Fall 2016 Co-op Plans

Last year, we were part of a fantastic Charlotte Mason friendly classical co-op and loved every minute of it.  I taught history, literature, writing, and art/music appreciation to the third and fourth grade, which was a wonderful experience.  Michelle fell in love with Shakespeare because of the Shakespeare class she took there.  The only little problem with it….it was clear on the other side of town – a very sprawling town.  And we had to leave in the morning before rush hour ended.  So, we sadly had to decline participating in that group again.  I'm still sad about it.

 

For this year, our Plan A involved a co-op with a couple of friends from church who were planning to give AmblesideOnline a try this year.  We made a lovely plan for the year, and I was so very excited about where it was heading.   And then, one of those families had to move away. L  I'm still sad about that t00.

 

So that left just my other friend and I.  Thankfully, our children are very similar ages and get along really well, so we decided to go ahead and have a little co-op together anyway.  We had to pare things down a little bit from the original plan that we had settled on when we thought we were 3, but we're both pretty happy with how things are going so far…so all's well that ends well I guess.

 

What are we doing, you may ask?

 

We meet twice a month.  One meeting is at my house and for lack of a better name we are calling this an "enrichment class".    In that class we are covering the following:

 

Recitation

We start our meetings with an opportunity for any children who would like to share a poem, Scripture, or piano piece they have learned with the rest of the group.

 

Picture Study

Charlotte Mason style picture study involves studying a set of 6 paintings from a particular artist slowly, over a period of several months, so we can truly acquaint ourselves with the artist's work and style.  This is done mainly by quietly studying a painting for a few minutes, and then turning it over and narrating all we remember about the painting, talking about what we notice, and what story we think may lie behind the scene or person depicted.  Only after the students have given their insights do I share a few (very few) choice tidbits about the artist or the story behind the painting.  We will be studying Hans Holbein the Younger this fall, and Giotto this spring.

 

Nature Study

We do an "object lesson" on a seasonally appropriate topic during our time together, and spend some time journaling together.   So far, we have done lessons on seeds, fall leaves, and pumpkins (comparing and contrasting with other squashes and cucumbers).   I didn't really plan it this way, but it's working out well to study a different aspect of plant life for each of our studies, so we will probably continue with object lessons on that topic as we continue on through the year.   My method of conducting these object lessons is pretty simple: we collect samples, lay them all out on the table and observe them, discussing what we see.  I have found using the prompts What do you notice? – What questions do you have? – What does it remind you of? a la John Muir Laws helpful to guide this process.   And then we sketch something of interest in our nature journals.

 

Composer Study

We are studying Dvorak this fall and will do Medieval Music in the spring (going along with Giotto as our artist.)   Ideally, we play the music of our chosen composer at home frequently to gain familiarity.  During our time together, we do some focused listening on a selection of one of his pieces and discuss a bit what we hear (or what we see – occasionally we watch a YouTube video of an actual performance), and perhaps discuss a bit of what Dvorak's influences were.  (This is really fascinating y'all.  Maybe I'll write another post about some of the fun connections I've come across.)

 

Handicrafts

This the most challenging since we range in ages from 4-11, meaning there is a wide range of skill and ability.  This fall we are doing Paper Sloyd projects (measuring/cutting/folding to make envelopes, boxes, bookmarks, etc), which has gone okay for the most part.  We do have two adults with extra hands, and we are learning how to help the children with perfectionistic tendencies not get too upset when it doesn't work quite right the first time.   I'm not sure if we will continue paper sloyd in the spring, or choose a different handicraft. Handicrafts are neither of our forte…

 

We also have a recess break at the small playground in our subdivision, and our friends usually pack a lunch and stay and eat with us before they head home so the kids get some playtime together in too.

 

On our other monthly meeting, we plan a park day or other field trip of some kind.  Thus far, we've just had a couple of park days, but I think we will need to be a little more creative during the winter when it is likely to be too cold to want to spend all morning out in the park. J  But our crew has been pretty happy with this arrangement so far.

 

While there are times I find myself missing the more academic, discussion-based focus of the group we were part of last year, we are finding this a good fit for us this year.  Because we only meet twice a month, we have some wiggle room in our schedule on our off-weeks, which has given us time to pursue other field-trip opportunities on our own or set up outings with other friends.  These were things I rarely felt like I could give us permission to do last year when we were part of a weekly, more academic co-op (especially given the distance factor and how much that weekly cross-town trip took from all of us energy wise.)  Our kids love spending time together, and it's been good for us Mamas to be able to chat outside of church time too (especially since I've been unable to participate in our women's Bible study this fall).  So, all's well that ends well….

Fall 2016 Morning Basket Plans

So, our school year is now pretty well underway and running pretty smoothly…so I thought I'd share what we're doing over the next few posts.

 

Morning Basket Plans

Co-op Plans

Individual Lessons for First, Secondish-Third, and Fifth Grade

Putting all the Pieces Together: Our Daily, Weekly, and Yearly Rhythm

 

Today, let's talk Morning Basket.

 

We are still starting our school day with a Morning Walk.  I cannot begin to tell you what a huge difference this has made in our home.  Even on mornings where people wake up cranky and breakfast is kind of a disaster (yes, we have those days in our house, please tell me you do sometimes too?) – this hits the reset button.  We come back to the couch to begin our time together refreshed and ready.

 

Our Morning Basket lasts 30-45 minutes at the moment, and runs somewhat like this:

 

Morning Prayer

Bible – Reading, Narration, Discussion

Singing: Hymn or Psalm

Read-Aloud from our Rotation with Narration and Discussion

Singing: Folksong or Latin Song

Swedish Drill

 

Here are the Resources I'm using for each of those categories this fall:

 

Morning Prayer:

I use parts of the Morning Prayer service from The Trinity Mission – a nicely organized, user-friendly resource based on The Book of Common Prayer.

 

Bible:

Joshua and Judges with the commentary by J. Paterson-Smyth.  Just a note on those: these were the actual commentaries Charlotte Mason recommended for use in her schools.  He was a product of his times (Victorian) and denomination (Church of Ireland, I think), and so there are places where I disagree with him.  This is not a resource to use blindly.  That said, thoughtfully using excerpts and discussion prompts has given us a lot of food for thought and brought these familiar Bible stories alive in a new way.  So they have been a good resource for us.  If you decide to try them, do be sure to read through the lessons ahead of time and decide how you want to handle them.

 

Hymns and Psalms:

We are mostly following the AmblesideOnline Hymn rotation, although I shuffled a couple around – so the hymns we will actually be learning (one per month) are: Jesus, The Very Thought of Thee; Jesus Lover of My Soul; Be Still My Soul; and Take My Life and Let It Be.  On alternate days, we are continuing to sing our way through Psalm 119 from the Book of Psalms for Worship.

 

Read-Aloud Rotation:

Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan) – the actual text.  We started this last year, and then in the craziness of moving this spring it got set aside.  We are starting again from the beginning since it had been 6 months+ since we last touched it.

 

Taming of the Shrew is our Shakespeare pick this fall.  We had a great time with Twelfth Night during our summer term, so our children are excited to give the Bard another go.  We started off with Lamb's retelling in Tales from Shakespeare, a film version, and making little wooden character people, and now are beginning the real thing.

 

Child's History of Art: Sculpture  (Hillyer) - I finally scored a fairly reasonably priced copy of this out-of-print gem.  I decided to skip over the painting section since we have learned about a lot of painters through doing picture study, but we are looking forward to expanding our knowledge of art by reading slowly through the sections on sculpture and architecture.

 

Parables from Nature (Gatty) – We've read through this book once already when Michelle was working her way through AO Years 1-3, where it is scheduled, and now have started over again for the sake of the younger two.  Michelle is enjoying giving it a second listen though – fun to see what she remembers from these stories, and how different aspects of them stand out to her now.

 

Trial and Triumph (Hannula) – I had originally wanted to keep this book as it is scheduled – stories of famous people from church history tied in with each year's other history reading across AO Years 1-6.  But this is also a book that needs to be read aloud because it has a little more of an anti-Catholic slant to it than I care for, so it requires a bit of editing and discussion. It got to be too much to be reading from three separate places with three separate students in three separate years.  That said…I didn't want to ditch these stories completely, so our compromise was moving it to a morning basket read.  We do pull out our timelines at add each person we read about, which helps them orient themselves to what other historical events were taking place around the same time, so it works out.

 

Elementary Geography (Charlotte Mason)  - We started slowly working our way through this book last year, and are continuing it into this year, taking time for hands-on exploration and application where appropriate.

 

In the read-aloud rotation, we shoot for reading a short section from Shakespeare and Pilgrim's Progress every week since these are ongoing stories and I don't want too long to elapse between each reading.  The others have more self-contained chapters, so we loop through them more slowly on the other days, hitting each about once every other week.

 

Singing, Again:

For folksongs, we are following the AmblesideOnline rotations.  On alternate days we sing Latin songs from Memoria Press' Lingua Angelica.  This fall, we are hoping to learn Angus Dei, Sanctus, and Veni, Veni Emmanuel (during Advent of course!).

 

Swedish Drill:

Hooray for my lovely friend Dawn for making Drill accessible for us regular folks.  I am pretty much following the outline of exercises and routines she is sharing over at Afterthoughts.  My kids have been loving this!  It also provides a bit of a movement break between our morning basket time on the couch and moving to the rest of our school day.

 

Other 'group' things that don't fit into Morning Basket or Co-op Time:

In addition to our 'formal' group studies, we continue our habit of reading a family free-read literature choice at bedtime.  My husband leads the Evening Prayer service from the Trinity Mission (portions of it anyway) at supper, usually using the New Testament Scripture reading since we are currently studying the Old Testament during our school time.   We just planted our first garden, which is our 'family project' for now….and when the cold, early-dark, winter evenings set in I'm hoping to spend some time with handicrafts.  

The one thing I am struggling to find a place for is drawing.  We enjoy drawing sessions when we have them, and I originally thought we might regroup everyone after lunch on afternoons when we don't have other activities….but that hasn't worked out as well as I hoped.  Still searching for the best place to slip this in….