Bible Notebooks

I promised a few weeks ago that I'd share more about the girls' Bible notebooks. As I said before, the original idea for this came from The Heart of Wisdom. I hope to gradually implement more ideas from this teaching concept.

We start out on the sofa, a daughter on each side of me as I read one (or sometimes two) day's reading from our chronological Bible, stopping to discuss or answer questions whenever necessary. Most days, we look up something in our Bible dictionary, atlas, or other resource. I like the time with one or both girls leaning on me. {smile}

There are still quite a few things we'll add to our notebooks, but for now the goal is for each of the girls to make at least one Bible notebook page each week. If they feel inspired to do one each day, they can do that -- but so far it's been one each week. Kathryn says Bible time is her favorite subject, and Lindsey seems to be enjoying it, too. I think the pages will get even more creative as we go along, but I'll share what we have so far...

Their first pages (Kathryn's at left, Lindsey's at right):
Lindsey's page from Job (using an illustration she printed out):
Kathryn's version (comic strip concept was totally her own idea!)
Kathryn decided to make her own version of a family tree (left) from our Victor Journey Through the Bible; Lindsey liked the idea, too, so she made one as well (right).I love this as a great way for us all to look back and see what we've studied, and it'll be a nice keepsake for their sentimental Mama, too.

I'll share more once the girls have created a few more pages!

Creative Writing

Although her perfectionist tendencies tend to make her stress on the front-end of any assignment, nine-year-old Kathryn is actually quite good at things like creative writing. Her story from last week made me giggle, so I thought I'd share with you. This was inspired by assignment #5 in The Write Stuff Adventure by Dean Rea.

A few things to note in your reading: the "big black thing" at the beginning of the story was based on a day Ken photographed a spider. All spelling and punctuation is exactly as Kathryn wrote it, and no, we have never never studied proper punctuation usage; her knowledge is simply based on Charlotte Mason's ideas of learning things like grammar and punctuation naturally through the reading of good literature.

Once, there was a spider named Sam. He was a house spider, but one day a huge black thing came, made weird noises, and then took poor Sam outside. It had just snowed, and Sam was very cold. He had never been so cold in his life. He remembered a song his mom sang when Sam was a baby called "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider." It was a song about his great-great-great grandfather and his life. So Sam made that his theme song for his life. Sam headed for the nearest leaf, and when he got there, he started to work on his book again. He was writing a novel called, "A Spider's Life." This story was about a spider named Fred, a ball of yarn, a girl spider named Angel, and a spoon. Sam was an educated spider, and he loved to write, so he always had a pencil, pen, pencil sharpener, and two or three dollars to buy more pencils or paper. Safe from the snow still falling, Sam soon fell asleep. The next morning, the snow was gone, and it was sunny, so Sam crawled out from under his leaf, made his way back to the house, got inside, and was reunited with his family, and there he lives today.

Did the part about the spoon make you giggle? {grin}

(This story also reinforces my idea that unless you squish the critter, it'll end up back in the house eventually! Ken is kinder to insects than I am.)

Weekly Wrap-Up

A couple of weeks ago, I began making up a weekly schedule and printing it off for each of the girls. This accomplishes a few things: they like highlighting off the things they've completed, I can see at a glance how much they still have left to do, it's an easy way to keep a record of what we've been doing, and most importantly, it's given me freedom from our pre-written curriculum. I love the Winter Promise program, but if it's all there staring at me, I feel like I have to do it all. Homeschooling is suppose to be flexible -- or at least, for me it is!  But I'm a box-checker at heart, and I tend to become a slave to something that was intended to help me. Making my own schedule frees me from that. Seems like a ridiculously simple solution, but it took me months to figure it out.

Last week Kathryn finished up Horizons 3 math, so she began Horizons 4 this week. I love that homeschooling allows us to work at our own pace, at an appropriate level for each child, no matter what we call their grade number. I actually really dislike the concept of being in a certain grade, but I we go with it for the purposes of state record-keeping, and because it's easier to explain to friends and family. Anyway, Lindsey is still doing Life of Fred, and that's going fine for now, but I'm already considering what I want to do when she finishes that.

I bought both girls their own nature-themed copywork books from Queen Homeschool because I've discovered that Lindsey loves copywork. It's one of the few school-related things she enjoys so far, so I want to encourage that!

We've added creative writing to our weekly schedule, and I'm using lessons from The Write Stuff Adventure. This week the girls both wrote about a spider, based on the itsy bitsy spider song. Kathryn's story amused me greatly. Lindsey did a good story last week about being the only person on earth and then hearing a knock at the door.

Handiwork is something both girls enjoy. Kathryn has done some cross-stitching before, but Lindsey is new to it. We bought a few small (not overwhelming!) cross-stitch sets for the girls and they wanted to start on them right away! This kind of thing is great for practicing patience, too! (I love these kinds of homeschool days!)
In geography this week, we're starting our "visit" to the continent of Africa, which is really cool since it's the only one I've ever been to (other than North America)! We actually even have a few things around the house that we brought back from our trip last summer, and we have lots of photos! Kathryn was labeling the Namib Desert on the map this week, and I told her I'd seen and taken pictures of it from the airplane: that still amazes me!

Despite a few parts the girls have both declared gross (like when the boy has to lick sweat off cow noses to keep from dying in the desert), we're enjoying a new book called Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna. Last week's visit from Beth, with her first-hand stories of women in Uganda and Zambia, and those great necklaces made by the women there, was a perfect intro into our study of Africa.

We still use News Current for current events. Lindsey and Kathryn both read it, and Ken and I always learn something from every edition ourselves!

Nature study this week was quite literally right outside our window! See yesterday's post for photos of a pair of red-tailed hawks having a meal in our yard!

For assigned reading this week, Kathryn began Pollyanna, and Lindsey finished up Understood Betsy. I have no problem choosing books Kathryn loves, but Lindsey has disliked all my picks so far. I don't think she liked my explanation of it being like food; if you're accustomed to junk food, you don't love fresh veggies, and if you're used to twaddle, you don't love good books. Oh, well -- we'll get there! And she is reading it without too much complaint. But suggestions for twaddle-free books for teens are very welcome!!!

Our Bible reading this week has been in Job; heavy stuff to explain to a nine-year-old, but I do love the part where God answers back because I love imagining things like storehouses of snow. The girls have started making pages for their Bible notebooks. Our goal with these notebooks is to cement their learning, and to have a lovely record of what we've been studying.  I'll share some of those pages soon.

Nature Study: Hawks

I've been lax in the nature study department, but this week we managed to accomplish a wonderful bird study right from our kitchen window!

Thanks to Lacy the very observant WonderDog, we've noticed a pair of red-tailed hawks in the yard quite often lately. Lacy doesn't usually bark when she sees something like that, but watches intently out the window and sometimes gives a little whine. Wednesday morning, after noticing that Lacy was studying something, Kathryn and I had a chance to observe a hawk as it ate it's breakfast. (Not as graphic as it sounds; we couldn't see it's meal well enough to be grossed out!) It's not often I get a photo of a hawk right outside my window (through the screen, which is why it isn't more clear) with snow still on the ground!Then another hawk -- its mate, we're assuming -- joined it to keep a look-out but never joined in the meal. I believe the one on the left is a female because they are typically bigger than the males. Their coloring was quite different, though; the one I'm calling the female was more brown, and the male was more of a slate gray, almost with a blue hue. From what I've learned online, the color of their plumage can vary greatly. I stepped outside to try to get a better shot (not through a window screen), and it flew off. I am obviously not a wildlife photographer. Especially when I'm in my robe and slippers on the patio covered in melting snow. So forgive the poor quality of the photos, but I'm still sharing because this was really amazing!We read about hawks in our Handbook of Nature Study, and in an old North American Wildlife book I have from when I was a kid, and I looked a few more things up online. Hawks have something called a crop that is in-between the throat and the stomach; it holds food when they've eaten a big meal, and slowly releases it into their stomachs as they digest. This hawk won't have to eat again for a few days. In the photo above (totally blurry--sorry!), you can see how hugely bulging her crop was!

I did my own nature journal entry, and I plan to try to do that more often to encourage the girls in doing theirs. I'm always torn about how much to push them to do it, so I'm hoping if I do it myself, I'll do less nagging and more inspiring.

Weekly Wrap-Up: New Stuff!

Last time I did a weekly wrap-up, I mentioned plans for some changes. We've been implementing those changes this week, and I am pleased with how it's going so far.

One big change is simply in our morning routine/schedules. Lindsey loves to sleep late, but with the promise of a Starbucks on the weekend as incentive, she has gotten up and ready by our goal of 10AM every day this week. "Ready" means showered, dressed, breakfast eaten, teeth brushed, and bed made. Last year I worked hard on developing the habit of a morning quiet time, and it's been a great blessing. But the past few weeks, I've been trying to figure out when and how to incorporate my work-out without messing up my habit of quiet time. After some experimenting, I've figured out I do best with tea & quiet time immediately after I get up, then a workout, then shower, then breakfast. All of that means I have to get myself up on time (6:30ish - 7AM) to get all of my stuff accomplished to be ready by 10AM, too.

The way we start our school days has changed significantly, too. At 10AM, we meet on the sofa to start our school day with prayer and Bible reading. This is the main how of how we're shifting our focus back to what's most important, reflecting our priorities by starting the day in God's word. For months, I've felt the importance of this, and I've been searching for ways to implement this focus in practical ways. So I read "The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach," and was delighted to find some answers I'd been seeking in regards to the hows of what I'd been wanting to do. Once I had bookcases {yay!}, I raided other areas of the house and ordered a few books online to stock our new Bible reference shelf.

Now we have a chronological "One Year Bible" we read from every morning, an illustrated Bible dictionary, a Bible commentary, a Bible concordance, the fabulous "Victor Journey Through the Bible," a couple of other Bible translations, "Family Guide to Biblical Holidays" (which we'll work into doing as unit studies), "What the Bible is All About for Young Explorers," a Bible atlas, and more. After our morning reading time, we pull out a couple of these and see what we can find to expand upon what we've learned in our reading. We haven't officially started creating a Bible notebook/portfolio yet, but we've talked about ideas for them, and will begin those soon. To help me learn more about what I'm teaching, I'm working through "30 Days to Understanding the Bible in 15 Minutes a Day."

More new stuff: 

• we've re-instated daily copywork
• we're trying to do at least one somewhat fun craft each week
• we're doing a weekly creative writing assignment, currently using "The Write Stuff Adventure"
• we're doing a weekly art lesson, mostly using "The Wonderful ART of Drawing Horses" by Barry Stebbing
• we're re-instating focusing on a weekly character trait.
  This week was appreciative, with 1 Thessalonians 5:18 as our coinciding verse
• I'm assigning a novel for each girl to read (one to a few chapters each day, depending on length), and we'll be re-instating narration (totally new concept for Lindsey) next week, I hope.

Lindsey is still totally loving her tumbling class, and currently trying to master her back tuck. Kathryn is still loving Girls In Action, and this week, she enjoyed meeting two ladies from Romania who work as missionaries. I think our readings, like in "Cry From The Streets" have peaked both girls' interest in missionaries.

My aunt Beckie currently has five 6-week-old Schnauzer puppies in her care, and the girls spent a few hours  at her house loving on the pups yesterday afternoon. I consider that a great nature study. {grin} Now they are begging and begging for us to let them have the one pup who has not yet been claimed. Confession: it is very hard to be the reasonable-thinking mom here when I'm just a puppy-loving girl at heart!

Weekly Wrap-Up: Sick Days

Would everybody in our household PLEASE just stay healthy?
Kathryn wasn't feeling well this week; not sure what she had exactly, but she sure didn't feel good. Already in this very young year, we've had three weeks when one of the girls wasn't well. When one of us is sick, I'm even more thankful that we homeschool because we can still do some of our work, and I don't have to send them off when I'm not sure if they are all better yet. Here's how Kathryn spent most of the week, camped out on the sofa with her pillow, books, and stuffed animal pals...
This week, we've "visited" Canada, continued with all of our readings, Lindsey kept with Life of Fred in math, and both girls are working on typing skills (and having a blast doing it) with Dance Mat Typing. I had only planned to assign a lesson each week, but they both love it so much they asked if they could do a lesson each day. They've already met a belly-dancing hippo named Dainty, a flamenco-dancing flamingo, a break-dancing turtle, and a giraffe that does the limbo. It's silly fun, but they both feel like their typing skills are already improving. And it's free! (Free is good!)

It's extremely windy and drizzling a very cold rain today (brr!), but if we don't blow away, I hope to get a bit more organizing done this weekend so it'll be easier to start on some of those changes I mentioned in yesterday's post. I'll also be eagerly anticipating another package from Amazon. Is it just me, or does a package at the front door get you just as excited as a little kid at Christmas?

Seeking Wisdom

Hardly a day goes by without me praying for wisdom. Wisdom is absolutely required in parenting, but  it doesn't come automatically! Some days I make a point of praying for wisdom as a part of my morning routine, but there are a whole lot of times I have to pray on-the-fly as challenges of life come up. There are just w-a-y too many things that are beyond my human capacity for figuring out, so I need all the divine wisdom I can get!

This passage is one that inspires our homeschool, but I reread the passage yesterday and paid more attention to the second part:

"For wisdom will enter your mind, and knowledge will delight your heart. Discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you, rescuing you from the way of evil." Proverbs 2:10-12a

True wisdom --the kind that comes from God-- is what I desire for myself, but I also want to impart it to my kids. In fact, it's what I'm called to do as a parent: disciple my children. I've been praying about how we can reflect this as a main priority in our lives. Wisdom is what will enable us to live in a way that glorifies and honors Christ.

So we'll be working more on making changes in our homeschool and our daily lives so we may "be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind, so that [we] may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:2) As we make these changes, I'll be sharing about them here in blogland. First up (next week, I hope): a revamp of our schedule and a few additions/modifications to our schoolwork.

Weekly Wrap-Up

Funny how homeschooling is a total learning experience for ME. Not just in learning alongside my kids (which is great!), but in learning about my kids: their learning styles, their preferences, their strengths and weaknesses -- and what to do about all of those.

Even though our Winter Promise curriculum is written to a wide range of grade levels, I don't think Lindsey  fully "gets" that yet; it's certainly not how things are done in public school, and it'll take a while before she stops thinking that way. She seems to feel like she's doing third-grade work if I assign too many of the same things to her and Kathryn, so I'm working on finding other things to incorporate for Lindsey, and I've decided that she doesn't need to do all the same activities as Kathryn. This semester is her first doing school at home full-time, so there is a big learning curve for both of us.
She does enjoy the travel journal portion of our study, though:I think we all agree that our favorite book right now is "A Cry from the Streets: Rescuing Brazil's Forgotten Children." It's about a missionary family, and their journey of faith as they seek to follow Christ in helping the street children of Brazil.

Theoretically, I have planned to do tea time with the girls each week, but it hasn't happened in quite a while. This week I actually wrote it into our schedule, but I hadn't really prepared goodies and all of that, so I considered skipping it until I realized how much Kathryn was looking forward to it. We went ahead and made a pot of tea and threw a fancy tablecloth on the table. Voila! Tea time. (I'll do better about preparing next week!)Even though I look sooo sleepy, I love this photo of me and the girls doing a bit of snuggling after Bible reading and prayers, just before bedtime. My super-cozy wrap (super clearance sale from Coldwater Creek) is the envy of both the girls.I know there will be many more changes in our school days to come, but all things considered, it's going well. Even in the frustrating times, there has never been a moment where I did not absolutely feel called to do this, so I know the Lord will equip me for any challenges. This is His work. My kids are really His, but I'm so thankful He has entrusted them to me, and allowed me to be their mom.

A Note of Encouragement

Our days are far from perfect. But notes like this from my little encourager go a long way in helping me through them. I found this on my planning notebook yesterday...

(My mom manages a doctor's office, so we get a bunch of free notepads with drug company names on them. Not as cute as ones I'd buy, but free!)

Weekly Wrap-Up

I'm so delinquent in posting this, but that fits with how our week has gone.
A few quick highlights:

• Our rusty old furnace (heater) finally died. A very good thing it wasn't a couple of weeks ago when the high was 20 degrees. But it sure made getting out of the toasty bed in the morning rather difficult, so our school days started late every day this week.
  
• Lindsey started tumbling class and loves it.
• Kathryn started learning to crochet in GA's (Girls In Action) at church, and loves it.
• We got a new furnace.
• Lindsey got strep throat and has felt miserable the past couple of days.
  

Figuring out how to do school with both girls is proving difficult, but in ways I hadn't anticipated. So I'm still tweaking things, still praying for direction about specifics. I know this is where they both need to be, but I just have to figure out how to make it work well for them both. For instance, Kathryn loves me to read certain things to her, but it's distracting if Lindsey's doing something else. I'm not yet accustomed to having to work around things like that. Kathryn is very thorough; in fact, she tends to be a bit of a perfectionist, which is something we're working on. And she tends to dawdle. Lindsey, on the other hand, tends to rush through things; she does her work, and I can't find specific fault with it, but I know it's not the best work she's capable of doing.  So I have to help Kathryn learn not to get upset if she makes a mistake,  and I have to help Lindsey learn to take her time and do things to the BEST of her ability.

For the time being, they are both still doing Winter Promise "Children Around the World" for geography and culture studies. We just began Barry Stebbing's "Wonderful Art of Drawing Horses" for our art lessons, and I think they're both going to enjoy that. I might do it along with them, because it looks fun. Kathryn and I loved his "Joseph the Canada Goose" last year.

Kathryn is close to finishing up Horizons 3 in math, so we'll start on Horizons 4 when she's done with that. I stumbled across a math curriculum called "Life of Fred" for Lindsey, and although I'm not yet convinced that it is the most effective program, she doesn't hate it, which is saying quite a lot. It's math told as a rather amusing story about a boy named Fred; we're doing "Pre-Algebra with Biology."

Last year we did quite a few things that we haven't been doing this year -- yet. So we're working on adding them back in. Things like poetry, copywork, and more Bible study. I'm letting the girls choose a poem they like (for now) to copy and asking them to memorize at least part of it; by reading it aloud every day, that's pretty easy to do. We're using Lamp and Quill for our Bible curriculum, plus adding a weekly memory verse. We're also trying to start having family Bible-reading time most evenings.

And now, because every post is better with pictures, and because anything we spend this much money on deserves to appear in a blog post, I give you this photo of our brand new furnace in our lovely attic...

Please feel free to oooh and aaah over it.
(If you haven't already, check out yesterday's post for Kathryn in our take of a Norman Rockwell painting!)

Nature Study: Snowflakes!

We had hoped for enough snow to build snowmen, have snowball fights, and to go sledding (which neither of my girls have ever done!), but we ended up with only a thorough dusting. However, there was enough snow to run around catching snowflakes on our tongue and for me to play right alongside the kids. I don't do that often enough.

We also made a point of noticing how intricate and amazing individual snowflakes are. I had seen some amazing snowflake photos and really wanted to capture some of my own. I didn't really prepare enough to have a frozen pane of glass or anything like that to catch them on, but the girls help me find them, like these on the playset: And this one on Kathryn's coat:
I can't believe I've my whole life and never noticed individual snowflakes before. As we were in search of snowflakes, I keep thinking of a verse we'd read earlier in the week, about God's "storehouses of snow" (Job 39:22).

We learned that snowflakes are formed when water vapor is frozen while still in the clouds. These  hexagon-shaped ice crystals grow into more complex shapes based on various environmental factors such as temperature and humidity levels. Colder temperatures produce snowflakes with sharper tips, which may explain why we saw them so easily this time.

We read a bit about Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, who photographed over 5000 snow crystals (flakes) in his lifetime. He adapted a microscope and bellows camera to capture these amazing images. In all his work, he never found two snowflakes alike. I love this quote by Bentley, and I'm so thankful he shared this gift with the world:

"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."

Even though I've been a slacker on nature studies, this reminds me of the main reason I love it: because I think all of creation is a "masterpiece of design." I hope to teach my girls to always take time to enjoy the beauty of God's creation!

Cute & Cheap Art Supply Organizer

I wanted to make a cute organizer for our art supplies that can sit in the middle of our school table. This is what I came up with, and it was super-easy, and the total cost was just under $17:

I bought a $7 wooden lazy susan at IKEA, then found little Valentine's Day metal pails in the dollar section of my local Target. I didn't want them to fly off when we spun the lazy susan, so my original plan was to drill a hole in the bottom, and just screw them to the top of the lazy susan. I still think that's a good idea, but it would have made it harder if I needed to clean out the containers, or if I just wanted to change them later. Ken suggested we use magnets, so I bought a set of little round magnets at Hobby Lobby ($2), and hot-glued them to the top of the lazy susan, like this:

All I had to do after that was set the buckets on top of the magnets and fill them with our supplies. As soon as the girls put the markers and such in there, they both immediately started drawing, so I think that means this little project was a success!

Weekly Wrap-Up: a very BIG week!

Last Saturday, Kathryn spent a large part of the day getting ready for and participating in her daddy's wedding. She got home in the afternoon, and had just a little down-time before we headed to a fun crafty party at a nearby art studio. The theme of the party was based on the American Girls Felicity books, so Kathryn and several other girls made a pomander, made soap, began a cross-stitch, decorated cookies, then enjoyed hot cider.This week was our first week of Lindsey being home full-time for school, but we had a very light week. There was just too much other life stuff going on to get really in-depth for school. We mostly did crafts related to learning how other countries and cultures celebrate Christmas. Most of the week, our school table looked something like this...We learned a bit about Christmas in China, and made a pagoda-shaped paper "lantern" with a silhouette of the Holy Family inside. We learned of a Ukrainian legend about a poor woman who had no money for gifts or decorations: a spider built a web around her Christmas tree, and the web turned to silver the next morning. So we made our own silver spider web out of glue and glitter.We learned about the Star Man (instead of Santa) in Poland. One tradition I liked is that they scatter straw on the floor under the dining table to remind them that Jesus was born in a stable. An angel would be a common decoration on their Christmas trees, so we made paper angels.We made clothespin dolls of Saint Lucia as we learned about Scandinavian Christmas celebrations. If we observed this tradition in our family, Lindsey would be the one to dress as Saint Lucia and serve us coffee on Christmas morning because she is the eldest daughter. Both girls have read the American Girls Kirsten books, so they were already familiar with this. I think Lindsey wanted hers to look more like her, but Kathryn had a vision of Kirsten in mind, and had to have the candles on the crown as well.Both girls were on a roll, so to speak, so Lindsey made a felt ornament for the tree. It's a star with the year in the middle, and each point has an initial for each member of our family. She's never done any sewing, so this was a great little project!Kathryn made a manger out of popsicle sticks and a baby Jesus out of a wooden clothespin.I'm just about all crafted out after this week!

The very biggest highlight of our week was when Lindsey's adoption was finalized! See yesterday's post for details!

Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: December 15th Edition

Welcome!

I'm delighted you've joined us for the today's edition of the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival! I hope you are able to take a bit of a break from what is most likely a very busy time of year and enjoy a little leisurely blog-reading...



LIVING BOOKS, NARRATION...

"Our business is to give him mind-stuff, and both quality and quantity are essential. Naturally, each of us possesses this mind-stuff only in limited measure, but we know where to procure it; for the best thought the world possesses is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books; our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving." -Charlotte Mason

Brenda at The Tie That Binds Us gives some great ideas for dictation in her post Using dictation as a grammar lesson.

Richele presents Developing a Taste for Living Books posted at Under the Golden Apple Tree.

What fun! I want to sit in with Jeanne at A peaceful day as she and her family enjoy read-alouds in Again, with feeling. That Australian accent would just make it that much more entertaining for a Southern gal like me. {grin}

NATURE STUDY...

"We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things." -Charlotte Mason

Naomi at Living Charlotte Mason in California had an experience that got her thinking. She shares these thoughts in  No more sticks....

Barb at Handbook of Nature Study says "I found a great source for some of Anna Botsford Comstock's nature study ideas and linked to it in this entry. I love it when something renews my passion for nature." Me, too! Read her post, Fresh Thoughts on Nature Study.

HANDICRAFTS and MUSIC...

"Again we know that the human hand hand is a wonderful and exquisite instrument to be used in a hundred movements exacting delicacy, direction and force; every such movement is a cause of joy as it leads to the pleasure of execution and the triumph of success. We begin to understand this and make some efforts to train the young in the deft handling of tools and the practice of handicrafts. Some day perhaps, we shall see apprenticeship to trades revived and good and beautiful work enforced." -Charlotte Mason

My 9-year-old daughter Kathryn shares a wintery handicraft and tells us How to Make Felt Ornaments at her blog FaithGirl.

I love Angie's definition of a handicraft: “Anything useful you can learn and use the rest of your life.” With that in mind, she presents Handicraft/Life Skills Spotlight and Challenge posted at TheOneThing.

What age is best for starting music study? Heather shares her thoughts in Year 0 Music posted at Maple Hill Academy.

MORE CM WISDOM...

"Children should be taught their duty toward God. It is their duty. That which they owe, to love Him 'with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their strength' these things are seldom taught as they should be." -Charlotte Mason

Michelle, a columnist for "Homeschooling Today" magazine, shares this article: History Backwards?

Barb shares more wisdom from Charlotte Mason, and some of her own reflections in "Life Should Be Full of Living" posted at Harmony Art Mom.

Sunny helps us get to know Charlotte Mason in Seeking? at Sunny Scholars. I love Sunny's  recommendations and heartily recommend them myself!

Just one final post; I'm sharing my own Notes from Jeannie Fulbright. Her words reminded me of these words by Charlotte Mason: "A child is a person in whom all possibilities are present - present now at this very moment - not to be educed after many years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator"

That's all, folks! Thanks so much for taking the time to peruse this edition. We would LOVE to have your article in the next edition of The Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival! Just use our handy-dandy carnival submission form! We'll see you next time at Beck's Bounty on January 5th.

Interested in hosting this carnival sometime? Email me!

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