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

The Six Swans (First Grade)

The Six Swans

       This week we have been working on the fairy tale, The Six Swans by the Brothers Grimm.  On Monday I told her the story. On Tuesday, I re-told her the story and then we listened to it on story nory.  Storynory.com is a website of free stories to listen to.  On Wednesday, S. told me the story of The Six Swans and I wrote down her narration in her lesson book.  A few times, I would prompt her with questions to help her remember the story, but all in all she did quite well.  I was going to have her practice writing some  s words, but she became so frustrated and angry when she felt her writing wasn't good enough.  I tried to re-assure her that she was doing a good job. In truth, she really was doing a good job.  She has perfectionist tendencies at time.  As a mom, those can get to be annoying.  I don't tell her that though.  She did calm down and took to cutting out construction paper to make shapes and forms.  Cutting is such an important fine motor skill and one that leads to developing writing skills.
     She has been digging in her grandma's side yard today and yesterday. She collected and washed off some rocks to share with me today.  I hope that can counter some of her time spent on tv, though I do try to be sure that she is watching PBS Kids if she is watching tv.
     We continue to play mini math games with mancala pieces. We call the pieces fairy or gnome jewels.  We did a pattern sequence together on Wednesday using the different colored pieces.  She did well with continuing the pattern.  She also drew some patterns of her own.

Seneca had an impromptu tea party with her grandma's porch bears.

Trying to Learn the Lost Art of Storytelling

        When we first started this homeschool journey, I was leaning more towards Waldorf.  However, as I have said, CM really just is a better fit overall for our family. That being said, I did glean a lot of wisdom from the Waldorf method.  Here I share my thoughts on learning the importance of storytelling - a main component of Waldorf education. 

            Pre-K 

            Seneca chose out three books for me to read to her. They were The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss, and Corduroy by Don Freeman.

  I read an article today that said that a child's intelligence was more greatly affected by having the same stories read over and over again.  This helps strengthen their memories. That is not to say that they don't learn from a library book which is read and then exchanged, but that the type of learning from repetition is different.

              In the meantime, I have to learn some more fairy tales to recite to her.  She enjoys hearing the ones she knows, but she is eager to hear some new ones.  I have  a collection of fairy tales, but now I need to really get some new stories down in mind before I can bring them to her.  Before learning about Waldorf education, I had never considered the role of story telling in regards to language acquistion.  However, as is pointed out in Waldorf articles, the child must really depend so greatly on their own imagination to fill in the images when a story is told rather than read.  This helps develop listening as well as visualization skills.  In our world of ipads, iphones, and instant images, we have lost so much of the basic skills of simple learning.

    

Shakespeare: A Spicey Dish

Shakespeare is a core part of a proper Charlotte Mason curriculum.  Most students would read three Shakespeare plays per year starting in the fourth grade.  So far it's only been my highschoolers who have ventured to works of the bard.  My oldest daughter went from not liking Shakespeare to reading his plays for fun. In fact, I had to remind her to tell me that she had read them so that she could get credit.  For her freshman year of college, her advising group was the Shakespeare class.   Loving Shakespeare doesn't mean you have to like all of his works. Her favorite is King Lear, but she found nothing appealing about The Tempest.  She felt like there was no real ending. In her words, "It's like Shakes just gave up." She also wasn't a fan of "Twelfth Night."
    When she was in a public school high school (part of 9th grade), she applied a feminist understanding to the character of Lady MacBeth.  Yasmeen had also read extensively on the six wives of Henry VIII at this point and had a unique understanding of the survival instincts of women of this era and how society did and did not attribute worth to them.  Anyhow, she wrote an essay that asked the reader to reconsider Lady MacBeth's role as a villain, but almost as a warrior. Unfortunately, her teacher wrote, "I think you sided with the wrong character."  That was her entire point!!  She was deliberately siding with the villain to see the humanity and what might drive someone like Lady MacBeth to such a desperate act.  She returned to homeschooling shortly after that.
    I was certain my son would have to be dragged slowly through Shakespeare and would run as fast as he could from it once it was over.  Was I ever wrong.    He started by watching a BBC production of Julius Caesar (1979) which was a verbatim production of Shakespeare's work and also had subtitles.  I found this use of subtitles to be very helpful as it allows you to read and listen simultaneously thereby letting the audience experience each word on screen as something with life and emotion while reversely seeing the dialogue as almost palpable.
   After Caesar, he made an attempt at "Much Ado About Nothing."  For some reason, it didn't click. Oh, I should have added that I had chosen "Julius Caesar" as his first Shakespeare play because he was very familiar with Julius Caesar and had read Plutarch's Julius Caesar earlier that year.  Much Ado About Nothing flopped the first time around.
  Liam's next Shakespeare play was "Henry V."  Liam already had a great understanding and set of knowledge right off the top of his head on The War of The Roses, so we approached this as somewhat of a prequel to that.  He watched Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V" (1989) in fifteen minute increments.  After that, he read the play using No Fear Shakespeare.  We did some readings together, but then he did most of them independently.  He read the original words and then the modern translation.
    Using No Fear Shakespeare, Liam would continue his Shakespeare readings so far covering "Much Ado About Nothing" (with a lot more success this time), "MacBeth," and "Romeo and Juliet."  By the time, he read "Romeo and Juliet," he hardly had to use the modern ranslation.  He chose not to watch film versions (which shocked me) because he says that they interfere with his imagination and interpretation of a scene.
     Understanding Shakespeare is not entirely a linear process. Yes, it becomes easier with practice and exposure, but some works are harder than others.  We try not to become discouraged if something isn't clicking or needs a lot of modern translation.  Shakespeare is like that oh so delicious spicey dish at a feast.  You want to devour it, but you know you have to take it bite by bite and maybe with some bread (modern translation) to make it edible.  But once your palate is adjusted, just go for it.  That spice won't seem so hindering in the end, but rather delicious - just like the works of the bard.

Third Grade Language Arts

Language Arts

Seneca continued to read classic fables, fairy tales, and poetry. She read passages in The Story of the World.  We did a shared reading of Who Was Charles Darwin?.

Books read by Seneca:

Thy Friend, Obadiah by Brinton Turkle

Peter in Blueberry Land by Elsa Beskow

Pele’s New Suit by Elsa Beskow

The Salamander Room

Corduroy by Don Freeman

Bible Stories: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark, Abraham and Isaac

Concepts of nouns, pronouns, verbs, first person/second person/third person singular and plural, direct objects, subjects, and predicates were covered.

Grammar lessons mostly correlated to the grammar lessons in Latina Christiana.

Celie and the Harvest Fiddler (short story)

Understood Betsy (213 pages)

St. George and The Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges (short story)  

Fourth Grade Language Arts

Language Arts (Readings were followed by oral narrations given by Seneca.)

   Stories read to Seneca:

“How the Raven Made The Tides”

“The Earth on Turtle’s Back”

“The White Buffalo Calf Woman”

Books Read By Seneca

The Knight At Dawn by Mary Pope Osborne

The Day of the Dragon King by Mary Pope Osborne

Viking Ships at Sunrise by Mary Pope Osborne

Choose Your Own Adventure by Anson Montgomery

Choose Your Own Advernture: Space and Beyond by R. A. Montgomery

Choose Your Own Adventure: Search for the Mountain Gorillas by Jim Wallace

Grammar

First Language Lessons Volume 2

Topics covered included poetry readings, proper nouns, common nouns, verbs, the four types of sentences, using commas, using abbreviations, titles of respect, and contractions.

Writing

Copywork was done from many of the readings listed above with attention paid to punctuation and proper use of capitalization.  Writing practice was also done to go along with some of the lessons in First Language Lessons Volume 2.

Poetry

“The Goops” by Gelet Burgess, “Rain” by Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Wind” by Robert Louis Stevenson, “I’m Nobody” by Emily Dickinson “A Book” by Emily Dickinson, “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer (Seneca really took a liking to “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer.)