Friday 10 January 2014

HSMJ A new Year A Fresh Begining

In my life this week…
We returned home from a much needed rest.  We had a wonderful week of discovering Goolwa in South Australia.
I'm really excited I am starting an online photography course this week.  I can't wait to learn how to use my DSLR better.  Happy dance here.  

 


In our home school this week…
  • We're still on holidays and will be back to school next week ... 
 Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…
Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
  • We returned home from South Australia on Monday
  • Paul and Sir N spent the day fishing and 'camping' in Anglesea on Wednesday.  I had a quiet day at home by myself.  Mothers do need these days to recharge.  Thank you my friend.
  • A dinner date with another homeschool family
My favourite thing this week was…
Source

Things I’m working on…
In Bloggy world I’m reading…
I’m cooking…
  • I'm trying desperately to get back into THM cooking I enjoyed my holidays but am ready to be back on board and sugar detox this week.
On Pinterest I found...
  • If you are after some music appreciation resources take a look at SQUILT
I’m grateful for…
A photo, video, link, or quote to share…
Yesterday …. was our Lord’s grace.
Tomorrow…. is our Lord willing.
Today…. is our Lord’s gift —
which is why everyone, everywhere, calls right now the present.
- Anne Voskamp
Blessings

Chareen

Homegrown Learners

Photo collages made with: Photoscape a FREE photo editor
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Thursday 9 January 2014

Picasso Cubist Inspired Art {Virtual Fridge}

This Week
Welcome back to the Virtual Fridge where we take a picture of our children's art work and hang it on our 'fridge' and share.  I am looking forward to seeing your artistic inspiration this year. We will be back to school next week however I thought I would share one of our projects from last year with you to start of 2014 edition of the Virtual Fridge.

This particular project was one we did a while ago and was inspired by a tutorial over at Practical Pages called: Picasso Inspired Collages. One of the amazing things about this art project was that Nadene's daughters art was featured on a the cover of Sacred & Profane Arizona Choir & Symphonic Choir concert booklet.

It was really easy to do and the results speak for themselves.  Sir N and I did this one together.



 Featured This Week


I loved seeing this post by Greatly Blessed.  You can see a photo journal of this project along with descriptions of their families adventure of Art in History creating Tomb Walls.


Your Turn

I invite you to take some photo's of your children's artistic pursuits put them in a post and link up with me I would love to come over and see the wonderful art your children have enjoyed doing.

Virtual Fridge Link Up

Blessings
Chareen


The Virtual Fridge a weekly art meme where we can hang our children's art on a virtual fridge. This meme was started by Jennifer over at A Glimpse of our Life who kindly invited three other bloggers to co-host this weekly meme.

Your hosts are



Welcome to the weekly art meme.
Please grab a button take a picture of your children's art and add your link.

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Wednesday 8 January 2014

Winter Olympics 2014 Unit Study Resources


It feels like the other day that we enjoyed meeting the Australian Summer Olympic Champions at Federation Square and studying the Summer Olympics .  This year it's time to take a look at the Winter Olympics.

The very first Winter Olympics was held in Chamonix, France in 1924.  This event is held every four years. The 2014 Winter Olympic Games host city was selected on the 4th of July 2007 and is Sochi, in Russia.  There will be 98 events in 15 winter sports.



"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well." Olympic Creed
At the Library

To Print

On Pinterest

On YouTube

On the WWW

Russia




Winter Olympics Resources Round-Up Have you found any good resources to use to teach about the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics ?? For more resources the Schoolhouse Review Crew (15 January 2014)  are sharing their favourite resources for the Winter Olympics

Blessings
Chareen

"The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." –Olympic Charter



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Tuesday 7 January 2014

SQUILT {Review}

In 2013 it was with great excitement that Mary announced that she was writing a music appreciation curriculum called SQUILT.

Mary has an undergraduate degree in Music Education and a Masters Degree in Education along with years of teaching experience both in public and the homeschool environment.  Her desire was to write a curriculum in which all the work was done for you in order to make music appreciation easy to add to your homeschool rhythm.  With SQUILT she has done just that.

The purpose of SQUILT is create a quiet regular slots of time in order to expose children to excellent pieces of music. As well as equip them with the skills necessary to appreciate quality music. It is perfect for preschoolers, elementary students, and young middle school students. 

SQUILT is an acronym for  
Super Quiet UnInterrupted Listening Time.

How we used SQUILT

When I recieved my copy of SQUILT I downloaded it to my pc and saved it to my Samsung Tablet.

I love the detailed HOW TO part of the manual.  Mary gives a step by step how to implement the music appreciation curriculum in your home and has hyper-linked all the terminology for clarification.  The links take you to great resources to help explain the terminology. If you have the internet it means that the eBook is the ONLY material you need in order to use the study.

I followed Mary's 5 step preparation guide and printed out the relevant forms. These were all hyper-linked and took you straight to the page you needed to print.

Mary explained the process of introducing the SQUILT process and using the printables in the the eBook.   For younger students it's about listening and feeling the music for regular short periods of time each day.  If you have older students you can add in the lessons.  These start with a short explanation along with facts of the Baroque Era.  Next we were given a list of composers from the era along with when they lived.

After that we learned about Dynamics, Rhythm, Instrumentation and Mood.  Sir N is learning how to express how the music impacts him using these as the tools. Younger students can start with 'Draw How ...' Notebook page. There are notebook pages for the children to complete included.

As we progressed we were introduced to the musical instruments of the era and coloured in a notebook page for our folder.  Now that Sir N had the terminology and an understanding of the musical instruments of the Baroque era we progressed to the lessons.

There are a total of ten lessons covering six composers.  Each lesson gives a short bio of the piece of music. Links to listen to or watch a YouTube clip for that piece of music. You are given a little bit of background to the clip as well.  Mary explains the dynamics, tempo, instrumentation and Mood for the piece along with questions to prompt you.  Each lesson is ONE page long so you are not overwhelmed with information.  These are followed by notebook pages.

Between the lessons you will find incidental lessons.  These are titled: What is ... ? If there is something you need to know or understand about a piece of music, you will learn about it before the official lesson.

The final part of the book is an Answer section.  Here you will find the answer the question on page 25.

Contents 
Volume 1: Baroque Composers
  • Instructions
  • Baroque era details
  • Reproducible Notebooking pages
  • Printables {Dynamics, Rhythm, Tempo & Instruments}
  • Colouring in sheets with definitions
  • 10 Lessons covering {Pachelbel, Couperin, Clarke, Vivaldi, Bach & Handel}
What We Thought
We love SQUILT and look forward to using future Volumes.  It is perfect fit for busy home school families and Mom's who do not have time to gather resources for music appreciation.  I like the fact that despite my lack of musical training I am able to teach Sir N to appreciate music and together we are able to explore the different era's of music together.  You can read more about SQUILT on the FAQ page.
Cost
  • Volume 1: {1600-1750}Baroque Composers $8.99 
  • Volume 2: {1750-1830}Classical Era $8.99
  • Volume 3: {1830-1920}Romantic (available in February 2014)
  • Volume 4: {1920- Present}Modern Era (available in March 2014)
  • A SQUILT for Classical Conversations Inc - Cycle 2  released 6 January 2014
This is an electronic product and available for purchase from SQUILT. All prices are in US $ and correct at time of review.  Please confirm prices before purchasing.


FREE SQUILT Lessons
Mary has some great SQUILT lessons on her blog to get you started.
 Connect with Mary
Mary has shared a wealth of information on music appreciation over at her blog Homegrown Learners.
Thank you Mary for the gift of SQUILT to our home we look forward to many years of SQUILT in our homeschool.

Blessings
Chareen


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Monday 6 January 2014

Language Arts {Virtual Curriculum Fair}

Welcome to my first post for the 2014 Virtual Curriculum Fair.  Today I'm sharing on Language Arts, both what we do and some of the curriculum that is available in the homeschool market to help you with Language Arts in your homeschool.

I shared some of my thoughts on language arts in high school in two posts: Writing and Composition in High School as well as The Art of Language in High School.

In our homeschool we are following an eclectic approach this year incorporating a Charlotte Mason approach along with Delight Directed education and Sonlight.  We are working on strengthening Sir N's writing skills through copy work and hand writing practice.

We are currently working on narration skills at the moment as I have come to realise that it certainly pays high dividends in the high school years with the fruit of a student who is able to "Attend, remember, visualize, comprehend, synthesize (see the whole from the parts), and articulate as the result." A Charlotte Mason Companion page 115.  Narration helps a child to train his/her mind to "sort, arrange, correlate, select, reject and classify" information. A Charlotte Mason
"Narration develops the power of self expression and forces the child to use his own mind and form his own judgement." - Karen Andreola A Charlotte Mason Companion page 114Companion page 115.

Spelling is the servant necessary to be successful in all the areas of written language arts. We will be using copy work and once we have completed Explode the Code book 3 we will be working our way through Spelling Workout.  

Vocabulary is not synonymous with spelling and is often times missed in language arts programs and deserves equal mention and attention. Twaddle free literature introduces new words in context to the student. Do not make the mistake of only choosing literature that your child can read to themselves.

Poetry enlarges a students language ability and teaches the clever use of words in self expression.  With this in mind we will be enjoying poetry together.  As Sir N gains confidence in public speaking we will add in poems to learn and present with expression. We will try different types of poetry until we find some that we like and then explore it further.  Poetry comments on all human experiences, it is comprised of everything  from war poems and epics, to psalms of worship, to love sonnets, to delightful nonsense verse that trips off the tongue, to nursery rhymes - CMC Page 220

Our Year Ahead


Language Arts

Readers
Read Alouds


Resources
Grammar Programs


Spelling Programs
Narration & Copy Work
On Pinterest

FREE on the WWW
Language Arts Curriculums

Take some time this week to visit some of the other 2014 Virtual Curriculum Fair participants.

Some of these links will not be live until tomorrow due to time zone differences as these bloggers are from across the globe.

What are you using for language arts this school year.  Susan has invited you all to share what you are using and add your link to the linky

Blessings
Chareen

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Saturday 4 January 2014

Grab My Button Tutorial

I've had a few requests on how to make a Grab My Button for your blog so I thought I would share a step by step tutorial to make it easier for you. It used to be a fairly straight forward coding but something has changed in the coding world and so I now use a button code generator and tweak it.

Step 1
Your first step is to choose a picture to use.  Most bloggers use square graphics as these are easier to place side by side or one under the other in your side bar.  The average size is 125 px x 125 px. Do not worry about the size of your graphic when creating because we can adjust this in the code.

I used Microsoft Publisher to create my graphic but there are plenty of great FREE tools out there to use.   Two that come to mind are Photoscape and PicMonkey. 

Photoscape is a FREE downloadable tool and is excellent.  I use it to make my photo collages for both here and my instagram.
Pic Monkey is an online mostly FREE tool that is fairly easy to use. 

Be sure to save your pic in a medium to higher resolution as you want a good looking picture not out of focus.

Step 2
There are a number of options to place your button on the web in order to use it.   You can use a free graphic host like Photobucket. If you have a self hosted site you can upload it and grab the HTML to the graphic or you can open a new post in your blog, add the graphic, open the HTML and grab your code from there.

 Here is an example of what this looks like and which code to select.


Check your code by pasting it into your browser and it should open a page with the graphic showing.

Step 3
Now it is time to generate your button code.  I recommend you use "Grab My Button" over at My Cool Realm.  It is very easy to use and generates code for both the Blogger and Word Press platforms.


  • Type in your website/blog title.  
  • Copy and paste your blog's URL
  • Copy and paste the URL of your graphic
I

  • If you are blogging on the Blogger platform leave the container type on Textarea.  If you are on a self hosted site or Wordpress then select Pre.
  • Click Preview

If you are happy with the preview then click on Get Code. Select copy and add to your widget.

Re-size
When I added the code the graphic was to big and I needed to tweak the code in order for my button to fit in my side bar.  I know that working with code can be a little frightening but I encourage you to give it a go.  The code we want to add is sizing for the graphic.  So I want to tell the browser what size to show my picture so I need to define the width and height.

  • When you look at the code it looks like this

<div align="center" style="padding: 5px;"><img src="http://i1180.photobucket.com/albums/x410/everybedofroses/DesignD_-2.jpg" title="Every Bed of Roses" alt="Every Bed of Roses" /></div><pre style="background: none; border: none; padding: 0;"><textarea style="background:#f0f0f0;border: solid 1px #cccccc; color: #777777; font-size:100%; height: 50px; margin:auto; text-align: left; padding: 7px 0 2px 5px; display: block; width: 90%;">&lt;div align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.everybedofroses.blogspot.com.au/" title="Every Bed of Roses" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="http://i1180.photobucket.com/albums/x410/everybedofroses/DesignD_-2.jpg" alt="Every Bed of Roses" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div></textarea></pre>

  • img src this tells us where the image is stored
  • I wanted my graphic in the side bar to be slightly larger than the standard 125 by 125 pixels so I changed the numbers and previewed it until I was happy with the size.  Add in height="160"  width="160" just before /></div> You can change these numbers to whatever you want them to be as long as your graphic fits in the spot you have placed it.
  • Now you need to add in the height and width for the button in your grab text area so when people add it to their blogs the graphic is 125 x 125.  After the second img src add in  height="125" and then width="125" before the last forward slash.
  • If your graphic is already made at 125 px by 125 px then there is no need to add in the code.  I add it the height and width when ever I add in buttons to my collection in order to make them all the same width and height.
  • With the new code it will look like this
<div align="center" style="padding: 5px;"><img src="http://i1180.photobucket.com/albums/x410/everybedofroses/DesignD_-2.jpg"  title="Every Bed of Roses" alt="Every Bed of Roses" height="160"  width="160"/></div><pre style="background: none; border: none; padding: 0;"><textarea style="background:#f0f0f0;border: solid 1px #cccccc; color: #777777; font-size:100%; height: 50px; margin:auto; text-align: left; padding: 7px 0 2px 5px; display: block;  width: 90%;">&lt;div align="center">&lt;a href="http://www.everybedofroses.blogspot.com.au/" title="Every Bed of Roses" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="http://i1180.photobucket.com/albums/x410/everybedofroses/DesignD_-2.jpg" alt="Every Bed of Roses"  height="125" width="125" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div></textarea></pre>

Time to add it to your blog
  • Go to your layout.
  • Add a HTML widget
  • Copy and paste the code in here.
  • Save
  • Move the widget to where you want your grab button to be.
  • Save your new layout 



If you would like to partake in a button exchange, please grab my button add it to your blog and  leave a comment with a link to your blog. I shall then add you to my Bloggy Friends page. 

This page will be having a make over so be sure to watch for my 6 days of Bloggers to Follow post series starting next Saturday.

Blessings
Chareen

Next Blogging tutorial Making 'Grab My Button' buttons line up {22 February}
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Friday 3 January 2014

Virtual Curriculum Fair

The new school year is about to commence in Australia and for some of my readers January is a time where we find some things are just not working for our students and we are on the look out for something new or fresh ideas.

It's time for the 2014 Virtual Curriculum Fair.

These year’s dates and themes 
(links will be added here as each theme goes live):
  1. January 6th---Playing with Words: the Language Arts---includes phonics, reading, writing, grammar, spelling, speech, literature, etc., etc., etc. Latin and foreign language studies could also go here.
  2. January 13th---Discovering Patterns: Mathematics, Logic, and Science---includes anything to do with mathematics, mathematical thinking, numbers, arithmetic, symbolic logic, critical thinking, and math-y sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.).
  3. January 20th---Exploring Our World: Social Studies and more Science---includes history, geography, world cultures, worldview, biology, botany, geology, etc., etc., etc.
  4. January 27th---Seeking Beauty: the Arts and Everything that Brings Beauty to Our World---includes any of the arts, handicrafts, but really ANYTHING at all that adds beauty to your homeschool.
Blessings
Chareen
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Thursday 2 January 2014

Collingwood Children's Farm { Field Trip }

Over the last year I have missed sharing our trips with you.  One of the reasons this blog was started was to share our adventures with family near and far.  So I think I'm going to start doing some Throwback Thursday / Field Trip Friday posts. One of my goals is to have a more Delight Directed Educational approach and part of this is to make more use of the environment in our education.  Our home school co-op took a trip to Collingwood Children's Farm earlier in December.

We arrived and met up with our group at 9:30 am and met up with the farmer who graciously took us on a tour of the farm.  Our two hosts took the children from display to display.  Gave them food to feed the farm stock and kept us safe.  Sadly the cow was dry so we were unable to milk her on our trip.


The children hand fed a lot of the animals on the farm.
Unfortunately the cow is dry at the moment so there was no hand milking.
They did however have the opportunity to brush her down.


The children finished the tour with a guinea pig cuddle.
This peacock was in full spender.
The chickens were quite accustomed to being hand fed.


There was plenty of time to think and reflect.
Lovely flowers in the gardens.
Fairly unique farm in the middle of a major city.


FYI
Collingwood Children's Farm would make an excellent Staycation venue in Melbourne especially for younger children.

Have you been here ?  What are some of your favourite staycation venues ?

Blessings
Chareen

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Wednesday 1 January 2014

Our Reviews 2014

Reviews
I am happy to receive products for review in exchange for my honest opinion of the products. I do not receive or accept any monetary compensation for reviews, however I do accept and keep the products reviewed. Read more about my review policy in my full disclosure.

Here is a list of our current reviews for 2014. You can see my reviews for 2013 here.

 Coming soon

Apps
  •  
Books
Curriculum
Other
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