Christmas Book Give Away Winner!

First of all let me appologize for not posting the winner earlier. I am so sorry. I have been under the weather (virus, in the bed) so I haven't been on the computer.
   Here's how I chose the winner. I walked in the room, told my hubby to pick a number 1 - 6 beings there were 6 commenters & he chose 3. I went back to my computer & looked at the comments & the third commenter is the winner. That blessed person is Chef Penny. I will be contacting you Penny to get your address so I can get your package in the mail.
   Thanks to all of you that entered the contest. Be on the look out for more give aways.

Mental Discipline: Capturing Details

    As a family, we are all working together trying to focus on training our mind. We are trying to train our mind to capture every tiny detail in a passage as we are reading it. It is amazing how we all can read the same passage, but have such a different interpretation of it.
    Our training began when my children were much younger. In the beginning of our school journey, as we would read a passage of topic, I would stop constantly in the middle of the reading and ask my children questions about things I would want to make sure they had comprehended. By asking those questions I was hoping to train their minds to learn how to sift the material for the nuggets it held. I wanted them to capture detail. For instance, instead of a man who was a soldier that fought in a war, I wanted them to know he was a soldier who lived in Virginia that fought in the Revolutionary war in 1783 who was under George Washington's command, etc.
    It did not take many times of me doing this that my children realized what I was wanting them to focus on and could soon answer most questions that I presented to them. At their young age they would give me short choppy answers. As they grew older their answers took more form. They now can tell a passage back to me as if they were telling a story. This past year and in the up coming months, they have worked on and will be working on putting their narrations on paper.
    The Art of Narration is much more than just telling a story. First, it teach's the child to develop a listening skill, which is needful their entire life. Secondly, the child is learning public speaking that will aide the child in communication skills, another trait needful for life. Thirdly, as the child develop's motor skills using pen and paper he or she can take the nuggets they collect from a passage and put them on paper. This will begin to teach the child the writing process, again, another communication tool needful for life.
    These are steps I've seen developing and growing in my own children's lives. They came about all because of us trying to train our mind to sift and collect. Narration has been a process in our lives similar to panning for gold. Our mind hear's the passage, we sift it, and only keep the gold nuggets (the valuable things).
When a gold minor is sifting for gold, he is careful to watch his pan, searching for nuggets that shine. In training a mind to sift nuggets from a passage, we need to take on this same carefulness, listening to see if we can find the things that shine (things that are important) in the passage we are hearing/reading.
    Over the years, the sift and collect process has been my means of testing of my children's knowledge. We've read many passages/books and my children can still tell me information that we read several years back. I would have to say that if a child's mind is trained to sift and collect information and then narrate it back in their own words, whether it be verbal or in writing, it will cause the child to retain the knowledge. It has been a proven factor in our family's life. I am a firm believer in proved and tried situations.
    I would personally recommend Narration be a part of any child's life due to the benefits it could add to their future communication skills. Narration is an art that has to be worked on. It doesn't just develop over night, but it is well worth the work. Take the time after read alouds with your family to point out the plot of the passage, the setting of that passage, discuss the characters and their characteristics, talk about what is happening in the passage, point out descriptive (adjectives) words the author used, sayings a person may have spoken in the passage, etc. All of these things will teach you and your child to sift and collect information when you are reading or listening to a passage.

Parents Step to the Side and Let Living Books Become Your Child’s Guide

We know that young people are enormously interested in the subject and give concentrated attention if we give them the right books. Vol. 6 Page 171

                Sometimes as parents we put strain on the child's attention by trying to emphasize a point entirely too much. When, if we would just step back and let the book do the talking to our child more would be accomplished.

                If we make a selection or our child chooses a great selection for a living book not much more has to be said from us as the teacher to the child. Living books are spirited. The characters come alive as our child is reading the book. By taking the book in small portions and reading it, our child becomes to know the characters in the book extremely well. The characters start to feel like old friends.

                Charlotte Mason exclaimed, “Having found the right book, let the Master give the book the lead and be content himself with the second place.” (Vol. 3 pg. 229) Living books capture our child’s attention. They are books that keep our child interested in a particular subject. If we have chosen a book of this nature, we can gladly step back and let the living book unfold the information before our child. No words from us will be necessary. Yes, we can have great discussions with our child, but the book will have already presented the material in such a manner to our child that we can relax and enjoy listening to our child expound on their knowledge they’ve retained from the book.

Charlotte Mason says in Vol. 6 Page 183 We spread an abundant and delicate feast in the programs and each small guest assimilates what he can. The child of genius and imagination gets greatly more than his duller comrade but all sit down to the same feast and each one gets according to his needs and powers. The surprises afforded by the dull and even the 'backward' children are encouraging and illuminating.” She is saying that if we as our children's teacher will give them books that are alive and in-depth in a particular topic each child will receive. Each child will digest what he or she has eaten (took in). All of your children sit around the same table and listened to the same book, but each bit off what they could chew. When you set your dinner table and all of your children gather round, all of them may not eat the same food. Some will have their preference over certain foods that you have prepared. That is the way it is when they sit around and listen to you read a great book. Even though all of your children may not always eat the exact same foods at your dinner table, all of them are growing. Whatever your child receives from the books you read to them is going to grow. One book that you read to them will lay a foundation for the next book read about that same topic. The more great books they read on a particular topic only keeps laying another stone on the foundation. You and your children just keep right on building a wonderful model. Before long your model is finished in that particular area and can be used as the example for another.

                There's an old saying that we all hear today and that is, "The proof is in the pudding." Well, my daughter is our proof of our pudding. When we started our home school journey I wasn't familiar with many curriculums and did not know very much about homeschooling so I just did what most people do. I copied my neighbor. It didn't take me long to realize that I had made a mistake. The curriculum I had chosen was not the curriculum for my family.

So I did what most people do for their second step, I switched to another curriculum. Again, this was another mistake. My daughter was growing to hate certain subjects by this time because the dry facts where just too much for her trying to memorize them for her test at the end of the chapters in her books. I knew I had to do something and I had to do something fast. She was getting further and further behind.

                At this point, I started doing my homework. That's when I discovered the Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. It sounded great so we decided to try it. I asked my children what they wanted to study and went to the library and got some books on that topic. It didn't take me many months to realize that my daughter was retaining the information. When we forgot about all the dates and the ... my daughter just looked at this time as another reading session and comprehended the information. The living books that we had chosen were enjoyable stories to her, not obligations holding her to memorize dates, etc.

                It was at this time that I realized that my daughter wasn't behind. She was just biting off what she could chew on, while her brother was being a pig, gobbling up everything. She may not fill her plate as full as her brother, but she is growing right along beside him.

                We don’t use living books for our entire curriculum, but for the most part. We choose a history ... book and use it for our Scope & Sequence. Our family will read in that book until we find something of interest. That is when we pull away from that book and go to the library, our learning begins. We’ll read book after book on the topic that interested us until we have gotten our fill of it. Then, we go back to our curriculum book and read some more until the next interest arises. Back to the library we go. This is our routine in our education. Living books have been tried and proved with our family. I can see the growth in my children’s knowledge regularly. We recommend living books.

                Oh the excitement you and your child will share!

P.S. If your family has not ever read Nothing Is Impossible by Dorothy Aldis, it’s one of our favorites. It’s about the life of Beatrix Potter and how she came about writing her short stories. The book really makes her characters come alive because you will see where they derived from.

Cultivating a Harvest

                Our children's minds are as a garden, soil waiting to be tilled and seeds planted in. We all know before you plant a garden there is work to be done. Much preparation and planning must take place. First, the decision has to be made to plant the garden, then; we have to decide where to plant it. Next, we would have to decide how big of an area we would want to plant. Then, what are we going to plant. And finally, we would begin the process of tilling the ground and dropping the seeds in.

                Our child's education is so similar to this process. First, we made the decision to home school, for whatever purpose your family chose. Next, we have to have the proper materials we are going to need for our child's education. That's when all the planning and preparation begins to take place. Just like the seed, we have to decide how much ground we are going to cover and with what kinds of seeds (curriculum). Depending on the type of fruit we want to produce will determine what kind of seeds we plant. We can't supply our child with a fabulous background in History and then expect to have a Rocket Scientist lurking about our home. Our children will be cultivated in to the seeds that have been planted and watered in their life. A germination process will occur. The ideas that are planted in their minds by us as their teacher begin to grow. They eventually take root. The more we present a particular subject to them, the more the idea grows in their mind. A fruit will come out in the end.

                Each year as a gardener plants a garden he or she does receive some type of fruit at harvest time. If much time and preparation was taken and the gardener watered and fertilized the garden as it was needed, the fruit come out delightful and tasty. Should the gardener just throw the seeds in the ground and not return to put forth time in his or her garden during the germination process the garden will not produce to its fullest potential. When a garden is not worked, all the weeds pulled out, it is not watered and fertilized, then the fruit tend to be small.

                If we as our child's teacher want him or her to learn at their fullest potential we have to provide them with great materials that would water the idea we are trying to cultivate or the germination process will be affected. Our fruit at harvest time will not be what we were expecting.

                Germination is the sprouting of a seed. All seeds need moisture, oxygen, and warmth to germinate. These requirements, especially the need for warmth, vary from species to species. In our case as home school parents this would mean the need for warmth from child to child. Every child is different and will need different levels of warmth, love and care in certain areas of their study. If we want delightful fruit at the end of each of our children's harvest time we are going to have to devote ourselves to meet each individual child’s need. One of our children may need just a bit more attention in a certain area than another of our children. If we want tasty fruit at harvest time we have to be like the gardener. We will have to show the love and care needed to cultivate that particular fruit. We must nurture the idea we are trying to cultivate. If proper conditions are present, a seed can germinate in a few days. If we take time to walk beside our child in an area they are having a problem with, it is possible for them to learn what we are trying to present to them in a few days. We should keep in mind that it takes seeds in a garden time to grow. With that in mind, it may take time for our child to grasp information being presented to him or her.                

On the other hand, not all seeds germinate. Some seeds take a while to germinate and others don't. The seeds that don't are dormant.

                Your child may not learn everything you are trying to teach them at a particular time. It may seem as if they are rejecting what you are laying before them. This should not cause you to worry. Take time to check out the soil you are trying to plant your seed in. Is it ready to cultivate the fruit you want to produce? The condition of the soil (your child's ability) must be properly nourished to produce your fruit.

                Dormancy of a seed does not mean it will not germinate. Sometimes the gardener has to give the seed a little time for the conditions of his soil to become favorable in order for the seed to begin to grow. Sometimes we just have to wait a little later to feed our children some ideas. Their minds ar just not quite where we think they need to be to absorb what we are laying before them. This means we have to just slow down and take our time. We have to give them time to grow. Fruit is not grown over night and neither will our child's ability to learn happen overnight. A garden is a work in progress and so is our child's education.

                When a young plant can gather water and minerals in its roots to make food in its leaves, the germination process is complete. As we take the time to teach our children how to gather material to feed the ideas in their mind we are bringing them to the end of germination. When we can get our child to step in to a place to where he or she can begin to learn on their own, our process of germination is complete. Just as the gardener sits and watches his fruit grow, so shall we sit back at this time and watch our fruit unfold before our eyes. As harvest time draws to a near, the purpose we started this home school journey will then come in to view. What goals that have been accomplished will be our harvest. The seeds we planted will be the fruit we receive.