November 22, 2011

Yup - it's been that kind of a month - another unschooling day....

• Reading independently
• Playing board games (more Axis and Allies)
• Helping with chores - inside and out
• Playing with their Legos and creating various things
• Conductor spends hours making paper airplanes (note to self: get some photos)
• Piano Lessons today

Day #56/175 Days

November 8, 2011

Today was another unschooling day. The afternoon was spent at piano lessons. We are there for two hours while everyone (myself and each boy) has a 30 minute lesson.

The boys ....

• read independently
• helped haul wood
• helped with animals
• did inside chores (home ec)
• played board games (Axis & Allies is a new favorite)

Day #51/175 Days

Day #12/175 Days – Fine Arts Co-Op

Today was our second time trying our “Fine Arts” mini co-op with my sister. It’s definitely a challenge at times to make the boys understand this is school time and not play time. They get about 20-30 minutes when we first start to play while my sister and I get ready to go. Then we have at least an hour for lunch (it only takes them half that time to eat) and then they have more time at the end to play as well.

We really do cover a lot of ground which is good since we only meet twice a month.

• Read in Story of the Orchestra about the flute.
• Listened to the track in SOTO as well.
• Pulled out a real flute for the boys to try out. They were all able to make a sound with it. (Happy did not get to try as he’s just getting over being ill.)

• Listed four things on the chalkboard that they learned about the flute.
• Copied three of them in to their mini-books on the flute
• Read about the piano in Story of the Orchestra
• Listened to the track with the piano (all the boys are either currently taking lessons on the piano – mine- or have in the past – my nephew)
• List four things on the chalkboard about the piano

• Copy three of them in to their mini-book on the piano

• Our composer today was Mozart. We read about him in Meet the Great Composers.
• We also use the Young Scholar’s Guide to the Composers as well and as my sister reads from there they boys fill in the Student Review pages.
• List four things about Mozart on the chalkboard.
• Pick two to write in the mini-book on him.
• Listen to some of his work on the CD from Meet the Great Composers

LUNCH BREAK! The boys were off and running. I did get a bit distracted this morning and never mentioned it to the boys as I didn’t want to disrupt the flow of work. These “things” have been visiting our yard just about daily:



After lunch we began our art study. We are covering art history, an artist study, and art application. For art history we are using videos by Barry Stebbing. We are also using videos from him for our art application. We are using a variety of resources for our artist study. Since I lead the art study, there aren’t any photos. I’ll have to have my sister snap some next time.

• Watch Lesson 2 in “God & the History of Art” on The 2nd Commandment and how this pertains to art. Discuss.
• Watch Lesson 1 in “Beginning Drawing” (only did the first 10 mins) The boys drew basic geometric shapes, a pencil, a paintbrush, and a 3D object.
• Discussed how basic shapes show up in all drawings.
• Read about Botticelli in Art in Story
• Viewed some of his paintings online including:
  
  • Primavera
  • Man with a Medal
  • The Magnificat
  • Madonna of the Book (rectangle and round shapes)
  • The Annunciation
  • Adoration of the Magi
• Discuss the paintings – using Art in Story
• Used Discovering Great Artists and had the boys create a drawing on round paper.

We broke here for a walk in the woods. It has been raining a lot lately and this seemed like a good time to burn off some energy since it wasn’t currently raining. We took to the logging roads behind my house.



At each intersection we took turns picking which direction to go. This helped lengthen the walk. We spent 30 minutes enjoying the fall day. And this was near the end of our walk…



Our favorite spot on our property – the town line. The boys are in two places at once!

When we returned we discussed the different things we had seen on our fall walk. We talked about Botticelli’s paintings Primavera which is intended to depict spring and the things about it that would suggest that. We also looked at his painting “Autumn” and what would suggest that season in the painting. They then had to create a drawing of what fall/autumn means to them.

Next time we’ll be studying the cello and organ and Haydn during our music study. We’ll continue with our art history and art application lessons but I’m not sure who we will do for our artist yet. We forgot to make a list of those to study at the start of the year so I just pick one when putting together our check list.

•      

Day #6/175 Days – Fine Arts

My sister and I started talking about a month ago about ways to incorporate more of the fine arts in our school year. She came up with the idea of a little mini co-op with just the two of us. One time a month we all head south to her house and the other meeting she comes up here to ours.

We meet at the end of August and planned out what we were going to study. We are using some videos by Barry Stebbing for our art history and drawing lessons. We are using a hodge-podge of other materials to round out everything else.

Today was our first class day. Overall it was a good day. We realized we have too much reading planned for the music appreciation time so we may end up changing that a bit.

Mornings are reserved for music while after lunch is art time. My sister will lead the music time and I will lead the art time.

• We began reading in Story of the Orchestra about the violin.
• We listened to the recommended track of the Story of the Orchestra CD of the violin.
• We listed four things the boys learned about violins on the white board. They then choose three to copy on to their mini books (found at Homeschool Share).
• Read about the harpsichord in Story of the Orchestra
• Listened to the recommended tracks
• Listed four things (one from each boy) and they created their mini books for this instrument as well.
• Read about Bach in Meet the Great Composers
• Read more about Bach from A Young Scholar’s Guide to the Composers book.
• While reading from the above book, the boys had the Student Review pages. Anytime they thought they had heard the answer to a question, they raised their hand, read the question, and answered it. This kept them pretty engaged.
• Listened to the CD track from Meet the Great Composers of one of Bach’s songs. We had the boys try to pick out violins or harpsichord.

At this point we figured the boys had done enough music. We had wanted to read from Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers but thought it would be too much sitting at this point. There are also notebook pages as part of the Young Scholar’s book but the rebelling over writing had started so we saved this as “homework.”
We let them go have some fun play time while we made lunch. After lunch we tackled art.

• Watched Lesson 1 of Barry Stebbing’s “God and the History of Art.” This covered “What is Art?”
• We created color wheels using tempera paint. The boys were given red, yellow, blue, green, and purple and had to create all the other colors needed from those (including orange).
• I read to them from Art in Story about Rembrandt.
• We then looked at a lot of portraits (self and otherwise) in a book I have of Rembrandt. The reproductions in it were very well done. We talked about what the people in the paintings may have been and what clues we saw in the painting to support that.
• The boys then created their own self-portraits simply using paper and pencil.
• We also talked about etchings and how Rembrandt created those. There were some examples in my book as well so we looked at those.
• We used some simple etching kits picked up at the Dollar Store to create our own etchings.

Overall a full and productive day.

 

 

Day #2/175 Days - Field Trip

I'm continuing to "sneak" in days of schooling without the boys knowing or guessing or well, it's not "formal" stuff yet. I have had friends tell me to follow my own advice, so that is what I am doing.

Even though today was Labor Day, my hubby decided to work. He wants Friday off instead. Since Daddy wasn't home, we I decided to take the boys on a hike. Even having a friend overnight didn't stop me, I just brought him along.

This waterfall is only about 20 minutes away from us. The boys had gone with me once before but didn't remember. It had been a couple of years. It's very pretty. We only saw two other families. One was hiking out as we were hiking in and the other was hiking in while we were hiking out. We had the whole area pretty much to ourselves.

The falls are pretty. The highest one is just as your enter, but you can continue to walk up and further in to see smaller ones. All told we spent about 30 minutes in the woods.

The boys also played a ton of Wii games today - mostly Wii sports. They enjoyed a rousing game of hide-n-seek as well. Since we live on 100 acres, they have plenty of spots to hide!

Lego-Man and his friend also went for a walk in the afternoon on the logging roads behind our house.

Conductor was a bit jealous of Lego-Mans's nice walking stick so he decided to make one. He took a piece of slat wood and spent the afternoon sanding it down. He did a really nice job on it. He worked hard and was very diligent in finishing the task he set before himself.