Learning
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Studying The Russian Revolution
On the weekend I was updating our previous First World War plans to suit our 11th grader and I realised anew that one of the rewarding results of maintaining a blog is to be able to search your own blog for ‘those plans I wrote before’. Our 9th and 7th graders are studying The Russian Revolution this term therefore sharing our Russian Revolution plans in the desire to help someone else also searching but also to help myself in another year or two;) The books suggested below reflect what is available at our local library (alas) I’m certain there are other wonderful titles available. Websites http://www.skwirk.com.au/p-u_s-56_u-427/the-russian-revolution/qld/sose-history http://www.angelfire.com/biz5/romanovs/links.html http://www.oocities.org/athens/bridge/1230/Tsar.html http://randomnetstuff.com/page/anastasia/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Romanov An online…
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Inspired by Our Koala Sighting
Inspired by our koala sighting this week our ‘A Book & Activity’ was all about koalas. Our readings included; Koala Lou by Mem Fox, Kolo the bush Koala(OOP) and Two-Thumbs the Koala by Leslie Rees.(OOP) The first day we made toilet paper roll Koalas. Next we enjoyed making origami koalas. On the third day we made movable koalas. Everybody enjoyed joining in once again and my enthusiasm continues to grow:) well it does about ‘a book & activity,’ I confess we didn’t manage all our more formal academics, so obviously I’m still a ‘work in progress’.
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Nurturing My Lost Enthusiasm
Home educating a wide age spread can be a challenge and sometimes there are casualties. For months now, one of our casualties has been our little ones, blush. I had plans but they consisted of.. “I’ll read two picture books a day and…” but we weren’t achieving much. For years I used to overplan, investing hours that seemed wasted as our plans always changed. Attempting to change this situation I became more relaxed and let my planning go. We had a broad structure but no finer details. However I’ve come the the realisation that planning created & fed my enthusiasm. So it wasn’t wasted, it just translated differently. Over the…
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The Pen is Mighty
This month’s Homeschool High School Carnival is hosted by Take Up and Read and we are chatting about: Writing and Composition in High School What place do you see writing have in your high schoolers education? Do you use a writing program? What approach do you use? Which ‘tools’ did you use in the younger years that helped prepare your high schooler to write and prepare them to join “the Great Conversation?” Learning to write well is a high priority in our home, a goal in which we work towards from the earliest years. As our overriding academic goal is to nurture “thinkers and effective communicators, both in the written and the spoken word” a large portion…
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The Wide View: Homeschool High School Carnival
Welcome to the first edition of the Homeschool High School Carnival! We have a broad and fascinating line up of contributions, grab a cuppa and spend time perusing the shared stories from these homeschooling families, may you feel inspired, encouraged and supported. The Wide View: How does your family’s ‘big picture’/goals/educational philosophy affect/guide your planning and translate into what your highschoolers do on a daily/weekly basis? Do you generalise or specialise? Angela shares: Taking the Road Less Traveled in High School. Angela provides a brief history of how the way her teens learn is dependent on the philosophy of freedom within limits they have developed over the years, we catch a brief glimpse of…
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The Mission, The Strategy, The Focus
Participating in the Homeschool High School Carnival, in fact this is our launch edition! Sharing my thoughts today about: The Wide View….How does your family’s ‘big picture’/goals/educational philosophy affect/guide your planning and translate into what your highschoolers do on a daily/weekly basis? Do you generalise or specialise? Like many home educating families we began this journey with ideas, thrilling, inspiring ideas, with plans to set our little corner of the world on fire, along the way our journey has taken twists and turns, some as thrilling as hoped, some rather unexpected. Travelling the journey we have tried to keep the ‘big picture’ in mind, we believe that God has a plan…
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Homeschool High School Carnival!
It is with great excitement that I share with you the launching of Homeschool High School Carnival!! Homeschooling our children through the high school years can be one of the most rewarding times in our homeschool journey, the fascinating conversations, the delving deeper into learning, nurturing the emergence of our children into young adults is captivating. Yet this journey can also be a time of uncertainty, a questioning of our discernment as we help our young adults make decisions and reach their potential. There is a need for families homeschooling high schoolers to support and inspire one other. Recently an idea was born and the flames were fanned to life of…
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Our Spelling Dilemma
Our older/middle children are all strong readers, for the most part they have learnt to read with relative ease. Our approach has been to immerse in literature and poetry, then introduce phonetic sounds via Spalding phonics, with the aid of games and our chart. We follow with lots of encouragement as they begin with basic readers. Although we use Spalding’s phonic cards we abandoned their spelling program very early on as the children hated their markings with a passion. Nor did I find the teacher book friendly despite the fact that I have actually undertaken week long courses in both Spalding and LEM Phonics. Spalding proponents would contend this was not a wise…
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Quality Literature
“For the children? They must grow up upon the best… There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ represent their standard in poetry, DeFoe and Stevenson, in prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature– that is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life.”(Vol 2 pg 263)When I first discovered Charlotte Mason and read her thoughts on living books, I knew I had found a kindred spirit! Some of her other teachings were harder to implement, some we have never succeeded in introducing consistently, but her insistence on quality literature was…
