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.

Year in Review: Our Favourite School Books

JJ(7)'s Year 1 Books

Today I pulled out all our books from the school year just ended and stacked them on the table. What a good feeling it was to realize what we had read through! Most of these are part of Ambleside Online's wonderful curriculum for Years 1 and 3, with a few books added in for Canadian content and special interest, and a few books taken out to compensate for what we'd added in. Everything we read was narrated, whether by the individual student, or by both of them (or all three! My extroverted 4-year-old loves to take his turn narrating the readings we do together as a family.).

Some of them are books we will continue to read in the next school year (Probably. Plans are not set in stone yet!):
The Blue Fairy Book
Canadian Wonder Tales
Great Canadian Lives
Mathematicians are People, Too
The Story of Canada (Marsh)
The Story of Canada (Brown, Harman, Jeanneret)
Trial and Triumph

Some of them were books that we didn't complete. The term ended, and we moved on:
Children of the New Forest (SA(9) may yet finish this on his own.)
Hamlet by Bruce Coville
The Jungle Book
Just So Stories (One chapter to go...JJ will finish it on his own.)
Leonardo da Vinci by Emily Hahn (I suspect I got the wrong book in this case...it was very heavy for Year 3. We read through half, and moved on.)
Sebastian Bach by Opal Wheeler

But the majority of the books on the stacks were the ones we finished, whether together as a family, or separately. Because we did several Year 3 books together, I ended up taking out a number of the Year 1 books in order not to overload JJ.

SA(9)'s Year 3 Books

Together:
A Drop of Water 
Cartier Sails the St. Lawrence
Madeleine Takes Command
Pagoo
Pilgrim's Progress (We finished Book 2 this year)
Secrets of the Woods
Tales from Shakespeare (We did the chapters scheduled for Year 3 together.)

SA(9):
Bard of Avon
Our Island Story (He completed the chapters scheduled in AO's curriculum through Year 3.)
The Adventures of Marco Polo by Russell Freedman
The Heroes
The Princess and the Goblin

JJ(7):
Fifty Famous Stories Retold
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
Paddle-to-the-Sea
The Aesop for Children


The Favourites

For fun, I asked all of them to choose their favourite school books. They each started with one, then thought of more they considered favourites. In the end I let them choose as many as they wanted. I also asked them to choose their least favourite book. JJ had no doubt about his pick, but SA assured me earnestly that really, he liked all his books, and his least favourite was still a good book.

SA(9):
The Princess and the Goblin 
Madeleine Takes Command
A Drop of Water
The Heroes
Sebastian Bach
Mathematicians are People, Too

Least Favourite: Leonardo da Vinci by Emily Hahn

JJ(7):
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
Madeleine Takes Command
Fifty Famous Stories Retold
Paddle-to-the-Sea
A Drop of Water

Least Favourite: The Story of Canada by Brown, Harman, and Jeanneret

MM(4) also insisted on choosing his favourite:
The Blue Fairy Book

And why not? I'll include my own favourites of the year. You'll notice some overlap with the boys picks...it's just such a pleasure to share books when they are loving them too. I was learning as much as they were.

Madeleine Takes Command
Cartier Sails the St. Lawrence
Secrets of the Woods
The Blue Fairy Book
The Heroes

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?