Growing up I knew absolutely nothing about composers or classical music. With the exception of the tune of Ode to Joy thanks to the Drink Milk Love Life commercials back in the 90’s (what I’ve since learned: the commercial lied; milk doesn’t make everyone love life). Was this commercial just a Canadian thing? So, despite my limited composer knowledge, or maybe because of it, I wanted to give my children a little more of a well rounded music education than I had. Even though I had good intentions, it was a slow start, but we are picking up pace now. For our first composer study we decided to go with Antonio…
Composer Study with Living Books: Antonio Vivaldi
I’ve learned over the past few years the benefit of reading living books and I am making a real effort this year to add as many living books into our days as possible. Composer study and artist study are not something that are generally taught in the regular school system but hang around homeschoolers for a little while and chances are you will hear about them soon enough! Composer and artist study could be really overwhelming for kids but teaching them with living books makes it so easy, both to teach and for the kids to understand. Who doesn’t love listening to stories about the lives of people in the past?…
Using Games in our Homeschool
My husband has always loved games, he even has a group of friends that get together every month to play games. So it comes as no surprise to me that both my kids ask to play games often. The only games I played when I was younger were pretty much Clue with my brother and endless rounds of Monopoly with one of my cousins (we did not play by the rules). We don’t have a huge selection of games but we are slowly building it over birthdays and Christmases, games are such a great gift to give kids. Thankfully almost every game out there has some kind of educational benefit to…
An Overview of Our Homemade Grade 1 & Preschool Curriculums
Today is our official start to our first year homeschooling! I have been waiting for this day for about 3 years and I’m kind of nervous that it will all blow up in our faces, I don’t think it will but that fear is definitely there. When I started thinking about what I all wanted the kids to learn this year part of me got overwhelmed and just wanted to buy a full pre-made curriculum. BUT one of the reasons we are homeschooling is to have more flexibility in our days and our learning and I knew that wouldn’t be the best way for us. So, I decided to hack together…
