First Day of School ~ 2012

Out for breakfast per our tradition!  We almost didn't go because we ate out every night for dinner on the drive home from vacation, but tradition rates up there pretty high.

This year we are studying Year 3 of Tapestry of Grace, the 19th century.  We talked about all the different things we would learn about...beginning with the presidency of John Adams, the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, pioneers and settlers moving west, states being added to the union, wars with Indians, the slavery issue, the Civil War, reconstruction, and ending with the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt!  Wow!!  So much happened in those 100 years.

For our cookie dough maps this year we made the shape of the Louisiana Purchase.  A few of the children also added the Oregon Territory to their cookie so they could trace the entire route taken by Lewis and Clark on their journey to the Pacific Ocean.  The kids all taped a piece of wax paper over their paper maps, and then made the cookie shapes directly on the wax paper.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking....."

Adding chocolate chip mountains, and green (for the grass) and gold (for the dry areas) sprinkles for the great plains.  Having just driven across much of the Louisiana Purchase, we could attest to its vast green and brown areas!

I then transferred the wax paper to cookie sheets and baked the cookies at 300 degrees for about 12 minutes.  After baking we traced the route taken by Lewis and Clark with blue icing.  Then we ate them!!

Daughter G (age 15) with her finished cookie map.

Little Man, age 7.

Son G, age 13.

Son L, age 12.

Son C, age 10.

While the cookies were baking we decorated new covers for our history notebooks.  This is son G's cover: Lewis and Clark surveying the Rocky Mountains.

Son L drew some dynamite blasting through a Year 3 "mountain" to make the transcontinental railroad.

Little Man also drew Lewis and Clark.

And daughter G drew her customary "collage" picture with lots of smaller pics showing different events of the 19th century.

It was a very fun first day!  Happy to have started!

Central Command

I have been getting an astonishing amount of school prep done for this fall.  Astonishing compared to last summer, when I got virtually nothing done ahead of time (extenuating circumstances).  So thankful for the time this summer to get ready!  It makes such a difference in my outlook and anticipation of the year.  This is my "central command" for school prepping.  I have been focusing on our history/geography studies, as that provides the backbone for everything else we do.

On the chair you can see a tall stack of books with green dots on the spines.  Those are our new books for this go round through Year 3 of Tapestry of Grace (19th century).  Last time we went through Year 3 we did not have a high schooler, so this time we needed the high school level books.  I was able to purchase a good portion of them used.  Woot!  The green dots signify that these are Year 3 books, and on the dot is written what learning level the book is for, and which unit during the year it is used.  The large green binder is my Tapestry Unit 1 teacher book, and as I "dotted" all the new books, I went through the binder and marked the books that we own (many!) and the books that I will have to get from the library.

Under my reading glasses is a weekly planning book that I made myself.  It is not a planner in the sense that we could use it to write in all our assignments for every subject, it is simply a tool to help me plan out each Tapestry week.  What books will each of my children be reading for literature that week?  The ones Tapestry recommends, or a substitution?  What will each child's writing assignment be?  What hands on activities will we do, or movies will we watch that coincide with our history studies?  Is there a president to add to our Presidents Books that week?  New states added to the union?  Are there any "extra" things that we already own that would be fun to fit in that week?  I printed off 36 copies of this single sheet planner and took them to FedEx/Kinko's to be spiral bound.  I have been happily filling in things for all 36 weeks, but focusing on the first 9 weeks of the year (unit 1).

We belong to a Tapestry virtual co-op,  and as it happens this year our very-end-of-summer vacation will cause us to miss the first three weeks of class.  I had to think through how to handle that ~ whether or not to require reading/schoolwork while on vacation (no), how to get the children up to speed on the flow of history up to the point where we will jump in (Story of the World audio cd's while driving), and how to handle our first week of school, which will be week 5 of unit 1.  By God's grace I have a plan in place that I think is doable for us, given the fact that we'll be getting home and jumping right in at full speed with tired, travel-weary bodies and minds.

Long time readers will know that we love, love, love Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) and have used it for our writing curriculum for many years.  For the first time this year we are not using a new IEW product as the spine to our writing, but I am creating my own writing assignments for each child the IEW "way", using topics from our history studies as the content for each assignment.  We will be writing on topics that we read about and discussed the week before, allowing us to follow the read-discuss-write sequence that Tapestry so strongly recommends.  I am so excited about this!!  It has been really fun for me to go through each child's books and ponder the best writing assignment at their level that will bring everything together in their minds (Lord willing!), and help develop the way they think about key ideas. 

I LOVE HOME SCHOOLING!!!!!

At least at this moment. ;-)

I love making plans, and I love even more seeing them bear fruit in my children's minds and hearts.  To disciple one's children, and see first hand the character development as it is happening, is such an incredible privilege.

Disclaimer

There is a huge tendency among women in general, and homeschool moms in particular, to compare ourselves to others and find ourselves lacking. I can see what another homeschool mom is doing and think, "I should be doing that", or carried to the extreme, "I'm a loser at this and should just put my kids in building school." I know this because I have done it.

BUT.

It is terribly destructive. It takes our eyes off Jesus and fosters discontent and even envy. God has unique plans for each of our families, and we need to focus on the priorities He has given to us, not those He's given to someone else. We answer some day to HIM, not to each other.

If you are a homeschooling mom who uses Tapestry and you don't do unit celebrations, that is okay! If you are a homeschooling mom who doesn't use Tapestry at all, that's fine too! If you don't homeschool but instead trust the education of your children to others, that's great! It grieves me to think there may be those who read about our hands on activities or our unit celebrations and feel inadequate. If that is you, please stop reading my blog.

I'll be honest and tell you a little secret that feeds into our unit celebrations. We have a very difficult time finishing home maintenance projects here at our house. A set of beautiful half finished wooden bunk beds has been sitting in our garage for 6 years now, while our cars are parked in the driveway. There is a hole in my kitchen ceiling, made by an overly enthusiastic Jedi knight, that will probably be there until we sell the house someday and are forced to fix it. My biggest fear in starting our schoolroom expansion project this past summer was, what if we never finish it?

Psychologically, it makes me feel so good to have a unit celebration and mark that 9 week period of study as DONE. There are so many other things in my life that are not done.

My friend Guinever uses the Student Activity Pages that come with Tapestry each and every week. We are hit and miss with those.

My friend Marsha hits English grammar really hard. Us, not so much.

My friend Sally has an immaculate house. She would disagree with that, but she'd be wrong. ;-) She comes here and enjoys our artsy craftsy clutter. I go there and enjoy her nice, clean home.

I have friends who play with their children more than I do with mine. Some who do a much better job at teaching household chores. Some who do bulk cooking.

You get the point.

Can we learn from each other and be inspired and motivated by each other? Of course! This is one of our God given purposes as women, to encourage and mentor one another. But God has wired us all differently, and if we let those differences cause us to envy or doubt our own calling, or focus on our inadequacies rather than the complete adequacy and awesomeness of God, that is WRONG!

So, as I share about things we do in our homeschool, please keep in mind that I am striving to be faithful to what God has called our family to do, as one who will give an account.

And that as long as I am supervising hands on activities, I don't have to dust. :0)

Epiphany

God is so good!

I have been praying about a school related issue for a couple weeks, having to do with the tension between holding our children accountable to complete their work with excellence, and having their content areas of study (history and science) be fun and enjoyable for them.

Our daughter has been at the dialectic level of history for two years and is now starting her third. Our son G is also transitioning to this level. The dialectic level is basically middle school age in cognitive development. At this level in Tapestry of Grace students have several questions to answer each week as they do their history reading. Some of the questions are deeper level ones that require thought and the putting together of information they knew previously with information they just learned. In other words, it's work.

I helped our daughter learn how to answer these two years ago when she first started at this level, as I am doing now with our son G. But since then she has been working mostly on her own. Some weeks the reading is heavier than others, and some weeks there are more questions than others. Some weeks she was still answering questions after youth group on Wed night, in preparation for virtual co-op the next morning. It felt to her like sloughing through a swamp all week long and never quite reaching the other side.

Over the past two years I have watched our daughter learn how to think. But I have also watched her enjoy history less. I became increasingly concerned about this and began to pray and ask God for wisdom in this area. I wasn't really willing to not require answers to these questions, and every student has to realize at some point that they need to do the work because it needs to be done whether they like it or not. But what could I do differently to ensure the best possible chance that she'd enjoy, and maybe even love, history?

As an aside to my fellow TOG moms, our daughter has always loved the hands on aspect of history, and the read alouds, and the other "fun" parts. It has just been since starting the dialectic level and having to answer the questions each week that a cloud has fallen over her previous love of history. And it's hard to watch someone who used to love it begin to resent it! What to do??

I had a long talk with my husband about it on Tuesday night, and woke up Wednesday morning with a plan. God literally gave it to me while I slept!

I told G and G that we were starting a new thing. Each Wed afternoon at 3:00 the three of us will have a history meeting. At this time, all history reading and the answering of questions will STOP. No more is required after our meeting, even if they didn't get them all done. We will discuss all the questions they have not yet been able to answer. I told them that they know a lot more than they think they know, and discussing together will prove this. They are welcome to jot down in outline form any answers that reveal themselves during our discussion, but if they still have blanks on their paper after the meeting that is okay.

In my desire to hold them accountable to their work, I have inadvertently been teaching them that answering every single question on paper is the goal. And that is not the goal! The goal is knowing facts and concepts and making connections in their heads. If I can show them this through the course of a weekly "mini discussion" (before their "big" discussion during virtual co-op) I think they will be encouraged with all they are truly learning and enjoy the process more.

This will also make Wed afternoons and evenings much less stressful, and there is already enough happening on Wednesdays this fall to induce stress! So, it has only been one week, but we had a great time during our discussion this past Wed, and even though they both had a few blanks on their papers, I think they totally got the gist of what our virtual co-op was all about on Thursday morning. After our discussion on Wed, son G said to me "well this is great! I only have to finish my questions and I am completely done with school today!" And I said, "no, you are done." Which got me a glowing smile. :0)

This will work with these particular children because I know they will have been working diligently since the previous Friday to accomplish their daily reading and answer as many questions as possible. If they were slackers I would have to have a different plan.

I share all this for two reasons. One, to show that God cares about even this. I prayed and He answered! Nothing about your school day is too small to bring before the Lord. And two, even a 5 year Tapestry veteran and a 9 year homeschooling veteran can learn new things! (actually, I learn new things every single day!! One thing I love about homeschooling!)

Movie Night - The Great Locomotive Chase

We watched this movie last Friday and really enjoyed it! The story takes place during the Civil War, so it would go along very well with Tapestry of Grace Year 3, Unit 3. A group of soldiers are hand picked for a secret mission, to go undercover, travel through southern territory, and meet up again at a certain train station for the purpose of stealing a Confederate locomotive and then using it to travel along the line, breaking up track and telegraph wires as they go. One saavy southern train worker realizes their plot and goes after them, hence the "chase". It was exciting, based on actual history (some details were changed but the story line was mostly accurate), and contained nothing inappropriate. I don't want to give away the ending, but it did contain an intense scene near the end which was handled with an appropriate amount of vagueness (for our younger children) and which led to a good discussion afterward about how success and failure is perceived (for our older children).

It held the attention of all our children. Highly recommended for those who love historical movies!

Year End Homeschool Celebration

Tapestry of Grace strongly encourages the holding of a "unit celebration" at the end of each 9 week unit of study throughout the year. This is a great idea for a number of reasons such as, a unit celebration is like a period (or exclamation point!) that marks a certain period of study as being DONE. In this way it is a powerful mental tool. It also helps remind the children of all the things they learned, made or did while studying that time period, and it tends to be the thing children will remember later when asked the inevitable question, "what did you learn in school this year?".

Well, I was not good this year about holding unit celebrations, so instead we decided to have a big celebration at the end of the year for all 4 units we covered. We invited 3 other homeschool families to join us (none of whom use Tapestry), as well as my husband's parents, and each of the children were encouraged to present something to the audience. It was a great evening of fun, encouragement, and inspiraton!

We displayed the Impressionist Art projects we made the last day of school.



And some of the books we used during the year.


Each of our 4 older children worked on state notebooks this year, adding information and coloring the state bird and flower for each state in the order they were added to the Union. Here is the stack of 4 state notebooks, with a few flapbooks in the front (one on Napoleon Bonaparte and the other on Andrew Carnegie).


And here is the first North Carolina page in our son G's state notebook. I got these state pages from Notebooking Pages, and they worked beautifully this year!


We also displayed many of the hands on projects we worked on throughout the year, which I have highlighted on my blog before. Here are the moccasins and nature journals we made when we studied Lewis and Clark.


And the covered wagons we made when we learned about westward expansion.


Here is our replica of the Monitor, made from a soy milk container! Its turret has 2 guns (see the black dots?) and rotates! (smaller can is inside the big one, and the big one turns around the smaller one)


Here are the shields we made when we learned about the European colonization of Africa.


And here are most of the children, ready to begin! There were a couple of younger ones you can't see that were playing in their own special area in the very back. And the dads and the grandparents were not yet seated.


My friend Sally helped her 2 year old sing the alphabet song. He did a great job and it was the cutest thing ever!!!


Her 5 year old sang us the story of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?" by Eric Carle while holding up each animal he had colored.


Her 9 year old daughter read a story she'd written using Institute for Excellence in Writing.


And her 12 year old also read a story he'd written using IEW. They both did a super job!


My friend Angela's 9 year old daughter read us a page from her "All About Me" book.

While her 5 year old daughter showed us the alphabet book she made during her preschool year.


Each of our children chose to dress up in some costume representing figures from the 1800's. Our Little Man dressed up as an Indian. He recited a poem from the poetry book we have memorized from all year, Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization. I didn't upload a video of it, but here are the words to his poem:

Ooey Gooey was a worm, a mighty worm was he
He stepped upon the railroad track, the train he did not see!
Ooey, Gooey! (said while rubbing hands together)


Our son C also dressed up as an American Indian. He recited the poem, "The Vulture" by Hilaire Belloc.


Our son L, trying to look like a manly cowboy here and therefore not smiling, recited "Swan and Goose" by William Ellery Leonard.


Son G, dressed as a Union soldier from the Civil War, recited "Jonathon Bing" by Beatrice Curtis Brown. He also read a report he'd written on Stonewall Jackson. You can barely see a bit of gray sticking out from behind his left shoulder. This was his bedroll, strapped to his back! And you can see the tip of his gun leaning up against the table next to him.


Our daughter G chose to wear a hawaiian costume. We learned about the attempt to annex Hawaii as a U.S. territory in 1893, but President Grover Cleveland felt that since Hawaii still had a queen (Queen Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawaii) it was a sovereign nation and should not be annexed. It eventually was annexed 5 years later, but as you know, did not become a state until many years later. G recited "Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably" by Hilaire Belloc. A fun poem! And she also read a report she'd written on Ulysses S. Grant.


Finally, we had the pleasure of hearing Teddy Roosevelt (aka my husband) recite "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. If you are not familiar with that poem, it was written about a specific and tragic charge that British troops made to capture French guns during the Crimean War.


When presentations were finished, we enjoyed desserts and some 1800's period food. We had pineapple to represent Hawaii, corn to represent the Indians and the fields that escaped slaves would hide in as they fled from their slave masters.


Hard tack to represent what people ate on the way west, and also what soldiers ate during the Civil War, and tomatoes which were introduced to our country from France by Thomas Jefferson. Not pictured, ham lunch meat to represent Virginia Ham!


It was a very fun evening, and everyone enjoyed seeing and hearing what the others had learned. I encourage other homeschoolers to consider doing unit celebrations or a year end celebration ~ it can be done beautifully and elaborately such as my friend Laurie does, or simply and cheaply such as we did, but either way it is a great way to look back and thank God for all that you accomplished during the year!

Art in the Style of the Impressionist's

We ended our school year last Friday with a day devoted to art. Not just any art, but Impressionist Art. This is a style of art that sprang up during the second half of the 1800's and the early part of the 1900's (smack dab in the middle of the century we were studying! Imagine that.....) Until that time, most paintings were done in studios. People were posed. Attention was given to detail. There are some beautiful paintings like this, of course. But then some painters began to want more realism in their paintings. They began to paint people out in the "real world" doing "real" things. Rather than focusing on each detail, they painted an impression of their subject, as if they had glanced at it in passing. Because so many of their paintings were done out doors, these artists began to experiment with light and shadow. Light reflected off a shimmering pond, light from the sun reflected in the grass, with the shadow of a person falling across it. The results of this experimentation were at first decried by the "Salon" painters of Paris, but later became very popular. And now many of the Impressionist painters are household names. Degas, Renoir, and Monet are probably some of the most famous.

I had wanted to give a taste of this style to the children for some time but never found an opportunity to fit it in. It ended up being the perfect way to end our school year! We started out by looking at pictures of Impressionist paintings in this book:



This is an incredible art book I purchased 3 years ago when we were just beginning to use Tapestry of Grace for our core curriculum. We used it extensively when we studied the Renaissance, but had not used it much this year. I flipped through all the pages ahead of time and post-it noted together several pages that had just a little too much art for my children's young eyes, if you know what I mean! While looking at the pictures we talked about what made Impressionist art "impressionist", until I felt sure that the children had a good grasp on what to look for to identify art as Impressionist. (see the post it note folded over several pages?)


Then we looked at a few more pictures in this book (below) which is a GREAT book for kids! (suggested by our Tapestry curriculum and given to us by a generous book fairy). Just the right mixture of pictures, the history of various Impressionist artists, and projects to do that aren't too complicated. Everything we needed for these two projects were items I already had, so not only was this fun, it was also FREE!



Our first project involved working with light (the sky) and shadow (the ground). It had two main steps.


First, the children each picked a stencil (showing something "real" and not posed). We taped these to paper and they painted inside the stencils with watercolors.





While these paintings dried, we began working on the background papers. We drew clouds with white chalk and then filled these in with dashes of colored crayons. Then we painted the background and the crayon "resisted" the paint.





When the backgrounds and the stenciled pictures both dried, we cut out the stencil shapes, glued them to our backgrounds and added shadows under our stenciled figures. They turned out great! (see below)

Our second project was a 3-D painted paper water lily.


It was based on this painting of water lilies by Monet. We talked about the different colors in the water lilies, and about the light and shadows on the surface of the water.

Then we cut 3 small flowers (yellow) and 3 large flowers (pink) for each child, and painted them with tempera paints. All of the children had fun mixing and creating their own color shades.






After they were all dried, we glued them to green lily pads. Don't they look beautiful?!


Here is the first project, all finished.

(this one was Little Man's and he really wanted to add a "j" to his sky!)





And here is each child with his or her art work so you know which work goes with which artist.






It was a very fun day!

I have a more serious post coming soon, but sometimes it's emotionally easier to write about light topics right now (not to mention getting all these pics out of my camera!).