Category Archives: Education

Sickness, solo parenting, math games, and King Alfred bread

Posted on by
10

(I’m trying out a new collage format this week.  I’m not sure I love it, but I thought I’d go with it and see if it grows on me.  I think I prefer my line-’em-up-straight format better.  :-) )

1.  This week we played a lot of math games:  Addition Corners, Find the Remainders (subtraction with four digit numbers), Dot Card Memory (evens/odds), Swim to Ten (mental addition of one-digit numbers).  Part of this is due to the fact that Lulu came down with a sore throat last Sunday afternoon, and she was still puny Monday and Tuesday.  Math games were about the only thing that perked her up.  ;-)   Still, though, we managed to get through lessons 97 and 98 in RS C, which entailed finding perimeters in centimeters and adding mentally.  Both of these tasks were fairly easy for Lulu.  Louise continues to make progress in RS B.  This week we completed lessons 18-20 in which evens/odds and EQUATIONS were introduced.  Oh, and we played a lot of games.

2. The other thing that perked Lulu up was lots and lots (and lots) of American Girl audiobooks.  Both girls spent a large portion of the week, especially Monday and Tuesday, on the couch listening to the stories of Kaya, Rebecca, Julie, and Kirsten.  On Monday night we skipped dance altogether and had a movie night–Kit Kittredge.  Steady Eddie had an out-of-town meeting Monday through Thursday, and I try to do something a little extra when he’s gone; often this is a movie night.  (I hate to say it, but with so many afternoon and evening activities, even a movie night is tough to plan around here!)  It was a bonus for me because I worked on my Project Life scrapbook during the movie.

3. Lulu continues to show great interest in crocheting, and I still haven’t found the time to learn how to do it myself in order to teach her.  My mom spent the night with us Tuesday night, and she was able to help Lulu a little bit.  Heather’s series, 10 Days of Pouring into Your Child’s Passions, is really encouraging me to find ways to carve time out of our day for the girls to do things they’re really interested in.  Lulu is all about making things with her hands–from tiny purses out of Scotch tape to necklaces to crocheted bracelets.  I really want to encourage this.

4.  I have such a hard time with knowing how to handle sick days.  (I’ve written about this before–here and here.)  Thankfully, I’ve wised up a bit and sort of let the sick one take the lead–more “Do you feel like doing ______?” than requirements.  Actually, Monday and Tuesday were fairly productive school days, even though we didn’t get in all of the 3 R’s on either day.  However, I felt way more relaxed about school than I usually do–I even did some things I enjoyed in the middle of the school day and spent extra time working with Louise.  I found myself thinking that that’s really how I want school to be around here–more relaxed on my end of things.  How do accomplish this?  I don’t know.  Maybe trying really hard to not see it as a day-by-day project but more as a week-by-week (or even month-by-month or term-by-term?) project, so that what we don’t get to today we’ll get to tomorrow?  By lowering my expectations?  Hmm. . .lots to think about as we finish up this year of learning.  (This post of Alice’s really resonates with me.)

5.  Wednesday afternoon found Louise, the DLM, and me enjoying some sunshine on a quilt on the lawn of Lulu’s piano teacher while Lulu was inside having her piano lesson.  Louise and I did her “piano school”–we read together and played yet another game of Swim to Ten.  (She absolutely LOVES this game!)  I also brought along The Well Trained Mind which I’m perusing once again as I begin to think about next year.  I’m feeling the draw toward more books (as if that’s possible ;-) ) and less formal curriculum.  Good books + narrations + the basics of math and language + something they’re passionate about = a good education, right?

6. On Thursday I shook up our schedule a bit, knowing we were taking the day off on Fun Friday.  After piano practice, we went on a Get Outside Photo Scavenger Hunt (hat-tip Barb) for which I handed over my little point-n-shoot camera for the girls’ use.  (This is huge–I’m usually pretty stingy with use of my cameras.)  Unfortunately, the camera battery died before we got very far in our scavenger hunt, but at least everyone got ONE turn to take a picture.  (Fairness is very, very important around here. :-) )   When we came back inside, we stirred up a batch of King Alfred bread from the SotW Activity Guide.  We had read about King Alfred the day before, so I knew that pairing a very interesting story from history with a kitchen activity would be a win, and I was right.  Our bread turned out to be more cake-like, so instead of kneading and forming the dough, I ended up pouring it into mini-loaf pans.  It was delicious!  (Must’ve been the butter and whipping cream. . . )  My girls will probably never forget about King Alfred and his cowardice!

7.  We were in a lunchtime rut this week, so on Thursday I made us “snack lunches.”  This day it was cheese cubes/sticks, baby carrots and Ranch dressing, grapes, and King Alfred bread.  What’s your favorite homeschool lunch?

8.  This week we finally got around to starting on a states notebook, which is something I’ve wanted to do since we were in the middle of reading Little Britches (linked to my review).  While reading this wonderful story, I thought it would be great to use this story to talk about the landscape of Colorado and then just about Colorado in general.  Using state-specific notebooking pages from Notebooking Treasury and this state fact sheet from Homeschool Creations, the girls have a nice start on their states notebook.  (I was also inspiree by Jimmie’s 50 States Noteobook Squidoo lens.)  My Favorite Resource This Week, though, is How to Draw Colorado’s Sights and Symbols from the A Kid’s Guide to Drawing America series.  (The link is to Amazon, but the book pictured with the link is about California, so beware if you click it.  I don’t think I’d pay the $25 Amazon is asking, either, but it’s definitely worth a look around for cheap used copies or at the library!)  We’re all a little frustrated by drawing, so having simple, step-by-step instructions on how to draw the map, the seal, etc., was invaluable to us.  Plus, the book includes a lot of good information. 
This, a few informational books on Colorado from the library, and our memories of Ralph Moody’s descriptions were all good resources to get us started.  We also pulled out and studied Geography from A to Z: A Picture Glossary by Jack Knowlton (which I wrote about here) when we weren’t sure of the definition of canyon and gorge.  (That’s the DLM’s contributions to our studies up there in the picture–a Little People pirate, goat, and lion–looking on as the girls pore over this colorful little geography book.)

Favorite Resource This Week9.  I knew Lulu was better on Tuesday afternoon when she remodeled one corner of their bedroom during rest time to make a “dressing room.”  I really, really try to not interrupt their play time to do something as prosaic as lessons.  ;-)

This week Lulu did three days of week 27 in WWE 2, the first part of step 11 in AAS 2, lessons 85 and 86 in FLL 2, some reading aloud to me, and some handwriting practice.  Louise completed lessons 145-147 in OPGtTR.  As usual, we also read a lot.  We took the day off on Friday for appointments and errands.  Steady Eddie was back home, and boy, were we all glad!

Although I hate to make an already too long post even longer, I thought I’d share some of the things the DLM does while we’re doing school.  I have read every suggestion out there on how to keep a toddler busy during homeschooling.  Mostly, we just go with the flow.  Sometimes one of the girls will read to him while I work with the other girl; sometimes he colors in his high chair while we work.  Lately he loves playing with the math manipulatives.  This isn’t ideal, but it does keep him happy.  Plus, it’s cute to hear him count on the abacus.  ;-)

Have you been enjoying the iHomeshcool 10 Days of series all over homeschooling blogdom?  I have!  I have to give a plug for my friend Mary’s 10 Days of Teaching Music series.  So far it has been five days of fantastic information and resources, and I can’t wait to read the next five days!

Something else that keeps the DLM busy and happy: playing "do" on the piano!

 

Normally I link up with Collage Friday at Homegrown Learners, but it has been pre-empted this week for the aforementioned 10 Days of Teaching Music series.  This week I’m happily linking up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Learning All the Time.

Book report alternative: book vs. movie

Posted on by
1

Normally I am very much the proponent of reading the book before watching the movie, so let me say that from the outset.  :-)   The girls have watched the movie Mary Poppins countless times, starting back last year when I masqueraded as Mary Poppins herself.  Last week the novel was Lulu’s required reading.  (Actually, we first had Mary Poppins a long time ago as a read-aloud when my girls were still very young, but they don’t really remember it.) She had read Mary Poppins Comes Back the week before and enjoyed it, but last week she was really resistant to finishing her book.  When she finally finished it on Friday, I decided that rather than have her do her usual sort of book report (which I’ve actually gotten rather lax with), I’d give her the option of simply contrasting the book and the movie.  I thought this would cause her to perk up a bit about it, and I was right.  She enjoyed thinking about things that happen or appear only in the book and only in the movie.  She elaborated on the list orally:  that Bert actually makes only a brief appearance in the book, and he’s definitely not the same sort of Bert who’s in the movie; that Admiral Boom doesn’t live in a ship in the book; etc.  Narrations are such a valuable learning tool, but I think this sort of narration in particular helps me see where we’re going:  this list contains the seeds of an essay for an older student.

Do your children write book reports?  What kind?

 

Two picnics, a math change (& lots of games), and an overnight trip

Posted on by
6

Photobucket
1. Lulu requested on Monday morning that we go to the park.  Why not?  We worked on school-y stuff for a bit and then headed over to Chick-Fil-A to pick up some lunch to take for a picnic.  Steady Eddie met us at the park.  It was a breezy and slightly cool day, but the kiddos didn’t seem to mind.  Then it was back home to finish up lessons.

2.  Louise’s reading lessons took her into the domain of silent letters this week:  gnat, gnaw, sign, etc.  (That’s her up there, spelling such words on our AAS white board.)  Lessons 142 and 143 in OPGTtR took next to no time this week; really, it’s at this point that the lessons become almost an afterthought to real reading.  We’re working on a short historical fiction chapter book together that Louise found in her Easter basket:  Shadow of the Wolf by Gloria Whelan.

Lulu’s assigned reading this week was Mary Poppins, a book she drug her feet on and didn’t finish until Friday afternoon.  Sometimes she reads her assigned books happily; other times, not so much.  I persevere because I think it’s worth it to give my voracious reading something each week in the way of quality literature so that she doesn’t feast the entire week on what I consider literary junkfood.  Her current obsession is Boxcar Children mysteries, and she’s long past the twenty or so that were actually written by the real author Gertrude Chandler Warner.  I also had her write up a different kind of book report on Mary Poppins; I hope to share this in a post next week.

3.  Lulu took a break from RS C this week to work on subtraction skills in Math Mammoth.  She did a half dozen or so pages that caused her to really think about subtraction in a slightly different way that it was presented in RS C.  I wish I could say that this proved to be a magical solution to our math woes; instead, I think I can say that I’ve come to realize that sometimes it’s just developmental and we just keep pressing ahead.  It’s not so much that she doesn’t get subtraction; it’s just that it seems to give her more problems than anything we’ve done so far.  (Maybe mama needs to not get frustrated by the math as much as Lulu, eh?)  Next week it’s back to RS C, where we’ll jump back into a variety of topics, including plenty of subtraction review.  We also made time this week for several card games involving subtraction.  This is the most painless way I know of to practice subtraction with Lulu because this girl loves games.

Louise completed lesson 17 in RS B this week, which involved quantities arranged by twos.  We also played Old Main and Swim to Ten (pictured above).

4.  Keeping the DLM out of mischief is growing more and more difficult.  He loves to color, and usually he’s pretty good about only coloring on paper.  This week, however, he colored on the windowsill and the floor.  :-) I hope to make some changes to our current set-up to provide more interesting things for him to do in the school room.  I think he’s tired of all his school-time toys now.  (He’s using a crayon to “work” on ours school table here–or maybe he’s using the table leg as a crayon sharpener?–anyway, he’s always busy!)

5. Nothing gives me greater delight than to look up and catch my children reading on their own.  Louise read a bunch of Elephant & Piggie books and some other stuff that you can see here.  It looks like the DLM is going to fit into our book-loving household just fine.  :-)

6.  Lulu’s love of all things yarn-related continues.  She made that bracelet by herself.  This girl really needs to learn to crochet.   I must eke out a bit of time to learn to crochet myself so I can teach her.

7.  On Wednesday afternoon Steady Eddie and I dropped the children off with my parents and headed south to Montgomery for an overnight trip.  I wish I could say it was all for fun and relaxation, but alas, Steady Eddie had a Thursday morning meeting to attend.  I, however, got to sleep in, walk on the hotel treadmill, eat breakfast alone, read, pray, and blog.  It was nice to have this little getaway, even if it was very short.

8.  While with my parents, the kids got to play outside, jump on the trampoline, visit the horses, fish in the pond (and be scared by the cows), and watch way to many episodes of Bonanza.  (My girls love it, thanks probably to the presence of a young Michael Landon in the show.  This thrills my mother to no end because she has always been a little bit in love with Little Joe. ;-) )

9.  We ended the week as we began it:  with a picnic at the park.  We got up and got the day started early, with a bit of writing before heading out to baby story time at the library.  After we checked out a rolling cart full of books (!!), we headed across the street to a little city park where we ate our PB & Js and fed some of our Goldfish to the squirrels.  Steady Eddie met us there, and he and the children walked over to the post office to mail Louise’s letter to her penpal.  (It’s finally headed your way, Stephanie! :-) )  Then it was back home to finish up Fun Friday:  math games, a bit o’ spelling, and some nature study.

Of course, we did language and handwriting, and more spelling and writing this week, too:  FLL 2 lessons 82-84, AAS 2 steps 9 and 10, WWE 2 week 26.  We read about the Vikings in Story of the World 2, and Lulu turned out a pretty good notebooking page on Leif Ericcson.  We’re actually covering territory we’ve already covered with other resources in history, and I have to say that I’m really appreciating the narrative of SotW.

I hope today will turn out to be a Science Saturday.  We’re finding it so difficult to get everything in these days.  Steady Eddie has more or less taken the reins when it comes to science, but with all of the girls’ afternoon and night-time commitments, it’s hard for him to find time to squeeze the lessons in.  We’re thinking that we’re going to have to go back to something a bit more textbook oriented than BFSU.  I really, really love how the concepts are presented in it, but it’s just not a good fit for us time-wise right now.  Maybe we can use it as a supplement.  I’ve also been toying with the idea of simply doing nature study next year, sort of like Janet has done this year.  (Full disclosure:  I have one child who claims to not like nature study at all, so I’m not sure how this would actually play out.  Maybe even more exposure would cause her to love it!)

The other thing that I feel like we’re really missing right now is art.  I’d like to give Drawing with Children another go.  I encourage the girls to participate in Sketch Tuesday each week, but I’d like to find time to participate with them and really learn more about drawing.

That was our week in a nutshell.  I’m still feeling spring feverish.  We have a little over a month of school left for this year before we take a short break and then plunge back into summer school.  I like to think that we are semi-year ’round homeschoolers.  I like to have enough time to swim and do fun stuff in the summer, but I don’t like to ditch the routine entirely.  I’m thinking about shaking it up a little this summer and trying something entirely different, too.  Just thinking. . .

How was your week?

P.S. :-) Several of my favorite bloggers are participating in a series sponsored by iHomeschool Network beginning on Monday.  The series will run for two weeks.  Each homeschool blogger will write about her area of expertise.  Some of the topics I’m most looking forward to are

  • Mary‘s posts on teaching music
  •  Jimmie‘s posts on teaching writing
  •  Heather‘s posts on pouring into your children’s passions
  •  Tricia‘s posts on teaching multiple ages
  •  Heather‘s posts on “accidental unschooling”

Photobucket

dogwood tree study

Posted on by
5

Last week I planned all week long for us to get outdoors on Thursday for a bit of nature study.  I knew that the dogwood tree is one of April’s topics for study in Barb‘s newsletter, but I also knew that if I waited until Barb posts this particular topic for one of her OHC Friday posts, it might be too late.  The dogwoods in our area have been gorgeous! This was on March 22.  Look past the rain-spattered window and the bird at our feeder to the little dogwood across the street:

 

 

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I walked out onto our driveway on Thursday to this:

 Closer. . .

 And closer still. . .

 Nope.  Nary a white bract to be had.  There weren’t even any salvagable ones on the ground.

Well, I decided to cut my losses and go with it.  It was also an unexpectedly cool and windy spring day, so I wanted to get the wee man back inside as quickly as possibly.  I suggested to the girls that they choose something about the tree to sketch–the tree itself, a leaf, the bark.  They both chose leaves, and when we got back inside they decided to do leaf rubbings.

 

Lulu and I discussed the location of the leaf on the branch, and we made a quick trip back out to the tree to make some observations.  She then listed her observations on a notebooking page:

We talked about how the white petals aren’t actually flowers, but the flower is a tiny little thing located in the middle of those white bracts.

Louise was inspired to sketch the flower and make her own observations:

 Her observations:

1.  It does not smell.

2.  It looks like it has spikes.

3.  The flower has red stuff in it.

I talked with the girls a bit about what I read in The Handbook of Nature Study.  I really like Comstock’s comparison of the parts of the flower to little churns and dashers.  (Knowing my girls appreciation for all things pioneer-ish, I knew they’d get this comparison.) 

I think the study turned out fine.  One of the toughest things I have to let go of as a homeschooling mother/tutor/teacher is that I will always have all of the answers.  Here’s the bottom line: I won’t.  And that’s okay.  In the interest of full disclosure, I was frantically trying to print out notebooking pages for my 7 and 6 year old daughters to have diagrams of the parts of flowers not thirty minutes before we began this study.  Thankfully, our printer wasn’t communicating with the computer at the moment, so they were saved that bit of botany.  Instead, Lulu made her own observations and Louise made hers. 

This is why I love nature study.  For me, it’s an opportunity to really see our world (sometimes I feel like I’ve been blind to it for most of my life!) and realize how much I don’t know.  For my straight-A, high school valedictorian self, this is huge.  (True confessions here, folks.)  I am a science nerd hiding in an English teacher facade, but I don’t remember everything I learned in my high school and college science classes.  I’m okay with that.  For the girls, it’s an opportunity to add experientially and incrementally to their knowledge bases.  They’re building fat nature notebooks, and it’s wonderfully gratifying for them (and me!) to go back and remember what we’ve studied. 

(Those notebooking pages come from Notebooking Treasury, for which I am an affiliate.  I use these notebooking pages weekly and really recommend the Treasury membership.  If you click through and purchase something there, I will receive a small commission, for which I thank you.)

 

 

 

 

 

A Short Week with Lots o’ Reading, a Calculator, and a Rainbow

Posted on by
10

Photobucket

1.  We started the week with a field trip, which was a nice way to ease back into school after spring break. 

2.  I worked Easter eggs into our lessons as often as I could this week.  :-)   On Tuesday I hid a trio of eggs for each girl, with each egg containing a math problem for her to solve.  We’ve also been working through our annual Resurrection eggs/reading of Benjamin’s Box tradition over breakfast.  The girls LOVE this.  I always hide the Resurrection eggs and let them find them just before we read the Bible passage.

3.  Our favorite resources this week have been the Decorah Eagle Cam and the Cornell great blue heron nest cam (hat-tip Janet).  Louise and the DLM have spent a good bit of time this week peering at the computer screen.  I’m usually pretty anti-technology for my young children, but I make an exception for live nature experiences.  Louise got extremely excited when the eagle’s mate came back to the nest right before her very eyes, and again when the heron stood up and she actually got to see the eggs.  Although they prefer watching the eaglets, we’ll have to keep an eye on the heron cam as time draws close to the hatching time!

4.  We’ve all done a lot of reading this week.  I even remembered to have Lulu read aloud to me several times this week.  Once she began reading fluently (and voraciously!), I sort of forgot to keep her reading to me.  She doesn’t like to do it, but I require her to because I think it’s important for me to hear her and gauge her fluency and help her read plainly and teach her how to actually pronounce words.  She read an Aesop’s fable and a passage from Mary Poppins Comes Back.  Like her sister, Louise is reading like a house a-fire!  I love that she is capable of picking up almost any old book and reading for herself, like she’s doing in this picture.  (This particular selection was The Easter Egg by Jan Brett, a book that gave us the opportunity to meet Jan Brett!)  You can take a peek at what else we read this week and get all the details here.

5.  On Wednesday the weather was so nice that Louise, the DLM, and I sat out on the hill beside the home of Lulu’s piano teacher and just enjoyed the great outdoors.  I actually intended to bring Louise’s book and the card deck to play a game of Old Main (tens facts game from RS), but in my haste to get us out the door for Sonic Happy Hour, I left them at home.  This little memory slip actually afforded me a much-needed opportunity to sit in the sun, read, and watch my children play.  Perfect!

6.  On Thursday we headed outside to observe our neighbor’s dogwood trees, only to find that they had shed every single one of their white blossoms (which aren’t really blossoms at all–did you know that?).  Oops.  I’ll detail our discoveries more in a future Outdoor Hour Challenge post. 

7.  Math continues to exhilirate and frustrate me.  As I’ve mentioned before, Lulu is at the point in RS C when I’ve heard that many people jump ship, and I can see why.  The lessons take a long, long time to get through.  Steady Eddie even posted a message on the RS Yahoo groups about it, and we’ve received a good bit of encouragement to a.) slow down and take our time and b.) know that it gets “better” shortly.  (I hesitate to use the word better because it’s not really a fault of the program, but rather perhaps my perception of how to use it.)  This week we covered lessons 94-96, and the first two of those involved learning to use the memory function on the calculator (all the while working multi-step subtraction word problems).  I have mixed feelings about handing a calculator to my second grader, but I finally decided that while I definitely don’t want her dependent on a calculator, I do want her to use one correctly and I want her to know that it’s an option.  (For the record, I learned how to use the memory function on the calculator this week, too!)  Lesson 96 introduced the metric system, which was a breath of fresh hour after an intense few days of subtraction.  ;-)   Steady Eddie and I are tossing around the idea of taking a very brief break from RS to let subtraction marinate for a while in Lulu’s brain.  Louise continues to breeze through RS A, finishing lesson 15 this week.  We’re still working on review lessons.

8.  We didn’t intend to do any school at all today since it’s Good Friday, but since we made a run last night to look for the girls’ Easter shoes, we didn’t have Science Thursday.  Steady Eddie made it a Science Friday instead.  He taught the girls all about gravity while I made my morning ablutions. 

9.  Is there anything prettier than Easter eggs in their dye baths? 

Oh, we’ve done more of the routine: 

  • Lulu completed lessons 80-81in FLL vol. 2, which entailed lots of parts of speech and direct/indirect quotations review.
  • Lulu finished up day 4 of WWE week 25 that was left over from the week before spring break.  This was narration and dictation from a pretty complicated Rudyard Kipling tale.
  • Lulu–AAS Step 8
  • Lulu–narration/notebooking about Alexander the Great (Louise listened to the chapter from SotW, too.)
  • Handwriting practice for both girls, both from their Getty-Dubay workbooks and dictation/copywork and the keeping of their booklists
  • Louise completed lessons 140-142 in OPGtTR.

This month we’re also enjoying poetry in honor of National Poetry Month.  You can read about this week’s pick here. 

We also began memorizing 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 and listened to “In Christ Alone” over and over.  I love this song.  We memorized it for Easter last year, but it sort of fell off the radar after that.  I need to add it to our hymns playlist!

I also have to share this:  we decided late last evening to head out to look for shoes for the girls.  It had been a rainy evening, and the temperature had dropped a good bit.  When the girls got outside they immediately began yelling about a rainbow, and when I went outside to see it, I was awestruck.  It was gorgeous–we could almost see the whole thing!  It was actually a double rainbow, but the one on top was so faint that I don’t think it photographed.  What a blessing to see this–a beautiful reminder of God’s promise!

 

I’m looking forward to a good weekend.  Steady Eddie and I have had a mid-day date today because all the kiddos went over to Nana’s before lunch.  We went out for a late lunch and did some piddling around.  One thing I’m very excited about is that we’re in the beginning stages of planning a butterfly garden for our yard.  We even bought a butterfly bush today!  This weekend we plan to work around the house, spend time with family, and remember the Resurrection.  How about you?

Favorite Resource This Week

Photobucket

Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems by Joyce Sidman

Posted on by
5

To say that I am excited about this book is an understatement.  I love Joyce Sidman‘s poetry, so choosing her Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems to kick off National Poetry Month was a no-brainer.  Reading her poetry simply feeds my love of nature, and because love of both poetry and nature is something I hope to pass on to my girls, sharing these poems with them is pure pleasure for me.  My only regret is that I didn’t have this book when we did our pond study last year, but that’s the great thing about nature study–the subject never expires or runs out!  In Song of the Water Boatman, Sidman captures with delightful imagery some of the denizens of the pond:  from duckweed to dragonflies and wood ducks to water bears, creatures both great and small are included.  One of my favorite poems is a concrete poem entitled “Into the Mud.”  It’s about the painted turtle’s hibernation, “shuttered like a shed”, down below in the pond’s muddy bottom.  I also love her concrete poem about caddis worms:

Smart

young

caddis worms

select only

the best to

dress themselves

 

I certainly did not know the caddis worm builds its own protective case out of whatever it finds in the water.  Fascinating! I think Louise’s favorite poem is a “House That Jack Built” rhyme about the food chain.  I had to read that one more than once.   We enjoyed this entire collection of eleven poems over two or three days, dipping into it and reading a few at a time.  Of course, I could spend hours justing poring over the illustrations, which garnered this title a Caldecott honor in 2006.  Beckie Prange’swatercolored woodblock prints are gorgeous.  (Houhgton Mifflin, 2005)

If you haven’t read any of Joyce Sidman’s poetry, what are you waiting for?  We’ve read and enjoyed Red Sings from Treetops (linked to my review and here’s another, I like it so much!) and Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night (linked).  I’m expecting Swirl by Swirl:  Spirals in Nature to be delivered by the big brown truck today!  Truly, if you like poetry even a little bit and if you like nature at all, you will love Sidman‘s stuff.  The fact that it is paired with the work of so many talented artists is simply the icing on the cake.  (If you’re keeping count, her books have earned two Caldecotts and a Newbery, plus other honors I’m sure I’m not aware of!) 

 This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Read, Write, Howl, the blog of children’s author Robyn Hood Black.  (For the schedule upcoming Poetry Fridays, visit Kidlitosphere Central.)  I’m also submitting this post for this month’s Award Winning Books challenge at Gathering Books.

How are you celebrating National Poetry Month?

This Week in Books

Posted on by
12

This week’s reading in bullet points:

  • I started and finished Inside Out and Back Again (wonderful!), started Dead End in Norvelt (hilarious!), and stalled out on Lit!  Why, of why, do I find it so difficult to get through nonfiction anymore?  Stay tuned for reviews.
  • Louise and I read together Abigail Takes the Wheel and Minnie and Moo and the Haunted Sweater, both of which are I Can Read chapter books.  See the four books above those two in the picture?  She read those by herself and brought them from her bedroom to add to the stack when I asked the girls what they read this week.  One of the smartest things we decided to do when rearranging the schoolroom for our new bookshelves is relocate a small bookcase to the girls’ rooms and put some leveled readers (in fact, all the I Can Read type books that we own!) on those shelves to give Louise something to read.  She even confessed that she only meant to look at Glasses for D.W., but she ended up reading it anyway.  She couldn’t help herself.  :-)
  • Lulu’s required reading this week was actually Mary Poppins, which she borrowed from the library at the end of last week.  However, when she wanted to read one of the P.L. Travers sequels instead, how could I refuse?  Despite my own misgivings about Mary Poppins – the P.L. Travers version is not the Julie Andrews version — I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist because she loves the movie so much.  I was right!  She loved it.  Obviously, she’s also still on her Boxcar Children kick.  She just loves those Aldens.  :-)   I’d love to broaden her horizons, too, with some other mysteries, but I’m at a loss to find something comparable to the Boxcar Children–something that isn’t scary at all, but still holds her interest.  Ideas, anyone?
  • Yes, we’re still reading Little Britches and Little Pilgrims’ Progress, with the addition of Benjamin’s Box this week for Easter. 
  • We’re reading poetry this month.  Come back tomorrow to find out what we’ve enjoyed this week.
  • We shared several picture books we all enjoyed, including these. 

Have you had a bookish week?

Natural Bridge, Alabama

Posted on by
7

On Monday we eased back into school from our spring break with a fun field trip to Natural Bridge, Alabama.  After a little mis-direction from Google maps, we found the place and enjoyed some time with some old and new homeschooling friends. 

See the Indian?

 

 

 

Ferns inside the cave's mouth--love the bright green!

 

 

 

 

This is the entrance to Natural Bridge. Isn't it pretty? Doesn't it look cool? It is unseasonably warm in AL this spring!

After our hike, we enjoyed a picnic lunch and the kids had some fun in the creek. I’m sure this was their favorite part of the day!

 This would make an excellent location for geology studies or just nature study in general.  If we hadn’t been with a group of friends, I’m sure I would’ve encouraged the girls to do a bit of nature journaling.  As it was, it was a good way to get out and get some exercise and fellowship.

April is National Poetry Month!

Posted on by
4

For the past couple of years I’ve tried to spend some of our lesson time each week reading and creating poetry during the month of April since it is National Poetry Month.  Once again this year I’m going to attempt to review a book of poetry each week for Poetry Friday, which is hosted by various bloggers in the Kidlitosphere (the schedule is in the sidebar).  Here are links to poetry-related posts here at Hope Is the Word:

I probably missed a few (I know I’ve reviewed a few novels-in-verse), but that’s enough to start, right? 

What’s your favorite children’s poetry book or poet?  Any suggestions for a not-to-be-missed poem, collection, or poet for this special month?

 

Easter Plans

Posted on by
8

*I’m reporting this from last year for my own benefit, but maybe you can use the inspiration, too.*

Because I am incapable of long-range planning at any time other than Christmas time, I am only now doing any serious planning for Easter.  Oh, we have our Easter frocks and our requisite white shoes (well, everyone except Lulu–and we’re looking for sandals THIS WEEK–and Steady Eddie, but he doesn’t look good in white ;-)   ), but I haven’t done the important planning, like what books we’re going to read.  ;-)   I haven’t checked anything out of the library besides Rechenka’s Eggs and Miz Fannie Mae’s New Easter Hat (both reviewed here).  I’ve just been in a sort of fog, going through the motions, just trying to survive this very busy season.  I don’t like it this way, but that’s the way it is every spring. 

This is what I’m planning for the week:

  • an Easter egg hunt Monday morning.  Lulu’s eggs will contain four digit addition problems and Louise’s will contain the tens addition fact problems.   They love doing things like this, and I ask myself, why do I wait until a holiday to do something that is so much fun for them?
  • read Benjamin’s Box and hide the Resurrection Eggs around the house each morning.  This was a huge hit last year, so I think it will be again.
  • make homemade matzah and eat it all, just like last year.  Of course, we will talk about the Passover, too, and how Jesus is our Passover lamb. 
  • decorate Easter eggs.  We might try our hands at making these egg cups and these eggs.  I’d really like to blow the insides out of the eggs so we can have a beautiful egg tree like Janet’s, but it has been since I was a little girl that I’ve tried that.  Is it hard?  Any tips?
  • read selections from our small collection of Easter books, including Jan Brett’s The Easter Egg.  I feel like we acquired the book so late last year that we didn’t have time to properly appreciate and enjoy it, and then it went up in a box with the other Easter things. 
  • focus on learning some scriptures that relate to the Resurrection.  We did this last year, too, but we haven’t continued to review them, so I’m not sure we all still have them in our grey matter.  I’m thinking about pulling questions and scriptures from our Bible quiz materials, but we shall see if I have time to do this.
  • work on an Easter-ish hymn this week for our hymn memorization.  Any suggestions?
  • make cinnamon rolls for our Sunday School class for Easter morning.  Yummy!
  • make my sister’s favorite cake, banana split (yes, cake), for Easter dinner at my parents’, in honor of her 34th birthday the day before.  (How can my baby sister be that old?!?!)

While I’m at it, I think I’ll make a tidy list of all my Easter related posts here, some of which I also linked above.

In the midst of all the busy-ness, though, I want to take some time to worship Him this week.  I’m making that a priority. 

What are your plans for celebrating Easter in your home this year?