2010-11 Year in Review: Picture Study

Picture Study

Sheesh. Now that I have a whole blog post devoted to what we did for Picture Study this year, I realize that I don't have much to say* other than:

We studied Norman Rockwell this year.

We have a couple of oversized books on Norman Rockwell and I just went through and selected several of his paintings and we studied them. (You can read more about how we do Picture Study here and here.)

Norman Rockwell has literally thousands of paintings-- I didn't realize just how substantial his body of work is until we started studying him. This man was putting out a brand-new painting weekly for the Saturday Evening Post. That's an astounding accomplishment for a painter.

No Swimming, 1921

What I liked: Norman Rockwell is an incredible artist, and his paintings have a photographic quality that I love. His attention to detail is so realistic that some of his paintings almost appear to actually be a photo. His paintings are like a snapshot capturing an ordinary moment in time: parents tucking their children into bed at night, a grown son home from the war, peeling potatoes with his mother working beside him, a family piled into the car. Rockwell had a gift for capturing the joys and adventures of childhood. (My kids loved his work.) I liked the fact that I was able to easily select paintings for different seasons of the year.

Freedom From Want, 1943

The Problem We All Live With, 1964

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you about my favorite addition to our Picture Study this year:

This cookbook holder-stand-thingamajig. (I don't actually know the appropriate term for this tool.) I spotted this one day at Target and knew it was the perfect thing to hold our picture study books.



See? So handy! No more trying to hold these large books open to the right page while trying to hold a squirmy child or having to continually prop the book up only to have it fall right over again. Loved this. On the days we did Picture Study (once a week. That's for you, Michelle!), it sat on our table, and on other days I set it top of our piano~ open to the most recent painting we'd studied or another one in the book that we weren't going to study, just so that the kids could see more of Rockwell's work.

*clearly I didn't have much of a problem coming up with something to say, now, did I?

I want to add that when I was planning for this year, I only selected Norman Rockwell works through the month of February. At the time I figured I would simply select another artist sometime before the end our Rockwell study (or take a few weeks break and then resume) and we'd finish out the year with another artist. Not so. It just never happened. (Note to self: plan ahead.)

2010-11 Year in Review: Composer Study

We are super low-key about Composer Study, as you'll soon find out. If you want some more in-depth suggestions, click on over to Ambleside and do what they say. :)

I began the year with a plan to listen to Mr. Bach Comes to Call and one other CD~ the Beethoven one, I think. It's a dramatized story with some history thrown in and, of course: the music of the composers. We did listen to Mr. Bach Comes to Call, but for some reason we don't do audio CDs well here. I don't know what it is-- we listen to music just fine but for some reason it always seems too distracting in our home to tune into dialogue on a CD. (Maybe it's because I don't personally love the additional noise it creates or maybe it's because when we quieted to listen, the little girls decided that was the time to get louder. :)) I ended up setting up the CD in another room with the older three kids and entertained the little girls away from them, but that sort of defeated the purpose of doing this part of school all together. And then- I wasn't able to hear it, so I couldn't follow up on what they had heard. So I scrapped this plan and moved to Plan B, which was *really* simple:

I simply checked out various classical music CDs at the library and we listened to them. We did that for awhile~ we'd fold laundry together and listen to classical music, or I'd play it while the kids were doing their schoolwork at the table. That's it. So not really Composer *Study*, then, more like Composer Listening. ;)

Then. Mark discovered a gem of a book at a thrift store and I was (still am) over-the-moon about it. He actually found four composer biographies for about $1.99 apiece. Neither of us had never heard of these, but he showed them to me and after a quick perusal, I knew they were a find! It appears there are several more in the set, and now I'm on the lookout for them because we love them so much. I took some photos of the Peter Tschaikowsky book for you:



This is what we settled into, and it just suits us so well. The kids loved this book! Each week I read a portion of the book, and as we read, we listened to Tschaikowsky on Pandora. Easy-peasy. :)

So that's that. Next year I plan to simply delve into the other biographies we have collected.

Note: If you're interested, Zeezok Publishing has republished these Opal Wheeler biographies, and you can find them here.

***

Click here for an earlier post detailing another season of Composer Study in our home.

Next post: Picture Study

2010-11 Year in Review: Memory Work

Memory work (catechism, Ten Verses cards, theme passage, sign language, Apostles Creed, review)

Mondays we worked through our catechism questions. I never learned a catechism as a child, so this has been a huge blessing to me as well. Even Adelia, at 3- pipes in with the answers to some of the questions, and I love that. :)

Tuesdays we worked on the Ten Verses cards. The kids loved this concept but I think I was a little overly ambitious, for two reasons:


1) I have five children. Four of them were learning verses this year. That's four *different* verses to go over in one relatively small time-frame. It just always seemed a little crazy come Tuesday mornings when we pulled out the verses.

2) Several of the verses I selected were actually passages of Scripture, not just one verse. For instance, right now Isaac is working on Revelation 5:11-13 for his verse #5. He's been working on it for several weeks, and has gotten a little bogged down with the length of it. I wish now that I had given only a single verse. (Then, if I wanted them to learn a passage, I could have just broken it down into single verses: so, Isaac could have been working on Revelation 5:11 for verse #5, Revelation 5:12 for his verse #6, and Revelation 5:13 for his verse #7.) Lesson learned.

That said, Ella has made it to verse #8 (so far... five weeks left and I bet she'll do it!) Isaac is on verse #5 (but SO close to finishing that and four out of his next five verses *are* single verses!) Isaias is on verse #6. Adelia (and Audra, sometimes, too) is on verse #7. They all love saying their verses to daddy and they love choosing a sticker and putting it on their cards.

Wednesdays we memorized our theme passage for the year (it is so much easier memorizing something all together), and then we moved on to implementing it (which they LOVE.) Now, every Wednesday morning we draw a name and then spend the day honoring the person whose name we drew. They have done each others' chores, made cards, made each others' beds, helped a little one get ready, invited a little one to do something with them, made a special effort to play whatever that child likes to play, and generally have been especially kind to that person on that day. :) It's been fun to watch what they've come up with.

Thursdays we learned the alphabet in Sign Language, and this was something else the kids really enjoyed- I think largely because it was different than our other memory work (because it involved their hands and their minds!) They learned this pretty early on in the year, so then we spent our time practicing. Sometimes we'd just sing through the ABC song and sign as we sang. Other times I'd write a few words up on the board and we'd all "spell" the words using sign language. Other times I would spell something to them and have them tell me what letters/words I was forming.

Fridays we learned the Apostles Creed, and then we played Rich Mullins' song and Third Day's version of it. When we had learned that- just a few weeks into the year- I used our time on Fridays to review our memory work from previous years (OT & NT books of the Bible, Landmark cards, verses). I think reviewing previous memory work is really important for retention, and next year I plan to start the year devoting one weekday to *just* this.

On Saturdays it was always my plan to read poetry during this circle/table/breakfast time... and then have the kids choose one poem to memorize and recite, but... we read poetry only a handful of times and never memorized any of it. Oh, well. Maybe another year...


Next up: Composer study/Classical music

2010-11 Year in Review: Bible

Our school year will be finished at the end of May. Then Ella has some testing and then we're DONE! On to summer vacation! We have no big going-away plans but all sorts of gardening and backyard plans, and we're looking forward to more playtime, more outside time, and more freedom to our schedule!

For the next several posts, I plan to do a "Year in Review"~ looking back at what we've done and making notes on how it went. This is largely for my own benefit: to remind myself what we did and how it worked, but I'm going to post it here in case it is of interest to you. (I also plan to put together a list of our favorite books we've read this school year, including a list of Ella's recommendations.)

First up: Bible


We read through Catherine Vos' The Child's Story Bible for our Bible time each morning, and we all loved it. This is the first year I used this and I'm so glad I did.

In previous years I have used Hurlbut's Story of the Bible For Young and Old (which I also love). I actually found a copy of this at the thrift store last week (79 cents! Hardcover!) and was thrilled.

Quick comparison of the two: Vos' is less reading for each chapter, Hurlbut's is longer and more thorough. When we read Hurlbut (last year and the year before) I had to stop mid-chapter and continue the following day. Or maybe that was just because the kids were all younger. At any rate, I rarely had to do that this year. Other notes: Hurlbut's has direct quotes from the Bible, while Vos' does not (to my memory. If there are, they are very few.) For the ages of my kids- and having the two little ones with us at the table while we were reading, Vos' was perfect for us. I plan to continue to use both- alternating from year to year.

Mark reads the Bible (NIV) with the kids in the evenings (most nights) before bedtime. They began this a few years ago and are now in the book of Proverbs.



Next post: Memory work (catechism, Ten Verses cards, theme passage, sign language, Apostles Creed, review)

Buddies

At the beginning of this school year, I couldn't imagine what our school time was going to look like. For the first time, I was educating three of our kids (!), and had two toddlers thrown in the mix. (!!) What on earth was I supposed to do with the little girls while the older three did schoolwork? How was I going to be available to the older three for teaching and questions when the little girls would be right there, demanding so much of my attention?

For this year, at least, we made the decision to school our boys (K and 1st grade) only three days a week. They do some school on the other two days as well-- Bible, memory work, and either picture study, classical music or poetry-- for our Circle Time at the table. But for the two days they're not doing schoolwork when we dismiss for breakfast and after they're done with their chores, they each get assigned a buddy (in the form of one of their little sisters) and they are excused to go play with them.

For instance: yesterday was Tuesday, and Isaac (7) was assigned to Audra (1) and Isaias (5) was assigned to Adelia (2). Isaac and Audra played in the playroom together for awhile, and then ended up on the living room couch, reading stories. Isaias and Adelia made a fort together, played dress-up, and did who-knows-what-else but managed to get nearly every single toy we own out in the process. :) On Thursday they will switch buddies.

When I came up with this idea in September, I thought this would buy me about 20 minutes of time, but 20 minutes has grown into nearly an hour, some days. I encourage the boys to choose separate rooms to play in with their buddies (otherwise the boys will end up playing together and the girls will get into all kinds of mischief) and often after about 30 minutes I will put a video on for all four of them to watch together. This has been a wonderful addition to our days, for various reasons:

1) It gives the boys the responsibility of taking care of their little sisters, usually doing something they might not personally prefer, but doing it out of love and honor for their little buddy.

2) It gives Ella some uninterrupted school time at the table, without the girls squeezing in next to her at the table and trying to color on her paper or just distracting her with their noise!

3) It gives me the freedom to be close to Ella~ available to teach and help and answer her questions. I stay nearby and usually clean the kitchen or do dinner prep, or I sit at the table with her and do paperwork of my own.

4) It has created a sweet rapport with the boys and their little sisters. Adelia and Audra *love* it when they get to pair up with one of their brothers-- it makes them feel very special to have such kind attention from their big brothers. And for the boys, too- they stand a little taller when they realize that it is their responsibility to take care of one of the girls for awhile. It has bonded the big boys to the little girls in ways I hadn't anticipated. They are much closer because of it, and I'm so thankful to see it.

Of course there are interruptions, and often Isaac will come upstairs to tell me a lengthy, descriptive rendition of what cute thing Audra just did and I have to gently remind him that he ought to go see what she's doing at the moment, since he is responsible for her, afterall. :) Sometimes I have to step in for correction or to remind the kids to stay in their rooms or suggest another activity for them, but all in all it has been a grand success, and I'm grateful for it.

Ten Verses cards

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:11

Last night I listened to a sermon* by Voddie Bauchman, and he was exhorting parents to have their children read and memorize scripture. He said, "You've got to pour everything in there you can get in there! Get it in there. And when you think you've gotten it in there, just stuff a little bit more."

I laughed out loud at that, and replayed it for Mark, because that is so my motto. :) Just stuff it in. Right now, when our children are literally sponges, when they are able to memorize and retain what they've memorized so easily, we want to pour God's truth into them.

In June, Mark and I each made a list of the top five things we value in terms of homeschooling our children, and "memorizing God's word" made it to the top of both of our lists. We want to stuff it in there. :)

As I set out to select our memory verses this year, I asked God to help me find verses that would suit each of our children. Instead of just choosing several verses that we would all memorize together, I wanted each child to have his or her "own" verses; verses tailored to their individual personalities and/or particular areas of struggle. I began by listing each child's name in my journal and then noting particular patterns of sin I see in them. For one child, these are the words that I initially jotted down: self-control, lies, self-worth, obedience, love. Then I found verses that dealt with those areas.

For instance, one of the verses that child will be memorizing is this one:

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. (Proverbs 12:22)

Then I rounded out their "set" by choosing verses that are specific to that child's interests or personality. One of our boys is very imaginative and is always telling stories. I made sure that some of his verses contained illustrative language:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. they were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen." (Revelation 7:9-12)

So at this point I had a handful of verses for each child, but I still wasn't sure how to put them all together for our memorization time.

Then I came across this "Ten Verses cards" post of Kendra's, so I shamelessly stole this concept from her.

I wrote out ten verses on a card (actually, it took two cards) for our four oldest children (yes! Adelia (2) gets her own set of verses, too!), and they look like this:


Everyone's verse #1 is our theme verse for the year. That space on the left-hand side is for stickers. When they learn a verse- and can recite it (with reference) to daddy- they get to choose a sticker and stick it next to the verse on their card. I showed them the envelope labeled: "10 Verses Stickers" that is tucked into our memory box. It's amazing to me how motivating stickers are. They were seriously enthused about the prospect of getting to choose a sticker. Kids are so great!



*Sermon link here, if you're interested. (And thank you, Cutzi, for the link!)

Memorizing our theme passage

You'd think with a degree in graphic design I could draw... somewhat-ish.

I cannot.

But do you know what? My kids don't care! :)

I am a visual learner, so this is naturally how I teach. And I think all children are very high visual/auditory learners- at least at this age- so often I add pictures and sound to help them learn, especially when it's memory work.

Here's what I've done to help us memorize our theme passage (Romans 12:9-21) for this year: (I'm only showing you the first few picture cards.)



Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the LORD.


Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the LORD. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I haven't drawn pictures on every single card; some cards are words-only. But this way, at least some of the cards offer a visual tie-in to the words we're learning!

What do you do to help your kids memorize Scripture?

Let me take a minute to plug (again!) my FAVORITE resources for Scripture memory:

1. My ABC Bible Verses


If you want to start memorizing Scripture with your kids, this is an excellent resource! Each letter of the alphabet has a corresponding Bible verse and is accompanied by a story to illustrate the scriptural passage. We read this book four years ago, and our kids loved it. They still remember every single one of these verses! I posted more about this book here.

2. Seeds Family Worship. They have five CDs available: Seeds of Courage, Seeds of Faith, Seeds of Praise, Seeds of Purpose and Power of Encouragement. We have all of these and every single person in our home enjoys them! When the kids ask me to put on a CD, I *always* choose one of these; they are just that enjoyable to listen to. (Each of the above links will let you listen to samples of the songs from that particular album.)

Memory work box

Our Memory work box is one of my favorite homeschooling tools, and I am so very thankful to Kendra for the idea! This box holds most of what we do for our daily Circle Time* (school we're all doing together).

Last year this is what we worked on:

Mon: verses, catechism
Tues: verses, 10 commandments
Wed: verses, states
Thurs: verses, landmark cards
Fri: verses, art cards
Sat: OT/NT books of the Bible (review)

I upgraded our Memory work box to a larger size this year, and I love it.

(Notice our theme verse, right there in front?)

Here is what lies behind those tabs for our 2010/11 school year:

Monday: Catechism questions
Tuesday: Ten Verses cards (also Kendra's idea. I'll share more about this in my next post.)
Wednesday: Romans 12:9-21, our theme passage
Thursday: Sign Language cards, and I am SO coming back to that topic, in just a minute.
Friday: The Apostle's Creed, and after we memorize that: some Family Rules Mark and I are working on.

Now. The sign language cards: I am super excited about these, so if you'll bear with me I'm going to rant about them for a minute. I wanted so much to have something visual for the kids in our memory work box because of how much they really enjoyed the pictorial Landmark Cards last year, but I couldn't think of anything similar to that for *this* year. I briefly considered doing a Greek or Hebrew alphabet, but I just couldn't really get pumped about that. Then I wondered: "...Maybe I could find some sign language alphabet flash cards..."

Imagine my delight, then, when not only could I find some sign language flash cards, but I found SIGNING TIME flash cards (!), with pictures of Alex and Leah and Hopkins and Rachel on them, no less! Which thrills me to no end because not only do my older kids adore Signing Time (and have for years), but even Adelia (2), is into them. The faces of Alex, Leah and Rachel are pretty beloved around here, so they are going to LOVE these!!! (But shh! It's still a surprise to them, so don't say a word!)

I bought two sets.

I just now remembered that I had planned to post a bit more about our theme passage in this post, but it's late and this is already a long post, so I'll get to that next time.




*The whole concept of Circle Time came from Preschoolers and Peace.

*More about what Circle Time looks like in our home, here. (Or you can just click on the "Circle Time" label on the sidebar and it will bring up any other posts I've noted as Circle Time posts.)

Our theme verse

One of the things I prayed about in terms of school for this coming year is our relationships with one another here at home.

It is paramount to us that the character of our children remains more important than any academic successes they might achieve.

With that in mind, I selected a theme verse for our school year.

Romans 12:10
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.

We will also be memorizing several verses from that chapter in addition to just our theme verse.

I'm going to introduce the year with it (a mini Bible study on the verse), and we'll continue to say it each day together and it will be posted for visibility.

I imagine we'll be referencing it quite a bit, too- in our day-to-day goings on, and talking about ways we can honor one another above ourselves and what that could look like, or what it does look like when we catch someone doing so and can commend them for it! I can't wait! :)

Picture Study

We had a lively Picture Study discussion this morning about this piece of news: Five Masterpieces Stolen in Paris.

We viewed each painting, talked about how rare they were, talked about museums, and thieves~ and (most exciting to the kids): "How would you go about investigating this crime?"

It was quite fun to hear their ideas! [Isaac will be looking for footprints, Ella will be looking for a glove the thief may have left behind.]

And then we talked about DNA for awhile.

Very fun!

States video!

Per your request (Kimmie and Hilary!)... here is a video of my kids singing the song: or at least the song I remembered from some twenty-five years ago. There are more words to the song, but when I Googled the lyrics, once~ I realized I had left out a chunk of the introduction and the closing part of the song. No matter. The names of the states are the most important parts, and those I did NOT forget. :)



What we're singing is this:

Fifty Nifty United States from the thirteen original colonies,
Shout 'em, Scout 'em, Tell all about 'em,
One by one, 'til we've given a name to every state in the U.S.A.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut.
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana~
Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine.
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan.

Minnesota, Mississippi.
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska~ Nevada.
New Hampshire! New Jersey! New Mexico! New York! North Carolina! North Dakota! Ohio.

Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas~

Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington,
West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming~

The official all-the-words-included lyrics can be found here. (If you follow that link you can also watch a video, too.)

A "nifty" way to learn our 50 states

There is only one song I remember from my elementary public school music classes, and it is this one: Fifty Nifty United States.

Do you all know that one, too? If not, you are so missing out.

That song is how I've been teaching our kids the states. But. Instead of just learning the song, we're also learning where each state is located on the map- which is something I never learned.

Really.

NEVER learned.

(And just so you know, that truth almost didn't make it into this post, because I am truly embarrassed by that fact.)

So guess who else is learning their US geography right now?

Anyway~ I taught them the song, and then once a week, during our morning school time, we'd learn a few states.

The first week: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas.

Second week: After reviewing the states previously learned (the "A" states), we moved on to the next "set": California, Colorado, Connecticut. And so on.

With each group of states learned, we'd point to them on the map that hangs near our kitchen table.

We only officially made it through the O's, I think, but they love the song, and every time they sing it they now try to find all the states, so it's sort of pointless to keep going through them, honestly.

My final plan was to give Ella a blank map and see if she could fill in the states on her own. Mark totally beat me to this, though. Not knowing that I had planned to do this, he printed out a blank map one evening and handed it to Ella to see how she'd do.

Ella correctly filled in 40 states on her first try.

And I'm sure she was singing The Song in her head the whole time.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas

The Italian artist Caravaggio. One of my favorite artists. We haven't studied him yet, though.

This morning for our Bible time we read about Thomas. I always get tearful when I read the account of doubting Thomas. And always this picture comes to mind:


So we skipped our scheduled study of Vermeer and looked at this painting instead.

This morning: at table

{...Trying to capture a little of the craziness of our mornings for you!}

At the breakfast table: literally

With every single one of the "School during breakfast" posts, I had hoped to take a picture of us actually at the breakfast table. So, as an addendum to the series, a photo:


See? Our memory box sits right there on the table in front of my chair, ready to go. Our Bible story book and hymn book sit on the floor next to my chair. Our list of Monday school subjects- written the night before- is up on the dry erase board.

Things may look nice and mellow in this photo, but don't be fooled.

What happened a few minutes before this picture was taken is that I was nursing Audra at the table. Then, while still nursing, I tried to cut and butter the muffins for the other kids with my left hand. Oh, and my plan for fresh-out-of-the-oven muffins wasn't to be: by the time we ate them, they were no longer warm. Oh, well. Such is life.

What happened right after this picture was taken is that Adelia, who had last night's dinner on her tray instead of the muffins we were all eating, began wailing about her plight. And the rest of our school-at-the-breakfast-table time was interrupted with her cries followed by my reminders. Twice, I got up and moved her crying self and chair into the living room and reminded her to please eat and that when she was ready to be happy and stop crying she could join us again. She obeyed, finally, and by the time we moved to chore time, her dinner from the previous night was finished and she was able to eat a muffin.

That's us. Keeping it real on a Monday morning. :)

The perk of this particular Monday is that we got an early start. We were eating a little after 8 o'clock! So we were able to finish most of school by 10:30, and then the kids all headed outside to play while Audra finished up her nap and I prepped for dinner.

School during breakfast, Part 4: Classical music

To review, here's what we do as part of our school time over breakfast:

Mon | Hymn practice
Tues | Art: Picture Study
Wed | Poetry
Thurs | Habits/Manners
Fri | Classical music
Sat | Silly songs/camp songs/choruses

I'm going to wrap up the final two today.

On Friday we have Classical music. This is new to us this year, and this is what we've done.

I purchased Stories of the Great Composers, which is a book/cd set, and- over twelve (short) units, covers twelve composers. Each unit has a picture of the composer with a short biography, a story based on fact about an event in the composer's life, a list of three of that composer's important compositions, and a word search or matching game to review the information learned in that unit.



As we move to our after-breakfast chores, I pop in the CD and we listen to one track while we clean up. We make comments about it as we listen, and then when that track is done, I tell them who we just listened to, and what the name of that particular composition is. I often write the name of the composer on the board and we practice saying it a few times together. Sometimes I read the short bio.

The following week we review the previous weeks composer by listening to a snippet of his work. And then I introduce the next composer.

We're about halfway through the book, now- so for the past few weeks I began by playing snippets of compositions we've previously heard and quizzing the kids: "Who can tell me who this is?"

I admit that I was surprised at how much our children love listening to classical music. They genuinely look forward to it, and enjoy listening, and they really have developed an ear for each composer's sound. They all have their favorites, and it has been really fun for all of us.

My favorite memory of our study so far is this one:

One of the things we learned about Franz Joseph Haydn in regards to his Symphony No. 94 in G Major, "The Surprise":

Hadyn had noticed that the London audiences "slept peacefully during the slow movements" of his symphonies. To correct this situation Hadyn wrote this symphony, which became very popular. There is a quiet section of the slow movement, and then, suddenly, the full orchestra with all the big drums plays a very loud chord. All those who were sleeping awakened with a jerk! Surprise!

[Excerpted from the book Stories of the Great Composers]

We had a grand time imagining all these proper gentlemen and ladies sitting in the symphony and nodding off only to be suddenly startled awake! So while we listened to Hadyn's composition I had the kids break from their chores and lie down on the kitchen floor, pretending to be asleep. Then when the music got louder they all pretended to wake suddenly, then doze off again as the music quieted down. We had such fun listening to "The Surprise" and Hadyn happens to be one of our favorites because of it. (Don't you agree he had a fine sense of humor?)

I'm not really sure where to go from here in our "study" of classical music- once we've finished the book, I mean. I think I'll start purchasing songs or CDs [or, more likely: checking them out at the library] of the artists we've already studied and become familiar with more of their compositions. I'd like all of us to develop an ear for each composer, based on a larger body of their work, as opposed to the one song we're getting in the CD that accompanies the book.

I'd love to hear ideas others of you have on this topic. What have you done?

On Saturdays I let the kids choose what they'd like to sing. Usually they're songs with motions and lots of laughter.

And that's it for breakfast at the table.

In looking back over the last several posts, it seems like we do a lot at the table. But remember: we don't do all of these things every day. We do them only once a week. Daily we do Bible reading and memory verses. And then we rotate in our other memory work each day along with the things I've been posting about.

So, our at-the-breakfast-table work looks like this for the week:

Mon | Bible, Memory verses, Old Testament books of the Bible, Hymn Practice
Tues | Bible, Memory verses, Ten Commandments, Picture Study
Wed | Bible, Memory verses, New Testament books of the Bible, Poetry
Thurs | Bible, Memory verses, Landmark cards, Habits/manners
Fri | Bible, Memory verses, President cards, Classical music
Sat | Bible, Memory verses, Rules/Manners for Gentlemen/Ladies, Silly songs

See? Really doable!

There's still lots to cover once we move away from the breakfast table. If you're not all positively bored by now, I'll post more about our other subjects as time allows over the next couple of weeks.

School during breakfast, Part 3: Poetry and Habits/Manners

It has become quite apparent to me that I need to work on my titles, because this whole series is getting a little out of hand what with all the extras I keep tagging on in the title. I SO should have asked Mark for help with that. Maybe I'll go back and change it at some point. For now I'll carry on.

I've been sharing about the rotating slot in our schedule that we do at the breakfast table.

Mon | Hymn practice
Tues | Art: Picture Study
Wed | Poetry
Thurs | Habits/Manners
Fri | Classical music
Sat | Silly songs/camp songs/choruses

Today I'm going to cover the next two: Poetry and Habits/Manners.

On Wednesdays, we get a book of poetry and we read some poems.

And I really don't have a whole lot more to say about that. We don't analyze them, study them, write our own poems or anything like that. We just enjoy them.

Right now we're reading from The World of Christopher Robin, and we all love it.


On Thursdays it says "Habits/Manners" on the schedule. This is basically an opportunity for me to have an official time set aside to review the habits or manners I think we're neglecting. We may learn a verse and focus on a particular habit like we did here, but more often than not it is just sort of a reminder-time of how we want to behave. Here's an example:

A couple of weeks ago, during the meet-and-greet time at our church, I saw a woman bend down to introduce herself to my son and ask him his name. He happened to be very focused on pulling a rock out of the bottom of his shoe at the time, and I noted that he very distractedly said hello and sort of mumbled his name. We briefly talked about it on the way home. I tried not to make a huge deal about it but I'm sure I said something about being disappointed that he didn't treat her with the respect and courtesy I would have liked to see him exhibit.

The following Thursday, our Habit/Manners time went something like this:

Me: "Okay, guys. Today we're going to talk for a couple of minutes about what you should do when someone greets you at church. Let's give some examples of what NOT to do-- they think this is pretty funny, especially when I give outlandish suggestions-- and then discuss and practice what would be some good ideas to say and do." Then we take turns being the greeter/greetee, and act it out and giggle together and use funny voices and practice the right way to greet someone.

And that's that. Pretty simple.

Picture Study Q & A

A couple of you had questions following my post on Picture study, so rather than hide those responses in the comments, I thought I'd take some time here to answer those questions and provide some more resources.

Q: Do you print the pictures for the photo album yourself, or send them to a place like the Costco photo lab?

A: I get them printed at Costco. If we had a good color printer and photo-quality paper, I'd do it here. But we don't, so I send them to Costco.

Q: How do you choose your art?

A: I have several favorite artists I remember from college classes or from traveling, so I have a list in my brain that I'm anxious to study with our children. At this point my goal is to keep our study to artists and paintings that are age-appropriate for my children. At this season, that means scenes of children and families or activities they're familiar with or interested in.

Ambleside Online is a wonderful resource, particularly for those of you who may be at a loss for which artists and which paintings to consider for your study. Follow that link and you'll find a wealth of information!

Q: Where do you get your art from?

A: I have found most of our books at either a local used bookstore or Goodwill. The book we got on Winslow Homer was $2.99 at Goodwill. The book I bought on Mary Cassatt was $9.95 at my favorite used bookstore. If I see a book on an artist I like and think we will study someday, I pick it up.

I have also seen reasonably-priced books on the bargain shelves at Barnes & Noble. Just recently I was there and on an end-cap they had a series of large books on various famous painters. [Think: oversized paperback or hardcover books]. They were marked down to $6.99 each or something. I didn't happen to want any of the particular artists they had left, but at one time they had several artists I would have been interested in. (I just didn't get there soon enough!) If all else fails, there is Amazon.

I like to have a print in hand to examine, but you could certainly do picture study simply by pulling a painting up on the computer and looking at it on your screen, too.

***

I gleaned almost all of my how-to-do-this ideas from Linda Fay at Higher Up and Further In. Linda Fay's blog posts schooled me when we initially began doing Picture Study. The link above will take you to all of her Picture Study posts.

One last thing. Recently I came across a list of questions to use in Picture Study. (I'm not sure who to credit as the author of this list, so please let me know if you happen to be familiar with the source, so that I can give proper credit.) I thought it might be a good resource for those of you who'd like to try this but don't exactly know what to ask. There are some great questions in the list below. My encouragement to you would be to keep it simple. Choose maybe 1 or 2 questions each time, or choose your favorite questions from this list and rotate them, a couple at a time, each time you study a painting.

DESCRIBE IT

1. What kinds of things do you see in this painting? What else do you see?
2. What words would you use to describe this painting? What other words might we use?
3. How would you describe the lines in this picture? The shapes? The colors? What does this painting show?
4. Look at this painting for a moment. What observations can you make about it?
5. How would you describe this painting to a person who could not see it?
6. How would you describe the people in this picture? Are they like you or different?
7. How would you describe (the place depicted in) this painting?


RELATE IT

1. What does this painting remind you of?
2. What things do you recognize in this painting? What things seem new to you?
3. How is this painting like the one we just saw? What are some important differences?
4. What do these two paintings have in common?
5. How is this picture different from real life?
6. What interests you most about this work of art?


ANALYZE IT

1. Which objects seems closer to you? Further away?
2. What can you tell me about the colors in this painting?
3. What color is used the most in this painting?
4. What makes this painting look crowded?
5. What can you tell me about the person in this painting?
6. What can you tell me about how this person lived? How did you arrive at that idea?
7. What do you think is the most important part of this picture?
8. How do you think the artist made this work?
9. What questions would you ask the artist about this work, if s/he were here?


INTERPRET IT

1. What title would you give to this painting? What made you decide on that title?
2. What other titles could we give it?
3. What do you think is happening in this painting? What else could be happening?
4. What sounds would this painting make (if it could)?
5. What do you think is going on in this picture? How did you arrive at that idea?
6. What do you think this painting is about? How did you come up that idea?
7. Pretend you are inside this painting. What does it feel like?
8. What do you think this (object) was used for? How did you arrive at that idea?
9. Why do you suppose the artist made this painting? What makes you think that?
10. What do you think it would be like to live in this painting? What makes you think that?


EVALUATE IT

1. What do you think is good about this painting? What is not so good?
2. Do you think the person who painted this do a good or bad job? What makes you think so?
3. Why do you think other people should see this work of art?
4. What do you think other people would say about this work? Why do you think that?
5. What grade would you give the artist for this work? How did you arrive at that grade?
6. What would you do with this work if you owned it?
7. What do you think is worth remembering about this painting?

School during breakfast, Part 2: Picture Study

I've shared a little about our hymn study here and about our Monday Hymn Practice here.

On Tuesdays we do picture study, and it's one of our favorite things! I was an art major in college and Art History was one of my favorite classes ever.

As to how we incorporate this into our week, I first choose an artist and purchase a book or some prints. [I've been able to purchase some good art books at used bookstores for this very purpose.]

Here's what the study part of that looks like at our house:

ONE: Announce the name of the artist you're studying, and any information (biographical) you think is pertinent. I usually write the artist's name up on the board, and read a short bio or a few facts I've found about the artist.

TWO: Pull out a print, hand it to a child. For the sake of this example I'm going to say I hand the picture to Isaac. Then I ask him to describe what he sees. The rest of us listen and try to imagine the painting in our minds. He does so. My children all love this part. Seriously, they fight over who's turn it is to describe the painting.)

THREE: When he has finished describing the painting, the rest of us get the opportunity to pepper him with questions about the things our minds are still wondering about.

The questions you may ask depend not only on the painting but also on how well your describer is. Our Isaac gets very detailed about what is going on in the painting (think: the story of it; what he imagines is happening), but he may forget to tell us what colors he sees, or what time of the day he thinks it is. Ella, on the other hand, will describe in detail the colors and pattern and folds of the skirt a woman in the painting is wearing but may forget to tell us what is happening.

A few ideas for questions:

What colors/shapes do you see?

How would you describe the people in this painting? [Dress, expression, position, etc]

What do you think is the most important part of this picture?
What is the focal point?/ Where is your eye drawn to?

What objects seem closer to you? Further away?

If you were to choose a title for this picture, what would you call it?

FOUR: Then Isaac reveals the picture to us and we all take turns making comments, things like:

Good job describing the boat, Isaac. That's exactly how I pictured it.

Oh! You forgot to tell us about those flowers there in the corner.

FIVE: Finally, I tell them what the name of the painting is.

The following week we begin all over again with a new painting by the same artist, and we review any of the paintings we've previously learned.

I usually select 5 or 6 paintings per artist (either my favorites or those that I think might be of particular interest to our children), and then we move on to a different artist.

A couple of other ideas:

1. Hand your child some paints or colored pencils (or crayons!) and tell them they get to color that painting!

This is one of the paintings we studied, early last year:


And here is Ella's representation of it:


2. Begin an art album for your child.


We bought a small photo album for Ella two years ago and have printed out the various paintings we've studied and she has added them to her album, listing the title and artist beside each one. She loves this!

{Pictured: page one of Ella's art album}

School during breakfast, Part 1

At our house, breakfast falls sometime between 8 and 9:30. Yep. Usually we're eating by 9, but some mornings are earlier, some mornings are later. We're flexible that way. ~smile~

Care to join us for breakfast this morning?

Let's begin when I ask the kids to set the table for breakfast.

[A side note, here: At mealtimes, each of our children has setting-the-table responsibilities. Ella gets the plates/bowls, Isaac gets the cups/glasses, and Isaias gets the silverware and Adelia's dish/utensil/cup. We standardized this because we were finding that we'd ask the kids to get the table set and within minutes there would be a dispute because "I was going to get the plates, and now [insert sibling name here] is taking plates out!" No more. They now know what they're responsible to have on the table for each meal.]

So. Back to breakfast. The kids are scurrying around, getting the table set. Audra is playing on the floor with some chubby little Fisher Price farm animals. Adelia has been saying "Eat, eat" for probably the past half an hour and I've likely already given her a bowl of dry cheerios (which she in turn has dumped all throughout the house, just so you know, and now I seem to be crushing cheerios every time I step. I'm sure none of you have ever experienced this.)

While the kids are doing this, I have likely just gotten out of the shower and am getting dressed or combing my hair. I may even glance in the mirror for 0.2 seconds. Hopefully when I make it out to the kitchen, the kids will have the table set. I pick up Audra on my way in and get her into her seat and then get a wandering Adelia into hers.

If your family is like mine, and no matter how prepared we try to be, meal times are not without plenty of interruptions. Things like:

"Mommy, will you please cut my muffin?"

"Mommy, I need butter."

"Mommy, where's the honey? I wanted honey on mine."

"My water bottle is empty and I'm thirsty, mommy. Will you please fill it?"

And then there's Adelia, who has decided it is time to throw her bowl of food onto the floor. She needs to be reprimanded, because she knows better.

Audra is now finished with her breakfast but is still hungry so I'm up to get her something to gnaw on.

Then the kids are ready for seconds.

In between all of these interruptions and several trips from the table and back, I'm also trying to feed myself, too. (Sometimes this part just doesn't happen.)

While the kids are still eating, we begin school. I pull out our memory verses and we do those, in between bites of food. I've written about our memory verses system before. Each day we have a group of verses we go over; color coded and filed by that day.


Then we do our other memory work~ today is Monday so we're going over Old Testament books of the Bible. We generally say them all together.

We also do "Hymn Practice" on our schedule, so we sing through our hymn together a few times. We're learning Trust and Obey, and the kids love this because they get to sing it at the top of their lungs. The first time we ever sang this hymn they all looked very solemn, so I reminded them that the words say 'to be happy in Jesus'. So we practiced looking very happy, all of us, while singing, and that stuck. Now they're always singing loudly with wide smiles on their faces. Audra thinks this is the greatest thing EVER; and is kicking her legs and clapping. Adelia is trying her best to sing along by chiming in on certain words.

Sometimes we're able to squeeze more school in at the table- on a great day, we can even get some history done- but not this morning.

I think the key to homeschooling at this season in our lives is flexibility. We have a schedule for our day, yes. But we follow it loosely. There are no time-slots for any of it. There are things I'd like to accomplish each morning at the table, yes. So we linger at the table for as long as we can, but we'll have a day when Audra or even Adelia is sick or fussy or we've simply had too many interruptions or distractions. I may ask Ella to take over with the verses or reading while I focus more on Audra, or we may just stop and resume later when things have quieted down.

One of those things that often gets relocated to a different part of the day is our Bible reading. For the past two years, we have read from either the Psalms or the Proverbs each day for our school Bible time. This year we're reading from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible, which is a narrative of the whole Bible. This is our favorite Bible story book. Several times I've read this while finishing up my breakfast while the kids work on their after-meal chores. Or we'll set it aside until story-time (which is right before quiet times/naps at our house.)

This works for us. It may not work for everyone, but it works for us. We still get everything accomplished nearly every day. But we have learned to roll with the interruptions and be flexible.