Wednesday, September 10, 2008
We hates it! Spellingses!!
One of the hobbits is an amazing speller, aces his spelling tests,is unfazed by any word configuration. The other two....aren't. They come by this naturally as you would know if you read any of my posts before spell check is applied. So, here is my Gollum like rant...I HATE SSSSPELLING!!!! I hate spelling listssss!!!! I hate drilling sssspelling wordsssss!!! We hates it!! We hatesss it!!!!!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Ocular Athletics
Yes, it's the first Ocular Athletic Thursday of the new school year!! Here are today's offerings...
A Book
Books are an endless source of entertainment, and they are good for your reading skills. I do not know how writers get all the patience to write a book, I mean, they all have to write page after page of long words and when you finish one page it's off to the next page. A book can be big or small, thick or thin, fact or fiction. (Man, that did run on like a song.) I like books about myth and legend, but I like best of all books about dragons.
P.Took
A Key by Samwise Gamgee
Today,dear reader, I am writing about a key. Just a small aluminum key. There is no design on it. It is about one inch long and about one centimeter wide with a rectangular hole in the middle. It unlocks a Viking treasure chest!
A Book
Books are an endless source of entertainment, and they are good for your reading skills. I do not know how writers get all the patience to write a book, I mean, they all have to write page after page of long words and when you finish one page it's off to the next page. A book can be big or small, thick or thin, fact or fiction. (Man, that did run on like a song.) I like books about myth and legend, but I like best of all books about dragons.
P.Took
A Key by Samwise Gamgee
Today,dear reader, I am writing about a key. Just a small aluminum key. There is no design on it. It is about one inch long and about one centimeter wide with a rectangular hole in the middle. It unlocks a Viking treasure chest!
Ave Maris Stella
We've been trying to learn this song this month:
Ave Maris Stella, Maria!
Hail, bright star of ocean, Maria!
Dei Mater alma, Maria!
God's own Mother, holy, Maria!
Atque semper Virgo,
Ever sinless Virgen,
Felix caeli porta,Maria,Maria!
Heaven's blessed portal, Maria, Maria!
And we also made a variant of Alice Gunther's craft idea featured in the July issue of mater et magistra. She used a wooden lighthouse--we improvised with legos. Ignore the pirate poster.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Monarchs
The boys came home from the tennis courts with two monarch caterpillars a couple of weeks ago. After a few days of milkweed they chrysalized and hatched out right on schedule. This was a big relief to me as our last attempt at this resulted in a dead chrysalis. A Daddy-long-legs chewed through the casing and sucked it dry. I was shocked! I didn't think they could do that! We made a point of meticulous vacuuming around the aquarium this time. Death to Spiders!!! At least in the house.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Subjects
To begin at the beginning, here are the proposed subjects for the coming school year:
Bible-the hobbits are fairly ignorant of most of the bible, in spite of my having read a couple of children's bible books to them. This year we are going right to the source and I will read the bible and they will (hopefully) narrate. I'll also use You Can Understand the Bible by Peter Kreeft as a parent resource. For Catechism, I found this gem-An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism by Rev. Thomas Kinkead in a box of books to be thrown out at our Parish so I snagged it! It is a very living explanation of the catechism. I also have monthly themes planned, August is Ave Maris Stella, September is for reading aloud Adventures of the Amethyst, October is for the Rosary and the battle of Lepanto (and Chesterton!), November is of course for saints, etc.
We will stick to Latina Christiana for Latin and I hope to review what we covered last year in book one and also get a hefty chunk of book two into our heads.
English will be Lingua Mater--hopefully the whole book but we'll see. The youngest hobbit will use Intermediate Language Lessons and Ocular Athletics will return. I also bought spelling workbooks from Seton. I have tried over the years to get the hobbits to spell correctly and have spent an inordinate amount of time devising programs and spelling lists. Enough! This is where the rubber hits the road and they will pass those weekly spelling tests or else!!!
For math I want to use Making Math Meaningful by Jamie York. This is a Waldorf book but pretty thorough and includes alot of math tricks like how to multiply by 11's and casting out nines to check multiplication. We also will use String, Straightedge and Shadow by Julia Diggins to get us started in Geometry. Little Hobbit will learn his math facts...or else!
We will meander through New York State history this year and also use The Natrual History of New York by Stan Freeman and Mike Nasuti as a spine for nature study. And because I can only stand United States history for so long I will also read aloud The Old World and America and add some appropriate historical fiction. The Dark Ages aren't so dark in this text!
Art and music study will follow the sequence in What Your 4th (and 7th) Grader Needs to Know. Not bad selections really. I will post on these as they come up.
The Hobbit twins will also study Chemistry and Earth Science this year. We will start with The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker. After reading the first couple of chapters I think this will be a good book for narration. I haven't decided what to use for Earth Science yet. They will also read The Complete Book of Marvels by Richard Halliburton for geography.
Well, this is the rough outline and is subject to change at any time or as my father always said, "That's the plan now let's see what happens!"
Bible-the hobbits are fairly ignorant of most of the bible, in spite of my having read a couple of children's bible books to them. This year we are going right to the source and I will read the bible and they will (hopefully) narrate. I'll also use You Can Understand the Bible by Peter Kreeft as a parent resource. For Catechism, I found this gem-An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism by Rev. Thomas Kinkead in a box of books to be thrown out at our Parish so I snagged it! It is a very living explanation of the catechism. I also have monthly themes planned, August is Ave Maris Stella, September is for reading aloud Adventures of the Amethyst, October is for the Rosary and the battle of Lepanto (and Chesterton!), November is of course for saints, etc.
We will stick to Latina Christiana for Latin and I hope to review what we covered last year in book one and also get a hefty chunk of book two into our heads.
English will be Lingua Mater--hopefully the whole book but we'll see. The youngest hobbit will use Intermediate Language Lessons and Ocular Athletics will return. I also bought spelling workbooks from Seton. I have tried over the years to get the hobbits to spell correctly and have spent an inordinate amount of time devising programs and spelling lists. Enough! This is where the rubber hits the road and they will pass those weekly spelling tests or else!!!
For math I want to use Making Math Meaningful by Jamie York. This is a Waldorf book but pretty thorough and includes alot of math tricks like how to multiply by 11's and casting out nines to check multiplication. We also will use String, Straightedge and Shadow by Julia Diggins to get us started in Geometry. Little Hobbit will learn his math facts...or else!
We will meander through New York State history this year and also use The Natrual History of New York by Stan Freeman and Mike Nasuti as a spine for nature study. And because I can only stand United States history for so long I will also read aloud The Old World and America and add some appropriate historical fiction. The Dark Ages aren't so dark in this text!
Art and music study will follow the sequence in What Your 4th (and 7th) Grader Needs to Know. Not bad selections really. I will post on these as they come up.
The Hobbit twins will also study Chemistry and Earth Science this year. We will start with The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker. After reading the first couple of chapters I think this will be a good book for narration. I haven't decided what to use for Earth Science yet. They will also read The Complete Book of Marvels by Richard Halliburton for geography.
Well, this is the rough outline and is subject to change at any time or as my father always said, "That's the plan now let's see what happens!"
Friday, August 1, 2008
Treasure Island
This book is way too scary for bedtime! The muppet version (And A Child's Garden of Verses) made me forget just how creepy Robert Louis Stevenson can be. I don't know why since The Master of Ballentrae gave me nightmares when I read it in my early 20's. We had just finished Secret Water by Arthur Ransome and as are all of his books it was a fairly in depth study. This one covered mapping and surveying and I thought Treasure Island would be a good follow-up and get us started in our Chesterton studies for the year. I'm anxiously awaiting his essay on Stevenson to arrive from the American Chesterton Society.In the mean time I am keeping a weather eye for blind, piratical, beggars bearing black spots....
Monday, July 14, 2008
Planning, again
I've been planning and planning until my head is spinning and history is yet again trying to take over the curriculum....so I just let it all go. What we are doing at present is slowly reading through the Core Knowledge sequence of books (yes, starting with What your Kindergartner Needs to Know! You should hear the groans, but everyone listens avidly and are oh so proud of knowing all the answers!) and creatively strewing books about on the topic of the day.
In September I plan to start a serious study of Latin again using Latina Christiana, reviewing book I first and hopefully moving on to book II before the year is out. This was the surprise winner from last year which I started mostly because I had bought the video lessons and figured I better use them. The discipline of this type of Latin instruction trickled down to all our other activities. I, of course tried to tweak this and added too much other stuff (Minimus, Our Roman Roots, and those new workbooks from CHC). I will try very hard not to do that again.
Other than that, I want the boys to be familiar with Kipling, Dickens, and Stevenson so they will know what GKC is talking about when they read his thought on these authors when they are older (high school?)and have a good idea of the flow of history. That's it. Those are the goals. Now we will see what happens!
In September I plan to start a serious study of Latin again using Latina Christiana, reviewing book I first and hopefully moving on to book II before the year is out. This was the surprise winner from last year which I started mostly because I had bought the video lessons and figured I better use them. The discipline of this type of Latin instruction trickled down to all our other activities. I, of course tried to tweak this and added too much other stuff (Minimus, Our Roman Roots, and those new workbooks from CHC). I will try very hard not to do that again.
Other than that, I want the boys to be familiar with Kipling, Dickens, and Stevenson so they will know what GKC is talking about when they read his thought on these authors when they are older (high school?)and have a good idea of the flow of history. That's it. Those are the goals. Now we will see what happens!
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