For Music Appreciation this week we read about George Frideric Handel 1685-1759.  We read Hallelujah Handel by Douglas Cowling illustrated by Jason Walker. The artist did a beautiful job with the illustrations and the author wrote an interesting story.  It was about 3 orphans who met Handel by carrying his bags.  I only wished there had been more information about Handel interspersed throughout the story.  We learned more about the orphans than Handel himself.  I do think that what we did learn the children will not forget. Rapt Attention  Handicraft work while listening. Even the four-year-old was tuned in to the story. I intend to follow up this book with the…

Nature Study in the Upper Levels I have felt somewhat inadequate for the job of teaching my two older boys, age 16 and 15, Nature Study.  They love the outdoors but just to walk outside with their sketch books to draw something of my choosing has not been that exciting to them.  Since reading about Charlotte Mason many years ago, I was inspired to give my kids a love of nature.  There is so much to learn about and see and yet I knew nothing.  I bought field guides to have on hand and when a new bird would show up in our yard, I would make a point to express my…

At the time I was learning about Visual Spatial Learners (see this post and this post), I found out about a free online math program called MEP.  It’s a spiral program versus a mastery based program and goes from K-12.  My son had been doing Math-U-See.  We had switched him over from Saxon to MUS because he found Saxon tedious.  I’m using Saxon with two of my other children and they both like it quite well.  But it wasn’t for Zachary.  I had my ds in a lower level of MUS because that’s where he placed when he took the placement test online.  He found it frustrating because he said he knew what they were teaching…

I am so excited to share some of the things I’ve been reading lately about habits.  Some of the information I’ve heard countless times but it’s just now starting to sink into the ol’ grey matter. I have been reading the book When Children Love to Learn:  A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Today by Elaine Cooper.  The contributors to this book are ones who are running Charlotte Mason style schools. The formation of habits is education, and Education is the formation of habits.   vol 1 pg 97 When we see a bad trait in our children we may think, "That’s their nature." or "They’re still young, they’ll grow out…

Some Illustrated by Buck Jones All rights reserved. Copyright 2002 Continuing from our last post about Visual Spatiel Learners, here are some characteristics of VSL’s taken from Visual Spatial Resource. Does your child remember what is seen but forget what is heard? Does your child have a vivid imagination? Can your child visualize objects from multiple perspectives? Does your child enjoy solving puzzles and mazes? These are children who would rather spend the day with a new box of LEGOs than do nearly anything else in the world. Kids who can get so absorbed in creative play, they lose all sense of time. Often labeled unorganized, unfocused, poor spellers or…