Mt. Hope Academy @ The Live & Learn Studio ~ November (-Dec.) 2012

 

(Diagramming challenges with friends. I made a few mistakes. Can you spot them?)

"To make the content of the curriculum relevant to the everyday life of the pupil, it is essential not to shrink the content to match the pupil's present experience, but to expand the life of the pupil to match the proposed curriculum."

~Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education

 

Andrew Kern (spoken words from the Two Andrews seminar):

"Knowing the truth about something is extremely practical, but when the practical is the goal, the truth is lost." "If you can't say something about a subject, there is no subject. God Himself is a predicated subject." "You can't drink the ocean. Just fill a cup and start drinking. Take the next step." "Falsehood only exists in sentences, not in creation." "As our truth expands, so does our ignorance. It should humble us." "What can my child do, and what is next? Don't assess a child for what you wish they were able to do."

 

::  Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning @ NPR:

"For example, Stigler says, in the Japanese classrooms that he's studied, teachers consciously design tasks that are slightly beyond the capabilities of the students they teach, so the students can actually experience struggling with something just outside their reach. Then, once the task is mastered, the teachers actively point out that the student was able to accomplish it through hard work and struggle."

 

::  Take the 100 Words Quiz! @ Write at Home (From the American Heritage Dictionary’s “100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know”) Take the quiz. I double dog dare you. And then come back and tell us how you did. {grin}

 

::  Vague-Talking and the Loss of English @ Minding the Campus:

“It was, like, you know, like, whoa. I mean, I'm like omigod! It was, hello, you know, totally amazing, and stuff.”

 

::  Books in Home as Important as Parents' Education in Determining Children's Education Level @ Science Daily

"But, strikingly, this massive study showed that the difference between being raised in a bookless home compared to being raised in a home with a 500-book library has as great an effect on the level of education a child will attain as having parents who are barely literate (3 years of education) compared to having parents who have a university education (15 or 16 years of education)."

 

 

Landfill Harmonic film teaser from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo.

 

::  Memorization Should Not Be a Lost Art @ Lesson Planet:

“Memorization allows scholars to warehouse, if you will, a stockpile of concepts. Important background information will only help learners throughout their lives. Also, the creativity process is a mysterious one. The more useful concepts that students have stored, the easier it is for their minds to sift through their "files" and allow them the satisfaction of discovering new ideas."

That made me think of two other favorite quotes about memorization.

::  Michael Clay Thompson:

'There are times when memorization is out of favor in education. Some might say that “rote memorization” is not appropriate as a teaching strategy. “Rote memorization,” however, is loaded language, biased against the discipline and effort required to learn things permanently. There is nothing wrong with challenge. We must remember that the alternative to remembering is forgetting, and when we teach something as important as grammar, that will be needed for one’s entire life, the ban on memorization makes little sense. There are areas of knowledge that should be memorized, and in the past, there was a better term for it: to learn by heart.'

::  Anthony Esolen in the Foreword from Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott:

“But more than that, we would desire to bring children into the garden of created being, and thought, and expression. Caldecott reminds us that for the medieval schoolmen, as for Plato, education was essentially musical, an education in the cosmos or lovely order that surrounds us and bears us up. Thus when we teach our youngest children by means of rhymes and songs, we do so not merely because rhymes and songs are actually effective mnemonic devices. We do so because we wish to form their souls by memory: we wish to bring them up as rememberers, as persons, born, as Caldecott points out, in certain localities, among certain people, who bear a certain history, and who claim our love and loyalty.

The memory, too, gives the child both the strength and the armor he needs for what comes next, and that is thought itself—strength to search for truth, and armor against easy and plausible falsehoods.”

I didn’t keep a careful record of the past month and a half, but this is what I have:

Classical Conversations (Cycle 1, Weeks 8-12) Foundations: One morning each week. Memory work in timeline, history, science, Latin, English grammar, math, and geography. Includes weekly hands-on science projects/experiments, fine arts projects, social time, and public speaking. Essentials: (Levi) One afternoon each week; includes grammar, vocabulary, writing, public speaking, and challenging math games. (We are also reviewing the corresponding weeks of memory work from Foundations cycles 2 and 3 at home.)

Faith:
God Our Provider (CD) (Bible memory songs) 
The Children's Illustrated Bible (reading through together, again)
Telling God's Story - Year 2 (lessons 13-20) 
The Gospel Story Bible: Discovering Jesus in the Old and New Testaments  
The Action Bible
Drama of Scripture, The: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (for me!)
(Luke and Levi: weekly hymns on piano) 
Buck Denver Asks: What's in the Bible? (DVD series)

Christmas:
Handel, Who Knew What He Liked by M.T. Anderson, rich illustrations by Kevin Hawke
What's In The Bible? Buck Denver Asks...Why Do We Call it Christmas? (DVD)
Handel's Messiah Family Advent Reader
ST. NICHOLAS: A STORY OF JOYFUL GIVING (Veggie Tales DVD) 
Lots of Christmas books, CDs, and DVDs

Science:
CC Weekly science projects and memory work (parts of plants and plant systems)
I Wonder Why Trees Have Leaves and Other Questions About Plants
Oh Say Can You Seed? All About Flowering Plants (The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) 
Incredible Plants (Discoveries Library)

Math:
Teaching Textbooks
Life of Fred
MathTacular DVDs

P.E.
Swim team practice (Levi & Luke) 3x week, Swim Meet

Fine Arts:
13 Sculptures Children Should Know
Draw Write Now, Book 1: On the Farm-Kids and Critters-Storybook Characters
CC Music Theory
Piano practice

Language Arts:
Classical Conversations Essentials of the English Language (Levi in class, Levi and Luke at home)
IEW writing (theme-based: Ancients, Levi in CC Essentials Class)
Writing With Ease (Leif: level 1, Luke: level 3)
CC grammar memory work (list of prepositions)
All About Spelling (Levi and Luke Level 3: lessons 18-22, Leif Level 1: –step 16)
Handwriting Without Tears workbooks (cursive for Luke and Levi)
Beginning Outlining (workbook, Luke)
MCT Language Arts, Voyage level (just getting started)

Latin:
Latina Christiana I (lessons 9 and 10?)
CC Latin memory work (Noun Endings-4th and 5th declensions)

Geography:
CC geography (Middle East/Europe/Africa/Ancient Empires, tracing on various dry-erase maps
Geography games (free online)
Draw. Write. Now. Book 7—drawing the continents (blobbing)

History/Historical Fiction/Literature:
CC Weekly memory work: history sentences and timeline
The Story of the World: Ancient Times (ch. 10-15)
Note-taking skills
IEW Ancient History-Themed writing assignments (Levi)
Playmobil Egyptian Pyramid set
If I Were A Kid in Ancient China (Children of the Ancient World)
Maples in the Mist: Children’s Poems From the Tang Dynasty translated by Minfong Ho (literature)
A Grain of Rice by Helena Clare Pittman (China)
The Magic Horse of Han Gan by Chen Jiang Hong
A Chinese Zoo: Fables and Proverbs adapted and illustrated by Demi (literature)
Ancient China by Natalie M. Rosinky
The Lost Horse by Ed Young (China)
The Seven Chinese Brothers by Margaret Mahy
Ancient India Maurya Empire by John Bankston 
Misoso: Once Upon a Time Tales From Africa retold by Verna Aardema
Tales of the Caribbean: Anansi Stories told by Evan Jones
Rimonah of the Flashing Sword: A North African Tale adapted by Eric Kimmel
The Ancient Maya by Jennifer Fretland VanVoor
Exodus by Brian Wildsmith
Hatshepsut, His Majesty, Herself by Catherine M. Andronik
Hatshepsut: First Female Pharaoh by Peggy Pancella
Temple Cat by Andrew Clements (Egypt)
In Search of King Tut’s Tomb by The Brothers Hildebrandt
Tut’s Mummy: Lost…and Found by Judy Donnelly
Tutankhamen’s Gift by Robert Sabuda
The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt by Elizabeth Payne (172 pp, Levi-IR)
Casting the Gods Adrift: A Tale of Ancient Egypt by Geraldine McCaughrean (95 pp)
Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw (historical fiction, 279 pp, Levi-IR)
Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander (historical fiction, 206 pp, Levi and Luke-IR)
The Cat of Bubastes: A Tale of Ancient Egypt by G.A. Henty (historical fiction, 308 pp, Levi-IR)
Adara by Beatrice Gormley (historical fiction, 850 BC, 151 pp, Levi-IR)
God King: A Story in the Days of King Hezekiah by Joanne Williamson (historical fiction, 700 BC, 206 pp, Levi-IR)
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid by Penelope Lively (literature, 114 pp, Levi and Luke-IR)

Miscellaneous Lovely Picture Books:
A bunch of Thanksgiving picture books
I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer by Carole Boston Weatherford
Keep On!: The Story of Matthew Henson, Co-Discoverer of the North Pole by Deborah Hopkinson 
The Man Who Made Time Travel by Kathryn Lasky, pictures by Kevin Hawkes (John Harrison, 1714) (again, rich illustrations by Hawkes)
Reaching for the Moon by Buzz Aldrin, paintings by Wendell Minor (Leif loved this one)
Monet Paints a Day by Julie Danneberg, illustrated by Caitlin Heimerl

Levi’s Free Reading:
Nicholas by Goscinny & Sempe
Penny and Peter by Carolyn Haywood

Luke’s Free Reading:
The Mystery of the Missing Necklace by Enid Blyton
Nicholas by Goscinny & Sempe
The Robber Boy by Dick King-Smith

(The boys read other books and re-read many. I just didn’t keep track this month!)