Simplified Homeschool - Morning Time.

I went to a homeschool meet-up today and found myself chatting with other parents about our methods of schooling.  As I was explaining our morning time it struck me that I wasn't being terribly clear, so I thought I'd re-visit my explanation, with a bit more success.

Morning Time is what I call our joint lessons first thing in the day.  This includes our memory work, Bible study and prayer, work with a globe, history read alouds, music, etc.  Honestly, all sorts of things.  I think I've read poetry during this time, screened a video, read Shakespeare, pulled out a giant floor map, completed puzzles,  listened to a piece of classical music, and done a math activity.  At it's most basic, this is just our 'all together' time for whatever we're able to do at the same time.

My children are 9, 7 and 5, so obviously there are some differences in ability,  which doesn't really matter with morning time because I make sure to have age appropriate expectations in place.  For example, I read aloud about the ancient Greeks.  The 9yo is able to discuss what he heard and sit for the reading.   The 7yo is able to sit for the 5 minutes and fidget with something.   The 5yo is able to be a not-disruptive presence in the room doing her own thing.

All of the lessons are very fast and repeated often.  We might recite a memorized poem all the time as we learn it, then less frequently as we get more comfortable,  and then periodically once it is learned.

A question I was asked today was what, specifically,  we are learning in morning time.  Okay, this is pretty fluid, but off the top of my head right now we are...

Reviewing days of the week, months of the year, names and order of the seasons.  (for the sake of the 5yo, essentially. )
Memorizing The Lord's Prayer  (done, but we recite periodically).
Memorizing the books of the Old Testament  (we are done up to Song of Songs).
Reciting the provinces of Canada west to east.
Singing and commiting a hymn to memory - Be Thou My Vision.
Also a folk song - Land of the Silver Birch.
Also the National Anthem.
Memorizing Psalm 23 (we're halfway done)
Reading books together - Story of the World volume 2, various other fiction and non-fiction.
The oldest 2 often read a chapter of a short biography out loud to me.
We might do an English lesson together, reviewing a grammar rule or a phonetic rule or something.
I read a verse of Mark, and we stop whenever we reach something to talk about.  Plus whatever rabbit trails we encounter.
Sometimes we do a group math lesson, often involving going outside.
Sometimes we do a group nature study lesson.
Sometimes we do a group art lesson.

I'm sure there's more, but you get the idea.  Stuff we do together!

Morning time sometimes progresses to a group activity such as going to swimming lessons, going to the church together to practice the piano, visiting the library, etc.

A great book on morning time is this one:

Now, how long does this all take?  Truthfully, the time we spend sitting together is possibly 30-45 minutes, and covers our bible, history,  geography,  etc.  It really isn't that much time.

HOW, in real time, does morning time play out?  I call everyone into the livingroom and make sure they are all sitting more than arms reach from each other, and also that they have whatever activities they need with them.  We open with a very short prayer, and then launch into memory work.  After we've done al, of that, we're sometimes just done, but often we're still good for a while longer so I will start running through readings.   Maybe a chapter of Story of the World will suddenly launch us into a conversation about calligraphy and I remember I picked up a book recently about that very topic and we follow a rabbit trail for a while.  Sometimes we bring out a dictionary to look up a word, or bring over a tablet to Google an answer to someone's question.  Occasionally I have to send a child to fetch a different reference book or a map from another room, but we try to stay together and focused in one room to avoid wandering.   Usually after 45 minutes we're ready for a break, but every once in a while I end up transitioning into our fiction read alouds.  When we're finished with morning time, that's it - I don't test and I don't do homework type stuff.

The rest of school is individual.

So there you go!  Morning time!

Reading Notes - February 2020

This month's reading notes!  A mixed bag, as usual.

Finished

Finished

Finished

Three of Alan Bradley's Flavia De Luce mysteries this month.  I've heard several people now mention this series as their 'fluffy' or 'light' reading, and I'd just like to know why that is.  I mean, certainly, this isn't Moby Dick or something,  but gosh mysteries seem to get the short end of the stick, don't they?  Anyway, Flavia is 12ish, she's brilliant,  the stories are generally well thought out without a lot of gratuitous violence or anything, they are a little. ..atmospheric, perhaps.   And I like them.  Although I will say the second title up there is the first de Luce mystery where I totally knew what was happening from very early on, and the third in the list was a very lackluster mystery altogether.  I hope this isn't an indication that the author is slipping.

Finished 

I am probably the last person I know to read this.  For a while, The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society was everywhere.  And I can remember a friend rapsodizing about it.  But, well, it looked hokey to me so I just didn't read it.  I was wrong.   Imagine that.  It's like Helene Hanff became a British war correspondent!  A bit of romance,  a bit of humanity,  a 'brave European ladies against the Nazis' book that doesn't venture into alllll the tropes you know so well.  Very much one for the keep shelf.

In progress 

I like travel memoirs!  I like Agatha Christie!  I like trains!  And I like this!  So often these following -in-the-footsteps -of-the-greats kind of travelogues fall too far to either side - all about the initial traveler,  or all about the current traveler,  but this one balanced well between the two.  I never felt like this was a thinly veiled treatise on the history of the Orient Express under the guise of a Christie biography,  and I never thought 'I cannot read one more paragraph about Agatha's failed marriage'.  A good balance, is what I'm saying.  Also, I love it when books intersect in interesting ways with other books, which is part of my fascination with the novels of Barbara Pym.  But I especially love oddities of marginalia and on the inside back cover of this book a previous owner had scribbled:

Minaret of Samaria
P.325
P.100
P.117
Ziggurot
Nebuchanezzar
Babylon

I mean.  I love it.  So of course I stopped and looked it up and one of the page references mentions...Paul Theroux.   Everyone knows how I feel about Whiny Theroux.   I mean Paul.  Cough.  But honestly I was just thinking that this cover looked like Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar.  It just made me happy.  Worlds colliding!

Finished

Billed as a 'coming-of-age' memoir,  which I find annoying.  Because, ugh, coming of age implies the recognition of impending adulthood, a certain embracing of the future, a series of changes in maturity,  perhaps,  but not...not drinking in Australia,  really.  It was a fluffy travel memoir of a very privileged, twenty-one year old, middle class, debt-free college graduate who has always been a people pleaser and decides to strike out on her own and explore the world.  Which she does by waitressing jobs for a few months in a few countries,  and drinking with other young, aimless backpackers.  I mean, there was a very funny bit about a friend's incredibly strange Polish boyfriend.  And there wasn't a lot of pointless sex.  So it had that going for it.  By the end, though, she's just annoying - borrowing money from her mother because she doesn't have enough to keep travelling, and then spending it on yet more tours and wine and what have you.  Dismissing all the concerns of people who love her.  Literally dismissing her parents over and over again, while still needing them for even the most basic of adult tasks, like going to a doctor!  Gah, I'm too old for this crap.

Finished 

I picked this short little novel up on a whim at a second hand shop and it was a tiny, perfect gem of fiction.  I got so engrossed in the story of Lydia, the sister of American impressionist artist Mary Cassatt, that I finished it on the way home.  My edition was slightly different from the picture, and was so well bound it really added to the luxery of the story.  Every character, every scene, every sentence, was so expertly crafted it seemed like the story sprang fully formed from the mind of a poet.

In Progress  

I'm too sick to adequately discuss my thoughts about this Ferguson book.  So far, two things come to mind.

1) He is really unhappy about being called a gaijin.
2) I think that I've finally figured out the problem with this author.   He continues talking about every topic for just a few too many paragraphs.

Book Review - Milly-Molly-Mandy

Milly-Molly-Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley.
read to the 7yo and 5yo

This book (an older, hardcover edition.  The stories are all out in a nice paperback boxed set as well) is split into individual stories centered around Millicent Margaret Amanda (Milly-Molly-Mandy) who is growing up in England sometime around the 1920s.  The stories are sweet and wholesome but also engaging, interesting,  and an appealing look at a past time.  I've read this compilation a few times now to the 7yo, but took it out again for the benefit of the 5yo.  Both girls looked forward to their bedtime chapter, and honestly I did too.  And the little historical oddities were great conversation starters.  The girls wanted to know what 'bread and dripping' was, what an anvil was used for, why Milly-Molly-Mandy was growing cress and so on.  I should probably just buy them all.

Book Review - The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street

 The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

Read to the 9yo, 7yo and 5yo.

I was hoping for 'updated Elizabeth Enright' vibes, and that's what we got!  The characters were spunky and unique, the biracial element was a unifying force, and the children were generally kind, untidy, loving, interesting, creative little weirdos.  Just like my kids.  Everything moved very swiftly along in terms of plot (this was not  a challenging or time intensive read At. All.), chapters were short, attitudes were pretty good,  parents not the loveable buffoons they are so often portrayed as these days, all in all a good read aloud.  A few negatives, easily glossed over: a child character says "freakin'" in conversation,  as in 'she has to practice violin in the freakin' basement'.  Not really a problem,  I just didn't read it, but it seemed unnecessary.  The elderly upstairs neighbour is referred to dismissively as 'the Beiderman', even after parents instruct the children not to call him that.  Some children argue with other children, words like 'shut up' are used.  Really, nothing untoward.

Think...The Saturdays mixed with the Clementine books, and taken down a few reading levels.   I will def. read another in the series and probably buy the paperbacks for my soon-to-be 8yo to read.

7 Quick Takes

1.  Let it be known that I've finally figured out, in a rush of understanding,  that 'gormless' means a particularly dopey kind of stupid.  Because I am the sort of person who yells at a child to "get me the thing...gah!  You know, the, the thing in the thing!  IT'S PURPLE!!!", I function almost entirely via a complicated set of rules and mnemonic devices.  Did you know, for example, that 'etymology ' and 'entomology ' can be differentiated because in Tolkien the Ents were alive and entomology is the study of insects, which are alive?  Although likely not as many as were alive before the entomologists got their hands on them.  Etymology is the study of words, btw, but that's not particularly important because really, if you say etymology in most circles you either have a group of people who already know what you're talking about, and would be just as happy if you said something else, or a group of people who have no idea what you're talking about and then you sound like a real drip.  Whereas entomology is a very useful word and you can use it all the time.   "Boy, that's a dishy entomologist on the BBC, eh?"  See?  Just used it.

2.  Last Friday we visited my mother.  My mother is ill, and it is not the sort of ill that will get better or go away or anything like that,  but is the sort of ill that just is, now.  It is reality.  I've become a little obsessed with taking my mother on walks and asking her if she remembers various pleasant memories from my childhood and I tend to wrack my brain coming up with them.  Did you remember a particular walk we used to take, or a funny thing a long dead childhood pet did, or a specific flower that grew in the garden.  And while this exercise seems somewhat pointless (she always smiles and says yes) it has brought up in my mind how very many happy little memories I contain.  So many.  And I believe this is God's grace to me, right now, that my mother will not get better, but that I will be blessed with a fountain of happy things to remind her of.  A fountain that will never run dry.

3) I suppose it's official that we have a dog.  The dog was dog-sat, then the dog stayed, as dogs often do.  Mind you, my husband and I are a pretty soft touch for such a disagreeable looking duo.  Actually,  that's not fair, we have a certain panache.   Under kind lighting and on a good hair day I can manage Brittle '50s Italian Housewife, although my standard look is a little more Especially Poor Oxford Undergrad circa 1918.  But often with pants.  My husband,  on the other hand, is 100% Absent-minded Professor.   Except, and I take full blame for this, in a giant, oversized pea-green outdoorsman coat made out if what appears to be sail cloth.  I bought him the coat to replace the coat he refused to part with, lovingly nicknamed 'the homeless person coat', which sported a matted fake fur trimmed hood,  a partially ripped off pocket, and a giant ink stain.  In my defense the ruse worked and the homeless person coat, which no self-respecting displaced individual would willingly wear, went to the dump.  And now he wears the huge green tarp everywhere in blatant disregard for style,  fashion, social acceptibility and the formality of the occasion.   It doesn't bother me, except for when he broke the zipper and hired the town seamstress to fix it and she inserted a zipper that only zipped down to the end but then wouldn't detach, which meant my husband  (who refused to complain or ask for it to be fixed) just stepped into the coat, and then zipped it up.  Challenging to do in dress clothes, as you might imagine.   Not that he'd care if you stared.  But then one day a few weeks ago the zipper just unzipped all the way, just like a normal zipper!  After five years of stepping into the coat!  Will wonders never cease.

4)  The dog, anyway, likes to always be touching me.  She likes to sit beside me and put a paw on my foot, or follow me from room to room.  Since the cat also does this, the children have taken to referring to 'the parade',  which is me, two animals, three children, and the weight of my to-do list.

5)  Last week my husband's aunt passed away, which is sad.  She was the last of that clan and had been unwell for quite a long time, but none of that really matters a bit in the end when you're mourning death.  However, the opportunity rose for me to send flowers to the funeral,  and I have to admit I haven't really had to do this before.  Usually we're either performing the funeral or we're there because the person was close family,  but I have never sent flowers in lieu of my presence before, and I have to say it was a mixed experience.   For one thing, if you haven't got at least $100 don't even bother.  Plus, the arrangements are almost all hideous.   And forgive me, but M. was a vibrant,  creative,  interesting person and I'm not sending a big ol' pile of baby pink carnations.  So I ended up picking an arrangement of shocking orange 'Asiatic Lilies' which honestly appear to be what we know as 'ditch lilies' that grow in such profusion here that some people mow them down.  I'm not sure if this will cause some talk because I don't think this is likely an acceptable funeral arrangement,  but fortunately I think M. would have liked it so I don't care.

6)  No, I tried, but I have to be petty and show you some of these horrible arrangements because I'm not a nice person...

This one:

This one:

This one looks like a hand reaching up from behind a very yellow bunch of flowers:

This ridiculous nonsense here:

This calla lily stuffed in a jam jar costs well over $100

7) Over the shrieks of my children, I have cleaned out the toy chest, and thrown away many toys, and now I'm going to go lie down.

A Learningish Sort Of Day

Feb. 5th, 2020.

The children were watching TinTin with David when I woke up late.  Breakfast, dressing people, etc., and we likely started school around 10:30 or so.

10:30 - 11:15 Morning Time!

We reviewed our memory work first.  The Lord's Prayer, the first two verses of Psalm 23, the provinces of Canada, and the books of the Old Testament up to Song of Songs.  With YouTube accompaniment we sang our study hymn, Be Thou My Vision, and our current folk song, Land of the Silver Birch.  I read several pages of our current poetry book and then we broke off into individual groups.  The 5yo and I worked on a reading lesson together while the 7yo and 9yo went off to read their narration chapters.

11:15 - 11:30

I needed to get myself ready for the day still, which I did while everyone shrieked and ran around or something.  I don't remember.  I think possibly the 9yo was still working on assigned reading.  Before we left for piano the 7yo gave me her narration.

11:30 - 12:30

The oldest two came with me to the church while David came home to stay with the youngest, so that we could practice piano.  They each got about 30 minutes of guided practice with me.

12:30 - 1:00

All three kids helped clean up and we ate lunch.

1:00 - 1:45

The kids were done lunch, and I sat with the 9yo and worked through 2 math lessons and then set him problems to work.  The younger 2 did math at the kitchen table from their workbooks.  Then everyone got kicked outside to play.  I went out too, with the dog, and cleaned up the yard a bit.  It was really cold, so we didn't have much of an 'outside time', and no one was up for a walk.

1:45 - 2:45

The 7yo and 5yo and I made paper beads at the table and had some interesting conversation about all sorts of things.  We made tea and drank it out of fancy cups.  The 9yo spent an hour reading on the sofa.

2:45 - ?

The 9yo finished his reading and did a page of copywork.   David came home again from the church to work here while I took the dog for a walk.  While he was home, the two youngest played with play dough.   I think there was a cartoon on but no one liked it or something.

4:00ish - 6:00ish

Ah, the witching hour.  I got home from walking the dog, got one child through a shower, checked math work, fed people...you know the drill.

6:00 onwards

David left again for evening meetings.  The kids got ready for bed and then the 7yo and 5yo listened to a chapter of their read-aloud.  When they were asleep I read a chapter and a half of the 9yo's bedtime read to him, and that was that!

Learning Notes (Jan.27-Feb.1)

Back in the swing of things with Learning Notes this week.  I just didn't bother to add that extra thing to do to my Christmas and Epiphany,  frankly.  Anyway, here's what we did this week!

The 9yo started a book to narrate...

We're using this book, which was a read aloud a few years ago, to practice our narration skills.  Read a chapter and tell me about it!  I offer a few cues for stuff to discuss such as...is there a bad guy?  What are the characters names?  Did anything exciting happen?   What do you think might happen later in the story?

The 7yo also got a narration book...

The Our Canadian Girl books are written with the 7-10 year old girl in mind, and focus on great events and peoples in Canadian history.  Despite the title of this particular choice,  these are not Christian books.

The 7yo is in the last 2 weeks of practice before she graduates from her piano level, so there was plenty of practice happening.  She also designed and produced invitations to hand out for her piano graduation party.  The 9yo had piano as well.

We made papier maché creations and painted them.  We're now the proud owners of...a container for the cat's toys, two bird feeders, and an organizer for the craft shelf. You get one guess as to which was mine.  I meant to take pictures but then...ugh, I didn't.

All three children worked once in their math workbooks and twice on their online math.  The 9yo did copywork.  The 5yo finished 2 reading lessons.

The children were signed up at the library to learn how to play Nintendo Switch Mario Kart.  They have never played on a Nintendo Switch before and had a blast.  On Saturday our family went to a local church family outdoor fun day.  The kids spent two hours chatting with friends while throwing themselves down increasingly perilous hills, culminating in one the 9yo called Vertical Death.  Then we had a big church community supper,  the kids played board games with buddies,  and slept the sleep of children who had conquered the Vertical Death and won.

Read Alouds!!

The 9yo and I finished The Dark Is Rising, and started our new novel The Boundless.  The 7yo and 5yo are still listening to Milly-Molly-Mandy.  Our group novel read-aloud is The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street and we're also reading the poetry of Mr. Rogers.  We finished a biography of Helen Keller.

We went to the library.  The 9yo has spent the last week reading The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, although I think he's missing the last two books off his list.  However, our library doesn't stock them so instead he's reading the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles.  Also this book:

The 7yo seemed to be between books for a moment, mostly reading cookbooks, but then latched onto Catwings by Le Guin.  All three children have pulled out this book:

And have spent many hours coming up with a game plan to make money with a pop-selling business.   On Mon. I sat down with them and explained an expense sheet and they're running with the idea.

We wrote a postcard to Mongolia,  which meant heading to the post office, picking a card, discussing international postal rates, carefully printing our message, and spelling exciting words like 'Ulaanbaatar '.  We walked back to the post office and mailed our card with great fanfare.  Then we read the Mongolia entry in this book:

What would a child in Mongolia eat?  Good question!  Turns out the traditional answer is...meat.  So we bought some steaks at the grocery store with the intention of grilled them, which we have not yet done.  Yay Mongolian cuisine!   Cough.

We also looked up Mongolia on our giant wall map, and flipped through a book about modern day Mongolia. 

We finished our hymn study of Be Thou My Vision and the 7yo and I sang it in church as a little celebration.   We started learning a folk song, Land of the Silver Birch.

We watched episodes of the BBC series Weird Wonders of the World (we skipped over the whale autopsy, though, at popular request), and also Antiques Uncovered,  which features Dr. Lucy Worsley, who I think is a marvelous presenter.

The children built a city outside out of snow.  We drove to visit grandparents, twice, once to see my mother for her birthday,  for which the 7yo helped to make biscuits.

 The 7yo also made good progress on her knitting.

Conversations about...

What would you do if you got lost?  How big is Canada and how much of it do we live in?  How many eggs does a chicken lay?  What is the term for being unable to talk?  What is windshield washer fluid made from?  Imagine what it would be like to carry water to your house instead of turning on a tap?  What is a sponsor child? 

Another week!