Mosaics have been found as early as 3rd century BC in Greece.  In these times they were used to decorate floors.  It wasn't until the 4th century AD that this changed when Christians began to use mosaics to decorate the walls of their churches instead.

Here are a few mosaics found from the 4th century.

This one was found in an ancient Roman villa and is only a partial view.  The detail is amazing.

Pictures were found at Wikimedia and Classical Mosaics.  If you want to see more just visit those links.

Mosaics were quite the art form. So, since we're studying the Middle Ages and we were in the 4th century we decided to try our hands at mosaic art.  I decided against ripping out the carpet for them to decorate and settled instead for stepping stones.

It was fun.  It was easy.  We have a functional item that will be well used in our garden and it was inexpensive. 

I think they're just great.

I'll be posting a tutorial on how to make these in a few days so that you too can enjoy masterpieces made by your sweethearts. 

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments

Once a year, myself and some other homeschoolers from our church, get together for a speech/co-op day. Several months before we give our speeches, we vote on a topic; the children study it, write a speech and then deliver it to friends and family on the appointed day. We go all out with props, costumes, food and games. The children get to put into play their creative skills and practice speech making.

This will be our 5th year. Thus far our Co-op days have been...

Democratic Republic of the Congo (we have a family at our church that moved from there and we thought it would be a great opportunity to learn some things firsthand)

(Wesley did his speech on the food of the DROC. He served some authentic food from his roadside stand "Red Termite Inn".)

Under the Sea

(my friend made this sharks submarine mouth that we had to enter before we could go underwater, which was our garage covered in blue tarps)

Pioneer Day


(Don't you love this carved watermelon that friends from Pennsylvania made? Some people are so talented!)

Inventions



(My oldest daughter did her speech on the pencil and included her two younger siblings.)

This year we will be going back in time to the Middle Ages - a time period with plenty to study since it covers about 1,000 years!

I just recently learned that history is divided up into three parts: 1. Antiquity 2. Middle Ages 3. Modern Times.

Isn't that interesting? I had always thought the Middle Ages was the time of knights and castles but did not know it also involved the martyrs, William Wallace and Vikings.

I can't wait to get into this study. So much fascinating history to cover and learn before June when the children give their speeches.

Some materials I plan to use are:






















There are of course many other books about the middle ages I intend to use but these are the ones I've purchased. It's much easier for me to have the books on hand than to be going to the library (since it's a little ways away) and I end up paying fines so many times, too. If they're good books I don't mind having them in our own personal library for the kids to mull over at will.

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments

School hours are like a monster (however excellent that school may be), gobbling up the child's treasure of time.  Careful now!  We only get to be a child once.  For some children, there are more calls on time:  gymnastics, music, swimming, extra spelling, French tutoring.  And what about the church?  However worthwhile each separate activity is, it is important to keep a check on how much of the child's time is being "organized," and make a wise and balanced choice of priorities.  Children's overall needs should be thoughtfully considered.

Children are being "fitted into" a streamlined schedule designed for the parents so they can cope with their pressures.

There should be space, and lots of free time.  Children need to be outdoors (for hours).  They need to make noise, mess, and to have access to raw materials.

Charlotte Mason so believed in this principle of giving children time to play that she organized the lessons so that the child could finish them about halfway through the day. ...she knew that if attention was to be given fully, the child should have it contained in a length of time appropriate for them.

Taken from For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, pages 22-24

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments

I don't know why it is but I have a hard time getting fresh ideas and inspiration for our Nature Study.  I feel it's a little pointless sometimes since my boys spend plenty of time outdoors and have  learned quite a bit about nature without any help from me!  

This week I needed some ideas so I turned to Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie.  Under the chapter The Autumn Journal she gives several suggestions.  I chose the following, making a few variations:

1.  Find different grass, rush, and sedge seed heads, and draw them.

2.  Find different colored leaves.  (This is a challenge around my house since a lot of what we have is evergreen bushes.  But we did manage to find one red leaf. )

3.  What plants still have flowers?

We gathered these things, along with other interesting finds, and sketched a few of them into our nature journals.

Justus found himself a corn plant growing and fashioned for himself an arrow.  It flew pretty good, too!

So, what are you doing for Nature Study and do you adjust your study if you have older kids?

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments

Habits - we all have them.  Probably 99% of our day is based upon the habits we have established whether they be good or bad.

My post on habits is going to be not so much on establishing habits in my children but in myself.  I have habits I want my children to have but I also must show a willingness to establish good patterns in my own life.

Now I'm not advocating that we leave our children to themselves while we create new habits in our own life.  I just know  that so many times it's easier to focus on someone else and how they need to change than to face issues in our own life.

Change is hard.  It's easy to write down all the things we want to change in our lives but actually doing it and not giving up is a whole different matter.  I believe that the habit we want to secure in ourselves must be something we yearn for deeply.  We have to be convinced it's something we really need to have in our life - we need to see the value of it.

Charlotte Mason writes about working on one habit at a time  I've also heard that it takes about 3 weeks to form a habit - depending on how often it's repeated.

Be realistic about what you want to change.  For example, I know there are a lot of ladies that want to get up early to have devotions but they're just unable to drag themselves out of bed because they have an infant they're up with during the night.  In this case, it's not very realistic to think you can get up at 5 a.m.  So, be realistic.

Here are my own list of steps to establishing a habit.

• What area do you desperately want to change?
• Be realistic.
• Begin - don't put it off till tomorrow saying everything will be in more order then - Start today!
• Press on!  It won't be easy to change since you have to unlearn the old habit.
• Get back up and begin again!  If you mess up don't beat yourself up over it - begin again.
• Ask God to help you.

As the song goes, "Little by little, I'm changing, I'm growing."

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments

Our Homeschool Speech Day is over and went very well.  About 75 people attended (including those participating) so it was a good audience for the children.  We have a really nice group of hard-working parents.  Since we put so much effort into the day it's nice to work with others who are like-minded.

This year I didn't do much with the planning but left it up to another mom.  I told her it would be good for her; she'd be stretching her wings, trying new things.  I don't think she was too convinced but she did a great job none-the-less.  There were a few things we could have did differently but that's typical.  We now know for next time.

 These are the children that participated.

 The audience.

Here are Serenity, Justus and Audrey giving a speech on the pencil.  I was really proud of Serenity.  She wrote her speech all by herself with very little help from me.  She wanted to submit her speech to ENN (Everyday News Network - Vision Forum) but her speech was over 2 minutes long.

She started her speech by saying, "Hello, this is Serenity."  Justus said, "And this is Justus."  The microphone was passed to Audrey who said, "And this is Me."  It was so cute!  Then all of them together said, "Reporting for Everyday News."

At the end of her speech she said the same thing but when the microphone was passed to Audrey, Audrey said, "Serenity!"  She was wanting out of her little cardboard tube and was sending out a plea for help.  "Sereeenity!" 

This isn't the best picture but it gives you an idea of how my son Wesley really gets into his speech.  He pretended he was a miner from Scotland and told about the invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel and how it had made life easier.

After Wesley came intermission where we had a sno-cone machine, popcorn maker and cotton candy machine going as well as watermelon.  Mmmm, yum!

That little thing in my dh's hands is a blasting cap and detonator cord for D-Y-N-A-M-I-T-E.  It takes 4000 psi (pounds per square inch) to ignite dynamite.  That's what the blasting cap does.  The detonation cord is 6000 psi.  When ignited it burns faster than the speed of sound.   If you're blasting a large area you would tie all the dynamite together with the detonation cord.

We had to settle for igniting this blasting cap since none of our acquaintances had a stick of dynamite on hand to give us.   We set this off during intermission just for a little added excitement.  It gives a very loud blast.  Hey, we live in the Wild West.  Normal stuff, you know.

In one speech we learned all about chewing gum and bubble gum.  Dubble Bubble was the first bubble gum produced.  It was colored pink the first time and is still the same today.

Seth's speech was on the Trans-Atlantic Cable.  We gave him a card because this was his last year since he's almost finished with high school.   I'm finding this stage a bit emotional for me.  More than a few tears have flowed thinking about it all.

Zachary did his speech on the Submarine.  Like Wesley, he's also a natural on the stage - very comfortable and can ad lib if necessary.

I think Audrey had the most fun.  She ate junk all day long!  By the end of the day her shirt and face were very dirty.

It was a long day - our last guest left at midnight.  My house was demolished and I'm exhausted.  But hang on here, I have to finish... I can't wait for the next one!  Sound pretty nutty?  

Ideas are already brewing in my head for our next speech day that I'm going to be mulling over the next little while.

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments

Each year a few families in our church plus one other family that drives 3 hours, get together to plan a Homeschool Day.  We pick/vote on a topic for our day and the kids choose a sub-topic that's pertinent.  They then prepare speeches, poster boards and/or backdrops. 

On our homeschool day, besides all the speeches, we have activities for the kids to do (just a few).  We prepare little booklets with questions and the kids answer them by reading the posters or listening carefully to the speeches.  We invite all kinds of people to come hear the kids so it gives them some real incentive to do a good job.

We started this as a way to give the children experience in preparing speeches and public speaking.  Kids need to learn to make eye contact, have volume, articulation and be expressive.  Some of the kids that come are still needing practice on this but I think I see improvement each year.

The kids have really enjoyed it.  I can't say my boys just love preparing their speeches but it has been good for them.  They have learned to research their subject and and condense their learning's to a 5 minute speech.

We also encourage creativity in their presentations.  However they want to present the information is up to them.  One year our topic was "Under the Sea".  My son chose to learn about scuba diving.  To get a costume we went to a local scuba diving store where they loaned him the use of an outfit at no cost. 

On the day of the speeches he stayed underneath a sheet frying, with sweat pouring off his face while wearing a 50lb. tank on his back until it was his time to speak and then "came up out of the water" amidst bubbles (this can be achieved by having people hidden with a bottle of bubbles) 

He also did a science experiment with an egg and a jar.  You light a match in the jar and place a peeled, hard boiled egg on the opening of the jar and it gets sucked down as the match uses up all the oxygen.  This represented the pressure on our lungs when we go diving.

This Saturday we're putting on our 4th Homeschool Day.  The topic this year is Inventions.  We have quite a host of people coming to listen.

Our invitation read:

Presenting

"A Rainbow of Inventions"

...a variety of color to show the variety of ideas and creations.

You are invited to join us

as each student will present a time in history

 when an inventor was inspired and an invention was born!

This event will be held at:

The (our last name) Research Center

On:

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Starting at 1:00 p.m.

Supper will be served in the evening.

Come Join the Fun!!!

We're all quite excited and busy planning last minute details.  Next week I'll try to post some photos of our 'big day'.  So be sure to check back.

Copyright 2008 Treasuring the Moments

A friend asked me a few months ago about what I would suggest for grammar. I finally got around to answering her question and then just this morning was asked the same question by someone else. So I thought I would share the letter I wrote to my friend.

Recitation or Interpretive Reading achieves several things.  It helps you to learn to read aloud with feeling and meaning, clarity and volume and to practice making good eye contact when speaking.

Each term my children have one poet they study and each week they are given a new poem to practice.  They are to read this poem aloud with feeling, practicing clarity as well.  Then once a week we get together and have Poetry Tea.  Julie at Brave Writer  gave me this idea. 

I make a few snacks along with some tea, of course, and that's it.  It's not fancy, although a few times I went out of my way to do something extra special.  My kids enjoy it; they get to eat (a big thing for boys) and it's something different in their day.

As we hear the various poems from all age levels, I like to think that we're training our ear to appreciate the different types of poetry.  I don't always understand what they're reading,  (I have a hard time understanding Shakespeare for instance.) but I still think it doesn't hurt to stretch yourself.

Justus, my 4yos, loves to be a part of our tea too.  Since he cannot read he recites the few memory verses he knows.  He is all excited to be able to do this and jumps up and down when it's his turn and for this reason he usually goes first.   We all clap when he's finished.  (He probably claps for himself, too, now that I think about it.)

I forgot to mention that I do tell the children that this is a good time to practice being good listeners and to be respectful of those speaking by looking at them and not getting up to go get something in the middle of someones poem.

This boy of mine has no trouble with expression and being dramatic.  When he reads from the book of James about the tongue and how 'it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.' it fairly causes you to shiver.  He actually reminds me of the minister on Pollyanna when he preaches.  But he wasn't reciting from James on this day.

How do you practice recitation in your home?

 History should be the study of the good and the bad whereby the child forms in himself principles in which he judges "the behavior of nations, and will rule his own conduct as one of a nation."  The study should not be so full of dates for

"how is he to put the right events in the right reign, when, to him, one king differs from another only in number, one period from another only in date?" Vol.1 pg. 280 

Charlotte Mason thought it would be much better to let a child spend much time learning about one man than it would be to cover the whole history of a particular country.  Here in her own words, she says...

"The fatal mistake is in the notion that he must learn 'outlines,' or a baby edition of the whole history of England, or of Rome, just as he must cover the geography of all the world. Let him, on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period. Though he is reading and thinking of the lifetime of a single man, he is really getting intimately acquainted with the history of a whole nation for a whole age. Let him spend a year of happy intimacy with Alfred, 'the truth-teller,' with the Conqueror, with Richard and Saladin, or with Henry V.––Shakespeare's Henry V.––and his victorious army. Let him know the great people and the common people, the ways of the court and of the crowd. Let him know what other nations were doing while we at home were doing thus and thus. If he come to think that the people of another age were truer, larger-hearted, simpler-minded than ourselves, that the people of some other land were, at one time, at any rate, better than we, why, so much the better for him." Vol 1 pg 281

I read in either Vol. 1 or Vol. 6 where Miss Mason said studying history chronologically was good.

Before I found Ambleside Online my 3 older boys and I used Greenleaf Guide to OT History, Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.  They learned a tremendous amount.  We did projects and read all kinds of books about the time period we were studying. 

Looking back, I think it was a good choice because I was learning along with them.  I was better able to see just what they were learning and was able to bring something up to talk about at the dinner table or bring back to their memory something we had read about.  My memory is so bad that now it's the other way around.  They'll talk about something and I'll be wondering where they learned it.

I don't believe CM thought you necessarily had to start at the very beginning of the world in order to study history, just not to be jumping to all different time periods in a mixed-up fashion.

Literature was to be books about the time period studied.  Plays, novels, essays, poems, architecture and painting were all to be used when possible.

CM gave her very young students, ages 7-9, fairy tales to read for literature.  I differ here with Miss Mason.  Some of those tales are really not worth reading in my opinion nor are very uplifting.  (Hansel and Gretel comes to mind.)

If you've read much about CM you know that Narration was one of her basic teachings.  What your child can tell back he knows.  If he cannot tell you back he probably needs to learn the habit of attention.  Narration can be done orally by the younger children, a written narration (essay) by the older children or even another way is for the child to draw a picture.

Get excited about history and pass that on to your children.  From CM Vol. 6 page 170, Miss Mason writes about people who have no interest in history.

What is it to them where great events have happened, great persons lived and moved? And, alas, this indifference to history is not confined to the Dominions; young people at home are equally indifferent, nor have their elders such stores of interest and information as should quicken children with the knowledge that always and everywhere there have been great parts to play and almost always great men to play those parts: that any day it may come to anyone to do some service of historical moment to the country. It is not too much to say that a rational well-considered patriotism depends on a pretty copious reading of history, and with this rational patriotism we desire our young people shall be informed rather than with the jingoism of the emotional patriot.

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." (Edmund Burke 1729-1797)