One project included researching colonial furniture and architecture and then sketching some examples into their notebooks. Here are a couple of samples. Colonial furniture Colonial houses
We also purchased a leathercraft kit and learned how to stamp and dye leather projects. So far the boys have made a luggage tag, a coin pouch, and a bookmark. I must say that this activity was a huge hit with the boys. It involves a hammer and metal stamps....what else can I say. We are going to work on the rest of the projects in the kit over the summer.
A little more involved and long running project was to pick a portrait and then draw or paint it into three different styles. Mr. B chose the Mona Lisa and he used oil pastels for all three versions: Neo-Classical, Impressionistic, and then abstract styles.
Mr. A chose to acrylics, oil pastels, and then markers to make his three versions of his portrait. He wasn't all that happy with the acrylic painting, but I think he learned a lot about the process of painting faces during this art project.
The boys also were assigned a project where they researched different paintings and images of Daniel Boone using the internet. They were to choose three different images and then write what they thought the artist was trying to show about Daniel Boone. We might do this sort of project again in the future because it was interesting to hear what the boys came up with for their explanations.
Many of you have emailed me and asked me about our plans for music appreciation. I know for each family there are different expectations. In our family I am trying to give a lot of exposure to great music. For music appreciation, they are assigned a composer, I give them some suggestions for listening, and then they are require to record what they listen to and write a short biography. Simple.
Here is an example that was done this term for Mozart. I prefer they record their listening activities on the log sheet but sometimes they just use binder paper. Here is a record for Schubert.
Here is one more for Bach.
That should give you a pretty good idea of how our unit went for art and music appreciation. We also enjoyed taking in a performance of The Man of La Mancha (musical) at our local theater. It was a great way to follow up our reading of Don Quixote. We are hoping to get to see a Shakespearean play this summer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, perhaps Henry VIII.
I will post our next unit's plans as soon as I have them nailed down.
Whether you are interested in composer study, nature study, high school thoughts, poetry, literature, audio books, insect collections, or any other variety of topics, you will find it in this Carnival.
Take a few minutes to pop over and read the entries. You will not be disappointed.
Your assignment this week was to sketch something with buttons. You will enjoy seeing what everyone came up with this week. Lots of great ideas and sketches.....thanks to all the moms who scan and email in the assignments. Sketch Tuesday is a success because of you.
Shhhhh...don't tell the Classical Homeschooling Police! We have not been able to complete a formal study of Latin. It is not because we didn't several times give it an honest to goodness try, but I just did not have the energy to power through and make it work.
We tried two different programs to learn Latin. We got a little farther with the DVD program, but we still were not able to stay motivated. I know I had a bit of a bad attitude about Latin and at some point I made the decision to set it aside and learn Spanish instead. I thought in our family that Spanish would be more applicable and practical. It was a great decision.
We have not totally ignored all Latin. We have enjoyed two programs that are giving us a taste of Latin by studying the roots.
English From the Roots Up: We started off with the book and the cards but what has endured to the end are the cards. We took these very slowly, discussing and learning each root one at a time. When I say slowly, I mean it has taken us four years to cover the box of one hundred Latin and Greek roots. We just finished our very last card this week and I can honestly say that both boys know *every* Latin and Greek root in this set.
The cards give simply the root on the front and the definition with examples of words on the back. I love things that are that simple.
We use the cards each week to drill the roots into our memory. We play simple games with the cards if we have some extra time during the week. We study five minutes a day, four days a week.
Quiz each other: I give the root and they give the meaning or I give the meaning and they give the root.
Speed: Use a stopwatch and see how fast we can get through the cards we know.
Made Up Words: Use the roots to make up new words, mixing together funny combinations.
Matching: Many of the roots are given in Greek and Latin. I give them the Latin and they tell me the Greek or vice versa.
This series of workbooks has helped us tremendously with our vocabulary. These books are meaty in content and they assume some level of sophistication to begin with. The pages are not colorful or full of illustrations. They have helped our skills in recognizing Latin and Greek roots in new words and thus giving us a pretty good idea of what the word means.
I highly recommend that you view the samples on the website for the various levels before purchasing your workbook. The link to the samples is on the right sidebar of the website linked above.
I admit that I did not use all the suggestions for activities in the Teacher's Guide. Both my boys work on these independently and I only help them review from time to time. They have 15 minutes per day allotted in their high school schedule to work on the lessons. They complete a lesson every week with a test on Friday.
I feel very good about what we have accomplished. Setting aside Latin, it freed us up to take our time to learn the roots and then apply them in our other schoolwork and in the vocabulary workbooks. Both my boys like words so they actually enjoy the workbooks.
No regrets, Barb-Harmony Art Mom
Sidenote: We muscled our way through Science Roots during our biology study last year. I found the program a little overwhelming to try to accomplish in one year. If I could have a "do over", I would have started the Science Roots program when they boys were in middle school so they would have been ready for all the vocabulary in their biology study.
We have a trumpet player in our family and the one thing we have learned is that trumpet playing is loud. Even though he spends time behind doors, we always get to hear what he is practicing and working on.
I love Tine Thing Helseth's soft touch and the video really makes you feel like you are seeing the "behind the scenes" person who is playing the music for you. I love that personal side.
Another trumpet player that I especially like is Alison Balsom.
I love classical trumpet playing...these ladies really can play. They can play.
I hope this encourages our trumpet player to keep at it because these pieces are beautiful when they are polished.
The world seems to be made of plastic these days and there are some fantastic sketches of plastic things this week. I am always amazed to see the variety of ideas that come back to me in each individual sketch. Thank you so much to all who participated.
This week's assignment, due on Monday, May 25th: Sketch something with buttons.
Everyone is welcome to sketch...even moms and dads. All sketches are due on Monday, May 25th. Send your sketches to this email address: sketchtuesday@yahoo.com. Thanks so much for your support.
Can I just give myself a big whoop and holler? Wahoo!
Another year of high school nearly under my belt and I am feeling great. Wahoo!
Sometimes you just need to rejoice about the place you are in life.
I have been writing a lot lately about high school and Tapestry of Grace and Charlotte Mason. I feel so impelled to share our experiences with everyone as we go through the process. I know from my email that there are those that are listening and participating in the discussions and I love that.
This time I wanted to share how we have made literature study a success in our family using TOG and Charlotte Mason's ideas. I don't think I have it all figured out but it is going fairly well for us at this point.
Literature is probably the hardest subject for me to share with my boys in high school. With that thought in mind, I pick the literature that we will cover carefully.
Formal Literature:
Slow reading of books has become the foundation for our literature study. We read several books at a time and alternate days. We get the same amount of pages read over the long run but each book is sliced into bite size pieces.
We use three sources for our literature study. I start off with the Tapestry of Grace book list, eliminating books we have read already or we don't think will be a good fit for our family. I consult the Ambleside Online year we are working in and pull books from their lists as well to substitute for the books we eliminated from TOG. Then I browse our home library for books that I would like to include for the year. This year we pulled in additional Shakespeare and additional poetry. I sort the books by terms and then add them into Homeschool Tracker. It really is not a difficult process at all and it gives us a customized literature list just for our family.
These books are read and shared together each week at our Friday meetings. The boys keep Commonplace Books for most of their literature but sometimes I pull an idea from TOG and we go a little more in depth. I make sure to cover literary terms with the boys each Friday at our meetings. We did use TOG's story analysis document from The Loom to learn how to do a little more formal study of a few books. We also enjoyed using the Loom's Author Index to learn more about each author before reading the books. ( I will share our general ideas for covering literary terms in an additional post...I have a pretty good system going on for the boys.)
Free Reading:
In addition to the books, plays, and poetry that I assign as part of our weekly homeschooling plans, I have what I refer to as free reading books.
These are books that I decided the boys need to read as a matter of general knowledge and for enjoyment. They may be additional books by authors we read during our formal literature time or books we just cannot fit into our busy school schedule. They can read and enjoy with no narrations unless they want to share thoughts with me or other family members.
I make a list and put it in the front of their literature binder and they keep track of when they start and finish each book on the list. They use these books as a way to fill in extra time during their day, on road trips, in the evenings, over the winter and spring breaks, or during their free afternoon time. The only "rule" is that they have to have one book started at all times.
I have all the books lined up on a shelf in our school area and they can be read in any order. All books are unabridged and usually older copies that I have collected over the years.
Sample list of books that are to be completed by the end of grade 9: Robinson Crusoe
Kidnapped
Treasure Island
Captain Courageous
House of Arden
Oliver Twist
Cricket on the Hearth The Prince and the Pauper Little Men
Animal Farm
Rob Roy Book of Three Lorna Doone
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells Count of Monte Cristo
Invisible Man
I have a hard time remembering which of my children have read which books in the past so they are allowed to come to me and tell me that they already read a book and I will cross it off the list. Also, they are allowed two books to "skip" if they are really not enjoying them. They have to give the book a chance by reading at least two chapters but I am not trying to make free reading a lesson in obedience. I want it to be enjoyable.
So far, they both have opted to skip Rob Roy because they were having trouble with the dialect. Mr. A does not especially like Dickens' style of writing so he opted out of one of the Dickens books.
Mr. A enjoyed reading the unabridged version of Treasure Island for the first time.
Mr. B loved The Time Machine and The Count of Monte Cristo.
I was intrigued by the story of The Invisible Man.
I have already started their list for next year and it is going to be great.
High school is a great time for so many "grown up" kinds of literature. I am grateful to be able to share at least a part of the experience with my boys.
We have been reading and enjoying ballads from the 18th century for literature. We decided that we would search out some of the ballads on YouTube since they really need to be sung to get the full impact. Here is a sample. Lord Randall
I love this man's voice. I first heard him sing on the soundtrack of The Merchant of Venice and fell in love with the sound....Andreas Scholl. My favorite: How Sweet the Moonlight.
I have been participating in an on-going email discussion with a mom who is interested in TOG but can't decide if buying the plans are worth the money if you can work from the book list shared on the Tapestry of Grace website. I thought about it for exactly three seconds before I replied. Here is what I wrote her to answer her question. ----------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friend,
I can't imagine trying to recreate my own schedule without the plans from TOG. TOG is so much more than a schedule of books.
Planning: I just got done planning for the week with my boys and we used the first page of the notes (General Information page) to introduce our topics for the week. The books weave the topics into their reading. They are able to tie the main ideas into their reading both in literature and history. This helps with their narrations and writing assignments. If you want to use the student pages from TOG, they are all there waiting for you to pick and choose how to use them with your family. I sometimes assign the accountability questions to be discussed at our Friday meetings. This saves me from having to read every book they read. The Teacher's notes are so thorough that I have not had to keep up with their reading but we still have great Socratic discussions on Fridays because I can read the summaries and World Book accounts that are included in TOG.
Writing: TOG also includes great writing suggestions which I use without the Writing Aids CD but instead use them as jumping off points and suggestions for the boys to use as written narrations each week.
Living Book Experience: In the Rhetoric level, I have thoroughly enjoyed the Pageant of Philosophy information which is hard to explain until you have it in your hands. Basically, it is a play built around a character named Simplicio that meets different real people from history and the TOG pages share the discussion that Simplicio and the historical character have. Much of what the historical characters say in these plays are direct quotes from their own writings. We read it as a reader's theater on Friday's as part of our meeting. These sorts of insights into various historical characters have given us a sort of "living book" experience.
Buffet of choices: Also, the TOG plans include activities, vocabulary, geography assignments, art and music appreciation suggestions, timeline information, and suggestions for unit celebration activities. I am sure you could use the book list and make your own plans but that would take a lot more energy than I am willing to put into it. Besides, I could never recreate the experience of the weekly discussions without the Teacher's Notes.
I know that many families using CM just let their children read and narrate and they never participate in a discussion. For our family, those discussions are the highlight of our week.
Vary our approach week by week: I also am the kind of person that likes to pick and choose what we do each week since my boys learn in different ways. Some weeks we read, narrate, and discuss. Some weeks we make maps from the geography assignments instead of written narration. Some weeks we focus on literature and the boys recite a passage from their reading. Sometimes I like to jump down to the Dialectic level and read a book. We are doing that this week and reading an additional book from the lower level just for fun.
Anyway, a very long email to say that would not have been the same experience without the plans on paper right in front of me. The books would be dry bones by themselves.
Last week, I received my spring 2009 newsletter from Institute for Excellence in Writing. I had a few minutes so I began reading the front page. The article answers this question:
"When does the substance of students' writing gain more significance than whether or not they follow the models and complete the checklist?"
I was very interested in the answer to this question and in answering, he quotes the following words:
"A good idea poorly presented is not as powerful as a bad idea well presented-history proves this." (Dr. James B. Webster)
Your slideshow this week is a collection of sketches of animals or birds from Australia. Our family spent some time researching different animals and we ended up learning about two animals that we had never heard of before. This was a lot of fun for us and I hope you all enjoyed your assignment as well.
This week's assignment, due in two weeks on Monday, May 18th: Draw something made of plastic.
I will not be able to make a slideshow next week because I have some personal commitments but send in your sketches as soon as you finish them so you won't forget! All sketches are due on Monday, May 18th.
There are quite a few people that are sending in their sketches to my regular email, but please note that it is much easier for me if everyone sends in their sketches to: sketchtuesday@yahoo.com.
Since you have two weeks, you can sketch something made from plastic one week and then complete an old assignment that you skipped or would like to complete again. All you need to do is to click the Sketch Tuesday tag in the bottom of this entry and it should pull up all previous assignments.
I thought some of you might be interested in the sorts of projects that my boys are working on during their afternoon time. This time has been totally theirs to pursue interests, to fiddle around with stuff, and to be bored at times. I know that the years of having very few obligations on their time are coming to an end but I am not in a big hurry to fill the time up with more academics, sports, or classes. It has taken a measure of confidence that my children know what they want to learn about without interfering with their activities.
It is sort of, dare I say it, unschooling. I am here to provide the free time and to watch and make sure that they are getting the materials and information they need to move onto the next step. They many times are beyond my knowledge working on projects but they seem to find people in real life and online information to fill in where they need it.
Mr. A's Projects (age 15) 1. Remote control helicopter-learning to fly, fixing it when it crashes, improving the way it flies, and the latest endeavor is to make a paper skin for it to replace the plastic body parts.
He printed the plans off the internet and realized that the scale was wrong so he had to adjust the plans to fit his helicopter. This was very time consuming and I am amazed at his concentration and focus on this project once he got started.
2. Making a remote control airplane out of balsa wood totally from scratch. He scaled the paper plans from the internet, made the airplane which took weeks, learned how to paint it, convinced his older brother to make vinyl stripes and a number for the sides, and adjusted the plane's weight to fit the motors and parts he had on hand. He is nervous to actually fly it but I know he will do so when he is ready. He has joined an online discussion group for RC enthusiasts and they have helped him learn so much about this hobby and I am very grateful.
3. Drawing, drawing, drawing airplanes and helicopters of all kinds. 4. Training his Labrador retriever. He took a class with her and now works with her everyday. 5. Skateboarding back and forth, up and down. Trips to the skate park just about every week. 6. He has been working with me in the garden doing heavy duty planning and then implementing. I love that he has an interest in gardening because it is actually something that we can do together. 7. Trumpet playing. 8. Weekly volunteer work.
Mr. B's Projects (age 13) 1. This guy has a logical bent and loves to design games on paper. He is in the middle of creating what he calls "Space Nomad" and here are some of the game cards and the maps he is using to create a whole world. This involves lots of paper and pencils and cards and time just thinking.
Here he is writing the instructions for the game...I think he is on page five right now. I have looked at it a little bit and it reminds me of a combination of Risk and Chess. His older brother has been helping him a little to design games on the computer and he thinks it is hard stuff but he doesn't give up.
2. Basketball. This child spends hours a week dribbling and shooting in the driveway at our family's basketball hoop. I watch him sometimes and he is so intent on his skills, drilling himself over and over until he has a certain move down perfectly. I was a basketball player in high school and I never worked as hard as he does at learning and improving basic skills.
3. He also has informed me that he is going to write a book over the summer break. He spends a lot of time thinking about this project as well. 4. Lego building. He has two things he seems to work on the most. *He spends a lot of time using Lego 3-D Designer. He finds something he wants to create digitally and then works at it until it is just right. I watch him work when he doesn't know I'm watching and he is amazing in the way he can spatially twist and turn the Legos on the computer until they are just right. *The second thing that he does is to work on creating his own little Lego worlds and then photographing them and making them into movies. I have shared before a little about his projects but so far I have no way to share the finished projects with you. I wish I could because his sense of humor really comes out in his movies. 5. He also has joined in our weekly volunteer work.
Here is one project they worked on solving together using Lego Mindstorms and the book Lego Mindstorms NXT: The Mayan Adventure. This book is fantastic for a little more advanced robotics student. It lays out a task and then they have to build a robot to perform the task. This robot needed to move down the string until it was over the bowl and then drop a ball in. They made it so it was clap activated. You will see what I mean when you watch the video.
Isn't that fun? This is something that they love to do and I see so many important life skills involved in this sort of project. I think it took them four weeks of working to plan the robot, build it, test it, rebuild it, test it again, rebuild it again, and then finally get the results they were looking for.
Can you see how this sort of learning can enrich your high school experience? I think that as parents, homeschooling parents, we begin to think that our teens need a certain course of study in order to keep pace with students in public school. I am seeing the value of allowing our children time to keep exploring with different projects now that they are older and can do most of the work themselves. Most of the time I am not involved at all with their afternoon activities. They come to me when they get stuck or when they are lacking some sort of supply. I will pop in every now and then to see what they are working on and then see if I can find someone or something to help them to get going again.
I ended up giving Mr. B my old digital camera to use on a regular basis. I regularly take Mr. A to the hobby store to buy his supplies. I drive him to his part time yardwork job because I know he likes earning his own money to support his RC projects. I try to be aware of their interests and feed them with books and movies and field trips. It isn't at all like school but more like living an authentic life with my teens. We aren't at odds with each other.
They finally have the skills to be self-educated and the balance of academics in the morning and afternoons free for this self-education seems to work well.
We have been working hard in the grammar and middle school years to instill good habits and skills and now that effort is paying off big time. Why not allow them the time to show you what they can do on their own? I have had to step aside, give them control, and provide the opportunity. They have followed their hearts.
Plotting a course for your child's high school education is not easy and straightforward. For our family, we were committed to continue schooling the boys at home and I felt in my heart that Charlotte Mason's ideas had taken hold. Would they continue to work for high school? It was not an simple decision to make. Should we continue the course with the ideas of education that had seemed to work at the middle school level so well? You would think that we would automatically answer in the positive but some of us make more trouble for ourselves than we need for some reason.
I started to doubt.
The problem was that I couldn't find a real-life model that showed exactly how it should look, exactly how I could provide the sort of education that I envisioned but still keep up the rigors of high school subjects.
Sure there is guidance from Ambleside Online and the few families that shared high school ideas on Ambleside's Yahoo groups and the House of Education groups. I scoured each group's files, the blogs of members, and their websites but it all still seemed so theoretical. The lists of books were provided as well as the approximate pages and chapters to cover but for some reason it seemed so abstract to me. I am a paper and pencil sort of gal and having things neatly put down in a schedule feels comfortable and secure.
It was scary to face high school. High school seemed so important and huge that it overwhelmed me for a period of time. I didn't want to "mess up" and leave something out or overlook something really important. It seemed as if at the point where we walk through the doors to high school that things started to count more. This was *high school* and there were a lot of serious subjects to tackle.
I was lacking confidence. With so many serious subjects expected at the high school level, it is easy to let things like nature study, art and music appreciation, poetry, and handicrafts slip off the schedule in order to fill the student's time with more academic demands. Free time for a high school student seems to disappear in our society. I needed some permission from somewhere to allow the same hours of freedom in the afternoons for my high school age children that I had allowed in their younger years.
I had another obstacle that I needed to get over and that was the idea that unless I was using Ambleside's exact books, it wasn't going to be rigorous enough for my boys. I studied their book lists and sampled reading some of those books offered and I was convinced that for our family it would be a mistake to take the suggestions as a package. Our family is a unique group of individuals and as individuals, our tastes vary from one another. How realistic was it to think that some stranger's list of books was going to fit each of my boys? I threw that myth out and started to move forward.
I started to dissect the book lists and after mixing in books of interest that pertained to things that we were already studying on our own, our high school plans began to take shape. When I found that I could use a textbook and add in living books, biographies, and varied types of narrations to our study, taking the topics and going deeper and wider than a normal textbook, our plans took on a Charlotte Mason flavor.
Our Charlotte Mason high school was taking shape at last. The books were not as important as the ideas shared and the shaking down of the information into something that was meaningful to the boys as well as to our family. I felt a freedom that I hadn't felt before in our homeschool. I felt free to take a book off the list that didn't fit and replace it with one that did fit.
I still work better with a spine plan and that is what Tapestry of Grace has provided during the last two years for our family. It gave me the "on paper" plans that I could manipulate to fit our vision for high school and it was easy to scan and skim through the book lists and activities to find something that sparked a sequence of learning. I didn't want things to stop when the last page was finished. I wanted there to be an interchange of thoughts and discussions. TOG helped me to provide that in our high school. Spending time with the boys looking into aspects of literature and history and art and geography that we found of interest was easier because I wasn't spending oodles of time developing the whole plan from scratch.
A change in thinking was in order in regards to "free time" as well. It wasn't until I started reading Theresa's blog at LaPaz Learning and Lori's blog at Camp Creek that I had a label for what had been considered free time. It was the idea of project driven learning. Projects were undertaken as interests were developed and the time for these projects was during our regularly scheduled free afternoons. The afternoon projects consisted of different and varying degrees of in-depth study of a number of topics over the years. Note: The ladies linked above are most definitely not Charlotte Mason homeschoolers but are geniuses at making "free time" meaningful. So now not only was our Charlotte Mason high school engine running with great ideas and books and expectations, it was humming with the balance and added texture of project time. It works for our family and we are now looking forward to the future and to the day that these boys will walk out the front door with confidence. A confidence built on experiences and full hearts and they will be ready for a lifetime of learning.....whatever their course will be.
Because of circumstances of age and maturity, we have decided to give our youngest son a "bonus year". The year between 10th and 11th grades will be the year that he will explore some avenues of interest. He is very young schooler who because of combining classes with his older brother many years, is slated to graduate when he is a young sixteen year old. My husband and I have spent time analyzing his strengths and decided that giving him the bonus year will allow time for him to mature a bit more before official graduation. This means that I have four more years of high school to teach. You are stuck listening to me talk about high school for four more years. Can you bear it?
My point in writing this post was partly to record my thoughts as I go through my end of the year process but also because I wanted to share some thoughts for readers that are facing high school in the next few years and are thinking about whether they should stay the course with Charlotte Mason principles or go with a more traditional view of high school since it would seem to be easier. I also wanted to say out loud for those that may have been thinking it, that even though you don't follow Ambleside's plans for school...you can still provide a Charlotte Mason style homeschool experience.
It is *not* the books. It is *not* the subjects. It is the principles that are laid out in her writings that give your plans the fuel for true learning.
Find your touchstone and your balance and don't look back.
