Category Archives: Charlotte Mason

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: God Creates the World

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Well, here we are, back at the beginning!  I started this blog right after Ian turned 3, when we began going through the Bible lessons in the ABC Jesus Loves MeThree-Year Old Curriculum, which took us on a chronological journey through many of the best-known stories in the Old and New Testaments.  This past spring I wrote a post about what our next step should be, and I’m so excited about the route we’ve chosen.  This week we started going through a fantastic family devotional called Long Story Short by Marty Machowski. (Seriously, read the reviews at Amazon or Timberdoodle and you won’t be able to resist either).

The book is broken up into 78 weeks of stories from the Old Testament (the New Testament is covered in the sequel, Old Story New (scheduled to be released this Fall), which also has 78 stories, so together it will take us at least three years to get through all the material, probably more since I’m scheduling in breaks around holidays and vacations).  Each week consists of 5 ten-minute devotions designed to be used with kids from preschool through high school.  While the main story may be from the Old Testament, each week you also look at how it is part of the overall “Gospel Story,” so there are New Testament passages to read as well.  I wasn’t sure if our children were quite old enough for it, but if this week is any indication of how things are going to go, I think they’re going to get a lot out of it.  And maybe in the future we’ll go through it again and they can process things at a deeper level.

This week’s lesson covered Genesis 1.  We started Sunday night so that we could dive into some school activities on Monday.  Daddy read the Bible passage while I helped Ian follow along in his ESV Seek and Find Bible.  Then I walked us through the questions.  If the question was too hard, I just shared the answer as part of our discussion.  Then I told them what the suggested prayer topic was and asked who wanted to pray.  Usually we just had the boys pray, but sometimes Daddy or I would pray as well. They boys really enjoyed this nightly “Bible time,” and they were sad the two nights we didn’t do it.  There are only 5 per week, but it worked out really well because we were out late at a Bible study one night and playing miniature golf as a family another night, so it would have been hard to get more than 5 done.  On weeks when we’re not out late, I’ll use The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski) or a related Scripture to carry us through the end of the week.*)

After the first night, our Bible story was constantly on the boys’ minds.  All day on Monday they kept exclaiming, “God made ______ [dirt, trees, cows, the sky, etc].”  When we had lunch, I prayed, “Thank you, God for making grapes,” which led them to ask about the other foods, which taught them that even if God didn’t make something in the form we see it, He did creat the materials for it.  So then they started saying, “God made the stuff to make ___.”  This continued throughout the week!

The first night it was a little difficult to keep Elijah engaged, so after that I tried to come up with ways to keep everyone listening.  For example, when we read through the days of creation, I asked the boys to raise their hands every time they heard “God said…”  We talked about how even though only God can create by speaking, we also can create things.  We just have to start with paint, playdough, or some other sort of material.  (And then, of course, we had to get out our paints and spend one morning creating our own masterpieces.)

  

Go-Along Books

We have several Bible storybooks, but since there are lots of other fun books related to Creation, I decided to set those aside for this lesson.  Here are some of the books we read or looked through this week:

Reading Practice

I want to help Ian practice his reading skills by finding things at his level related to our Bible lessons.  This week I had two good resources:

  • We Learn About God from Rod and Staff Publishers (a beginning “reader” that’s right at Ian’s level)
  • The Young Reader’s Bible by Bonnie Bruno (still a little too hard for Ian to read on his own, but he got good practice following along as I read.)

The other thing I did was print out our Bible verse and then cut up the individual words.  (I laminated the cards to keep in my Creation file, but that’s just so I can use them again with the other children).  I did something similar to the reading lesson Charlotte Mason described in Home Eduction (Volume 1 in the Original Homeschooling Series) Part V, chapter 4 “Reading“.  He was already familiar with Genesis 1:1, and he knew a few of the words by sight already, so I didn’t read it in order to him the way I would have with something new.  Instead I just mixed all the cards up and asked him to put them in the right order.  I helped him recite the verse so he’d know where to start, but then I was amazed how quickly he laid out the whole verse.  After he was done, I had him read it to me, pointing to each word as he read.  He was so proud of himself and immediately mixed them up and did it again.  He also took great pride in repeating the feat for Daddy that evening.  When we did “Bible time” before bed, he turned turned to the first page of Genesis in his ESV Bible and read the first verse as he pointed to the words.  He was a little confused why it didn’t say “Genesis 1:1” after “earth,” which opened up the door for talking about chapters and verses.  I pointed out the title “Genesis” and the big and small numbers, and soon he understood.

  

Bible Notebook

I really liked making a notebook as a record of our journey through the Bible the last time around, so I decided to do it again.  This time I’ll be doing them with both boys, so I’m going to try to do different activities than I did with Ian the first time. This week I printed out out the mini-book from Christian Preschool Printables to use for the boys’ Bible Notebooks.  I made up a page that had the Bible verse and a number for each day.  For Elijah, I cut out only the pictures and had him glue them next to the number on the page.  I had Ian trace the words and numbers for the day before gluing them over the printed numbers. (He’s been asking how to write letters a lot lately, so I want to start having some sort of “copywork” for him each week.  This seemed like a great starting place.)  It was nice being able to make the same activity developmentally appropriate for each boy.  They were both incredibly proud of their work, especially Elijah (“Grandma, I glued!”), since it’s the first official “schoolwork” he’s done.

  

Activities

There are lots of wonderful activities from Christian Preschool Printables, but I didn’t want to overwhelm the boys, so I tried to restrain myself.  I printed and laminated the Memory Match Game.  The boys did a good job just matching them up, but we never got quite confident enough to play “memory.”  We also each colored a Creation Wheel from Oriental Trading Company, which Ian loved turning to reveal each day.  Elijah only colored the top page and then lost interest.  I was a little irritated that they put a rainbow on it, since that’s a prominent part of the story of Noah, but we talked about how God created that too, just later on.

  

I really wanted to give the boys a chance to observe some animals, but with temperatures in the triple digits I just didn’t feel up to a trip to the zoo.  Instead, we took a field trip to a local pet store, where we saw cats, dogs, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, turtles, snakes, iguanas, and lots of varieties of fish (and even got to pet most of the mammals).  Both boys loved it, and they soon were back to their gleeful exclamations of, “God made ___!”

Multimedia

I found several resources online that Ian enjoyed playing around with:

Our “Listening Lesson” had a few more items on it than the last time we discussed creation.  This year I want to start being intentional about learning both traditional hymns and also some of the worship songs we sing in our Sunday services.  This was an easy lesson to incorporate a number of such songs into our iPod playlist:

I’m so excited to be starting this journey!  By the third night, Ian was begging for “more Bible time!”  By fourth night, both boys were eagerly volunteering to pray at the end of our time (when both have been extremely reluctant in the past).  Okay, so Elijah’s prayers in any setting are now about thanking Jesus for rocks, and the sky, and every animal he can think of, but I love that he’s excited about prayer!  “Bible time” is now something we all look forward to at the end of the day, and I love that they’re going to bed treasuring God’s Word in their hearts and minds.

—

*Here are a couple of ideas I came up with for filling in extra nights:

  • Psalm 19:1-6
  • Psalm 95:1-7
  • Romans 1:19-20
  • Psalm 104 (for older kids)
  • Job 38-39 (for older kids)
Posted in Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Composer Study: Ludwig van Beethoven

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Adding “composer study” to our school subjects was really a no pressure way to expand our learning simply by being intentional.  I enjoy listening to classical music, and it’s so easy to help my children become familiar with great composers just by choosing a composer for the month and listening to his music at least once a week.  I tell them the composer’s name, and then we listen to the music and occasionally talk about what it sounds like.  If that’s all we do, great.  However, for some of the uber-famous composers, there are lots of other great ways to help all of us learn more about the composers’ lives and music, so I like to take advantage of those as well.

Last month we studied one of the “giants” of classical music: Ludwig van Beethoven, and there were a LOT of resources available.  Here’s a list of some of the things we enjoyed as we learned about this incredible artist.

Audio Resources

The boys got a kick out of several pieces from the Beethoven’s Wig series, where silly lyrics are put to the tune of famous classical pieces. (There’s also a book that goes along with the title song, but we didn’t manage to get our hands on it.) All the albums are available on Amazon either on CD or for download.  Each album also contains the original song without words, so I recommend buying the whole album rather than individual songs, though I’ve also included links for each one.  There are pieces by many different composers, but these are the songs by Beethoven the we listened to:

Video Resources

  • Beethoven Lives Upstairs DVD (also available for purchase from Amazon Instant Video)
  • Pastoral Symphony (6th) from Fantasia (I don’t recommend this one if your family is extremely sensitive to nudity.  I don’t have a problem with it since it is animated and not graphic.  My kids didn’t even notice.)

Little Einsteins episodes that have music by Beethoven (always a favorite in our house):

  • “Brand New Outfit” and “The Missing Invitation” both feature “Ode to Joy” from the 9th Symphony
  • “Brothers and Sisters to the Rescue” and “Annie and the Beanstalk” both feature the theme from the 5th Symphony.  (Every time Elijah hears the opening of the 5th Symphony he shouts, “That’s the Forte Giant!”)
  • There are also 2 other episodes “The Christmas Wish” and “A Galactic Goodnight” (both feature “Fur Elise”) that we didn’t have on our DVR so we haven’t gotten to watch them yet.

Books and Other Reading

And for grown-ups:

Homeschooling is not just for the kids.  I try to did a little deeper and learn new things myself about the subjects we’re studying.  So I started practicing a piano Sonata I’d never learned before.  I may not do this for every composer (even the ones that wrote piano music), but after learning so much about Beethoven over the course of the month, it made the piece feel very personal.

I also enjoyed watching a couple videos about Beethoven online:

As always, if you have any suggestions of other resources, please comment!  I love collecting ideas!

Posted in Charlotte Mason, Composer Study

Composer Study: Igor Stravinsky

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In July we made our first venture into the world of classical composers.  My kids are no strangers to classical music, but it was first time we’ve discussed the person who wrote what we were listening to.  This first unit was much simpler than what I plan to do through the next school year, mostly because I wasn’t planning to do a true composer study.  We only did it because Grandma had just come from Russia and Stravinsky fit into the conversation, though he wouldn’t normally be one of my first choices for composers.

We started off by reading through the first section of My First Classical Music Book, which is about “When and Where” we hear classical music (in movies, at weddings, for dancing, etc.).  It’s a great introduction, and it comes with a CD that has clips to listen to for each page.  Then we turned to the second section of the book, which discusses a number of composers.  We read the page on Stravinsky as we played the “Russian Dance” from Petrushka on the CD.

Mostly we just listened to The Firebird, music the boys are already familiar with (thanks to Little Einsteins: Rocket’s Firebird Rescue) and talked about the fact that Stravinsky wrote it.  We also found some interesting information on the Classics for Kids website.  I love their podcasts because they’re really short (about 6 minutes) but have good information specifically presented to children.  There were four episodes specifically about Stravinsky and the Firebird.  Every time the boys heard the music they’d start talking about the characters from the story on Little Einsteins.  I’m glad the music has stuck in their heads!

The only other piece of music we spent any significant amount of with was The Soldier’s Tale from Maestro Classics.  I love the biographical information on these CDs.  The story was a little mature for my boys, so it wasn’t their favorite thing we’ve listened to, but after I had played it a few times Ian started requesting it.  My main goal in listening to this CD was to provide some exposure to the main piece and to hear the information about Stravinsky’s life, so I’d say it was a success.  We’ll come back to Stravinsky in a few years and then I think they’ll get even more out of it.

Although I have some background in classical music, Stravinsky was not terribly familiar to me.  I really enjoyed finding out more about his life and listening to his music more purposefully throughout the month.  Someday we’ll dig a little deeper into our composers, but for now a gentle introduction is just right for both the kids and myself.

Posted in Charlotte Mason, Composer Study

More Classical Music My Kids Love

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One of the subjects I’d like to be a part of our children’s education is music appreciation.  Ian’s already learning to play piano and enjoy making music through a Yamaha course, but I also want to help them all become familiar with some of the beautiful music that has been enjoyed for centuries through a little composer study à la Charlotte Mason.  Our children are still so young, but my plan for the next few years until we are “officially” homeschooling is to gradually add in the subjects that I want to be a part of our curriculum.  Otherwise it would be pretty overwhelming when Ian turns six if I suddenly try to jump into everything at once.  So since I have a fairly extensive background in music (not to mention an absurdly large collection of classical music CDs), I’ve decided now is a good time to start being a little more intentional in this area. (I tend to think in terms of the schoolyear starting in August, even though I intend to homeschool year round, taking breaks as we need them rather than a big summer holiday)

Last year I shared about some of the music we started listening to when they were quite little in the post “Music My Preschoolers Love.”  They still enjoy all those pieces, but now they’re also ready for a few more mature findings.  Yes, they’re SO mature now that the oldest is 4 1/2.  Seriously though, having been exposed to it early has made them more open to hearing things not necessarily meant for children so young.  I especially like finding CDs or other audio files that explain a bit about the music and give the kids something specific to be listening for.  For example, after hearing the composer tell about using tubas to portray the big boats in Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, Elijah started asking, “Mommy, is that the big tubas?” every time they played.

Mike Mulligan and His Steam ShovelThat CD is the first one we bought from the Maestro Classics series.  It was such a hit, both with the boys and with me, that I also decided to get Peter and the Wolf, even though we already have another recording of this piece. I just really like all the extras that come on their albums–(plus the Peter and the Wolf (MP3) was just $5 thanks to a coupon from HomeschoolShare–they’re also sponsoring a giveaway until the end of July so check it out!)  And we just got The Soldier’s Tale to include in the last week of our July composer study on Stravinsky (post coming soon).  I’ve put the rest on the kids’ wishlists for gift ideas and I hope we can eventually collect the whole set.  Here are all the titles available:

The Maestro Classics website also has homeschool curriculum guides with lots of great suggestions for integrating different subjects with the music from each CD.Beethoven Lives Upstairs

Another great resource for exposing your children to the works of the great composers is the Classical Kids series.  A fellow homeschooler shared these with us, and while I haven’t yet listened to all of them yet, they get great reviews.  They tell a story about the composers’ lives, using various pieces of their music throughout the CD.  What a great way to help your kids become familiar with the unique musical “voice” of different composers!  Over the next school year I’ll be using these as the framework for our composer study, choosing one CD a month and supplementing with podcasts from Classics for Kids (lots of great resources there!), music from my own collection and kid-friendly biographies from the library.

There are two additional Classical Kids CDs that are thematic rather than being about a particular composer.

And just in case you needed any more ideas, I’ve recently added to our music library a couple other albums combining classical music (or classical style) with engaging stories.  We’ll be listening to Ferdinand the Bull and Friends when we “row” The Story of Ferdinand.   And although our listening schedule looks pretty packed this year, I’m really looking forward to queezing in some time for the award-winning Baroque Adventure: The Quest for Arundo Donax. 

Wow!  That’s a lot of music!  I hope you’ll try out some of our suggestions and share some of your family’s favorites in the comments. 🙂

(If you’re interested in implementing Charlotte Mason-style composer study in your home, check out Ultimate Guide to Composer Study over at Homegrown Learners for lots of great information and ideas!)

Posted in Charlotte Mason, Composer Study, Homeschool Resources, Our Vision, Parenting Resources, Preschool

Index of Composers we’ve studied

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Here’s a quick alphabetical list of the composers we’ve studied:

Also, here are two posts I wrote with lots of ideas for music to listen to with children:

And finally, here’s a post about Christmas Music for the Whole Family.

Posted in Charlotte Mason, Composer Study, Index

The Parting of the Red Sea (part 2)

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It felt good to be getting back in the swing of things, though I didn’t do the greatest job of it.  Monday slipped by before I knew it.  On Tuesday we told the story of Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea in a number of different ways (as I talked about in my last post).  We started with the flannel board, read in several Bible storybooks, and ended with a clip from the Prince of Egypt.  Later that day Ian watch VeggieTales: Moe and the Big Exit, but I’m not sure if he saw any connection.  We talked a little bit about the story over the next couple days, but life was busy, and not until today (Friday) did we get back into it.  And really all we did was talk about the story a little as we worked on the page for our Bible notebook.

We started with this craft from DTLK-bible.com.  Ian glued the pieces on cardstock (some of our pages have proved to be too flimsy, so I think that’s what I’ll use from here on out) and let Ian add some fish stickers we had lying around.  Then for a special touch, we painted over the water sections with blue glitter paint.

We did the verse from the ABC Jesus Loves Me week 8 lesson: “My God will supply all your needs.” Philippians 4:19.  As suggested in the lesson plan, I sang it to the tune of “London Bridge.” I sang it over and over while we worked on our craft, since I’ve neglected it since Tuesday!

“My God will supply all your needs, supply all your needs, supply all your needs. My God will supply all your needs.  Philippians 4:19.”

Luckily we’ll review it every week when we read through our Bible notebook, so I know he’ll get it eventually.  This was definitely a minimal week.  For some reason iTunes wouldn’t open for me and I never got around to reinstalling it.  So we didn’t have a playlist to listen to.  I had a Before Five in a Row book picked out to do along with our Bible story (and even had an activity planned) and we never once opened it.  On the other hand, we had some great “nature study” yesterday.  We went to a park with a lake, watched the ducks and some turtles, even found the dead body of some small crustacean that just fascinated Ian.  I’d love to be more intentional about including nature study in our schedule.  Ever since reading Charlotte Mason’s Home Education*, I’ve been determined to make it a part of my children’s education.  All that to say that our days without Bible lessons weren’t a total loss!  Weeks like this make me really thankful we’ve started trying to get into the “school” habit long before we need to worry about “officially” homeschooling.  It’s definitely going to take a while to make it a more solid part of our schedule!

* You can find the text for all Charlotte Mason’s writings for free online at Ambleside Online.  I downloaded the modern paraphrase and then read it on my Kindle.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Ambleside Online, Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason, Preschool

Other things floating around in my brain

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After I finished that last post about the different curricula I checked out (I really don’t like that word “curricula”, but “curriculums” just sounds wrong, so I’ll stick with it for now), I realized I’d left out a whole other side of my thought process in landing where we are.  I was all prepared to start describing what we’re currently doing, but the picture would be incomplete if I didn’t share some of the other ideas floating around in my brain.  Hence the title of this post.

I guess I can really boil the rest of it all down to this: Charlotte Mason.  How I ever got through a Master of Education program and a teaching credential without hearing her name, I just can’t understand.  Charlotte Mason is pretty much a hero in the homeschool world, but since she actually taught in schools, it seems to me like “traditional” schoolteachers could learn a lot from her writings as well.  If you want to find out more about her, here is a good place to start.

There is so much I like about Charlotte Mason’s methods.  I love the idea of including artist and composer studies in our school work.  Nature study seems like such a wonderful thing to include as well, especially with boys.  (I’m very prone to just wanting to stay inside and do desk work.) I’ve never been much on poetry, but reading Charlotte Mason’s books encouraged me to give it a try, and Ian LOVES reading poems together. I’ve also started thinking about how to incorporate foreign language study into our preschool learning time.  Finally, Iknow I did my best learning growing up through the many “living books” I found at the library, and this is one of the key parts of a Charlotte Mason education.

I have a feeling that when Ian’s ready to start first grade, I’ll probably be using Ambleside Online, a Charlotte Mason based curriculum, as my main source for inspiration, much like I’m using ABC Jesus Loves Me for preschool.  I looked through their booklists for the first few years and fell in LOVE.  So many of my old favorites were on there, and I love the idea that those can BE our schoolwork, rather than trying to squeeze them in on top of schoolwork!  But as I’ve said before, I’m a tweaker, and I doubt I’ll do everything quite as laid out.

The one thing I did do was compile a massive list of books I want to be sure to read with my children while they’re young.  I took all the books used in Five in a Row (including B4FIAR and volumes 1-4), the Ambleside Year 0/Kindergarten list, the Simply Charlotte Mason Early Years Booklist, and the Kindergarten list from An Old Fashioned Education and looked to see which books were on more than one of these lists.  Those were the books I decided I really wanted to make sure we got to.  Then I picked the ones that seemed best for younger kids and pencilled them onto our school calendar for the next year.  I’m not going to share that list, because to be honest, it’s just too much evidence of how obsessive I am about books.  (As if describing the process I went through didn’t already reveal that!)

Can you see how I’m having a hard time not centering our school around books?  That’s why I’m so thankful for ABC Jesus Loves Me .  I make the Bible story the first thing I plan, the first thing I teach, and the center of all we do throughout the week.  Then instead of using the “book of the week” in the curriculum, I take one from my own list (many of them are actually on both).  That way I’m still touching on the literature I want to share, but I don’t spend a lot of time each week thinking about it.

Okay, so I think that’s all the background stuff.  Next time I’ll start sharing a little about what we are actually doing.

Posted in Ambleside Online, Charlotte Mason, Our Vision
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