The Curriculum Choice

Jimmie

Jimmie is mom to one creative twelve year old daughter. Jimmie's Collage is where she blogs about their Charlotte Mason styled homeschool. Her second blog, The Notebooking Fairy, features free notebooking printables and how-tos plus the eBook Notebooking Success.

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Mathematicians are People, Too

Charlotte Mason, Living books, Mathematics 3 Responses »

Sep 162009

There are actually two Mathematicians are People, Too books – a volume one and a volume two. They both have the same format and style and are written by Luetta Reimer and Wilbert Reimer.

Recently on a forum, someone asked if these books are math books or history books. Well, that’s a great question. They are living books for sure. And because they are living, they are multi-faceted. They are math and history; you can certainly call them math history. But they also are good biographies. And they incorporate science and geography as well. So like any quality living book, they are hard to pin down to one particular label. This is the kind of book a Charlotte Mason educator loves – a book full of ideas to digest.

Each book has 15 chapters, and each chapter is a biographical sketch of a mathematician. Where each chapter begins, there is a full page black and white illustration on the left. Those images are great for photocopying onto notebooking pages for your math journal. The mathematicians are arranged chronologically within each book and include men and women from many nations. The chapters don’t try to capture every detail about the mathematician, running from birth to death in a boring list of facts. Instead they focus on one or more key narratives from that person’s life which illustrate his discoveries or his character. A real effort has been made to select humorous, exciting, and inspiring stories. Here is a complete chapter from volume 1 — Pythagoras.

Mathematicians in Volume 1

Thales, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Hypatia, Napier, Galileo, Pascal, Newton, Euler, Lagrange, Germain, Gauss, Galois, Noether, and Ramanujan

Mathematicians in Volume 2

Euclid, Khayyam, Fibonacci, Cardano, Descartes, Fermat, Agnesi, Banneker, Babbage, Somerville, Abel, Lovelace, Kovalevsky, Einstein, and Polya

These are math books with words, not numbers. So math concepts are the focus, not arithmetic functions. Of course, if you want to use Mathematicians are People, Too as a jumping off point for a study of geometry or algebra, for example, you certainly could! In fact, that’s exactly how I see these books. They are engaging narratives that encourage further investigation. As you read, you’ll see lots of tangents you can choose to explore.

How can you use these books? Well, if you’re already using a living approach to math, these volumes fit perfectly with a study of math history. If you desire to shift towards a living math approach but aren’t there yet, this book is also a good choice. You could choose any mathematician and read just one chapter. Your children could see that mathematicians really aren’t boring guys and gals! And math is actually much more than multiplying and dividing. Or these books could add a mathematical facet to a history study. Just read the chapters as you reach the time periods in your history lessons. If you need biography genre for literature, these short one chapter stories will serve you well.

For more ideas and lesson plans to go along with these books, visit the Ohio Resource Center volume 1 & volume 2. And for free notebooking pages for volume one, I’ve put together Printables for Mathematicians are People, Too.

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Opal Wheeler Composer Biographies & Companion Discs

Charlotte Mason, Literature, Living books, Music 4 Responses »

Sep 022009

The composer biographies written by Opal Wheeler are a great complement to a Charlotte Mason style composer study. I say complement because studying the biography of a composer is not essential to enjoying his music which is the core of a composer study.

Composer biographies by Opal Wheeler

Composers in the series include

Bach
Beethoven
Handel
Haydn
Mozart
Schumann
Chopin
Brahms
Foster
MacDowell
Schubert

The biographies cover both the childhood and adulthood of each composer. In fact, they generally span all the way from birth to death. These books are not a dry list of dates and accomplishments but an entertaining narrative written especially for children. The books were written 1930s and 40s, so the style is a wholesome and quaint. You’ll be relieved to know that there is nothing questionable to edit from the content. However the author sometimes talks to the reader such as, “Aren’t you glad that Father Mozart wrote it all down for all the world to play?” It feels a bit condescending, but not all of the books have this same tone.

companion CDs

You can buy companion discs to go along with the books. (One disc covers two of the composers, so plan your purchases accordingly.) Those are wonderful for two reasons. First, as the book references various pieces or snippets of music, the CD will have an audio file to listen to. No more skipping over the music, wishing you had a way to locate the tune or play it yourself. (Note, these music selections are generally very short. They are usually parts of larger pieces. These CDs will not suffice for all the music you’ll need for a composer study.)

Secondly, the illustrations from the book are in PDF format on the disc so that you can print them as coloring pages or as notebooking graphics. I thought the CDs added a lot of life to the reading of the books and kept the focus on the music which is the goal of a Charlotte Mason styled composer study.

We have used Opal Wheeler biographies and companion discs in our composer studies of Bach, Mozart, and Haydn.

Of the four titles we have, each book has four to five chapters, so it’s easy to read the book in a week’s time. Competent readers could use the books are independent readers too. I estimate them to be written on a fourth grade reading level.

The biographies are published by Zeezok Publishers and can also be found at Rainbow Resource and at Christian Book Distributors.

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Daily Paragraph Editing by Evan Moor

Language Arts 3 Responses »

Aug 192009

Why should you give your children regular editing and proofreading exercises as part of their language arts studies?

Editing exercises teach them how read critically for errors. Hopefully, those skills will carry over into their own writing as they go through the drafting, revising, and editing steps of the writing process.
Editing exercises are the best way to teach grammar and usage – in the context of real writing, versus the forced situation of a textbook activity.

Daily Paragraph Editing (Grade 5) by Evan Moor

In an ideal world, mom would select a literature passage from something her child is studying, make some changes, and have the child find the errors. But few of us have time to do that each day. That’s why I love Daily Paragraph Editing by Evan Moor.

Daily Paragraph Editing is available in printed format or ebook format. (I get mine from CurrClick and download it immediately. Then I print out the pages I need each week.) You also have the option of a less expensive student workbook if you feel confident that you don’t need the answer keys. There is a book for each grade 2-6.

Each book has 36 weeks of lessons, each week with four paragraphs, all centered on a certain theme. The themes vary from academic to daily topics, for example baseball, eating pizza, George Washington Carver, or John Muir. Each paragraph takes up half of a page, and the suggested corrections are on a separate page. On the student’s portion, there is a hint telling them what type of corrections to especially watch for. But the errors are not limited to that one thing. If you want to know exactly what errors to look for, refer to the Skills Scope and Sequence chart offered in each Daily Paragraph Editing volume. On the fifth day of the week, the student can use the list of weekly writing topics, each of which is a continuation of the weekly theme.

Because you’re doing a short editing practice each day, even these toughest punctuation rules are going to finally sink in through the repetition. And for some reason, students find it more enjoyable to look for capitalization problems in some one else’s work rather than to learn a capitalization lesson. But you can use the editing practice as a springboard to those types of mini lessons.

Suggestions for Using Daily Paragraph Editing

Give the child the passage, and have him read it. Reading aloud is preferable, because doing so often helps him catch errors, especially with punctuation, fragments, and run-on sentences.
Make sure he understands the passage before making the corrections. Take time to discuss any new terms or ideas.
Give him time with a “red pen” and the passage, using standard proofreading marks to indicate his corrections directly onto the passage. (The book even includes a chart of proofreading marks at the front of the book.)
Check his corrections against the ones on the answer key. I actually go sentence by sentence, making my daughter tell me what correction she made and why. If she doesn’t know why, then we refer to a writer’s handbook for the grammar or usage rule. The book itself includes a short language handbook with rules for writing and editing. This is a great opportunity for a mini grammar lesson.
You can record any errors that were missed on the Skills Scope and Sequence chart. As you see patterns emerging, you can stop and do more intensive grammar or mechanics lessons.

Remember that the corrections are not always written in stone. English is flexible, and there are often many ways to correct a problem. So be willing to consider alternative corrections. As long as the passage is free from error, the student has successfully edited it.

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Learning Language Arts Through Literature Curriculum Review

Charlotte Mason, Language Arts 2 Responses »

Jul 232009

Literature

Finding a language arts curriculum is a lot like finding a good bathing suit –getting that perfect fit is really tough! Here’s a review to help you “try on” one more curriculum.

Learning Language Arts Through Literature (LLATL) is a gentle approach to language arts study that works best for homeschoolers who use a living books approach to learning

[I am basing this review on our use of LLATL Yellow (grade 3). Other levels may vary.]

The literature part of LLATL is covered in two ways:

1. Four novels are assigned through the year.

2. Each weekly lesson begins with a literature passage (either poetry or prose).

Most lessons include copying the literature passage, learning a short (5-6 words) spelling list of a word family represented in the passage, writing the passage from dictation, and practicing cursive handwriting. The other activities vary and include basic language arts skills – alphabetizing, analogies, parts of speech, plurals, punctuation, etc. The writing tasks are few – just a handful of narrative, descriptive, or how-to topics throughout the year. The nitty-gritty of paragraph structure is not covered at all.

LLATL publishes a teacher’s book and a student book. I rarely used my teacher’s book because most of the student activities are clearly described in the student’s book. But there are a few exercises that say only “follow your teacher’s directions.” Actually, for this program you can use the teacher’s book only and have your child write on paper.

The big question about LLATL is, “Is this a complete language arts curriculum?”

Yes and no. Everything (except vocabulary) is touched on but not necessarily covered in depth. That’s probably why LLATL is considered a gentle curriculum. (I supplemented LLATL Yellow with additional grammar, spelling, writing assignments, extra readers, and vocabulary.)

The daily assignments are not long and can be completed in 10-15 minutes. And of course, reading only four books in a year is not enough. There is certainly an assumption that your children are reading other books besides the four titles included in this curriculum.

If you want something light that touches on lots of language arts topics while giving you time to select your own tangents, LLATL may be a good fit. If you want a rigorous program that includes all you need for language arts, LLATL may be a disappointment.

My Own Take on LLATL

Personally I think LLATL works best for those homeschoolers who already incorporate a lot of language arts across the curriculum. If you use a living books approach, your children are already reading a lot of good books. Similarly, if your children write about their history and science readings, then they don’t need extra writing assignments as part of a language arts program. Assuming that your children already do reading and writing tasks in other subjects, LLATL can be a nice “icing on the cake,” pulling together some topics you may otherwise miss or reviewing others that you did study. For more about this approach to language arts, read Ruth Beechick’s short advice (scroll down to It’s Just Common Sense).

photo credit

Written by Jimmie, Charlotte Mason flavored mom of one.

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The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker

Charlotte Mason, Living books, Science Comments Off

Jul 092009

The Mystery of the Periodic Table

Do you ever plan too far ahead? That happened to me with science curriculum. I bought Noeo Physics 1 and Noeo Chemistry 1, but we worked through the physics material so slowly that by the time we got to the chemistry material, my daughter had outgrown level 1!

Fortunately, Noeo is a living books based curriculum. And good books are good books no matter their level. So I decided to simply beef up level 1 with some extra books that take a deeper look at the subject.

The Mystery of the Periodic Table turned out to be an excellent living book for the study of chemistry! It’s one of those books that makes you constantly think, “Why, oh why couldn’t my chemistry studies have been this interesting?” Written by Benjamin D. Wiker, the book is a non-fiction narrative of the history of chemistry from ancient metal workers of the Neolithic period all the way to modern twentieth century scientists who artificially produce new elements. Of course, the meat of the book covers all the scientists in the middle – Robert Boyle, Joseph Priestly, Henry Cavendish, Antoine Lavoisier, John Dalton, Humphry Davy, Dimitrii Mendeleev, and Ernest Rutherford to name a few.

chemistry This one volume will take you logically through the major scientific discoveries that led to the creation of our modern periodic table of elements. When science is approached in this step by step way, even complicated scientific concepts are easier to understand. It’s as if you’re walking alongside the scientists, discovering what they discover through the years. You read about the experiments and the conclusions that the chemists make. Although their conclusions were often wrong, their questions or methods led other scientists to come to the right conclusions later on. In this way, the value of the scientific method is repeatedly emphasized.

The Mystery of the Periodic Table is not overtly Christian, but there are a few key passages that hint at the hand of a Creator. One example is in chapter 16, “Human beings, especially scientists, but also philosophers and theologians, are always suspicious. They have a deep down feeling that things are not just put together randomly, a strange intuition that, underneath it all, there is a conspiracy going on, a great conspiracy of order.” The entire book is devoted to the unveiling of that “great conspiracy of order” which is revealed in the periodic table of elements.

It is a fascinating read that makes chemistry both engaging and extremely comprehensible. There are nice line diagrams illustrating many of the concepts, and each chemist is featured in a small thumbnail portrait. There is a glossary at the back of the book, and pronunciations of the chemists’ names are included in the text. Another helpful part of the book is an appendix listing the elements by their date of discovery.

making a periodic table of the elements

I read this title out loud to my 10 year old daughter. I don’t think that she totally understood all of the science of the book, but she did grasp the main ideas of what elements are and how scientists throughout history uncovered their existence and then arranged them as they discovered their properties. The book reinforced for her that scientists do not have all the answers; instead they are looking for answers through a lot of trial and error. As we read the book, we added the various chemists to our timeline, made a chemistry lapbook, and made a wall chart of the periodic table (pictured). Love2Learn has some study questions for each chapter of The Mystery of the Periodic Table.

Written by Jimmie, Charlotte Mason flavored mom of one.

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Beautiful Feet History of the Horse

Charlotte Mason, Language Arts, Literature, Living books, Unit study resources 1 Response »

Jun 242009

Books from Beautiful Feet History of the Horse

The History of the Horse is a Christian, living books based unit study published by Beautiful Feet (BF) Books. I bought History of the Horse for my fourth grade daughter, and I am so pleased with my choice! It was a huge hit with her! She mostly loved the great stories and the drawing assignments integrated into the lessons. I felt it was a great curriculum for introducing her to more independent learning and research skills.

The term “history” in the title is a bit misleading. The teaching guide does order the books in chronological order, and there is information about horse breeds and the history of them. However, BF History of the Horse is not truly a history program. Since the bulk of the work is reading novels, answering questions, notebooking, sketching, researching, and writing reports, I consider this better classified as a language arts program.

Sketching Horses

The course is organized into 91 lessons. The guide recommends the student cover three to five lessons each week. However, I found that the assignments for one lesson were actually quite short. So I generally assigned my daughter Sprite two lessons each day. Doing eight lessons per week, we completed the program in about four months.

Each lesson includes a reading assignment and an activity related to it. The activity may be sketching a horse, answering some comprehension questions, researching something that was mentioned in the reading, writing a report on a famous person or event, copying a Bible memory verse, or mapping the location of the novel. Usually all of the assignments are put into a History of the Horse notebook. You do need to know that History of the Horse is a very Christian program. Besides the Bible memory verses and copywork, many of the discussion questions are written from a Christian perspective.

Beautiful Feet History of the Horse Books

The core of the program is a set of horse novels written by Marguerite Henry: King of the Wind; White Stallion of Lipizza; Justin Morgan Had a Horse; Misty of Chinocoteague; Brighty of the Grand Canyon; and Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West. In addition, there are Black Beauty and Black Stallion as well as three non-fiction books: Album of Horses, Smithsonian Handbooks: Horses a DK book by Elwyn H. Edwards, and How to Draw 50 Horses by Lee J. Ames. There is also a set of regular playing cards that feature images of various horse breeds. The idea is that as you play other card games, you will learn some of the names of horses and be able to identify them by sight.

BF recommends this unit study for 3rd through 7th grades, but actually most of the books are written at a 5th grade level. If your child is reading comfortably at that level, she could easily do the reading assignments independently. That’s how we chose to use this unit study, and it was a first for my fourth grader to read alone in her room and do her assignments by herself. You can see more images of my daughter’s History of the Horse notebook at this Flickr set.

Written by Jimmie, Charlotte Mason flavored mom of one.

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Living Math Curriculum Review

Charlotte Mason, Mathematics 9 Responses »

Jun 102009

Living Math is a curriculum written by Julie Brennan, a professional CPA, a mom of four, and an obvious math lover. If you have heard of living math, you may think that this curriculum is full of hands-on games and puzzles with lots of living math books.

Actually it is more of a historical tour through time, looking at the mathematical developments of each period. Living books are the cornerstone of this curriculum although there are some puzzles and activities sprinkled among the readings.

pyramids

For example, you study Thales, the Greek Mathematician who was fascinated by pyramids and then do a hands-on pyramid measuring activity. (But these activities are not enough for a thorough math curriculum. In addition to the historical perspective Julie offers, you will still need to add the study of math facts taught through a skills or games based learning option. From what I’ve read on the Living Math Yahoo Group, most families use Living Math as a supplement to their existing math programs and textbooks.) There is a deliberate focus on integrating math into other subjects, so Living Math often crosses over into art, history, and science.

You can purchase the electronic materials online via Paypal, and Julie sends you links where you can download all the PDF outlines and activity pages. The curriculum is broken into four $20 units which are offered at three levels – Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced.

This is the outline for the four chronological units available:

Unit 1: Ancients and World Cultures
Unit 2: The Alexandrians and Medieval Math
Unit 3: Renaissance to Enlightenment
Unit 4: The Modern Age of Mathematics

(Sometime in 2009 a second cycle is supposed to be released. )

For each ($20) unit, you get a series of eight loosely organized lessons with a plethora of reading selections. Julie believes in “strewing” resources to create a learning buffet. That tendency is evident in her outlines. There are so many reading choices that it’s a bit overwhelming. It’s hard to know what is an essential book and which are supplementary books. It took me hours of poring over the book lists and studying Amazon.com to choose the best books. Because of the wealth of living books and emphasis on biographies, Living Math is a perfect fit for Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. You can add the mathematicians to your timeline, use real world problems to recreate what they discovered, and document it in a math notebook .

The Living Math units are not “open and go” curriculum. There are no schedules or boxes to check. It is more of an outline. Specific pages or chapters in each suggested book are listed clearly but you will not find a day by day schedule. For a math-challenged mom who is totally new to this style of learning math, there is some advanced preparation. Personally, I have to read over the lesson and mark the resources that I have on hand, preview them, and then try to schedule them. I also discovered that many of the activities are much harder than I anticipated. These are problem solving activities, often not the clear-cut “right and wrong” types of math I did in school. For example, we built a tower from straws and tape. Some of the activities and books have no answer keys, so if you don’t solve the problem, it can be a bit frustrating. To cope with this ambiguity, I’ve learned to approach the activities more as a time of fun exploration rather than a problem to solve.

According to the lessons themselves, “the pacing of the course is completely up to you. Much of the material in each lesson plan can be covered in two weeks.” So estimating two weeks per lesson, a unit should last about 16 weeks. In my experience, I would agree that two weeks per lesson is about right.

So, to make it more concise, for $20 you are getting reading lists, teaching notes, and some activities/handouts that can be used to supplement your existing math curriculum for approximately 16 weeks. Living Math is not a complete math curriculum but a study of math history through the ages using living books (which you purchase or borrow on your own).

Thales math notebooking page After using this material for about one semester, I do have some evaluations. If there were one or two unifying spines holding this curriculum together, I think Living Math would be more coherent. Because I don’t have the benefit of a strong math history foundation myself, I have to rely on the scattered chapters to do the teaching. In other words, I can’t draw up information from my own memory to teach about Pythagoras or Galileo. If the particular lesson relies on an out of print book that I don’t have, the lesson is weakened. Along those same lines, this curriculum works best for those who have access to a well stocked library. Purchasing all of the books listed is impossible, not just because of exorbitant cost but because many of the books are out of print.

Although I’ve shared some weaknesses in the program, I do strongly feel that for someone who does not understand the history of math (like me), Julie’s chronological outlines are immensely helpful as a starting point. So while we’re still using Unit 1, I have already purchased Unit 2 and plan to continue using her booklists and outlines.

If you are considering Living Math, I suggest you spend a few hours at The Living Math website. There is a wealth of free information that can point you in the right direction for your own studies. For example, the booklists for each level are free to download. With the booklists and an understanding of the philosophy, you could create your own math history unit. However, Julie’s outlines do relieve much of the planning burden. And if you’d like to read more about my own journey towards a more living approach to math, of which Living Math is part, visit Transitioning to Living Math. I also make some specific book recommendations there.

Written by Jimmie, Charlotte Mason flavored mom of one.

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Big Book of Books and Activities Review

Charlotte Mason, Lapbooks 2 Responses »

May 212009

The Big Book of Books and Activities by Dinah Zike is a black and white, 128 page resource for paper crafts and minibooks. I’ve owned my copy for several years, and I still pull it down for ideas. Now that my daughter is ten, she can look up papercraft ideas herself in this easy to use book.

What I love most about this book is that it is both crystal clear and supremely practical. There are 41 different projects, mostly minibooks or “foldables” as Zike calls them. But some of them are activity ideas such as using macaroni in crafts or making homemade sidewalk chalk. Each project includes step by step diagrams and written directions for how to make the minibooks. In addition, there are lots of photographs (black and white) and written suggestions for specific uses of the minibooks. For example, on the page showing how to make Circle Stands, Zike tells you to “use circle stands to hold labels, vocabulary words, information cards, and more.” In the layered look book section, she suggests, “Cut layered look books into sections for comparing and contrasting, cause and effect, or for recording data, as illustrated by this experiment book.” These kinds of tips are good for kick starting your own creative applications.

Zike also shares some organizational tips for your supplies (mostly geared towards classroom teachers, but still applicable to a homeschool setting) and teaches the names of the basic folds which she references throughout the book.

A Charlotte Mason purist probably would not think much of these paper projects. They are the kind of “bells and whistles” they consider distracting from and unnecessary for real learning. But if your child is artistic or creative or prefers a more hands-on approach, making paper projects can be an excellent way to narrate what was learned. Miss Mason did recommend written narrations for children once they are able to do so. I see these paper projects as a creative style of written narration. After a reading assignment, offer your child a paper project to assemble. She can write or draw (depending on her age) her narration onto the minibook. An older child may enjoy choosing his own project from the possibilities in the book.

This book is unavailable new at Amazon, but can still be bought at Rainbow Resource, my favorite homeschool retailer.

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Noeo Science Curriculum Review

Charlotte Mason, Science 2 Responses »

May 122009

Noeo Science is a rare jewel for Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. Miss Mason felt that nature study was adequate science instruction for elementary children. But for eclectic homeschoolers who desire a more structured science curriculum in addition to nature study, Noeo fits the bill.

Noeo is not a textbook but a literature based curriculum with options for grades K-6. You can choose from one of three areas–chemistry, physics, or biology. Your set includes an instructor’s guide, living science books, biographies of scientists, and experiment kits. The spiral bound, three –hole punched instructor’s guide has readings laid out for 4 days for each of the 36 weeks. The schedule is light and thus meets Miss Mason’s recommendation for short lessons.

The instructor’s guide is really more of a schedule than a teaching guide. As Miss Mason would have it, the books are meant to speak directly to the child, so there is no need for lengthy teaching notes. There is absolutely no busy work in this program. There are only reading, experiments, and narrating. Generally, the only notes in the instructor’s guide are “read the assigned pages and describe and/or sketch what you learned in your science notebook.” This type of activity is narration, exactly what Charlotte Mason recommended. Sometimes the instructor’s guide points out key vocabulary words to define, and when experiments are scheduled, there is a supply list.

The experiments are from Young Scientist Club Kits and from Ein’O Kits. The supplies are all included, and the directions are very clear. I found that each experiment really worked well to give us a concrete illustration of what we’d been reading about. Noeo supplies a blank experiment template to document each project.

Noeo Science also has a Yahoo group where you can get help at any time. Once I could not understand one of our physics experiments, so I posted a question on the group. Randy Pritchard, the creator of Noeo science, responded to my question with a clear explanation. And after that, we were able to successfully complete the experiment.

How does Noeo compare to Sonlight science? Although they both use living books and experiments, Noeo’s experiments are always related to the readings. And whereas Sonlight’s packages offer a broad view of many facets of science, Noeo focuses on just one area each year. Noeo offers some blank notebooking templates, and Sonlight has activity sheets. Both use narration as a learning tool.

We have completed our study of Physics 1 (recommended for ages 5-8, grades 1-3). I found it a wonderful curriculum and am totally satisfied with the purchase. The books are colorful and engaging, the type that you don’t want to sell once the study is over. There is a definite structure, but it’s not so stifling that you can’t go off on tangents of your own. The standard assignment after each reading is really just to narrate. You can do this orally, through a science notebook, through lapbooking, or whatever other method you prefer.