Heart of Wisdom Academy

 

In the early grades "living math" is easier to come up with and implement. But in the middle-upper grades many moms wonder if it can be done. It can be! I mostly use a traditional math text, but every opportunity I can find, I insert or substitute that lesson with a living math lesson. This semester, we've stepped away from Saxon Math completely  Instead we are focusing on math fact mastery and other math topics that don't require heavy calculations. We're going through a book called Word Problems with Fractions. We'll also do geometry, measurements, and probability.

Kyle is currently working on ratios, percents, and fractions. If the World Were a Village  is perfect practice for ratios  and some of the other math topics he's working on right now. I found this at the library and I'm so glad that I did. At the time of this printing the world's population was 6 billion. But 6 billion is almost unfathomable. So the book condenses the world population to a village of 100. Each person actually representing 65 million people. For example: 13% of the world's population has a car. This number has a bigger effect when you realize that in a village of 100 only 13 have cars! It has lots of neat and interesting facts, and a ton of opportunities to practice ratios, fractions, and percents. How I use the book:

• What fraction of the people have cars?
• What fraction of the people don't have cars? 
• How many people have cars in the world?
• How many people don't have cars in the world?
• What percentage of the people have cars?
• What percentage of the people don't have cars?
• What is the ratio of people to cars?
• What is the ratio of the world population to villagers?

Homeschooling has been smooth and easy and we have completed our first month of learning together. Implementing the Charlotte Mason philosophy into our homeschool has changed our days. They are creative and meaningful. We've actually focused on and thoroughly enjoyed the extras-that-aren't-extra. (nature study, art appreciation, read a louds, etc.) The twins are going slower, but learning. Kaden graduated to the second book in the Rod and Staff reading series for Grade 1. A HUGE accomplishment!! I feel like we're not reinforcing defeat and failure with the twins. And with a varied curriculum they have so many more opportunities to experience victory in learning. I wanted to show how I use my planner to not only plan but keep records of our weeks. Every week I have a book log page where I catalogue all the books we have read that week. On this page, I'll put things that we all worked on together. We work on the 70 phonograms together everyday. I'll also put field trips we took and educational DVD's we watched together on this page. This is the week 4 page for Grade 5. I have listed the agenda for the week. Some of the items on this page aren't meant to be done weekly, but I keep them there as a reminder to do it before the end of the semester. This includes Shakespeare ,science biography, parables of nature, and Answers in Genesis. On this page I check off what we did and anything extra that we got done I write on the side. This is the week 4 page for my first graders and preschooler. Again I check off everything that they did this week. Their page has directions for the Writing with Ease program, which I won't start with them until their writing improves. Write now it is a lot of work for them to remember how to write their letter correctly, space in between words, write on the correct lines, and remember the sentence or phrase that I've dictated to the them. When the mechanics of writing becomes a little less laborious then I will begin writing with ease. For now, we are doing dictation exercises and narration weekly.

I'm excited to participate in the Not Back to School Blog Hop for the first time! I'm Kristal and I've been married to my best-friend, encourager, and confidant for 11 years. He is extremely supportive and encourages me when I feel lost or overwhelmed. He trusts me 1000% with their education, he let's me plan away, and he quietly encourages me and patiently listens to me.


The name of our homeschool is The Heart of Wisdom Academy and we have 5 children enrolled. We follow a Charlotte Mason slightly Classical Approach to Education, using Ambleside Online and The Simply Charlotte Mason Curriculum Guide as a pattern:

Kyle:10 years and 9 months-5th Grade
Peyton:6 yearsand 11 months- 1st Grade
Kaden:6 years and 11 months- 1st Grade
Kason: 3 years and 9 months- Preschool
Kendal: 21 months-Toddler

Our Goal: Ephesians 4:12 To equip God's people for works of service...

The school year is 36 weeks long, appx. 180 days, and is divided into 3 semesters of 12 weeks each.

Our Family Studies-These subjects everyone studies together

Bible:each child has personal quiet time
Scripture memory:We focus on memorizing 1 chapter at a time altogether
Bible Study: Our 24 Family Ways and Instructions in Righteousness
Copywork and Dictation: Aesops fables or history and science reading
Geography:Geography Songs
Nature Study:nature walks, nature notebook, Virginia Living Musuem
Art Study:2 artists this year (Renoir, Caravaggio, and Civil War Art for 3rd Semester)
Composer Study:picking one composer per term from Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers. We'll read a about the composer and listen to the music.
Hymn Study: One Year Book of Hymns. 6 Hymns per year
Shakespeare: A Midsummer's Night Dream, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet
Spanish: Rosetta Stone, Spanish Every Day: A Learning Adventure for Young Readers
Habit Training: Prayer, Accuracy, Attentiveness, Truthfulness, Orderliness, Reading
the Bible
Science Biography: Isaac Newton, Alexander Graham Bell, George Washington Carver
Science Demonstration: Science and the Bible

5th Grade Curriculum for Kyle:


Math:
Saxon 65
Daily Word Problems with Fractions

Science Semester 1:
The Wonder Book of Chemistry(free)
Christian Liberty Nature Book 5
Story of Inventions
Parables from Nature(free)
Science Semester 2:
The Storybook of Science(free)
Parables of Nature(free)
Among the Forest People(free)
Christian Liberty Nature Book 5
Story of Inventions
Science Semester 3:
Exploring Creation with Botany
The Green Kingdom
Parables of Nature(free)
Christian Liberty Nature Book 5
Story of Inventions

*Charlotte Mason's students read the same book for 2-3 years slowly. She advocates short lessons.

Literature Semester 1:
Stories of King Arthur(free)
The Macmillian Book of Gods and Heroes
Wild Animals I Have Known(free)
Literature Semester 2
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Told to the Children(free)
The Horse and His Boy
Literature Semester 3
Call of the Wild(free)
With Lee in Virginia(free)

English Grammar and Composition:
Rod and Staff 5
Writing with Skill
The Creative Writer
The Writing Road to Reading

Typing
Typingweb.com

History Semester 1:
American History Stories III(free)
Indian Boyhood(free)
Lewis and Clark
History Semester 2:
American History Stories III(free)
If You Grew Up with Abraham Lincoln
History Semester 3:
American History Stories IV(free)
Diary of Augustus Pelletier(library)
Theodore Rooselvelt(free)

*we're keeping a family Book of Centuries

Geography:
Missionary Stories with the Millers
Stories of the Gorilla Country(free)

Poetry:
Rudyard Kipling
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
John Greenleaf Whittier

Logic:
The Puzzle Book
Logic Games on ipod touch
Ingenious Lateral Thinking Puzzles(library)

Guitar:
Worship Guitar Volume I

Personal Development:
Thoughts for Young Men(free)
Almost 12

Preschool & /1st Grade Curriculum



The twins and Kason are able to work together are most things except writing.Kason's fine motor skills aren't there yet.

They're all using ABCmouse.com and starfall.com the twins will also use hearbuilder.com as part of their therapy for mixed receptive and expressive language disorder.

Math:
Math U See Alpha (using as a loose guide)

Science:
Chambers Elementary Science Reader (free)
Let's Read and Find Out Series (library)

Literature:
Abeka Readers
Rod and Staff Readers
Bob Books
Lots of read alouds

Language Arts:
First Language Lessons
Writing with Ease
The Writing Road to Reading
The Wilson System for Reading *An intensive reading system for differently abled learners.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Kason only)
Lots of readalouds using various free Kindle books!

Typing:
Dance Mat Typing (an introduction)

History:
We spending 2-3 weeks learning about a person in history

Poetry:
A Childs Garden of Verses
and free audio here.

Audio Books:
Burgess Animal Book for Children
Burgess Bird Book for Children
Fifty Famous Stories Retold
Our Island Story I
other librovox recordings of Ambleside Online readings

Logic:
Logic games on ipod touch
Mind Benders Book 1

"How is it possible that a mother can despise her own child? Despise means to undervalue. As much as adults may delight in children, we do tend to have a low opinion of them. How else is it possible for a mother to leave her precious children in the care of unconscientious care-givers during their most crucial years? Every act a child sees, or word he hears, leaves an impression in his mind in the same way that light leaves a permanent image on a roll of film. It isn't that a nurse [or daycare or babysitter?] is totally bad for a child; it is not always good for educated people to have their children around constantly. That might be too stimulating for the child, and the mother is more refreshed if she can enjoy time with other people, discussing things unrelated to children from time to time. But children should have their mother's best; her freshest, most alert time of day. The mother should also choose care-givers carefully, train them herself, and be vigilant about knowing what goes on while her children are in the care of someone else."
Charlotte Mason Volume I in Modern English

Reminds me of a quote I heard; "God bless the children, but keep them far from us!"

I'm not condemning working mothers or women who have chosen barrenness; I'm condemning our cultural attitude about children. I'm condemning a culture that thrives on devaluing what God values, and valuing what He abhors.

Isaiah 5:20-Woe to those who call evil good and good evil....

If our value system were Godly, we would value what the Lord values. Just one of the things that God values are children. He called them a blessing. Do you tell your children they are blessings from God?

Valuing our children affects how we interact with them. Most of us value our credit or debit card. It is valuable to us so we keep it in a safe place, we don't lend it out to strangers for hours at a time, or let friends and family take turns keeping it for a while. Our car is valuable. We keep in a garage to protect it from the elements, we don't let strangers test drive it, we don't rotate it amongst our friends and family.

Our culture has defined what is valuable.Things are valuable, people are not, and children are completely worthless. In the modern mind, children have absolutely no worth. Anyone will tell you that the only reason people had an average of 6-10 children a hundred years ago is because children were free labor. Children 100 years ago had a worth. But today, children have no worth. We don't "need" them. Abortion is rampant, legal, and communicates to our culture where children fit in the world. Children are optional, invaluable, and disposable.

We don't think it worthwhile to even raise them. We think that strangers (professionals) could do as good a job if not better, and we commit tiny children into the care of perfect strangers out of our eyesight for 8 and 10 hours a day. And we value children? We don't even do that to our car, let a lone our debit card! But we do it to our children.

Every conscientious mother can think of a thousand ways to provide these kinds of opportunities naturally as she goes about her daily routines.-Charlotte Mason Volume 1

This quote has been swirling round and round in my head the last few weeks. What role should textbooks really play in education? No one can argue that textbooks are the absolute most uninspiring, lifeless, tiresome, string of continuous letters ever to bore humankind. Yet, this is the preferred method of educating lively, rambunctious children. I must agree with Charlotte Mason when she said that:

Too often, school texts are written in a style of insufferable twaddle. That's because the people who wrote them probably never met a real child. -Charlotte Mason

But how else will children learn if they don't read it in a textbook, fill-in-a-blank, or take a multiple choice test?

The answer is by putting our children in contact with living books. I am starting to come out of the fog. Although I've never been a heavy user of textbooks, it has been the only method of "education" I've ever known. Therefore by default I would lean on the grammar textbook or assign some pages in a history or science book so that I could feel like we "did science" or "did history".

My thinking has shifted. Instead of picking up a Biology book and reading chapter after chapter about every plant and animal known to man; I can pick up 1 good, interesting, book. My kids don't need to know every insect in the animal kingdom. They need to know the ones in their backyard. After they have come in contact with real bugs in their own backyard, I can start to explain to them about various bugs all over the world. What could does it do them to name every animal in the Amazon, when they can't name bug that just bit them? Do you know how many "science" lessons I've created by looking around my house and backyard:
Do you know how a door knob works?
What makes a door bell ring?
Why do door keys have bumps?
How does water get into the faucet?
What happens when you flush the toilet?
What makes a clock keep the right time?
What makes a light bulb light up?
How does a toaster work?
How does the fridge work?
How does the microwave heat?
Where does the sun go at night?
What kind of weeds grow in our yard?
What kind of snake is that?
What kind of rock is this?
How do you find north?
How was this bridge built?
How was this tunnel built?
What is your scapula and how did daddy break his?
How does a telephone work?
How does a television work?
How do video games work/computers work?
How does the Internet work?
etc. etc. etc.

Is this not physics, biology, chemistry, geology, geography, engineering,anatomy, etc.

Do you know much fun we've had finding out the answers to some of these questions. They could easily read any 1 textbook that will give them all the answers, but they'd never remember it. Active learning is true learning especially for younger children.

"Education is the science of relations"

"Imagine how the alert, curious mind of the child must be stifled without real things from nature to handle. Children can't fully grasp the words-mere symbols of things-until they have something real in their mind to relate it to; therefore, mere lessons without the expereince of being out in the real word with real things will be largely wasted"