Exam responses: Bilbo's Party

Book studied:  The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien

1. Write about Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party!

Everyone in the Shire was going to come; it was going to be one of the biggest celebrations in years! Everybody loved Bilbo’s birthday parties; he always had the best games, decorations, food, and PRESENTS! And so, the day of the party came, all of the hundreds of guests were there (they wouldn’t miss it for the world), and they had lined up outside of Bilbo’s cozy little Hobbit hole. Bilbo came outside, and started distributing the presents. Several Hobbits kept coming back for more and more presents! And then the feasting started. And Bilbo stood up to make his speech. He said a few kind words, and then he said “Well, you were nice to know, bye!” and vanished! What he had really done was slipped on his ring with his “Bye!”, but everybody was chattering about it the whole evening!

Dollygirl's Grade Six: Plans for Tuesday

Basic Bible Studies, page 25: Yesterday we read what the prophet Isaiah said about the coming Messiah.  Today, read Luke 2:25-32, 36-38. What did Simeon and Anna say when they saw the child Jesus? Listen to “Simeon’s Lullaby,” by Wendy & Mary.



Shakespeare: Cymbeline, continue Act II, Scene IV.  Iachimo reports back to Posthumus.  Oops--we forgot about this one.  Dollygirl was fighting a cold today and we didn't get to every subject.

Dividing fractions: Work through this word problem found here: "Cassie's bird feeder holds 1/2 of a cup of birdseed. Cassie is filling the bird feeder with a scoop that holds 1/10 of a cup. How many scoops of birdseed will Cassie put into the feeder?" Minds on Math 8, page 89, word problems 16, 17, 18, 19.  Now write your own problem.

Science: see Monday.

Copywork:  Einstein quotes.

French

Poetry

The Hobbit:  Chapter 10, "A Warm Welcome"

"The lands opened wide about him, filled with the waters of the river which broke up and wandered in a hundred winding courses, or halted in marshes and pools dotted with isles on every side; but still a strong water flowed on steadily through the midst.  And far away, its dark head in a torn cloud, there loomed the Mountain!"

Skills & Crafts:  work on Dollygirl's dollmaking project.

Grammar & composition:  Write Source 2000, sections 311 and on.    As an example of recalling information, list in sentences the six levels of thinking.   No?  See the example in the book about the 1985 Live Aid concerts.  What is the difference between recalling and understanding?  Your writing assignment for today:  write a paragraph describing what Grandpa told you about V-E Day in 1945.  Use as many concrete details as you can remember.  We didn't get to this, since we read extra in science and did extra sewing as well.

Dollygirl's Grade Six: plans for Monday

Hymns

Basic Bible Studies, by Francis Schaeffer: God’s Grace, part 2 (page 23)

After the man (Adam sinned), he tried to cover himself with the works of his own hands (how?). God took this away and gave him a covering of what? So this shows that people could not come to God by their own good works, but by what? (page 24) Look up Genesis 4:3-5. How does God ask Adam and Eve (and their children) to worship him? What picture does this give us of the promised Messiah?

The Hobbit chp 8: Flies and Spiders (continue)

FRENCH: Continue Le voyage de Monsieur Perrichon

Minds on Math 8, page 76 and 77.   Application problems for fractions 

Science biography: Albert Einstein, chapter 4.

Write Source 2000:  Last week we read about the "Planet of Bad Thinkers," a place where the inhabitants never set goals, never ask questions, ignore evidence, believe whatever they read, and so on.  We tried to turn those ideas around to list ways of "Becoming a Better Thinker."  Section 309 describes how your mind circles around from simple to more complex tasks while you work on a project.  Section 310 shows a chart of thinking "moves" from simple (observing, gathering) through more complex (rethinking, evaluating).  Choose a real or imaginary problem similar to the examples in section 308 (How can I...Should I...Is doing this activity worthwhile...I've got to convince my parents that...), and try to come up with a solution by tracing your way through the chart.  OR choose a picture book or children's story from our shelf, and show how the main character tries to solve a problem by using this kind of thinking process.

Put the books down and go for a walk.

Folk songs

Canadian history, using Story of Canada: World War II

Copywork

Poems:  Robert Frost, You Come Too

Frugal homeschooling: let me count the ways?

Now that we're a couple of weeks into this fall's homeschool term, and I'm pretty sure of what we're going to keep using this year (vs. things that, like bad sitcoms, disappear after one viewing), I thought I would try adding up what this year's homeschool materials cost us.

I didn't get very far with it.  Besides, it would be pretty irrelevant.  Most of our stuff came from the thrift shop or was already on the shelf...and out of the books from the thrift shop, I priced a lot of them myself, so I suppose I could have engineered a higher or a lower total.  I could have, but I didn't--I try to put fair prices on all the books, even the ones I'm planning on buying myself.  Just so you know.

And the other slightly misleading thing about saying that we're using a thrifted math book, or whatever, is that usually we didn't make the choice based on cheapness, but more because we found something secondhand that looked like it would both meet our goals and fit Dollygirl's learning style and our current homeschool situation (Mom teaching Dollygirl, and Dad usually working in the next room).  I wanted to use a more "out of the box" approach to math thinking this year, and if I had had to buy something new to make that work, I would have.   But I found Minds on Math already on our bookshelf, and that seems to be a good choice so far.  If we hadn't had that, there were a couple of alternatives we could have tried, such as buying new workbooks for the Key To series that Dollygirl's older sister used..  But we just picked one and went with it.

With all that said, here are some of the frugal ways and means we've found helpful so far this year.

1.  Craft materials:  we are using up some of our own stashed yarn and fabric, and buying carefully when it seems we can't find what we want.  We went looking for "fat quarters" at the mill outlet store, thought they were a bit expensive, but then discovered a huge box of bandanas priced at a dollar apiece.  Did you know that bandanas are about the same size as a fat quarter?  Dollygirl picked out a few that she thought would make good doll clothes, and she's already made Crissy a bandana-print blouse.

 Dollygirl pulled out her old weaving frame a few days ago, along with some thick, fluffy yarn, and decided to weave her dolls a living room rug.  She's almost done.

This week's planned project will be stuffed felt doughnuts. We already have felt, stuffing, and embroidery floss, so we're good there. Maybe we'll make them doll-sized (call it a math exercise in scale).

2.  French:  Although I did spend money last spring on the next level of the curriculum we were using, I just didn't have the interest (and neither did Dollygirl) in jumping right back into nouns and verbs.  I found a school copy of Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon at the antiques market, I think for about a dollar, and I also made paper people to go along with the story.  We read it, and sometimes I have Dollygirl narrate it or re-read a simple part with me. (I have posted about that before.)  We are also singing French children's songs out of a library-discard book we've had forever.

3.  Poetry:  I've already posted about the two books we're using for Robert Frost, and about the Graphic Poetry books we found.  Poetry is not hard to find, and it's not hard to teach, honestly: mostly we just read it.  Today I read "Birches" out loud, and then I had Dollygirl pick out and re-read her favourite pair of lines, and I showed her mine.  Dollygirl got a cobweb in her face yesterday when she went outside, so she could relate to that part, about wanting to swing on birches, somewhere up above the ground and not where nasty things hit you in the face.  Next time we do poetry, we'll use You-tube to let Mr. Frost read it himself.

4.  Literature:  Dollygirl tried reading The Hobbit when she was too young for it, and I think she got stopped at about "Out of the Frying-Pan."  This time around, she can't get enough, and we are going to be done with it way before the term is over.  We have a junior LOTR fan in the making.  So what's frugal about that?  Just this:  for the first time in history, probably, we are in a position where books, books, books are all around us, at the click of a button, at the dropping of a few coins at the thrift store, at the flick of a library card.  And the large number of North Americans (and others) who admit that they Don't Read and have No Interest in Reading is appalling.  Abraham Lincoln used to walk miles to borrow a book-when you have that much footwork invested in reading something, you make the most of it.   But these days there is almost no such thing as books costing too much or not being available.  Most of us, most of our kids, don't need fancy reading curricula and lesson plans; we just need to spend more time reading.

5.  History, geography, science, and all that:  we bought ONE brand new book in those areas, and that was The Great Motion Mission for science.  And two DVDs, if you count them, about Marie Curie and Albert Einstein.  The real key to what we're doing frugally here is not the books we're using, but the variety of ways in which I'm trying to use them.  We read out loud, sometimes, often discussing and questioning as we go.  (Why was the Kuomintang's idea to get help from the large, powerful Soviet Union probably a bad idea?  Because somebody large and powerful can help you at first, but then they just want to take over.  Right...)  Sometimes Dollygirl reads to herself and reports.  Sometimes I have her do something unexpected like re-read a point three times in a row, until it really makes sense.  Or make a grapefruit globe.  Or go outside and measure a tree (that was for math this morning, but it could have been from the science book).  When it's just you, me, and the books, it's important to keep things stirred up a bit.  And it also helps when grandpa or somebody asks, "what did you do in school today?" 

I could mention other frugal things we've done, like re-using school supplies, but everybody knows that stuff already.  The point here isn't what you have.  It's what you do with it.  It's a clean, re-organized desk space for Dollygirl, and also one for me.  (To quote a Mary Engelbreit saying we have posted, everybody needs their own Spot.)  It's the routine of starting school mornings with a hymn and Bible verses, but jacked up a bit with the addition of (thrifted) puzzle cards--and the additional motivation of trying to solve them along with Dad.  It's the freedom we're trying to achieve this year to take a bit longer on some activities--to throw in a math game or a craft that might take a good part of the morning.  (And it's okay, because we don't have other students waiting.)  The schedule is there, but it's not bossing us around too much.

Frugal?  Yes.  But it's not about the money.  It's about making sure we keep on caring about what we're doing.  Cost of that: priceless.

Linked from Festival of Frugality #354.

Homeschool things to do for Thursday

Today's schedule seems kind of long, but we'll see how it goes.

Morning:

Opening:  prayer, hymn, Mensa puzzle cards.  Robert Frost: America's Poet, chapters 1 & 2 (they're short).  "Going for Water," by Robert Frost.



Bible:  Basic Bible Studies, continue Study 1.  (Verses showing that there is more than one person of the Trinity.)  Sing "The Lord Our God is One" from Judy Rogers' Why Can't I See God?

Citizenship:  Uncle Eric Talks about Personal, Career, and Financial Security, chapters 1 & 2 (they're short).

School year discussions:  Introduce The People Notebook Project.  This is an alternative I came up with to a formal Book of the Centuries or timeline, for this year.  Historical, literary, and other people and/or characters each have a page with a few key questions, such as "best known for," "hardest times," and "beliefs about God."  There is also room for pictures--hand-drawn or pasted in.  The choice of which people to include is going to be up to Dollygirl, but I will give her a minimum for the term.

Math:  see schedule.

Copywork:  choose an Albert Einstein quotation.

History: we finished the chapter in Story of the World Volume 4, about the rise of Stalin.  This is of personal interest to us since the famine in Russia in the early 1920's led to the creation of the Mennonite Central Committee, and the conditions there also brought many Russian Mennonite immigrants to Canada--some of whom we know.

Lunchtime activities:  helped drill a hole in the wall for one of Mr. Fixit's new clocks.  Helped make lemon poppyseed muffins, mini-size, for our hobbit teatime (a tribute to the hobbit's "seed cakes").

Afternoon:

Albert Einstein biography--read chapter 1 and narrate.

Crafts and skills:  sewing a peasant blouse for a doll.  (Note: it's an old Tripod site with pop-ups, so be warned.)

(French:  lesson 2--I think we'll leave this until tomorrow.)

English:  begin first unit (see previous post about English).

Teatime:  "An Unexpected Party."  Dwarves are invited (come in your cloaks).