Doing Some Tweaking

Bible-Proverbs---no
Hymn---no
Burgess Animal Adventures---haven't read from this yet
Christian Liberty Press Nature Readers---no
Parables from Nature---no
Burgess Bird Book---haven't read from this yet
James Herriott's Treasury for Children---yes
Apologia Zoology---yes
Apologia Astronomy---yes
Blue Fairy Tales Book---no
A Midsummer Night's Dream---haven't read from this yet
Just So Stories---yes
Aesop's Fables---yes
Children's Garden of Verses---haven't read from this yet
Paddle to the Sea---yes
Mary Poppins---haven't read from this yet
Our Island Story---no
The Mystery of History---yes
The Story of the World---no
Composer Study---yes
Artist Study/Picture Study---yes

To replace reading the proverbs each day we are reading from a vintage book I found at my mom's. It's called Best Stories From the Best Book c. MCM (1900) It's definitely not watered down! Instead of a hymn right now we're going to focus on songs to learn with our church's youth choir. My friend Marla suggested downloading Our Island Story from librovox.com and listening to it as we do other things throughout the day. Mystery of History is much better than The Story of the World in my opinion. There is no need to make myself crazy and try to do both so one must go and SOTW-you are it. As for the rest of the roster that didn't make the cut we'll pick up here and there.

We are going to focus on these things:
Beyond FIAR- Starting with Thomas Edison we'll begin our FIAR lessons and I'll just ask for help on the FIAR boards. :)
Apologia Zoology - Ethan enjoys this. It's reading, narration, notebooking, and experiments and projects complete with an insect collection.
Apologia Astronomy-Eli and Rick are doing these lessons together. On the horizon is a model of the solar system.
Reading Rescue 1-2-3-This is a wonderful resource for helping children increase their fluency and comprehension in reading. I'm using the suggestions for both boys and we are using stories that interest each one individually.
We are almost finished with the Best Stories from the Best Book and when that is done I do believe we'll just read from Egermeier's Bible Story Book. I found a chart which links those stories with Mystery of History lessons.
Mystery of History-This is so amazing. I love the way the author weaves secular world history in with biblical world history.
So, we have: Reading, Science, History covered and our dear FIAR lessons provide more of that plus language arts.
Our art and music is covered with picture study/artist study and composer study and we can always throw in some piano or guitar or drum lessons!

Ahhh... feeling much more balanced!

Our First Few Days

We've not had an entire week of school yet but have had lessons off and on the last two weeks. I love the fact that my mom and dad can say, "Can the boys come to the farm for a few days?" and I can let them go and get some real life education.

The Double E Team say they enjoy the stories and activities from our list of Ambleside books. In this picture we are finishing up the 'picture study' of The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt. They are coloring a black & white copy of this particular piece from a Dover coloring book.

My aunt is a professional artist and absolutely detests coloring books but I think even she would have a good time coloring in our Mary Cassatt coloring book! I'll balance this picture study with having the boys (and me!!) try to re-create Cassatt's "The Boating Party" on our own. I may or may not post pictures of that activity! While we are coloring we have The Best of Handel on the CD player. I'm sure some people will think this is a b-o-r-i-n-g and that boys would not stand for listening to classical music and looking at fine art and coloring a baby in a sailboat. They haven't complained yet...and it does my heart good when Eli can open an art book and recognize a copy of Cassatt's work and ask, "Wow, Mom, are all of these by Mary Cassatt?"