Designing a home-centered life: learning, exploring, and creating with our five littles
When we begin Classical Conversations Cycle 3 in the fall, my littles will be ages 3, 6, 8, 10, and 11. This is our second time through this cycle and my oldest son's last time. I've decided to create a book list all my own this year. (As opposed to previous years where I've layered over an AO list.) I have consulted my best "book buds" - Five 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 husband is a Philly area native and at a young age visited Independence Hall in Philadelphia. We've since taken our littles twice. But, at home we still use something he purchased on a trip there when he was a little boy. It's a replica of the Declaration of Independence. We read it this week, made observations about the … [Read more...]
History - September 11, 2001 I found these lesson plans from The Cork Board and read this fact sheet to my children. It was hard for me to read all the way through without tearing up at the memories. Wow - I hope my children can understand that history doesn't just teach us so much, but was also lived by real people. Have you found a great way … [Read more...]
A few, fun educational ideas have found their way from my Amazon wish list into my cart for Christmas presents this year. Wanna take a peak at my list? Just don't tell my littles! ;)GeoPuzzle Jigsaw puzzles - these are amazing! The puzzle pieces are the actual shapes and approximate scale of the countries which you are building with to form … [Read more...]
In history this year, we'll be doing lots of memory work and reading around king and kingdoms. I will often hear my littles reenacting our history for the week. So for fun and for review, I thought it would be fun to make crowns for them to wear. I used this tutorial as a guide with a few changes.I bought 4 different laces to use … [Read more...]
"Classical educators want children to memorize a lengthy world history time line over an extended period of time that stays with them forever." (p.165) Are you seeing a pattern here among classical learning? It's so important to lay a strong foundation for our little scholars to build upon. With a basic timeline memorized, our children can … [Read more...]
History - Review our history sentences, by playing like the Mesoamericans with bouncy rubber balls - without using our hands & trying to get the ball through a ring. (without the element of human sacrifice and brutal competition - naturally.) Each correct answer gets a turn or 3 tries, depending on how hard this turns out … [Read more...]
Today after reviewing our timeline, we read the reverse of the first card. We plan to read the back of 1-2 cards a day. We also spontaneously decided to locate the ancient civilizations on our modern day map. That was great fun for all of us! and really helped give us context before we read in The Story of the World. I love … [Read more...]
Olympic ExcitementThere has been plenty of olympic excitement in my house! How about yours? Here are a few ideas I've pinned that you might want to include in your summer. It's kind of like getting an early start on ancient history, right?Olympic lapbookOlympic craft ideasOlympic cupcakes, anyone? Why not! :) … [Read more...]