Designing a home-centered life: learning, exploring, and creating with our five littles
"Art is one of the basics for little children. They love talking, listening to stories, and drawing or painting." Isn't what Susan Schaeffer Macaulay shares in For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School true? Put two of those together and I think you have some of the best building blocks for teaching art. I've made … [Read more...]
Okay, confession time. Our CC memory work review time has been a little chaotic. I blame the children. ;) Truly, there are four of them. They move and talk and distract. Then add in the toddler (he makes 5) and it's all a big fat mess. My threshold for frenzied school times is low, so we've modified how our review time works a little bit in order … [Read more...]
“Moms, let me say it again. You can’t help him too much. Okay?” These firm, but gentle, generous words from my son’s Essentials tutor washed over me for the second week in a row and I realized what freedom they had brought to our homeschool experience. I had been warned the first year in Essentials could be overwhelming and it's certainly … [Read more...]
I always like to consider our first schedule a rough draft, because I typically make changes as I see how things shake out. And truly, our schedule is more of an order to our day than actual times to do things. That sort of predictability without strict rigidness works for us. Mondays: Our Classical Conversations community day now … [Read more...]
This upcoming year will be our third year notebooking our memory work. There are a lot of variations to notebooking. You can use it in much the same way as workboxes or lapbooks, but for us it's a simple way to review and collect our memory work. In years past, I've printed worksheets for my littles to complete each week. But this year I'm … [Read more...]
Because I have a love of books and a desire for my children to learn, I've made a habit of purchasing the best reference books I can find and placing them around our home. As a result, I've stumbled upon how to study science without really trying. At least one or two of these great books are opened by my littles daily without any prompting … [Read more...]
We're on the final stretch of our Classical Conversations year. One of my guys is aiming for memory master status, but still needs to fine-tune some of the memory work. We're relying on what's tried and true by practicing using these simple methods for memorizing: 1. Making flash cards. He handmade flashcards today for John 1 in … [Read more...]
I love the conversations classically homeschooling our family has afforded. Because our core subjects are on the same topics, we are able to have conversations where everyone can join in. Today I was reading out loud to them, An Island Story, a child's history of England originally published before 1923. It's one of my littles' favorite … [Read more...]
My friends are the best. They've shared so much into my life and I've been blessed to have them share with y'all. From what you've shared with me, they've blessed you too. Counting down, here are the top 5 guest posts from 2014 -- #5 A Day in the Life - Largent Family This post by my pastor's wife and all-around great … [Read more...]
Each week, I'll post a fun idea or two related to the CC Cycle 3 memory work. In the past, I posted an idea for each subject, each week. But, it was a bit of overkill - at least for us and the time we have. I'm keeping it simpler this year. If you're keeping it classical, remember, the first goal is to memorize the memory work for each subject. … [Read more...]