Our New Learning Space {NBTS}

This post comes with a WARNING.  You do NOT need a personal library to home educate, although it does seem to be a common side effect in many home educating family homes.  Paul indulges my Bibliomania habit and my Dad custom built some bookshelves to make storage easier.  I think that I would have had a lot of books even if I had not home educated.  Home education has simply empowered me to find excellent twaddle-free literature.

A few years back I did a show and tell post about our learning spaces.  We tend to homeschool using our whole home. Nothing had really changed over the last three years. This years Aussie Not back to school party Learing Spaces theme over at Our World Wide Classroom has inspired me to change things up a little at home and move my primary learning area into the same space that most of the books are kept.

We found a great couch at the local op-shop and that is at the rear of the room.  I moved the small shelf next to this courch.  I keep our current read-alouds here along with a few reference materials and a couple of items that are to tall for any of the other shelves in the house.  The beautiful flowers are a gift from my daughter before she flew out to the USA two weeks ago.

I spent a few weeks rearranging my shelves and removing books I know I will not be using with Nathaniel and making some new sections.  I wrestled with how to arrange the books on the shelves which took a while.

If you're anything like me you'll want to get in there for a closer look at what sorts of books are housed on the shelves.

I finally took the plunge after 10 years of home educating and used the colour stickers on the Sonlight Core books to keep the different cores together. I am pleased that I finally did do this as it's made life so much easier.  It's so much easier to locate a specific book in a specific core. I can now see at a glance if a book is in the wrong place too.

I decided to try and place the biography style books together. Some of these are specifically for homeschooling and some of them are for me.

I also rediscovered my character study resources and will be adding these to our studies later this year.

One of my current passions is learning about the Charlotte Mason method of home educating.  The more I've looked into it the more I found out about Nature Journaling and journals, so over the last couple of years I have been collecting some resources for it.

Earlier this term I attended a Charlotte Mason workshop where classical subjects were talked about so I decided to place my Charles Dickens reources, William Shakespeare, Hymn Study, Artist and Composer Studies resoruces together.

Other posts in this years Not Back to School blog hop

• Meet the Family
• Year 4 Curriculum
• A Day in Our Lives

It's been so much fun rediscovering the treasures that have been hiding on my bookshelves and knowing they are in full view so I remember to use them when we're studying.  I am looking forward to a little more tweaking of this space but so far I am very pleased with the results.

Have you blogged about your homeschool space ?  If so I would love to come and see so please leave a link either in the linky or in the comments.

Blessings

Chareen
PS If my spelling is not a 100% this week I would ask for your patience. I am borrowing a friends laptop (who happens to be german) and so I have no way to do any spell checking as her pc has a default setting of German ...

A Day in Our Lives {NBTS}

Welcome to week three of the annual Not Back to School Party, I'm co-hosting this event with Kylie over at Our WorldWide Classroom.  I love meeting new home educating families and find inspiration in knowing how their days go and what they do.  I'd love to hear more about your day.  If you have a blog please come and link up your post us and if you don't blog I would love to hear about your day in the comments.

Daily Schedules I've found to be a bit of a hotly debated topic among home educating families. There are so many opinions and some families schedules can leave you feeling overwhelmed and inadequate for the job of home education.  You can read some of my thoughts on scheduling here: Our Rhythm - Year Round Schooling and Homeschool Daily Schedules

I've done both.  I've scheduled every minute of every day and done no scheduling what-so-ever. Neither options lasted very long for us.  I've avoided writing down a schedule for Nathaniel as it seems to cause him a lot of stress if we don't do something at a scheduled time of the day. As a result I have a rough schedule in my head which is flexible around the things we need to get done or field trips we are booked into attending.  Over the last few years I have come to value Field Trips and I am appreciating more and more the impact they have on our students educational experiences.

In this way: give your a child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information. - Charlotte Mason

Alas I digress ...

What does our day look like ?
In an ideal world I would love to have a very strict schedule.  I also know that that is not real life.

• We get up and share a cup of tea each morning to start our day.  On days when I need the car I take Paul to work and we have breakfast when we get home.
• After breakfast we do a couple of household chores (generally we hang washing and unpack the dishwasher)
• Nathaniel and I then spend some time reading read alouds
• We have morning tea and do some seat work at the table. (Math, LA, Notebooking etc)
• By then it's lunch time.
• After lunch we either go to afternoon activities or we cuddle on the couch and enjoy more read aloud time together
• Sometimes we watch documentaries on demand TV.  I prefer SBS Documentaries for these.

"Every lesson must have its own time, and no other time in this world is there for it. The sense of the preciousness of time, of the irreparable loss when a ten minutes' lesson is thrown away must be brought home." - Charlotte Mason Companion page 93

Homeschool Adventures
You can follow our day to day adventures on Instagram via ChareenR



Looking forward to reading about your days come and link up with us

Blessings
Chareen

Year 4 Curriculum {NBTS}

It's week 2 of the Not Back to School blog hop being hosted here and at Our Worldwide Classroom.  This week we are sharing our proposed curriculum for 2015.  Don't forget to meet some of our amazing homeschool blogging families in Australia.

Our plan is to take 12 - 18 months with the following books.

Sonlight Core B

This year my aim with Nathaniel is to add in some more Charlotte Mason educational principles.  This is a learning journey for both of us as in the past I have followed Sonlight and the Well Trained Mind.  I really enjoy teaching / learning history chronologically so my aim is to complete Sonlight Core B this year and flow into Core C.


Readers

• The Beginners Bible
• The Bravest Dog Ever
• The Best Trick
• Little Bear
• A Fly Went By
• Owl at Home
• Hill of Fire
• Titanic Lost and Found
• Wagon Wheels
• The Big Balloon Race
• Mouse Tales
• Daniel's Duck 
• Nate the Great 
•  Greg's Microscope
• Amelia Bedelia 
•  Frog and Toad are Friends
•  Frog and Toad Together
•  Owl at Home
•  The Sword in the Tree

Read Alouds
Last year we did not get to most of our read alouds due to taking the scenic route and reading aloud a whole raft of other books so this year we plan on doing two read aloud periods a day.  In the morning doing Core B and afternoon Core C


 Fine Arts

• We will continue using The World's Greatest Composers by Confessions of a Homeschooler.
• The Classical Kids Collection Vol 1 & 2. These are produced by The Children's Group and cover the lives of eight famous composers.
• Classical Composers Monthly as a supplement to whichever composer we are studying.
• We will continue with The World's Greatest Artists Vol 1.  We have already studied Claude Monet {FREE Resource List} and will continue and learn about the other seven artists in the unit.
• We did Shipwrecked earlier in the year and really enjoyed it so we will work our way through Bible Stories by See the Light
• In an ideal world I would love to do some Hymn study too.  I have not settled on anything.  I think we might alternate Composer Study with Hymn Study.
• We will be meeting up with a family each week where we will continue to learn to play the recorder as well as work our way through drawing lessons from the Drawing Textbook.
• I am also in the process of reseaching the Charlotte Mason philosophy on the Fine Arts.
• This year we also intend on attending a few MSO concerts and a ballet concert.

Sonlight Core C

History
This year we will continue reading Story of The World Volume One and using the Activity Guide which goes alongside it.  Core B and C also do History chronologically so I will be consulting my manuals and using the recommended read alouds and spines from Sonlight.

Geography
 I haven't decided yet upon a resource to use.  Here are a few I'm contemplating using

• Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography
• A Child's Geography (Ann Voskamp)
• The Geography Book
• Geography Songs 

 I think we may continue using Expedition Earth: A Journey through God's World.

I would like to also complete  Trail Guide to World Geography  This particular package is my all time favourite.

I saw a review on Wonder Maps and really like the look of this program.  Have any of you used it or seen it ?

Math

•  We will play with Pattern Blocks and work our way through Patternables and Pattern Block Cards.
• We shall completeExploring Arithmetic 3 by Rod and Staff before switching over to Teaching Textbooks.
• CalcuLadder 1 and 2 These are part of the Learning Vitamins series.  I love these math drill work packs.

Logic

• Critical Thinking Activities
• We will be including Critical Thinking games this year. (Block by Block, Rush Hour, Blokus, Lonpos)

Science

For science we will choose books from our very well stocked home library this year and will be working through Exploring Creation with Astronomy from Apologia.  We will be using the Astronomy Junior Notebooking Journal.  Once we have completed this we will begin Exploring Creation with Botany.

For hands on Science we shall continue with Science Activities, Vol. 1 
Language Arts
Composition
We will be continuing with WriteShop Primary this year.  This program is an excellent way to introduce composition to reluctant writers and primary school aged students.



Spelling
Last year I began using Logic of English with Sir N and was really impressed with his progress.  This year we will continue our lessons with the goal of completing the program.


Vocabulary
This is not synonymous with spelling. We will continue to work though Spelling Workout starting with book B this year. I am also compiling a list of classical books we will be using as read alouds throughout the year ahead.

Grammar
I haven't yet settled on a grammar program.  I have two books I'm considering.  The first being English for The Thoughtful Child by Mary Hyde OR Karen Andreola's Simply Grammar: An Illustrated Primer.

Narration
This is something I want to focus more on this year with Sir N.  There are so many incredible benefits to the student in developing this skill.

Second Language
This year we will begin studying two other languages: Latin and French
For Latin I will be using two programs Prima Latina and  Getting Started with Latin
For French we will begin using  Rosetta Stone

No doubt due to our eclectic tendencies and as I learn more about applying a Charlotte Mason approach to our home education this will change.  I will update this list as I make changes to suit our learning.

Blessings
Chareen
This list is current as of 9 February 2015


It's your turn.
Looking forward to reading your plans for the year ahead.