I believe that exposure to a wide variety of music is crucial to a child’s education. We listen to all kinds of music in the car and just hanging around the house and Shorty and I have studied a lot of contemporary music, like jazz, gospel, Christian contemporary, pop, showtunes, standards, bluegrass, rock, folk and world music, but I do believe that listening to music conventionally known as “classical” is important, not just for its historical and cultural significance, but because a lot of these other genres are based on aspects of classical musicality. It’s a fact, for example, that many pop songs are based on the chord structure of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, and it’s also a fact that a lot of jazz is a blend of musical traditions of the African diaspora and the atonal composers of the early 19th century.

We follow Ambleside Online’s composer study rotation because it’s just three composers a year. Shorty is already pretty familiar with Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Handel and those are all very easy to listen to online. I also have a large classical music CD collection if I feel like playing them in the car or while the song. But for the lesser known artists, buying CDs is expensive, and it can be confusing to find places to legally listen to entire symphonies online. So I’ve instead gone with the option of creating YouTube playlists to play the entire pieces or several pieces from the same composer in a row, just leaving it playing in the background as we do our schoolwork.

Click here to read more and for instructions…

Today is the 50th anniversary of the time-honored grammar handbook, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. The New York Times has five grammar experts weigh in on the pros and cons of the manual, used by copy editors, college and high school students and pupils of the art of English writing for the last few generations, and whether it’s still valuable in the context of modern academics. Read the article and debate here.

I remember reading this as a senior in high school and using it as a reference book through my years of college. I do think that it’s given my writing clarity and focus, and helped me gain a deeper understanding of English grammar as a non-native speaker, but the naysayers in the article make some excellent and worthwhile points, too. What do you all think of the book?

As we head into our last 8 weeks of school, we are following the picture study and artist study schedule set forth by Ambleside Online. Ambleside Online is going to be our main curriculum next year and we’ve been taking babysteps to doing it this year. Artist/picture study seemed like a painless place to start.

This term’s artist is Vincent Van Gogh, which is fortuitous because we already have several large prints of his artwork around the house, since he is a longtime favorite of mine (we have Garden at Arles and The Night Cafe, each measuring about 2′x3′). I also have a large picture book with at least 3 dozen full-color prints of his, so it’s a good place for us to start.

I thought it would be fun for Shorty to have coloring pages of the six pieces we’ll be looking at, so he could put his own spin on the artwork. The six pieces are:

1. The Starry Night, 1889
2. The Chair and the Pipe, 1888
3. The Night Cafe, 1888
4. Self Portrait as an Artist
5. The Vase with Sunflowers
6. Bedroom at Arles, 1889

Unfortunately, I could only find ready-made coloring pages for three of the pieces, namely:

• Starry Night. There are many, but I liked the one here, because it has a lot of white space and allows for maximum creativity.
• The Vase with Sunflowers, again, there are many, but I liked this one.
• Bedroom at Arles – coloring page from the Van Gogh Museum is lovely.

For the other three, I couldn’t find anything except a coloring book to purchase. I don’t want to purchase anything I don’t have to, especially not for 3 pictures, so I set about seeing if I could make my own. They aren’t perfect or professional looking, but they serve the purpose of providing a coloring page for each picture and I think they came out okay!

Here’s the actual version of Self-Portrait as an Artist:

Here’s my coloring page. Click on it to see the full size page. Every printer is different, so be sure you set it to “shrink to printable area” before you print, just in case!

So in black and white outline, it turns out he looks a little like Fidel Castro. LOL.

The Night Cafe was trickier, and I’m not sure that it can be made into a printable coloring page just using Photoshop, because the original is just so impressionistic that trying to render and contrast its lines makes the details Van Gogh added in with color indistinguishable. But I did my best and I think it’s still usable. I may try this again at a later date with a higher quality image. Again, click on this to be taken to the full file.

Edited to add: I scanned in my “lost” coloring page that I made of The Chair and the Pipe. Photoshop had a fatal error when I tried to save it, but I had already printed out a copy, so I just scanned it in. I think it came out pretty good. Again, click on it for the larger size!

All of these print out quite nicely on a full 8″x11″ regular page. I purposely didn’t “clean these up” too much; the rough brush strokes and suggested rather than explicit shapes and shadows were trademarks of Van Gogh’s style and ingenuity, and while the clean lines of the coloring pages I linked to are fine, I tried to make mine look a little less sterile and more suggestive of the real guy’s work.

Hopefully these are helpful to someone out there. Feedback is appreciated!

I have the following books for sale. Books marked like this have been sold.

From the current Winter Promise Animals and Their Worlds curriculum.

• Richard Scarry’s Best Storybook Ever – $8
• Glow-in-the-Dark Fish Bible Devotionals – $6.50
• One Small Square: Coral Reefs – $4
• Kids’ Wildlife Book – $6.50
• Animal Habitats! – $6.50
• Easy-to-Create Wildlife Habitats – $6.50
• Animals in Motion - $3
• Ed Emberley’s Animal Drawing Book - $4
• 2006 Instructor’s Guide for WinterPromise: Animals and their Worlds (resellable per their terms) – $25,

Other Science/ Animal Resources:

• The Fourteen Bears in Summer and Winter,” an older AW resource, never read – $5
• “Animals of the World” Jigsaw puzzle book that has never been used, for $4. You can see it here on Amazon.

From Winter Promise’s American Story 1 curriculum

• Liberty! Story of the American Revolution – $5
• Celebrate America! - $6
• If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution – $3
• 3-D Interactive Maps: American History – $7
• If You Lived with the Iroquois – $3
• If You Lived with the Hopi – $3

Other American history books for sale:

• George Washington by Cheryl Harkness (same author as the Revolutionary John Adams) – $5
• If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution - $3
• And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? – $3
• Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? - $3
• Easy Make and Learn Projects – Northeast Indians and Southwest Indians (older AS1 resource) – $7/each

Well-Trained Mind Resources:

• The Well-Trained Mind – $8
• Science Wizardry For Kids - $4
• Math Wizardry For Kids – $4
• Science in the Kitchen - $3
• Adventures in Atoms and Molecules Vol 1 library binding – $5
• Physics for Kids - $4
• Rod and Staff Grade 4 English: Buidling With Diligence student book (older edition) – $3

Other educational books:

• The first 8 Encyclopedia Brown books – $25 for all 8 books, only read once each.
• Marvel Comics Grade 4 Math Practice (3 or 4 pages written in) – $4
• Life in the Great Ice Age - creationist text never read – $6
• Writing Poetry with Kids - Gr  1-6 (3 or 4 pages written in pencil)
• Evan-Moore Literature-based thematic multicultural units for Gr 1-3: China, Japan, Nigeria, Homes Near and Far, Transportation – $3 each or $10 for all 5 and I’ll count it as one book for shipping.
• Drawing with Children – never used – $8

Shipping is $2.50 for the first book and $1 per additional book in the US; will ship to Canada at going rates.  I take PayPal or personal checks. Please email me at nimsisland at comcast dot net if you’re interested/ have any questions. Thank you.

Yesterday marked the start of the last 9 weeks of our school year. We more or less try to follow the Miami Dade County Public Schools calendar, in the sense that we start on the same day as them, but it always all goes to h-e-double-hockey-sticks right around Thanksgiving when we start doing school WHENEVER WE FEEL LIKE IT. Darn hippie homeschoolers are we. This has its pros and cons; pros, because we have such a flexible schedule; cons because the later in the spring it gets, the more I start to feel like we’re “behind.” But I know that’s my own personal neurosis at work and nothing more.

This is what we’re working on right now:

• Language Arts: Reading through Grammar-Land, working on Cursive Success, finishing up Rod and Staff’s English text (very dry, but very thorough and gentle). MadLibs galore.
• Literature: Next week we finish this Nim’s Island unit study.  We are really enjoying the book and we are also enjoying the educational resources Walden Media has. We are renting the film for next Friday’s family movie night and Shorty will compare and contrast the book and the movie as a final project.
• Science: almost done with the oceans/ coral reefs lapbook and unit study, mostly from HomeschoolShare. We may go down to the Marjorie Stoneham Douglas Nature Center next week to do a little face-to-face observation. I refuse to go to the Miami Seaquarium for anything ever again. That place is depressing! After that, we’re starting a brief lapbook about dolphins and sharks, also from HSS, and using the Dolphins and Sharks Magic Treehouse Research Guide as a spine. Then, having completed our science curriculum early, we’ll do a five-week study about ecology and the environment using Hands of a Child’s lapbook freebie for the rest of the year – just in time for Earth Day ;
• Math: Making steady progress with MEP Math, Year 2 (third/fourth grade level… he is “behind” in math, his worst subject by a mile);
• History: We’re wrapping up a unit on Lewis and Clark and its corresponding lapbook, watching a PBS mini-series on DVD about the Corps of Discovery (AWESOME), almost done with More than Moccasins: a Kid’s Guide to Native American History, and Shorty’s current historical biography assignment is Sacagawea. After this, we are doing the War of 1812, the Trail of Tears, the Underground Railroad, Seneca Falls, a few other things, and spending the last month of the school year doing this lapbook and unit study on Little House on the Prairie/ westward expansion right up until the decade before the Civil War. We pick up right where we left off next fall.
• Electives: Still working on drawing, gardening, and video game design, among many other things.

Also, just because Shorty is an only child and I must work year-round, we do some academics over the summer to keep him busy and productive, i.e., not playing video games all day. I try to keep it lighter than the regular school year; in fact, this year I’m trying something new. I didn’t really have time to delve into electives this year the way I wanted to, because my schedule kept changing, so I decided that I’d save the great health and music curriculae I bought from Rod and Staff this year to do over the summer (heavy editing on the health stuff – I am not Amish, and found some of their theological assertions objectionable). I also didn’t do much music appreciation or composer or picture studies, and Shakespeare, while a big hit with the Shorty, fell by the wayside right around Thanksgiving, too.

So our summer schedule looks like this for the twelve weeks between fifth and sixth grade (side note: am I really old enough to have a kid in junior high? really?):

• Eight weeks of a Florida history lapbook and unit with books and materials that I put together myself (I’ll post all my links, books used and other materials and goodies at a later date);
• Four weeks of a lapbook/unit on wetlands/ swamps/ the Everglades, with a possible visit to the Everglades in August (because apparently I’m on crack, love mosquitoes and just adore being fricaseed alive in the South Florida summer heat);
• Finishing up whatever’s left of math. We’ll have a few weeks off with no math then, and I may just spend a couple of weeks doing “living math” stuff and things from our wonderful I Hate Mathematics book;
• Four weeks each on: John James Audubon (artist), Bach (composer) and a Shakespearean play, we’re feeling The Tempest or possibly Hamlet. Lapbook and notebooking. I’ll have to make my own on the last one seeing as the only things I found available were too advanced for Shorty;
• He’ll continue studying drawing and video game design, a.k.a. “following his bliss.”  He is interested in saving up for a Flip Camera and studying filmmaking on his own next year, too;
• Swimming lessons at the Venetian Pool again.  Last year I don’t think he got too much out of the one session, but I think this year he’ll do all four sessions since they’re so cheap, and also, it is the nicest public swimming pool IN THE UNIVERSE.

That’s all that’s going on with us right now, academics-wise. Bunch of personal/job stuff going on, but this post is long enough without me goin ito that.

Tell me, for all you homeschooling parents out there, how do you handle summers? Do you take the whole season off? Light academics? School year round?

I got this link from the wonderful World of Discovery blog, which has approximately a zillion or so incredible homeschooling freebies. I love this, and I think I’ll go to Office Max and have it printed out and spiral bound. It will run me about $13 and I can probably give it away later.  From her blog:

Are you looking for a fun, relaxing way to cuddle up with your children and teach basic grammar? Well I have found it, and guess what, I’m going to share it with you .

I have to put forth the following disclaimer before I share this resource: This is not intended to replace a formal grammar program, but if you use this along with worksheets, your children will really enjoy it, you will really enjoy it, and they will have a very good grasp on basic grammar. That said, let me tell you about our experience with Grammarland, written by M.L. Nesbitt.

I came across this book this past January on the freebies of the day website (link to their site is in the homeschool links section), but it is also available on other websites as well. It is a classic novel written in 1878, and is what I like to warmly refer to as “a living book”.

Living books are usually written in story form by an author who has a passion for the subject. A living book makes the subject come to life. In Grammar-Land, we are taught about the 9 parts of speech by wonderful characters such as: Judge Grammar, Mr. Noun, Mr. Pronoun, Little Article, Mr. Adjective, Little Interjection, Dr. Verb and so on. It is a wonderful story that follows the adventures and disagreements of the various parts of speech, as they parade in front of Judge Grammar to plead their case. The children of Schoolroom-Shire are given tasks to figure out in each chapter.

Our children LOVE this book! They can’t wait to do our lesson on grammar, and it truly warms mom’s heart when I hear “mom, can we do grammar today?”

Download your own free copy here.

You can also download a bunch of Grammar worksheets to supplement this here, and possibly supplement with the paragraph writing units at SchoolExpress. Add in some copywork from whatever book you’re currently reading, poetry, the Bible, or whatever you want, and/or this free handwriting course if necessary, and you have a complete free language arts program.  We’re pretty burnt out on Rod and Staff’s language arts program that we’ve been using for the last couple of years or so, so this is awesome!

This is easily the funniest/ saddest thing that has happened in Little Havana in a long time.

The other night I came home to a swarm of police cars surrounding the office building directly next to our apartment complex. My grandmother told me that she and all the other residents were advised to stay in their homes and that there was a hunt for a “potentially high-level dangerous criminal.” Scary, right?

This is actually what happened.

Our neighbor, Irina, was doing some spring cleaning in her tiny one-room studio yesterday afternoon, and decided her old red plastic briefcase was a useless eyesore sitting on top of her TV wall unit. Having little storage space in her small home, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it, so she put it out on her back steps near the back alleyway and set about finishing her spring cleaning.

This is not the nicest part of Little Havana, though, so within the hour someone had stolen it. It’s kind of heavy because it’s one of those old, lined, hard-back little suitcases and I guess the person wanted to see if there was anything valuable in it. It was empty though, so the thief wandered off and left it on the doorstep of the dental office next door and took off.

The people at the dental office were very alarmed to find a mysterious briefcase sitting on their front doorstep – RED, no less – clearly left there deliberately. They decided the safe and logical thing to do was to call the police. Right.

Fast forward half an hour, and there are about half a dozen police officers standing around peering with trepidation at the red briefcase, trying to decipher its mysteries. Around this time, Irina discovers someone stole her red briefcase. Oh, well, she figured. She was probably going to throw it out, anyway.

The police decide not to open the suitcase, as one has tried nudging it with his toe and found it “suspiciously heavy.”  After another half an hour of deliberation, they decide to question any locals who are nosy enough to come out of the surrounding apartment buildings and start questioning them to see what they know. This is Little Havana, my people are nosy and not shy, so that equals at least 2 dozen people.

The police decide the safe and logical thing is to call in a bomb squad.

Around the time that the bomb squad arrives, Irina decides to take out the trash and notices the huge commotion in the office building next door. Asking one of the rubberneckers, a fellow neighbor (nosy and not shy, have I mentioned?), she is horrified to learn that all this is over her lost red briefcase. The neighbor advises her not to identify it as hers to the police, because she’s a recent immigrant (age 63) and they could brand her as a terrorist and take her in for questioning. Irina just about dies from mortification, but decides to identify herself anyway and tells the police that the suitcase belongs to her, explaining that it was stolen that morning and really, they can just give it back to her and go home.

The bomb squad declines, pointing to the fact that it’s been missing several hours, enough time for a terrorist to have put a bomb in it.

Three hours later, the approximate 30-40 law enforcement officials finally mustered up the courage to crack the suitcase open. Finding no immediate threat to national security, they handed the briefcase back to its rightful, and rightfully irritated, owner.

So. Anyone need a little red briefcase?