Poetry, History, and A Sprained Toe

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately. I feel like I’ve lost all sense of homeschooling rhythm. However, when I read my previous entry and reflect on what she’s done in the meantime, I see that we are chugging along albeit at a slower pace these days.

                Her poem for this week is Maya Angelou’s “Awaking in New York.”  She has copied it in cursive into her notebook.  The goal is for her to read it aloud a few times throughout this week.  She also did cursive copywork from Emily Dickinson’s poem “To Make a Prairie” last week which is a very short poem. 

                Seneca’s artist for this term is Henry Ossawa Tanner.  Here’s a link to the biography that she read on him. https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Ossawa-Tanner-Boyhood-Dream/dp/1593730926/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1523973307&sr=8-5&keywords=henry+ossawa+tanner

                For history, Seneca read Who Was Daniel Boone? from the Who Is/Was series.  She types her written narrations. I’m fine with her doing it this way because typing is a much-needed skill and this gives her good practice.  She prefers typing to writing.  Her Daniel Boone narration cracked me up. Here’s an excerpt of what she wrote: He built a coffin for himself because he knew he was going to go soon. He would also polish it (which is very weird) he kept it in his sons house, at age 84 he died his last words were quote “My time has come.” end quote. He even said before he died that he had very good naps in it.

 Joke time- can you imagine you knocked on some old guys door and you kept knocking then he finally answers and he says “Sorry I was late at coming to the door you see I’m old and my now life is really awful and you see I’m going to die soon and so I built a coffin for myself and I just was taking a nap in it.” 

Please note that I am very aware of the grammar mistakes. I’m sharing her original typed response.  These written narrations help me to gauge how well she is or is not applying grammar concepts.  It also helps her to just get into the habit of writing. 

Seneca continues to work on multiplication and three-digit addition and subtraction. 

Our big event here was that she was in a ballet production of The Wizard of Oz at the Opera House!  The show was amazing.  They brought in professional dancers to dance the roles of Scarecrow, Tinman, and Cowardly Lion, but all of the other roles were done by the students of the school.  It is so new that the choreographer (Vadim Fedetov) and the composer were both able to come take a bow at the end of the show.  Speaking of bows, Seneca missed the bow because she hurt her toe in the second dance that she did.  Everyone was so proud of her for holding it in on stage and not letting on that she was hurt.  Back stage the tears started, but seemed to subside.  It was when she got into my car that the floodgates opened.  I took her to the hospital for an x-ray. Nothing is broken, but she did perhaps sprain it so no dancing for a couple of weeks. 

Adding Geography to Our Line-Up

               We took a fairly long break for the holidays.  Seneca’s cousins were off of school, so she spent a lot of time with them.  Her big sister was also home from college, and they spent some extra time together with big sis even taking her out to lunch one day.  

                After the holidays, Seneca continued our American history theme by reading a biography of Sacagawea.  From this book, I chose out some passages for copywork and dictation.  We don’t do dictation on a regular basis, but I’m trying to include it more.   

                I write out multiplication for problems for Seneca to work on. The goal is to do a page each day, but that never does seem to happen. However, we have been on a pretty good roll lately. 

                Seneca also worked on a new poem, “My Heart Is in the Highlands” by Robert Burns.  After doing a reading each day, she copied a verse from the poem in cursive into her notebook.  The poem is four verses, so this was spread out over four days.  I also found an audio on YouTube of Prince Charles reading this poem, so that was a nice touch for her to enjoy.  She also listened to the poem set to music.

                Seneca’s older brother participated in a volunteer day at one of our local nature preserves. While he was working, we took the opportunity to go walking through the trails.  It was more of a physical education experience than nature study, but even just spending time in nature can be so beneficial – and we had a great time.

               I was looking over the subjects and reading lists at Ambleside Online which we use for some suggestions.   I realized that we hadn’t done much with geography lately. I looked at Ambleside’s book suggestion for this year and I didn’t find it very appealing. The book is online as it is in the public domain, but it just didn’t seem to have the information that I would have liked to see. So, I did a YouTube search and found a great intro to geography concepts video. Seneca has already learned the seven continents, directions, use of a compass, and done some map work.  The list of things to work on this year as suggested by Ambleside are landforms, bodies of water, island, peninsula, etc.  I like the idea of working on these concepts; I just didn’t like the book.  Anyhow, I found a great video and Seneca has been watching and even re-watching it.  For writing practice, I’m having Seneca write the names of the continents in cursive in alphabetical order.  This is the geography video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqKTJtK_vw

Fourth Grade Social Studies/Geography Shelters

           In a Waldorf school, learning about shelters is typically done in the third grade.  We moved this to fourth grade and combined Waldorf and Charlotte Mason for this course.  I love the idea of studying humanity and our relationship to shelter as it encompasses a wide range of disciplines from cultural understanding to how climate and environment effects us.  

Learning how to build an emergency shelter

Social Studies/Geography

Shelters:

Houses of Wood: Native Dwellings of the Pacific Northwest by Bonnie Shemie

Houses of Snow, Skin, and Bones: Native Dwellings of the Far North by Bonnie Shemie

Houses of Adobe by Bonnie Shemie

Houses of China by Bonnie Shemie

Reading about shelters included learning about climates and how people adapt their dwellings to their climates. 

Fieldtrip: Crowley Museum and Folk School to learn about wilderness survival

Mapwork:  Tracing Marco Polo’s journey, equator, axis, locating the continents

Survival Videos: Seneca watched survival videos where she learned to put chapstick on a q-tip to make a fire. 

In true Charlotte Mason fashion, copywork was selected from the readings and used for cursive practice.   In our fashion, copywork was done with at the bookstore or coffeeshop.

Copywork being done at the bookstore with an oh-so delicious treat