Twaddle and Classics

If you've spent even a passing amount of time reading literature based homeschool booklists (not a sentence that applies to many of my friends, I imagine) you'll have seen a fairly obvious trend towards the same titles.  Everyone, but everyone, wants to read, say, Paddle To The Sea.  Including us actually; it's on our homeschool list this year.  People love Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Ferdinand the Bull, and Curious George (I do NOT love Curious George, in case you're curious).  These, and a few dozen others, seem to be the 'good literature' that is practically required for an elementary education.  Far be it from me to disagree on philosophical grounds, or to debate educational merit or what have you - I've been doing this for practically no time compared to the greats.  What do I know?  But I am having trouble abiding by the 'no twaddle' rules when I can't fully see whether what I'm reading is twaddle or not.

And let me assure you - there are lots of opinions about that.  Some people seem to think that unless it was written at least fifty years ago there's no value in reading it to a child.  Some people think that mass produced cartoon comics based on television characters are totally fine.  And there's everyone in between.

This is my first real experience with an aspect of homeschooling I am certain I will come across a lot over the years - people with widely differing opinions on what makes a 'good education'.  Right now we're approaching it cautiously.  The majority of our book list for the next few months is taken right from the pages of the classics-minded.  And then every once in a while, like this week, for instance, I'm throwing in a book I like just because I like it and I want to.

I don't know what it will look like by  the end of the school year.  Maybe I'll have ignored the advice of my betters and started reading Captain Underpants.  I doubt this will happen, but we likely also won't stick to reading off a booklist either.

Learning Notes - Homeschool Week One

We did it; we survived the first week.

So I chose to start our year with a weekly book study and the first story we read was Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCluskey.  We started our day getting into a morning routine - dressing, eating breakfast, etc. which is a bit of a change for us, and were ready at 8am to start.  First we prayed for a successful school day and then we had a short circle time with songs.  I asked the children to bring me whatever stories they'd like to listen to and we sat and read for a while.  At the end I brought out the book we were looking at that day and we read the story.  I asked the boy to try a narration, telling the story back to me, and he did fairly well with that.

After our story time we played a scavenger hunt game, looking for 'blueberries' ourselves - in this case blue circles with the alphabet on them, and we put them in order.  All of that took quite some time.  Finally, after our game, we made blueberry muffins for a snack and school was done.  I wrote a detailed post on how our first day went here.

On Tuesday we got a lot distracted by grocery shopping followed by library club for the boy.  By the time we got home we really hadn't *done* school very much at all.  At bedtime we read a whole bunch of storybooks and the first two chapters of our new read aloud - The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

On Wednesday the children kept talking about the blueberry alphabet scavenger hunt - so they played it again by themselves.  Then we read Blueberries for Sal again.  After our story I brought out a quart of blueberries and we sorted them into piles according to size and made alphabet shapes with them...and then ate them for snack.  We looked up blueberry bushes in our beginners field guide and learned that wild bushes can grow one to three feet high - and we measured that with a measuring tape.  For lunch the children made blueberry snack by spreading blueberry jam on crackers and topping with a slice of salami.

In the afternoon the children did a maze I had drawn to bring Little Sal to the blueberry patch and home again.  They loved watching me draw it and we ended up drawing a lot of mazes together.

On Thursday we read our book and then we played for an hour or so with a fantastic homemade blueberry scented playdough.  Then we made jam just like Sal and her mother, and then the boy went to the library for day camp.

While he was doing that the girls and I took out some more books from the library for read-alouds.

On Friday I had big plans all week to do a game with blue water balloons but I couldn't get to the store.  Soooo...we read the book again and played with our blueberry playdough again and read some more.

I feel pretty good about the week.  After the first day we stopped with circle time and didn't quite manage to pick it back up again, and we also only did that one narration.  I thought that re-reading the book multiple times throughout the week would end up being boring for the children but they actually really seemed to like it - go figure.  The baby was furious with me every time I picked up the book to read because I wasn't paying attention to her, but I think that will just fade away eventually.  And cutting out the other read-alouds before our focus book was a good idea; everyone seemed much more fresh.

I'm glad we are only spending one week on each book because by Thursday, I will admit, I was tired of Blueberries for Sal.  Haha.

Next week we're reading Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash by Sarah Weeks.

First Day Of School

We did it - the first day of school - and we survived.

I really need to tweak the system I tried today - the routine is definitely in need of adjustment.  But, in hindsight, I mean, every routine needs some adjustment.  Anyway, here's what we did today:

Woke up and started the day by getting ready immediately.  We were dressed and fed and beds stripped and little girl hair brushed and everything by 8am.  This seems early, but we didn't wake up any earlier than we usually do, we just got our act together a bit better.  I liked this part and how it set the tone for the day, but looking back I think we need to have clothes laid out the night before to avoid issues, and also I need to plan a bigger breakfast to see everyone through the morning.

We started school with a circle time which is an idea I really like but needed to plan out better.  We prayed for our school day, and then did some exercises and songs.  Again, really like the idea but need to implement it better.

Then we moved on to read-aloud time.  I had a specific book I was going to read to them but I thought they could choose some stories to have me read aloud first.  Not the best idea, maybe, since they were pretty tired of sitting by the end of it.  So tomorrow we'll just read the book I choose and maybe try a second story time later in the day if I can handle it.

We read our book, and then I asked the boy to tell me aloud what the story had been about - he did really well with this!  I need to read more about doing narration with small children but I was impressed.

Then we moved on to our activity - since the book we read was Blueberries for Sal I made letter circles and hid them around the house to find.  Then we laid all the letters of the alphabet out in order and again I was really impressed by how well this was done.

Finally we made blueberry muffins for our snack.  Sigh.  Cooking with small children.  Anyway.

So that was our first day of school.  It was about 2 hours long, which is more than I planned for but the game and muffins went on much longer than I thought.

Learning Notes for the end of July

As the first two weeks of July consisted of many days of driving and then camp and visiting and quite a bit more driving, the only thing that David and I managed to get sorted about school for our son was that it was going to happen at home again.  Take two, if you will.  And then of course there was a solid week of getting 'back into the swing of things'.  And so it fell on the final week of July for me to get curriculum organized and such - and I thought I was really ahead of the game, a whole month ahead, and then I saw people starting to 'do school' in August.  So in fact I am not way ahead of the game but sadly behind as usual.

So anyway, this past week I kept a very gentle, brief outline of some learning notes while I puttered on the curriculum for this school year.  Some of the things we did this past week include some math and logic games, discussing how everyone has a job, making paper airplanes, practical life skills (washing coins and filling up the q-tip container) and attending library club.  We read a lot of books aloud as well, some old favourites and a few new titles, some better than others.

And now here it is, Sunday, and I ordered the first batch of 'school stuff' from the library early last week but it hasn't arrived yet.  However, we are going to start school tomorrow regardless.  There you go.  I'm pretty certain that this first week (or month) will consist of just trying to get our feet under us again and figure out the whys and wherefores of what it is we're doing, so I won't share too much about our curriculum quite yet - I don't want to get all depressed if it doesn't go exactly according to plan.  I will say this though:

We're doing a literature-based kindergarten year and our main focal points will be phonics and math skills.  Our day is going to be loosely structured and I'm hoping that will help my desire for order.

Reading to the children and on my own

We've been focusing on trying to finish Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes as our bedtime chapter book, and the other night we finally got through it.  Personally, I loved it, and so did the boy.  I'm not as sure that Clara was a big fan, but they both did very well listening.  We're definitely going to have to read The Moffats, by the same author.  In the meantime I think we're going to take a different turn and read some Beverly Cleary.

Now what have I been reading?  A bit of this and a bit of that, really.  We were traveling quite a bit this month so I read Pride and Prejudice again, and then picked up and finished a book by a Canadian author - The Door Is Open - about Christian hospitality.  Now I'm reading some Barbara Pym and Kristin Lavransdattar is waiting for me.  A little intimidated.

My children eat fish

Of course, it's not their favourite meal, but here's three ways (all very easy) that the children won't moan when I put fish in front of them.  Which I do.  At least once a week.  Because I'm mean.

Creamed Salmon (or tuna) On Toast

Essentially you make a bechamel sauce - heat a fat, whisk in a flour until smooth, slowly add warm milk until a thick cream sauce happens - and season with salt, pepper, etc.  Add your flaked canned fish, serve over toast.  You can add peas if you like.

Breaded Fish

Shake those pieces of fish in a shake-n-bake coating and bake them in the oven.

Maple Salmon

I marinate the fish in a marinade of garlic, ginger, soy sauce, maple syrup and then bake.

Back

We got back a few days ago from two weeks away (I can't say it was a vacation, really) and we were incredibly happy for the break.  The first week we drove about 10 hours in one day to get to the city and saw my sister and her 6 month old twins, who I'd never met, and spent some time with David's parents and family and our friends.  Then David drove an hour to the conference he had to go to, spent the night, drove back on day two to get the girls and I, drove back, then drove all of us back the next day after the conference was over.  Whew.  Lots of highway driving.  Then we had another few days in the city with more trips to see people, and then we all packed up for a week at family camp.  Camp was wonderful for the children but wasn't much of a break for us, but we did eat a lot of food and go swimming every day.  Then back again up north with an overnight stop to see even more family until finally we showed up at our door - with a summer cold and a lot of laundry and dirty children in the back seat.

So for the past couple of days we've been busy - visiting a parishioner in the nursing home who is leaving us, grocery shopping, picking up the cats from the kennel, taking the car in to be serviced, airing out the house and pushing through the laundry situation.

Today, hopefully, we'll have the car all fixed up, or at least as fixed up as a 13 year old car is going to get.  I've made cherry jam and I'm trying to figure out if my sanity is up for taking all three children out to pick strawberries so I don't miss the harvest.  David is almost over the summer cold he picked up at camp, and I just have a bit of a cough, but at least one child is sick and that's resulting in a lot of tv and rest.

Anyway, here we are halfway into the week already and I'm pacing myself for the rest of the incredibly busy summer.