Paper Doll Sale with Free Shipping Posted on February 24th, 2010
Does Philosophy Bore You? Posted on April 25th, 2009
We have been studying Philosophy with our Pageant of Philosophy articles from Tapestry of Grace, while we find them interesting someone in our household does not. The girls were reading the conversation between Simplicio and Buddha and our dog Bentley just killed over with boredom. He stayed that way for quite awhile.
Busy with their hands Posted on February 3rd, 2009
My favorite chapter in The Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola, is chapter 3, "What is Education?". She begins this chapter by discussing what the world commonly refers to as education, something for teachers to teach, something to study and major in in college, something to plan on doing.
Charlotte Mason’s ideas of education where far different. Her focus was on bringing up children by training and nurturing them. The most important training would be in the scriptures and teaching them to know and love God.
Our children (and ourselves) are inspired by relationships. These relationships can be formed by the people we know, the books we read, the places we go, the things we do. We are not inspired to grow as a person by studying for that multiple-choice test.
Charlotte believed that each day your child should have the following:
~Something or someone to love
~Something to do
~Something to think about
The question I am going to address is related to the second item – Something to do. I believe that having them work with their hands while I read would help them to enjoy our reading time more. I also believe that it helped them at times to focus on the reading. Our minds can wander all over the place and this helped bring some focus to the rest of their bodies so they wouldn’t be so squirmy. And lastly my confession of selfishness, if I was going to read to them I felt they should be doing something to and not just sitting there. How bad is that? This should be "confessions of a selfish homeschool mom." 
Now that they are older, they have admitted it is at times hard to just sit, they need to be doing something with their hands. Maybe that is a good thing after all? Training them to redeem the time!
FAQ- How did Breezy learn to draw? Posted on January 28th, 2009
I have been getting several emails concerning Breezy’s artwork and how she learned to draw and paint, so I thought I would just answer those questions all right here.
Ever since Breezy was old enough to hold a pencil she has been drawing. Like most children she scribbled and made lots of drawings that were indistinguishable. But when she was two she drew a mouse on her Magna-Doodle board. At the time we were having a family get together and we all looked at it and were amused, but didn’t think to take a picture of it.
Breezy – 21 months old, we should have known by the seriousness shown here.She continued drawing and drawing. One day when she was going to public school she got in trouble because the teacher wanted everyone to draw braids on an Indian girl a certain way. But Breezy had recently been looking at her own braids and noticed they were different than the teacher’s, so she drew them the way she saw them. It was not a good art day for her. Her teacher was also rather upset that she frequently doodled on her papers during school.
When we began homeschooling I made sure that the girls were doing something with their hands while I read to them. Breezy usually drew. She had several hours a week from age 7 on to draw while I read. I would sometimes have the girls illustrate what I was reading or draw something that had to do with the story.
We used Barry Stebbing’s books for awhile, but we never actually finished one. Other than that, we didn’t use any set curriculum, however, we did do some artist studies. We would also do lots of crafts, nature studies and some note-booking. At age nine she entered and won an art contest on the state level, which was a good and bad experience. It was encouraging to win, but when you win the first time out you have extra pressure. I think she was more disappointed in herself when she didn’t win for several years, but we had her keep entering because it helped her to push herself and to work with a deadline.
When Breezy was 13 she took a few drawing lessons from a friend at church. Our friend used the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. (I would use this book with great caution. There are many questionable psychological aspects of drawing used that her teacher wisely cut out of the lessons.) This helped Breezy a great deal, and she grew a great deal during those few lessons.
A year later she took a more lessons from another friend at church. This was also a growing time for her, as she received weekly lessons; a few on perspective, and then several months with watercolor painting.
Aside from all of this, Breezy has checked out nearly every “decent” art book she could find at the library and many more through inter-library loan. *Just a note about inter-library loans with art books – look through them before you leave the library and before you hand them to your child. Sometimes I have had to give them right back to the librarian and thank them for their trouble. You cannot be too careful. If an art book looks very helpful, but with only a few undesirable pictures, you can cover them with post-it notes.
She did audit a college art class last year for one semester and will be auditing some more art classes next fall with a professor who is a professional illustrator.
While we have studied the required subjects, we have also allowed our girls to explore subjects that interest them, a beautiful thing about home educating. God has blessed her with a talent that she finds joy in practicing. As she has worked on developing her skills, she has sought to bring glory to God. She is such a lovely young lady. You can visit her blog here, www.abowlofmossandpebbles.com
Homeschool Open House Posted on November 25th, 2008
Tammy over at Lattes and Lollypops is hosting a homeschool open house and so I thought I would join in with her this month and share a little of what we have been doing. We have had some opportunities to do things just a little different lately so our normal schedule has been put on hold for a couple of weeks.
For most of the days we have still been working on our normal work in the morning which consists of Bible, copy can, Geometry, One Year Adventure Novel and science. Then in the afternoon the girls have been working on getting their own businesses up and running. That is something they have been wanting to do for quite some time. So now we are adding business class into their schedule.
They have both set up their own etsy shop, which is a website where you can have your own store front to sell your handmade items.
Emily Rose is making and selling homemade and vintage goods. Her etsy shop is located here.
Breezy Tulip is selling children’s illustration art prints. Her etsy shop is located here.
Also, last week were able to meet up with some friends that are in a Shakespeare acting group and go to a college performance of a Shakespeare play. The play was a matinee performance and the Shakespeare acting group that we went with was the only group invited to attend. After the play the actors and director came back out for a time of Q &A and then let the group go backstage and poke around a bit. We really enjoyed the whole play and getting to hear the actors after the play made it even more interesting.
Emily Rose has been hosting a weekly meme called A Homemade Christmas. That has been keeping us busy too and helping us get some things done ahead for the holiday.
You can visit Tammy’s blog and read more or add your own post about Homeschool Open House.
Homeschool Memoir #4 Something New Posted on September 10th, 2008
This week at Homeschool Blog Awards they are asking us to share what we are doing new this year.
This will be our first year doing the Redesigned Tapestry of Grace Year One. We have already gone through Classic Tapestry of Grace Years 2, 3, and 4. This revised edition looks to be much easier to use and as always, very thorough. It is by far my favorite curriculum.
The other new item on our list this year is the One Year Adventure Novel. The girls started this last Tuesday and have really been inspired by it. I originally leaned about this program from an ad right here at Homeschoolblogger.com. I clicked on the link, explored their website and signed up to receive a free demo DVD. After watching the demo with the girls we decided that we would do it. I have been watching the video lessons with the girls and have found them to be very informative and entertaining. The first semester is a series of lessons on setting up your outline, characters and plot. The second semester is actually putting the meat on the story and getting your novel written. It is a very ambitious goal, but with perseverance and hard work, by the end of the school year they should have a completed adventure novel!
To read what others families are trying new this year, go to the Homeschool Blog Awards and read Homeschool Memoirs #4.
Updated Schedule Posted on September 3rd, 2008
Schedules, schedules, schedules…..can’t live with them and can’t live without them.
We have to keep on schedule.
We are so off schedule.
Hurry up, or we’ll be off schedule.
What’s the schedule?
Schedule? I don’t know where it is.
What are we supposed to be studying now?
Look at your schedule.
No, those are not things my daughters say or ask, they are things that I have said and I am sure I will say again. I am not by nature a list or schedule person, but homeschooling has a way of making you into one. So, we have a schedule; I even write it down and then we try to stick to it.
6:30 – 9:00 Up | showers | breakfast | Bible | catch up on news and bloglines
9:00 – 10:15 Copy can | Latin & Greek roots | SAT review | practice 25 min. essays | Geometry
10:15-11:00 One Year Adventure Novel
11:00 – 11:45 Biology (Emily) | Art (Breezy)
11:45 – 1:15 quick clean-up | Lunch prep | Lunch with Dad | short break
1:15 – 2:30 Tapestry of Grace
2:30 – on Graphic Design | Photography | Literature | Violin | Health (Emily)*
Art/ Physics | Piano | Literature (Breezy)*
8:00 or 9:00ish- Family worship time with Dad. We sing psalms, Dad reads God’s Word to us and we pray.
*From 2:30 on they can work on those subjects as long as they want or can. We also get some blogging in here and there.
Every other Tuesday, Breezy takes piano lessons and then gives art lessons to her piano teacher’s sons.
Emily takes violin lessons on Thursday.
Tuesday afternoons we go to the library.
One thing that I try to work on is to limit our outside activities. It would be really easy to get over involved in a lot great things, but I have to limit our activities so that we can focus on what is BEST.
I also began scheduling our cooking days.
For lunch we all pitch in, it is usually salad, sandwiches or leftovers.
For suppers we will each take a day.
Monday – Emily
Tuesday – leftovers for Rob and the girls and I meet at my mom’s along with my sisters and niece, Maggie
Wednesday – Me
Thursday- Breezy
Friday – take turns – it’s pizza
Saturday- we all pitch in and make a brunch and then something simple for supper. I will usually make something for Sunday, like soup or prepare something to put in the crockpot for after church.
Wow, that looks great. Now put that schedule into action!!! (talking to myself)
*Disclaimer*
This schedule looks very busy and it is, however, I am not so strict that we don’t have down time or longer breaks in between subjects when necessary.
Life happens and you get off "the schedule", what do you do? The next day or next week, you just get back on it and if you have it written down, it is much easier to get back on it!
To see more scheduling ideas you can go here.
Time for a New School Year Posted on August 22nd, 2008
It’s time.
The pencils are sharpened and ready to go.
We have been doing "some" school throughout the summer, but now we are in "official" school mode. That means we have picked back up those subjects that we just don’t gravitate toward naturally, like geometry, biology, chemistry, SAT prep, etc.
One of the things that we did a lot of last year and will do again this year is give the girls a large block of time to work on their favorite subjects; art and graphic design. For us, a large block of time means around 2 hours of the school day . Since these are their favorite subjects they also work on them in their free time. So they could be working on art and graphic design 2-5 hours a day.
I am so thankful that we have been able to homeschool all these years. This will be our 12th year and it has been such a wonderful adventure. We had Breezy in public school for K and 1/2 of first grade and her teachers were concerned that she doodled too much on her papers – it was a problem for them. A year ago, I spoke with a teacher at the high school that the girls would have gone to and she told me they had no graphic design teaching at all. None. Nada. Nothing at all in that field. Wow. When we began to homeschool it was the Lord’s leading in our life, it had nothing to do with these issues. 12 years later, I see that not only was He leading us to homeschool for biblical reasons, but also He knew what the girls giftings were when we didn’t.
This will be Breezy’s senior year and Emily Rose’s sophomore year. Our schedule looks full and busy and it is, and we may not get everything done that we want to, but that’s OKAY. Life doesn’t stop at the end of the school year. We are life-long learners and that is what we are about. Learning is a way of life.
Here is a list of the subjects and curriculum that we will be using this year.
Polished Cornerstones (this will be a life-long study)
Tapestry of Grace (finish Year 4 and begin Year 1 on Sept. 2)
High School Essay Intensive with Andrew Pudewa
One Year Adventure Novel
Geometry with Math-U-See
Chemistry/Physics with a focus on light and color (Breezy)
Biology - Apologia (Emily Rose)
Art using a variety of books and practice (Breezy)
Graphic Design using a variety of books and practice (Emily Rose)
Piano (Breezy)
Violin (Emily Rose)
Life Skills/Consumer math/Driver’s Ed (Breezy)
Blogging
Copywork using the copy can
Latin & Greek roots
Earlier this summer we worked on our summer schedule and used Titus 2:3-5 to help us prioritize and get our schedule the way it should be; I kept that in mind with this new schedule.
This sweet little clock is a new addition to our home. My mother gave this to Rob and I for our 25th wedding anniversary. It is engraved on the back. It will be near us in the dining room to help keep us on track this year. Thanks Mom.