The Way They Should Go

We were sitting in Burger King yesterday.  On Wednesdays, if they get school work done my noon (which mommy works harder for than them I think) we go to Burger King.  This is not just any Burger King mind you, this is the one with the big multi-story play area!  They think it’s a treat for them.  ;-)  But it is for Mom too!

I teach a Bible Study on Thursday mornings, so Wednesday they play in the play area while Mommy gets to go over her study again and put together the class discussion guide.  It’s a good bargain all around.

But on this particular Wednesday, between bites of chicken nuggets, KTRose asks, “Why do some Mommy’s go to work during the day like Daddy does?”

At least it wasn’t “Do you get in trouble if you play the waiting game with the police?”  I still have no idea what she’s asking with that one.

So I told her that in some families the Mommies have to go to work to earn money with the Daddies.  So she asked who takes care of the little girls then?  I told her the girls go to school or to a babysitter while the Mommy and Daddy are at work.  She asks why I don’t go to work like other Mommies.  I told her it was because Daddy and Mommy thought it was more important that she and her sister spend their days with Mommy than with anyone else - even if it means we don’t have as much money.

There’s a pause and I’m waiting to hear what is going to be said.  She’s recently discovered how nice it is to have money to buy things… She recently started doing chores around the house to earn money for the skateboard she wants.  So I think it’s very possible she will want me to go to work so she can buy more things.

Instead she pipes up with, “I’m glad Mommy because I love you very much and I would miss you.”

Awww… exactly the right answer. 

Of course then she went on with “And I don’t ever, ever want you to die.  Except I know when I grow up you will die.  But that’s ok because you’ll go to Heaven.  And then I’ll die after that and go to Heaven and be with you.  So that’ll be ok.”

“That’s ok honey, I don’t think you need to worry about that for a very long time though.”  I say.

LOL.  Big thoughts for Burger King.

Well, last Wednesday we are doing schoolwork.  No big shocker.  Working away.  After 4-year-old finishes her math work (Math-U-See Primer), which she zips through, I have a Math-at-home book from Walmart that she picks and chooses pages out of to work on. 

Let me inject an important detail.  This child LOVES to do worksheets.  I have to keep an eye and throw in instructions now and then because she’ll just whip through pages doing whatever she thinks should be done.

 Anyway, I turn the page of the wal-mart book and the next page is subtraction word problems - the first answer is Zero.  This child has never done word problems (directly as math anyway), dealt with subtraction, or the concept of Zero, execept on the numberline we use as reference. 

The punchline?  What the heck, I read “Mike had 4 beetles in a jar.  The lid came off and 4 beetle got out.  How many beetles were left in the jar?”  No hesitation and she throws both arms up announcing, “Zero!”

LOL.  What a hoot.  There you go, no problem.  She seems to have no problem with subtraction.

Later we were at Target, getting lunch in the little cafe.  We get our food, sit at a little table.  KTRose pipes up with “there are 4 seats at our table, but only 3 people.”  Yep, I say.  That’s true.  Eat your pizza.

Then, she pauses a moment and starts, “If the table has 4 seats…”  Ok.  There were some hesitations, stumbling over the way to say it, but in the end after editing what she said was, “If the table has 4 seats and 3 people are sitting at the table, how many more people need to sit at the table to take all the seats?”  And she proudly announced the right answer.

I was just very amused at her making up math word problems spontaneously over her personal pan pizza.  :-)  Makes me think we may actually be creating a learning lifestyle for her! 

Yay!! It really is worth it even if I think I may go insane some days!  Hehe. 

Well, it’s been absolutely forever since I’ve written to this site.  My mother actually mentioned it a few weeks ago asking when I would be writing here again.   So I’m finally back.

What’s been going on in the almost year since I’ve written?  Ugh.  The big thing is that we moved last October.  That nationwide housing slump actually hit Northern Virginia and we jumped at the chance to buy a house - after renting here for almost 6 years.  We’ve watched the prices - which we thought were so outlandish when we moved here in 2001 - as they DOUBLED by the end of 2005.  Craziness!  Then this slow down hit and finally people weren’t forced to put in an asking-price-bid-with-an-escalation-clause on the first day a house was on the market in order to buy a house.  There was once again negociation, and we were able to leap.

We worked with a great realtor and found our house on the first day we did a realtor-house visit day, as opposed to our usual wander from open-house to open-house on weekends.  We still looked several more times in the same area before realizing we were still comparing everything to this house, so we put in a bid.  There was haggling, but we got it. 

So now, we have a privacy-fenced 1/3 of an acre!!  For those of you not living on/near the DC Beltway system, 1/3 acre is really nice!  Of course we moved to an area still in Fairfax County, but described most succinctly by a beltway friend as, “oh yeah, isn’t that just before the edge of the Earth??”  :-/  It’s really not far!

The people who owned the house before us did lots of landscaping - in fact had a landscaping company come regularly for upkeep.  We have 5 flowering trees around the house as well as a few evergreens, a japanese maple, and lots of other things I can’t identify.  It’s Cherry-blossom time as I write and we have one flowering in our front yard.  It looks really beautiful.  In fact hubby was commenting on how beautiful all the trees were the other day, and what a shame it will be when he is forced, in a fit of allergy-induced hysteria, to burn them all to the ground. 

We both have TERRIBLE allergies.

I decided (at the direction of a friend who knows such things) to cut down the dead decorative grass in our front yard so the new patch can grow this spring.  I had a rash up both arms for hours.  Yes, that’s with taking a Claritin.  Hehe.  This is going to be interesting.

However, it has been SO NICE to have days where School is done by lunch and afterward the girls go out and play in the back yard for 4 hours!!  They are stinkin filthy when they come in, but they have a blast and I like that so much better than cooping them up all day - or waiting til I’m done with whatever else I’m trying to accomplish so they can walk down to the little park for an hour on a good day.

There’s more, but it will have to wait for another day.  It’s time to go sit on the couch with hubby.  Later all!

Well, we made it.  Babchie kept the girls for the weekend - and they had fun even if the weather wasn’t conducive Babchie’s big beautiful pool.

Scott and I went to HEAV (unfortunate acronym isn’t it) which stands for Home Educator’s Association of Virginia.  I was there last year, but this was Scott’s first time. 

The first thing you have to know is, this thing is HUGE!!  The vendors and Used Book exchange take up the whole large convention hall.  Then we use all the individual rooms in the main building, and many rooms in the 2nd building for speakers.  There are 3 time-blocks of speakers on Friday and 4 time-blocks on Saturday - not including the key note speakers - and there are 18 different sessions in each block!  So that’s roughly 54 sessions on Friday and 72 on Saturday.  Yipes!! 

In the end we ordered the whole conference on MP3 and should get it in about 2 weeks - there were too many conflicts where we couldn’t go to everything we wanted.  Plus, by the end we were a little brain dead.  It’s like getting information from a fire hose during some of the sessions - and inbetween we’re debating “does this science curriculum look indepth enough to keep her interest - but still on a 1st grade level?  Is this “Christian” to the detriment of hard science?  Or “Hard Science” to the detriment of honesty about the unknowns and doubts of some of our knowledge?  Ok, next is math…  timelines… maps…  whew!

I went to one session I thought was really interesting.  It was by Andrew Pudewa and was titled “Spelling and the Brain”.  I was not (and am not) the best speller and so have laughed a little at the idea of me teaching my daughter to spell.  He is a very good speaker and excellent at giving example of what he means so you understand.  The big take home point is that spelling is the sequential retrieval of virtually random information (his own definition).  It is very tough to teach spelling in a read/write format because when you look at a work you don’t take in the individual letters in sequence to store in your brain, you take in the whole word.  (Have you seen that email that goes around where all of the words have all the right letters, but not in the right order - but you can still read it?  Same idea.)  So then it doesn’t reinforce the order of the individual letters in the child’s brain - especially since their brains are still developing and they have more trouble than adults with seeing proper letter order anyway.  SOOOO… teach spelling like the old-fashioned spelling bees.  It’s Auditory/Verbal.  You HAVE to spell a word out loud in an order - so if you do it in the right order, it is stored in the child’s brain IN ORDER.  Practice like this with them.  That’s my poor condensing of the seminar.  You gotta google him, it was interesting.

I tried to be very kind to my dear hubby.  He hates to shop.  He hates to shop like I hate stupid party games - which has lead to a marriage saving compromise in our home.  I don’t make him shop.  He doesn’t make me do stupid party games.

But this is one of those cases where I need his input, so he went into the lions den with me - being the vendor fair!  I had done a fair amount of research, so I knew I either wanted to continue with Horizons Math or switch to Math-U-See.  We watched the Math-U-See demo DVD a few nights before the fair and were impressed (he used these blocks to demonstrate factoring trinomials - I think it’s the first time I understood what that was doing!) but had a few questions about the long-term use of the curriculum.  Plus, I planned to do our own Life Science course this year - but then heard about Apologia’s Exploring Creation through Zoology I.  It’s the study of all winged-creatures - being Birds, Bats & Bugs.  This is only her absolute 3 favorite catagories of animals!  So we wanted to check that out. 

Hubby went with me when the doors opened on Saturday morning.  We made a bee-line to the Math-U-See and asked questions, then went to Apologia to go through the book and ask questions.  Then his responsibilities for shopping for the day were done.  Ok, Actually I also made him come with me to the Miller Pads and Paper table just long enough to take a huge stack of construction paper out to the car.  But besides that I would do the work of tracking down what we needed and comparison shopping.  He did come back in with me on Saturday to help me decide on a timeline and maps for History/Geography.  We got the timeline, we nixed the maps to see if we could find something closer to what I want.  Who ever heard of an “Ancient Times” map (this was wall sized we were looking for) that didn’t include ROME!!  Italy was completely bumped off the left side of the map.

Can I just say that I LOVE Rainbow Resource??  If they had a book that I needed, they had the consistantly lowest price.  They also have a really wide variety of products, so I got science, handwriting, history, Bible & Art materials from them.  AND if they didn’t have something on hand that was in their catalog, you could place an order at the fair and pay no shipping.  Whoo-hoo!

In the end I got our Math and Science curricula.  I got the last Draw Write Now book I was looking for as well as lots of practice paper.  I was able to get a lot of our history books, but still have to search down a few of the readers. 

I got First Language Lessons of the Well Trained Mind, the Big Picture Bible Timeline, Greek and Roman times “newspapers”, DK phonetic readers still shrink wrapped, and a book that is like an Usborne book of Bible History - but another publisher - all at the Used Book Swap!!  I was very excited.

And I found a really cool series of books called Art in History.  They are 30+ pages each, medium-large print and are each a different culture’s art.  So I got Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Chinese Art.  They take you through examples of the cultures Art, talk about materials and methods used, changes that occurred, and even have at least one “try it yourself” project in each book - all on Elementary level.  Exactly what I was hoping for!  Of course this was through Rainbow Resource - who also had a “make your own Papyrus” kit I bought too!  I had fun. 

Overall it was a really good trip.  We ran into 4-5 couples from our church there, and we had only known 2 would be there.  Maybe the funniest was running into a woman and her husband who are in the Thursday morning Bible Study I teach, and I hadn’t known she would be there!

That’s all for our weekend.  Hope you all had fun too!!

Meg.

So now, I’m back to planning it out for next year.

Reading and Math Progress Update…

Hello there!

Well, I’ve been a total slacker writing here. Sorry about that. I’ve thought about blogging often – but actually sitting down, typing something up and posting it just seems to be beyond me most days. Ah well. I shall try to do better.

I was inspired to write after attending a friends’ baby shower this weekend. The fact that it was a baby shower was awesome & we’re very excited for those friends, but isn’t what triggered blogging inspiration. What inspired was that I got to catch up with some of my Baltimore group of friends. The common question was “How is homeschooling going?” and I found myself repeating the same thing over and over. Several of the conversations were with others who have begun, or are ramping up to begin homeschooling, and those are always good idea & motivation swapping times.

Our recent progress in homeschooling has been in both reading and math – whoo-hoo! We had taken a break from our reading/phonics program because it made a leap to short, phonetically controlled books and KTRose was stressed by that leap. So I just decided to keep reviewing her phonics, introduce new ones slowly and work a little with sight words. I haven’t done as much with sight words as I will need to, mental note. However, she has turned a corner in the past 2-3 weeks and now is cruising much easier through the little Bob books. All of a sudden she could sound out all the words in a sentence, then go back and repeat the sentence. Before, by the time she sounded out the 3rd word in the sentence, she had forgotten the first word so she couldn’t hold the whole statement in her mind at once. A very tough way to try to read a book. Now, she can work through the Bob book, then flip back and do it faster the second time. Then she has the rhythm & vocabulary mastered in the book and will just skim the words and remember based on that what that page says.

The big thing is that she is feeling very successful and good about herself and reading now, so she wants to do it with me. It’s been great to see how proud she is of herself! We have the first two sets of Bob books, and I went out and got a few phonetically controlled books at Borders to work on next. Yeah, yeah… we should have just gone to the library! Are you kidding? I’m framing these books!

Another progression that has seemed to tie into this is KTRose will draw a picture, and then write on the picture “Mem” (my mom-in-law) or “Momy” if it is for one of us. She will also write other things by sounding it out as best she can like “Cat” or “bug” to label the picture. The spelling is strictly KTRose Phonetical – and sometimes quite creative (imagine butterfly), but it’s really progress for her. She even drew me a picture of tadpoles (guess what we currently have in a jar in the living room!) and got as far as “tadp” before she had to ask me how to finish. I was also surprised when she had colored a picture of me and her and then labeled it “Momy.” We haven’t covered the “Y” phonic at all, but she remembered from having me help her write “Daddy” and “Mommy” on things in the past.

The other thing I have done is ordered Horizons Kindergarten Math teacher guide and student workbooks. Horizons is one of my top contenders for First grade Math next year, and I found the Kindergarten books on-line for about $40 – so I decided to just get it and use it to see how well she can catch-up to the First grade level for next year. Then if we hate it, it’s off the list for next year. If we love it, all the better!

I was a little disappointed to see that there were several concepts we hadn’t tackled at all – money, telling time to quarter of the hour, counting by 2s, 5s & 10s to 100. This program also has the student doing two digit + two digit addition and two digit – two digit subtraction by the end of the year (no carrying or borrowing thank goodness!). This is Kindergarten!! Our state standards of learning are basically being able to count to 30, backward from 10, recognize those numbers and a little telling time! BUT then upon further research I found that this program is more advanced than most, and their K level is on par with most 1st grade level math programs. Whew!

I decided to just jump in at lesson 28 (out of 130) which seemed a comfortable starting place for her. She, so far, really likes this program!! We regularly do two lessons in a sitting and she has no problem with that.

We like that Horizons uses a “spiral” approach to concepts. This means they learn a new concept, do 6-8 problems in the new concept, then review approximately 5 past concepts (max of 6 problems of each type) and that is one day’s lesson. The next day, they again go over the new concept with the 6-8 problems, then review concepts (varying somewhat from those reviewed the previous day). Then at some point they introduce a new concept, and the previous “new” concept is one of the review sections heavily at first. As you progress with new concepts, old concepts follow a systematic cycle of review in each lesson. With this the child never does more than 6-8 problems of one type in a day (unless you do two lessons like we do sometimes) and older concepts are never dropped totally out of review rotation – so they stay fresh.

Where we jumped into the program was where the “new” concept being introduced is something she has already done, but it is still challenging to her. That is single digit addition. She and I have also already done single digit subtraction, but it is much farther on in this program, so we’ll get back to it when it comes up. Our marked progress this week was understanding + 0 addition. I hadn’t thought about how confusing that can be, but she has been wanting to add something, usually one, when the problem is adding zero. So for her 7+0=8. Every time we hit a +0 problem we would do it with pennies, popsicle sticks and fingers to try to get it to click. This past week on of our review problems was 9+0. She counted to 9, said “plus no more… equals… 9!” And grinned at me. YES!! Mommy cheered.

Anyway, that’s been our recent progress. Yay!!

Now, I am working on getting organized and planning next year. The homeschool conventions start in a couple of weeks and I wanted to know in detail, as much as possible, what I am going to be teaching so I can hit those curriculum & fun stuff fairs with purpose! Being the anal retentive person I am in planning at times, I have literally created a spreadsheet that lists each subject by 36 weeks and am trying to list weekly what will be covered. Next posting will include info on that. Hint: The Well Trained Mind has again captured my imagination…

This weeks goals:

Reading: Lessons 53-56

Music: Middle Ages - Gregorian Chant

Read Aloud: Dolphin Adventure Chapters 1 through 4

Math: Kumon Simple addition Make Number Line, #s 1-10
Pages 5 though 8 (dot to dot #s 14-17)
Pages 17 & 18 (identify missing #, up to 10)
Manipulative work to enforce counting up to 20

Bible: Start The Three Kings of United Israel page 187
Samuel annoints Saul, I Samuel 9:1-10:16
Saul is proclaimed King, I Samuel 10:17-27
Saul Rescues His People, I Samuel 11-13
Samuel Resigns as Judge of Israel, I Samuel 11:14-12:25

*************************************************

Well, here we are trying to jump back into school after a bit of a hiatus because of my continued sickness. KatieRose has actually been begging to do school for about 2 weeks, so I have tried here and there to do something, but it always ended in my coughing so much neither of us was getting anything out of it. So now I have been on meds for a while and am starting to do better and over the weekend I took time to map out what I wanted to do in the next few weeks.

Today I told KTRose over breakfast that I had school all ready and we were going to do it today and she cheered for me. It’s so nice to get that reaction.

We started with Bible as usual, and read about Samuel annointing Saul. She didn’t think it was all that exciting.

Next was Read Aloud. I have my stack of books from Sonlight and I decided to do Dolphin Adventure this week, maybe into next week since it’s 8 chapters. I’m thinking, we do school 4 days a week, so a chapter a day is fine, more if she’s interested. Today we read the whole Dolphin Adventure book. Granted it only took about 30 minutes, but that was a lot more interest than I was expecting. After each chapter I asked if she wanted to be done or for me to read more, and we read the whole thing. Now my decision is whether to read all of Dolphin Treasure tomorrow, or hold off for a few days. I only have so many of these books. KTRose was able to tell me the basic plot of the book in 2 sentences afterward, which is progress. I’m enjoying it more as she is able to retain more of a story and even somewhat hold a conversation about it.

Then we did Math. I have scratched our previous curriculum, at least for now. She just didn’t like they way they did things, so instead I got a Kumon Simple Addition book from the bookstore and thought we would work through it. It starts with Dot to Dots that get progressively longer, then they have number lines where she fills in the missing number(s). The book works up to adding 1 and 2 to numbers up to 30. I thought we would start with the dot-to-dots with 14 dots and work our way up, as well as do the fill-in missing numbers on the up-to-10 numberline this week. When she took one look and said, “Am I doing it all the way to 14 mommy?” I knew she was going to zip through it. She did all the weeks work but one sheet today. Hmmm… She wanted to do the last sheet today, but had missed the number 16 on the previous sheet, so I said we would wait until tomorrow to go on.

I also made a numberline with her today that we can hang on the wall in the dining room (where we do our schoolwork). I did up to 10 today and thought we would review this week, knowing that at some point in the teens she loses number recognition (though she can count to 20 fine) so we would start working on that next week. But I think we’re going to add 11-20 onto the numberline tomorrow and start work on those sheets now. I know she loses 16 when looking at numbers, so that will be where we really start to focus. Only after we do the Dot-to-dots up to 20 and all the fill-in the numberline sheets up to 20 will I approach the addition sheets. Of course, that could be by Friday so I gotta step up my preparation!

The plan is to use this book (as well as other Kumon or similar books for relevant topics) and manipulative activities and games until we decide on another curriculum to use for now. So far it may be Saxon, but I’m not yet ready to plop down the money, we’ll see. The Standards of Learning for Kindergarten in Virginia as far as numbers are that they know their numbers up to 30 and can count backward from 10. We’re well on track to do that this year, so I’m not feeling pressure to push with another curriculum. We also have to get time telling work. She can do this to the hour already I think, but I should review.

We started some of Ken’s wonderful Classical music exposure this week! Last night on the way home from Awana I popped in a Gregorian Chant CD (that I thankfully found once I scoured our CD collection). KatieRose listened for a minute then asked “are those men lonely?” It made me smile because I thought it actually showed some good observation. And it’s my people-relational KTRose. I asked a few questions just to see what she could hear in the music. I asked if there were men and women singing, or did she hear just men? She said just men. I asked if she heard just their voices or did she hear any instruments like piano or violin or drums? She said just their voices. I asked her if the men were singing all the same thing, or singing different sounds together? She said they were singing different things. Two out of three ain’t bad for the first listen.

Today after we finished school the reward was stickers and I put on the Chant CD for them to listen to. (I asked KTRose if she wanted it first and she was enthusiastic - lol). When I turned it on she asked, “what’s this music called again?” I started to give her a hint by saing “greg…” And she filled in “Gregoria Chant” - close! Then she turned to Lydia, “Lydia, this music is called Gregoria Chant.” Lydia said “Yeah!” nodding. Of course it is, what else would it be called? Lydia just stared at the CD player at first, so I asked if she liked it. “Yeah! I like this music!” It was very cute. [Throughout the day Lydia keeps going over and turning the music back on :-)] And it does seem to have a bit of a calming affect on them - even better!

We did 2 days worth of science and KTRose even got all of the review question right. “Why did God make the birds different colors?” the answers according to KTRose, 1. so they can hide, 2. so they can see other birdies like them, 3. so they can look for girl birds and boy birds. LOL I love hearing things on her level.

Finally we went on to phonics & reading. This is another one that I am fudging on. We are up to the point where she is using the phonics and sight words she knows to read short stories, the next being “A Pet for Pat.” But she is really intimidated and struggles with reading the stories. Individual words she is fine, short sentences she’ll do with encouragement. But give her a couple of sentences and it’s hard and she doesn’t want to do it. So today we reviewed. I went over all the phonics she knows (A,M,S,B,P,D,E,I,H,G,C,F,K,N,O,R,T) and our short list of sight words. I think I’m just going to work on those phonics in words, and sight words for a while so she knows them without really having to think about it. Hopefully it will build her confidence, too. Once that gets more automatic, I think she’ll do better with sentences and stories. Again, we are ahead of the game so I feel no pressure to push.

Well, we started at 9:00. We finished all of that school & I wrote this up while they did stickers, and it’s only 11:30am. It’s a good day.

Needed more Ken help…

Can you give me a short list of the composers you would present in what order and what era they composed during? I know SO VERY LITTLE about this, I’d do Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Handel? That’s about it. And I have no idea what era or order they go in!

Ask and you shall receive!…

They are listed here with notes about the 6 major eras. As a start, pick 1 composer per week and 1 era per month = all of music history in 6 months. Later this can be expanded.

http://www.ipl.org/div/mushist/

Composer list also here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music#Tim
eline_of_Classical_Composers.27_Music

Frankly if you have recordings by one composer and not by another, that may guide your list at the start. Use what you have. If you’re not sure what to buy, try to buy enough to fill up an era with at least 4 composers before you over do it on say, romantic.

I think you just might fall in love with music again. There is some really good stuff in there. We adults get caught in a rut sometimes.

-K

Input from our friend Ken about incorporating classical music into our curriculum:

Well, I made it into the Hamilton Homeschool Blog. Now I’m famous…at least in my own mind.

For the record: On the topic of listening, I’m not sure if you played JUST ANY classical music in the world, that Benjamin could identify Vivaldi in the mix. This is untested, and would be quite amazing. Frankly, it’s not my goal for a 3-year-old.

Since you are keen on the idea, here’s my current strategy, subject to change without notice. A list of Dos and Don’ts for preschool listening.

DO NOT:

Randomly play classical music (jukebox approach). This does not teach how to listen. It teaches that it doesn’t really matter what we are listening to, just that something is on.
Associate classical music with Baby Einstein or a movie or anything else. The child will automatically do this anyway. Affirm this, but your job is to refer to it by composer, genre, title, and instrument.
Spend lots of money on music. Most of the time, cheap recordings (like VOX) are as good as expensive ones at this age. More music is better than better music. Besides, you will need your money for the iPod (see below).
Use cassette tapes or CDs. It’s time for an iPod (see below).
Skip a piece if the child doesn’t like it, unless it causes major trauma. Some pieces are like vegetables. They are good for you, and you will learn to like them. Maybe not all of them, but many of them. Most children are more open to new music than we are. Note: I haven’t tested some of the extreme examples from the 20th century yet. I may have to do this carefully.

DO:

Pick a composer per week. Listen every day during play time, which doubles as learning time in preschool.
Go chronologically. Start with early music, then march week by week to the present. Then start again from early music. You will notice that the music (for the most part) gets more complex, and in some ways, more interesting. Children will start to see how later music builds on earlier music (just like literature, history, poetry, etc.)
Identify the composer and the genre. “What composer is this, Benjamin?” “This is Bach from the Baroque era.” Stop there until Bach comes back 6 months later, where you can add the title of each piece. Again, 6 months after that when Bach comes around again, discuss instruments.
Cue the child. “this is the last day to listen to Bach. Tomorrow we will start listening to a new composer: Mozart.” The child will start to request music by composer. “Daddy, can we listen to Beethoven’s music?”
Get an iPod with an iHome iH5 for Christmas. Makes it much easier to manage listening. This is your music curriculum for life. It’s worth a few bucks. You don’t need a large-capacity iPod, because you can use your computer to just put on the music you need for the next few weeks. Get a used one if you don’t have lots of money. Note: some iPods (such as the iPod Shuffle) don’t work with iHome. Check before you buy. http://www.apple.com and http://www.ihomeaudio.com/flash/default.asp
If your child is beyond preschool, look for ways to integrate the music/era/composer with the curriculum. I haven’t done this yet. Too early at age 3.
Listening Game: with your iPod, you can make listening tests. After you have 5 composers under your belt, randomly select a few short pieces and play a guessing game. Which composer is this? Which genre? Etc.

Now for other listening. Buy stories on CD and play them for the child when you are sick. The best ones are here: http://www.greathall.com/ (bad website, good storytelling)

-K

Ken

PS: I’ll teach your child music if you teach my child science.

PPS: Narnia rocks. Long live the True King.

Well, as I’ve mentioned to some of you, we’ve discovered what may be one of our main challenges in homeschooling. My health! Sometime we can do school when usually I would keep them home because of runny nose and cough or whatever – or like when school was canceled by the 1 inch of snow we got Monday – which seems a nice way not to fall behind. However, I am prone congestion & uncontrollable coughing type colds in the fall – and this is a bit tough when homeschooling! If every time I speak I start coughing and can’t stop, it’s hard to teach KTRose anything. I’m just not that good of a mime. It’s also tough to keep the motivation up when I really just want to lay on the couch and let them watch Clifford again!

So, the past few months have been challenging, but we are really motivated to track down the cause of these colds and get them stopped – or at least lessened – now.

Ken recently asked me what we are doing in the “listening” area for KTRose. This is why it’s so nice to have other friends to talk to and get ideas from. At least as far as music goes, we’ve not done anything. Hmmm… I’ve started to think of how we could work on some of that. Ken & Jen have been playing classical music for their son Benjamin with the goal of having him be able to differentiate the main classical composers. I LOVE the idea – because I remember trying to do that in High School music appreciation class and it being really challenging. Ken assures me it’s much easier for kids – and Benjamin can already at times identify Vivaldi when he hears it (Benjamin is Lydia’s age). Of course, I think Ken’s genes may have something to do with that! (Those of you who don’t know, Ken was the piano player at our wedding & is an incredible musician.) So, Ken is now hired as our music consultant for homeschooling.

Hmmm… Lisa, you may be hired for Art consultation.

What we have done in the listening area is listening to stories. We have finished The Magicians Uncle & are listening to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe now. It’s the CD set of Focus on the Family’s dramatic radio program they did once. Chronicles of Narnia is second only to the Bible is Scott’s Mom’s family – so it’s a must that they know and can converse on this topic. And yes, Scott and I are going to see it on Saturday!

For reading, KTRose knows many regular phonics and does well with simple sentences. We read another book, Pan the Tan-Man-Ram. However, reading the books is hard for her and she doesn’t like it. While she can sound out all the words individually to get the sentences, it takes so much concentration for her to get to know the sentence that she has forgotten the previous sentence. She doesn’t enjoy the process. So we have set aside the book reading part of the system and are just working on really knowing the phonics and sight words. She’s really young for this part anyway so we have just set them aside and will come back to them later.

We are also considering switching math programs. It all sounded great – and I probably would have loved the program growing up – but KTRose does NOT like it. It has made math her least favorite subject so it has been ditched. We are holding onto it because it may be a good thing to come back to in 1st grade or so. The nice thing is – I can do that! I’m thinking of switching to Saxon Math which is a really popular program in our homeschool group (and really in homeschooling nationwide). The lessons in Saxon look much more like what we all grew up with as far as the worksheets & lots of manipulatives, too. The nice thing is that most of our manipulatives from the old system will be useable with Saxon if we switch, I’m awaiting the Saxon homeschool catalog in the mail now.

My newest thing with KTRose for math is Dot-to-Dots. They are a great way for her to practice number recognition as we work on numbers up to 20. She can count to 20 no problem, but gets the numbers mixed up when she sees them. Then after she finishes the Dot-to-Dot (or two or three) she can put stickers on them, color them & cut them out (the cutting out is the highlight). Our math “program” at the moment consists of dot-to-dots, mazes, and playing with the manipulatives with Mommy. But just doing that has her doing basic addition and subtraction – so hey! Whatever works!

Science is greatly loved and is the one subject she never says she doesn’t want to do. In fact she regularly begs to keep going and read more. I’m amazed at what she can retain when we do the questions for the day at the end. Her subject preference list is:

Science
Art (such as my pathetic attempts are)
Read aloud
Bible
History (3, 4, and 5 are all kinda the same to her)
Reading
Math (at least the current program – she likes it more as play with manipulatives time)

What I feel I have accomplished since August is really knowing what she knows and her ability level in the different areas. I found what areas she loves, what she really doesn’t like, and what she just isn’t ready for yet. I’ve learned how to approach teaching her a new topic so she will want to listen. My ability to read aloud with lots of inflection & gesturing has sky-rocketed. My comfort with abandoning one way of teaching whatever individual concept and waiting until I come up with another is growing. KTRose and I are both comfortable with me saying “You know, I’m not doing a good job of explaining this to you, am I? How about we wait until Mommy comes up with a better way.” Sometimes it’s later that afternoon that I think of something – sometimes it’s days. Sometimes it’s just a concept she’s not ready for and I have slow myself down and say, “She’s 5. She doesn’t have to get this yet.” Do you believe I have a 5 year old!?

Well, that’s the update. I hope all is going well in your homes. I hope that Christmas is a time you can rest at least a little and enjoy the celebration it is! School is done for the day here, so I’m being tugged at to watch a little Clifford.