Book Review - Sense and Sensibility

To be honest, I didn't even finish this book. I've noticed that a lot of Jane Austen's books start out very slow, but get good at least half way through the books and they always end up being worth reading, but I've been in the mood for a good page turner lately and this wasn't doing it for me. I wasn't highlighting very many interesting thoughts either. At this point, I'm hoping that I will come back to it when I need a Jane Austen fix and hopefully I will love it then.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

I can't believe it's been two weeks of homeschool already. We've had fun and we've had some tough moments, but only one bad day and I've learned a lot from this experience. Keeping this blog is mostly to help me remember the things that I've learned along the way. I'm sure things will just keep changing too. I'm a parent, I'm use to that.

Kendi loves the new, bright, shiny workbooks right now. I was surprised by that at first, but I think it's just because they are new and something different. I have a feeling that the newness may where off. I'm even more surprised that Kendi doesn't love some of the games that I put together for math and such. In fact she kind of hates them. haha. Math is something that I really need to make a priority of figuring out right now. I think she needs more hands on manipulative math to do. The math book that I ordered is way below her level and not even fun anymore.

Kendi loves art. What kid doesn't? I'm so glad that this subject is well taken care of. I just need to schedule it into our week to make sure that it happens. There is so much we can do everyday and so little time to do it. Kendi could paint for hours.

My aunt passed away a couple of years ago. She had been taking art lesson's from Jared and was really quite good at it. Kendi and my aunt had become really close when my aunt was diagnosed with brain cancer. I was also very sick at the time and Kendi spent a lot of time with my parents who were also spending a lot of time with my aunt. Kendi and Aunt Mary would go for walks, draw and just talk together. It's safe to say they were best friends. My heart has never broken so hard as when I had to tell Kendi that Aunt Mary was gone. Mary's family left her art supplies with Jared. She had accumulated a lifetime supply of water-color equipment. Jared doesn't water-color much, but Kendi loves it. It is so fun to see her painting with professional paints from someone she loved with her daddy in the mountains that Mary was so fond of.

Kendi loves projects. I'm trying to think of some on-going ones. She already wants to start a project for the county fair next year. I'd like to get started on some service ones too.
I need to really remember why I'm homeschooling in the first place and not get all caught up in the fun things to buy and do. I really want Kendi to socialize with all age groups which means I need to start getting those types of activities set up soon. I also want her to learn how to work hard with a happy attitude. Anyone needing work done at their house, let us know. I also need to make sure that I'm focused on teaching her how to think and not what to think. I need to be a mentor, not a teacher. Sometimes this is hard when it comes to things like handwriting. She taught herself how to write and really doesn't want to take the time to relearn. I need to come up with a way to inspire her to want to.

I figured out that it helps to have a short, fun activity to start the day. It gets us in a positive school mode to begin. I'm glad that I have that old Kindergarten resource book from DI for that.

I just found out that the Montessori school nearby may let her do a subject or two with them. I'm meeting with them soon to find out more details. I love so many things about Montessori and it would be hard to do it at home so this would be a way for her to have Montessori and work with groups of kids in more age groups.

So far, I've really enjoyed homeschool and Kendi says she likes it too. My only fear is that time is flying by so fast. I want to make sure that I cover all the things that I wanted this homeschool to do.

Brilliant Video

Lessons Learned From Nature

As a child I spent so much time in nature that I will sometimes catch myself saying that I was raised in the mountains. I have a seldom, spoken-of love and respect for nature that is on a level that only another person who holds the same reverence for nature could understand. Henry David Thorough spent two years living in the woods, which is not enough in my opinion, and wrote a book about his experiences that he titled Walden, named after the pond he lived on. I have recently read this book and it has piqued my interest enough to make me want to share some thoughts and feelings about living with nature and what there is to learn.

Henry David Thorough is most well-known for this quote,

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

This quote is well into the book and at that point I didn’t believe he had even scratched the surface of what there was to learn from the woods. He had written a lot about observing nature with meticulous detail and how to survive by barely getting by so that a person may have some leisure time. I believe that there is a lot to observe and learn from nature, but there is a spiritual level that a person must come to know that makes you feel connected to an eternal realm of beauty and wonder and testifies of our Creator.

Most of his writings were only to prove that a poor man can have time to gain knowledge and progress his intellect by living simply off the land and supporting himself. He had strong feelings that society wasted too much time and money on materialistic, superfluous traditions that were only performed because everyone does them and deems them necessary. It is ironic to me that more than a century and half later, society has fallen so much further into that foolishness that he described so long ago.

Toward the end of the book, Thorough finally taps into what I feel there really is to learn from nature. He says,

“I delight to come to my bearings--not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may--not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is the only president of the day. . .”

Thorough begins to see a bigger picture from having spent time in the woods, from having spent time in silence to think and ponder on our short, little lives. He begins to tell about how important it is to gain education from nature. He made me realize how much of what I know now I learned from experiencing nature in one of the deepest ways possible, by hunting. He writes,

“. . . my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes--remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education." "It requires so much closer attention to the habits of [nature] that no other sport can substitute."

Thorough no longer prefers to hunt with a gun and I haven’t for a while either unless my freezer is empty. I have been privileged enough to hunt most of my life that I now can go out into nature and see it on the same level. There are so many lessons to learn beyond observing the patterns of animals and the elements of weather conditions and terrain and how they all effect the cycles of life and animals. You learn so much about yourself. Patience, endurance, respect for life, strength, hunting abilities, maturity and more than I can list. Thorough goes on to say about the matter,

“We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected,”

“Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself.”

We could all use some time away from society and noise. If only for a few hours to have some time alone to just think. It is amazing what can happen to a person who is left alone in nature long enough to begin to evaluate his life, his past and his future. Such a person would benefit in a most positive way. I have recently been told that nature is the best learning environment because you are surrounded only by the truest beauty in the purest and most uncorrupted form.

I’m so happy that I was fortunate enough to be raised in the mountains. To appreciate what they can hold for a person’s soul. I will most definitely pass on the learning experiences to my posterity and continue to enjoy the benefits of a heaven on earth.

Kendi's Kindergarten Curriculum

Well, this is just a start. I'm still looking for things and I'm not planning the whole year out right now. After reading through other bloggers' curriculum lists, I didn't think I had much of a curriculum collected until I wrote it all down. My main focus this year is to get Kendi reading really well. She is almost on a first grade reading level and I hope to get her reading on her own very soon. We want to do a lot of hands on and outdoor discovery instead of bookwork. I would like most of our curriculum to come from the classics. I have to keep telling myself that she is only 5 and Kindergartners don't spend a whole lot of time at school their first year. Kendi gets excited every time a package arrives and it's her homeschool supplies. I'm not sure how great any of these will work out, but we'll let you know if we really don't like them. Here is what we've put together so far. I think it's a good start.

• Scriptures - Book of Mormon and Bible. Right now we are just reading together as a family after breakfast and it is working really well. I'm keeping my eye out for some kind of activity book for kids. I'm picky about how accurate they are. Please do not suggest the Living Scriptures to me unless you want an earful.
• Science - I just ordered a science project book called, Big Book of Play and Find Out. I can see Jared getting excited about this one.
• Science - Our Father's World. A Christian book that follows the creation.
• History - I Love America, part 1
• Music and Foreign Language - LDS Primary Songbook in English and Spanish. We also like to have fun at the piano and will do that until her hands are big enough to start learning to play. Kendi loves to dance, but I'm torn about putting her in dance classes so early.
• Writing - A Reason for Handwriting. Another Christian based book. She also keeps a journal and we want to start writing letters to family and friends.
• Math - Early Bird Kindergarten Mathematics. We skipped the first one because she already knows her numbers pretty well. She also has a summer book to finish up called School Zone Big Kindergarten Workbook. I have a feeling she is going to whiz through these. I've heard good things about Saxon Math so we'll look into that next.
• Geography - We've started getting National Geographic magazine. She loves seeing the pictures and finding the countries on a map.
• Reading - We are about half way through the Family Literacy Center Readers. I'm keeping my eye out for first grade level readers for when she finishes those up. We will also be consistently reading from the TJed list of classics for children. I'm mostly read them to her right now.
• The Safety Kids series
• Standin' Tall series
• I have a Kindergarten resource book that was found at Deseret Industries. I will be using it for the activities and holidays for more fun things to do.
• The most education I ever got was in the mountains and I plan on doing the same with my kids.

We will be doing a lot more hands on stuff than bookwork and I can't even list all the things I have planned for that. We will spend a lot of time on art. Fortunately for Kendi, her dad is a professional artist and internet engineer. He will take over the art and math subjects when she gets real serious about them. He's already had her painting with real watercolors. I can't wait to get started to see how these resources work out for us. We are all excited. If there is a system on any subject that you are passionate about, please share.

Supplies We Need

Friends and family are always asking what our kids need. I'm going to make a list here of things we are looking for to use in our homeschool. I'm not necessarily asking for donations, but maybe some of you teachers or more experienced parents out there know of some good places to find these things. Also, if you have stuff kicking around that you don't mind getting rid of or selling for a discount, we love second hand items. This list will always be changing.

• Safety Kids cassettes or cds. I've found volume 2, but not volumes 1 or 3. I already have all three books.
• Standin' Tall Books. I have most of the cassettes, but no books to go with them.
• Somewhere to see a flag raising ceremony.
• Classic Books of all reading levels - A classic is any book worth reading more than once.

Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke

I've always liked the movies that have been made after this series of books by Janette Oke. From my experiences with movies made after books, the books are usually so much better. That made me interested in reading this book, hoping that it would have more to it than the movie. I was a little surprised at how different the original story was. I can't help but think that the movie improved on the original story. I like how in the movie the characters seem more intelligent. The movie also has more religious meanings throughout and more relationship development between Marty and Missie because of her being so much older in the movie. I don't buy a lot of movies, but this series would be something worth having. As for the books, I probably won't use them in my home-school.