A Whole Year has Gone By!

Wow, it's been a whole year since I posted on my blog!  We have been busy with the newest little (big) member of our family.  Lucas was born between Christmas and New Year's Eve, on 29th December last year.  He weighed a healthy 9 lb 3 oz.  He is a delightful little chap, and keeps me very busy, along with his big brother and sisters.  

We have still yet to take a picture of all six children together :-/  

- and Lucas is nearly 5 months old!

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What to do with Little Ones ~ Nature Study

Well, what a long time it has been between posts!  I am determined, however to continue my series on What to do with the Little Ones.  I've been reminded lately to be more intentional with my time with my little ones.  My youngest daughter is 6, and my son is fast approaching 4, and is eager to learn and "do school." 
One of the first things we did when the big girls were about 4 and 5 was to go on nature walks.  We would go for a walk around the block, or to the local park, and pick up different leaves or cones to bring home for identification.  We would also try to identify trees by their leaves, or the birds and insects at the park and in our backyard.  If you have access to a good beach, go and look at shells and try to identify them. Sometimes we would draw our finds in our nature books, but almost always we would look them up in our nature books. 
Here are some helpful New Zealand nature books for identification of New Zealand flora and fauna:

This is just one of a series of pocket guides to New Zealand wildlife. We own this one, as well as one on native trees and shrubs, and one on New Zealand birds.  They are great for identifying common species, not just natives.

This book is from another GREAT series by Andrew Crowe.  They include life-size photos of common species in New Zealand, and you can get books on insects, native trees, birds, sea-life, wild-flowers, or for ease of use, some of them come in a plastic-covered fold-up pocket guide, for while you are at the park or the beach.  These books are readily available from your local bookstore or you can buy online at Fishpond.

Dave Gunson also has a great series of books on NZ nature.  I recently picked up the above book on sale at our local bookstore for $10.00.  This book not only has lovely illustrations of shore life, but also includes information about each species, and its location within the different tidal zones. 

We have many more books on NZ nature, many of which I have picked up at library book sales for just a few dollars.

So get out there and enjoy the beautiful natural world that God has given us here in New Zealand!  Your children will love it, and I believe, they will have a life-long love and interest in God's creation.

Tintinnabulation

Have you ever heard of the word, "tintinnabulation"?  Neither had we, until we learned this first verse from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe:

The Bells

Hear the sledges with the bells---
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation, that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells---
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

We memorised the first verse as part of a lesson in First Language Lessons Level Three, by Susan Wise Bauer. 
Tintinnabulation simply means the sounds of ringing bells.

The poem continues with a further three verses, read it here or enjoy listening to the poem here.

Perhaps we will memorise the remaining verses one day.

New Year's Resolutions

Although we are now well into the new year, I thought I'd share a couple of things I have determined to improve this year.  I have started various Bible reading plans, but I never seem to get to the end of them.  I start out well, but get slack as time goes by.  I tell myself that I'm a busy Mum with five children, but really, there is no excuse for neglecting God's Word.  So this year I have chosen a plan, and I intend to stick with it. 
I have been following Tim Challies' blog for a while now.  I enjoy reading his articles written from a Reformed perspective.  This year he challenged his readers to use Professor Grant Horner's Bible reading plan.  You can read all about it here.  The plan splits the Bible into ten reading lists, each list is a different length from all the others, the idea being that you will be reading a chapter from ten different parts of the Bible each day, but never reading the same combination again.  I challenged my husband to do the reading plan with me.  We began on 1st January and we have stuck with it so far.  I am really enjoying reading a variety of genres each day, and I really feel like I am being saturated in God's Word.  I am excited that it will enable me to get to know the Bible more thoroughly as time goes by.  There is a facebook group for those following the plan here.

Another challenge I have taken up this month, is to memorise the book of Titus.  Doctrines in the Kitchen is a facebook group set up to encourage mothers at home to be interested in, and to study doctrine.  Last year a group of ladies memorised Philippians, and this year they are memorising Titus.  I thought I would give it a go.  So far, I have Titus 1:1-5 memorised.  I am writing out the verses each morning and night, and reciting them to myself throughout the day.  The simple act of writing them out daily helps to store them my brain, and I find it is reasonably effortless to memorise the verses with this method.
You can find the Doctrines in the Kitchen facebook group here, and the Memorise Titus blogpost here.

What to do with the Little Ones - Family Devotions

I plan to do a series of short blogposts on what to do with young children. These will serve both to help out others just getting started at homeschooling, but also help to remind ourselves to do these things with out little ones, even as our older girls get busier as they enter the high school years.

The first subject is Family Devotions.

In a Christian home, it should go without saying that reading the Bible to our children is the most important part of our homeschooling. However, sometimes with our younger children we are not quite sure where to start. Some passages seem too difficult for our children to understand. While I would like to encourage you to just "read the Bible" with children of all ages, there are some Bible reading plans we have found helpful with our young children.

Penny Gardner has put together a very helpful list of Bible "episodes" designed to give the children a good overview of the stories of the Bible. You can find it here.

Rod & Staff put out a lovely Bible story book which also has a companion
colouring book. We have used these at home, and in church Sunday school classes. These books are available in New Zealand from Geneva Books, and are very affordable.

Another important aspect of our family devotions has been learning a Catechism. We believe it is important to teach our children the truths of God's Word from an early age, which is when memorisation is so easy for them! Children as young as 2 years old can start learning the answers to the First Catechism, which is available as a little booklet, and is also free on the internet here. Our Sunday school has recently started using a curriculum called Show Me Jesus which is designed around the First Catechism. This includes short lessons with colouring pages, and review of the catechism questions each week.

 

Yet another great little book for teaching about the truths of God's Word through stories is Big Truths for Little Kids by Susan Hunt and Richie Hunt. This book tells about a Christian family who seek to witness to a neighbouring family, while learning biblical truths along the way. The book also utilizes questions from the Westminster Catechism.

Reading the great stories of the Bible and teaching your children catechism when they are young will give them a great start to later understanding of the truths of God's Word, enabling them to apply them to their lives.

Homeschool Meme

My new blogging friend, Chelle, at Last in Line, has tagged me for a homeschool meme. By the way, please have a browse through Chelle's blog. Chelle is a kiwi homeschooler using many of the same resources I am using with my children. I was thrilled to find her on the internet!

Here are the meme questions:

1. One homeschooling book you have enjoyed:
The first "homeschooling" book I ever came across was Karen Andreola's book: "A Charlotte Mason Companion". This is a great indroduction to Charlotte Mason's methods and how you came implement them in your home.

2. One resource you wouldn't be without:
I think right now I would have to say the brilliant writing course by Andrew Pudewa: Student Writing IntensiveThis course takes all the mystery out of writing for our family.

3. One resource you wish you had never bought:

Hmmm, I am having trouble with this one. I am usually very careful about what I buy. We did try out Mystery of History, but after having already used Story of the World, we just went back to that.

4. One resource you enjoyed last year:

We enjoyed using Discovering Great Artists as a springboard for out art lessons.

5. One resource you will be using next year:

Well, it's not next year yet, but my oldest girls have just started working through Dr Jay Wile's Exploring Creation with General Science. So far they are enjoying it.

6. One resource you would like to buy:

I would LOVE to buy an e-book reader, for all those out-of-print or hard-to-find or just-too-expensive classic books that we have yet to read.

7. One resource you wish existed:

Some sort of reference for New Zealand poetry and literature suitable for children.

8. One homeschool catalogue you enjoy reading:

I have been browsing through the Institute for Exellence in Writing's catalogue, and would love to be able to buy some of their history-based writing lessons and poetry lessons.

9. One homeschool website you use regularly

Ambleside Online. This is a great resource based on the methods of Charlotte Mason and includes booklists for every grade in every subject area.

10. Tag six other homeschoolers:

1. Melissa, from Bugs, Knights and Turkeys in the Yard

2. Nancy, from Sage Parnassus

3. Narelle, from House of Bogwitz

4. Laura Lou, from Wasted Textbooks

5. Mel, from Sweet Blue Sky Days and

6. Jeanne, from A Peaceful Day (Jeanne's lucky - she's already done the meme, so I've linked you directly to her blogpost :-)

If I haven't tagged you, feel free to join in anyway, it's always great to read about what other homeschoolers are using and love.

Vive Les Roses!

We have just finished learning about the French Revolution in Story of the World 3: Early Modern Times by Susan Wise Bauer.
One of the extra reading suggestions was "The Man who Painted Flowers" by Carolyn Croll.


It looks like a lovely picture book which I would love to purchase at some stage. Carolyn Croll has several of her lovely illustrations on her blog, which is well worth a look at.

I did however come across a very similar sounding book on
trademe. It is called "The Man who Painted Roses, the Story
of Pierre-Joseph Redoute". So I snapped up this book for just $2, thinking it was bound to have some of Redoute's paintings reproduced in it. I was a little disappointed when I received it as there were no pictures, other than on the front cover. What I did discover however, was a wonderful story of Redoute's life.


Redoute was born about 30 years before the French Revolution, into a family of painters in Belgium. His father longed for he and his brothers to grow up to be famous landscape or portrait painters. They were encouraged to leave the family home at the age of 13, and travel the country learning from master painters, earning their bed and board by assisting the master painters and by painting the odd potrait or religious painting for the local people.


Redoute learned much from this experience, but he never really wanted to paint portraits, he love flowers! He was constantly distracted by their beauty and began to sketch every flower he could along the way.

Eventually Redoute married and settled in Paris. Pierre-Joseph and his wife, Marie-Marthe, had two daughters, Josephine and Adelaide. Through the help of his older brother, Antoine-Ferdinand, and the contacts of various well-known French botanists, Redoute went on to be the official painter for Queen Marie-Antoinette, the Empress Josephine (first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte), the Empress Marie-Louise (second wife of Napoleon) and Queen Marie Amelie. If you can keep up with all the Maries, Louises and Josephines in the story, you are doing well!

Redoute published many botanical books on roses, lilies and many other flowers of the world. He lived a full life and died at the age of 81.

I learned more French history in this book than I have ever known!