New ideas for the New Year

I've decided it is time to do a little more school-wise, and although I touched on this in my latest Quarterly Review, I wanted to be more specific so I can have a reference for myself and a little accountability as well.

So far, we've been great about doing math, reading, art study, and memorization almost every day.  The major reason for this is because we do them either during, or immediately after lunch when the younger two girls are down for naps.  However, these subjects about max out that time and I want to do handwriting, read alouds, and exercise daily as well.  Mornings are mostly out because we either have therapy appointments or social obligations most mornings of the week.  So that leaves afternoons and evening.  Knowing this, here's my new plan:

Continue to do math, reading, art study, and memorization during and right after lunch.  As it is a new "semester," We're doing a new art study along with Ambleside Online's schedule focusing on Jacob van Ruisdael and Pieter de Hooch.  We're also listening to a new composer, Bach.  I've also added a few more memorization selections to our list.  Lydia seems to pick up poems faster than scriptures, so she still has tons of religious selections left but only one poem and fact.  So I've added "The Rainbow" by Walter de la Mare and "A Dragon-fly" by E. Farjeon to our poems list.  I've also added Lydia's, Mommy's, and Daddy's full names and Mommy's cell-phone number to her facts/lists memorization section.

After naptime (which is now quiet time for Lydia and Ellie because they almost never sleep anymore) I think I'm going to try to be consistent about doing a chapter book read aloud.  I'd love to work our way up to half hour at at ime.  Daddy does picture books every night before bed time and we do family scripture study before bed as well.  The girls and I have just really gotten out of the habit of doing a chapter book together.  It is tricky to pick books for them, though, because they still don't really follow the stories very well.  So basically I need to pick books that I would enjoy reading aloud that they might get some enjoyment out of.  It is especially helpful if there are at least a few pictures.  So here's my book list.  Some of these I've read to Lydia before, but she was very, very little and didn't get at thing out of it other than some cuddle time:

Little House on the Prairie, starting with Farmer Boy
The Hobbit, illustrated by Alan Lee
Winnie the Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner

I think I'm going to try to do handwriting right after read alouds.

And I mentioned exercise.  I found some awesome children's yoga videos on YouTube called Cosmic Kids Yoga. They are adorable and the girls have enjoyed them the few times I've turned them on.  I'm thinking I'll try to make it something that we do in the morning around 9 or so.  If Lydia is at therapy, she just misses those days, but at least Ellie and I will get in the habit.

So that's it.  That's my new plan.  Here's hoping I can stick to it. 

Trying to Round Out Our Preschool Experience

We are doing great with my current plan for preschool right now.  Lydia loves learning and once we get started with a subject, we often spend 45 minutes or more on it because she wants to keep going.  As I've mentioned, right now we're doing reading, math, and memorization.  I got to thinking about my teaching style and our preschool as it is, and it occurred to me that I'm not a project-doer.  I have never loved doing crafts more than 2 or 3 times a year.  It is just not something I am naturally attracted to.  But when I thought about what preschool should be like, I realized that I want my daughters to be able to do fun stuff like that.

After talking to my husband about it, he agreed.  Most of our memories from early schooling are of fun projects we did, and he especially doesn't want our kids to miss out on those types of experiences.  As a result, I think I'm going to try to follow a preschool curriculum, complete with books, crafts, and fieldtrips.  I could do this on my own, but I think that because I don't really want to do it, it probably wouldn't happen if I had to piece it together.



The curriculum I'm planning on following is the free preschool one over at Wee Folk Art.  It is a waldorfy, seasons-based curriculum, but it appears to be very gentle and the crafts appeal to me.  We are right in time to start the Harvest Time one, too.  My plan is to do week one starting next week.  I already have the books for it from the library even!  I'm not going to do the art appreciation or poems because I already have my own plan for those, but everything else is fair game.  I think I might even attempt the quilt!

Another thing I'm adding in is art appreciation and starting up music appreciation again.  I'm still happy to follow Ambleside Online's classical music appreciation.  This term they are studying Debussy.  I made a playlist of the recommended songs and will be playing it every day while the girls are playing.  For fine art, they are studying Renoir.  I've ordered prints of the 6 paintings and am going to put them on the wall in the playroom so the girls will see them often.  We'll also talk about the paintings' names every day and maybe a little about the individual paintings too.

I'm sure I'll go into detail more as we progress through all this, but this is my new plan!

It's been a hectic month, so I haven't had much time to do anything formal with the girls or myself, but I thought I'd check in anyways.  Tyler finished his first year of medical school!  It feels like an accomplishment for me as well, because I played a very significant supportive role to him, as well as his practice dummy.  Right now he is doing a preceptorship for a few weeks, so we are staying with my in-laws at the moment.

In the few weeks before we left, I was spending a lot of time working on Early Intervention evaluations for Lydia.  Those of you who know us well are familiar with the struggles she's had since she was tiny.  Between moving so much in the last year, and the lengthy process of getting set up for evaluation, this is the first chance we've had to get her checked out since she was a baby.  I was worried that I was making stuff up and that she was doing just fine and I was just one of THOSE first-time parents.  It appears I wasn't making it up at all, because she qualified for 2 hours each (the maximum) of developmental, speech, and occupational therapy per week.  That's 6 hours a week!  Before I started this process, I was thinking I should sign Lydia up for a class or something to get her a little out of her comfort zone and out of the house on a regular basis, but I think 6 hours a week of therapy should be plenty of activities.  I am totally new to the area of special needs and therapies, so this will definitely be an adventure.  I have a good feeling about the company that is doing her therapies, though, and she really seems to like it there so far.  I'm looking forward to getting back home and getting her started.

For Music Study, Lydia has zero interest in Chopin.  Every time I start Chopin, she says, "Listen Baldi!, Wan to listen Baldi!"  I can see why she would prefer Vivaldi.  It's more exciting music, as opposed to Chopin that is quiet piano music for the most part.  I haven't been great about turning on Queen, but that's an album that gets listened to at our house all the time anyways, so I'm not too worried about her getting exposure to it right this minute.

As for Unit Studies, she wasn't really getting much out of it so I'm not doing them anymore for the moment.  She already knows all her letters and their sounds, and is learning her numbers through daily activities, like counting the stairs and her cars.  She doesn't really care about crafts at all at this point, either.  She enjoys scribbling with crayons, but that's about it.  The one part that was very successful was getting her a few books with a theme and reading them over and over again.  She especially enjoyed the penguin books and the kitten books.  She still recites The Three Little Kittens and Kitten's First Full Moon to herself while she plays.  I think I'll continue to get several books about the same basic theme, because she enjoys it.

Grandma's house has two back decks, each with a porch swing.  Lydia LOVES the swings.  She is almost always happy to go sit on it and swing with you for a long period of time.  I've been using this time to do read alouds.  Right now we're working on Anne of Green Gables, one of my personal favorites.  Both Lydia and Ellie will sit with me on the swing for a few chapters.  I'm most impressed with Ellie, who will just go limp and listen until I'm done reading, up to 45 minutes or more.  That's a pretty good attention span for an eight month old.

Ellie is getting bigger every day and is starting to want to be involved in things.  She follows Lydia or myself around everywhere.  She can pull herself up to her knees and sit up by herself now, as well as crawl and get into things.  She's fun and I look forward to getting to know her better as she gets older.

As for my studies, I'm still plugging along at Latin and Khan Academy.  I just finished Lesson 11 in Latin for Beginners this morning and have completed 49 exercises areas on Khan Academy for a total of 170,011 energy points!  In math, that puts me in simple geometry and pre-algebra.  It's all coming back to me and I'm finding it fun. I'm thinking that I should probably add in some formal grammar, specifically diagramming.  My grammar knowledge is all intuitive, and I would like to know it better formally.  I plan on having a heavy diagramming emphasis in grammar when I teach my daughters, so I think this would be a good place for me to start considering I did diagramming for all of 2 weeks in school.  I was thinking I might do KISS Grammar all the way through, but I've since found out that they don't do diagramming.  Maybe I'll just get a book on diagramming and do KISS?  KISS comes very highly recommended and it's free, so I'll probably at least try it.  Finally, I'm trying to get caught up in my history, so I've been reading History of the Ancient World, by Susan Wise Bauer.  I really enjoy Ms. Bauer and plan on using her other book, The Well-Trained Mind, as my guide through educating my children.  HOAW is the first of four books that she will eventually finish (only two are out yet) that will chronicle the history of the whole world.  It's very dense, but I enjoy her style and find her way of viewing history to be both entertaining and informative.  I'm learning so much just by reading it, and I can't wait to do history with my girls.

Music Study for the Second Quarter of 2011 (Chopin and Queen)

Vivaldi last quarter was wildly successful.  Lydia completely loved it and asks to listen to it every day.  After a few months of Vivaldi every day, though, I was going to go nuts.  I was much relieved to be able to start our new unit of Chopin!  Like I've mentioned before, we're following Ambleside's recommendations for Classical music study, although they take the summers off, so I'll probably add an extra unit a year because of that.  Here's a link to what they recommend for Chopin, and here's a link to my playlist on on Grooveshark.  So far every time I turn on Chopin, Lydia just asks to listen to Vivaldi, so she doesn't seem to love it as much, and that sort of makes sense.  Chopin is mostly quiet piano music, and Vivaldi was more exciting orchestra music, and I could see how that would appeal to a toddler more.  As a result we're still listening to quite a bit of Vivaldi as well.

For our modern music study, my husband chose Queen for this quarter.  I was glad because I enjoy Queen very much, I mean, who doesn't?  Their music is so bombastic and silly that even kids can enjoy it.  Lydia hasn't really shown much preference towards it yet, but that's ok.  She has a lifetime to learn to enjoy Queen!  Tyler chose to have us listen to Queen's Greatest Hits Volume 1, plus the song "Under Pressure".

Music Study Update- Bob Dylan

So, Tyler finally made a playlist for the girls.  He hesitated for so long because he felt like the task was so overwhelming.  How could he possibly make a one hour playlist for them to represent a single artist?!?  Anyways, after my encouragement, he managed to make their first "modern" music study playlist.  Rather than The Beatles, though, he chose to do Bob Dylan first.  I thought it was an interesting choice, but as I'm trying to use Grooveshark as much as possible for this and The Beatles aren't really on Grooveshark, it made sense.  So here's his first playlist.  You can listen to it here.

Bob Dylan:

Blowin' In the Wind
Tangled Up in Blue
The Times They Are A-changin'
Mr. Tambourine Man 
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Positively 4th Street
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
It Ain't Me, Babe
Maggie's Farm
If Not for You
Like a Rolling Stone
Lay Lady Lay
You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
I Want You
Ballad of a Thin Man
Knockin' On Heaven's Door

So, my current goal is to listen to each of these (classical and modern) playlists at least once every other day.  If we want to listen to more, that's just fine.

Music Study

If you know my husband you know that music is a very important part of our lives, especially his.  He has a very strong passion for music, especially rock and roll music.  As a result, we both want our daughters to grow up being exposed to lots of different kinds of music.  I'm interested in our daughters being familiar with the great composers and their works.  My husband wants our daughters to be familiar with the great artists of the last 50 years.  So what I did was to create a playlist on Grooveshark.com for the Ambleside composer study recommendations.  We listen to this every other day.  It's about an hour long and I just put it on when the girls are playing.  Here's the link to Ambleside's composer schedule.

Right now that means we're listen to Vivaldi.  Specifically (and I don't know if I'm writing these correctly, but there you have it):

Gloria
The Four Seasons
Trio Sonata in C major
Concerto in D for Guitar
Concerto for Oboe, Violin, and Strings in B-flat major.
Concerto Senza Cantin in re minore

My husband thought it would be a good idea for the girls to start with The Beatles, so he's working on a playlist for them.  I have will have them listen to this on the days we don't listen to Vivaldi.  My plan is to do two new artists (one classical, one modern) every four months.  In this way I'm hoping they will gain familiarity with them all.  I'll update this post with my husband's Beatles playlist when he gives it to me.

Today, Lydia fell asleep while listening to Vivaldi.  I guess that's a good side-effect of a classical music education!