Monthly Archives: October 2012

Papa Piccolo

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Over the last few weeks, we’ve been rowing Papa Piccolo by Carol Talley, which I chose to complement our composer study on Vivaldi (post coming soon).  Because of that, we focused on geography and spent a lot of time learning about Venice.

Papa Piccolo tells the story of a Venetian tomcat who finds two kittens who could use someone to watch over them and teach them how to take care of themselves.  The illustrations by Itoko Maeno are wonderful watercolor paintings of what many consider the most beautiful city in the world.  Both my boys were enchanted by the story and enjoyed reading it over and over.

Here are the things we did in addition to covering many of the activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1):

  • We talked about the main character’s name, looking at a picture of a piccolo and listening to Vivaldi’s Piccolo Concerto on the Daydreams and Lullabies CD from Classical Kids
  • We watched a Wonder Pets half-episode called “Save the Kitten” about a kitten in Venice (it’s the 2nd half of the episode, starting at 12:15 if you don’t want to watch the first one), available streaming on Netflix or Amazon Instant Video (free for Prime members).  The Little Einsteins episode “How We Became the Little Einsteins” features paintings of Venice. (They also visit Venice in “The Birthday Machine” on the Mission Celebration DVD.  (We also watched The Aristocats, which has nothing to do with Venice but was a fun story about tomcat who helps a group of kittens and their mother.)
  • Ian and I both enjoyed watching Ancient Mysteries – Miraculous Canals of Venice
    on Netflix as we folded laundry one morning.  (This was fascinating for me and would be great for older kids!)
  • We read Zoe Sophia’s Scrapbook: An Adventure in Venice by Claudia Mauner and Elisa Smalley, which has a lot of great information about Venice.  I also had a Kindle book called The Canals of Venice that I had picked up a few months back when it was free
  • Finally, Ian really enjoyed seeing pictures of a friend and me on our trip to Venice back in our single days.  I told him about how a pigeon pooped on my jacket in the Piazza San Marco (where Papa Piccolo likes to watch the birds), and he mentioned it every time we saw the square in books or videos after that.

  

There are several places to see gondolas in action around Southern California, and I had hoped to take the kids out one evening to see them, but then sickness hit and it just didn’t seem like a great idea to spend an evening outside.  Someday I hope we’ll get to do that, and when we do I know the kids will we looking out for Marco, Polo, and Papa Piccolo!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Long Story Short: God Gives Abram a New Name

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“Never imagine you have rightly grasped a biblical idea until you have reduced it to a corollary of the idea of covenant.”*  When I was in college, one of our mandatory classes was “Theology of Ministry.”  Everyone was required to memorize this quote, and though it’s been more than fifteen years, it was so drilled into my mind that I can still remember it almost word-for-word.  As we spent yet another week on Abraham this quote came to my mind.  God’s covenant with Abraham was one of the most important events in the Bible.  If I were to sum up the major events of God’s whole “Grand Story” as told through the Bible, I would put it this way:

  1. God created the world as a place for his masterpiece, mankind, with whom He wanted to live in relationship.
  2. Mankind rejected God’s authority, believed the lie of the Enemy, and consequently caused sin to enter the world.
  3. Although sin separated man from God, He had a plan to redeem His Creation: He promised that someday He would send a Savior to crush the Enemy.
  4. Out of a world now ruled by sin, God chose one man, Abraham, who trusted in Him.  Because of Abraham’s faith, God made a covenant with him, promising to bless his family and from them to bring forth the Savior through whom he would bless all the families of the earth.
  5. Abraham’s family became a nation, Israel, the first to be “God’s people.”  Although they did not always follow him faithfully, through His relationship with Israel God revealed His nature: slow to anger, abounding in love, rich in grace.
  6. When the time was right, God sent the Savior, Jesus, who conquered sin and death.  Those put their trust in Him are grafted into “God’s people.”
  7. Jesus ascended to heaven, but someday he will return to fully establish His kingdom, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where God’s original intention will be fulfilled, and His people will live with Him for all eternity.

The story looks bleak until God’s plan is put into action, when He makes His covenant with Abraham.  This week in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski we talked about God changing Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude,” telling him, “I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5).  His wife, Sarai, who has spent decades lamenting her barrenness, is told that “she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (Genesis 17:16). I wonder what it must have been like to be Abraham and Sarah.  God has promised them something so incredible: not just the baby they have ached for and long since accepted as an impossibility given their advanced ages, but a major role in the Grand Story, one that encompasses all of history, from Creation to eternity.  I think they must have borne their new names with a sense of humility and awe.

I love that Long Story Short is making me consider such things.  The covenant between God and Abraham is at the core of our faith.  While the slow pace through these chapters in Genesis is making me do something a little different with our lessons, I’m still glad we’re using it.  Next week I’m planning to go back to a few of the activities we’ve done before, but for now we’ve just used the lighter Bible lessons to start a math program, focus a little more on reading, and spend time enjoying our composer study.

Even our “Listening Lesson” is less than what it usually is, but here’s what was on our playlist this week:

* After seaching for this quote online, I see it is from Paul Ramsey, but I can’t find any more information on it than that.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Our Foray into Math

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I know there are many homeschool families that hold off on any kind of formal math until the children are around 2nd or 3rd grade, instead using various math games and activities to lay a foundation.  At first I considered going this route, but over the last few months something “clicked” in Ian’s brain and he started becoming fascinated by numbers and counting.  It felt like a waste not to take advantage of his interest, so I’ve been slowly starting to spend more time on math concepts. As I started this new venture, there were two things I wanted to keep in mind:

  1. There are many facets of math, so I decided to use a curriculum to make sure I was hitting them all in a logical order.
  2. I want to be sure to lay a strong foundation of “number sense,” so that Ian is really grasping the concepts behind the symbols we use in math.  One of my favorite tools for this is a set of Cuisenaire rods.

My mom was a teacher, and growing up I used to spend every afternoon in her classroom waiting for her to finish getting things ready for the next day.  One of my favorite ways to entertain myself was playing with Cuisenaire rods.  There was something so satisfying to me about the way they were designed.  When I first became a teacher myself I was blessed with 2 sets of rods, and though I never used them with a large class, I knew they would be a valuable tool in homeschooling.  Over the last year I’ve gotten them out several times for the boys to play with, just to build familiarity.  As I started looking for a curriculum, I wanted to find one that would incorporate the rods in the early stages. Okay, I have to make a confession.  Ian is only 4, but I think I’ve been looking at curricula for at least 2 years.  I just like to know what’s out there, to read reviews, talk to other people about what they use, and have a decent idea of what’s available before I need to make a decision.  Early on in my search I came across the Miquon Math Lab series.  Because I didn’t need them right away, I put them all on my PaperBack Swap wishlist, and within a few months I had collected all 6 workbooks (in order: Orange, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Purple) and the “Lab Sheet Annotations,” which is basically the teacher’s manual.  They’ve been sitting on my shelf waiting to get put to use, but I was a little hesitant to start an actual curriculum when Ian is still a few months shy of turning 5.  (Most of the books are available very inexpensively at Amazon.  You can also get the whole set from Rainbow Resource.) I decided to look online for activities I could do that were more structured than just playing with the blocks, but not quite as formal as a curriculum.  My favorite resource was the “Cuisenaire Activity and Exploration Book for Pre-Miqon Kids ” by Miranda Hughes, full of activities and games designed for her daughter to use before beginning the Miquon series and generously shared as a free pdf file.  I also liked Marcia Miller’s ideas at Unschooling Conversations.  There are a number of books available with more ideas, but these free resources will take you a long way (and get you started thinking of your ideas about how to use the rods). I love the “lab” nature of Miquon and these Cuisenaire rod activities, but to me they feel more like a supplement than a core math program (though I know some people have gone that route).  So even though I had been hesitant to start a curriculum, I changed my mind and decided to ease into one VERY slowly.  There are a number of good math curricula out there, and I think we’d be fine going with pretty much any of them.  However, I am all about cheap and convenient, and it’s hard to get cheaper than free or more convenient than having everything you need available online to print whenever you want.  That’s why I was drawn to the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (MEP) from the Center for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching in the UK.  It’s designed for classroom use but has been used by many homeschool families as well.  (There’s even a Yahoo group where you can connect with others using MEP at home.)  Incidentally, I know of many families who would chose MEP over other programs even if it weren’t free, so I’m not worried at all about compromising quality just to save some money. From what I understand, the “Reception” year is geared toward preschool-age children, and “Year 1” would be for Kindergarteners.  I kept considering starting Reception with Ian, but I was turned off by the format, which is different from the rest of the years.  It’s very conversational, which would be okay except that I found so much of the material to be too easy for Ian.  I didn’t want to bore him with things he already knew; nor did I want to spend the time picking through everything to find the things he really did need to learn.  So I decided to skip Reception and just dive into Year 1.  It’s a spiral curriculum so I figure any gaps will be filled in eventually as we move through the program.  So far Ian is doing fine with the material.  We use “Little People” when activities call for using children in the class (they also make great “counters”), and a set of “Thomas & Friends” number cards I found at the 99-Cent Store a while back (though you could easily make your own cards).  If you’re interested in using MEP, I highly recommend reading through this post by a mom who’s been using it for a while.  Reading this really simplified everything floating around in my mind and encouraged me to give it a shot. Because I spend a lot of time in Charlotte Mason circles, I have to say I feel almost guilty beginning any sort of curriculum with a child so young.  However, I am not a slave to any particular method, and Ian seems ready to begin some more structured learning, so here we are.  I’m not pushing him to keep up a quick pace.  My goal is to get through 2 MEP lessons a week.  In the month we’ve been doing this, we’ve sometimes done more, sometimes less, and I’m fine with that.  If a concept seems a little challenging for Ian, we spend a little extra time on it before moving on.  We’re also taking at least 1 day a week to do some “Math Lab” work.  Right now I’m using the pre-Miquon book I mentioned above, but after that we’ll start slowly working our way through The Miquon “Orange Book.”  (I’ve torn out the perforated pages and put them in page protectors.  Ian can work on them with dry-erase markers and then we can save them to use with the other kids.  Yes, the books are cheap, but I just can’t stand the waste of having him write in the book!) There’s one last thing I want to make note of, and that is Elijah’s reaction to all this.  He has watched Ian and I doing “Math,” and is eager to have his turn.  I try to adapt the lab activities and take a few minutes each session to have some one-on-one time with Elijah.  His brain is much more naturally geared toward order and numbers, so his eyes just sparkle with excitement as he does “work.”  I have a feeling we’ll be diving into those Cuisenaire activities with him before too long!

I wrote a follow up to this post, so be sure to check that out for more ideas on using Cuisenaire rods.

 

Posted in Homeschool Resources, Preschool

Long Story Short: God Makes a Covenant With Abram

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http://b2bwithrobi.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/35-abraham.jpg

I think I’ve found my first complaint against Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, and that is the fact that he spends a really long time on Abraham.  Though really, that’s only been a negative as far as our related schoolwork is concerned.  It’s hard to find things to go-along with just the tiny sliver of the story we’re working on each particular week.  However, as far as our nightly devotions it’s been great.  The slow pace and repetition I’ve provided during the day has really helped Ian to understand the main points of the story.  Plus, it’s such a crucial part of the overall story of the Bible, so it’s one I really want to emphasize.

Once again, we took it easy last week, so aside from reading about Abraham inThe Rhyme Bible Storybook and The Rhyme Bible Storybook for Toddlers, all we really did was our “Listening Lesson”:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

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Over the last two weeks we’ve been rowing How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman.  Ian loved the story and all the activities we did from the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1). In addition to reading it several times, we watched a cute reading of the story on YouTube as well as a Reading Rainbow episode featuring the book. (Our library has most of the series on DVD.)  I focused mostly on geography and the sources of the various ingredients, but we also had fun doing math with a bowl of apples on the kitchen table and a few other suggestions.

We talked about the seven continents as we put together a puzzle map of the world.  (I also found some free coloring pages about the continents at CurrClick.)  Then we used the story disks from the printables at Homeschool Share to locate the various places in the book.

I printed and laminated a set of cards for matching various elements of the girl’s trip around the world. Elijah practiced sorting them into three piles based on the pictures (country, food and modes transportation), while Ian matched up the proper cards into a pile for each location.

  

Of course, the highlight of our time with this book was making an apple pie.  We tried to get the freshest ingredients possible.

We spent a day at an apple farm and picked our apples right off the tree.

  

We made our own butter by shaking whipping cream (and a pinch of salt) in baby food jars.

  

We even evaporated our own salt.  We had planned to get an egg from our friends’ chicken, but that didn’t work out.  Either did grinding our own cinnamon, though Ian was impressed with the bark.

  

After begging all week to make our pie, Ian was a great helper when we finally had collected all our ingredients.

  

And voila! Our beautiful (and delicious) apple pie!

We decided it looked too good to settle for eating it plain, so we also made some homemade vanilla ice cream by rolling it around in a pair of coffee cans.  Heavenly!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Composer Study: Claude Debussy

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Last month we started becoming familiar with the music of French composer Claude Debussy.  There weren’t a lot of extras to go along with our study, but that didn’t lessen our enjoyment.  I’m realizing that one composer a month is rather a quick pace, for I’m finding myself surprised when we come to the end of a month and move on.  This first year I’m really only trying to introduce the whole idea of composer study, so I think we’ll keep with my original plan.  However, next year will be Ian’s official “Kindergarten” year, and I think then we’ll slow down a little and just do one composer per term, probably sticking with the suggested schedule from Ambleside Online.  (Actually, I included their composers for this year in our own schedule because I knew we wouldn’t be doing a full study and I wanted to hit all the major composers this year as an introduction.)

Here’s what we listened to in our month with Debussy:

Posted in Charlotte Mason, Composer Study

Long Story Short: Abram and God’s Promise

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In my women’s Bible study group at church this week we were talking about how the early church had to wrestle with the concept of including Gentiles into the people of God after so many years years of following the commandments of God’s Law which kept Israel so different from the other nations.  I immediately flashed back to what we had read the night before with our family in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski.  God told Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).  That promise was made about two thousand years before the early church.  Throughout those two millenia, God had been laying the foundation through his interaction with Abraham’s descendants, preparing the way for the Christ who would open the way for all of us to return to the blessing of relationship with God.  The 1st century Jews knew the promise; they’d heard God’s reminders through the years about making them a light to the nations, yet when the time of fulfillment came, many struggled with knowing what exactly that should look like.  How hard it can be for us in our finite little minds to grasp where our situation falls in the big picture of God’s plan.

That’s one of my favorite things about using this devotional.  It helps me remember that the story of God promising to make Abram a great nation is about so much more than the life of a man who lived four thousand years ago.  It is part of MY story.  I’m not even part of Abraham’s family line, and yet I am blessed because of God’s promise and Abraham’s faith.  What seems like such a long story as you read through the Bible really is quite short when you get right down to it.

As far as lessons, we didn’t do a whole lot this week aside from reading the five devotions and the corresponding story from The Gospel Story Bible.  For one thing, we’re still settling into our fall activities and I haven’t yet found my “groove.”  For another thing, we’re going to be spending more than a month on Abraham, and most of the extra activities I’ve seen go long with other parts of the story. (We also were enjoying diving into our October composer study, starting a math program, and “rowing” and our Five in a Row book, so we kept plenty busy!) We did work on a memory verse (“By faith he went to live in the land of promise.” Hebrews 11:9), but other than that we took it easy and may continue to do so for another week, just doing Bible time each night and our “listening lesson” during the day.  Here’s what was on our playlist this past week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story