Breakdown of Year 2 (and pics for the bored)

For those of you who are weary in well-doing because of listening to me ramble on about homeschooling, buck up! I'll be back to regularly-scheduled programming soon, or when I feel like it! Ha! But to pacify you for a while, here are a few pics of the view from where I sat while I typed the majority of this post!

Madeline taking notes on her sisters' progress

Olivia's favorite new trick is swimming under water,
or at least the best she can with the floaties I make her wear! :)

Not too bad for nary a swim lesson and only a few pool visits per year!

With the help of some lovely people on the Yahoo! discussion board, I have chosen Year 2 to start with Ambleside Online. Carli's Math, Reading, Spelling, etc, will still be Grade 3 level, but if we started in Year 3, we would be missing part of a couple key books in the history cycle.

Ambleside takes a lot of books a little bit at a time, almost to the point that I can imagine my girls saying, "Just one more chapter, Mom! Puh-leeeeeeeeeeeeeze?" I think the short, varied lessons will be fun and keep our interest very well.

This year we will have daily instruction in Bible, math, penmanship/copywork, phonics as needed, and possibly Spanish, and weekly instruction in nature study, art and art appreciation, music appreciation and composer study.

History for Year 2 covers A.D. 1000 to the Middle Ages, and we will be utilizing these classic books:
::An Island Story by H.E. Marshall
::This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall
::A Child's History of the World by Virgil Hillyer (Go HERE for an explanation on the use of this book)

For History Tales and/or Biography:
::Trial and Triumph by Richard Hannula
::The Little Duke by Charlotte Yonge
::Joan of Arc by Diane Stanley

For Geography we will read Holling C. Holling's books, Tree in the Trail and Seabird, practicing our map skills along with it.

During Natural History/Science, I am looking forward to delving into Anna Botsford Comstock's The Handbook of Nature Study. Carli really enjoys working on her nature journal, though we didn't take as many nature walks as I would have liked. There is an Outdoor Hour Challenge in which we may be able to participate. We will also enjoy Holling C. Holling's Pagoo, and The Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornton Burgess.

We won't have heavy phonics instruction this year, but for Reading practice, I found delightful readers on Google Books, called Reading-Literature by Treadwell and Free. I plan to print them out and make them special. I absolutely love them, and will probably use them for Livy too, once she is reading.

We will study the Poetry of Walter de la Mare, Eugene Field, James Whitcombe Riley, and Christina Rosetti. Our Artist Studies will include Jean Honore Fragonard and Norman Rockwell, as well as one other, yet to be determined. Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bartok and Hindermith will round out our Composer Studies.

And Literature! My favorite! We have already read a few of the Little House on the Prairie books listed for year two, but between this and the Free-Reading List, we will have plenty to read through the three terms.

Literature
::Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb
::Pilgrim's Progress Book 1 (Christian's Journey) by John Bunyan (original language)
::Parables from Nature by Margaret Gatty, selections.
::Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
::The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
::Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (original language)

Additional Books for Free Reading
Heidi by Joanna Spyri
A Wonder Book by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales
Pied Piper of Hamlin by Robert Browning
Abraham Lincoln by Ingri D'Aulaire
Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater
Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
Chanticleer and the Fox - Barbara Cooney's is one version
Along Came A Dog by Meindert De Jong
The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli

For more information on about Ambleside Online or to figure out what in the world I'm thinking, go HERE.

Guest Post

I am truly honored that my Aunt Pam asked me to write a guest post for her lovely blog, A Sheltering Tree. If you feel so inclinded you can read here about Sheltering Families with Special Needs.

Ambleside Online

So what in the world is Ambleside Online? Here's the welcome on the site:

Welcome to Ambleside Online, a free homeschool curriculum designed to be as close as possible to the curriculum that Charlotte Mason used in her own private and correspondence schools. Our goal is to be true to Charlotte Mason's high literary standards. Ambleside Online uses the highest quality books and costs no more than the cost of texts. The curriculum uses as many free online books as possible, and there is no cost to use this information or join the support group.



As I said in the previous post, Ambleside Online provides the curriculum for History, Literature, Geography, Poetry, Composer and Artist Studies, Music Appreciation, Natural History/Science, and Free Reading Lists, as well as a lot of support with their online discussion boards.



One thing that is a little different with Ambleside Online is that it is set up as three terms rather than two semesters. The terms are September-November, January-March, and April-June. We will see if we like it, but if not, it will be easy to go back to our normal schedule next year. I do love the idea of having a month-long holiday in December to concentrate more on the celebration of Christ's birth. It's always too busy, and that might just be the ticket to allowing us to slow and drink in the beauty of the season. There is enough leeway in the terms to give us a few short breaks and still meet Indiana's requirement of 180 days.



So we're excited! I'm grateful for the extra month this summer to get ready for the first term. I'm still researching gentle math introductions for Kindergarten, and then I think I'll be set with K curriculum. I would love to get the first term's completely ready to go by September...notebooking pages, a daily schedule, and more.

Grade 3 Curriculum (2011/2012)

I feel like ordering, "Drumroll, please!" I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my dear sister-in-law, Esther, knows exactly what I mean when I say that I have lived and breathed homeschool research in this last week. To be honest, as much as I look forward to the end of the school year, a big part of that is because I enjoy working on the upcoming year.

This year I have double the fun with Olivia moving on to Kindergarten next year. And an added challenge...try to do it for a LOT less money (more on that at another date). Last year I spent around $400 for just Carli. This year? Carli's comes to $167 or so. Still working on Olivia's.

Ok, so here we go! I think I'll just list everything this time, and explain more about the whys and wherefores and give links another time.


:: Year 2 History, Geography, Literature, Readers, Artist and Composer Studies, Poetry, Music
Appreciation, Natural History/Science, Free Reading List--Ambleside Online.
::Math--Teaching Textbooks 3
::Language--finish Primary Language Lessons
::Penmanship/Copywork--Pictures in Cursive
::Spelling--The Modern Speller (a classic) and customized spelling lists
:: Art--ARTistic Pursuits
::Foreign Language--Looking into free Spanish lessons in town at our local teacher's shop.

The free curriculum at Ambleside Online has been a treasure-trove discovery for me. I love Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education (that's right! More on that later), and Ambleside Online bases it's whole curriculum on her principles. It will be an intense and exciting year. I have much learning and growing to do as a mother and a teacher, but I've seen the start of it this past year as we started our journey down this road.

Carli's Photography

I'm trying to think of a suitable introduction to this post, but it eludes me. At any one time when I download pics and videos, I find dozens of photographs and video clips. I think I need to have her start chronicling some of her school work on video because she can be quite the little teacher. She just needs a steadier hand! :)

Hot and Sweaty Memorial Day Bliss

Memorial Day turned out differently than originally planned. We stayed put her in Indiana rather than heading to PA. Would have loved to visit the cemetery and Mom's newly found bench just a few feet away from Daddy's grave and to see the lovely geraniums she planted.

Instead we sweat it out here in Kokomo! It was a HOT one! I stuck to the cool house for most of the morning. Carli was at her friend Katie's house all morning, so Glen took Olivia on an hour+ bike ride. I finished up a sermon file, "putzed," as Mom would say, and continued to research 2011/2012 school year. Love nice long lazy holidays!

Olivia and Carli were in begging-to-help mode, so I taught them (again) how to peel potatoes for our potato salad, and Carli set the picnic table on the deck. She chose a red table cloth and cut strips of paper to write place cards, held down by pebbles. :) Madeline wheeled around the kitchen, keeping me company while I put our simple meal together.

I think the girls were in their swimsuits all afternoon (Olivia for most of the morning, too). I pulled out sundresses for when our company arrived for a tad more sophistication.

Trying to tell Mommy something by mouthing it!

Glen's burgers were juicy and delicious, and if I could remember what brand of baked beans we bought, I would freely tell you which ones NOT to buy. Mealy beans anyone? Definitely should have tasted them first. Potato salad and chip dip and Mom's made-from-scratch brownies and raspberry tea were fantastic, though.

So fun to have friends to spend the holiday with. Danny, Lisa, Emily, and Cameron...glad you're in our lives!

The one and only picture I have of the Bryants yesterday. Ooops.

Clean again!

Very tired bedtime prayers.

Plans for Madeline

Last week, I attended my first-ever case conference and helped write Madeline's first IEP (Independent Education Plan). Madeline will be in an integrated (typical/special needs) preschool setting at a terrific school here in town. This is how she will receive most of her therapies since she will be aging out of First Steps in July.

Here are my remarks of that day, posted to Facebook:

Have to admit, all the paperwork, all the therapists, school reps, liaison, all the compliments about my little girl, all the clinical numbers showing lower numbers than I'd like, all the recommendations, and just the fact that we were writing an IEP...It was all a tad (or more) overwhelming today. It's amazing to know your child insi...de and out and still have to listen to someone read through the list of what she can or can't do. Everyone was so sweet. Nobody loves her and knows her like I do, and no numbers or checkmarks or Xs will ever paint the beautiful picture that is Madeline.

If you want specifics for prayer, please intercede for us on behalf of Madeline's speech. She signs a lot, but we need her to do more than label items. Cognitively, I think she's not as far behind as what her speech would indicate, but overall, being non-verbal is slowing her down across the board. She signs, mouths some words, but only babbles a little. Her neurodevelopmentalist has given us a referral for a communications evaluation to see about getting a communication board of some sort. This could be a vital tool to coax it out of her!

I'd love to see her take off soon so that we can see where she's at in that little mind of hers! This preschool experience will give me a chance to gauge whether or not I will have the ability to school her at home once she's ready for Kindergarten, a couple years away, thankfully.