Toddler Class/Preschool

I prefer being really flexible for anything I do with my toddlers so I don't follow a specific program and we are constantly changing and adjusting. I'm sure that anything I've posted in the past we finished or stopped doing a looong time ago.

But O, my almost 3 year old, wants her own "class" and it is really helpful to devote 20-30 minutes to my two little girls before starting school work with my older kids.

We start by reading books together. They will usually pick a few that they are currently interested in, and I pick a few as well. The ones I pick we usually read for 2-4 weeks at a time, and have more of a learning aspect to them. Sometimes we read the books and sometimes we look at the pictures.

Books I've picked for November:

A book from My First Bob Books Pre-Reader Collection which includes the Alphabet set and Pre-Reading set -- I don't read these to teach my girls to read, but because they are simple and have a lot of familiar pictures for them to identify. They also like them because my older kids have used the other collections as they were learning to read, so my girls think they are using "big kid" stuff. And there are stickers.

First Rhymes: A Day of Rhymes with a Different Twist by Lucy Coats -- Author has re-written favorite nursery rhymes: "Humpty Dumpty stood on his head, Humpty Dumpty fell out of bed . . . "

Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman -- has colors, opposites, and lots of DOGS, my girls' favorite animal.

Before Five in a Row books -- The Five in a Row books are wonderful, but I prefer to just use the book lists for wonderful picture book ideas. Jesse Bear is very well-loved and O is always asking for it!!

Books girls picked today: The Bugliest Bug, I am Not Going to Get Up Today, and Oops-A-Daisy.

After we've read for a little while we play games. Right now they like laying the memory cards face up and making matches. In the past we've done puzzles, played with babies or other toys, and sometimes we also do activities like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes or Ring around the Rosies. We also sometimes sing songs together - they are really getting into a song we are learning in anticipation of Christmas called Christmas Bells.

After about 30 minutes I let them pick some toys from the closet that are just for school time -- we have a house set, barn set, Noah's ark set, space ship set, blocks, puzzles, and quiet books. They also will join in when we are doing something they can participate in such as coloring, nature walks, listening to stories, etc.

Composer Study - Fall 2009

Ludwig van Beethoven

Biography@Wikipedia

Classic Cat - Free Classical Catalog

Classics for Kids - Biography

Classics for Kids - Radio Shows

The Story of Beethoven

Beethoven Lives Upstairs (Classical Kids CD)

Books from Library, such as Beethoven Lives Upstairs by Barbara Nichol

"Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold." -Beethoven

Artist Study - Fall 2009

Claude Monet

Art Smarts 4 Kids Post

Famous Art Appreciation Lesson

Harmony Art Mom Monet Lesson

Monet Taschen Portfolio

Wikipedia - Claude Monet

Picture books from library

"School always gave me the impression I was in prison . . ." -Claude Monet

Poetry - Fall 2009

William Blake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_blake

http://amblesideonline.org/Blake.shtml

Audio@Librivox

"Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?" -William Blake

Literature - Fall 2009

In our home school we read a TON of books for all subjects, but we do have some books that are specifically for Literature. Some books we read in a couple weeks, and other books are spread out over the whole school year.

Literature - Chapter Book

These usually take a couple weeks to a month to read, depending on how interested we are in the story.

We started reading The Princes and the Goblin by George MacDonald, but the kids were worried about the idea of goblins (their previous exposure to goblins being The Lord of the Rings), so I read the book and found these goblins to be stupid, awkward sort of fellows, but my kids aren't buying into my reassurances, and freak out when I bring it out. So we are listening to the Redwall series by Brian Jacques (currently Mattimeo - book 3) which we started listening to on our recent family trip to California. This is one thing I love about homeschooling - when something doesn't work for us we change it! But I would still recommend The Princess and the Goblin to anyone who may be interested and doesn't have a fear of goblins.

Literature Tales

These are books we will read over the course of the school year. We usually read one chapter spread out over a month or one story per week depending on the length of the chapters/book.

American Tall Tales by Adrien Stoutenberg - For example, this books has 8 chapters, so we will read several pages once a week to read an entire chapter in a month.

Little Pilgrim's Progress by Helen L. Taylor - The chapters are short enough to read one per week. This is a beautiful children's version of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and we are really enjoying it. I was amazed that my kids understood my explanation of what an "allegory" is and were able to point out some of the symbolism from the first few chapters (King, Celestial City, etc.)

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit - This will be the third year we have been reading from this book. We do one to two plays a month. We've read Romeo and Juliet more times, because it is Nyah's favorite (She loves all that drama!). Next year we will move on to Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, which have a little more detail and story complexity. I am hoping we will catch some live performances of Shakespeare's plays this year, but we'll see what happens. And ever since I watched the movie Tea with Mussoulini I have wanted a miniature Globe Theater with puppets, and I finally found one!! Shakespeare's Globe is on my Christmas list!

Ambleside Online and Milestone's Academy (two curriculum guides I use) both recommend reading Charles Kingsley's The Heroes, which are Greek myths, but instead I am using a beautiful book I already own called A Children's Treasury of Mythology by Margaret Evans Price, which are Greek myths with some Roman tales as well. We read one per week and the kids are really enjoying these as well.

Natuer Study/Science - Fall 2009

Nature Study

We have been doing the Handbook of Nature Study blog Outdoor Hour Challenges, and plan on continuing this as long as Barb keeps posting challenges! Sometimes we do write and draw in our nature journals, but mostly we enjoy learning about the world around us.

For nature tales (fictional nature stories), we are currently reading Pagoo by Holling C Holling, and we will read Secrets of the Woods by William J. Long next.

Science

For science experiments we are trying out the Backyard Scientist series for the first time. We've only done it once so far (our official school start was September 16th), but the kids really enjoyed it and have been asking to do more.

We will be finishing up God's Design for Life: The Animal Kingdom this year as well. It is a short book, but with all the other things we do we moved through this really slow last year. I like that it is told from a christian viewpoint (acknowledging the world and all its creatures are God's creations), but there are some ideas that I'm not completely confident about, so I carefully pre-read and leave out what I don't want to include. Also, it can be "textbook-y" so I keep it really short- Yesterday it wanted us to label a pie chart - why? Nothing against pie charts, but I can just say insects make up the majority of arthropods, we don't need to label a pie chart to get it.

I am still waiting on a couple books from amazon, and Science: 100 Scientists Who Changed the World is one of them. It gives (can you guess?) a brief biography of 100 scientists whose work changed the world.

We are also reading another book that is similar to 100 scientists, called The Story of Inventions, but this focuses on inventors and inventions of the last 200 years, while the 100 Scientists includes other time periods (such as the one we are studying this year - the Renaissance & Reformation).

For science tales we will be reading Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather, which is a collection of stories about "a single air mass traveling from the Canadian Rockies to the northeastern United States (back cover)."

History - Fall 2009

We are at the start of a new school year, so I thought I would share some of the resources we plan on using, starting with History.

We do history 2 days a week (Mon & Wed), for about 15-30 minutes at a time. After I read from the book the kids illustrate the story in their history journals and I will write or help them write anything they want to say about it. We also place a picture with a little bit of information in our timeline notebook, and find the places discussed on our maps.

For World History we are studying the Renaissance & Reformation era. The books we will be using are:

Famous Men of the Renaissance & Reformation will be our main spine. This just barely shipped from amazon today, so we will be about a month late getting started. Last year we used HA Guerber's The Story of the Middle Ages, which told history in a story format (the link has sample chapters), and my kids had a hard time listening and following along. Too many extra details I think. I'm hoping with Famous Men we can focus on the stories of the important people of the era and fill in details (dates, places, politics, etc.) with later school years.

For history biographies we are going to read Bard of Avon, Leonardo da Vinci, and Good Queen Bess by Diane Stanley. We might also read her Michelangelo book if we have time.

We will also check out library books, such as those recommended by Simply Charlotte Mason, to give the kids an idea of how people lived, what the houses and buildings looked like,

For American History we are mainly reading biographies (some fiction), and aren't really focusing on a specific time period. Some of these books I specifically want to read with them, and some I just already have and may include.

Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims
Path to the Pacific: The Story of Sacagawea
A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple (Mayflower, 1620)
A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32

We will read also read The American Revolution

Nyah's Liberty Girls club is reading the Kaya books, which is the Native American - American Girl.

Austin's Knights of Freedom club is doing the American frontier era through the Childhood of Famous Americans series and will be reading Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill, and Crazy Horse.

I also have the I Love America teacher resource kit which highlights an american history story each month September through May, which I sometimes remember to use.

There are also other subjects where we touch on history information, such as our Foreign Country Study, Composer Study, Artist Study, and Poetry, but history isn't the focus of these subjects so they aren't included in the history journals, but we do add important people and events to our timeline.