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How are YOU Spreading the Feast?
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It’s November. How did that happen? I don’t know about you, but in my homeschool November is check up month. Somehow along the winding path from August through September and across the days of October it becomes easy to let a some of our subjects slow or stop all together. We want to keep on track with our traditional subjects and after a couple weeks with colds we decide to let some things fall by the wayside so we can get the ‘important’ things done. On really bad years our homeschool begins to feel stale and repetitive, something to get finished each day instead of something we look forward to. We’re eating, but there is nothing to feast on.
November’s anticipation of our Thanksgiving feast reminds me to bring fresh dishes to the homeschool table to restore the feast of ideas available to my children and myself.
So let’s talk about what subjects, practices, and topics you want to spread before your children in your homeschool for November and December? Are there things you’ve let slip that you want to add back in? Do you want to try a new recipe for an existing but slightly stale subject?
I’m still struggling with science and social studies – as in, they’re not really happening. Not much anyways. We’re doing a once a month field trip to a local science center which is nice.
We’re loving music study using Story of the Orchestra.
Picture study is rarely happening.
Memory work is going surprisingly well and they enjoy learning new poems.
All right, I still don’t know what we’ll be officially doing for Nov/Dec in this area, but I have started brainstorming some ideas and getting input from my kids. I thought I would share the ideas because they may spark ideas for others.
- Study the phases of the moon for a month
- Study constellations
- Learn to make something new on the rainbow loom
- Knitting
- Lego challenge calendar (a new challenge each day)
- Study rocks
- Cooking/Nutrition – learn a new kitchen skill and recipe
- Sewing
- Stop motion animation
- Electricity with snap circuits
- Exploring Christmas music
I plan to play read The Nutcracker (third year! 🙂 ) and listen to Nutcracker music in December.
My attempt at Apologia completely fell through the cracks…again. I ended up buying Clara Dillingham Pierson’s Among the Night People to use for science along with a weekly nature walk.
My nine year old isLOVING Lamb’s retelling of A Midnight Summer’s Dreamm.
I would really like to hear more about the Lego Challenge you mentioned.
i don’t think I’m doing a very good job spreading the feast, we’ve been pretty faithful to morning time but, not the good stuff. We haven’t delved into Plutarch, composer study or Shakespeare. I have been consistent with poetry memorization, read aloud and learning the Westminster catechism. I think we’re ready for my more. My main problem though has been history and science, none of my plans have come about for my youngest student and my oldest just seems to tolerate his.
@Michelle – For the lego challenge calendar – you can take a blank calendar and write in different things for them to build each day. For example: Build a car, build a turkey, make a scene from a book, build something using only gray bricks, etc. There are several to be found online with a quick search on Pinterest if you just want one ready to go.
@2Corin57 – Science is one I usually struggle with beyond nature study. One thing that helps me is to choose some interesting kit or topic and make it available to the kids. A couple examples: We have a rock collection with a field guide and magnifying glass to try identifying. We did owl pellets a few weeks ago – you can get them on Amazon – and learned about owls. We watch documentaries or science shows like Mythbusters or Magic School Bus occasionally. Around Christmas time is a great time to grab science kits because they are often on sale.
@Des – One easy way to get history going is to grab and audio book.Fun topic Tristan! Thanks.
Lets see … I think I can add a few things I started this year or implemented this term –
- Utilized Quizlet for vocabulary and added creative sentence creation too – hits grammar review, dead words, and more
- Re-introduced games for our Essential Literary Terms drill that they challenge each other with
- Limited Fine Arts (composer, picture, poet, nature studies) to 1x a week this year and alternated through these four each week of the month
- Restarted oral narrations for Historical, Geographical and Science literatures
- Giving myself a mini refresher on teaching good literary analysis and finding it’s really as CM compatible as I knew it to be, but I’m grabbing some teaching language and narration prompt ideas that feel zesty
- (big one) Took a rest from Plutarch and Shakespeare this year after a six year streak
- Making new narration bookmarks and being pleasantly surprised at how Bloom’s taxonomy mirrors CM and how both compliment any decent standard out there – not that I’m comparing 😉
I picked several topics for each subject at the beginning of the year. For science, we are using Outdoor Secrets to get in the habit of regular nature notebook entries…and everyone is really enjoying the books! We are also going to learn some constellations with the Book of Astronomy (from Memoria Press). Also, we’ll be exploring physics with an experiment kit and Physics 101 DVD. Since we got a late start, we’ve been focusing on fall topics from Outdoor Secrets. After this, I hope to get through the fall constellations, then focus on physics for the winter, along with winter constellations. Then in the spring, we’ll pick back up with Outdoor Secrets.
For handicrafts, we are starting with watercolors, and everyone is really enjoying the book. It’s an out of print Klutz book called Watercolor for the Artistically Undiscovered. The book is intended to be consumable, but we’re painting on our own watercolor paper. We’re also continuing with Paper Sloyd for the Primary Grades (year 2), and Compass Drawing, which everyone enjoyed last year. Later on, I hope to get to polymer clay and crochet.
For literature, we have two daily readings. In the morning, we read from Memoria Press’ Third Grade Read Aloud books, which is a beautiful mix of chapter and picture books! We are reading these purely for enjoyment. Our afternoon literature time is a mix of SCM literature books, church history/theology, Shakespeare, and family history readings. Instead of spreading out books like Peril & Peace or Shakespeare’s As You Like It across the school year, we are spending a few weeks on each book. We are adding some narrations and discussion to these books.
For enrichment studies, I picked up Memoria Press’ First Grade Enrichment for my 7yo and have been using it with my older DC as well! Each week has a picture study, composition to listen to, and a poem. My younger ones listen in on the book and sometimes we do added activities. The rest of our enrichment is pretty open and go as well: Scipture Memory, LDTR for Children, Hymns for a Kid’s Heard, and poetry memorization, which is tied into our litature studies, using Poetry for the Grammar Stage from MP. My older ones are learning some poetry terms like alliteration and about different rhyming schemes. I’m aiming for 2 poems per term from this book, since we are memorizing these.
Another great resource this year are some narration notebooks I picked up at Miller Pad and Paper. Each 2-page spread has a blank page followed by a lined page. Each child has one with the correct line spacing for their writing abilities. I try to get these out once a week for a written narration with a drawn picutre. For now, topics are chosen by me from science, history, Bible, literature, and habit study.
I’m really enjoying the mix of SCM and MP this year. MP gives me some ideas to add a bit of discussion, in addition to simple narration. Now that my DC are getting older, I’m finding I want more help in this area. I’m also reading through SCM’s Hearning and Reading, Telling and Writing to make sure I’m staying on track with my older DC with regards to language arts.
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