Home Education - Language Arts
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Literacy and Beginner Readers
Educational experts are enthusiastic in promoting exposure to literature, and exposure from a young age, as the key to reading success. Language, thinking and literacy development are fostered by regular reading. Enjoying and sharing books has been played a huge role in our family culture over the years, however at times it has ebbed rather than flowed. I was recently discussing these tides with a friend and reflecting on how this may have affected the ages our children began reading. My friend had noted a similar pattern in her own home. When our older children were young we enjoyed a huge amount of literature together. We read many picture books…
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Immersion in Quality Literature
My childhood home was a home of books; thousands of books, I don’t recall many picture books, but we had shelves of quality novels mixed with twaddle. This immersion in quality literature encouraged my own love of reading. Making the decision early on to home educate our children, I began reading about home education approaches and knew our learning would not be reliant on text books. When I first read of Charlotte Mason I was immediately drawn to her love of Living Books, I had found someone whose experience bore out my instinctive thoughts! The past 17 years of parenting have been filled with reading, books are an integral part of…
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Charlotte Mason and Dictation
When Koala was seven I heard of Charlotte Mason for the first time, her ideas resonated with me, in particular her teaching on Language Arts and Living Books. At nine Koala began dictation lessons, they have long been part of our learning. Over the years we have used various resources, Bible passages, Psalms, Catechism questions, a current read aloud, excerpts from the Queensland School Readers(excellent quality literature) and more recently we have purchased Spelling Wisdom. The quality of literature in these books is incredible and truthfully they are making our days flow far smoother. Despite years of dictation though, I still felt we were missing the result I desired. The…
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Rosetta Stone Contest
The longer I homeschool with my teenagers the more I can see what a benefit technology can be; it can foster independence and present a first rate education. Last year we developed a love of Latin when we had the brief experience of a Latin Mass community and the boys learned to serve. I would love to continue our knowledge of Latin so in the hope of winning I present: ****Rosetta Stone is the fastest way to learn a language and has been the #1 foreign language curriculum among homeschoolers for a while — and you can WIN the *all new* version 3 Rosetta Stone Homeschool LATIN program… FOR FREE!…
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Encouraging Budding Writers
As I shared Carpenter and Koala have been busy writing novelettes. Carpenter has always been interested in writing although his spelling has not always been easy to follow, recently though he has made great improvement. Writing for an audience is a valuable experience as he not only has to take care with his mechanics but has to be certain that his writing reads well. For years I have despaired over the lack of writing done by Koala, she has always read prolifically but never wrote. Amazingly as she has started putting pen to paper in the last year we have been astounded at just how well she can write, so…
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On Reading Matter
We are a reading family, if I confess that Jem at 4 weeks old was issued with his own library card you will understand that I literally mean what I say. Books number in the thousands in our home, every day sees various members holed up with a book, or two. I experience the blessings of this exposure daily; I hear it in the richness of the children’s choice of words, their ability to notice grammatical errors, when introducing a new field of knowledge only to have a voice pipe up, “oh I know, I know, I read about that….’ It brings challenges though too, one is to keep us…
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Reading the Works of ‘The Bard’
As I shared previously we were to study a little Shakespeare this term. Well we stayed to plan (amazing!;) We reserved a pile of books from our library and found we only had time to read the one. Stories from Shakespeare by Geraldine McCaughrean became our favourite, we read plays such as Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night. We also enjoyed listening to Shakespeare for Children by Jim Weiss this CD was of a Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Taming of the Shrew. The Bard of Avon: Story of William Shakespeare by Diane Stanley a biography for children rounded out our study. I was pleasantly surprised to find…
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Studying Shakespeare
For so long I have wanted the children to study Shakespeare but have been a little uncertain as to where to start. Jimmie’s site, Shakespeare for Children has finally given me the courage to immerse ourselves into the world of ‘The Bard.’ With the aid of the links from the above site, a pile of reserved books from the library and the purchase of Jim Weiss’ audio Shakespeare for Children I finally feel confident:)
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Picture Book Time
One of my new resolutions is to regularly fit in picture book time with my younger ones. By younger I mean Michaelangelo, Princess and Jelly Bean and of course Jack Jack. For some reason snuggling up with picture books once a great mainstay of our life has fallen by the wayside. I am determined to re-instate this time where it belongs – daily. To this end I am going to keep myself accountable by recording on the sidebar just what we have read. On the first day of ‘kick of’ I shared with Princess that we were going to pick a group of books around a theme and enjoy them.…
