Middle School Art and Music

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May 7, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 4 Comments

Middle school is tough.

Art and music in middle school is really tough.

I like to teach art and music along with history from year 1 and we cycle through every 4 years, digging deeper each cycle.

This unit was our 3rd time through for my eldest.

How I teach art and music:

Listening
Fundamentals, Theory, Vocabulary
History
Practicing and/or Performing

We listened to Haydn’s Farewell Symphony.

It was part of our classical history studies with Tapestry of Grace Year 2 and the book was on the girls’ list of reading, but we read it together as a family and was delighted and then I found the whole symphony on YouTube. It is magnificent.

Liz finally broke out her acrylics and painted this as she listened:

She loves abstract art.

I love her representation of the musicians’ candles. She explained which parts of her painting meant which emotion from the symphony.

Brilliant.

We often create and complete notebooking pages with music and art.

Check out these great Haydn notebooking pages.

Famous Artists & Picture Study Notebooking Pages

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Wizard of Oz Unit

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April 29, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 6 Comments

We really enjoyed our Wizard of Oz Unit Study.

When I think of Wizards, I immediately think of the Great Oz. The kids and I love that horse in the movie. Check out the meaning of the phrase.

Weren’t there lots of unexpected turns in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? {You can get all the books on Kindle for almost free!} Kate is already reading the 2nd one!

Of course, the girls and I saw the new Oz the Great and Powerful movie. Opening weekend!

I had loads of fun planning our Oz sensory bin.

Rainbow rice and pasta. Emerald beads in a bucket and bowtie. A wooden rainbow. Oz characters from Grandma and a lion finger puppet.

Oz preschool pack printables.

I downloaded them for Alex. The girls loved it too.

3 part matching cards. Alex is telling me they lost the match to the Cowardly Lion. sigh

We used the puppets to retell the plot and practiced the reading pages.

The kids are all coloring pages for their lapbooks!

least and most favorite characters pages.

Kate and Tori both loved Dorothy and Tori disliked the Wicked Witch. Kate said the Cowardly Lion was annoying and talked too much. ha!

map work: coloring in the state of Kansas and color coding the regions of Oz.

I really love this one!

Paying it forward. Did you know that last Thursday was The Day?

We discussed how Dorothy was so kind and generous. She could have returned home to Kansas at any time had she known how. She wasn’t resentful at all but truly pleased that she helped her friends.

Tori and Kate wrote some ways she could be kind to others. I love this Pay It Forward printable! I also love it that it has a hot air balloon!

Kate said she could give flowers, food, and toys to friends. She could help with cooking.

Tori wrote that she could bake cakes and pick flowers for neighbors and friends, help Dad in the garden, clean up, help with Alex, and doing chores without being asked.

Liz does research on Oz Wikia to compare movies to the book.

I found these awesome stickers of original illustrations! Love Dover!

I’d gotten these fun glasses around Easter. Perfect for Oz play. Emerald goggles!

The girls finish up their lapbooks and notebooking:

Tori is a “cowardly” reader. I gave her “liquid courage” to help. It’s just mango juice with some sweet and sour. I would’ve added some 7Up {‘cause fizzies always help!}, but we’re all out.

Resources:

NotebookingPages.com LIFETIME Membership

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Math Monday: Symbols and Zero

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January 28, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We had trouble last time we had word problems. The girls read them and didn’t know whether to add or subtract. So now the girls have this handy dandy chart in their math journals to help them decipher the words in context.

My SIL pinned this math symbols chart. Perfect!

I thought the girls would like this pattern activity (scroll down to box#8). I admit I lost way too much perusing her site and subsequent links and downloading all these fun mathtivities for later!

The girls loved making these Zero the Hero posters.

Princess dresses help Kate do her best during school time.

Then, we watched Schoolhouse Rock DVDs.

ProSchool Membership - Productive Homeschooling

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Winter Nature Walk

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January 12, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 8 Comments

Join us on our walk around our neighborhood?

We ventured out for a winter nature walk.

I love the birches in this area. Their bark really stands out…and has eyes!

an evergreen silhouette with the sun shining through it.

a tree that still has leaves on it

Just look at that gorgeous bark! I think it’s a striped maple.

crows in the tree. they were eating walnuts.

and, look! a crow footprint in the snow.

this tree already has buds on it

this birch with buds and catkins

juniper berries. Tori was good to spot these.

a really big beautiful rock in someone’s front yard

a poignant picture of unpruned withered roses with rocks

Tori was excited by how long her shadow was.

Rosehips along the next door neighbor’s fence. I love how they stand out against the gray and snow.

our new nature display box. I found this at Hobby Lobby. perfect.

the girls hard at work drawing the milkweed pods

Tori is proud of her tree silhouette page

Katie is drawing the buds and crows in her tree silhouette

Alex drew his pictures too. He loves being a part of it all.

Tools we use and love

Sure glad we got in that walk since we’re in a blizzard this weekend!

Tori got a little rock set for Christmas and we’re going to explore that since all our rocks are under billows of snow right now.

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Math Monday: Nursery Rhymes

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January 7, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

Nursery Rhyme math to coincide with our nursery rhyme readings in history! Most nursery rhymes originated during the Middle Ages and Renaissance to help teach lessons to children.

I got this journal free from a TpT shop. She must’ve taken it down now. She has lots of other fun printables though!

We talked the math problems through and they helped me figure it out. I wrote it on the board and they copied it on their papers.

This one is Humpty Dumpty’s men. Five men…how many fingers did they have to help Humpty Dumpty?

The finished page…drawing…words…equation

Music Math!

Dad taught the count of the musical notes and helped them through counting their notes on these fun math pages.

8th notes…counting by twos. they enjoyed having something different in math.

Check it out here…Early Math with Mozart!

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New Year Homeschool Goals

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January 3, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 4 Comments

It’s back to work. Here are our new year school goals.

We worked on a nursery rhyme unit with our Tapestry of Grace studies this week. We practiced rhyming and picking out the main character in the poems. These notebooking pages come with the TOG lower grammar printable pack. I have a Mother Goose book that my uncle gave me when I was 3 and the girls loved seeing his inscription on the title page to me.

We started some new copywork to go along with our Hero Tales Bible study. The girls love the missionary stories so far. We read the story each morning and the girls recite our character trait and verse. They copy the message and they draw something meaningful from the story. They love the drawing element.

We’re on lesson 21 of All About Reading, Level 2. They’re coming right along. Almost fluent readers! Tori likes the hands on stuff more than Kate. And she needs the lessons more. Kate is almost bored, but it’s good review.

Kate is putting story cards in chronological order.

Our January poem. I made this on Publisher. Kate already has it memorized. She recited it for me today! She remembers it from last year. I guess I should find a new one, but I love this one. I plan to make a Montessori poetry basket to go with our snow unit this month. Stay tuned!

Mama’s favorite: Katie reading the Tacky the Penguin books while she waits on Tori and Mama to transition to the next thing.

Happy New Year!

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Narration with Technology

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December 26, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Notebooking was getting monotonous and boring for my tween daughter.

Lightbulb.

I had been fighting threatening negotiating with Liz to get her history narration//writing/accountability questions/thinking questions completed. Tapestry of Grace can be overwhelming without a little planning here and there. Picky Choosy. We sure can’t do it all.

I threw an outline together on PowerPoint and told her to fill it in with the information.

She loved it. No more battle. Why didn’t I think of it before? When I taught public school, I often had my students use PowerPoint and Publisher for assessment. And Liz is now of the age those students were. Perfect.

We will do more technology narrating each week now.

And it’s good to show Dad that she accomplished something. Since all she wants to do is lay around and read and talk about it. He wants to see a product. Win/win/win.

How do you make notebooking fun for your older kids?

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Geography Notebooking

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November 18, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

I used our Geography A-Z book for definitions of the bodies of water.

Liz and I wrote the definitions on the board for Tori and Katie to copy.

It was a practice in patience. Katie hates copying sentences. or definitions. or anything really.

Elizabeth’s completed page:

I plan to review some geography terms and the bodies of water this week as we go over the story of Thanksgiving in detail. It fits well with our history studies of exploration during the Renaissance.

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Thanksgiving Turkey Fractions Math

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November 15, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Tori is rather obsessed with turkeys, as it is.

She cannot wait until hunting season. We have a friend who is willing to take her to hunt turkeys. I don’t know where she got this idea, but it has persisted for more than a couple years now.

So, when I saw these, I just knew. She loves it!

3 part matching fractions cards. with turkeys!

Tori is reading the number words to make sure they match up with her fraction numbers and pie picture.

Here’s the set-up.

I did help by sorting the cards into three piles. She already completed the match for 1/3. She’s reading the cards for 2 1/2. The orange cards are challenge cards. She did those first, of course. Tori completed all the card matches and then copied the number words and fraction numbers onto her page.