A Common Shepherdess

I wish I had heard of loop scheduling earlier in our home schooling journey. It makes so much sense that I'm amazed I've gone this long without figuring it out! The basics: make a list of all the subjects you want to cover during your school year. Then determine how often you want to cover them. This is what our community loop schedule looks like. The community loop is for the subjects that all (or some) of the kids do together. We start each day with Bible reading and prayer so I put that at the top of the list. Our state study is done irregularly (2-3 times a month) so I put that in the middle. My aim was to get through the schedule once a week. (It doesn't always work out that way but that is the great thing about loop scheduling. We quit missing subjects!) You can see that I've scheduled Zoology twice on the loop since we need to do that more often to cover the material. Our day works like this: We start at 8 a.m. We all meet at the table at do our Bible re...

Nature study is an important part of Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education. It doesn't really feel like nature study to talk a walk around a city block though. We love the opportunity to escape the city and enjoy a more rural setting. Today we took the chance to visit the Hassayampa Nature Preserve. A guide took us through a couple of trails and encouraged the kids to make notes in their nature journals. One exercise that I will use in the future was to divide blank page into four sections by drawing a cross in the middle of the page. Then devote each section to four senses: touch, hearing, seeing, and smell. Our guide asked the kids to sit for 1-2 minutes, concentrating on one sense and then to write or draw. We came across this little fellow. His scales shone iridescent and yet he still blended in well with the tree. "Hassayampa" comes from a Yavapai word meaning "upside down river." Most of the Hassayampa River flows underground. It is an u...

Today was our first day of school! For our 6-year-old it was her first day of 1st Grade. We have never really made a big deal out of our first day since we tend to do school work year round, but our 6-year-old is big on celebrations so I thought we should do something . This year I did much more advance planning. This year everyone has their own color coordinated books of checklists and materials. We spent some time decorating the covers of our Zoology notebooks. Our 4-year-old has a bunch of bird coloring pages in her book. (Both girls insisted on wearing dresses for their first day!) Each child made a First Day of School page that included a cut-out of their hand (I forgot to buy fingerpaint at the store), a photo taken this morning, a list of their favorite things and what they want to be when they grow up. Our 4-year-old wants to be a bunny doctor. Not a doctor who takes care of bunnies, but a doctor who dresses like a bunny. Her current favorite accessory is her bunny ear...

I am becoming increasingly disappointed with modern children's literature. Recently I decided to add some literature to our state studies. With the help of a friend, I finally figured out how to search our library's online catalog for children's books by setting. [Do a subject search for "juvenile fiction - (insert name of state or region)". Works great!] After pulling up the books available at our library, I used Amazon.com to get some reviews and synopses. Keep in mind that these books are written for 9-12 year olds. Here is one book I found set in Georgia (opinions of reviewing librarians and educators in bold): Daniel's nickname, D-Man, came from his Uncle Clay, who has been more of a father to him than the boy's mean, beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking dad. One fall morning, Clay gives his nephew his Granddaddy's shotgun and they go out to bag a few rabbits. Daniel's queasiness about hunting is embarrassing, so he tries to mask his qualms...

Oregon Caprial's Crab Club Sandwiches Cranberry Pear Salad with Curried Hazelnuts Milk (official state beverage) Mixed berry cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream (We wish we could get Tillamook Ice Cream here in Arizona!) Washington Garlic Prawns Buttered noodles Baked Apples Starbucks coffee ice cream Alaska Smoked salmon Roasted root vegetables Poppy Seed Potato Bread Baked Alaska

California Cobb salad Sourdough rolls White grape juice Pistachio pudding cake Hawaii Loco moco (if you are feeling brave and very hungry) or Hawaiian sweet and sour chicken White rice Tropical fruit punch Haupia or go out for Hawaiian shaved ice

Texas Texas-style chili Pan de Campo Texas sheet cake Arizona Carnitas with corn tortillas Nopales Caramel milk Navajo Fry Bread New Mexico Green Chile Stew Blue corn chips with pico de gallo and avocado Hot chocolate with cinnamon Bocaditos de Miel de Abeja

Montana Blackstrap Steaks with Carmelized Onions Country-style Fried Potatoes Fruit leather made from applesauce Huckleberry Buckle Idaho Grilled hamburgers French fries with Fry Sauce (1/2 c ketchup, 1/2 c mayonnaise, 2-3 tsp chopped dill pickle) (I had never seen fry sauce before moving to Idaho. Every restaurant had it!) Cowboy beans Huckleberry pie (or substitute blueberry pie) Wyoming Cowboy Beef and Beans with Roundup Bacon Biscuits Mixed Greens Salad with Blueberry Vinaigrette S'Mores Bars Colorado Baked fresh water trout or Eggroll Chile Rellenos Potato and tomato bake Millennium Mocha Rocky Road Oatmeal Cookies Nevada Basque Lamb Stew (We may substitute beef since we've tried lamb before and found it to be quite nasty. We will just pretend it's lamb!) Basque Sheepherder's Bread Grape juice Utah Pastrami Burgers (topped with Spanish sweet onions) Mormon Funeral Potatoes Fresh cherries Utah's famous green Jell-o

The girls and I made a wind chime today. We wanted one to hang in our new backyard patio area. This is a great handicraft for boys or girls. We washed a can. (I believe this one held green enchilada sauce!) The girls helped me decide what design to punch into the can with a hammer and nail. They chose a heart on one side and a star on the other side. We used fish line and strung glass beads on the line from an old broken necklace and added some interesting keys that have long laid forgotten in an old bucket. Our oldest daughter added a metal heart she found at a garage sale.

This past Tuesday at our homeschool group was Science Project Day. Here were our kids' projects. Our 5-year-old daughter studied whether or not the shape of a blower would affect the shape of the bubble. It doesn't. All bubbles are still round! Our 7-year-old son studied what dye combinations make which colors in Skittles and M&Ms. Our oldest son tested different types of wood and found which wood needed more force to drive a nail through it. He made a hammering device that ensured equal amounts of force was used to hit the nail each time. The nail went through redwood in 6 hits with the hammer. After 210 hits with the hammer, the nail had still only gone halfway through the oak piece of wood. They all love hands-on projects!

I came across this great link . It is a map of the USA with the states labeled and each state's electoral votes listed. The boys will be coloring it tonight as we watch the election results.

We have all been very sick this past week. We are still recovering. So what does a homeschool mom do when she is too weak to do much except lay around all day? Why, more planning of course! I put together checklists and organized the assignments for my two boys. I bought them each a three-ring binder and made them each a cover sheet using a picture from their readings. The boys colored them. (You can see my younger one is still learning his spelling rules. "Mom, we can't end an English word with an 'i' so I added the silent E." "Or we change the 'i'..." "OH! *smacks forehead* I should have changed it to a 'y'!") In each book I put their weekday schedule, showing them which subjects we study on what days. There is also a calendar to mark off each day we do school. Another page helps them keep track of which week of the curriculum we are doing. Last week my 7 yo finished week 26 of Ambleside's Year 1 and my oldest ...

In the last couple of weeks we have had more opportunities to do more nature study. We took a trip to the Hassayampa River Preserve . (Yes, there are rivers in Arizona!) It actually rained on us most of the morning. The only animals we got to see were some ducks. The Hassayampa River is a year-round river. It doesn't just flow after a heavy rainfall. We went with a group of other homeschool families following the Ambleside curriculum. A few days later we took a trip to the zoo. A zoo isn't the best place for a nature study since the animals aren't in their natural habitats. But it gives the kids a chance to get up close to animals they might not have a chance of seeing otherwise. Like stingrays and sharks: and some kind of vulture (I don't remember):

My favorite thing is when my kids connect with what they are learning. Our folksong last term was Cockles and Mussels. This afternoon we listened to it again, just to refresh our memories. My 6 year old son said, "This song breaks my heart." Then a moment later, "Play it again. I like sad songs. Is this song real? Did she really die from a fever?" Our folksong this term is The Minstrel Boy, another sad song. Our hymn for this month has been It Is Well With My Soul. The song is not sad but the story behind it is. If you have never heard this story, you can read it here .

I feel like we never get to nature study. I have it scheduled for Fridays but by the end of the week, we don't seem to have the time or energy needed for this subject. Not all is lost though. During the week we do spend time outdoors and I found a couple of great picture books that even my two older boys enjoy. The first one is Bedtime in the Southwest. It's a funny look at how southwest critters might behave when Mama and Papa tell them it's time for bed. The second one is Way Out in the Desert. It is new words to the old song Over in the Meadow. It's a great, gentle introduction to ten southwest animals as well as different Sonoran desert plants. The other night, outside our boys' tae kwon do gym, our 4-year-old daughter was inspecting some of the flowers. Suddenly she ran over to me, yelling excitedly, "I saw a bird! It had the long pointy nose for drinking juice from the flowers!" I asked, "A hummingbird?" "YES!" she yell...

One of the fun things about homeschooling is that you have time for more of these moments.

Last week was exam week for my oldest. (My second oldest only started his term three weeks ago so I didn't bother doing exams with him.) I was interesting to see how well he is doing and see where we need to change things a bit. It was fun to be surprised at some of the details he remembered. Exams were done orally and I recorded the questions and his responses in a composition notebook. For every exam week we have, I'll add questions and responses. I will be able to keep quite a few years recorded in one book. I'd say his strongest area is Bible. He remembers much of what we have read. (Why did Joseph's brothers hate him? Because he got most of the attention and he dreamed dreams that made his brothers mad. The dream that really made his brothers mad was when he dreamed that eleven piles of hay bowed to one pile of hay. His brothers talked behind his back about how they didn't like these dreams.) We are slowly making our way through Pilgrim's Progre...

From Ambleside online I get our weekly schedule. Our school year has three terms, each 12 weeks long. Here is how I divided up the work into a daily schedule: Monday: Bible reading Math Copywork Spelling (a spelling, reading, penmanship curriculum) Music: Hymn (this month's hymn is Praise To The Lord, The Almighty) History Outside Literature (Poetry: this term's poet is Walter de la Mare) Free reading Spanish (a children's Spanish class at the library) Tuesday: Bible reading Math Copywork Spelling Music: Classical (this term's composer is Mozart) History: history of England Outside Literature (Historical Fiction) Free Reading Wednesday: Bible reading Math Copywork Spelling Music: Folksong (this term's folksong is Cockles and Mussels) History: world history Outside Literature (Pilgrim's Progress) Free Reading Thursday: Bible reading Math Copywork Spelling Art (this term's painter is Pieter Brueghel) Geography Literature (Pilgrim's Progress) Free Reading...

The hardest thing about homeschooling, to me anyway, is consistently staying the course. We started school on Monday and we've already taken one day off. My husband's days off are Thursdays and Fridays. Usually he still goes to the office in the mornings, which gives us time to finish our schoolwork so we can be free by lunchtime when he comes home. But on Friday he took the entire day off. Of course, one of the perks of homeschooling is being able to do schoolwork whenever. But it's not fun to do schoolwork in the evening after a busy day. I hope to make up the work we missed on Friday over the weekend so we can start next week without feeling like we are behind. Days off with Dad aren't necessarily wasted school-time though. We visited Lake Pleasant, a man-made lake north of Phoenix. A great opportunity for a nature study! Now, if only I had thought to bring their nature notebook... We got to the visitor center just in time to watch the park ranger feed the t...

On Monday we started our new school year. The summer days have been getting too long and boring for the kids. We needed to do something, so why not start school! This year we are doing something completely different. I'm scheduling the kids' year using Ambleside Online . This is an amazing resource. It is a full, free curriculum based on Charlotte Mason's method of teaching. We are discovering all kinds of wonderful books. I've also discovered another wonderful resource: LibriVox . It is a collection of free online audio books. The goal of LibriVox is to make all public domain books available as audio books. This has been a great time saver for me. Our curriculum this year is heavy with literature. Much of it would take my oldest son a very, very long time to read on his own. He depends on me to read aloud most of the stories. A couple of the books we are using can be found at LibriVox: Our Island Story (the history of England) and the Burgess Animal Boo...