Making it Work for Us

There are some days that I get out of bed and almost before my feet touch the floor the little blondie, who refuses to stay in his own bed at night, has already whispered to me, a list of what he'd like read to him or of things that he would like to do. I feel so bad for him. The reality is that we may accomplish one or maybe two of the things he names together and the rest of the time my little Kangaroo does his own thing. I'm pleased though. Today he brought me something extremely easy to accomplish. Can I please listen to this cd Mum, he says. Wow! Too easy :D! Kangaroo wanted to listen to the story of Australian Settlement and Convicts, 'A Dramatized Australia History Study'. I then played it through our laptop and because the cd is without images I set the laptop to play through a screensaver of Monets paintings, this terms Artist study. I'm bucking the AO system and going our own way this year. The AO pictures are all too dark and dreary for small children so I'm going with something lighter and more child orientated, Impressionism, and we'll immerse in the style for the entire year. Monet, Cassatt, Renoir, Van Gogh are our major artists and for Australian 'Impressionism' we''ll be experiencing the sublime works of Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin.

Extremely too easy wasn't it. Australian history and artist study in one shot. Thanks Kangaroo!

You know it's a Living Book when they start dressing up and want to be a convict and lump around something on their leg as a make shift ball and chain.

And wanting maps drawn on their hands.

And playing at escaping. My reluctant Kookaburra joins in beautifully with where Kangaroo leads in their history play. Our children balance each other fittingly. One is very technical and logical and the other is more language arts, creative and together they compliment and draw each other out (and challenge each other!). And so we have a cheeky escaped convict peering back through the bars. Catch me Mum!

Kangaroo drew his own compass rose, Arthur Phillips ship and lo... Oz! complete with our little mate, Tasmania :).

Between this play and chores our Sunday morning disappeared into an afternoon of what I'm going to class as 'musical studies'. The word musical is doing double duty here :P.

We won't be studying a composer this term but I will continue to play classical music as we please and read whatever falls into our lap regarding composers because Kookaburra and I have been extremely fortunate to have fallen in with our little towns' Musical production of The Music Man. So our concentrated musical energies will be going towards rehearsing for the show in April. The soundtrack is on permanent repeat in our house and while Kookaburra doesn't seem to mind , I think the other men of the house would like to be done with Mr Matthew Broderick singing 'Trouble'. Personally, I adore the library scene and the Wells Fargo Wagon scene. *Sigh* I'm really loving musicals and am so glad to be able to validly add that to our list of learning.

Sometimes life just leans towards the learning curve a little more easily than other days . I think I'm finally accepting that a learning environment will differ from family to family and that ours, which has progressed and grown with us over the years, right now, at this moment, looks super.

Memory Work

Both Charlotte Mason and The Well-Trained Mind advocate memory work and we try to include some most days. Mostly we're happy still working through Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses and Kangaroo and Kookaburra have memorised four poems from there, Kookaburra's best is 'The Wind'. They love to perform crazy actions to that particular poem but for the recording I asked them to be sedate. Kookaburra was really disappointed by that and even just a little sulky about it - he loves being crazy!!!! We're also memorising a bible verse a week and they are very proud to pull that out whenever they can. Even though I can't truly say I'm a believer, I still want to raise our boys with christian morals and values which I know will go a long way to help building solid foundations in their character and for me that means most days we read the bible and we practice planting a verse in our hearts so that it can come to our aid when we need it.

When I was a kid, I was petrified of being in front of my class and speaking and that still carries over to being an adult. I loathe this trait and I'm trying to do my best to help our boys be comfortable public speakers. Last year we attended our local Eisteddfod and we left inspired and full of admiration for the kids and adults that could bring themselves to be the center of attention and flourish. Kookaburra was definitely interested in giving it a go this year so I'm helping him learn a monologue which is called 'The Kid' and it's great to hear him recite it and also hear Kangaroo quietly chiming in in the background. I don't know if he'll be allowed to perform this but it's entertaining for us as a family and great memory work for both our boys.



and if I could sing, I would Looove to do this.....



Kristin Chenoweth is Awesome!!!!

Thanks girls for yesterdays comments :) I remember now that the other thing I really enjoyed about blogging were the comments left by you. It was so supportive of you to be instantly there for me when I was feeling so blue. Thankyou :) And I also enjoy reading your blogs but haven't commented because I wasn't blogging. That can now change. It's nice to be back.