Out with the old year, in with the new...country?

So I've hinted here and there that next year is going to be a bit crazy. Every year here is a bit crazy but normally I don't know what craziness to expect until it happens; this year, I know in advance! We're moving! To England! Yay!!!

And yes, all those exclammation points are needed becasue this is a dream come true. England, the land of our honeymoon. The land of my beloved Jane Austen...and Charlotte Bronte....and Charlotte Mason. Okay, I'll stop now. But rest assured, I could go on.

But that's not until late spring. Right now, it's prep time. And prep time is crazy time. Because I've got a whole houseful of kids and animals and stuff that has to be dealt with in one way or another (spoilers - the kids get to come... and so does the dog and much of the stuff because we'll be there at least 3 years. But not the guinea pigs are hopefully not a lot of our crap. I tend toward minimalism but with 4 kids, the stuff still accumlates fast)

I've given myself the holidays to enjoy holiday stuff but that's just a a few more days. Then the kids get back to work on their second term of school with hopes of finishing it on time (10 weeks or less!), I start decluttering like a crazy women and ordering everything we need for next year school (I want it all here and organized before we go so I'm not worrying about it later) and Craig starts chasing me around with paperwork he wants done and we both start working on our massive (and growing) checklist of things to be done here to the house before we go. But in the end I'll end up living the dream so bring it on!

Classics Challenge: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

11 hrs. I finished the Challenge with 11 hours to spare! I really didn't think I would but I actually got into the story towards the end. It took me a while, mostly because of ebook formatting options. I read a lot faster when I found a good hardcopy at my dad's house over the holidays. Then I was close enough to the end that I powered through on my annoying ebook once we came home.

I used this for my Classic from a Place You've Lived seeing as how Hannibal MO (aka Mark Twain country) is not too far from us. I actually would like to go visit this spring if I can fit it into the schedule. So it's from here - and yet it's not. The world Huck Finn lives in is so different from what I live in day to day that I think it would be easy to dismiss parts of it or at least some of the ideas its sharing. It's tempting to read this in a less than humble way. In other words, to use it as a way to pat yourself on the back for being so woke. Which would be a mistake. But having said that, it's one I would have loved to read at the time because I think it would have been almost a different book. Of course, one can never really do that and I suppose that is one of the best reasons to read it now. To try and see from that point of view. Both the ideas that were prevelent then - and the way people fought them.  I wish I could articulate more but I think I need a few more weeks (months?) to think on it. And the idea of it being banned because of racial slurs - well, that's a whole 'nother post that I don't even have the desire to write anytime soon! But it's all interesting to think about.

On a less "educational" level, it was also just enjoyable. Having a little boy in my life probably made certain parts more humorous too. Little boys are their own type of creature - and one that I think Mark Twain was familiar with.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was my Back to the Classics Challenge Classic From a Place You've Lived selection.

Classics Challenge 2019

Another Classics Challenge completed! (sorta)

I've finished 11 of my 12 catagories. I actually did more of the ones I originally picked this year that I typically do which is kinda neat. I still have Huck Finn to finish and I'm only at about 50% so I'm putting this up now and if I don't finish, I don't finish. We are still thick in Christmas celebrations here (it's only the 4th day of Christmas, more presents to open and more treats to make/bake!) but I will be trying. (Update - I finished! And almost half a day to spare)

1. 19th Century Classic  -  That Lass O'Lowries

2. 20th Century Classic -  40 Acres and No Mule

3. Classic by a Woman Author  In This House of Brede

4. Classic in Translation.  Dante's Inferno

5. Classic Comic Novel. Mike

6. Classic Tragic Novel. The Great Gatsby

7. Very Long Classic. The History of Tom Jones

8. Classic Novella. The Death of Ivan Ilyich

9. Classic From the Americas (includes the Caribbean). Robinson Crusoe. 

10. Classic From Africa, Asia, or Oceania (includes Australia).  

The Quiet American

11. Classic From a Place You've Lived. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 

12. Classic Play. Much Ado About Nothing

Of all my reads for this challenge, I think my favorite was In This House of Brede but followed pretty closely by 40 Acres and No Mule. The one I'm most proud of completing is Dante's Inferno and the one I could live my life without ever reading again is Tom Jones. Since my review I've read some other opinions about the lessons it teaches so I won't judge if you like it or assign it to high schoolers or anything but I won't ever be picking it again!

And that's my challenge. I've really enjoyed doing this challenge with Karen and her Books and Chocolate blog for the past few years and I've seen a few others recently but I haven't decided if I'm doing any next year. Maybe I'll just see where the books lead. Or maybe not, my type A personality is already a little freaked out about not having a list for this next year :-) 

And if you need to get ahold of me Karen, try naethingm@gmail.com

Classics Challenge - Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is one of those classics that I couldn't really believe I'd never read. I won't say I'm ashamed to not have read because there are too many wonderful books in the world to ever be ashamed of not having read any one particular book but I am really glad I've can now say I've read it.

Crusoe spends most of the book on a desert island somewhere near Trinidad which is in the Caribeans so I'm putting this one in the catagory of  Classic from Americas/Caribbean.

I "read" this one mostly by listening along with Lucy (its an Ambleside Online year 4 book). Mark Smith was already a favorite librivox reader of ours and it was nice to have a familiar voice leading us through it. That also meant we took it slow, listening to about 10-15 minutes 4 days a week for many weeks. I think that really contributed to my enjoyment. This book is by no means a simple adventure/survival story but still, not really liking that sort of book, I probably wouldn't have given the other aspects as much of a chance to sink into my brain had I read it on my own quickly.

 Both she and I really liked the middle section. The first part moved quickly and you start to get a little annoyed at Mr. Crusoe for his bad decisions. But we stuck with him and I'm glad. I'm not sure Lucy got as much out of his religious ponderings as I did but I also know that both of us probably internalized more than we think and we both have already made connections to other books and situations since then. That's another benefit to having read it with her, when we see a connection - we get excited to share it with each other!

Robinson Crusoe is my Back to the Classics Challenge - Classic from Americas or Caribbean. For more about challenge, head over to Books and Chocolate.

Together - Term Review continues

Together Time 

What we call our morning time. I've shorted it up a bit and I'm having a hard time finding a good time for this, mostly because the right after lunch time we had is now right before naptime for Jude and I feel like I'm always rushing it so I can put him down because he's falling apart or I'm rushing it because he's asleep and I don't want us singing and waking him up or him waking up right as we finish and big kids start quiet time which means I don't get any quiet time myself. So this was probably the weakest link in terms of consistency. But it has folk and hymns, catachism questions, recitation pieces (poetry,bible and some US history memorization work) and everything got memorized and/or learned fairly well so I won't panic yet. 

Feast Time

 In addition to our daily-ish family together time, we did a weekly mini-coop with other AO friends. This was Picture study and a artist biography, Swedish Drill, Handicrafts and Map Study and some extra quality picture books (Diana Stanley for the win!). We were as consistent with this as fall and germ season allowed. 

Tea Time

Since we moved a few of our regular tea time activites to our feast morning (picture study, composer), we had some space to fill. We do the AO Year 4 Mason/Long geography readings (Jonah's always followed along with Lucys' work in the AO schedule), bible videos (Phil Vischer bible study videos - they are great and allow me 10 minutes to actually make the tea), the MCT poetry book and whatever extra special studies I want to do (Good Pictures/Bad Pictures last term, I'm planning on doing Connoisseur Kids this upcoming term) and Keeping time (timelines and painted narration cards) We didn't get everything I had planned done but when I made those plans, I didn't know we'd be doing the Feast time so in the end, I'm really happy that we got a whole AO term done along with all the extra stuff.

Jonah's keeping cards. 

Piano

We were having consistently issues but I moved it to right after breakfast and it's getting done pretty regularly now. We've dropped Solfa for now but they kids love to sing so I'm sure it will get added back in again in the future.

Handicrafts

We had a good summer of handicrafts with out summer mini-coop of two other families. Paper cutting was a huge hit! This fall we have dabbled in a few things but mostly child led. I introduced them to sculpey and they took off with that, I've got a constant stream of little items next to my oven waiting to be baked. Lucy and Jonah both did a church workshop with all sorts of sewing and woodbuilding and fun projects all afternoon, Lucy did a sewing badge for AHG and then we worked on this present for our first cousin - due this April!

. This is one subject that I need to learn to be content with bursts. When I write it all down, what we did was quite sufficient but it doesn't fit into my neat tidy weekly checklists. I need to learnt to be okay with that instead of stressing out when we don't get to it weekly.

Art 

I outsourced! We hired a local artist to come to our house and teach Lucy and Jonah every other week for an hour and a half. They absolutely love it. She's a wonderful woman and its been such a great experiance. The kids do tons of drawing and as I said, sculpting,  on their own but she's been getting them into bigger, messier projects like print making and lino cuts and mosaics. And I no longer feel guilty for not being able to make bigger, messier projects happen with a preschooler and toddler underfoot. She comes at naptime so Norah and I try to have special time when its just the two of us, painting and reading and snuggling. I've noticed that Norah has started thinking she is bad at art but its just she's always tagging along with what the bigger two are doing. When its just her and me, she thinks she brilliant at art - and she is!

Lucy:

Jonah

Norah

Nature Study - Another fits and bursts subject. We read Burgess Sea Shore book this summer and did a bunch of nature study on our beach vacation and afterwards drawing the items we found. We didn't quite make our 25 stars on our hiking chart yet but we'll try to fit one or two more hikes before it's officially winter.  We also started phenology wheels after we picked a tree to study all year but I also forgot where I "safely stored" said phenology wheels so we're a little behind. Oops.

Changes to make

No matter how well the term has gone, I always panick when I'm writing exams because all I see is what we didn't do and what I wasn't consistent about. I've learned now to try and ignore those feelings because once they've actually taken their exams and I've put together their pieces and added them to their portfolios, I feel pretty good about what we accomplished and am not planning on changing too much.

 I'd like to try and be more consistent with our morning time but since this is the first time we've ever struggled with it, I think its definitely a life stage issue. I finally made a cd of all our folks songs to replace the ones I lost and add in the newer songs. I also plan to buy a hymn cd and work our way through. Having the cds means that we can at least get our songs in if its a field trip day. And we did more composer study this term than ever before, finishing a biography about Mozart and actually listening to some of his pieces at least 3 times a week. But next term I'd like to start trying to recognize specific pieces by our composer and learning their names. This next term will be a bit crazy so if we do as well next term as we did this term, I'll be pretty happy.

Jonah's Year 1 Term 2 Exams

Jonah did great this term too. For our family term this spring/summer, we studied ancients and when I asked him what he wanted to do this fall, he specifically asked to do extra science and learn about "how scientists learned things in time" so in addition to the AO year 1 science, we've added Berean Builders Science in the Ancient World. We're only doing it 1-2x a week but he's enjoying the readings and the demonstrations/experiments. Lucy doesn't have to but normally choosees to listen in.

Math - I didn't do any math exam questions but he's doing MEP and Beast Academy. We'll probably have to narrow it down to one eventually but for now, he's enjoying doing both.

Bible

     Tell one story about David.

There was this big valley and there was two hills on either side. And the Philistines were on one side and the Israelites were on the other side. And the Philistines had one of their people was a giant and everyone was afraid of him but they were having a war and David, he choose to fight Goliath and he killed Goliath. He took five flat stones from the brook and took his sling and he shot Goliath in the forehead and then he fell over.

    Tell about the shepherds and the angels.

So there were some shepherds in the fields in the same area where Jesus was going to be born. And then an angel appeared to them “There is going to be, in the city of Bethlehem, a baby and he will be called Jesus, the son of God” and then their appeared a multitude of angels and they praised the Lord, the angels did, and then the angels went away and the shepherds said “let us go there and see Jesus, the baby, and then they went there to Bethlehem and they worshipped him.

Tales

Tell a fable.

Ass and salt. So this Ass and his owner, they were bringing salt back home and the donkey, the ass, tripped and he fell into the water and the salt melted and then it was easier to carry it home so next time he fell over on purpose and the master figured out he was doing in on purpose. Then he went to the seashore and brought home two baskets of sponges and the ass fell down and it was then harder to carry.

  

Tell the story of Grace Darling.

There was a ship and it was sailing on the sea and there was a waterfall and it drove over the cliff and half the boat fell down and the other half had people on it and they clung on to it so they wouldn’t go down the waterfall. And there was a lighthouse far away and the lighthouse keeper’s daughter, named Grace Darling, saw the boat and told her father and her father, the lighthouse keeper, he said “No” but then finally she persuaded him to go and then they went and got all the people onto their boat and went back to the lighthouse and then the people that were on the boat went back to their homes. The end.

Tell me the story of the First Letter, or Armadillos or Tell me about how the crickets had to wait.

So there was a mom and a dad and they had one daughter was Taffy that meant girl who does not have very good manners and ought to be spanked and the dad’s name was Tegumai that meant man who does not put his foot forward in a hurry and the mom’s name was Teshumai and it meant, woman who asks a very many questions. And Taffy and her dad always came home late and one day they went out on a fishing trip but before they had caught anything the dad’s fishing spear broke and he was going to mend it when this stranger came from a different country from them and Taffy drew them a picture of, well, it looked like a bunch of people were throwing spears at her dad and then he took it to the mom’s house, the cave, and then there was some other people there and they all put mud in the his hair and were rude to him but then they went there and they saw them fishing, because they were done mending. And then they all laughed and then cleaned his hair and then the mom said “you have made an invention!”

Draw a picture narration for Aladdin and the Magic Lamp OR The Glass Slipper.

So this is the castle that was in the dessert and this Aladdin laying down and the princess in the window.

History

Tell how the Giant's Dance was brought to England, or how Arthur became king.

Arthur became king. Everyone was fighting about who would be king. So Merlin walked in with Arthur and he said, this is the new king and everyone was like “oh no, he is just a boy and Uther Pendragon did not have a son!” and then he brought all the people to a stone with a sword in it and then everyone tried to pull the sword out of it to become king but no one did it until Arthur took and pulled it out. And then that was his sword and he lived a long good life.

Tell about Dick Whittington, Picciola, or Antonio Canova.

Antonio Canova. So there was this boy named Antonio Canova and his father died so he lived with his grandfather who was a poor woodsman and he carved things out of wood and tried to make statues out of marble. And one time he  accidently broke a big statue and he was sorry and he carved something out of butter. It was a crouching lion. And everyone really liked it and then he became a somebody who makes statues and who is good at it.

Tell me what you remember about George Washington.

He was a very good boy at school and he was the best at riding horses at school and he had good manners except he cut down his father’s tree, cherry tree, and when he was grown up, he wanted to be a surveyor and then he was in the army and he went through the river Delaware and everyone wanted to go home and then they won the war and they got home on Christmas day. And they celebrated that he came back and they had a big feast. And his soldiers when he was in the army were just farmers and weren’t really soldiers and all the time they went home to see their children and family. And he was the first founding father and the first president. And his other name insGeneral Washington.

Geography – 100%

1.      Find Lake Michigan and Lake Superior on a map. Where is Missouri on the same map.

2.      Find the continents of Africa and Europe on the map. Find the countries of Canada, United States, United Kingdom. 

Natural History and General Science

Describe your favorite nature study find this term.

It was a big black caterpillar, a little bit longer than a wooly bear, and it was all black. It was a lot faster and I saw it in the middle of our yard on the concrete. And the last place I saw it was all the way over by the wall.

Tell me what do you know about nests? Or Tell me about the woodpecker family?

Woodpeckers tap on trees with their long beaks. And they live in trees sometimes and some of them live on the ground. And there are flickers and red headed woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers and pileated woodpeckers. They eat bugs and berries and one member of the woodpecker family, the top, the very tip of their beak, it can flip up to catch worms in the ground without their whole bill opening.

His Downy Woodpecker drawing

Describe one of our science demonstrations and what it meant.

You take one glass and put vinegar in it and you put some pennies in it and a nail that is not stainless steel or galvanized and you wait. And the pennies should get shinier. The copper ions come off of the penny and that makes it shinier. But if you use stainless steel or galvanized, the nails get shinier because that’s what happened with us. And one that worked was…

You take two cups and put cold water in one and boiling water in the other one. And you put pepper in both of them. Black pepper. And then you watch it. The pepper in the hot water glass will go around and not go straight down but in the cold water glass it just floats down and stays down. Because in the hot water, the ions are moving and they push the pepper up and around. But in the cold water, its not really moving, not as much, so it just floats down.

Picture Study

Describe your favorite picture from this term's picture study.

Now let’s see, my favorite was…the last supper. So Jesus is in the middle and they are all on the same of the table which is kind of odd. And its just at the time that Jesus is telling everyone that someone is going to betray him and everybody is whispering to each other “do you think I’m going to be it?” and things like that. And at one side there is a hall and the side that they aren’t sitting, there is a hallway going down from the table. And its in a big room and I don’t see which one is Judas.