Poetry

Listening to beautiful music, looking at a picture or painting, observing nature, singing a hymn, memorizing scriptures and reading a poem-
These are things we do everyday that mean more than schooling to us- they have been incorporated in our lives.
Poetry, in particular, has the power to make a thoughtful child happy, and I say that from observation. Poems take us to places and time we've never been before. They make us laugh or even cry. They make us think and be inspired. Whatever it is, every child should be exposed to good poetry. We do that by reading one everyday.
Most of them get added to our notebook. We often use part of a poem for copywork. Heavy papers are used because Aliyah loves to illustrate her copyworks in markers or watercolors. We like browsing at our pages a lot, so cardstocks inside sheet protectors are the way to go. I designed the paper so that there is blank space for illustration, and the rest is lined.
Here are some sample pages from last fall:

Bible Narrations

Here are sample pages from Aliyah's Bible notebook:

"The Tower of Babel" by Aliyah 2005

Aliyah 2005

"The Ten Commandments" fold

glue happy...

From the Book of Joshua

Aliyah 2006

Z

I dug and dug amongst the snow,
And thought the flowers would never grow
I dug and dug amongst the sand,
And still no green thing came to hand.

Melt, O snow! the warm winds blow
To thaw the flowers and melt the snow
But all the winds from every land
Will rear no blossom from the sand.

-Christina Rossetti

Bible and Memory Work

WHAT WE ARE READING:
Narrated Bible in Chronological Order - The Book of Joshua
* Sometimes, I would get voluntary narrations from these readings. See Bible Narrations for samples.

FROM THE KING JAMES:
Proverbs - from the chapter that corresponds to today's date
Psalms -
* Don't hesitate to read the King James Bible to young children. If they are to enjoy great literary works like Shakespeare later on, they need to be acquainted with the beautiful language of the King James first!

RECENT MEMORY WORKS:
The Ten Commandments, Joshua 1:5-9, Books of the OT

MORE TO MEMORIZE:
Psalm 91, The Beatitutes, 1 Cor.13, Books of the NT

Winged Creatures

We are now reading Exploring Creation with Zoology I and loving it.

history & copywork

Once in a while, we would use books we've read for copywork. We use Italic for hand writing and before I got the Educational Fontware software, I would handwrite everything for Aliyah. It was a lot of work, but I firmly believe that she should be copying texts that are meaningful, and I want her to copy them from the Italic handwriting. With the Getty-Dubay books, I felt like we were compromising something. We also have Penny Gardner's book, but we got through it pretty quickly. Using the EF software, I just type in future copyworks on the PC and link them to Italic. Now, I'm able to offer more choices for copywork. What a timesaver!

colonial times notebook pages

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Aliyah put a lot of work in this multi-fold page!

Inspired again!

History Jeopardy

New cards like these get added on Fridays. These are of people we read about during the week. We use these cards in a game of Jeopardy.
I resize and print the figures from History Through the Ages CD ahead of time (but Google works as well) and the notes are usually dd's narrations.
We love playing this game, and hey, it's a fun way to retain information!

Astronomy

1st Astronomy page

Earth's layers

Uranus' & Neptune's flaps

We thoroughly enjoyed learning about Astronomy last year!

This solar system accordion was an ongoing project. Planet facts were saved in the pc as we learned them, and Aliyah worked on the illustrations 3 planets at a time. Just like what we did in the above Uranus and Neptune project, we used black construction papers for frames, and cut big round holes in them. I supposed we could have just pasted pictures of the planets in the black construction paper, but that was not dd's idea of "creative". Haha!

Presidents Day

Happy Birthday, Mr. Washington!

Timeline Book

We got this beautiful Record of Time from Homeschool in the Woods last year. We still use it for major events we study, but we're not so diligent with it. We have the nicely done HTTA timeline figures on CDs that we use with this book, but for what we utilize them for, I still haven't justified the cost. Since we're only on our 3rd year of History adventures, it's not very fulfilling flipping through so many blank timeline pages. I know, I know. It will look better as time goes, but for now, we are keeping a history binder filled with pages of events and people we read about. I will be posting some of these pages later on.

Nature Observations

One of the things we love to do is taking nature walks. At the moment though, it is a bit of a challenge for me with 2 little ones in tow, not to mention it's winter. But I would let the kids go outside while Lyrica and I watch. They were always proud to show me their "finds". It could be twigs, leaves or anything that moves!
We also enjoy birdwatching (or deer watching) even when we're at home. Birds and their habits just never cease to amaze us!
Have you seen these Laptop Lunchboxes? They are great for nature walks, field trips or other outings. It's a great way to pack healthier food and it's easy on the environment, too! We love them.
But wait, we could be outside enjoying nature right now!

Book Illustrations

These are from the book illustration project Aliyah did at the Art Academy.