Reference materials to keep to hand

Other things to have on hand...

A good map!  I have a little atlas but I much prefer to keep a big rolled up laminated wall map beside me and unroll it so everyone can lie on it and see where they are.  A globe is also nice.

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This large, heavy doorstop has been invaluable to us.  The pictures are big and glossy and well done and the mini biographies are full of more information than I need for my littles to enjoy a piece of art but wouldn't likely be enough for an older child.

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Nicely done.  Not too much information to overwhelm younger students but enough to answer everyone's questions about who the vikings were.

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 My completely unprofessional opinion about dictionaries is this: buy a grown-up dictionary right off the bat and forget about children's versions, which they quickly outgrow anyway.  You may as well teach them how to look up a word properly as soon as they're able to because the rest of their school days will be spent doing just that.  Choose whichever publisher you like; I prefer Oxford.

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A birdfeeder, or a flat space to spread seeds, and a good birding guide for your area.  Also nice are other nature guides, to local plants, flowers, tracks, insects...as much or as little as your interests and pocketbook allow.

We're still in the early years, of course.  Who knows what will be invaluable reference material a few years from now.

Music - Vivaldi

Although I love the music of many genres I know very, very little about it from a teaching standpoint.  I'm afraid that after being able to tell a whole note from a half note my knowledge is exhausted.  Since this is the reality we're living with and I'm unable to outsource my children's musical education, I've been more than a little nervous about presuming to teach them anything.  We've defaulted to listening to a classical piece during morning time and taking it from there; right now we're enjoying Vivaldi's Autumn from his Four Seasons.  This is the sort of classical music I feel fairly confident with!  Listen, children, it sounds like leaves and wind!

And I came across this short and interesting TedEd video about why we should listen to Vivaldi - he is indeed the 'pop music' of his age.  Take a moment and enjoy.

In case you're interested in learning more about the orphans of the Ospedale Della Pieta, here are a few links:

From Classicfm

From Wikipedia

Beyond morning time

The 7yo dislikes being asked to practice reading aloud every day, but still we persevere.  This is what we're working through at the moment:

It's written from a Protestant viewpoint, if that is an issue for you, and I like how each biography is split into a few chapters and followed by review questions.  The font is quite large, and the chapters very small - perfect for the reader who can manage short chapter books and progressing into nonfiction.

Something else he dislikes?  Copy work.  We do as many words as we can before mutiny reads it's ugly head.  We putter through the John James Audubon copy work book from this site.

Math is significantly less of a battle and probably deserves it's own post, but we use these books:

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Combined with a lot of baking, number puzzles, calculator play, tangrams, board games and Doodling In Math Class videos it equals a lovely and interesting elementary math education.