What we see in the stars-the perfect introduction to astronomy

My little homeschool clan is fairly obsessed with the moon and all of it's observable phases. We love keeping track of the latest full moon and it's subsequent waning and waxing. Last year could have been titled the "year of the moon" for our schoolroom at home. Now, I am thinking its time to broaden our observation of the night time sky and get to know some of the surrounding constellations as well. I bought my Oldest a telescope for Christmas, to give us a fun jumping off place, and knew there had to be a good "book for that" to go along with it!

And find one, I did. What we see in the stars: An illustrated tour of the night sky is a gorgeous introduction to star gazing that I can't wait to jump into with my boys! It is a visual treat that is Mama swoon worthy, but the information is approachable for kids. 

There is a great bit of introduction info on the science and study of space and the stars before diving into an extensive collection of constellations.

I appreciated that there is a page for each major constellation- containing a beautiful illustration and a paragraph of pertinent facts.There are quite a few lesser known constellations introduced as well.

A segment on all the planets.

I would highly recommend this book as an addition to homeschool libraries and to anyone captivated by the beauty of the stars.

Thanks to Blogging for Books for providing me with this gorgeous book to review. 

Thankful

I know I maybe a (couple) day(s) late with this post, but before I move into full on Christmas mode, I wanted to share a wrap up on fall and what I am thankful for in current life. 

My little boys have been true and constant sunshine in a oft times grey and dreary part of the year. We have defintely had seasons where trying to parent 3 rambunctious and very young boys was easily the biggest stress factor in my life, I am thankful this chapter lets them star as one of the biggest delights. 

School hasn't been religiously consistent, but it has happened and we have had a ton of fun learning when it does. It's been such a treat to see Cole soak up reading lessons and take such pride in is new found skills. Asher slowly but surely is improving on his speech and jumps into learning with full enthusiasm (when he's in the mood for it ;). Silas is a dependable source for joy and entertainment for the whole household- what a gift that littlest boy has been to our family! He is a go getter who has always wants to be in on the action. "I wanna Twy", is his current catchphrase. 

I can know say I have been blessed to be married to my husband for seven years. Seven is kind of my number so it almost feels like a bigger deal than say, ten. I envisioned seven years ringing in triumphant bliss- this year hasn't been an easy one in any aspect of our lives but the celebration does taste a little sweeter being hard won.

 I am so grateful for family and friends that love and support us in tangible ways- like watching our little crazies and allowing us to get away for our anniversary. We contemplated several new trip itineraries but in the end, decided to stick with our stand by- Bend. We knew we could enjoy ourselves without a ton of mental energy being expended on trying to navigate a new to us area. We slept in, ate so much great food and  refilled our kombucha growlers. We did some Christmas shopping, hiked to a gorgeous water fall and saw two movies in theatres. It's so refreshing to splurge on a weekend or so a year of just a time of fun, just the two of us. I always come home and am thrown for a bit of a loop stepping right into our extra busy holdiay season- jam packed with not only holidays but a whole lo of birthdays in our house- but I am also thankful for that little breather before jumping in to all the seasonal activities too. We came with a pretty awesome souvenir, my anniversary gift, a Pendleton blanket. It's gorgeous and something I could never justify buying for myself so it really was the perfect gift. 

Thanksgiving was of course, filled with the best meal of the year shared with loved ones. From there it's been a fast shift into the Advent season and here we are already at December first. I am really glad to have adopted some meaningful advent rhythms and traditions to our days last year and am excited to pick those back up and add in a few more this year as well. I really don't want to overload us on "doing" and loose really "being" in the season, so we're slowing down on our outside commitments and focusing in on our home and on Christ. 

I am using the Slow and Sacred Advent ebook as a weekly framework. It is a laid back, but lovely guide to the 4 weeks of advent with handicrafts and recipes. As a family devotional for the season, we are using Prepare Him Room by Marty Machowski. This book is full of scripture, projects, songs an even an original Christmas story. I am really excited to share a more extensive review on this great family resource in the near future! 

It is so neat to watch the boys become more aware of what Christmas really means more and year and be more able to be involved in the preparation and festivities. Yesterday we had a full house of little and big friends to start of the Christmas season with an afternoon of handicrafts. We all shared a big pot of hearty soup, fresh baked breads, cups of coffee (for the mamas) and hand rolled beeswax candles. What a fun project it was! The kids exceeded my expectations with their interest and ability with it all. They really loved making something with their own two hands to be used for Christmas time. the natural, honey scent of our candles is very homey and comforting-perfect for cold, winter days.  The boys loved doing our devotion by candlelight later that night. It was fun to find a project that was first for both me and the boys and to learn together. Though, we later found out that Daddy had rolled many a candle in his childhood- in preparation for Y2K! ;) 

We've strung a few popcorn garlands and enjoyed a Christmas movie or two while sipping tea. I'm looking forward to a lot more cozy time at home over the next weeks- including, of course, a lot of time snuggled up on the couch reading Christmas books. We've pretty much put school on hold to enjoy all the special books, music and other "lessons" the season has to offer. We are using Pam Barnhill's Advent morning time plans and adapting them with the Christmas read alouds we have on hand to use- including the Hans Christian Anderson The Fir Tree (which I've reviewed here!) and The Snow Queen (which all be reviewing soon!) On top of the pile of Christmas picture books I have accumulated over the last couple of years.

It's the most wonderful time of the year. 

DIY History "Textbook"- Make Your Own Timeline of World History

Fall keeps marching on and here on the Oregon Coast that means less days of little boys playing out in the sunshine and more rainy days in the house with Mama- I have an affinity for both kinds of days. Today we fell back in day light savings time which looks like it being dark by 5 pm. This is the season for Gathering- gathering together my boys in our cozy home while the rains come down outside. Gathering stories to fill little imaginations with new adventures and heroes to "be" when a clear day comes along. Some of the very best kind of stories I want to share with my boys are the truest ones- History. More and more, I am being convicted that giving a comprehensive and correct view of what has happened in the world before our time and place in it, is one of the most noble goals in an education. I want my boys to see and know both the gravity and the hope of our place in time and history. That there truly is nothing new under the sun and to learn from the mistakes and the victories of those who have gone before us. I want to know these things- I need to know these things.

 While I was fortunate to have an advantage being educated

 with christian history text books, I still don't feel that remembering the bold type names and dates in the book just long enough to take a test really gave me a true picture or love for History. I am really enamored with the idea of introducing history to my boys through living books and am so thankful for the multitude of pre-organized history "spines" to provide a conclusive time frame and book list to delve into. So far, I have used a mixture of Sonlight's Core A- Introduction to the World and Beautiful Feet Books- Early American History. There are two main schools of thought on how to introduce history and the world to children: the first is to start with national history (since that is in a big sense, their "world") and the second is to begin with a brief scope of global reach. I have had a very hard time committing to either philosophy exclusively. I love the idea and have really enjoyed presenting glimpses of other cultures and peoples to my boys but there are also so many amazing books and heroes from our own national history for kids. So, I have done both! Sometimes, I get a little scared that it is too broad and not focused enough of an approach for them to get a clear understanding of any type of a timeline in it all. But I am holding on to the hope of Charlotte Mason's teaching to just set out a broad feast of truth and that the child will make the connections they need to in due time. 

 One very helpful way to keep all of this new found knowledge in line is a history timeline. This is no new idea and there are plenty of versions, both pre-made and bought or DIY and free. I know this is an idea I want to implement on an individual level when my boys are older students. I think it will be very neat for each of them to have their own "version" of world history- a catalog of prominent events and things that stood out to them the most thru their education. I know they are too young to take this project on right now, right now it would be mom doing all the work for them! But I also am aware that we are learning so much great history right now,while they are small, that I want to have a record of. In comes another amazing resource from Thinking Tree Books, Make Your Own Timeline of World History. When I talked with Sarah Janisse Brown, the creator of Thinking Tree Books, about the books she would recommend I try out with my boys this year, I mentioned to her that I was really interested in doing a history timeline but felt it would be a little presumptuous to start with my boys being so young. Sarah was so encouraging in her advice- She reminded me that kids learn best when Mama is learning right alongside of them. She suggested that I go ahead and start a timeline for all of us currently and I am so glad I took her advice! It has been a lot of fun already to not only learn about some amazing individuals and their contributions to World History, but also be able to peg them to a certain period. From there, it is pretty neat to have a evolving grid to hold new discoveries and dates up to and see how everything fits together!

The book itself is a joy to use- It has a vibrantly designed cover with a lush, matte finish. It is impressively thick at 365 pages- plenty of room for recording a whole lot of history! There is a straight forward and simple to use page format of A box for your time period date, a space for drawing or pictures and a lined box for journaling. I'll admit, at first I was a little intimidated by how open ended the format of this book is. It is truly designed to be customized to whatever your family needs it to be! I looked around the internet a bit and did some brainstorming and decided to break the book up into 26 equally portioned time frames. I used page flags to mark off the different time eras and make them quickly accessible. 

Lately, we have been learning about Vikings- particularly reading thru Leif the Lucky and learning about the earliest discovery of North America. My oldest has been loving reading one of these delightful classics from the D'Aulaires! we also use the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia and Living Long Ago quite a lot after being introduced to them by Sonlight. I found a fun viking paper doll printable that my oldest colored. We cut it out and put in our Vikings time period pages and have enjoyed adding information about Leif the explorer as we go!

I am so glad to have come across the idea and started to implement a history timeline so early in my boys' schooling journey. What a treasure it will be to have our ventures thru history mapped out for us in this delightful book. That will be something this Mama will consider a family heirloom! ;) 

 I received this book from the Thinking Tree LLC.

Plan and Document your Homeschool (and have fun while doing it!)

We have (Finally!) got a rhythm and a plan going for our school year that works for us and that we are actually getting done on a consistent basis- rather than just theoretically thinking will work. I have a daily minimum Three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) that Cole needs to get down and more than enough extras to plug in when we can. There are so many things I want to do and learn with my boys but I have definitely found just because I have the idea and desire doesn't mean it's going to happen. I need a plan and I'm also finding, I need a planner. I have always loved the idea of physical, write in planners but have never really found them realistic enough to need on a regular basis for my day to day life. So much of my daily life is just routine chores and tasks, there's really no reason to have them written down in a book, no matter how cute it is (believe me, I've tried to justify it many times to myself!). But I am finding that school plans are so much more likely to be executed if I have thought and written them out in advance, rather than waiting for an idea to pop into my head and then having to go gather up all the supplies, etc. 

But then it comes down to which planner to use, because there are about 100 just homeschooling planners alone. Well Sarah Janisse Brown of Thinking Tree Books was so generous to send me a copy of her planner, The Eclectic Homeschooler's Plan Book-A 180 Day Plan to give a try out in my homeschool planning endeavors.

 I love how open ended all of the Thinking Tree products are- you can really customize them to exactly what your family needs to get out of them! The cover alone is a motivating start with it's bright and engaging hand drawn pictures and a soft to the touch matte finish. This is a thick book with a nice, large format to fit a lot of plans into. With the signature Thinking Tree flair, these aren't just ordinary black and white pages, but all of your planning boxes are set against a fun floral and swirls pattern to color in. 

I think when homeschooling older and a little bit more independent learners, this book would be a great for fit for the daily spiral notebook assignment checklist method Sarah Mackenzie encourages in this post. This is really a funner and slightly more detailed version of just that idea. I think I am personally going to be using this planner slightly more out of the box while my kids are younger and document weekly projects, achievements and just fun moments I want to remember from our schooling journey. I think it will be really neat to have a written record of all the highlights of our early learning years! 

There is also a neat bonus feature sprinkled through out the book: There is a Plans & Perspective page to journal a little more long term goals and visions and a correlating Remember... page to document stand out school experiences. This is a well made, beautiful book that is straight forward enough in it's format that I think you could use it in a multitude of ways.

I am loving our experience with Thinking Tree books so far and can't wait to share some more of these treasures with you. Being a Charlotte Mason inspired Mama, I am especially excited to dive into the Timeline of History and Picturing the Past art study books. 

I received this book from The Thinking Tree LLC.

Saying goodbye to Summer and hello to Fun Schooling

The leaves are starting to fall, the evenings have got a chill to them and there's more garden harvest than I know what to do with; I think it's safe to say that fall is upon us. It's a bittersweet fact around this house: we are summer lovin' folks. The season of the sun is fairly short lived in the Pacific Northwest and as much as we don't mind the rain, the sunshine is a gift we hold onto as long as we can. Autumn is slowly winning us over though. With it's mountains of apples, beautiful landscape and piles of fresh books and a new year of school to dive into! 

September was a semi-summer holdover month for us with lots of end of the season trips and plans and so much garden preserving to get done. I think October will be our official buckle down into a structured school pattern month. We have dipped our toes into the academic year and it's been an encouraging intro to the school year. I did put some semblance actual goal setting and lesson planning together in August and I think that's going to be a blessing in the coming weeks! For now, we've jumped into some seasonal and interest led projects- such as apple sauce making and apple sauce inspired poetry writing, constructing "measure for measure" paper skeletons of the boys and of course, a lot of fall nature study. We are warming our way back into Morning Time and Asher is excited to be an "official" preschooler this year. Cole and I picked back up in the "100 easy lessons" reading book were we left off at the end of last year and we are both really encouraged by how much more competent he is with reading now! He's started to pine over being able to just being able to pick up a book and read it. I think his actually really wanting to read and pride in what he's learned so far is really going to take him a long ways this year! 

Another new dimension I'm really excited to add to our school plans this year is not only educational, but also just plain fun! we are going to enjoy some Fun Schooling with Thinking Tree books. I have had my eye on this super creative and open ended series of interactive books for quite some time now (complete with having a pretty full Amazon wishlist of the titles I wanted to try out most on standby ;). Sarah Janisse Brown is a homeschooling Mama of a large brood who has authored and illustrated so many titles in this ever growing and unique collection of homeschool books. They fit nicely into "out of the box" unschooling and as a Charlotte Mason-esque supplement, as I intend to use them.  Sarah was very generous and sent me a hefty box of personally curated books for my boys and I to enjoy and share with all of you. I can't wait to get these bright and engaging books into my boys hands and share in depth looks into new titles with you through out the school year. I really think my boys are going to learn so much copying things into their very own fun schooling journals and I'm going to look for excuses to "learn" things to jot down in my own homeschooling handbook ;) (spoiler alert!) I foresee these books doing a wonderful job of keeping the joy in learning under the guise of just being "for fun"!

The first book I want to share with you is the perfect example of how focused Sarah is in these titles on capturing the interest and heart of a child. The All about Horses Homeschooling Journal is a thick and delightful six week unit study on, you guessed it, Horses! The first page asks students to write down several things they want to specifically learn thru their study time about horses and then instructs them to go to the local library and pick up six books to use as "text books". The book may be all in black and white but it does not lack in beautifully detailed illustrations and all the more opportunity for kids to get creative themselves in coloring it in! 

Each day's study opens with a fun circle the date intro page and place to fill in a daily to do list and daily inspiration. After that, Sarah does a fantastic job of mixing things up each day and including a wide variety of activities and "subjects". One day the student is learning to draw a horse, finding spelling words in their horse "text books" and another they are watching a documentary, writing up a days worth of meal plans and doing a nature study sketch. I just think this is a really great way to engage a maybe hesitant student who would rather be out, say, riding a horse than working in school books.There is an impressive mixture of inspiring, yet open ended project prompts to definitely document education but the learning itself is coming from such pleasurable, real life experiences. 

I would have LOVED this book as a homeschooled farm girl growing up and I have a little animal lover middle child who I think will grow into this fun resource nicely. :)

I received these products in exchange for my honest review.

Give your Child the World- through the pages of some well picked books!

 I have three rough and tumble, non stop boys who take so much after their father, but thankfully there's a few things they share in common with their mama as well- including a deep love and large appetite for books. I have some of the fondest memories (and the cutest pictures!) of my boys, starting with my oldest as a baby, totally enthralled in a good book. I am proud and happy to see them be daring and physically active boys, playing every "fighting" game imaginable and never being very far away from mischief; but I also see the benefit in balancing their active play with spending the quiet, still time to fill their minds with good, imaginatively rich stories. I can see those stories bringing context and deeper meaning to their play by infusing it with characters they can "be" and "evil" they can face off and fight. I have smiled to myself as I hear multiple references to "Lord on the Rings" come out in their adventures (ok, and Star Wars too..). So, I have made it a point to introduce them to many "epic" adventure tales to stock their moral imagination, but I will admit, I have never been very aware or intentional about bringing globally minded books their way. I suppose it's because (to my detriment) I have not been a very global reader. I love to see new places and the idea of travel but the reality of traveling to foreign countries just doesn't seem like it will factor into my life on a very large scale. I guess due to the fact that I have not been nor have any concrete plans to be in these far off lands, they seem to stay "out of sight, out of mind."  That is a disservice on my part, since I know that the world wide we are more alike than different and all God is doing amazing things around the world, not just in North America and it's a loss to not get a glimpse into those lives and cultures. How fortunate we really are to have such a effective and enjoyable method to travel around the world (and through time and space) through the pages of a book!

This summer I am hoping to broaden my children's (and mine!) perspective and knowledge when it comes to this globe and all who call it home with the help of an amazing new resource of a book, Give Your Child the World: Raising globally minded kids one book at a time by Jamie Martin! I have heard stirrings about this book during the months it was in the making and new that I wanted to have it on my shelf when it was released. I love (and have marked up with abandon!) so many other well thought out book lists volumes- Honey for the Child's Heart and Read for the Heart- and loved the idea of this very modern and uniquely targeted edition being added to the ranks on my resources shelf. The book starts out with a engaging introduction to Jamie and her (in her own words) " Mini United Nations" of a family :) I loved reading of how Jamie fell in love with the world thru travel and ended up with a houseful of loved ones from all corners of the planet! The book list it's self is laid out by continent and then organized by age group. I thought it was very easy to follow and appreciated the short synopsis of each book recommended. I quickly jumped on to my local library's website and made short work of putting holds on a whole cart load of fun, new books! :) 

  Jamie's encouragement and ideas for implementing a "globally minded" mindset in our households is contagious and to make getting started even more enticed Jamie and Sarah Mackenzie of the The Read Aloud Revival have teamed up to offer a super fun summer reading program using Give Your Child the World as a guide! This is the first week of the program and it correlates with the first chapter of Jamie's book list- Multicultural. You can find more information and some fun printables and videos at the link above. We already have a towering stack of books waiting for us for Africa week next. I am so glad that they put together this "reading challenge" to go along with the book launch of this awesome new title; it was really the push I needed to just jump in, track down some titles and start reading to my kids. I have distinctive memories of my dad reading aloud in the evenings from the Christian Heros-then and now missionary series- traveling to China with Hudson Taylor and India with Amy Carmicheal. Some day, I am sure I will pull those titles out to read with "older" kids; for now I am excited to curl up on a couch with a big pile of picture books and take my kids on a journey around the world. 

I received this book from Book Look in exchange for an honest review. 

Just maybe Fall is finally here..

It's starting to actually feel like fall around these parts. For a long time here, the weather wasn't keeping up with the calendar. We finally got a true fall feeling day, complete with fog and showers. I love a rainy day excuse for cozying in and spending some intentional, slow time with my boys. There was pumpkin pie baked oatmeal and little tomatoes to pop in the food dehydrator. My Oldest loves to arrange the multi-hued tomato halves on the dryer shelves and gush about how prepared we're going to be for winter with all our yummy dried tomatoes.

 

 

We enjoyed a fall time nature collecting field trip to our "tree farm" property. The boys took their nature baskets and collected fallen leaves galore along with whatever other treasures caught their fancy. (including some wild pears we found!) I really love using nature collecting and journaling as "science" for the boys schooling. Children are always curating their own nature collections as it is-why not add in some classification and interesting facts and call it school?

 

 

 

I have absolutely no artistic abilities to share with my boys, but I'm hoping by encouraging them to start young they will acquire at least basic skills. My Oldest has been pretty enthralled with sketching birds out of a North American bird field guide we have on the bookshelf. I'm impressed with his eye for detail and love seeing how proud of his finished masterpiece he is.

 

Timelining is nothing new to the homeschool scene but we just started incorporating it into our studies! I have a feeling it's going to be a really enjoyable way for us to track what we learn about during the year and how it fits into the history of the world. The boys loved seeing the looonngg "span of time" we have to fill in. This past week, we added timeline figures for Abraham, Isaac and the ancient Egyptians.

 

The work of doing some lesson planning and making the time in my daily schedule for the boys schooling is daunting at times. Adding "Teacher" to my list of roles is taking some time to become second nature. But seeing the wonder spark in my sons' eyes as they encounter new ideas and interests makes it worth it to me. Their love of learning makes me slow down and appreciate all their is around us to "educate". My Little/Big Boy asks "Why?", just like every other 3 year old, but he also asks "How?". I love that.

 

 

 

I'm excited to add a new podcast series to my "play list". The Mason Jar Podcast looks like a great resource for all the Charlotte Mason Mamas out there!

 

To add to the constant activity that is our household, we decided to a bring a new family member on board. My determined husband has been talking about getting a Rottweiler for years now. I was so hesitant about the idea of a large, aggressive dog living with my kids for a long time. I finally got on board with the benefits of a protective breed being right for our family. Then it was just never the right timing- too busy of a season or the kids were too young. Finally, we decided the time was right. We've been on the lookout for a puppy for months before finding the perfect pup for us. Introducing Stella.

 

We drove up the coast with all the little boys in tow to pick up our new pup. Stella was the puppy who instantly jumped into the boys' laps and wouldn't leave their side. She is a sweetheart and I'm excited to have a pal to grow up alongside my boys. My middle boy has a real heart for animals and we especially wanted to find a good puppy for him. It made me smile to watch him spend the morning out in the rain playing with his new friend. :) And my responsible Oldest has been happily feeding the puppy and even cleaning up puppy piles!

 

 

Every little boy needs a dog.