Questions.....

Last year I found a list of questions to ask children which seemed so fun. I did it with James (aged 3) and recored it on my other blog (which I have yet to transfer!). I repeated it again this week and thought I would record the answers.

What is your name? James Roy
How old are you? 5
When is your Birthday? After Christmas (need to teach James this one!)
Who is your Mum? Emma Roy :-)
What does your Mum do during the day? Makes me breakfast and cooks :-)
Who is your Dad? Duncan
What does Daddy do during the day? He goes to work and goes on the computer
What is your favourite colour? Red
What is your favourite song? Funny Music - Bach Classical CD
What do you want to do when you grow up? Be a spaceman
Where do you want to live when you grow up? In a house that is a big as Gran's in America :-)
What is your favourite food? Ice cream - Chocolate (both he cannot eat :-( )
What is your least favourite food? Mushrooms and Courgettes
What is your favourite animal? Lion
What do Mummy and Daddy do when you go to bed? Do jobs - work
Who does our family love the most? James!!!
Where do you like to eat? Picnic
What is your favourite ice cream? Chocolate
What is your favourite book? Sharks
What is your favourite toy? Lego
How do you like to spend your time? Making lego things, go to the ice cream shop, aquarium and got o the park
What is your favourite thing that happened last year? Leraning to write with the salt box

I think Charlotte Mason would appreciate this means fo understanding the child as a person! It was so insightful and has made me think about books, activities, sharing what Mummy and Daddy do in detail. So often I do not ask what James think. I would like to so this more often.

Here are some links for next time...
http://life.familyeducation.com/communication/family-time/36021.html
http://www.minds-in-bloom.com/2010/01/20-question-to-ask-kids.html
http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780380805259

How to choose a Book

In reference to may last post I read more of the recommendations for choosing books on Ambleside online. I am still learning but this is what I understand so far:

• Text should be literary to prepare for the classics later on
• Books should cultivate a delight for beautiful names
• Books should be selected with the goal to decreasing dependance on pictures and relying more on the imagination to envision pictures in the mind from the text
• Illustrations should have a"have a refining, elevating effect upon our coarser nature" and bring us into the world of beauty
• The pictures should develop a affinity for and an attraction to the beautiful, the lovely, the pure, the refining, because "education is concerned to teach him what pictures to delight in."
• Stories should have the noble, beautiful, inspiring kind of living ideas that CM espoused including "the great human relationships, relationships of love and service, of authority and obedience, of reverence and pity and neighbourly kindness; relationships to kin and friend and neighbour, to 'cause' and country and kind, to the past and the present."

Taken from http://www.amblesideonline.org/00.shtml

This is certainly food for thought....... I think the idea is to nurture the ability of the child to create illustrations in his own mind based upon what he hears. For example James laughed today at the phrase "eyes as big as lollipops" - I wonder what he saw in his mind? I think having picture books around has given James a real interest in books - now it is time to stretch him a little and allow his mind some space to imagine...

Book List

I wanted to make a record of what we are reading with James simply so I can remember what we have covered - I would like to read the books recommended by Ambleside Online plus some of the Sonlight Books. At the moment we are not doing FIAR but I hope to cover a few books in the summer as a row. Interestingly as I consider doing this I referenced to the the Year 0 Page on the Ambleside Online Web Page and found this quote:

"Away with books, and 'reading to'--for the first five or six years of life. The endless succession of story-books, scenes, shifting like a panorama before the child's vision, is a mental and moral dissipation; he gets nothing to grow upon, or is allowed no leisure to digest what he gets." (CM's OHS, V5, p.216)

I think what Charlotte is saying here is that it is important to read a little every day and allow the child to play with what he has absorbed in the book. I like the idea of a book basket with the same books for a month, well read and enjoyed before being changed for fresh new books. This hopefully will reduce the mental and moral dissipation that she warns of. When James and Hannah have reading time with me we do tend to read only a few books at a time - mainly because of their natural attention span. I hope that my book choice is wise and edifying for my children - gradually I am considering each book for it's worth and weaning out twaddle - this is easier said then done as I am not quite sure yet what is twaddle!

• Beatrix Potter:
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit
• The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
• The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
• The Tale of Miss Tiggy Winkle
• The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher
• Two Bad Mice
• The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck
• The Tale of Miss Tittle Mouse
• The Little House
• The Story about Ping
• The Little Engine that Could
• Blueberries for Sal
• One Morning in Maine
• Make Way for Ducklings
• Ferdinand
• OxCart Man
• Stone Soup
• Miss Rumphius
• The Story of Little Babaji
• Brer Rabbit
• Poems and Prayers for the Very Young
• Mother Goose
• The Child's Garden of Verses - on second Time
• A Child's Book of Poems

The learning continues...

I continue to read to James from the Garden of Verse before bed and I love the sweet language of these poems. Despite being English I am still unsure of some of the words! It is good for me to have my own vocabulary stretched. Today the Poem was Foreign Children. It described children from other countries and told about things they do like eating ostrich eggs. One of the nationalities was Sioux - I had never heard of this but they are the native North American Indians who ranged from Lake Michigan to the Rocky Mountains. It is pronounced "soo". It was a term first used in 1640 by Jean Nicolet, a Frenchman and means little snakes.

The Crow are a Siouan people who lived in the Montana and Wyoming area of the USA.They were called the handsome people by the French. They were known for their fine physical appearance and beautiful clothing. They were a horse riding, buffalo hunting people.

In the Marching Song there is a phrase that says "here's enough of fame and pillage". I also did not know what pillage meant. It seems to mean the act of stealing or plundering a place in war. This Robert Louis Stevenson liked his war and Indians!

Older Resources

I am always finding different useful web pages and I am finding this a great place to record the links so i do not lose even if I do not need then now. This page is going to be for James (i.e. an older child)

http://www.discoverymagazine.com/index.html
Science and Scripture Articles and Activities
http://www.rodandstaffbooks.com/list/Storybooks_Preschool-Age_7/
Older Character Books
http://dailythoughtsonmytots.blogspot.co.uk/
For FIAR and other ideas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixMvFdeo-F0
Books of the Bible
http://biblestudyguide.com/images/beginner-student-pages/bsp-sample.pdf
Idea for Family Bible Time

Nut Cracking

This is a picture of the Internet - it has so much less than ours, maybe I should simplify ours!

Today I came downstairs and met James in the living room looking guilty and opening his mouth. It was full of something so I asked him what it was. He pointed to the nature basket. I was about to freak when I decided to be more measured with my response (by the grace of God!). I asked him to tell me what he had eaten. It was a nut of some sort from the nature basket. I gave a him a mini lecture on the fact that it could be poisonous and then decided that we better find out what it was! It looked OK but I thought I had better check.

While I was doing this on the computer I asked James what he had been doing eating out of the nature basket and he said he was using a nut cracker to open nuts. He showed me what he had used and it a very large pine cone that we have! He had been taking each nut and smashing it on the carpet and getting the nuts out! I have to be honest I did think - is this an outdoor survivalist in the making? Thankfully when we looked on the computer it turned out to be pecans! This shows how urban I am - I am not even aware of what a pecan shell looks like. I think this all comes from the fact that around Christmas James realised there was walnuts in some of the nuts in the basket which he though was so cool - food available any time.

So poisonous disaster averted. I did give James some guidelines about nut cracking - check the nut with Mummy (not that I know a lot of nuts I do know a pecan and a walnut shell now), to use a chopping board (to protect my carpet) and to clean up after himself - all the shells! I do think we should find out about forest school - I think he would love it! I also love the fact that he knows he can eat as nature intended. I think he will always know where a pecan comes from!

Reading Basket April

In Hannah's Book Basket this week:

• Katy and the Big Snow (FB)
• Bringing Down the Moon
• Runaway Bunny (FB)
• Little Bear (FB)
• We're going On a Bear Hunt (FB)
• Easter Story - Bible Friends Bible Story
• Baby Animals (The Metropolitan museum of Art) - little ones at play in 20 works of art
• The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse Eric Carle (Library)

In James' Book Basket this week:

• How do Apples Grow - Let's Read and Find Out Science
• How do you lift a Lion? Robert E Wells (Sonlight)
• The Three Trees Angela Hunt (Easter)
• The Usbourne Book of Fairy Tales
• The Usbourne Poems for Little Children
• The Growing Story Ruth Krauss
• The Polar Bear Son An Inuit Tale Lydia Dabcovich

The plan is to replace the books when each one had been read - I will cross them off as we do them