The Year of Miss Agnes

What a great little book. I started this as a read-a-loud but just finished it myself. I think it should be a must read for every homeschool mom! Miss Agnes is inspiring. I think Charlotte Mason would be proud of Miss Agnes. Through Miss Agnes, the children "woke up to see the world around [them], and way beyond them" (p111). And the love of learning burned strongly in them. Miss Agnes played opera and read Robin Hood to them. She made a wall timeline and would pretend play, going back in time through a time machine to test them. Miss Agnes did not use written tests. She also did not like the "Dick and Jane" readers, so she made little books for each child, about the child. She encouraged the love of learning, and encouraged each child in his or her gifting/passion, whether it be sign language, science, music or printing, airplanes, making people feel happy, to running the house and dancing. She affirmed each child and made them feel good about themselves and each other.

It starts off a little slowly and uses "stupid" a couple times, and the use of poor grammar from the kids gets a little irritating sometimes, but the book gives an intimate look into the village life on the Alaskan frontier. Miss Agnes is absolutely inspirational in her one room schoolhouse. And the book is also full of practical teaching ideas and tips. What a great little book!

FIAR Week #7 - Papa Piccolo

This was a fun week ! A lot of work though. We started out with our review as usual (I'll have to take a picture of our boards and post them some time). We colored the Italian flag and did some map work. For art, we used watercolor paints to paint a picture of the grand canal in the style of the book, and we glued a cutout of a gondola as well. For snack, we ate spaghetti while listening to opera. Several said " I don't like it", refering to the opera. Then the fun part was painting these little dogs and cats I found at Walmart. They were told to name their pets, and at the end of class, we had an adoption ceremony. They held up their right hands and pledged to take care of their pet, and were rewarded with a certificate. We made little boxes filled with tissue paper for them to take their pets home in. The kids were really excited. Except Superman. He didn't like how his puppy turned out, so he didn't want to bring it home he said. Sigh.

We also read:
















But didn't have time to get to The Gondolier of Venice. It's a cute book with a good story line about the city of Venice sinking. But the ending is not satisfying, in my opinion.

At home we also read Gabriella's Song.















I really enjoyed reading (and singing some parts) this book to the boys. It's a beautiful book about the city of music. This one was satisfying.


There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal!













Superman likeed this book above the others. It's a more modern book with comical, watercolor pictures. It's not as descriptive in writing or in art of Venice, but S seemed to enjoy this book. He asked for it again as soon as I read it. On a side note, it's authored by the grandson of the Bemelmans (of Madeline).

[edit: After a second read, I like it better. It's a fun and exciting book. It does make mention of the historic buildings and bridges, and there's a lot of Italian interspersed through out the book. A fun page was where the tourists makes exclamations in their own language. However, I did not like the inference made that it is boring to hang out with your parents, and the author uses "stupid" and "dumb" once. Oh, an interesting thing about this book is you learn the sea animals that live in the Grand Canal.]

Zoe Sophia's Scrapbook: An Adventure in Venice was another book I checked out from the Library but we ended up not reading that one. It looked interesting (it's in a diary format) but was a little too lengthy and descriptive for my 5 year old, I think.

















And of course, we've been listening to Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery a lot this week.

Geography

For our FIAR class, we've been using some books in class or at home that we've been enjoying as we travel to different cities and countries












We learned about the Eiffel Tower and the Great Wall of China.


And a new series that I discovered is great. They're books by Miroslav Sasek.










We'll be using this one when we row Papa Piccolo. Other ones in the series include This is Paris, This is London, This is Israel, among others.

And The Usborne Internet-Linked Introduction to Asia has beautiful pictures that give you a good feel for what the countries are like.













Here's another interesting one. It's called Anno's Spain. It's a wordless picture book, with two page spreads, covering different historical periods, different regions, etc.... It's quite beautiful and interesting. If you look carefully, there's a lot of interesting details. We'll have to check this one out again to take a closer look.

Schedule 2008-09

Well, it' only the middle of October (almost a full quarter of school for some) but I've finally got a schedule down on paper for us. I've written up an outline for our days, a checklist for B, and checklist for me. Now, we don't get to nearly half of what's on paper, but it's ideally what I'd like to be able to accomplish. At least if I have it on paper, it helps me to somewhat structure our day and fall into a routine (which btw, we desperately need). I want to provide lots of time for "masterly inactivity" as Charlotte Mason would put it, but too much time with no structure plus three little boys equals too much fighting and bickering.

The first part of our day is for the basic three r's (although even that, we don't get to all of it with the toddler and all). The second part is for the more fun stuff like history and science. We're not getting past the three r's yet but I'm not stressing (at least trying not to) since B is only in the second grade. Sometimes I wonder though if all the history & science planning and researching is necessary. Is it what's really good for my boys or is it me giving into my inner pressures and trying to satisfy my desires. I mean really, they would love to just go to the park, or go climb trees, or do some digging. I guess I have to strike a balance.

FIAR Week #6 - The Story of Ferdinand

The boys were sick, so we missed today's co-op class which is too bad because I love this book. It's a story about a bull that enjoys smelling flowers over bullfighting. I like this story for the simple illustrations, for the love of flowers, and for being content with oneself. We own this book and have read it many times before so it's all right, although we missed out on some great activities like smelling flowers and learning it's different parts, having empanadas and horchata for snack, and drawing outlines of our bodies on huge butcher paper to measure our height! We'll have to enjoy the book at home.

Listening & Memorization

I wanted to make a note of this article by Andrew Pudewa who states that the two most important skills needed for children to become good writers are (1) listening (being read to out loud) and
(2) memorization. This article reinforces my desire to and belief in reading out loud to my children (although right now it's next to impossible with a toddler around). And now I'm going to actively add poetry to our read-a-louds.

My Bat Vehicle

(A post by Batman, dictated to Mom)

This is a picture of my batmobile before we broke it. We broke it because there was this bat contest and I wanted to enter and then my Dad gave me the idea of breaking this batmobile. So I broke it and I built a batmobile to enter the contest but then my Mom and Dad said that I needed to make something more creative so I am going to do that.














Things my batmobile can do.
First of all, there's a little steering wheel on the inside and if you turn it, you open the front mask and the mask will go up and in it's place will be two turbines. And if you move the batmobile, these turbines will spin.











And inside there is a seat that can move and the steering wheel that moves the mask up and down.















Another thing that my batmobile can do.
Although I didn't put any lego fires in, if you move the car back and forth, and you have lego fires inside those turbines, the turbines will spin the lego fires.


























And if you're wondering who built this, I, my Dad and my brother helped me.












This is the picture of the batmobile that I'm probably going to use to enter the contest. And also, if you're wondering who built this, Idid.











And do you know what that little bomb shooting thing is? It's a bomb. If you pull back the lever it will shoot the bomb.












































And this is what you win if you win the contest. For grand prize, which is what I'm trying to get, you get Xbox 360, and a copy of the Lego Batman video game! And then if you win one of the 25 second prizes, you get a copy of the Lego Batman video game, and a package of Lego Batmans sets. And if you win third prize, you just get a copy of the Lego Batman video game.

A Trip to the Beach

FIAR Week #5 - Mirette on the High Wire

Due to miscommunication, we didn't have the book for class ! So we had to improvise and read The Happy Lion (which is a good book too, by Roger Duviosin, the author of Petunia). We colored the flag of France and mapped Europe. We learned some french expressions and drank hot cocoa with chocolate eclairs, pretending we were sitting in a Parisian cafe! It was fun, especially for the little girls. And then we built the Eiffel Tower out of clay for our art.

At home, we read a couple of nice books.


















A really beautiful book, illustrated with watercolors. There are some scenes that are really beautiful. But there was one page with cancan dancers that I didn't care for.




















Another cute book with photographic illustrations and a recipe for crepes at the back!

Btw, we read Mirette at home and out of all the FIAR books, Superman seems to like this book the best so far!

FIAR Week #4 - The Story of Ping

This week we rowed The Story of Ping at co-op. We're getting into a rhythm so it's good. We start by reviewing our geography and our animals. And that leads nicely into where we'll be visiting today and any animals that might be in the story. So today we looked at some books on Asia and China (particularly The Great Wall) and then headed into our story. Today's art lesson was learning to make water ripples and blending with colored pencils. Most of the art we've been doing seems to be going over the kids' heads. A few catch on but most of them, they just do their own thing. We concluded the first hour with the buoyancy test. That was really fun and the kids seemed to really enjoy it. The second hour was supposed to be spent doing some math, but our math today included cutting out ducks and the cutting completely absorbed all the time. We didn't even get to our rice cakes and our chopsticks. So it was a little rushed at the end but it was fun.

At home, we supplemented by reading The Hungry Duckling, The Five Chinese Brothers, and The Story of Noodles (which by the way, Superman really, really liked). He learned how to say noodles in Chinese "mian tiao".

2008-09 School Pictures

We had pictures taken today at co-op.















Here's one of the whole gang. (Oops, I cut off some heads.)
















A silly one.















Pre-K & Kind. class.















Gr 1-3 class.















And one with mom and the boys.

Weekly Report : Sept. 15 - 19

More of the same -o in terms of the three r's this week. I guess that's a good thing.
I did want to post some pictures from Batman's class at co-op (American History). They've been covering a different topic every week and it's been really good. He's enjoying it a lot.
















Week 1 - Leif Ericson, the viking who first discovered America.
















Week 2 - Christopher Columbus
















Week 3 - Jamestown

FIAR Week #3 - Night of the Moonjellies

Today we read Night of the Moonjellies. I don't know why but this book seemed to be a little over the kids heads. We looked at the New England states for geography and for science we looked at this book Creatures That Glow. We sat back to back to feel our vertebrae , and we squished jello to feel what a moon jelly might feel like. For art, we colored an ocean scene with oil pastels. Then we had fun playing store (or Mar-Gra's) with monopoly money. We also read this book Surrounded by Sea: Life on a New England Fishing Island.
















Here is Superman's re-creation of the ocean scene from the book. He decided to add a sun though. He likes bright and cheery, I guess.
















Batman decided to try his hands at oil pastels as well when we got home.

FIAR Week #2 - How To Make An Apple Pie & See The World

Today was our second class at co-op. I think the kids are getting the idea. Not one asked, "When's playtime?" I think last week, we were asked that all throughout.

Today was a fun class. We read the book and colored the flag of Sri Lanka. We looked at the map and at some farm animals. We pantomimed some of the action words for language arts. The fun part was baking mini apple pies and taste testing different apples. We baked mini apple pies in muffin tins and taste tested four different apples and graphed the results. Fuji came out on top. We read a go-along book called Tiny, Tiny Boy and Big, Big Cow, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman.
















Superman eating his creation.

















Going over the results of our taste test.

Weekly Report : Sept. 8-11, 2008

Well, this week was a big week for us - we started co-op! Superman is taking a FIAR class and Batman is taking American History. It was an even bigger week because I'm teaching FIAR! Phew, am I ever glad that the first week is over.

B has been working on his math and copywork steadily. We are trying to commit to memory even and odd skip count numbers by 2. He's coming along. We added FLL and narration of Aesop this week. Narration is a little rusty from the summer break. On the other hand though, he sat down today and wrote a report on the book Leif the Lucky all by himself (aside from the spelling of certain words he asked)! I don't know what propelled him to do this. He just sat down and started writing away and told me not to look. He's written a lot of stories, comics, and letters but they were all dictated to me. I think this is his first piece of writing (long writing) that he has written (both composition and handwriting) that he has done by himself. He did really well. Way to go B!

I've read that writing is really a two part process. The first is the formation of words and ideas in the head, then the second part is putting the words on paper. They are two separate processes. Composition can be learned in the mind before the hand is ready to put it to paper. Maybe B's hand caught up to his thoughts today.

For Superman, we continued with his letters from Handwriting Without Tears and followed up with this week's FIAR material.

I'm still trying to figure out how to juggle a toddler in there. Haven't really implemented my plan yet. Just wasn't the week for that yet I guess.

FIAR Week #1 - Petunia

This was our first week at FIAR co-op and we rowed Petunia.
We have 17 kids in the class and though they're mostly kindergardeners and first graders, they seemed really young. We read Petunia and the books below. As well, we did coloring sheets for the USA flag and for the continent of North America. We also did math using this from Homeschool Share. And cut out a cute barn as well. We talked about teeth and I showed them the experiment for eggs in vinegar (the acid eats away at the shell made of calcium).
I realized I have to simplify and plan for longer time for the activities. All in all, it was a good first class.

Let's Read & Find Out Science : How Many Teeth





Dr. DeSoto

A mouse dentist that treats and outwits a fox.