they go, much more so than if they learnt the little passage off by heart. They learn French songs in both divisions and act French Fables (by Violet Partington) in Form IIA. This method of closely attentive reading of the text followed by narration is continued in each of the Forms. […]

We have not space to follow in detail the work of the P.U.S. in French, which of course includes the usual attention to French Grammar…

This hitherto unused power of concentrated attention in the study of languages whether ancient or modern appears to hold promise of making us at last a nation of linguists. We have attained very good results in Italian and German by this same method, both in the House of Education and the Practising School belonging to it, and we are in a fair way to produce noticeable results in Latin. The classical mistress writes,––

"Latin is taught at the House of Education by means of narration after each section has been thoroughly studied in grammer, syntax and style. The literature studied increases in difficulty as the pupil advances in grammar, etc. Nothing but good Latin is ever narrated, so the pupil acquires style as well as structure. The substance of the passage is usually reproduced with the phraseology and style of the original and both students and children learn what is really Latin and realise that it is a language and not a mere grammar." '

from: A Philosophy of Education, pp. 211-212

We studied Swedish last year, but I wasn’t satisfied with the content for reading and listening. This year for Swedish, we will be using living Swedish - short stories and real books, and listening as much as possible to native speakers. I have found several Swedish resources online, and I have ordered some picture books from Sweden, which all the girls helped to choose We will also continue learning a new Swedish song each term, and some Scripture memory.

I read a post on this topic a little while ago by The Linguist on Language Learning: Which Language to Study. The success of the German learners is encouraging and falls in very well with what Charlotte Mason has said. I hope we do as well!