Hobbit Homeschool

We've just begun The Hobbit, and I'm trying to employ some of the kinds of living book activities that we've enjoyed in the past: recipes, crafts, research, and field trips, etc. We started creating our own Hobbit books to fill in as we read; and we enjoyed a Hobbit-style afternoon tea.

Hobbit Tea:  Our little tea party was full of seed cakes, pork pies, and ale - served on bright colored dishes and a green tablecloth. We found hobbit-inspired recipes that we followed loosely:

• this recipe for our pork pies, but really we just stuffed them with some leftover pork roast. 
• this seed cake, baked in small bowls to make multiple little cakes, although we actually left out the seeds.
• Henry Weinhard Root beer made a nice ale for some of us (and the rest had cocoa)
• And we enjoyed decorating our pies with some of the tips we found in this cool video.

An unexpected tea

Seed cakes, pork pies, and blackberry tarts

Root beer for our ale

Hobbit Book: We like the Waldorf practice of making books to illustrate what you have learned, and kept using the idea even after we moved away from Waldorf curricula. For our Hobbit books, we stapled together 12 pages of construction paper, leaving us 1-2 pages per chapter (and we decided we can unstaple and add more if needed).

Each child spent plenty of time making their books cozy-looking and just the way they wanted. They decided not to glue their Bilbo's behind the door, as we originally planned, but keep him loose so that he can walk throughout the book. We'll try to illustrate characters, copy quotes, and answer discussion questions in the book as we go. For this first chapter, we focused on the characters.

We found this cool interactive map of Bilbo's journey, printed it and glued it on the back cover for reference.

the beginnings of a Hobbit book: Bilbo and his Hobbit house

Gandalf and the bearded dwarves

Gandalf and the bearded dwarves

Who knows if I'll get around to sharing the rest of our Hobbit adventures, but I'm keeping my Ideas for Living Book Activities in mind: we'll try some dragon crafts, and I'm eye-ing Hobbit legos for Christmas. We have a hike planned later this month, and I think that will be a nice venue for field-trip reading. I'm also reading the Cliff's notes, so we don't miss out on important themes, and we'll watch the movies when we're all done. Anyway, we're off to a promising start!


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Goodnight Jesus!

pom pom balls in a can

I've returned to the how-do-I-manage-my-crazy-toddler-in-church?! stage of life. I haven't been here for awhile, and, although I think I'm more patient this time around, I had forgotten how hard 18 months old can be. I hold her while we sing and carry her around to see the icons, and when she gets restless I keep her quiet with this little can of pom poms. She's really into books lately, so recently I tucked some of her favorites in my bag, ...but later, when she wouldn't stop moooooing, I regretted bringing Mr. Brown Can Moo to liturgy.

So, I was super-excited to see the new Orthodox board book from AFP, Goodnight Jesus, and really grateful to receive a copy to review. Of course, AFP has tons of great kids books, and we usually bring a couple to church for the big kids - but there aren't a lot of options for this little age.* Like Mr. Brown, the best books for kids at this age are repetitive with a nice cadence, and give the little ones a way to respond. While Mr. Brown's sound effects weren't so appropriate for liturgy, the kissing encouraged by Goodnight Jesus will fit right in.

She snuggled in to read the book with me right away, immediately pointing and saying, "Zeezus!"in her sweet baby way. The pages are nice and sturdy, and I think that makes turning them more fun for littles. The little poem leads you through a list of people to kiss goodnight, starting with Christ and Mary, then saints from the Bible like John the Baptist and the myrrh-bearing women. We also kiss a gospel book and cross, then all the members of our family and a picture of those far away.

This is my first Orthodox-baby, and I've enjoyed seeing how quickly she learned to kiss the icons. She still kisses them more consistently than she kisses me! This book nicely ties together our love for Christ, with our love for the saints, the scriptures, our family, pets and dolls. The act of kissing is such a simple way to teach our children about love and tenderness and reverence, and the participatory nature of our faith. 

My big kids enjoyed the book, too! The oldest especially loved the picture of Christ just about to break open the gates of Hades; and the other laughed and laughed at the fish blowing a kiss. We all love the illustrations - which are bright and beautifully done. So it seems there is something in it for everyone, and I think we'll all enjoy taking turns to read it to baby.

The book is uniquely Orthodox because, of course, we like to kiss both people and things (like icons and the Gospel book). Still, its also simple enough that I think Christians of other traditions who can appreciate kissing will enjoy it, too. I'm thrilled to have such nice books for our kids! Be sure to check it out at Ancient Faith Publishing.

*We also love What Do You See at Liturgy, the only other Orthodox board book I've seen, and perfect for toddlers, too!
**Cross-posted from Many Mercies

When God Made You (a book review)

I like to include books in our Easter baskets each year, and this year I found one so lovely I bought it for my godchildren, too! I love a book that puts beautiful illustrations and poetic images in children's hands, and even better, this book challenges them to think poetically, too. When God Made You is a delight. We don't celebrate Easter until later this year (see why here), so I'm still waiting to share it with my kids, and I can hardly wait!

Each page introduces a new child from a different culture and with different gifts. It goes on to explain the unique recipe for each child: seeds, fizzy candy, drum beats and wood. My oldest daughter loves drawing connections to metaphors, so I believe she will like thinking about how these "ingredients" work together to make each child's unique skills and strengths. The book ends by asking, "What beautiful things was God thinking when He made you?" I expect we will have silly and serious conversations about what beautiful things in our world might make up each of us.

The book clearly presents God as the maker of people (and beauty!), but doesn't go much farther to explain God. This has the lovely affect of encouraging children to see God through his creation, and leaves the door open for you to discuss your faith in the way you choose.

The illustrations initially look like fanciful watercolors, but the more you look, you can see illustrator Megan Elizabeth Gilbert included collage elements as well. The pictures are full of new things to find with each reading.

The author Jane Meyer encourages children to write or draw their own page for "When God Made You," and send it to her! Here are some instructions I put together to get my kids started, with my own little entry below. I'll have to share later when the kids do their own.

1. What do you do really well? (an action, e.g. painting)
2. What do you like about that? (looking, color, being playful)
3. What kinds of things help you do it? (brushes, pigments, flowers, icons)
4. Where do you live, and where do you do your action? (Tennessee, upstairs)
5. Write your explanation of what God was thinking when He made you!
6. Draw a scene of you doing your thing in your place. Be sure to show what is unique about where you live, and include the elements that you like and that help you. Hide some of these elements here and there so people don't see them all at first (because isn't that how God hides things in us?).

When God made Laura, he spattered her cheeks with copper and tickled her fingers with foxgloves. Then he gently opened her eyes and brushed her lashes with sunlight and clay and gold leaf. Stepping aside and pointing, God said, "Laura, paint!"



*This book review contains affiliate links, but I bought the book and reviewed it out of my own delight!

9 Ideas for Living Book Activities

Whenever we start a new homeschool read-aloud, and I want to find activities to go with it, I google: "BOOK TITLE homeschool." I inevitably find a few blogs with a pdf bundle with cutesy clip art images to go with the book, teaching math and spelling aimed at lower elementary kids, but isn't at all what I want.

After some thought, I realized [what is probably obvious to veteran homeschoolers] that I'm finding unit studies, when what I really want is to engage in a living book study. Of course, living books don't require worksheets. They teach by engaging you in a well written story. As we stretch out a book over a few weeks, we enjoy engaging with them in hands-on ways.

So here's a list of ideas (for my own sake as much as yours) for enjoying a living book with kids, drawn from our recent experience:

1. Historical/Geographic context: Often this is the reason I've chosen a book. A quick check on Wikipedia can provide a lot of this information, and then you can look up the location on the globe or map, or note other stories you know from the same time period to draw connections.

2. Themes: Although sometimes the themes are obvious, sometimes we study something that I'm less familiar with and I need a little help. Right now we're reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland because we're going to see the ballet next month. I realized my knowledge of the story is pretty limited, and I was thrilled to realize that Cliff's notes are online. A quick read on the Themes section is a good starting point for what I can expect and what kinds of conversations we may have.

3. Recipes: Food is an important part of many stories. We especially enjoyed cooking as we read through the whole The Little House Series one year. Making lemonade, butter, maple candy, and fried cakes were all helpful insights into pioneer life. We absolutely love the The Little House Cookbook! We also had a lot of fun making turkish delight when we read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

4. Recreating scenes: Focusing on some of our favorite scenes helps us live within the story a little more. We made a diorama of the cabin in the woods after reading The Courage of Sarah Noble, and built a lego sod house after reading On the Banks of Plum Creek.

5. Wildlife: Notice when plants and animals play important roles in the book. Look them up in field guides, read about them, and draw them. Find videos on youtube. We chose Island of the Blue Dolphins especially because of one child's interest in sea life, but we encountered so many new creatures throughout the story. We often had to look up words to figure out what kind of animal it was, or food she was eating. We enjoyed watching videos of Karana's devilfish.

6. Handicrafts/Games/Activities: Experiencing the different types of activities of people of different times and cultures can be a lot of fun. We tried a few Little House on the Prairie crafts with My Little House Crafts Book, and we made a thaumatrope after reading the Kirsten books.

7. Write about it: I had already planned to have my kids write a mini-book report on Stuart Little, but when they were unhappy with the ending they ended up sitting down to write their own new endings. This was a lot of fun and helped them think through the story a bit, as well.

8. Field Trips: When we read The Trumpet of the Swan, we decided to go to a local park and read the last two chapters of the story while eating lunch and feeding the ducks and geese. [We wished our park had swans, but we enjoyed the geese anyway!] Other times we read in a noisy restaurant, or the train museum, to add a little ambience to our story. Its harder for little ones to pay attention for very long this way, but its a fun way to finish (or begin!) a new story.


9. Watch the movie: I won't let the kids watch the movie until we've finished the book, but they are often excited now to realize a book has a movie. It helps to actually see and hear the clothing and styles and accents of a story. Its also fun to discuss how the movie was different from the book and why. I'm generally impressed that they prefer the truer plot of the book to the movie, but they can also appreciate the fun of the movie. We've especially enjoyed seeing Anne's puffed sleeves after reading Anne of Green Gables, and the tree house of The Swiss Family Robinson.

So there you go! My best 9 tips for activities to go with your living books. Turns out I knew what I was doing more than I realized, and next time I'll skip the googling!

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Reading Day

Ah, Mondays. Sometimes our weekends are so full, we need a rest from the weekends! But Monday comes, and we can't afford to get behind in school. So I did a little shuffling with our weekly schedule to make last Monday a little different to get us excited about starting a new week. We had just been to the library and it was time to start some new books, so reading day seemed like a fun idea.

So what do you need for a great Reading Day?

1. Books. We started with 6 books, and replaced our usual subjects with extra readings. We started two new chapter books (Royal Monastic and Island of the Blue Dolphins) from which we read several chapters in a sitting. The rest were easy reader books that we read all in one sitting (including Poppleton books, Arnold Lobel's Grasshopper on the Road, and Henry and Mudge books), and we ended up adding in a few extras of these.

2. Schedule. I organized our schedule the same way I usually do - with a checklist in a spiral book for each child, but today's usual subjects were all replaced with reading. So today's check list looked something like this:

• Read during breakfast. 
• Read.
• Morning walk, and read outside.
• Quiet reading time on your own.
• Read again.
• Snack and Read.
• Read.

3. Post-its. Before we started on our schedule, we decided to read each book in a different place. I put a post-it on each book, and let the girls choose where we'd read each one. We wrote the location on the post-it. We chose Grasshopper on the Road for our outside reading, L thought it would be fun to read Poppleton in the Pop-asan (papasan chair), and then the girls each picked their bed for their favorite book.

4. Cozy socks. A last minute idea, to help make today feel extra special, everyone put on warm socks so we could be cozy while reading.

After we got organized, we read through our schedule. I tried to put the next book in its place while the girls checked off their list. I was just trying to stay organized, but the girls thought it was like a treasure hunt. So when we took our quick morning walk, we picked some flowers and then we arrived on the porch; and there they found a vase ready for our flowers, and our next book waiting. Later their books were waiting in their beds with snacks. A successful treasure hunt indeed! We went through most of our stack of library readers, and got started on new novel and biography with lots of snuggles, so I'd say a pretty successful day. 

Back to (Home)School with Animal Bookmark Printable

dolphin bookmark

We're back to school again, and pretty happy about it. Many families have first day of school traditions to help get everyone excited about the new year. I was only sort of prepared, and so ours stretched into first week of school celebrations, which is just fine with me. 

On our first day, we painted self-portraits, and started reading some new books.

Everyone claimed their quiet reading spot. 

I meant to have donuts for breakfast, but didn't get out to the store. So I made toast with butter hearts. I thought they turned out pretty well... but I sort of forgot to mention it to the kids, and I think they ate them without noticing. But hey, the love is there, right?

making toast with love

Later in the week, we got around to grabbing a few new school supplies, and starting the 1st grader on her very own field journal. I'm feeling really good about using spiral notebooks to simply our homeschooling schedule. We'll see if it works for the whole year - but this week, we're all loving it. It helps the kids see how much they have left to do, encourages my new reader to read, and it has a fun schedule built in (when they finish the first two subjects, then they get to have a snack and read on their own).

We have a (mostly) Charlotte Mason style homeschool this year, so there are lots of books. I thought some new bookmarks were in order to get us excited about reading. First we made a few of these easy origami bookmarks. (There are quite a few other origami corner bookmarks with interesting designs. I've pinned several here.)

And then I surprised the kids with some animal bookmarks, featuring their favorite animals: Sea Animals (a dolphin, of course, seahorse, and octopus) and Horses (in well named colors). 

octopus bookmark

golden horse bookmark

lavender seahorse bookmark

I couldn't find all the books in all the places to take pictures, but this shows quite a few. Grab the printable bookmarks below. Print on cardstock, and cut along the gray line. Use an x-acto knife for best results on the interior cut outs. Enjoy!

Happy New School Year!