Year in Review: Our Book Stack

I love taking pictures of our book stacks for the year! It never fails to make me feel like we accomplished something good. Many of these books are from Ambleside Online Year 2 and Year 4, though we did some substitutions (mostly for Canadian history and geography).

The Books We Read Together

As last year, we read a fair number of books together. We had a rotation going at breakfast, and another at teatime. I have not included the books we read at bedtime because they were not narrated and we don't think of them as "school books". Some of these books are ones we are reading over several years.

The Little Woman 

Canadian Wonder Tales (ongoing)

The Blue Fairy Book (ongoing)

Trial and Triumph (ongoing)

Elementary Geography

The Ocean of Truth

Drummer Boy for Montcalm

The Story of Canada (Brown et al) (ongoing)

Great Canadian Adventures (selections. ongoing)

The Story of Canada (Marsh) (selections, ongoing)

Famous Indians (section about Joseph Brant)

The Map-Maker

Robinson Crusoe

Kidnapped

Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (selections)

Poetry for Young People: Emily Dickinson (selections)

A Lakeland Anthology: William Wordsworth (selections)

Mathematicians Are People, Too (selections)

SA(9)'s School Books

Since several of the books we read together were from SA's Year 4 (Trial and Triumph, The Ocean of Truth, Robinson Crusoe, Kidnapped), his stack looks a little short! Not pictured are Plutarch and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. We read Shakespeare together with an audio production, and I read Plutarch aloud to him. SA's favourite books this year were George Washington's World, The Map-Maker, and Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare: MacBeth

Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Shakespeare: Julius Caesar

Plutarch: Romulus

Plutarch: Publicola

Madam How and Lady Why (ongoing)

Bullfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable (ongoing)

The Story-Book of Science

George Washington's World (incomplete)

JJ(7)'s School Books

JJ is a very strong reader, and though I was reading some of his books aloud to him at the beginning of the year, by the end he was reading all of these on his own. You may notice that we left out several of the Year 2 books. This is because we were reading a number of books together (above) and I didn't want to overload him. JJ's favourite books this year were The Little Duke, The Wind in the Willows, and The Blue Fairy Book (not a Year 2 book, but I have fairy tales on constant rotation in this season of life).

Stories from Shakespeare (selections)

The Little Duke

The Burgess Animal Book for Children

Understood Betsy

Robin Hood (ongoing)

The Wind in the Willows

Seabird

The books above do not reflect everything we did. We studied Dutch artists De Hooch and Van Ruisdael, early Canadian artist Thomas Davies, and French artist Jacques Louis David. We listened to music composed by Telemann and Corelli, Copland and Gershwin, and Beethoven. We read French children's books La Chenille qui Fait des Trous, Ours Brun, and Trois Souris Peintres. In the Bible, we studied Joshua and Judges, Mark and part of Acts. The boys also did a number of paper sloyd projects. Outside the home, they participated in a children's choir and took swimming lessons.

SA was well into grade 5 of Singapore Math (Primary Mathematics US Edition) by the end of the year. He started KISS Grammar and did well with it. We did not begin Latin this year, as I wanted him to know more grammar before beginning Visual Latin. Studied dictation also went amazingly well, and we could see definite progress from the beginning of the year to the end. He did well with learning cursive italic handwriting, but did not gain ease with it yet. We did not begin written narrations, as he was just not ready. However, I started to write down his narrations from George Washington's World so he could begin to get used to the feeling of having his words written down. That was hard for him, as he is a perfectionist and it would take forever for the words to come out (a problem I understand all too well!). I ended up teaching him an oral version of freewriting, which is the technique that helped me break out of that paralyzing perfectionism myself. He made progress, and the words started flowing more easily by the end of the year. 

JJ completed book 2A in Singapore Math. We switched from Miquon part way through the year.  He prints with ease, so he began cursive italic this year as well. 

MM(5) started to learn to read, and insisted on doing math while the other boys were doing it. I printed off Year 1 of MEP Math and he completed it. I tried to have some one-on-one time with him every morning before the school day started, and we read Charlotte's Web, Little House in the Big Woods, and part of Little House on the Prairie. Of course, he also listened in on all the reading we did together and enjoyed the pictures, music, and Shakespeare. 

Writing about all we accomplished makes me feel good, even though I dropped the ball on several things (again.). We dropped piano. Once again, we did very little in our nature notebooks after the first term. French was a failure, other than the children's books we read. We could have done more of several things: dictation, poetry, map work, timeline work.  I could have written an entire post on what we missed and what we could have done better, but I'm making a choice to give thanks for what we were able to accomplish. It was a good year.

Using Children's Books for French Language Study

As a supplement to our French curriculum this term we have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar in French. I borrowed La Chenille Qui Fait Des Trous from the library, and we have been watching it on YouTube weekly so the children hear it read with a good accent. What's nice about this book for beginning French students is that it has a fair amount of repetition. It also includes numbers from 1-5, the days of the week, and the names of several fruit and different kinds of food.



The only drawback to this particular choice could have been that it is not an exact translation (The title is translated back into English as The Caterpillar that Makes Holes). However, the vocabulary is simple enough that we haven't found it to be a problem.

It was so fun last week to hear AJ(2) on the couch with the English version of the book saying, "Look Mama! Un papillon!" He also likes pointing out "la chenille" on every page.

My choice for the second six weeks of our term was going to be Georges va au Zoo (Curious George Goes to the Zoo), but sadly it is not on YouTube. I'm not sure if I want to read it to the boys myself. I could do it, but my French accent is not that great. (My husband has told me that I put emphasis on all the wrong syllables, and gave me an impression of how this would sound if I did it in English. My confidence is gone!)

Does anyone out there have any good ideas for other children's books I can use in this way? We really enjoyed doing this with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I'd like to keep going.

Our Year 2 with Ambleside Online

This summer SA(8) finished Ambleside Online Year 2. I may have mentioned before how grateful I am for the booklists Ambleside Online provides so I can get on with homeschooling. Once again I did not deviate much from what they laid out, though I did begin with Canadian history near the end of Year 2.

Next year is going to be interesting, as I will finally have two students! JJ(6) will be starting Year 1, and SA(8) will go on to Year 3. Of course, I'm not implying that JJ hasn't been learning before this --he learned to read this year, and is loving his math. But somehow starting Year 1 is still serious business for me. School suddenly becomes much less casual somehow. I am a little overwhelmed at the thought of two students. I know, you moms of many. It's nothing! But it seems like a lot to me now. I know I will adjust and move on, and do it again when I add another student, and another. Each step is an adjustment, though, and feels like a big deal.

Anyway, (big breath) before I jump into that I'm just going to take a moment to look back at Year 2. This is going to be long, sorry!

The Books

The books are my favourite part. There is something so satisfying about gathering a good feast of wonderful books and getting to know them well over the course of the school year. Some of the books are hard at the beginning, and then your student adjusts and you suddenly realize that what was once difficult has become easy. I also noticed over the year that SA made progress in narration from telling back a few sentences at a time to a few paragraphs at a time.

The History Books

Our Island Story (British History) was continued from Year 1. I continued to read aloud, even though SA became quite good at reading over the year. This book has a lot of names and places. In Year 3, I think I will introduce the names at the beginning of the lesson and allow him to read to himself.

We added several names that stood out to us to our timeline. I love our timeline! This year we will start a fresh one because JJ is starting school. I am considering making it a little bit longer (more space for SA) and giving SA the bottom portion and JJ the top. We will transfer names from stories that SA found especially compelling from the old timeline to the new one. At this age it is not so much about understanding who the most important figures are as it is about getting to know people in history and making connections between them. Having some people he already knows on our new timeline will help him make those connections.

We also had a few readings from A Child's History of the World this year. I was excited about this book at the beginning of the year, but in the end I didn't love it. I think it was the tone...it seemed to talk down to children a bit. However, we had some good experiences with it, especially when it enriched our understanding of Our Island Story.

Using Ambleside Online, we begin to study the history of our country parallel to the history of Britain when European explorers begin to arrive in the New World. I am reconsidering that for JJ's Year 1 next year (I would like to start with Canadian history from the beginning.). However, with SA I have followed AO as written and so we began our Canadian history near the end of Year 2. We used E.L. Marsh's Story of Canada for the stories of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot, and supplemented with Brown's Story of Canada for more on John Cabot. This worked well, and I would do it again. It meant more of an emphasis on Cabot than Columbus, which was appropriate for our Canadian homeschool. The books complemented each other well, not overlapping so much as adding to each other.

The Little Duke is a good example of a book that we grew into this year. It was difficult for SA to narrate at first, with all its description. However, over time narration got easier, and we grew to love the characters. I'm already looking forward to reading it again with my next child.

Trial and Triumph went much better this year than last year.

Somehow I missed Diane Stanley's Joan of Arc! I didn't buy it because it's in our local library system, but though I ordered it, it never ended up at my house.


The Literature

We managed to read through most of Pilgrim's Progress Book 1 in Term 1 of our school year. (It was supposed to take all year...) I don't know why, but I think it went that fast because the schedule told us to read 800 words a week. I wasn't about to count out 800 words every time, so I just read a little every day. We started in on Book 2, but went much slower. We still have a little bit to finish up in the new school year. The boys told me what to draw afterwards in a sort of picture narration. (SA in particular is not much of a draw-er...) So really, it was just a narration, but it felt unique to them because I drew what they were saying.

Understood Betsy was a fun, easy read in term 1. We really started to lengthen the amounts I could read to SA before we broke for narration, and that carried over into his other narrations.

The Wind in the Willows was SA's favourite of the year, I think, along with Robin Hood.

We dropped Parables from Nature.

Natural History and Geography

These were the books SA read on his own: Tree in the Trail, Seabird, and The Burgess Animal Book. I read Burgess aloud sometimes, but I found that he actually did a better job of narrating when he read it himself.  Usually, I set the timer for ten minutes. When the timer went, he read on to a good stopping-place and marked it in pencil (so he'd know where to start next time...). Then he came to me and narrated. I am hoping to hand over more of his reading to him in the coming school year.

Our Circle Time

Circle time is our time to learn things together as a family. As I have done from the beginning, I divided our "Circle Time" into two parts. One part was immediately after breakfast for Bible reading and narration, Scripture and hymn memory work, and prayer. The other part began at around 10:00 and marked the beginning of our school days. We read poetry on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, studied pictures on Tuesdays, and listened to music on Thursdays. A real highlight in the poetry this year was Robert Frost's little book You Come Too. Whenever I gave the children a choice of what to read, SA chose from that book. (JJ and MM still love Cat up a Tree.) My favourite times of picture study were in Term 2, when we studied Canadian artist Tom Thomson. Music...well...let's just say I need to work on getting them to sit quietly and listen. We really enjoyed watching The Nutcracker ballet (on YouTube) before Christmas.

We also tried to work on our French at Circle Time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In Term 2, SA really enjoyed working online with Middlebury Interactive Languages. I didn't end up purchasing more of it, though, as it is expensive! In term 3, we watched quite a few BookBox stories in French on YouTube. They were much in the same style as the Middlebury Interactive program (only without the step-by-step lessons, of course.). The stories seem to be real folk tales from all over the world. Also like Middlebury Interactive, they include the written word at the bottom of the screen (which Charlotte Mason would not have approved of, at least not at first.). I don't feel that I used these stories as well as I could have. I know I need to do better at teaching foreign language. Or maybe I just need to hand it over to my husband...


We did well (for us) with drawing in the third term. I discovered the Art for Kids Hub. I am no artist, and I have picked up and dropped Drawing with Children several times already in the few years I've been homeschooling. I still like it a lot, but I just can't seem to get any momentum with it. With the Art for Kids Hub, we'd just watch a video once a week and follow along. SA did not complain, and JJ and MM continued to draw throughout the week based on that one lesson. If I can't be perfect, art lessons done this way still bless my family...

The Skills

SA made a lot of progress in copywork from the beginning of the year to the end. His neatness remained about the same throughout the year, but his fluency increased quite a bit. He went from printing three words in five minutes to printing two or three lines. He is still "behind" other children his age, and would still not voluntarily pick up a pencil and write something down. I think this coming year will be the year it takes off, though. He is becoming conscious that he can't write or spell what his cousin (just slightly older) can. JJ is also catching up with him in this area. I think these things may just give him the motivation he needs. I may add spelling to circle time this year, as I think SA and JJ will be at about the same level this year.

We made some changes between Term 2 and Term 3 in the way we do math. Those changes have worked out very well, and I plan to keep going with them. Our every-day math conversations started coming back, and SA began to amaze me again with the way he figures things out. He had been getting bored with just Singapore Math day after day, it was as simple as that. More variety and more inspiration has been good for him.


We had a good year. We still love homeschooling, and learning, and Ambleside Online!



Keep a Thankful Heart as You Plan

Are you an idealist?

I can be an idealist when it comes to homeschooling. I have great ideals in Charlotte Mason's philosophy and methods, and I do my best to live up to them. But I fail sometimes. I lose energy, and things I planned don't happen. These things creep on me almost imperceptibly, until I realize suddenly that we haven't done x, y, and z for weeks. This happens especially at the end of a school year, when spring arrives and boys' attention spans shrink.

The result is that as we wrapped up this school year last week, my first thought was to take stock of everything that went wrong and to plan how it will be better next year.

• SA(7) did only two (of twelve) nature journal entries in the last term. Obviously, that was not well-planned.
• I did not increase the amount of reading for narration that SA did on his own over the year as I had planned. I was enjoying reading aloud to him, and I didn't consider what was best for him.
• I feel SA's copywork got a little more sloppy over the year as he gained speed, and I did not deal with it.
• I didn't go outside enough with my children.
• I didn't sit down every day with JJ(5) to teach him to read.
• And on, and on...

I felt like a failure!
(Don't laugh, you older homeschool moms... I'm realizing as I write this that this doesn't sound all that terrible.)

Once I had a little rest, I realized that my feelings did not reflect reality. Yes, there were things that I could have and should have done better, things that I will plan to improve next year. But there are many, many things to give thanks for, too.

I'm writing this list to remind myself, and you.

Don't jump into planning for next year before giving thanks for the blessings of last year.

Look at all of it with a thankful heart, and you will feel so much more ready to go on and do what must be done.

Here's some of my thanksgiving list.

• We are so rich in books. Not just any books, good, living books. Even better, we don't just have them on the shelf, but we are reading them and getting to know them well through narration. SA has gotten to know the books in Ambleside Online Year 2 this past year. When I asked SA for his favourite, he picked two: Robin Hood and The Wind in the Willows.

• SA(7) has a twinkle in his eye when it comes to poetry that wasn't there before this year. This year, a dear friend gave us Robert Frost's You Come Too, and it became his favourite. He has always enjoyed our poetry tea time. In kindergarten, he loved it for the snacks that he could form into mathematical equations on his plate. In Year One, he loved it because it was a predictable and steady part of our day. In Year Two, he has found a poet he loves. This makes me so happy!

• Despite my failure to sit down with him every day, JJ(5) learned to read. He decided he wanted to. I had an Explode the Code book that he worked in independently, and he insisted on sitting down with Alpha Phonics a few times a week for a while. Then I pulled out an easy to read book one week, and another one the next week, and he hasn't looked back.

• For the first time, MM(3) learned the Bible passage we memorized this term (and is very proud to recite it...).

• Our math lessons were revitalized in the last term of this year by the addition of inspiring stories of mathematicians, by me sitting down with him to explore new concepts orally a few times a week (using MEP), and by the judicious use of DreamBox for fluency. SA had been losing a bit of his sparkle as he sat down day after day with his Singapore Math. He still does Singapore as his core, but the joy and creativity is back with these additions.

As I begin planning for next year, I don't only need to consider my failures. I also need to remember what we did well, and continue the good work there. Of course I continue to reach for my ideals. I'm not saying my failures are okay or that I don't need to improve. But to be healthy and happy in my homeschooling, I will keep a thankful heart.

How about you? How are you doing as you plan for next year? Do you take time to give thanks?

Highlights from Year 2, Term 2 Exams

Last week Thursday, SA(7) finished Term 2 of Ambleside Online Year 2. Since we had one day left in the week, I decided to do just a few exam questions over the rest of Thursday and Friday rather than carrying the exams over into this week.

Bible

He answered two exam questions on Bible, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament. For the New Testament, I asked him to choose a parable and tell it to me. He chose the parable of the sower.

"There was a sower that sowed seeds on the path, and they got picked up by birds and the birds ate them. The ones that fell on the rocks sprang up, but then because they had no water and no roots, they withered away. The ones that fell where the weeds were got choked up. When they started growing, they got choked up by the weeds. The ones that fell on good soil were just... they didn't have any problems. They didn't get eaten by birds, they had roots and water. They just grew."

"Do you remember anything about what the parable means?" I asked.

"The seeds that fell on the rocks was one that Satan snatches the Bible. They read the Bible but it means nothing to them. The seeds that fell on the good soil are the ones that read the Bible and it meant something to them. I don't remember the ones that fell among the weeds or the ones that fell on the path."

I was very pleased with how well he remembered the parable, which we read about six weeks ago. He didn't remember Jesus' explanation very well, just some tidbits and interpretations of our discussion afterwards.

SA also recited our Bible passage for the term, Colossians 3:12-17. Normally we try to learn two or three passages per twelve-week term, but this time we had some Sunday school memory work leading up to Christmas and we only started with this in week five of the term. He began well in his recitation, but things fell apart a bit when he missed verse 16 and mixed a little of verse 15 into verse 17. He recited verse 16 when I pointed out his omission.

Picture Study

I did a picture study exam question on the spur of the moment as I was nursing the baby. "Close your eyes," I told SA, "and think about the Tom Thomson pictures we studied this term. Choose one and picture it in your mind's eye. Describe it to me, but don't tell me what it is. Then I'll see if I can figure out which one you're describing."

He willingly did this (It's the willingness that amazed me... picture study might be his least favourite thing.) and described "The West Wind" well enough for me to figure out which one he was telling me about. He started with the hills in the background (hills are very common in Tom Thomson's paintings), then described the rocks in the foreground with their reddish tint, and the wind in the sky. He didn't get around to the pine tree in the foreground until the end of his description, but I already could see the whole painting in my own mind.

"Was that your favourite painting?" I asked him.
"I don't know. I didn't know I was supposed to choose my favourite," he said.
I quickly reassured him that he didn't have to have a favourite, and the one he chose was fine. :)

Literature
I asked SA two questions about literature. One was from Pilgrim's Progress, Part Two, and one was from The Wind in the Willows.

"Tell me three things Christiana saw at the Interpreter's House."

-"The fire which was burning. On the side you could see, you could see water, but on the opposite side was oil. The water was the evil one, and the oil was the 'good one.'

-A robin with a spider in its mouth. Christiana didn't like them anymore when she knew robins ate spiders. When they are roaming, they are nice. When they are by themselves, they eat spiders.

-A tree that was rotted out in the middle, but it still grew and bore leaves. The leaves were for the devil's tinderbox." 

"Tell me your favourite part from The Wind in the Willows."

"The Barge. As he was walking, there was a barge woman, and he said he wanted to go to Toad Hall. And he asked the barge woman, 'Is Toad Hall near where you are going?' And she said, 'Yes, it is near.' He said, 'because my girls might be smashing the glass.' She said she thought they were horrible hussies. He said that he wanted to do the steering, but the barge woman told him to do that laundry that he was fond of. She saw that every moment he was getting crosser, and that he lost the soap for the fiftieth time. And then he untied the rope to the barge and mounted the horse and rode away."

History

I had time for only one exam question in history. "Tell me about the Seige of Calais." As he thought about how to answer he was frustrated to tears because all the details of all the stories we've read were blurring in his mind - he wasn't sure which details belonged with which battles. There were several King Edwards in a row and that didn't help, either. It wasn't my intention to frustrate him, so I tried to help by listing the people involved in the story:

Edward III
Governor of Calais
King Philip of France
Eustace de St Pierre and five other prominent men of Calais
Queen Philippa

Happily, he remembered which story this was when he heard Queen Philippa's name. Even so, he started somewhere in the middle of the story.

"They asked if they could be free people. And then the king said they could be free if they bring him the keys of the city and six men. And they told the king that they wanted to be free six times. They brought him the keys of the city and asked the king to let them live. Then Queen Philippa begged him not to kill them and he finally let them go without killing them and then he had a feast."

Copywork

I had SA copy "The Badger strode up the steps." His copying wasn't as neat as I know he can do it, and I made a mental note to emphasize that he must do his best work as we go forward. However, overall he has made great progress in his writing skills this term. At the beginning of the term I was having him copy my model line by line, and he was copying word by word directly beneath the model. We continued to limit our time to five minutes, but the amount of work he could do in five minutes increased from less than one to more than three lines. Towards the end of the term, I began to have him copy paragraph by paragraph. I modeled three to five lines at the top of a page, and he copied them at the bottom of the page. His neatness suffered, which I assumed was due to him copying more line by line rather than word by word. (I do want him to do that...it is what will help him exercise his visual memory and begin to learn to spell.) However, the fact that this one-line exam question was also not very neat made me think that perhaps he is getting into bad habits and I need to keep a closer eye on it.

Math

SA did his final Review for Singapore Primary Math 2B. We will begin grade 3 next term. He continues to do well with math. I rarely have to teach him anything...he simply absorbs whatever comes his way in the daily exercises. I have been considering how to spread more of a feast for him in math. I begin every term with the intention of doing math activities and games one day a week. I have wonderful resources for this, but somehow the planning involved and the little ones underfoot have meant that I did this maybe six times in the twelve-week term. Somehow I need to streamline a process, or perhaps have more of an open-and-go program that emphasizes the problem-solving/puzzling/pattern side of math. I have been thinking about supplementing his Singapore Math with Beast Academy (a big decision because it's so expensive to get here in Canada), or perhaps doing some beginning algebra with Hands-on Equations. I also continue to be periodically tempted by Right Start Math (also very expensive.). I know I have a good thing for him in Singapore Math. It progresses in a methodical way that makes sense to him. It's just that when his daily exercises usually take him about five minutes and seemingly no challenge or effort, I know I need to be doing more for him. He needs more "captain ideas" coming his way to really feed his mind and inspire him.

This week I am thinking deeply about math and history before we jump into our third term next week. I expect I'll have a post or two about those subjects before long, too.

A Timeline that Works for Us

This is not a beautiful timeline, I admit. It has no timeline figures. It is small, the width of a wall map, with an inch for each century. Its people and dates are jotted down when we please with the pen that is at hand. It works for us, though, and I plan to make one for each of my children when they begin Year 1. This was my first try, for my first student...I'm sure future timelines will become successively more orderly and beautiful.

This particular timeline is also known as a stream of history chart. I began this one a year and a half ago when Jen Snow shared the idea on her blog. She had worked out the idea from Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page, which referenced a Parent's Review article describing such a chart. The chart referenced there was intended for older children, and was to give an overview of major events in all of history.

My chart has been adapted for our own use with younger children. It does not differentiate between major and minor historical characters or events. That will come later, as what matters now is their vivid impressions of the people of history. Whenever we have come to know someone well in our lessons (whether through history, or picture study, or music appreciation, or even free reading), we add that person to our timeline.

I began by entering my dates and my husband's dates on the chart. Next, I added the children's grandparents. I also put Jesus' dates on the chart. Then I left it open, and added whoever captured our interest. Laura Ingalls Wilder was an early addition.

The greatest benefit having such a timeline has been seeing the children's enjoyment of the connections it makes between the people they have learned about. They like seeing that Mozart lived during George Washington's lifetime. They know that William Longsword, Duke of Normandy ("Little Duke" Richard's father) and William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, are not the same person, because they occupy different places on the chart. Today we added Canadian artist Tom Thomson to our chart. We noticed that we now have three people on our chart who died in 1917: Tom Thomson in Canada, Edgar Degas in France, and Buffalo Bill in the USA.

Next year I will take this chart down and put a new, clean one up for JJ, who will be in Year 1. I am thinking of making SA a timeline in a notebook at that point (He will be in year 3.).

I know you're looking at this and thinking how crowded and messy it is! When I do it again, I am considering being content with a smaller range of years. At this young age, I don't think the children appreciate that aspect of it, anyway. A smaller range of dates will allow me to make the spaces between centuries a little wider so I can fit the people in more neatly and we can see the relationships more clearly.

If you want to make a chart like this, it is easily done with a piece of Bristol board from the dollar store. Cut a wide strip, make a line down the middle, and mark each inch and label it. It's that simple.

Highlights from Year 2, Term 1 Exams

SA(7) just finished Term 1 of Ambleside Online's Year 2. Since we finished halfway through a week, I decided to try to do some exams this time.


This isn't the first time I've tried to do exams. The first time I tried was a huge failure. It was my own fault. We ended our term at the end of a week, and I tried to start exams at the beginning of the next week, after I had told him that our term was completed. I tried to sell them as a special event and a way to share with his Papa what he had learned. I even got out the video camera to record his answers. Bad, bad idea, at least with this child.

This time, I took the lessons I'd learned from that fiasco and made the exams as much like our regular school routine as I could. The only difference was that I wrote down his answers. It went much more smoothly.

I know some of you aren't familiar with Charlotte Mason or Ambleside Online, and are wondering why on earth I'd do exams with a homeschooled Grade 2 student. After all, I know what he knows, right? I've been right with him as he's been learning it. The answer is that these exams aren't really like any test you'd be familiar with from school. The best way I can think of to put it is to say I'm taking a snap-shot of where he is right now.

The value of exams for him:
-A sense of accomplishment as he himself realizes how much he knows.
-As we do them regularly, a realization that the things he learns today are not expected to be forgotten tomorrow.
-An exercise for his long-term memory.

The value of exams for me:
-A sense of peace that these methods are working and he is retaining what he has learned.
-An assessment of anything that needs to be adjusted in the future, particularly areas we neglected.
-A record of progress from term to term and year to year.

I'll be honest and say that the true reason I haven't done exams regularly until now is because deep down I had a fear that I would find he hadn't retained what he had learned. That fear was unfounded. True, there were some answers I was disappointed in, but overall I was encouraged.

Bible
We did lessons from both the Old and New Testaments this term, beginning Genesis and Matthew. This is his answer when I asked him to tell about the flood.

"God told Noah to build the ark and to bring seven pairs of the clean animals and one pair of the dirty animals. And it rained for forty days and forty nights. Then Noah sent out a raven. ("I don’t remember the name of the bird." “Dove,” I told him.). Then Noah sent out a dove, and it couldn’t find any land. Then he waited seven days and sent it out again and it came back with a leaf in her beak. And he knew there was dry land nearby. And the ark was resting on a rock. And then God told them to go out and to scatter and fill the land."

He did not do as well when I asked him what Matthew says about the birth and early life of Jesus.

"He was born in Bethlehem.Then God told them to go to different places.And then after a time they lost Jesus, and they searched for him and they were surprised to find him teaching."

(That last part is not even in the Matthew account.) I told him later I was surprised he didn't say anything about angels, or wise men. He said, "I do know that, I just couldn't find the words."


Literature
We've been reading Pilgrim's Progress after breakfast almost every day. We are almost finished with it (I think it was supposed to last us the whole year? Oh well.). Instead of our normal narration, I simply had the boys tell me what to draw after each episode. This meant that they highlighted the events more than the conversations in their narration. I think we will go through Pilgrim's Progress several times over the years, no doubt with different levels of understanding. They really enjoyed it. Here is what Seth said when I asked him how the pilgrims ended up in Doubting Castle.

"Hopeful said they should not go off the way. And Christian wanted to go off the way onto that path. They met another person, and he said it went to the Celestial City. And then he fell into a pit. And then they thought they should get out, but they almost got drowned. They slept beside the path, and then the Giant Despair saw them and took them and locked them in a dungeon. Then he said he would check for key-locks. (I don't think that's the right word.) And then they talked, and then Christian said, “I have a key that can open any lock!” And he tried it, and it fitted. And they opened the lock. But one lock, the gate, creaked so loud that it woke up the Giant Despair, but he couldn’t get out of bed and run after them. Then they went back into the way."

Another highlight this term has been Understood Betsy. I asked SA to tell me about little 'Lias, a character in the book.

"Betsy made some clothes for ‘Lias because he was all dirty and didn’t have any clothes. Then they went to the door and put the clothes on the doorstep, rang the doorbell, and ran. (Rustled in the grass, and lots of other things that make noise in the night.) A person came to the door and picked them up. They looked through the window. He looked like little Molly with no one to feed her. They hoped Mr. Pond would adopt him. The next day at school they saw that he was dirty and didn’t have any new clothes on. Disaster had happened. After little ‘Lias had said the story, Mr. Pond looked over their shoulders. And he said he will get some clothes for ‘Lias. They met him in the Hall in new store-bought clothes."

History 
We have been studying British history, going steadily through Our Island Story and a few chapters of Hillyer's Child's History of the World. We learned about William the Conqueror in both books, so I was a little surprised at SA's response when I asked about him and the Battle of Hastings
.

"William the Conqueror or William the Red?" he asked. 

"William the Conqueror," I said. "William Rufus was his son."

"Harold waited for William the Conqueror.He sailed across the sea to Harold’s kingdom.They pretended they were going away, but then they ran up again and they killed him." 

This took all of fifteen minutes to get out of him. On the positive side, it did include elements from both books. Our Island Story mentioned how long Harold waited for William to come and attack him, and Child's History of the World told about how William and his forces pretended to flee during the Battle of Hastings, then turned and defeated Harold.

I also asked him about another story from Our Island Story, the White Ship. At first it seemed as though I would not get anything. Finally I decided to prompt him. "King Henry was in Normandy, and when he was going home, someone wanted him to sail on his ship, but he couldn't go." That opened the floodgates.

"King Henry said, “The prince may go on.”And they were sailing and they laughed. And the boat suddenly stopped and the laughing stopped. And they cried for help.King Henry heard it and he said, “I hear people far away,” and they said it was a little bird.But he spoke so sternly that they went back. And many people crowded onto the small boat. As the boat overturned, two people were left clinging to the mast. And they cried for help. And one said, “Goodbye, God be with you,” and he slipped into the sea and drowned. And his clothes were made out of satin. The other person who was left wore sheepskin clothes. Just about when the sun was going to go up. And he clung to the mast until some fishermen came, and they saw the person clinging to the mast. And they brought him home. And then he said that Henry’s son died. And they said, “What terrible news to bring to England!” And nobody told the king for three days, and then they pushed a boy in the king’s room and he mumbled out the story. And the king fell down on his face, and they laid him down on a bench. When he opened his eyes again he didn’t have a happy look. Nobody ever saw him smile again."

(If that doesn't make sense to you, there is a gap in his telling...it was the prince, in a little life-boat, who spoke sternly and told them to go back for his sister.) I was struck by the details that had captured his imagination: the way the laughter stopped, the clothes that enabled one man to survive, and "Nobody ever saw him smile again."

Geography
This was a fail for me. I didn't cover the concepts I was supposed to because I assumed SA already knew them. At the same time, this showed me the value of exams... now I know I still need to go back and do it with him! I asked him, "Do you know what a compass is? Describe a compass and tell me what it does."

"A thing that tells you which way you’re going. Its little arrow turns to different directions as you turn. It is round, with an E for East, N for North, W for West, and S for South. It tells you which way we’re going."

He didn't know about the magnetic needle and how it always points north. Oh well, now he does. :)

Nature Study
We had a spider project this term, and I asked SA to tell me about it.

"We caught spiders with our spider net. And also we found them on webs and caught them with a cup and we wiggled the cup to keep them from running out. We put them in poison or freezed them. We gave them to the spider lady.And we could catch them in a spider trap uncovered or covered with a piece of cardboard. And we could check it the next day from making the spider trap and putting it in the dirt. My favourite spiders were the argiopes." (We found two types.)

SA also read and narrated from the Burgess Animal Book. This was the first book he started reading on his own for narration, and he always narrated very well. I kept the lessons very short this term (ten minutes per day, four days a week), and as a result we only got through half of the assigned readings. We will pick up speed over time, I know. I asked him to tell me about a squirrel.

"The flying squirrel. He goes about and he flies in the night. And he goes up a tree to the top of a tree, and then he jumps and flies off. His tail helps him keep his balance. And he can steer so he won’t bump into things until he lands on the tree he’s going for. And then he goes up the tree to do it all over again."

Technically, this is not correct (flying squirrels don't fly, they glide). I know he knows this. I assume the name tripped him up...

Math
I chose a few questions from his Singapore Primary Math 2B workbook, including simple multiplication and division, geometry, diagrams, and word problems with money and subtraction. He answered them easily.

The only question that tripped him up for a second was "David has 8 quarters and 12 dimes. How much money does he have altogether?" He asked me how much a quarter and a dime were worth. I told him, and he had the answer immediately. $3.20. The three was written backwards, but he included the dollar sign and the decimal point.

It wasn't quite fair of me to include that question anyway, as we didn't do the money unit in the book yet (I plan to get some Canadian money for that and haven't gotten to it yet.).

Copywork
I had SA copy a line from our Bible memory passage this term, Psalm 139. "Lead me in the way everlasting." While I normally set the timer for five  minutes and have him complete what he can in that time, I wanted him to complete the line for his exam. I put on the stop-watch so we could see how long it took him. Well. It took him 21 minutes. (I estimated that he is capable of doing it in seven.) At least it was neatly done. There is work to be done there, but then I already knew that...


Looking back over the term, there are a few other things I want to take note of:

Narration has progressed. At the beginning of the term, SA still needed to narrate after every paragraph. Now, I can read several paragraphs or even several pages in the easier books (like Understood Betsy) before stopping for narration.

The choice to slow down and work on our atmosphere and discipline at the beginning of Year 2 was a good one, but I could have picked up the pace a little as we went on and gained our balance. The first twelve weeks took us fifteen weeks including exams and one week off at the end of August. Daily, we did two readings with narration of fifteen minutes each, and one of ten minutes (that he read himself). I didn't include Bible and Pilgrim's Progress in that count, as we put those into Circle Time. I'd like to go a little more quickly as we head into winter. I'll start with the same pace in our second term, but increase the minutes per lesson to twenty over time (fifteen for the lesson he reads himself).

We skipped Parables of Nature this term. I felt I needed to cut something, and that is the book I never learned to love over the year we've already spent with it (So. Very. Wordy.). However, SA asked me about it yesterday, as he noticed it was never checked off on the schedule. He would like to read those stories, so I think we'll add it into Circle Time again once we're done with Pilgrim's Progress.

The boys need to do more chores. I haven't done a good job with that this term.

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And now, it's time to take a week off! We're going to visit my mom and dad, yay!

Independent Reading for Narration in Year 2

SA(7) is reading quite well now. Ambleside Online's booklist for year two is still mostly too advanced for him to read on his own, and I read most of them aloud to him. However, I have given him two books this term that he reads independently, and then comes and narrates to me. These two books are Holling C. Holling's Tree in the Trail and The Burgess Animal Book for Children. The language in these books (particularly Burgess) is relatively simple.

I am still keeping the lessons where he does this very short at ten minutes, but I am hoping to stretch them to fifteen or even twenty minutes by the end of the year. He is doing extremely well. He actually does a better job of narrating these books than the ones I read aloud to him. This may partly be because they are easier books, but I suspect it is also partly that his learning style is more visual than auditory. There is also a little bit of excitement in the fact that he feels like he is telling me something I might not know (since it's not something I just read aloud to him...).

I have also tried having him listen to Librivox and read along for some of his more difficult readings (The Little Duke). I am not particularly happy with that option, as I often feel like I could read it so much better to him myself, even with the French pronunciations. He likes the novelty of the audiobook experience, though, so we do it for variety sometimes.

Because of the very short lessons, we are "falling behind" on the Burgess Animal Book for Children...we are just not keeping up with the Ambleside Online schedule for it. However, he is enjoying it so much, owning it, really (this is his book to read and narrate from), that I'm not eager to jump in and help him move through it faster by reading some of it aloud. So we'll just continue at a comfortable pace. No doubt we'll speed up a little before the year is through.

Fellow CM homeschoolers, how do you transition from reading aloud to independent reading for narration? Is it a gradual process for you, or do you begin all at once at a certain point? I assume the time a child is ready varies widely from child to child. I'd love to hear your experience.

Copywork in Grade Two

"I can only offer a few hints on the teaching of writing, though much might be said. First, let the child accomplish something perfectly in every lesson--a stroke, a pothook, a letter. Let the writing lesson be short; it should not last more than five or ten minutes. Ease in writing comes by practice; but that must be secured later. In the meantime, the thing to be avoided is the habit of careless work--humpy m's, angular o's." Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p 253, emphasis mine. 

I

The above is the result of a typical copywork lesson right now for SA(7). Three little words, done in five minutes of effort. He prints fairly neatly, but not with ease. Aside from his daily copywork lesson and some numbers in his math book, he writes little to nothing. I worry about this sometimes, particularly when I notice the achievements of others around his age, or even his younger brother JJ(5).

When I was eighteen and in driver's ed, the classroom instructor said something that stuck with me. Some people learn to drive quickly and with ease, while others take more time and effort to master it. What matters is proficiency in the end, not how long it takes to get there. 

My aim is for SA to learn to write beautifully and with ease. This is not a race. It is not a competition with other seven-year-olds. If it takes him years to get to that point, it will be okay. 

Meanwhile, he takes five minutes out of each school day to do his very best printing. He has his bad days, where his pencil "accidentally" makes stray marks and mis-shapen letters. We erase and go on the next day. He does not hate copywork. He is not frustrated. It is enough for now.

There have been two or three times in the last month that he has voluntarily copied something or written something down, and I take that as a hopeful sign. It may be that he will experience a sudden jump in ability someday, as he did with reading last year. It will not be the first time slow, steady, daily effort has laid the foundation for such a leap.

I am very happy with Charlotte Mason's method of oral narration (telling back what has been read aloud) for the younger grades. Because of this, his learning is not tied to his reading and writing skills. He is growing in his composition and communication abilities, and someday his manual writing skills will catch up.

If you are curious, we use Penny Gardner's Italics: Beautiful Handwriting for Children. 

Working Days

It's really striking to me as I read through Charlotte Mason's Volume 1 again that different ideas are speaking to me. I know this because I underlined many things last time through, and this time I'm underlining different things.

Today I underlined this quote, because it reminds me of why I work so hard with SA(7) and why I make him work hard, too.

"Do not let the children pass a day without distinct efforts, intellectual, moral, volitional; let them brace themselves to understand; let them compel themselves to do and to bear; and let them do right at the sacrifice of ease and pleasure: and this for many higher reasons, but, in the first and lowest place, that the mere physical organ of mind and will may grow vigorous with work." (Vol. 1, p. 22)

I have to admit that I've been struggling a bit with the workload of Ambleside Online's Year Two. SA is a normal seven-year-old boy who is sometimes resistant to work. The habit of paying complete attention and narration are hard work! I have been asking myself, am I requiring too much?

The answer for me has been no, and yes.

No, it is not too much for me to require narration after every reading. No, it is not too much to require his complete attention on his math and copywork without dawdling. No, it is not too much to read more challenging books this year. No, it is not too much to require more work this year than last year as he grows.

But yes, it has been too much to try to fit all of the Year Two weekly readings into our weeks, at least for now. I have had to set a limit on how much work we will do in order to maintain peace in our home. I have had to let go of the goal of completing a term's work in twelve weeks, and that's okay. Last week I had the blessing of watching Julie Bogart of Brave Writer speak on Routine vs Schedule (You may have seen it as well if you're on my Facebook page.). She inspired me to set out on my daily routine without worrying about whether we will get all the week's work done in one week.

For now, SA will continue to do two lessons with narration of 15-20 minutes each, and one 10 minute lesson with narration from a book he reads himself. (Lesson times include introduction to vocabulary and/or maps and timelines, reading, and narration.). It may be that as the year progresses we will be able to add in more lessons or expand the time for each lesson, but for now that is all we can manage. (His Bible and Pilgrim's Progress narrations are done in our morning circle time and are not included in these numbers.) This pace does not allow us to finish a week's work in a week, but we will just continue in this way, day after day, (with holidays every now and then, of course!) for however long it takes us to finish each term.

Every day we have our daily work. It is challenging and satisfying hard work for SA's mind. I can see that he feels it to be so, because while he sometimes resists it, he misses it if for any reason I don't require it. It is also joyful work most of the time. The living books we use are interesting. The lessons are short and varied. There is time for play and rest.

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P.S. I wonder how I will regard this post after many years of homeschooling. Most homeschoolers mellow over time...and gain some wisdom. I suppose I will too. This is where I am now, two years into it.

Notes on Beginning Descriptive Narration

Yesterday SA(7) and I started reading The Little Duke by Charlotte Yonge. The book starts with two or three pages of description of a castle hall... columns, thick walls, windows without glass but such deep window-seats that the rain could not come in... Up till now, SA has not touched on descriptions very much in his narrations. They have been in his books all along, but he has been able to get away with moving on to the action quite quickly. This book is different, though. This is the first time we've had a reading that was all description, no action.

Now, I suppose that the natural thing to do in the case of a long descriptive passage like this would be to require a drawing as narration. SA's drawing skills are just not there, though. So this is what we did:

-I set the timer for 20 minutes. I think SA likes knowing that he can trust me not to make his lessons longer than a set time.

-I made sure he could picture the difficult things: columns "like the crypt of a cathedral" and cauldrons, for example. We briefly looked at a picture I found online of a crypt. (I wrote the words I wanted us to review earlier in pencil right on the page of the book. I will be going through this book with several more children and I plan to erase it all after the last child.)

-I encouraged him to picture things in his mind as I read aloud to him.

-After reading half a page or so, I stopped and got out a pencil and paper. I asked him to tell back what I had just read, and I drew what he told me. I'll be honest, he said very little at first. I kept in mind that this is a new skill in narration for him, and said things like, "I remember something about the fires." He came back with the fact that one fire was hotter than the other, and there were no chimneys so the smoke rose in the room and blackened the ceilings. Every now and then JJ(5), who was at the table with us, would pipe up and add something we had forgotten. We continued in this way until the timer rang. 

We only got through about two and a half pages in our 20 minutes. This might mean that we will have more readings than I anticipated for this chapter, but we will just move through the readings in order. If it takes us longer to get through our term because of that, so be it.

One of the things I realized as we did this is that my second child will not have any issue with descriptive narrations (No doubt he will have his own challenges.). It seems to come more naturally to him to see scenes like this in his head. Also, he will be able to draw better than SA can right now. This was interesting to me because I have always considered SA a visual learner. He does extremely well at math because he can see it in his head, for example. But he is also more literal, less imaginative than JJ. (If you're into MBTI, SA is ISTJ, while JJ is probably ISFP)

For your amusement, I have included my drawing. I have very (very, very) little artistic skill, but I did find that drawing this rough representation of our reading fixed it in my own mind very clearly. Also, when I think of that reading, I still see what I imagined in my mind, not what I drew. (I hope my boys also see what they imagined, not what I drew...) It was not an artistic exercise, but a process of fixing what we had read in our minds.

It will be interesting to go back to this post at the end of the year, I think. I remember from Year One that things that were very difficult at the beginning of the year became easy by the end. We will see if that proves true for descriptive narration as well.

The School Books are In!

I ordered my books for Ambleside Online Year 2 several weeks ago, and they have finally all arrived. I am so excited! We are planning to begin the last week of July. By that time we will have had six weeks of vacation, so we will be ready for a return to the school routine. We will work for four weeks, then take two weeks off at the end of August and beginning of September, when my husband has his vacation. After that it will be full steam ahead (with a week off every six weeks or so) till the end of May.

Here is a group photo of most of my finds. These books are our main expense for homeschooling. What's great about this is that they are all reuseable for all our children coming up. I think my husband is still sometimes a bit surprised that most of my budget goes to real books rather than curriculum, but he loves books himself, so he doesn't object. If you want to think in terms of "subjects," these books cover History (World, British, Canadian, and Church), Natural History, and Literature (including Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, and poetry).

Aside from these, I will just have to order SA(7)'s math when he finishes his current Singapore Primary Math workbook. For JJ(5) I will use Alpha Phonics and a few Bob Books I already have in the house and Miquon Math in printable e-book form already purchased for SA(7) two years ago. We also will continue to use several other books we bought in the last couple of years, notably the Handbook of Nature Study, Family Math and Games for Math, Drawing with Children, The Kodaly Method, and an e-book by Penny Gardner called Italic: Beautiful Handwriting for Children. I also have a French program that I'm not terribly keen on (Le Francais Facile! Junior), but don't know what to substitute.

My preference whenever possible and reasonable is to buy used hardcover books. Hardcover because they will stand up to the handling we will put them through with four boys, and Used because they tend to be cheaper for hardcover editions. Last year I ordered most of my books from Better World Books and Book Depository. Both of these are great sites for used books, offering free shipping anywhere in the world. BWB is based in the US, and BD is based in the UK, but I haven't found a lot of difference between them when it comes to speed of delivery to Canada (if anything, the UK ones often come first). 

This year, a friend introduced me to BookFinder.com, and it simplified things considerably. All I had to do was put in the ISBN of the book I wanted, and it found the cheapest prices for me including shipping to my postal code.

I don't know if you can see this, but it has book information at the top, then two columns below, one with new books, and one with used. Both columns are arranged from cheapest including shipping to most expensive including shipping.

I ended up buying several books from Biblio.com, several from alibris, and a few from my old standbys Better World Books and Book Depository. I found Biblio.com the fastest and most efficient. I was least impressed with Better World Books. Their packaging is very flimsy, almost like a bag vacuum-packed around the books. I had no damage, thankfully, but I will keep that in mind the next time I have to buy used books. All the other books were well packaged.

My Finds

And now I know you want to see my "finds"! Here are some of my favourites.

I didn't realize when I ordered A Child's History of the World by Virgil M. Hillyer what a beautiful edition it would be. It's a Centennial Edition (1897-1997) and it's beautifully bound. It even has a ribbon bookmark!

I first caught sight of this beautiful edition of Our Island Story in a picture on someone's blog (sorry I can't remember whose). It also is a "Centenary Edition," republished in 2005. Hardcover with dust jacket, strong paper with lovely large print and several full-page colour illustrations, it screams quality!

The text is taken from the Baldwin Project, which is where I had been reading this book online last year anyway. It follows the original 1905 edition, except for chapter 110 which is taken from a later edition because of its fuller account of the Boer War.

This was actually the first package that reached me (less than a week after I ordered it), though it came from the UK!


I am extremely excited about this book. Like most histories of our country, it is called The Story of Canada. This one is by Edith Louise Marsh and was first published in the early 1900's. Obviously, this means there are some limitations. For example, Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada, and the Union Jack was still Canada's flag. Also, it tells Canada's colonial history without shame. Naturally, this will be a discussion point.

However, it is beautifully written. We haven't tried narration from it yet, but I anticipate it will go well. We will use it for our main Canadian history book, and supplement with other books on Native peoples, and more modern history as I find them.

This book is available on-line, but I chose to get a scanned reproduction (paperback). It is obvious that it has been scanned, but I still prefer to have a physical copy rather than trying to read on-line. (I will be using this in place of This Country of Ours in Ambleside Online's Year 2.)

 I was very excited when this copy of the Burgess Animal Book for Children arrived! It is cloth-bound, published in 1950 by Little, Brown and Company. It has quite a few colour illustrations, though the illustrations are on glossy pages in random places throughout the book and not necessarily with the chapters they illustrate.

This edition of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle came in like-new condition from the UK. I can't remember what I paid for it, but whatever it was, it was a great deal for what I got!


I didn't buy physical books for all the poetry selections for AO Year 2, but I love Christina Rossetti and figured she would be worth it. This cute little edition of Sing-Song and Other Poems for Children was not in the most spotless condition, but it is cloth-bound and I think it will stand up to some use.

I'm afraid I could go on and on, but you would be bored and I would not get any of my work done. Do you get excited when your books come in?