CM/Classical October Thread - Page 5

[crunchy_mama]

Man, we missed a lot!

Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch, lots of fun, but a long full day!

My printer came in yesterday and dh has it set-up and ready to go. Dh is very impressed so far he said that it set up in Linux perfectly and easily, which according to him often doesn't happen.

We had a nature walk Thursday for fall leaves. Found lots of specimens, hopefully we will have more time to go through them today(we walked late). Then we got to study a racoon- I know this sounds bad- but it was recently killed- but I guess it was internal- no blood- we didn't touch it but the kids got to look it all over and found it very interesting, me too. I didn't realize their little fingers were so small and thin. Then we stayed outside and watched the sun set then waited for the first stars to come out. The kids had a blast and thought it was so neat. .

I am considering piano lessons for ds- anyone else do music?

Today we plan to hike and then a halloween part w/ some of our hs co-opers

Originally Posted by *Jessica*

Yum! I think I'm going to give them a try, even though we aren't GF.

Hope you like it!

craft, the felt wall sounds neat! Do you have any pictures?

That reminds me that I got our weeks tree up on the wall. I did use the Burgess birds for it. It looks cute! I need to take some pictures.
Ok, I want to see pics of the felt wall and the tree both!
Everyone gave such wonderful ideas for breakfasts, but I think my point was missed.

sorry no help there! My stomach reminds me at one point or the other. I do sometimes fast through bfast but couldn't do it every day.

Nik got the Lego Harry Potter board game for his birthday.

Will have to keep that in mind for Christmas. Luke LOVES legos!
I didn't get to nature study again this week. I think any time counts. I think that is one of those things to not get too caught in the process but just to do it. Just start out the door and go and talk about what you see. Encourage questions, ask questions. Share what info you have and have fun

Nik started a new book for his reading today. It's The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren.
[COLOR="DarkRed"]That is on our reading list for this year and I am really looking forward to it. I loved Pippi!

[crunchy_mama]

Originally Posted by MyLittleWonders

d
The biggest accomplishment, though, has been an improvement in ds#1's attitude.
That makes such a difference for you and them

crunchy_mama - I love the recipes too! I am going to have to try the crackers and the pizza dough Hope you like them!

Originally Posted by Jennifer3141

We're heading out this afternoon to watch "The Lord of the Gourd" sculpt pumpkins at the cherry store. We're going to do a little bit of history and finish up dolphins this morning.

The "Lord of the Gourd" sounds really neat. We need to look up on how to do ours, I haven't a clue.

Originally Posted by MissRubyandKen

I really think it is not good for my blood sugar nor my metabolism. I've gained a nice chunk of weight here lately and I really think this is a contributing factor.

I think I made up for yesterday being a bit of a disappointment to the kids. Today we did an almost full school day and then we walked our new kite to the park by dp's work.

Sounds like a great day. I am thrift store shopper as well- especially w/ pregnancies and then losing weight again afterward it is a pain.

I can skip some meals no problem w/ the bs but it depends on how and what I am eating. If I keep relatively lower carb then it works. And when I do eat in the am it is generally very low carb.

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

She's now only got three pages left in the phonics primer, and is quite excited to finish it. Her reading has really improved lately.

I also finally figured out how to change the ink on our printer, so now we can get back on track with math. Dh left two weeks ago, and forgot to change it before he left. I finally realized I was trying to open the wrong hatch.

That is awesome with the reading! I am not the best w/ electronics either, dh is too good w/ them so I am lazy!

[Bluegoat]

We are doing a music class. I don't have any expertise in that area, so we needed a class. The program we enrolled in is called Music for Young Children, and I am very very happy with it. There are up to six kids, but our instructor only takes four, and dd's class only has two.

They do pianom solfage, rythym ensemble, and lots of other exersizes to become good sight readers - pattern recognition and so on. There are four years if you start at five, and they can write the grade 1 piano exam when they are done.

Dd loves it, and I can see it is really impacting her other skills. They like five practices a week at home, and there is a lot of encouragement for the kids to take charge of this - they get stickers and rewards and so forth, at least in the first years.

A parent is expected to stay for the class. It's not cheap, but not bad either for what you get.

[MissRubyandKen]

Does anyone have book suggestions for a two year old who loves to listen to stories for an hour or more straight? We've read every picture book we have at least thrice and most more so. We have collections of Madeline and every Little Bear and more than one treasury with multiple good books. I often end up reading 5-6 stories a night, or more. I'm wondering if she might not appreciate a chapter book at this point! Something quality and relatively simple with pictures? Or maybe I should even try a nice story without pictures? I do have Magic Tree House books because I've heard good things about them. I haven't opened one yet myself. I may try one of those with her, but I would love any other suggestions . I also read her picture books during the day and I will keep up with that, but I was just thinking because the night time session is so long she might enjoy something more.

[craft_media_hero]

Bluegoat-
That class sounds great! I wonder if we something like that around here. I think if I had no other distractions and $ for instruments, I could come up with a reasonable music education, but alas . . . I think for now it would be better for her to take an outside class.

SOTW- I am so glad I downloaded the audio files! I don't think the program is perfect, but . . . it's easy and pretty well put together as a pick up and go thing. We did the first two chapters today (which we had read last year but decided to start back at the beginning again). DD did not enjoy the map work tho she usually really enjoys working with the puzzle maps. I think maybe the maps are a little too abstract for her a this point. I want to speed through the first seven chapters so we can get to ANCIENT GREECE!!!! and also so that we can "catch up" and finish the first volume by the end of our 36-but-really-40 week Second Grade plan.

Speaking of maps and felt walls, we did do our felt geography project that night, and I'm really glad we did. DD matched the felt continents to our wooden puzzle, placed the labels on them, and then recited the continent names to her dad and pointed to the correct ones. Pretty good! I think we will do animals of the continents next, then I want to download some Foods/People/Houses/etc. of the continents files and have dif. folders for each. I will put up some pictures of our felt projects, but first I need to get some more blue for the oceans and then we can put the whole map up with everything in it's proper place.

I'm thinking we can use the felt wall for all kinds of things---the solar system, parts of a plant, etc.

The Greek Code Cracker came today, and at first glance I thought it might be a little too heavy for her, but she wanted to dig right in and we did the first unit right off the bat. There are audio files on the website that go with it, but we haven't had a chance to get into those yet. All in all, I'd say it's a pretty good starting place for Greek, though I would not have wanted to start it with her if she was not already pretty comfortable with the alphabet and letter sounds.

MLW- I love hearing about your boys' language work! It's awesome that your oldest can identify all of the elements of a sentence like that. Do you mind spelling out for me what materials you're using? I'm not so familiar with the acronyms

So we've added Geography and History back in OH! and dd is READING!! For real. She has noticed how much easier it's getting and said maybe phonics is worth it but still grumbles about our one daily page from PP

Now to bring in Science . . . and Housework

[MyLittleWonders]

Originally Posted by craft_media_hero

MLW- I love hearing about your boys' language work! It's awesome that your oldest can identify all of the elements of a sentence like that. Do you mind spelling out for me what materials you're using? I'm not so familiar with the acronyms

So we've added Geography and History back in OH! and dd is READING!! For real. She has noticed how much easier it's getting and said maybe phonics is worth it but still grumbles about our one daily page from PP

Now to bring in Science . . . and Housework

on your dd reading!!!

We are using First Language Lessons (ds#1 is about 2/3's of the way through level 3; ds#2 is about 1/2 of the way through level 2), Michael Clay Thompson's language arts materials (Island level), and just started using Growing with Grammar (mostly because I needed something more hands off right now). So, M-Th, it's GWG and MCT; Fridays are FLL. And it's actually my middle one - not quite 7 years old - who is parsing his sentences so well. I find it almost ironic that the one that struggled so with speech (he was dx with Childhood Apraxia of Speech at 27 months, though it "went away" when we went gluten free) has such a great understanding of language. He's constantly telling me the parts of speech for sentences outside of our grammar lessons. He's also more intuitive with spelling and reading that my oldest.

[PJsmomma]

MissRubyandKen
Have you looked at Ambleside's Year 0 book list? My son and I loved them!
http://www.amblesideonline.org/00.shtml

I think we started it when he was 3.

[crunchy_mama]

mr&k-
a few thoughts-
My Father's Dragon- is a good chapter book to start
also, Dahl has lots of cute shorter chapter books- especially- Giraffe, Pelly and Me- Minpins, Fantastic Mr. Fox and more

Also, do you have the collections of Beatrix Potter and AA Milne? Lots of rich vocabulary beautiful pictures and more.

[MissRubyandKen]

Originally Posted by PJsmomma

MissRubyandKen
Have you looked at Ambleside's Year 0 book list? My son and I loved them!
http://www.amblesideonline.org/00.shtml

I think we started it when he was 3.

I remember looking at these lists a long time ago, but forgot about them. Thanks , I will look at it again. She'll be three in February, so not too far off.

[MissRubyandKen]

Originally Posted by crunchy_mama

mr&k-
a few thoughts-
My Father's Dragon- is a good chapter book to start
also, Dahl has lots of cute shorter chapter books- especially- Giraffe, Pelly and Me- Minpins, Fantastic Mr. Fox and more

Also, do you have the collections of Beatrix Potter and AA Milne? Lots of rich vocabulary beautiful pictures and more.

I have My Father's Dragon, Mr. Fantastic Fox, and a Dahl collection book but didn't think of them, so those would be good places to start, thanks . I do have the Beatrix Potter collection and two AA Milne books. Those are on her picture book shelf and we've read them lots! My older two weren't as into books as she is when they were two. She's always been willing to hold still for a story.

[Nursingnaturalmom]

Oh I'm loving this thread. I"m making the switch to CM slowlllyyyy!

[Jennifer3141]

MLW, we started FLL this weekend and I love it!!! Thank you! I'm beginning to think you may be right.

DH got the kids horseback riding lessons this weekend to see if they'd like it. They LOVED it! We may have found our "thing."
We still have to add music though.

Tomorrow we finish dolphins and start the next HO lesson. Then we've got some reading and we WILL do math. Maybe we'll start with that one...

This week, they'll do lesson 2 of REAL science and we'll do our desert report.

We've got library day Wednesday at the little library and I'll probably have to do a run to the big one Friday.

That's our week in a nutshell. How about you all?

[MyLittleWonders]

I'm glad you are liking FLL. And horseback riding lessons sound like so much fun!

We had a long day at the ballpark (ds#1 and ds#2 play, but they always play opposite each other, so we are there about 5 hours from start to finish). Both boys had good games and I was happy because it was chilly - almost cold!

This week is our scheduled off week. I plan on finishing everything I need for maternity plus getting Latin photocopied for the rest of the year. We will do Latin chanting, reading, and probably a Mad Minute math drill sheet each day, but that is all (just keeping up on the couple things that seem to be forgotten easily LOL). I hope to finish reading Archimedes to them and make it through Greek Myths for read aloud. And if it doesn't rain, we might make park day with our friends (when we have full school I just don't have the energy to get out at the end of the day, but this week we should be fine). I also plan on making it to the library with the boys. I think two "field trips" are ambitious enough for me, so if we get both of them done, we'll be doing good!

For now, we're off to have some homemade chili for dinner (love the crockpot!) and hopefully enjoy a fire in the fireplace. I'm going to keep rereading TWTM; I realized I never read thoroughly anything past the Grammar stage and I'll have a 5th grader next year! : I have no idea where the time has gone ... for those with little ones, it goes SO insanely fast.

[Jennifer3141]

I'm coming over for dinner tonight, MLW!!!

My first groggy child just stumbled out of bed... Time to start the day!! Have a great day, everyone!!

[Bluegoat]

I was hoping Cursive First would come in the mail today, but no luck!

Dd read a Dick and Jane book today. Rather boring, but she was quite happy to read a whole book on her own. We got them as a Christmas present, and although the text is stultifying, I am actually rather enjoying the pictures.

We've been going full steam on story reading this weekend - we read The Velveteen Rabbit, Paddington, a book about Guinevere before her marriage, and some weird poetry about people-eating animals, like an ant-eater that munches down someone's aunt.

[MyLittleWonders]

Originally Posted by Jennifer3141

I'm coming over for dinner tonight, MLW!!!

My first groggy child just stumbled out of bed... Time to start the day!! Have a great day, everyone!!

It was rather tasty if a little too spicy! But, everyone but ds#3 liked it (oh man can he be picky). Tonight there is a roast a'cooking in there.

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

We've been going full steam on story reading this weekend - we read The Velveteen Rabbit, Paddington, a book about Guinevere before her marriage, and some weird poetry about people-eating animals, like an ant-eater that munches down someone's aunt.

That sounds like very interesting poetry! Did all the poems have a play-on-words like an "ant" eater eating an "aunt"? That could make for some fun discussions about language.

We have already done art this morning (we do the "Sketch Tuesday" prompts from Harmony Art Mom - same as the Handbook of Nature blog mom). I was hoping to have had it done by last Friday, but we were working late on nature study and then my mom came over to play with the boys, so it was pushed back. This week's activity was a little challenging - sketch something found in an art museum. So, we pulled out a couple Usborne art books we had and talked about some of the art work they have seen before all three decided on doing a still life. Ds#3 decided he didn't want me to scan his picture because he wanted to cut out the teeny-tiny pumpkins he drew (he LOVES teeny tiny things - he found a teeny tiny cast iron pot at the surplus store this weekend - big enough to make one egg - and wanted me to buy it for him so he'd have his own teeny tiny cooking pan).

And speaking of the surplus store, we found a very cool military surplus store not too far from us this weekend - the older two boys wanted to be soldiers for Halloween, so we were able to find them pants, a long-sleeved shirt and a jacket (the really light-weight ones ... for some reason I've always wanted to call them "flack" jackets, but I'm not sure if that is correct). They are in heaven with their "costume" and I love that it's all regular clothing that could be worn at other times with jeans and such instead of just for one night. Ds#3 got his glow-in-the-dark sword at the teachers' supply store (just a glow stick with a sword base). What I loved the most is how ds#3 was so overjoyed with his sword ($3!) and never asked to get anything that his brothers were getting - clothing, new boots, etc. He can be so opposite of his older brothers sometimes; it's refreshing!

We did not get around to making our igneous rock "fudge" for science this weekend, so we are going to do it this week since it's technically our "off" week. I'm hoping to do it this afternoon. Right now the boys are watching some TV (something they don't get to do on school mornings) and then we'll do some reading aloud, the boys can read to me, and we'll chant some Latin. It's supposed to be cold and rainy, at least the first part of this week, so maybe we'll put a fire on after lunch.

[Jennifer3141]

I want some fudge!!!

We are DONE for the day! Woot!
We got science, history, grammar, math, reading, and writing done. Whew.
We rarely do everything in one day. I threw in grammar this week. If I can get that under my belt, I'll add Latin in a week or two. Then, we'll really be cranking through and we'll feel more like "real" classicals to me.

Bluegoat, there are literally hundreds of Guinivere books out there. I remember being completely enchanted by her as a middle schooler and I read a book or maybe even a series of books about her. This book had a conversation between Guinivere and her unicorn before she got married (since unicorns don't come to non-virgins). If your book starts to sound like that, would you tell me? I would love to someday have DD read that!!!
It was one of those books that stays with you, even when you're long grown up but I've never been able to find it again.

We read Monster Goose last night and my kids were hysterical. It's a really cute book if you all want to read some Halloween poetry based upon well, Mother Goose obviously. We have another Halloween poetry book we like too if anyone wants to look that up but it's more original poetry by real poets. There was an e.e. cummings poem in there and I hated e.e. growing up because it distresses me to write e.e. instead of E.E. I hate the name, therefore I hate the poetry.
Freaking poets thinking the basic rules of grammar don't apply to them...
But the rest of the book is great, once you totally disregard my rant! And you all will probably flame me anyway because I bet you all love e.e.

[crunchy_mama]

BG- Meant to thank you for the thoughts about the music class, looking to see what is offered here, I live in a somewhat rural area. The poetry sounds fun. Kudos to your dd for reading! I haven't read any Dick and Jane but my dd loved the Ricka, Flicka and Dicka books- I found the animation quite nice.

I have really been enjoying poetry w/ the kids lately. I never read much before but as I have scheduled it every week I have been reading it regardless. This term it is AA Milne and I just find it too adorable.

MLW- I want fudge as well ! YUM! I like the sketch Tuesday idea. I need to work in a day of just drawing we haven't done that in a while we have been focused too much on specific art projects. Hope your week "off" is a nice one!

Jennifer- thanks for the book rec- will have to look for that one- sounds like a nice productive day!

Good day here as well. Added in some dictation and copywork with our writing as he has been doing so well with his writing, as I said before he is on track to finish his K handwriting book in just a couple of weeks. I ordered 1st and 2nd grade as well. I just did copywork and dictation w/ his books from his reading books to keep it simple. Then he wanted to write out skeleton though, so we sounded it out.

Math was working on evens/odds which seemed to go just fine. WE also started working on the Months of the year and had fun finding some songs online- youtube is always great! Read ahead in bible then Alladin and the Magic Lamp for lit. Picked back up w/ Latin, going nice and slow w/ that. We have backtracked some in our reading books as I think he needs the review, so it was nice for him and me to have an easy book to read today!

I think this evening we will do our journal pages for our Nature Study last week as we never got around to doing our pages and we still have our bag of leaves from our walk. Speaking of which we saw 2 bald eagles on a walk Sat it was awesome, we don't see those very often around here.

I got in our AAS(all about Spelling) today. So, I need to read it all over and decide how to incorporate that. As I said prior, he is really coming along in his writing. I am trying to decide on which direction to go with this. I keep meaning to buy the SWB Mp3 on writing for grammar age for some ideas. Oh, and I requested the Liping Ma Math book in ILL and dh is picking it up this evening. I had requested the Simply Grammar book but they said it would cost $10 + just to borrow it ILL- unbelievable!!

[MyLittleWonders]

Originally Posted by Jennifer3141

I want some fudge!!!

We are DONE for the day! Woot!
We got science, history, grammar, math, reading, and writing done. Whew.
We rarely do everything in one day. I threw in grammar this week. If I can get that under my belt, I'll add Latin in a week or two. Then, we'll really be cranking through and we'll feel more like "real" classicals to me.

We read Monster Goose last night and my kids were hysterical. It's a really cute book if you all want to read some Halloween poetry based upon well, Mother Goose obviously. We have another Halloween poetry book we like too if anyone wants to look that up but it's more original poetry by real poets. There was an e.e. cummings poem in there and I hated e.e. growing up because it distresses me to write e.e. instead of E.E. I hate the name, therefore I hate the poetry.
Freaking poets thinking the basic rules of grammar don't apply to them...
But the rest of the book is great, once you totally disregard my rant! And you all will probably flame me anyway because I bet you all love e.e.

I'm hoping the fudge tastes good when we make it - it is basically sugar, milk (I'm debating between coconut milk and rice milk), chocolate chips and mini-marshmellows. My children will eat it no matter what because it'll be sweet and chocolatey!

Monster Goose sounds like so much fun! I'll have to look that one up at the library. And on e.e. cummings. I never was a poetry person growing up - I wasn't really exposed to it (at home or at school) except the random "unit" in junior high school and high school. I remember, though, in my 11th grade American Lit class, we had to memorize and recite a poem by an American poet/writer. I did "The Children's Hour" by Longfellow. One of my best friends, Mike, did "Only a Lad" by the "poet" Danny Elfman! Thankfully he told me what he was going to do before he got up in front of the class, but I still couldn't watch him while he "recited" it ... I had a hard time keeping from busting up. (He was a massive Boingo fan; it was very fitting and he received an "A" because he stuck to the assignment. ) All that to say, I never understood why e.e. cummings always had his name (her name?) in lower case.

Originally Posted by crunchy_mama

I have really been enjoying poetry w/ the kids lately. I never read much before but as I have scheduled it every week I have been reading it regardless. This term it is AA Milne and I just find it too adorable.

MLW- I want fudge as well ! YUM! I like the sketch Tuesday idea. I need to work in a day of just drawing we haven't done that in a while we have been focused too much on specific art projects. Hope your week "off" is a nice one!

I got in our AAS(all about Spelling) today. So, I need to read it all over and decide how to incorporate that. As I said prior, he is really coming along in his writing. I am trying to decide on which direction to go with this. I keep meaning to buy the SWB Mp3 on writing for grammar age for some ideas. Oh, and I requested the Liping Ma Math book in ILL and dh is picking it up this evening. I had requested the Simply Grammar book but they said it would cost $10 + just to borrow it ILL- unbelievable!!

We do a lot of poetry for memory work (we love Christina G. Rosetti and Robert Louis Stevenson around here), but lately I've been toying with the idea of studying a particular poet (by just reading his/her work) for a month or so ... probably alongside a composer (just listening to music) and maybe artist (browsing through artwork and trying to do one of our own). It's on the list of things to do ... just don't know when we'd do it (well, the poetry and the composer would probably be pretty easy - just reading and listening). But I wanted to expose them to things I wasn't really exposed to as a kid (aside from the composers - I have played piano off and on since I was 4 and do love playing classical music, though I'm not that great at it since I stopped taking lessons at 13).

For what it's worth, ds#2 started level 1 of AAS at about the age of 5 1/2. He had a good grasp of all consonant and short vowel sounds and had just started working through the HOP K level. But, his writing wasn't quite there yet. So, while we were cementing his penmanship skills (K level of HWOT and then starting 1st grade level of HWOT), we only used the tiles for AAS. We moved very slowly, spending quite a bit of time on the first couple lessons on segmenting words and hearing all the sounds (this was difficult for him at first to the point I was worried about an auditory processing issue for a while). By the time we were on lessons with some simple phrases for dictation, his writing ability had caught up and we started doing 1 or 2 very short (2 word) dictation phrases every other lesson or so. Now he's doing great (1 1/2 years later), is in level 4 already, and is the one that parses his dictation sentences for me!

I have the SWB mp3's and plan on listening this week. I think I've listened to the grammar stage one once, but I need to listen and take notes this time. Plus, I'm starting to get a little panicked about ds#1 being a 5th grader next year ... it feels like a whole new ballgame! BTW, did you know you can download the presentation slides as a PDF for the mp3s? I am hoping they help me stay focused while listening (I focus well when I'm there in person, but listening to a lecture with only audio is harder).

Oh, and I realized today that there is great benefit using Dr. Seuss for fluency practice with reading. Ds#1 and ds#2 each picked a Dr. Seuss book to read to the rest of us ... between the unusual (at times) sentence structure and the made-up words, they had to really focus, which was great!

[Jennifer3141]

MLW, that's really neat about Dr. Seuss. I never thought about it that way. But you would have to slow down and think hard reading some of his stuff.

I loved Shel Silverstein as a kid. I had most of his stuff memorized at one point. But that was about all the childhood poetry I remember.

I've got to clean the guest bathroom and mop the downstairs for tomorrow. It's co-op day! We're going to cook chicken and gluten free hot dogs over the outdoor fire if the weather holds tomorrow. The 4 year old asked if I could make him a TURKEY for lunch. He wants a real turkey roasting for lunch. He was even more excited when I explained the open fire but I guess I know what to make for lunch NEXT week. And my friend is doing REAL science tomorrow which is microscopes and jello cells.

Dinner tonight is xscrambled tofu. I'm not a wonder woman!