Father’s Day seemed like a good excuse to head over to the coast. (I never can decide whether to call it the coast or the beach, but I just decided that ‘beach’ evokes images of warm sand, surf boards, and umbrella drinks; ‘coast’ makes me think cold, misty, and windy…We definitely visited the coast yesterday.)
Daddy made things all better by giving her toys and showing her how to dig in the sand. (Daddy always makes everything all better.)
After that she was running around like she owned the place. But she wouldn’t look at the camera.
Or smile. It was serious business out here on the beach.
The boys needed no such introduction. It took them less than a split second to be covered in sand and water.
The cool weather didn’t dampen their spirits one little bit.
Luke was the first to fall in and get soaked. He wasn’t too sad about it.
I have pictures of Levi as a baby at the beach with HUGE grins on his face. As soon as he could walk, he was running through the sand ecstasy. This kid has always thought of the beach as heaven on earth.
My favorite people in the world:
The weather ended up not being as cold as I expected, and we had a fabulous afternoon together on our magical (if a bit misty and gray), secluded beach. (Russ was such a great sport and agreed to visit MY favorite beach even though it was Father’s Day…)
. A sweet blog reader directed my attention to the Circle of Mom Top 25 Homeschool Mom blog awards. (I’m on the Pending Approval list for a day.) If you are interested in checking out new (to you) homeschool blogs, head on over! And if you feel so led, maybe you can put in a vote for your favorite homeschooling blog. {hint, hint} You can vote once a day for the next 15 days! .
I have to admit. It's been driving me crazy to have this expressive, silly little girl on my hands and not be able to share her with you since she hates facing the camera. But I caught her in a rare willing mood right after a nap.
She’s 20 months.Unbelievable, right?! She sleeps through the night (most nights). She is independent and opinionated. She doesn’t have very many words, but she is extraordinarily expressive and communicative in other ways. She understands and responds to everything we say (though doesn’t necessarily obey…). She now loves shoes and clothing. She takes one afternoon nap (usually not nearly long enough). She runs and climbs and loves to write all over anything and everything (herself, furniture…). She loves her brothers, but adores her daddy most. She finally learned to say ‘no’ and ‘mom.’ Often at the same time. {wry grin} And not ‘mama.’ She loves fine-motor challenges like putting a tiny straw into a tiny hole or threading cheerios on a wire. She LOVES her blankie. Her curls are looking adorable, but she still looks bald from the front. And no ponytails yet. {sniff} She weighs 27 lbs and is 34” tall. She loves chocolate and pizza. (See, she does take after her mother on rare occasion.) She loves attention (feel free to make funny faces or appreciate hers), but doesn’t want anyone in her personal space. She scratches up her face all the time because she hates to have her fingernails trimmed.
“We think to determine three things: whether something is true, whether something should be done, and whether something commands our appreciation. In other words, we think to know truth, goodness, and beauty.”
"The bored 'graduates' of elementary and high schools seem, in progressive language, to be 'incompletely socialized.' Ignorant even of things that they might be expected to know, they do not care to learn. They lack an object in life, they are unaware of the joy of achievement. They have been allowed to assume that happiness is a goal, rather than a by-product."
"Kids with parents who read for pleasure are six times more likely to do so themselves -- and their grades shoot up. Which is why I talk about the books I love, and ask kids about their favorites, every chance I get. I'm intentionally role modeling for them that books and ideas are something adults value."
"In a recent post, Andrew Coulson, director of Center for Educational Freedom at Cato Institute, wrote, 'Thanks to the Web, the material covered in virtually every undergraduate program is readily available at little cost…And, having learned it spend a few hundred dollars to create a website or a YouTube channel on which you demonstrate your new skills/understanding. Conduct research. Write it up. Build something…. Then, when you’re ready to apply for work, submit your resume with a link to this portfolio of relevant work.'"
"During an interview with The Associated Press in a Lerner Hall conference room, Filipaj didn't show the slightest regret or bitterness about his tough life. Instead, he cheerfully described encounters with surprised younger students who wonder why their classmate is cleaning up after them...His ambition is to get a master's degree, maybe even a Ph.D., in Roman and Greek classics. Someday, he hopes to become a teacher, while translating his favorite classics into Albanian."
::Give a Girl a ‘Hook,’ Get Her Into College @ The New York Times. Some interesting thoughts here. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I think most, if not all, kids benefit from having passions and hobbies, especially by the time they hit adolescence, but it needs to be a personal choice for each child, not a ‘hook’ just to get them into college. I think ‘anchor’ is a much preferable term to ‘hook.’ What do you think?
"An anchor is an activity or pastime that they do deeply and consistently over a long period. Anchors help them define them and their evolving identities. Anchors teach them valuable lessons that they can apply to other aspects of their lives — especially school. Most important, anchors help them to be different."
“In terms of happiness, a close companion of learning is the degree of engagement people have with tasks that provide them knowledge and fulfillment. People who are intensely absorbed in a task can lose track of time and place. Hours pass like minutes. They may be tired by the task but emerge energized and happy. This condition is known as "flow," a name coined 30 years ago by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.”
(You know, like when you are diagramming sentences! {grin})
:: This next video about the Common Core standards for reading made me a little sad. Why do we have to choose between fiction and non-fiction? We need to be choosing QUALITY fiction AND non-fiction rather than insipid movie-inspired leveled readers or reading textbooks with pointless excerpts. Reminds me of this quote from The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame:
“What the Boy chiefly dabbled in was natural history and fairy tales, and he just took them as they came, in a sandwichy sort of way, without making any distinctions; and really his course of reading strikes one as rather sensible.”
“The sequel to Beauty for Truth's Sake has been published by Angelico Press. Called Beauty in the Word, it completes the retrieval of the seven liberal arts begun in the earlier book by examining the first three, the "Trivium", which Dorothy L. Sayers made the basis of Classical Education in her famous essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning." But this book tries to go further than Sayers.”
::Climbing a Different Mountain by Tucker Teague @ Classical Conversations (I know I’ve posted this one before, but I thought I’d keep it handy here with all my other links.)
“One thing I have learned from climbing mountains is that the route is critical. The summit is a long way off when one is at the bottom of a mountain, and the journey will, no doubt, be difficult and tiring. It is best to have a clear idea of how one is to proceed, what path one will follow, and to be prepared for the dangers that will inevitably appear. What I want to propose is that Christian, classical homeschooling is not merely a different path up the same mountain that everyone else is climbing. It is, in fact, the climbing of a different mountain altogether.”
(And don’t forget, the Albany, Oregon, Classical Conversations FREE parent practicum is June 25-27th. Let me know if you are interested in more information!)
Faith: The Children’s Illustrated Bible (reading together) Telling God's Story Buck Denver Asks… What’s in the Bible? Wanderin’ in the Desert, Battle for the Promised Land, Israel Gets a King, A Nation Divided, Exile and Return, and Why Do We Call It Christmas (DVDs)
Math: Teaching Textbooks (Levi finished level 4 and started 5, Luke skipped to level 5) Life of Fred (elementary series, free reading) IXL (online math) Sir Cumference and the Viking’s Map: A Math Adventure by Cindy Neuschwander
Science: Christian Kids Explore Chemistry (Read lessons 23-24 with oral review) Crazy Concoctions: A Mad Scientist’s Guide to Messy Mixtures by Jordan D. Brown Bill Nye: Probability (DVD) Bill Nye: Time (DVD) Bill Nye: Sound (DVD) Bill Nye: Phases of Matter (DVD) Bill Nye: Fluids (DVD)
P.E.: Swim Team practices (Levi and Luke!) Bike Riding
Fine Arts: Action Jackson by Jean Greenberg and Sandra Jordan (Jackson Pollock) Magritte’s Marvelous Hat by D.B. Johnson (very clever way to introduce kids to Rene Magritte!) Poetry for Young People: Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Speaks to Children Bizet’s Dream (The Composers’ Specials, Paris-1875, DVD) Strauss: The King of Three-Quarter Time (The Composers’ Specials, Vienna-1868, DVD) Tchaikovsky Discovers America by Esther Kalman (New York City-1891) The Royal Ballet School in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (DVD)
Language Arts: MCT Practice Town (4 level grammar analysis) + sentence diagramming MCT Building Poems (poetry) MCT Caesar’s English (vocabulary) Writing With Ease (Levi and Luke) All About Spelling Level 3 (steps 9-) (Leif: Level 1, steps 12) (Levi spent a bunch of time writing a ‘book’—a first attempt at creative writing for him!)
Latin: Latina Christiana I (lessons 4-5/review)
Spanish: La Clase Divertida (DVD lessons 2-4) Fried Plantains (Yum!)
History/Literature/Historical Fiction: The Story of the World: The Modern Age (chapters 7-16) The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History(select pages, Luke) The Call of the Wild by Jack London (Arctic, turn of the century, 114 pp, Levi-IR) Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell (Navahos, 1860s, 124 pp, Levi-IR) The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz (Pennsylvania, 1784, 124 pp, Levi-IR) A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison by David A. Adler Thomas Edison: The Great Inventor by Caryn Jenner Edison: The Wizard of Light (The Inventors’ Specials, DVD) Who Was Thomas Alva Edison? by Margaret Frith Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story by Janet Halfmann Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl by Tonya Bolden (fabulous non-fiction picture book!) A Picture Book of George Washington Carver by David A. Adler Born in the Breezes: The Seafaring Life of Joshua Slocum by Kathryn Lasky (biography, 1895) Kids Discover: Pioneers Wagons West: Off to Oregon by Catherine E. Chambers The Pioneers by Marie and Douglas Gorsline A Pioneer Thanksgiving: A Story of Harvest Celebrations in 1841 by Barbara Greenwood If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine Daily Life in a Covered Wagon by Paul Erickson How Many People Traveled the Oregon Trail? by Miriam Aronin Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (335 pp, Levi-IR) The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl by Megan Stine (100 pp, Levi-IR) Prairie School by Avi Clara and the Bookwagon by Nancy Smiler Levinson Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner The Diane Goode Book of American Folk Tales & Songs Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream: A Family Almanac by Nancy Willard, illustrated by Jane Dyer Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (fiction, Canada, Levi-IR) The Robber and Me by Josef Holub (translated from German) (historical fiction, 19th century Germany, 207 pp, Levi-IR) The Industrial Revolution: From Muscles to Machines! 1750-1900 by Carole Marsh The Great Railroad Race: The Diary of Libby West—Utah Territory, 1868 (historical fiction, 199 pp, Levi-IR) Ten Mile Day and the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Mary Ann Fraser Dragon’s Gate by Laurence Yep (historical fiction, Chinese railroad workers in California-1865, 272 pp, Levi-IR) Across America on an Emigrant Train by Jim Murphy Listen Up! Alexander Graham Bell’s Talking Machine by Monica Kulling Alexander Graham Bell: Giving Voice to the World by Mary Kay Carson (119 pp, Levi-IR) The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois (fiction, Krakatoa-1883, 180 pp, Levi and Luke-IR) Captive at Kangaroo Springs by Robert Elmer (fiction, Australia, 174 pp, Levi-IR) Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Giff (historical fiction, 1845 potato famine in Ireland, 148 pp, Levi-IR) Maggie’s Door by Patricial Reilly Giff (historical fiction, immigration from Ireland to America, 156 pp, Levi-IR) The St. Patrick’s Day Shillelagh by Janet Nolan (historical fiction picture book, immigration from Ireland to America) Journey of Hope: The Story of Irish Immigration to America by K. Miller and P.M. Miller Laundry Day by Maurie J. Manning (shoeshine boy in New York City) Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880-1924 by Deborah Hopkinson How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. Riis (photographs, turn of the century) Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes (historical fiction, Norwegian immigrants in SF in early 1900s, 147 pp, Levi-IR) The Good Lion by Beryl Markham (autobiography, Africa, 1906) Fire on the Mountain by Jane Kurtz (picture book, historical fiction, Ethiopia) The Lion’s Whiskers and Other Ethiopian Tales by B. Ashabranner and R. Davis The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, July 25, 1909 by A. & M. Provensen Under the Royal Palms: A Childhood in Cuba by Alma Flor Ada Theodore by Frank Keating Teedie: The STory of Young Teddy Roosevelt You’re on Your Way, Teddy Roosevelt by Judith St. George The Battle of the Little Bighorn by Michael Uschan Little Bighorn by Philip Steele Roosevelt’s Rough Riders by Andrew Santella Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! by Jean Fritz (117 pp, Levi-IR) You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton? by Jean Fritz (77 pp, Levi-IR) A Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen-1917 by Kathryn Lasky (historical fiction, 209 pp, Levi-IR) Who Was Amelia Earhart? by Kate Boehm Jerome Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady-1912 (historical fiction, 192 pp, Levi-IR) Titanic (Eyewitness Books) Titanic Sinks! by Barry Denenberg The Road From Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl by David Kherdian (historical fiction, Armenia-1915, 238 pp, Levi-IR)
Literature Study: Saint George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman The Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean Book Detectives: The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (read-aloud, half-way through) Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Czechoslovakia retold by Virginia Haviland
Levi’s Free Reading: The Quest for Seven Castles (The Terrestria Chronicles) by Ed Dunlop The Search for Everyman (The Terrestria Chronicles) by Ed Dunlop The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Hidden Gallery by Maryrose Wood Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm A bunch of short chapter books
Luke’s Free Reading: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl Socks by Beverly Cleary Emily’s Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary Sir Balin the Ill-Fated (The Knights Tales) by Gerald Morris The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith (Africa) Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm The Pirates’ Mixed-Up Voyage by Margaret Mahy A bunch of Dragon Slayer’s Academy and Magic Tree House books The Ink Drinker by Eric Sanvoisin Henry Reed, Inc. by Keith Robertson Henry Reed’s Babysitting Service by Keith Robertson
Leif’s Free Reading: Lots of Magic Tree House and Life of Fred
Delightful Picture Books We’ve Enjoyed: Non-Fiction: In Flight with David McPhail: A Creative Autobiography by Daid McPhail (children’s author/illustrator) Mrs. Harkness and the Panda by Alicia Potter, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (one of my fav. illustrators) (China, 1934) A Colonial Town: Williamsburg by Bobbie Kalman Despite All Obstacles: La Salle and the Conquest of the Mississippi by Joan Elizabeth Goodman Into the Unknown: How Great Explorers Found Their Way by Land, Sea, and Air by Stewart Ross (ill. by Stephen Biesty) The Secret World of Spies (series) by Susan K. Mitchell I Grew Up to Be President by Laurie Calkhoven Jean Laffite: The Pirate Who Saved America by Susan Goldman Rubin Brothers At Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team by Audrey Vernick America is Under Attack: The Day the Towers Fell by Don Brown Worst of Friends: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the True Story of an American Feud by Susanne Tripp Jurmain Looking at Lincoln by Maira Kalman Fiction: The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup by Rosemary Sutcliff
Family Movie Nights: We Bought a Zoo Mr. Popper’s Penguins Hugo
