Not Back to School trip

This week is Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish new year, and generally when we would restart our homeschool after a loooooooong summer break hanging out with daddy. It's a fun day of starting out with fresh curriculum and books; and eating lots of sweet things (we have fruit, yoghurt and honey for lunch!) to remind ourselves of how sweet and good God is.

Our home-ed co-op. however, prefers to start a little earlier, and this year, we decided to join them on a trip to Prestatyn in Wales. It was so much fun to go with our cousins and the kids had a fantastic time.

We went to surf school at Surf Snowdonia, to great Orme copper mines and on a fossil hunt; we played on the beach, in an incredibly mild ocean; we went to Conwy castle and on an audio tour of an Edwardian house.

It was great fun to catch up with old friends, as one of Cosmo's favourite buddies who left our co-op last year made the effort to book in to the same resort and hang out with us all.

On the way home we stopped in at Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the MAD museum. It was incredible and the kids loved playing with all the exhibits, particularly a typewriter that was attached to fishing wires, which tapped glasses that had been tuned to different pitches.

You can see our video of what we did below:

Butterfly World

Today we went on a trip with our co-op to Butterfly world.

The kids had a great workshop where they got to hold different insects and even giant snails (both my kids refused to touch anything "Mummy! That's absolutely disgusting!") but really enjoyed the leaf cutter ant exhibit. 

  

They also loved being in the butterfly house with all the butterflies floating around. Lychee and her cousin Bon had a lot of fun seeing who could get closest without touching one.

 

The musical garden was a great play area too and inspired me to get some larger items for ours.



Everyone was exhausted on the way home, especially having spent the weekend at Alton Towers already, but we had a really fun time.

Music Appreciation

I found a link on pinterest for How to Teach Music Appreciation The Charlotte Mason Way and I've decided to add it into our schedules this year.

The author suggests picking one composer each term, listening to a piece of their music daily and changing it each week (easily done whilst we are on copywork or something else). We then also need to discuss and learn about the composers life and learn about them.

I think part of the reason I'm so excited about it is that we have really been enjoying a fantastic audiobook which includes the story of Johann Sebastian Bach and I had no idea what an amazingly faithful overcomer he was.

We're going to start with Debussy this term, because I like his music, then do Bach in January (for contrast and because I already have a biography of him) and the Chopin in the summer (because I like his music too.

If you are interested in doing this with us, I've made youtube playlist with some of their music so you can play it easily on your phone, tablet, laptop etc... whilst your littles are working to help familiarise them with the music.

Bach
Brahms
Chopin
Debussy
Mozart

And I'll add more as we get through them, so just keep an eye on the playlists in my channel, or let me know if you make your own and I'll add a link to them.

Thanks.

Our musical garden

Behind the scales I built last week there's a secret passage that led to a massive compost heap. 

We dug all the compost out and used it to build our raised beds, but it left us with a massive crater that was just begging to become a play space. 

A few xylophones and some tambourines later and we have what the kids are calling their 'musical den'. 

All that was needed was a little fishing wire for hanging some cheap plastic instruments.

And a screw driver to remove some of the fun parts from said plastic instruments.

And the best part is that now all the noisy play can happen in the garden making our home a much more peaceful place ;-)

JET PACK!

As I've posted before, we LOVE Readeez.

Well Lychee may not be reading fluently yet, but she is definitely making progress, and today, thanks to Readeez, she sang her first recognisable song without just joining in 'laa-ing' over what someone else was singing. 

The chosen song was... a Readee!! One of our absolute favourites that Cosmo has been singing for weeks. I was just walking past the school room when I heard as clear as a bell the bridge from JET PACK.  

'I got my J E T P A C K (not very clear, but recognisable tune, followed by  a perfect 'With me, with me, with me'. 

So proud.

Here's the song if you want to here it:

Readeez

We love Readeez in our house. If you don't know what a Readeez is, you should check out this video.

I mean, seriously how cute, yet stealthily educational, is that?

Cosmo's personal favourite is 'Geometreez' where the little girl, 'Isobel' performs various acrobatics to demonstrate rotating on various axes.

There's readeez to help with general phonics recognition and frequent sight words for smaller children with reading and english grammar for slightly older kids. The videos use music and 'syllable sync' (where the words pop up syllable by syllable as they are spoken and sung) to help children learn.

I love this. How much easier was it to learn the alphabet, months of the year or even the periodic table when you had a song that went with it?

And then there's just some really cute videos that my children love like the lullaby 'Tonight and every night'.

The great thing about Readeez is that they don't dumb it down too much. There are long words, used in context, that my children learn to recognize and use without being concerned by them.

If you want to just watch a few readeez there are a tonne on youtube, but I recommend downloading them for a couple of reasons.

i) somebody works really hard to produce this excellent and innovative resource and I like to support that. I respect that they give so much content away for free and think it's nice to give back

ii) they are excellent value, especially if you by the bundle. Three half hour movies and a CD of songs is excellent for what ends up costing about £15.

Musicianship

We have joined up with a homeschool co-op where we live and now attend a 'musicianship' class on tuesdays. The teacher is brilliant, totally sensitive to our special educational needs, and the children are learning pitch, rhythm, conducting and having a great time.

The games they play often involve using their whole bodies to show variance in pitch or volume, and listening carefully, as well as having a chance to try out different instruments.

Afterwards there is a choir with some older children, but sadly we've not managed to stay for that so far. The first week we went Cosmo was overwhelmed with so many people and got very distressed so we left. This week some of the older children weren't being very nice to him. He didn't seem aware, but I couldn't stand by and let them bully him even if he didn't know it. I called him over and he suddenly realised something must be wrong. Incredibly embarrassed he demanded that we leave right away, so we did.

I'm really hoping we'll manage to stay for choir at some point before christmas (only one session left).

It breaks my heart to see him being picked on, but then I remember that this would have been ten times worse in school, and that I wouldn't have been there to intervene.

I'm so grateful that we still have the option to home educate in this country. If we didn't, I think I'd emigrate.

Cosmo's first song

Cosmo made up his first song today (well, the first one that wasn't just random syllables thrown together!)

I was really excited, but he was really embarrassed that I'd overheard him singing :o(

It went like this:

King of Glory

King of Glory

Have some Glory

King of Glory

You died for me

Tell the story

about the glory

King of Glory

The benefits of classical music??

Will playing classical music to Cosmo really affect his intelligence?
I'm not sure where this rumour comes from, but it seems to be fairly prevalent amongst toy manufacturers (baby einstein et al) and is often applauded as one of their (only) unique selling points. But where is the evidence that any of this will help Cosmo in the long run?
I can see that playing gentle background music whilst we play encourages a peaceful atmosphere, possibly allowing for slightly less frustration when those blasted puzzle pieces won't quite slot together in his desperate clutches, but really, is it any more than that?
Classical music is also valuable in that whilst we are listening to it, we are less likely to have the TV on, or the radio, filling his little mind with advertising and negative images/messages. It also covers such a broad genre of music that there is something for all occasions; a little Brahms or Chopin before bed is incredibly calming whilst Debussy's cakewalk is fun and playful. Would anyone be willing to risk playing some Wagner during a temper tantrum?
We have also taken to belting out some good old fashioned gospel tunes recently. Cosmo loves the repetitive words and recurrent tunes. He can even join in by the end of each verse.
So, if anyone genuinely knows any reason why classical music would improve my children's intelligence then please, do share. I wouldn't want to be stunting my sons intellectual abilities with Andrae Crouche ;)