Epiphany

The end of the day - hats drying in front of the fire - the view from my spinning wheel

Christmas is officially over chez Little Shoots. Once we get to new years eve I get a little OCD & down come the decorations amid much sadness.

We do have Epiphany to look forward to, however!

We will be starting 'school-lite' as from tomorrow - lots of reading, a review of maths we were studying before our December break, fun phonics & maths games, a new spelling list or two...

Friday is Epiphany, however - a jewel in the dark winter days.
Here are our plans....

~ We will be reading Matthew 2

~ We shall be singing 'We Three Kings'

~ We shall be reading the story of Baboushka in Festivals, Family and Food theough there is a version of the folktale here

~ We shall be baking a plaited Brioche

~ And of course, we shall be making Crowns

Happy Epiphany!

Michaelmas Plans

Oh, how I do love this time of year.

The changing seasons, the moving toward winter. The colours of autumn, the smells of comfort food, the walks in the woods through rich autumn sunlight....

Michaelmas is almost upon us & here are my plans for tomorrow:

The feast of Saint Michael, one of the seven archangels of Scripture, originated in the sixth century. Michael, whose name in Hebrew means "Who is like God?", is revered as the leader of the angelic army who will conquer Satan and his armies of demons, and is considered the defender of the Church.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Revelation 12:7-9

Legend has it that when the archangel Michael threw Lucifer out of heaven (on what would become Michaelmas), the devil landed in, of all places, a blackberry patch, where he promptly spat on the berries, rendering them inedible! So by long held tradition on Michaelmas you should eat your fill of blackberries before they're no good!

We shall be having our annual afternoon Michaelmas Tea, with Blackberry Tea & Blackberry Jam Tarts

Blackberry Jam Tarts
Ingredients
• 14 oz plain flour
• 7 oz butter , chilled and diced
• 1 & 3/4 oz caster sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 340g jar jam , use 1 flavour or a mix if you have them
Method
1. Whizz the flour and butter to breadcrumbs in a food processor. Add the caster sugar and mix. Add the yolks and pulse until it comes together (you might need to add a splash of water). Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 20 minutes.
2. Heat the oven to gas 5. Roll out the pastry and stamp out circles big enough to fit 2 x 12-hole jam tart tins. Bake for 15 minutes then add small spoonfuls of jam to each and bake for 5 minutes.

For dinner I am going to make a rabbit stew! Goose is the traditional fare for Michaelmas, but a hunting friend has given us a rabbit, so rabbit it shall be.
To follow, the girls will be baking a chocolate cake. I found some white chocolate stars in the supermarket today which will be a lovely addition to the cake, as Rosie has started to see the nights drawing in again. She has become so used to going to bed in the daylight!

Weather dependent, we may go out to fly our kites tomorrow, but the weather is unusually hot right now.
I am planning to make a start on lanterns for martinmas, so we may do some wet on wet watercolour tommorow, that we can later use for our Martinmas lanterns.

We shall be sketching the 'Michaelmas Daisies' in our garden- a wildflower, an aster with many small star-like flowers, that blooms in late September, known as the Michaelmas daisy. They make an ideal posy for the Michaelmas table.

Our Plans 2011-2012

Here is a look at our school plans for 2011-2012 - only time will tell if it works better in reality than on paper, or if it will need a revamp!

Main Resources:

Bible:
The Child's Story Bible
Telling God's Story Curriculum

French

Language Arts
Phonics:
The Writing Road To Reading
The Reading Lesson

First Language Lessons

Maths:

MEP

History/Geography

The Story of the world 1
Activity Book
Encylopedia World History

Science

Kingfisher Encyclopedia Of Animals
Kingfisher 1st Human Body Encyclopedia
Growing Up Green
Keeping A Nature Journal

Music/Art

Classics For Kids
Drawing on the right side of the brain

Outside Activities
Girls Friendly Society
Swimming
Brownies
Rainbows
Locally organised nature walks & activities
Knitting Club

Monday

Read from The Child's Story Bible

Prayer, Hymn & Memory Work (includes Bible, Lang Arts, Maths, Hist & Geog, Science, French & General topics)

Language Arts:
First Language Lessons
The Writing Road to Reading for penmanship, phonics & spelling - will see how this goes, is new to me & very teacher intensive to understand & read through all the book! I will see how this pans out...
The Reading Lesson
Daily Reader
Independent 'Fun' reading

Maths

MEP lesson

SOTW
Read the story, work on the colouring page. Narration.

Tuesday

Read from The Child's Story Bible

Prayer, Hymn & Memory Work

Language Arts:
First Language Lessons
The Writing Road to Reading for penmanship, phonics & spelling
The Reading Lesson
Daily Reader
Independent 'Fun' reading

Maths

MEP lesson

SOTW
Read the story. Narration. Mapwork.


Wednesday

Read from The Child's Story Bible

Prayer, Hymn & Memory Work

Language Arts:
First Language Lessons
The Writing Road to Reading for penmanship, phonics & spelling
The Reading Lesson
Daily Reader
Independent 'Fun' reading

Maths

MEP lesson

SOTW
Read from history encyclopedia . Look at related library books
Complete this weeks lapbook booklet


Thursday

Read from The Child's Story Bible

Prayer, Hymn & Memory Work

Language Arts:
First Language Lessons
The Writing Road to Reading for penmanship, phonics & spelling
The Reading Lesson
Daily Reader
Independent 'Fun' reading

Maths

MEP lesson

Science:
We are working as follows:
Animals approx 20 weeks
Human Body approx 10 weeks
Plants approx 6 weeks

At the moment we are working from our animals topic.
We read from the encylopedia about our chosen animal, the girls narrate, draw a picture & make a notebook page.
Then we spend time on further reading. So far this has been a very rich topic for us. With the help of our cat(!) we have had a mouse to observe, and an extremely handsome dragonfly. We have looked at butterflies & ladybirds. The cat is on our list too : )

Thursday afternoons are devoted to our Afternoon Teas
We usually drink strawberry tea & eat goodies baked by the girls. We either listen to Classics For Kids, work on our drawing, or celebrate a festival (such as Michaelmas) or enjoy a nature celebration (such as the harvest moon)


Friday

Read from The Child's Story Bible

Prayer, Hymn & Memory Work

Language Arts:
spelling
Daily Reader
Independent 'Fun' reading

Our Craft time
I always have something planned - often from our SOTW activity guide.

Nature Study
We take a nature walk & make an entry into our nature journals.

Sunday
A weekly reading & activity from God's Story

My year is all planned out. I am not sure how I will fare with The Writing Road To Reading - I am feeling rather overwhelmed by it right now & may go back to spelling workout. It just is so appealing - to have such a thorough spelling course. We shall see.

I spend time every couple of months sitting down & planning out the 'lovely' things - festivals & nature studies etc etc & weekly I plan out our lessons in detail.

History

I have decided that we are going to re-read Story Of The World Vol 1

Having thought long & hard I feel I should have given this book more space in our schooltime.
So we shall re-read. I have purchased the activity guide & I shall be using it along with the wonderful resources from The Chronicle Of The Earth blog.
Elianna shall be making the Ancients Lapbook (all printed out & ready to go!)
I shall be using the extensive resource notes for each chapter
All the wonderful resources are listed here.

Isnt that an exciting prospect!

Tea Time

A while back the girls & I had a regular weekly Tea Time
Somehow our lovely ritual was forgotten in the dash of outings, playtimes & laundry. But i have been pondering our days & have decided to reinstate this special time.

Elianna had asked to follow a drawing course. I spent time online researching & plumped for the older edition of Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain.

We bought beautiful new sketchbooks & discussed what we were expecting in preparation of the big day : D

I have set aside an afternoon each week for us to have a lovely Afternoon Tea followed by our drawing lesson. Five year old Rose will join us for Tea, then can draw with us or not, as she pleases.

Elianna is now of the age were by she can bake unattended (except for popping the goods into the oven) so she has been getting her copywork done bright & early on Tea Time day, then she can use that time to bake so the goodies are ready for the afternoon.

I am so delighted that we have our ritual again. It is great fun & brightens our day no end. And our drawing will improve to boot : D

Daily Walk

Daily Walk