Homeschool Coffee Break

Homeschool Mother’s Journal: In Which We Prepare for the Holidays

kympossible — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 18:57:03 +0000

In our homeschool this week… The goal this week was to get everything caught up so we could go on a Christmas vacation with clear consciences and without a pile of overdue assignments waiting for us when we get home. As far as I can tell now (before doing the grading), we’ve succeeded, with the possible exception of some drawings that Spencer might need to do for Art. That is something that is easy to take along though.

Kennady and Landon finished the current Science unit on extreme biomes – we studied oases, mountains, chaparral, and caves this week! We covered a lot of ground.

I had hoped to get a little further with Social Studies, but was satisfied with what we accomplished. We studied the Middle Ages and they sketched a castle and a hawk’s head (because hunting with hawks or falcons was a popular pastime during that period). They also sketched coats of arms – we didn’t follow any of the rules of heraldry, just drew designs that we thought looked interesting.

Our composer study continued with an overview of the Romantic era, and the first part of our study of Tchaikovsky.

In other news… this week was a bit more relaxed in that we had relatively few places to go and errands to run. The final performance of the kids Christmas play at church was on Sunday night.

We finished our Christmas shopping, with just a few exceptions. DH took another vacation day on Friday, so he and I spent the day shopping and we met with some old friends to do a little holiday visiting. Today we are doing our best to do the last minute tidying up and preparation for our vacation.

My favorite thing this week was… Christmas music of all kinds.

What’s working/not working for us… after some more trial and error, we think/hope that we have the computer issues solved. Sadly, I’ve come to the conclusion that HSB may not be working for me, so I am planning on migrating my blogs after Christmas.

Questions/thoughts I have… How will I get everything done that week between Christmas and New Years?!?! I have a LOT on the agenda for that time period. Hopefully it will go smoothly…

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

This made me smile!

On the Bookshelf…

Already Compromised by Greg Hall and Ken Ham with Britt Beemer
Merlin by Stephen R. Lawhead
Beethoven: His Life & Times by Jeremy Siepmann
Educating the Whole Hearted Child by Clay Clarkson with Sally Clarkson

I am still behind with my posts on Kym’s Bookcase! That’s something that will need to wait until after the holidays.

A Parting Shot…

This post is linked to The Homeschool Chick – see how other families are getting ready for the holidays!

Combining Christmas and Composers

kympossible — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 05:48:12 +0000

This week’s Composer Study was wonderful because we got started on the Romantic composers with another of my favorites, Pyotr Ilyick Tchaikovsky. We began the week by getting an overview of the Romantic era and the new styles and values of the composers. Then I skipped ahead to Tchaikovsky for two reasons – 1) It’s a great time to listen to The Nutcracker; 2) I have an upcoming review of Maestro Classics’ Swan Lake that I want to work on. We learned about Tchaikovsky’s life and work from A Young Scholar’s Guide to the Composers and Mike Venezia’s book in the Getting to Know the Great Composers series. We listened to selections from a “Best of…” CD I have. And I could have listened to it over and over, to be honest. It includes the Piano Concerto No. 1 and the 1812 Overture, which are two of my favorite pieces. It also featured the beautiful waltz from the ballet Sleeping Beauty, and we realized that the love duet in Disney’s animated Sleeping Beauty uses the same theme. I’m sure I knew that before, because it didn’t surprise me – just didn’t think about it. Absolutely beautiful music!

I also happened to have a CD of highlights from The Nutcracker, and we listened to most of that while driving to and from various errands this week. In our collection of children’s Christmas books, we found a retelling of The Nutcracker, so Kennady read that aloud to give us a reminder of the story that inspired the familiar and memorable music.

It seems that Tchaikovsky was another composer that faced tragedy and trouble in his life, and yet produced incredibly beautiful music. Music that has become familiar to people through Disney’s Fantasia, all kinds of Christmas specials, adaptations of his ballets, and inspiration for many pieces by Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

We will focus on Swan Lake the week after Christmas.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

This post is linked at ~a teaching heart~ where we are keeping each other accountable for making time for music in our homeschooling!

Homeschool Mother’s Journal: In Which We Have a Few Technical Difficulties

kympossible — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:48:25 +0000

In our homeschool this week… We had fewer distractions this week, for the most part, and I think we were able to get quite a bit done. Unfortunately for this post, not much of what we did warranted my taking a picture! I think Spencer is making more of an effort to stay current with his schoolwork now, and is keeping up well in Chemistry and History. He has pointed out that the assignment list he has for the other subjects is out of date, and while I don’t think that is a good excuse, I am going to get a fresh assignment list printed out ASAP so it’s clear what is expected of him next week.

Kennady and Landon both nursed their aversion to Math this week, but at least they worked on it. Kennady was more interested in Language Arts, because she is working on a short story with herself and two of her good friends as the main characters.

In Science, we started a unit on biomes with extreme conditions. We learned about the tundra, and about the desert and oases. Our composer study was rather brief this week, since I had not hunted up any additional materials on Franz Schubert, and we had some computer and internet issues that made it difficult to listen to much of his music online. After quite a long hiatus, we were back to work in Social Studies, learning about the Celts. I printed out some Celtic designs for the kids to color, and Kennady enjoyed that enough that she has asked for more designs.

Kennady - lovin' the Celtic designs

Landon - not wanting to be in a picture

In other news… On Tuesday the choir finished our holiday season with a concert given at the mall. I took Kennady with me so she could watch my coat and purse while I sang, then I took her clothes and shoe shopping afterwards. That was her Christmas shopping trip. Spencer and Landon are both in need of shoes, so we are going to try to schedule Christmas shopping trips for them as well.

Wednesday evening was the first performance of the kids Christmas play at church. Of course it was very cute. And of course, Kennady was great in her part. Second performance was this evening, and there is one more tomorrow. So far I’ve had a tough time getting pictures, but I’ll be sitting right near the front tomorrow so I’m hoping for something a little better.

We were rather surprised to receive a phone call that Landon’s glasses were ready, less than a week after they’d been ordered! We had been told they might be up to two weeks. So on Thursday afternoon we went to pick them up, which worked out well because Kennady was invited to a birthday party and we needed to pick out a gift.

And Friday my DH took a vacation day to just relax at home, which made our schoolday feel a little different, but I was happy that we still got a fair amount done.

My favorite thing this week was… Christmas baking! Finally got the peppernuts done, although a couple days after St Nicholas Day. Also baked shortbread and Nanaimo bars (which aren’t really baked at all…), and I plan to do more this coming week.

What’s working/not working for us… for a few days this week, our computer/internet was not working. Those were not happy days! Thankfully, DH managed to get everything back in working order on Wednesday evening, after I’d done a system restore to about three weeks earlier! We still don’t know what caused the issue, but we are very happy it’s working again. And then I was going to post this early this morning, and HSB was down!

Questions/thoughts I have… I am WAY behind schedule in planning and preparing my lesson plans for spring co-op! I will have to really get in gear after the Christmas break in order to have all of that ready.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

These pictures were taken in preparation for a review I was going to do – an electronic bug from Teacher Geek – but there were some changes to the plan so that review won’t be posted on this blog.

On the Bookshelf…

Already Compromised by Greg Hall and Ken Ham with Britt Beemer
Merlin by Stephen R. Lawhead
Beethoven: His Life & Times by Jeremy Siepmann
Educating the Whole Hearted Child by Clay Clarkson with Sally Clarkson

Finished Taliesin, which I was working on last week, but I am behind with my posts on Kym’s Bookcase!

A Parting Shot…

This post is linked to The Homeschool Chick – come see if anyone else had difficulties to overcome this week!