Story of the World...Susan Bauer

I was recommended this gem of a book by an experienced home educator. As a newbie I am keen to learn from those who have gone before me and waded through the endless material and have actually seen how certain books and curriculum have worked.

Susan Bauer has put together 4 volumes of story based history starting with ancient times and bringing it all the way up to the present modern day. I myself find the books a fascinating read. My own history in school was limited to a spot of mediaeval history, a smidgen of Roman history and the majority being the World wars. So this history course is an education to me. What is great about these books is that the core itself is bases upon stories. Each chapter is simple and easy to read which means its good for even young children. The stories although simple gibe a good overview of that particular period and inspire lots of creative opportunities to do some hands on activities.

I decided to go through one volume per year so over the course of 4 years we will have a good overview of the world's history. We really do enjoy our history sessions and on top of reading the book we have got extra books out of the library to look at certain events in more detail, coloured in maps and acquainted ourselves with parts of Europe and Africa and done some hands on activities including building a shaduf, making an Egyptian mummy and creating a Minoan mosaic.

Today we have been looking at ancient Greece, the Greek alphabet, Odysseus and the Cyclops and the Olympic games. After reading the chapter Mr Social had a go at copying the Greek alphabet (I was most impressed at his attempt), some copywork as we did an overview of the chapter and finally we created our own olympic games.

Mr Social made up his own list of games to compete in including wrestling, running race, jumping race, hopping race, wheelbarrow race and long jump. We created some medals, laurel wreaths and an olympic torch. All we need now is a daddy home from work then let the games commence! I shall post the winners tomorrow.

A crimp

Mr Social discovered a new animal today...a crimp! 

We were looking at final consonant blends and this is what we got:

A crimp apparently is an underwater crab (he is insistent that this animal exists). It brightened my morning. I hope it brightens yours too

Happy Mothers Day

Yesterday the boys celebrated me being their mum but I feel more like it's a celebration of being a mum and having 3 amazing children to guide and nurture, train and admonish, and raise in the light of God's word. I feel blessed to be their mother.

They surprised me in the morning with a lovely card and a necklace and earring set and some perfume and lots of little kisses.

Mothers Day may bring a mixture of feelings for many women. Thankfulness and joy and yet sorrow and sadness. Some of us have mothers to rejoice in and some grieve for the mothers they have lost. Some of us have children to feel grateful for and some of us grieve for the children that we do not have or have lost. I myself mourn for 2 babies that only ever knew my womb for a short time and my heart still yearns to watch them grow, to love and cuddle them, to cherish them here on earth. But that is not what God planned for me. I have friends who have struggled with infertility, who are not yet married and would dearly love children and some who have walked the valleys of grief when having children die. I have friends who have distant relationships with their own mothers and some who have had mothers die. Mothers Day is not always full of rejoicing but often a time of remembrance. 

I remember there was one person in history who never had a mother...Eve, the mother of all. Eve often has a bad reputation, after all she did take and eat of the fruit of the tree that was forbidden to her. She gave in to temptation and listened to that voice that tempts all of us away from obedience to God. And she is the reason why women scream for epidurals, pethidine and gas and air (although that last one is pretty good stuff). Eve never had a mother. When banished from the Garden of Eden and bearing her own children she never had a mother to guide her and offer help. She never had someone to ask for advice when the kids had a temperature or were teething or just couldn't settle. She also had to bury her own son and not just that she had to bear the heartache of knowing that it was her first born son that had killed her precious boy. Oh what sorrow this mother must have felt.

So let us just remember those who we miss and those who grieve on Mothers Day as well as celebrating Mothers everywhere for all their genuine hard work.

"What is a Mother?"

A mother is someone to shelter and guide us,

to love us, whatever we do,

with a warm understanding and infinite patience,

and wonderful gentleness too.

How often a mother means swift reassurance

in soothing our small, childish fears,

how tenderly mothers watch over their children

and treasure them all through the years.

The hearth of a mother is full of forgiveness

for any mistake, big or small,

and generous always in helping her family

whose needs she has placed above all.

A mother can utter a word of compassion

and make all our cares fall away,

she can brighten a home with the sound of her laughter

and make life delightful and gay.

A mother possesses incredible wisdom

and wonderful insight and skill-

in each human heart is that one special corner

which only a mother can fill!

Author: Katherine Nelson Davis

Maybe you know someone who this poem describes and yet she does not have a child of her own...maybe you can let her know just how much she is loved too.

I had an extra reason this Mothers Day to feel blessed and that was in the form of a little ball of cuteness that is Mr Smiley. Mr Smiley turned 1 yesterday. One whole year ago I gave birth to a little boy who was to fill my life with even more joy. We had a lovely day celebrating with his grandparents as well. There was birthday cake, train sets, wrapping paper, backpacks, wrapping paper, wooden cars, wrapping paper, clothes, wrapping paper, bath toys and oh did i mention...wrapping paper. My little treasure won't remember his 1st birthday and really he wasn't interested in his new toys that his family so kindly bought for him, and yes he was more interested in the wrapping paper but how could we not celebrate when God has been good to us. Thank you Lord for this precious gift of our son from You. May You guide him in his life and may He grow to love You and serve You.

Let's eat cake!

Mr Smiley's impending birthday on Sunday means that we have spent a lot of time in the kitchen preparing all manner of treats.

It is great to get the children involved although I do find that part difficult as I know there will be mess involved, and yes I may have to pick egg shells out of cake mix, and it will slow me down but sometimes with such a hefty workload it is best to start a little earlier and let the boys join in (and this usually helps in keeping the rest of the house tidy as they are not roaming causing havoc).

So yesterday I set Mr Cheeky to work on making muffins, I weigh he mixes and puts the mix in the tins. He did a great job at trying to get each muffin to the same height. Mr Social was given a lesson in pastry as he made some short crust pastry for quiches and then helped beat the choux pastry (I do the stove top work). Choux pastry caused much hilarity with Mr Social as he thought once made this pastry could go on our feet, I still don't think he believed my explanation of the French language but let's face it, it is more exciting to think of us walking round with choux buns on our feet at that age. He also did a great job. Then Mr Social actually volunteered to make the bread! Yes please. Mr Cheeky was even tempted into getting his hands stuck in even though he normally hates messy hands. Mr Social was impressed to see the sticky stringy mixture come together and form a lovely smooth silky dough.

So my morning had got off to a great start, choux buns and muffins made and pastry resting in the fridge and bread rising. I sent the boys to play as I cleared the kitchen for the next jobs. CRASH. Within 5 minutes I felt my heart sink, my great start was to be lost to an afternoon of tidying as a child had upset the large box of Lego and it's entire contents over the floor. Mr Cheeky has a particular fondness for Lego and was not pleased to see his models in bits across the floor so once cleared we set about remaking a police truck, the rest of the models can wait until next week. Mr Cheeky loves following the instructions and is quite competent in doing this by himself for the most part but he really struggled finding all the pieces in the box. But we persevered and have a police truck and a happy 4 year old to show for our efforts.

Back on with the rest of the day and we finished the quiches, made watermelon push up pops, and finished the bread. I spent my evening putting together some Mothers' Day gifts of candles, tea and biscuits in some homemade gift bags and boxes and made cards.

It wasn't the day I had planned for the boys and as I rouse from sleep this morning after being up for a lot of the night with Mr Smiley I feel somewhat intrepid about the day ahead. I still need to make the birthday cake for tomorrow and cater for 12 people tonight but I have my little helpers. Maybe I will keep them away from Lego boxes though.

A four day week homeschool schedule

A great advantage to home educating is the ability to be flexible. We are not tied down to 13 week terms or 9-3 hours. I have always found it somewhat amusing when being interrogated over our choice to teach our own children that people are shocked that we are doing school during half term and that we always seem to be out when we should be in doing school. There does seem to be a misconception that home schoolers have to follow a typical school day pattern or it could just be me that keeps meeting these people.

I had a bit of fun deciding what our homeschool week should look like and in reality our week often turns out different to what I may have planned at the beginning due to the wonderful nature of life to throw you a curve ball and obstacles put in one's way. But having said that I do have a general timetable that I keep returning to. I decided that I would have a 4 day home school week where we would do school on Monday, Tuesday, break on Wednesday and continue with school on Thursday and Friday. With Mr Social being the tender age of 5 still I don't feel like we require any more than this right now. In the mornings we focus on literacy, mathematics and scripture memorisation and the afternoons would be a mixture of science, history, geography and Spanish. This makes our day sound quite full but in reality planned school work can be finished within 1-2 hours in the morning and an hour after lunch and the rest of the time is spent in the children's own pursuits or in the great outdoors exploring our city and local parks and sometimes even the exotic realm of our garden. Wednesday is our off day but we do help with our church's toddler group, go to the library and Mr Social has an athletics group he goes to. Saturday is family day as Daddy isn't working and Sunday is the Lord's day.

We take off time around Christmas, Easter and the middle of summer when we have the great weather. School also happens wherever we go. At the park, in the garden, at local libraries and places where we meet with other home educators. School doesn't mean sat at the table and writing either, it takes many forms and most of all we try and have fun.

What does your home school week look like? Leave a comment and let us know.

Jolly Phonics

I came across Jolly Phonics about 2 years ago when trying to wade my way through a myriad of resources when I was contemplating how best to teach Mr Social how to read. It stood out for me as it appeared to suit my way of teaching. I didn't know what kind of learner my son would be at the time and as the programme was relatively inexpensive and was adaptable I decided to give it a go. I purchased workbooks 1-7 and a reading book to go along with it and that was all. 

Slowly, slowly we went through the first book looking at letters s, a, t, p, i and n. 

At the end of the book we looked at words purely made up from these letters and so our journey into reading began. 2 years in and Mr social has completed all 7 of the workbooks and is quite a fluent reader to the point I caught him reading out loud "Five little peppers and How They Grew" by Margaret Sidney on my Kindle yesterday. When I started home educating I always thought that I would feel more confident at being the teacher if we could succeed with reading and yes I know there will be challenges to come and lots to learn but it has given me affirmation that we can home educate. 

Now Mr Social has been working through the Jolly grammar series and is discovering how we create sentences.

The whole Jolly phonics series is a useful tool in helping your child learn to read. I'm not being paid to advertise it, honestly. I just wanted to share with you a great resource. A quick search on good old Google will show you that there are lots of resources on the internet to go along with the books and lots of practical ideas to use to reinforce the basic lessons.

Mr Cheeky has just started working through the first phonic book and is enjoying the colouring pages and has quickly picked up the sounds for the first 6 letters and I am excited to see him develop in this area. 

Shadow Puppets

Not long ago we excitedly made a purchase...a purchase that is transforming my homeschool. It has freed up more of my time, it has given Mr Cheeky an enthusiasm for learning, and has aided us in planning and organising our weeks. What is it? I hear you ask. A printer...a wireless printer. I was very excited to pick up the printer. I had been managing without one for 18 months since my old printer had decided it was only going to photocopy photos in colour, the black ink did not work, couldn't print from the computer and couldn't even photocopy a worksheet properly. It ended up being a very selective printer and I don't think i can call it a printer. So for 18 months I have been drawing my own worksheets, relying on a kind father in law to print necessary documents and handwriting mostly everything, and in a day where modern technology is ever increasing (sometimes good sometimes bad) it was becoming rather tiresome and time consuming to create my own worksheets for the boys when I knew there was an option to click and print from some very good resources.

So the printer came and we have printed off lots of colouring sheets for Mr Cheeky who is becoming more eager to learn his letters and numbers. (On a side note there are lots of great colouring sheets that can be downloaded for free that focus on letters and numbers). Mr Sociable has enjoyed doing his grammar worksheets in colour and history maps and various math related activities. I have enjoyed being able to devote more of my time to other pursuits and now can contemplate using my free time to restart an idea formed a while ago of my own craft business.

On Saturday we used our printer to print off some gruffalo shapes, mounted them on black card, attached some sticks to them and created our own shadow puppet show.

Oh the fun we had.

The light box was created from an old cereal box with holes cut out and a plain sheet of paper stuck to the front with a table lamp behind it. I got the idea from good old pinterest and we had a great time recreating the gruffalo story. The penguins of madagascar even gatecrashed the show as the boys started to divert from the classic Julia Donaldson story and make up their own. Give it a try sometime...you won't be disappointed.