End of May Update on Charlotte { 6y 9m }

Here's where Charlotte was roughly by the end of May.  She's currently in Grade 1 according to the public schedule, but as you'll see, homeschooling has allowed a little more wiggle room to accommodate her more appropriately.

{ Bible: }

Charlotte has continued with her character copywork and is now at the end of Creativity.

Don't forget that you can pick up this workbook for FREE on the blog here.

{ Math }

In the maths department Charlotte is making exceptional gains.

As of posting this particular photo, Charlotte is actually past the 40th lesson and has started official multiplication in all earnest.

{ Reading } 

She is thoroughly enjoying reading her Rod and Staff Nurture reader.  There has been a hidden blessing in not doing too much in the way of Bible Stories with her previously to this.  As she reads each story for herself.... she is scandalised, captivated, entirely intrigued by the content of each story as she goes on through.  Not having those basic Bible story backgrounds already - it has shocked her at some of the content, and thus kept her completely interested in reading.

Here's a recent story that she's read.  Yep, this is considered Grade 1.  The story actually goes over to the next page.  She reads these out loud to me so that if there is any need for help or correction I am right there to address any problem immediately.

{ Science } 

We're having some down time with Science and keeping it light with a little detour on the Water Cycle.  I'll be looking to start a new topic soon though.

{ Penmanship }

Another thing that Charlotte has been regularly attending to this month was cursive handwriting.

{ History } 

We also continue with SOTW II.  I've moved it to Fridays so that we can be free to spend that read aloud time on Mondays and Wednesdays on another History book.

That other book or read aloud time is for this:

We're nearly finished......

And of course she is still working largely from Rod and Staffs Phonics and Reading workbooks.

{ Art }

To see Charlotte's Art, you'll have to pull up all the Art Monday posts.  I generally keep all the Art together.

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Yes, so I just wanted to do a quick little update on where Charlotte was at this point in time.

Thanks for visiting.

Character Studies Update

We are still using the character materials that I put together a few years ago.  Just yesterday Phebe my super fresh 11 year old worked on this:

The left hand side:

The right hand side:

And for my little Miss 6 - she uses the same text book but puts all her copywork into a workbook especially designed for it.

I have them available for FREE.  Just click the links below to go and pick them up.

Here's where I keep them:

Character worksheets

What it looks like worksheets

Character & Commands for Littles

Character and Commands for Littles

It's been a little while but I finally got back to working on some character notebooking pages for the Littles.  Some of them have been available for some time, but now, I'll be working to get them all completed and in sets.  Oh, I also changed one of the pages to include a Command of Christ in there as well.

You will need copies of these books to fill it in though:

Achieving True Success

&

Commands of Christ Pocket Guide

At any rate, what I've decided to do was divvy up this new lot of printables into 5 separate downloads - because each download is going to be 40 pages.  Yep, that's a lot when you put them altogether.... 200 pages.   Once completed it should keep everyone busy for about 2 years of character focus.

Ok, so here's the first one.

Yeah, so click away on any of the pictures and grab yourself a copy.

And here's PART TWO - Just click on the cover to download this pack as well.

And here's PART THREE - Just click on the cover to download this pack as well.

Thanks for visiting chookies,

I am hoping to get the next one done super soon.

Week 8

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the weeks go.

This week we did another Van Gogh.

Today in the biography Christine and Vincent break up.  It was a sad moment, but probably for the best.  He needs the money for painting and models and well, she's got a smoking and drinking problem amongst the other things.  He never has enough money to pull them through each month, and she keeps ending up having to go and stay with her mother.  Not to mention the additional character flaw in that she has no problem with sleeping with other men for money.  Now, it is true she's been nice and clean since she's been with Vincent { well we hope }, but yeah, not exactly the type of woman you'd take home to mother.

Charlotte did the letter { r } for rabbit for craft this week.  She totally has this letter down, but she needed a craft for her alphabet book that we are building.

She's turned into quite the little student.  She loves doing "school."

In particular she's been very diligent with her book work.

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We continue with our Bible survey as well.

Character: Loyalty

History Copywork

Food this week:

Little savory meat/vege rolls.

This week I'll be linking up with:



I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.

Why You Should Still Do Book Learning for Character

I've got a couple of thoughts.

Do you want to go for a walk with me on them?

Moral Character is usually something that is taught, or more often times caught by children from their parents, peers, and care givers, but I found that there can still be a few little catches with that and those are:

1.  The parent must have that character quality functioning within their own lives to some successful degree.  It's a little bit difficult to impart something that you don't have.  It rightly lends itself to integrity, and accountability.  Hypocrisy should be the last thing we should be aiming for.  We must walk the path before we expect anyone else to.  

Many parents lack high enough standards of character within themselves.  Children are not blind.  They get to live with us day in, and day out.  If we want our children to practice moral and excellent character we should lead them via example. 

2.  Timing.  The parent usually needs to be present at the right time in order to teach a particular character.  If  you've got a real life application, the lesson is sure to have a better chance of being retained.  A lot of times though the parents are not available when the time is ripe.

3.  Maybe you're like Plutarch, Socrates, Aristotle, or some other great philosopher who can write { and speak } really well about morals and character.  But I'm not.

4.  Maybe you can quote 25 verses based on particular character trait/s from the Bible?
Or have a way of explaining the moral actions of people in the Bible?  But I can't. 

{ Book Learning }

Character - and it's opposite.

A clear definition of the character.

A quote about the character.

An animal that exhibits this character.

I will's of the character.

The benefits of the character.

What it looks like in real life.

All these different aspects help one to reach an understanding of what the character means.

5.  Understanding and Knowledge.  You've all probably heard of the word: benevolence, haven't you?  But how many of you know of a good off the hand definition in which to teach your child?  In the spur of the moment, right when you see that your child needs it the most.  Better yet, what it should look like in practice as opposed to its opposite?

Do you really have time to pull out your bible?  Or go grab your dictionary, or jump on the internet to get an understanding just so you can teach the concept to him?  What if you simply rely upon some vague idea of what it is from your own childhood?  I dunno about you, but when I'm in the shopping center and my trolley is full, and I've got 5 tired children, and just needing to go home - I don't have my bible or my computer handy.   Nope.  What I've got is my backed up memory of my BOOK learning.

Better yet, my child, SHE has a backed up memory of her book learning too.

All I have to do is prompt her!
And bring her back to remembrance of what she has already read, written, and thought about.

I honestly feel that this is something that is genuinely needed because a lot of people don't come from fantastic pious backgrounds or have great character models in their lives, families, or victorious christian life experiences.  Not these days.  By getting out those books we can fill our minds with these great ideals.  We can fill our minds with the parameters that lead to some degree of virtuous living.  These then become our go to's when push comes to shove in the real world and we're out there in need of some character.

By doing character book learning,

ie, learning the definitions, characteristics, and what it looks like

LAYS a FOUNDATION 

for a particular character, that can be drawn upon when the required time comes 

to put it into practice.

How do you teach character?

Do you use a book?

Let me know.

This week I'll be linking up with:



I hope you will join us too.

To infinity and beyond!

{ Week 2 }

After a full 6 weeks off school I got a bit antsy and decided that we needed to get back to it all again.  So, we did.

Here are some quick takes on some of the things that we've been up to:

Noah decided that he needed to grow a bit more.

Hannah did a wordsearch for Lesson 2 in her spelling.  This is the format that the Wordsearches will come in for the Grade 2 level.  I'll just change the clipart as I go along though.  

As a little ps.  See that font I used for the Wordsearch word?  Yep, it's awesome isn't it?  I thought so too - so that's why I bought it, my first one from KG fonts.  I keep eyeing off her other fonts for purchase too.  She does awesome font work.

All three girls are doing Saxon 5/4.  They started last year, staggered, so this means that they are all at different lessons in the book.  Hannah worked on lesson 29 today.  { Chloe lesson 34, and Phebe lesson 22 } I printed and bound my own little exercise/workbook for their work. It has enough room to do 6 weeks worth of work, then I'll print another one when this one is filled up.  Saxon do provide a reproducible but I wanted a tidier version.

This is the front page of a lesson and the remainder of the lesson is on the other side.  Basically they do all their workings and answer in each box corresponding to the question in the text book.  They only go up to 30 questions when it's in full force, but don't let that fool you into thinking that it is a short and easy curriculum.  By the time they actually do their lesson and get their work done it still takes somewhere between 1 - 2 hours each.  I am sure that I will have quite a lot to say about Saxon Math throughout the year.  It will probably be mostly about how much I LOVE it.  :o)   ha ha ha.

We started with "Patience" in the character department.  Funny that because I really needed a lot of patience these last couple of weeks, being sleep deprived and all.

Don't forget that you can get these two books - FREE - just check in my freebies tab for their links.

We tried some opinion writing using an interactive notebook framework.

The inside:

We also tried sorting between fact and opinion.  Guess we'll be having some more practice with that type of thing this year too.

Then we had a go at writing facts / opinions.  They're little flaps that lift up with their sentences underneath.

On another day we did this for the days activity.  An awesome little fun activity that I got free off TpT from Not So Wimpy Teacher.   Basically you roll the dice to get a number and then you round it off to the nearest 10 and 100.  Because it's interactive, you just lift up the little flap and put the answer underneath.  Just click the photo if you want to go and grab her free download.

We did a ton of other things, but yeah, I'll have to remember to keep the camera charged and next to me in future I think.  :o)

I hope you like my little snap shot of some of the things that we've been doing.  I can't wait to get a bit more in depth show and tell with some of our curriculum, in particular the Saxon Math, English, and Spelling.

Thanks for visiting.

Character Worksheets { freebie }

One of the things that I worked on in December happened to be the Character Worksheets.  These new worksheets are very specifically designed to work with this book:

{ Oh, this book is the secular version - so useful in public school classrooms too. }

This 53 page download contains worksheets for 49 Character traits.

Here's an example:

It covers spaces for which animal reflects this character, definition of the character, rewards of this character, a quote for this character, and space for the 'I will's' too.

Each page is matched as close as I could to the animal presented in the book.

My intention is to do one little tiny section each school day - taking one school week to complete each worksheet.  Nothing too taxing on the girls, but hopefully passing the message and understanding of each character as we go.

If you'd like a copy - just click on either picture sample to download from googledocs.

Ah, and now that this little project is done I need to go back and continue working on updating the other original pages { and finishing them off as well }.  I am thinking of making them for junior writers who can't squish all this information on the one page.

Thanks for visiting.