Archive for May, 2007

New Find … check this one out … it’s a keeper!

{ May 31, 2007 @ 11:54 am } · { New Finds, art, picture study }
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The Lavie ChildrenNational Gallery of Art’s FREE Loan Program!!! From their website:

The National Gallery of Art’s Division of Education provides slide teaching programs, multimedia programs, videocassettes, CD ROMs, and DVDs to millions of viewers each year. These programs are intended to foster awareness of the visual arts and make Gallery collections accessible to a broad audience beyond the Gallery’s walls. They are circulated free of charge to educational institutions, community groups, and individuals throughout the United States.

Direct Loans
This option is intended for anyone’s personal or individual use. Homeschool parents and teachers are among our newest group of borrowers. The process resembles that of a lending library:

Cycle: Request –> Booking –> Shipping –> Presentation –> Return –> Inspection

Requests
Be sure to request programs well in advance of your planned presentation date. It is important that requests are received at least one month prior to anticipated use. Each request is booked for the desired date if possible; otherwise, programs are booked for the borrowers’ alternate date.

Loan materials may be requested online. Search the online catalogue by curriculum topic, subject, artist, or format and add desired programs to your cart. Alternatively, you may fax or mail a printable order form. See how to order for complete details.

You may also request a printed catalogue.

Confirmation
You will receive a confirmation by mail noting our shipping date and your return date for each program scheduled for your use.

Loan Period
All direct loans may be kept for two business weeks (or up to 9 months depending on program type); because programs are mailed well in advance, the actual loan period is frequently longer. We ask that you return program materials promptly.

The borrower pays only for return postage (media mail rate).

Hello! How cool is this???? You only have to pay for return postage, by media mail. I think I can swing that. I’m off to order some things ….

A Great Day Outside Today

{ May 25, 2007 @ 9:31 pm } · { nature, outdoors }
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Come over to Heart Condition and check out my post Strawberries, Soil and Sun and read about our great day!

Awesome Stories

{ May 23, 2007 @ 11:06 am } · { websites }
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I found this site today – Awesome Stories. Currently they are waiving their $9.99 sign up fee for individuals and students. From their website:

AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose – since the site was first launched in 1999 – is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, and government
web sites.Your Site membership provides:

  • Original stories created specifically for educational purposes and targeted
    research
  • Key references and primary sources directly linked in story context
  • An end to wasted time reviewing meaningless search-engine results for
    targeted topics
  • Newsletters which include ideas for teachers and research topics for students
  • A great resource to learn what you would’ve learned in school had you paid
    attention
  • New ways to see magnificent art, ancient artifacts, original documents and
    annotated maps
  • A great way to use the Internet for educational purposes and not just for email, news, stock reports and on-line purchases
  • A great alternative to watching television

Enjoy :)

Book Tag

{ May 18, 2007 @ 10:28 am } · { books, tags }
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I’ve been tagged by Linda Fay at Higher Up and Further In. It’s a book tag and I am to list the books that I am currently reading. Until I wrote this out I don’t think that I realized how many books I could be reading all at the same time!

  • Loves Enduring Promise by Janette Oke – just about finished with this one … my husband’s grandmother has the entire “Love Comes Softly” series and I’ve been reading them during my down time – I’ve found them to be a nice way to relax :) … and I find myself thinking in the characters’ pioneer english too! Iffen yed like ta read tha rest a my list … ;)
  • Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne – Just picked this up from the library last night, but my husband snatched it from me … I’ve heard good things about this book and am eager to read it through
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – I’ve decided to read through all the classics, so I am starting my literary project with this one
  • Your First Quilt Book (or it should be!) by Carol Doak- Just arrived this week from eBay and I’m enjoying it – looks like a good instruction book for the beginning quilter, me!
  • The Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola – slowly reading through this again and soaking up her thoughts
  • All About Quilting From A to Z – seems like a good reference book on quilting
  • Good and Angry by Scott Turansky & Joanne Miller – very practical, when-the-rubber-meets-the-road parenting book that I highly recommend! I heard them at our homeschool conference a couple of weeks ago and they are quite good :)
  • Quilting by Janet Wickell – so, apparently I am wanting to learn to quilt ;)
  • Gardening for Dummies – yes, a “for Dummies book”, but that’s how I feel when it comes to gardening ;)

I’m doing as much reading as I can right now about gardening (mainly my public extension service publications) and quilting (I found 2 neat blogs – Happy Things and Angry Chicken). These are my two pursuits right now.

Reading aloud to my dear daughter:

  • Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling – she is really enjoying this!
  • Felicity’s Surprise (American Girl) – she received the Felicity doll for her birthday and now she is wanting me to read all her books :) … next year we’ll be studying the American Revolution, to this is a good little into …
  • Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
  • Seabird by Holling C Holling

Okay, so now I will tag … Candace, Presley Family (Christi) and Angela :)

messy

{ May 17, 2007 @ 4:29 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Please pardon the mess while I redecorate …… :)

Poetry

{ May 15, 2007 @ 12:10 pm } · { poetry }
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DD loves poetry. Right now we are reading Just so Stories by Rudyard Kipling and the end of each tale has a poem about the tale. I thought I might share with you how we are going to do poetry next year.

First, we’ve selected the same poet rotation as Year 2 from Ambleside Online – Walter de la Mere, Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley, and Christina Rossetti.

I have a few children’s anthologies that my mother-in-law has given me (she is an elementary school teacher), but by far my favorite is Favorite Poems Old and New selected by Helen Ferris. Her indexes are very useful – by first line, by title, by author and she has them grouped by genre (i.e. nature poems, poems about people). I select our poems from here. You can find all of the poets online for free, however. But I do like to have an actual book in my hand if possible.

I will select a poem that I think is suitable for DD and print it out. I’ll post it in our school room and on the refrigerator. And every day we’ll read it.

And that’s that :)

Picture/Artist Study

{ May 10, 2007 @ 11:28 am } · { art, picture study }
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I have selected 3 different and interesting artists for our picture study this year, in order to pique DD’s interest as we begin this new venture. I also wanted to choose artists of whom I could find ample resources, since we are just starting out. So this year we’ll study:

Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Monet (in that order)

My favorite website to find prints online? They are:

Artcyclopedia – Lists various museums around the world with prints online
ibiblio’s Web Museum

Artchive

CGFA – extensive

And, if you are wanting to print some prints from the internet, this site – Image Resolution, Size and Compression – is excellent to help you understand resolution a bit and see if the print’s file size will work for the size print you want to make.

If you’re looking for a free book online about art for children, The Book of Art for Young People can be found over at Project Gutenberg.

We’ll be making a Fine Art album. I got the idea from Linda Fay at Higher Up and Further In. Visit her site to find out more about how to make one. I think it’s a great idea.

I also will be changing my desktop to the print of the week ;)

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Here’s how we will do artist/picture study:

Each week, on Friday we will do our studies. I’ll first introduce DD to the artist and let her look through a book or 2 from the library on the artist. Then I will selet a print and give her some time to study it with her eyes, look at all the details and enjoy to picture. Then I will take the picture and hold it so that I can see it, but she cannot. And I will ask her to “narrate” the picture for me, tell me everything she can remember about it.

I will also, as I said, put it on my computer desktop and then post the picture in our school room and on the refrigerator.

I plan on checking out several books throughout the 12 week rotation for each artist. I will choose 6 prints for the 12 weeks term and we will study 1 print for 2 weeks.

Summer Read Alouds

{ May 10, 2007 @ 1:09 am } · { planning, read alouds }
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I’ve compiled a list of our summer read alouds if you’re interested …

Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
Winnie the Pooh Books by A.A. Milne
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
James Herriot’s Treasury for Children by James Herriot
The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges
Aesop for Children – Milo Winter
Pippie Longstocking by Astrid Lindgreno
Amelia Bedelia series by Peggy Parish

Currently we’re reading through Just So Stories and loving it :)

The American Girl Handy Book

{ May 8, 2007 @ 12:02 pm } · { handicrafts }
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I am so excited. I bought The American Girl Handy Book at our homeschool conference last Friday and it is packed with tons of good things! The link above takes you to Amazon.com’s site and you can search inside and see the table of contents. I was hoping to find this or something similar. I have been so inspired as I am reading The Charlotte Mason Companion and Karen Andreola’s talking about making corn husk dolls and dipping candles for the fall.

I also picked up Pioneer Crafts to use during our American History studies. I agree with Charlotte Mason about the need for our children to do handicrafts and not cut-n-paste crafts. I see so much more pleasure in my DD when she is sewing or emdroidering or painting than when she is doing a cut-n-paste craft. And I am enjoying learning more about handicrafts myself.

*A word of warning: This is NOT the same book that you will find at Wal-Mart and other like places (same title, different cover). That book does not contain the same crafts and it contains a section about fortune telling.

Year 2 Revisited

{ May 8, 2007 @ 11:53 am } · { art, music, planning }
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I have revisited my plan for next year and saw the need to revise my artist and composer schedule. I am wanting to introduce DD to artists and composers that will pique her interest, so I have chose the following for next year:

Artists:
Michelangelo
Rembrandt
Monet

Composers:
Beethoven
Vivaldi
Mozart

You can see my revised Year 2 plan here.