Two years ago, when we were reading King Lear with another family, I searched high and low for some paper dolls or paper puppets we could use to keep our characters straight as we read the play aloud. I never found quite what I was looking for.
My daughter has always loved drawing and painting. She started working on a set of people. She came to me one morning to announce that she had created a Shakespeare resource for families who might like to “act out” their Shakespeare as they read it. That gave her the idea to rework Shakespeare’s original play to include only the parts that were in the Lamb’s retellings we’d previously read and have puppets for each of those parts. Her adapted play is not to replace reading the actual Shakespeare play, but to allow co-ops or families to put on a shortened version that keeps the main story intact.
Hence Act It Out Shakespeare came to be. My 12 year old’s entrepreneurial idea. Currently, The Tempest is available for purchase. Complete with 11 puppets to cut out and glue to popsicle sticks (if desired), a play, and a lit of characters per scene so you can easily assign roles without going through the entire play.
Next, she is working on A Midsummer’s Night Dream and Much Ado About Nothing. Leave her comment to let her know which plays you will be doing this school year and she will add them to her running list.
My kids are now in Year 8 and 6 with a Kindergarten student joining in occasionally. We also have a 3 year old. We’re in the History Cycle of Ancient Near East (3500BC to 550 BC) and American and British History from 1000-1680AD. Since we’re starting from the very beginning, I especially wanted to add diversity to history this time around.
We discovered Charlotte Mason and jumped into Ambleside Online six years ago when my oldest was in Year 2. Year 2 is the same time period as we are doing now. However, back in Year 2, I wasn’t trying to add diversity to history. I was just sticking to the book list. I also didn’t have a very clear understanding of what the Charlotte Mason principles even were! It’s been such a wonderful journey delving deeper in my understanding of her philosophy of education. We no longer use Ambleside Online because we like the whole family to be on the same history cycle, but I still visit it often to help me choose books!
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Amber of Heritage Mom mentioned some great resources for studying the great nations of Western Africa: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. We will add all of those books in as well. Some of those we are reading and narrating during our summer break, as they were available at the library.
American History
As I looked at American History for the 1000-1680 time period, and considered what narrative I wanted to teach my children, I realized that we have never actually studied the indigenous peoples who were here before the Europeans. Searching on the Living Books for All People Facebook Group, I decided on several books to round out both our Ancient and American History streams to include indigenous people of North America and South America.
Ideally we would have read Our Island Story in this time slot, but we have already read this book. Leah Boden of A Modern Miss Mason recommends The Story of Britain. (We’ve actually used this book for Modern Times and it is one of my son’s favorite history books.) The Winston Churchill history books were another possibility. However, ultimately, I decided on the Genevieve Foster books (The World of Columbus and Sons & The World Of Captain John Smith) because I like how these books present a wider picture of people and events around the world for a time period. There are issues – I especially do not like the sections between page 29 and 41 in the Columbus and Sons book. I have not read the whole book yet, but have several weeks to do so before school starts. I will be assigning specific non-problematic sections for the kids to read.
How to fit it all in
This is how I am scheduling the books:
Monday – Ancient History of the Near East Tuesday – Africa (see Heritage Mom for details) Wednesday – (Term 1) History of Indigenous People in the Americas (Turtle Island and Before Columbus) (Term 2 and 3) America History (An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People and A Young People’s History of the United States) Thursday – World History Friday – Geography
Any other recommendations for adding diversity to history? Drop me a comment. What biographies and historical fiction do you love for this time period?
What attracted me to the Montessori philosophy when we first started homeschooling was its emphasis on teaching toddlers and preschoolers practical life skills. My daughter was using a knife early on (she’s not quite 3 in that post).
I strongly believe that kids should be included in food prep early on. My 11 month old stands at the kitchen counter and watches me prepare dinner. She munches on zucchini, or whatever I am cutting at the time. Soon she’ll be able to help me stir or add things to a mixing bowl. When we lived in Costa Rica and I had a huge kitchen island, I would set up my then 3 month old son on his tummy time pillow so he could watch his sister and I prepare dinner. My oldest was 2 at the time and would tear lettuce for our salad. My kids have always been in the kitchen with me.
Here’s a video to get you and your children started with knife skills.
Morning Time is a time in which we gather together to focus on Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. We’ve been doing a “together time” since before I even knew it had a name. However, reading Your Morning Basket this year and listening to the Your Morning Basket Podcast has helped me be especially purposeful in what I put in our morning basket.
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Our Morning Basket Contents
We have daily items and weekly items. We often do not get to everything. When I was in teacher college, we learned to always prepare more than was needed and I got into that habit and seem to still do this in home educating. This list is my ideal – the “if-all-goes-perfectly-and-the-baby-sleeps -and-the-others-don’t-argue” list. Before the baby came along ten months ago, it was much easier to get through all the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in this list in one morning, fitting in all the weekly things too. Now, everything gets rearranged and sometimes (many times) we can’t get to it all. It’s okay with me. I basically put a timer for one hour and see how far we get. Next day, after prayer and religion, I will pick up where we left off on the list and cycle through.
First Communion by Mother Loyola (she wrote our all-time favorite too) Even if you aren’t preparing for First Communion, I highly recommend First Communion. Every time I read a portion of it to the kids, I am inspired to be a better follower of Christ and to renew my effort in looking toward eternity. Mother Loyola just has a gift for being able to write for children without dumbing anything down, so her writing actually really speaks to adults’ hearts, too.
Poetry Loop: we read one poem (or one page) per day rotating through the following and strive to memorize the ones from resource #3 and #4.
Scripture Memory: psalms from the Prayer resource we use
Hymn and Folk Song: I have kind of dropped hymns (gasp) because the kids get to sing hymns in our church choir. We were using this hymn book in last year’s morning time. And for folk songs, we LOVE the Little House Folk Song book, but this American Song Treasury was our favorite before. We also sometimes dip into From Sea to Shining Sea, but I like the song treasury better.
French and/or Spanish read-aloud– we have a lot of books in these languages but I sometimes also find some at the library. Our favorite French books are the Emilie books. I also use Cherrydale Press French and Spanish books in this slot, but not both on the same day!
Literature – this one is always changing and is usually from the Year 1 or 3 Ambleside Free Read list. However, currently we are reading Canadian Summer. If you haven’t read the three books about the Mitchells, you really should. They are humorous and lovely; my kids love them.
Music Appreciation: now that we’ve done almost all the SQUILT volumes, we are just following the Ambleside Online Composer study once a week.
Picture Study: I print off the Ambleside Online suggestions and laminate them and we narrate one print per week.
Geography and Art History – I realize that is a lot of geography titles, but they are all different and we enjoy all of them. It might just take us longer to get through them. The following are on a loop:
Hillyer’s Art History (I have a super old edition that includes Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture).
So there you have it. It seems like a lot, but it is all things we love and look forward to, and we aim for one hour and then move on and if there’s some extra time later in the day, we might continue some more readings, or, more likely, we will just go outside and enjoy being in nature instead.
Morning Time is a time in which we gather together to focus on Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. We’ve been doing a “together time” since before I even knew it had a name. However, reading 