Education made easy and even pleasurable!

One thing I learned last year was that the day after co-op is a total waste educationally. I wake up late and drained, often with a mutinous headache. Or is it me that is mutinous?

Every year, I get this marvelous catalog showcasing some fabulous video high school courses, and this year I caved into desire. I bought. Not only that, but I'm passing the word onto anyone who might stumble across this blog. The web address is www.SAVETEACH12.com. The caps really don't matter; they'll convert to lowercase. Everything is 70% off until August 30.

Whether you homeschool or not, this is a big deal! Instead of planting your kids (or yourself) in front of the latest episode of whatever, flip this on. Many of the courses come in both audio and DVD so whatever learning style matches yours the best......

For us, among the myriad of courses I could have chosen, I chose World History and Early American history by Professor Linwood Thompson, from the Bellflower High School in Los Angeles, California. He is both historian and dramatist. That's how he presents the history--by introducing the watcher to people from those times, both actual and fictional people. He throws his own name into the fictional person's name so you can keep them separate from the real ones.

Movin' on

Why do I wait until late at night to blog? I'm tired!

We finally finished The Story of the World: Ancient World, by Susan Wise Bauer. It spanned a couple of years, mostly because we stopped about 10 chapters early and did some other things. Like workbooks.

Imagine three children saying, "Boring!" Yup, that would be my three.

Added to that, my son kept waving the second volume (Middle Ages) under my nose saying, "When are we going to do this?" (I bought it two years ago.)

When my daughter started asking when we could do the silk road on p. 120, I knew we needed to hustle. So we abandoned Genevieve Foster which my sons hated and daughter enjoyed, and reverted to Bauer's book.

Last week we finished Ancient World and began Middle Ages, starting with Chapter 2 and Britain. We'd had enough of Rome. (Chapter 1 recapped the end of Rome that we covered thoroughly between the two books.)

Now we have studied the Celts as thoroughly as we are probably going to. In college terms, this is a survey course. In college, however, we would have covered the entire book in exactly one quarter rather than 2 years.

BTW, Usborne's Ancient World Encyclopedia does a great job of shielding kids from nudity. The Celts fought naked, and the internet is replete with those images. I decided to forego those. It was enough to read how they decorated themselves. We did get a chuckle out of remembering John Bytheway's quip in his talk, Righteous Warriors, Lessons from the War Chapters in the Book of Mormon, about how the Lamanites came out to battle: "Let's see, we're going to battle with lots of long pointy things. Yup, I think I'll wear the loincloth." (I didn't check that, and I don't have a photographic memory, and my kids who do are asleep, so this will have to be close enough.)

Now I'm wandering so I'll head off to bed.

Thanks for the visit!

Paul Revere to Constitutional studies

Myth: Paul Revere waited for the message from the lanterns in the Old North Church before he began his ride.

Fact: Instead, he was actually the one that came up with that system and the one that told the sexton how many lanterns to hold up. BTW, 2 men only held the lanterns up in the tower for a few moments, not long enough for the British regulars to notice, so colonists in Charlestown would get the word in case both Revere and Dawes were captured. Paul Revere knew which way the British would go before he ever left Boston since he was the one that delivered the message to the sexton.

Myth: There were only 2 riders carrying the message.

Fact: By the end of the night, there were probably 40 different riders taking the message to Lexington and Concord.

Myth: Paul Revere got through to John Hancock and Samuel Adams first.
Fact: Dr. Samuel Prescott was actually the one who reached John Hancock and Samuel Adams first. He was "a doctor who happened to be in Lexington 'returning from a lady friend's house at the awkward hour of 1 a.m.'" Made a good excuse for being out at such an unreasonable hour didn't it?

Myth: Paul Revere and William Dawes made it all the way to Concord.
Fact: All 3 of the "famous" riders, Prescott, Revere, and William Dawes were detained by the British in Lincoln but Prescott jumped his horse over a wall and escaped through woods. Dawes escaped also but fell off his horse shortly after, ending his ride. Revere was detained and questioned and escorted back toward Lexington. Upon hearing shots, they took his horse and left. Revere then helped Hancock and Adams escape with a trunk of Hancock's papers.

Myth: Paul Revere called, "The British are coming, the British are coming," as he rode through the countryside.
Fact: The colonists thought of themselves as British citizens so he would not have said that. Besides, there would have been British soldiers stationed all over. The message depended on secrecy from the British regulars so he would have quietly announced something like, "The regulars are coming out."
(Information from Wikipedia)

Okay, so this version is not quite as romantic as Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride, long memorialized and memorized by folks all over, but I think it might be more important.

First of all, Paul Revere was not particularly famous for the ride while he was alive. He didn't toot his own horn. Second, he wasn't concerned with whether he got the message through; he just wanted to be sure it got through.

How much can we, as average citizens learn from him? He did his duty and then some. He was very active in the Sons of Liberty, and it sounds like he spied for them. He followed his convictions, and he didn't pass off the hard work to someone else. What marvelous lessons!

So why am I posting this here on a homeschooling blog? Because today we attended an event on elections where I decided that I've postponed an in-depth study of the Constitution for too long. Tonight I pulled out a teacher's guide from the National Center for Constitutional Studies and discussed some of those ideas with the kids over dinner. (Learning seems to go better when the kids are eating. Why don't I remember that more?) The discussion around the dinner table, along with an assignment of writing a paper about key people led to questions of what role John Hancock played after signing the Declaration of Independence. Online searches on Hancock led us to Paul Revere. Don't ask. It's too convoluted. I think the boys will remember this though.

Oh, yeah. S-man will be researching George Washington; J-Dawg, Thomas Jefferson; and Jewell, John Adams. (I might have her research Abigail Adams instead since I think she would be more interested in her, and Abigail played a major role in those times.)

Lists

My mother requested a list of titles we will be using in the upcoming school year. Now that she has come and gone, I am finally typing up the book resource list. If you scroll down to the bottom of my blog, I am adding the titles as quickly as I can.

This book resource list comes from the curriculum A Noble Birthright: Defenders of the Title of Liberty noted on the sidebar with a link. As you can see, the list may not be exhaustive but it is extensive! The books marked with a dot are those most recommended; the others are supplemental. I have noted the ones I own.

I began linking them to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and other book sellers, but I got tired of searching for them. Some of these will be tricky to find!!! I'm hoping I can find many of them at our library---I recognize quite a few titles---if only they are from this library and not Kentucky's! There are some others that we have that are not on the resource list that we will likely use as well or in place of some I cannot find.

At the top of the sidebar, I have begun making a list of texts we will definitely be using this year. It is not complete since I tend to add/subtract texts throughout the year, but it represents the core curriculum. (A Noble Birthright covers history, geography, language arts, social studies, grammar, art, music, math, science, food, literature, dance and drama.)