Sunday, April 26, 2009

Autumn Themes





With that in sight I'm thinking through our themes for this year. Our trip to Wellington has shaped that.

My first attempt at brainstorming a list of topics gave us 12 subjects and 13 skills - which may of may not be possible in a ten week term. I would like to deal with one idea at a time, not lots but there is no reason why we have to do a topic a week.

In terms of skills,
  1. Art - Texture & Colour teaching around an autumn theme.
  2. Progym - Theon's 6 attributes and identifying the authors emphasis.
  3. Using Theon's 6 as an outline.
  4. Diagramming Skills 1
  5. Poetry
  6. Art - Shape and line
  7. Swimming
  8. Diagramming Skills 2 Linking Verbs and Adverbs
  9. Logic - introduction.
  10. Logic what is simple Apprehension
  11. Poetry


In terms of Topics
  1. Narnia - The Magicians Nephew,
  2. The Flood, and Babel,
  3. People of the Eastern World - Egypt
  4. Historical overview of Science - timeline
  5. Abraham
  6. How Scientists think/Lab Skills
  7. Swimming
  8. Other Ancient peoples of the Fertile Crescent
  9. Issac, Jacob and Joseph - Birth & Sacrifice Of Isaac Jacob & Esau Isaac & Rebekah Joseph As A Slave Famine In Egypt
  10. Science Experimentation 2 Apologia How to Analyze and Interpreting Experiments
  11. Ancient India, China and and Africa
I still have to flesh out the details and think through what this will look like on a day by day basis but it is good to have a general roadmap ahead of me.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Autumn Topics



With that in sight I'm thinking through our themes for this year. Our trip to Wellington has shaped that.

My first attempt at brainstorming a list of topics gave us 12 subjects and 13 skills - which may of may not be possible in a ten week term. I would like to deal with one idea at a time, not lots but there is no reason why we have to do a topic a week.

In terms of skills,
  1. Art - Texture & Colour teaching around an autumn theme.
  2. Progym - Theon's 6 attributes and identifying the authors emphasis.
  3. Using Theon's 6 as an outline.
  4. Diagramming Skills 1
  5. Poetry
  6. Art - Form
  7. Swimming
  8. Diagramming Skills 2
  9. Logic - introduction.
  10. Logic what is simple Apprehension
  11. Poetry


In terms of Topics
  1. Narnia - The Magicians Nephew,
  2. The Flood, and Babel,
  3. People of the Eastern World - Egypt
  4. Historical overview of Science - timeline
  5. Abraham
  6. How Scientists think/Lab Skills
  7. Swimming
  8. Narnia The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
  9. Other Ancient peoples of the Fertile Crescent
  10. Issac, Jacob and Joseph
I still have to flesh out the details and think through what this will look like on a day by day basis but it is good to have a general roadmap ahead of me.

Latin combining in Henle

I'm trying to soften the edges of our Latin studies and take it away from a Monday new words, Tuesday New Grammar, Wed translation etc routine to something more relaxed and more about discovery.

Actually I want to do this with all of our subjects and I think that I have gotten my head around most of the change but not all of it.

I'm looking at starting both boys in Henle. For the oldest I want to slow down the rate of new words and new ideas and master what we know - Henle does that beautifully. For the youngest its nice to have them on the same page and since he enjoys Latin and is racing through LC II I'm trusting he will cope. If he doesn't I'm happy for him to continue to self direct through Latina Christiana.

My daughter and I will continue with our verbs in Henle ... but I'm hoping for more fun and a lot less stress.

Putting it together

I have been trying to work through a daily rhythm that lets us move from a textbook school at home base towards something more natural, multi-level and yet retains a christian classical undertone. What does that mean for me. I want us to grow in the search of truth, beauty and virtue. In doing so I want the freedom to recognize that the ultimate expression of all of these are found in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. However, I am also aware that God sends his good gifts on all people and that truth, beauty and virtue can be found throughout the world and the people he created.

I want each day, or rather group of days to be centered on a single topic or book one read-aloud that we can share, discuss and bounce off. Some of these by necessity are story based textbooks, others will be more of a true living book.

For Latin, Maths and Greek I simply want to keep us moving forward in our respective texts spending time each day discussing the lessons, so board work and some time working independently of the topics we are studying. These three subjects seem to form a separate group from the rest of the topics, they are not easy to integrate, and they need a fairly consistent approach if we are not going to get bogged down in them. I still have to work out how they will look in practice.

My other block of subjects that I want to see as a block are those skills that allow us to express ourselves, and which we need instruction in to develop skills. Spelling, Writing, Grammar, Comprehension skills, Logic and Art.



For daily routines I can see some conflicts between my ideas and the preferred rhythm of my children. My choice

Circle time, poem and drills,

Maths, Latin and Greek

Skills work, dictation (Spelling) diagramming, parsing, skill development ... and then indepth inWriting, Grammar, Comprehension skills, Logic and Art.

Notebooks studies, where it all comes together and we start to put our skills in practice.

The kids would do it differrently probably they would run it:

Circle time and notebooks,

Maths, Latin and Greek,

Skills work.

It sounds simple and at the moment simple sounds good.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Growing


I've learned a lot this weekend - not all that I've learned has been put into practice - some of it is long term goals.

It's been a weekend of realizing how for our family relationship is essential. We can handle life without all the trimmings... but life without that connection and approval of being taken as who we are... that's priceless for us.

For 16 years now I've been waiting for a conversation - a hi how are you, how's ....whatever going from a particular person that God has placed in a central position in my life. A person who has had many special moments with their friends bragging about our achievements, photos of us, etc but has never stopped to find out who we are.

As people we are opposites - success for them, avoiding anything domestic, avoiding work and fun well I think fun is anything with a price tag.

When they come and stay - my safely net is to carry on doing the things I enjoy, I cook for them, this time when they were otherwise occupied I tried to catch up on a couple of those things that you can do and still carry on a conversation, but not feel like you are sitting waiting for them to start one.

Unfortunately the inability to understand each other - meant that they felt guilty and pressured to help. I simply felt judged as not being good enough. Strange how a high flying accountant who discovered the joy of homemaking and homeschooling could be reduced to someone inconsequential by a tirdae of I'll do that for you you sit down and rest...honest I was resting as I sat back and ironed ...in a strange thoughtful type of way.

Yes they will never understand why someone would give up a successful career - preparing audit reports for international companies in order to be a stay at home mum always juggling the budget and not able to give her kids the good things in life.

They think they know... they have done the parent thing - but not from my perspective, not in contrast to the meaningless nature of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell an international company that the financial accounts are ok, and knowing that even if we said they were not ok no one would really care. Compare that to baking a fresh batch of pinwheels for a mid week picnic...

I still have to work on figuring acceptance into my life - the realization that they will never get it, and continuing to love them regardless. See lots of space for growth now i just need to work on the self control part to put it into practice.

Lots of lessons for me with the kids as well. On Monday we start back into studies, the journey to a home learning environment and the realization that I'm despite my protests we are still doing school at home means more softening, more relational more interaction is coming. I'm looking forward to the journey.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Monet

We arrived full of anticipation,
Walked in somewhat disappointed
I had expected something greater,
Larger works a grander scale,
we wandered,
Relaxed,
Sat down,
And then from a distance grew in appreciation of how those canvases glowed with colour and light and
We knew why we had come this far to see them.

They wouldn't let us take a camera in for which I am grateful we wouldn't have slowed down and enjoyed- the collection is here

A Break Away

We've had a couple of relaxing, educational fun days at my family's in Wellington. It was good to catch up with my sister and her family, to see my mum, and to enjoy being in the capital. There were a couple of highlights as well - we got to see a collection of Monet's works that were on loan to Te Papa from the Museum of Fine Arts, and a tour through Parliament buildings to get the kids acquainted with how our country governs itself. It was fun three days, packed but fun...

Monday, April 13, 2009

Thoughts from Easter break

I've had lots of thoughts over the last few days - scattered thoughts that are still trying to come together into a single concept.

I want to see a more unified aspect to our studies, it seems that we are chasing so many threads across so many subjects that life always seems to be overly stressed and busy. I weant us to relax, learn and enjoy.

I want to see our faith more vibrant and focused in our life - Easter was missing something, mainly the time to rest in what God has done. Our local church isn't good in keeping the seasons of faith, Advent, Lent, Pentecost and the hunger to build these seasons into our lives is growing.

We need to have fun more to relax and enjoy our life, learning, faith. We need to simplify our life.

In the postive we've discovered that the changes of the last few weeks have been positive and encouraging. When we slip bad habits are just waiting to latch on to us and drag us under.

So where to next?