It’s been fun to see the many new mamas who have decided to home school this Fall! After talking to several of you – about your excitement, your concerns and fears – I’m thrilled to give you some ideas that I hope will help you feel supported in the months ahead.
I will be sharing based on Aspen Cooperative’s Curriculum which will focus on the Renaissance and chemistry. It also includes scriptural classics, literature, nature study and some math.
Whether you are in a cooperative or at home with your family the basics are the same…plan a little bit, keep it simple and listen to your children. Give them time to talk, then really listen to their thoughts. This will guide learning in a more beautiful way.
Week one:
Suggestions: Start each morning around the table – the kitchen table, the coffee table, the picnic table – any table! Circle the children and share an inspiring story, music, thought, prayer…Make the first day extra special by bringing out the teacups and some mini cinnamon rolls. (Or whatever your family loves.)
We have chosen the parable of the talents for our inspiring start this month. Christ is the Master storyteller and this parable can go as deep as your teenagers choose, or can be simple and sweet for the little ones.
Let the children read a few verses straight from the scriptures. Ask them for their input. What are the talents they see in themselves? What talents do you see in them? Look for the more subtle talents such as kindness, curiosity, a contagious smile, quick to serve, creative, good friend, etc. Consider sharing your talents with each other or with those outside your family. How can you bless others with your talents and improve upon those talents?
(Now might be a good time to play some epic adventure music from YouTube to enlighten your minds) This is one of my favorites!
This conversation can flow right into a story about Christopher Columbus. Here are some words from a “A Child’s History of the World” which is one of my favorite history story books.
“One of the first books to be printed….was “The Travels of Marco Polo.” (In English) One of the boys who loved to read these stories of those far-away countries of the East with their gold and precious jewels was an Italian named Christopher Columbus. Christopher was born in the city of Genoa, which is in the top of the “boot.” Like a great many other boys, who were born in seaport towns, he had heard the sailors on the wharves tell yarns of their travels, and his greatest ambition in life was to go off to sea and visit all the wonderful lands of which he had read and been told. At last the chance came, and though only fourteen years old, he made is his first voyage. After that, Columbus made many other voyages and grew to be a middle-aged man, but he never got to those countries he had read about in “The Travels of Marco Polo.”
This is just a sample of the story but you can already see how easy it would be to talk about Christopher Columbus and his talents as a young boy – his sense of adventure and his desire to read. It also opens the opportunity to discuss the geography of Italy, the life of a sailor, wharves, seaport towns, adventuring and the travels of Marco Polo.
Your family could lay out plans for an adventure that you want to take together. You could write an adventure story of your own – letting older children do their own writing and younger kids tell you their story as you record it for them.
Let your children’s interests guide your activities and your discussions. Observe them carefully and take notes of what you see.
We’ll continue this next week.
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When it comes to chemistry you don’t have to look too far to find it!
The Compass has a lot of science behind it – including chemistry…
By the time Christopher Columbus came to America the compass had already been discovered so he was able to navigate with a compass and other instruments. It might be fun to bring a compass to class for the children to play with and learn more about. You could also make a simple compass by using a needle, a magnet and a bowl of water. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HqW5m9yzgM
or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEze5ZVH2fw)
Depending on the age of your children, talk about how a compass works and why it was so important for exploration. Compasses are still used today though now we have GPS to help us find our way!
When energetic particles zooming in from the Sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field, we get amazing auroras in the sky – the northern lights or the southern lights. Here are a couple of YouTube videos that show some beautiful pictures of the northern lights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypR0y7GVMAQ (Northern Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmN5y2BYFMU (Northern Lights time lapse)
There are three elements: iron, nickel and cobalt, which have attraction to magnets and can be magnetized. Look at a periodic table – I LOVE the book called “Elements” which has great pictures of the elements. Find Iron, Nickel and Cobalt and learn their atomic numbers. See if you can find some of these elements to experiment with. Bring magnets and paper clips and magnetized putty etc. for the kids to play with.
Watch this Youtube video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvkEExdl-w4 and see if you can find one or more of the highlighted gadgets to bring to class.
Week Two
As we share history together it is important to have an accurate view of it. Using primary sources is easier as we get closer to modern times. There are loads of primary sources from Mr. Columbus himself. How exciting to read his own words which he shared as he was discovering a new world!
An English translation of Christopher’s first voyage can be found here: https://archive.org/details/journalofchristo00colurich/page/n9/mode/2up
If you read the Monday, August 6th entry you see that he had hardships from the very beginning. There were a couple of men who were thought to have purposely sabotaged one of the ships! This might bring up a good conversation with your kids.
Hopefully after reading some of his journal it will help the kids see why journal keeping is so important. When those from the past take time to record a few events from their lives, we get the privilege of better understanding what life was like at that time. We can feel what they felt and see things through their eyes that otherwise we would just be guessing about.
We learn that Mr. Columbus was a devout Christian and was guided by the hand of the Lord to come to this land of America. He had intended to arrive in India – but his destiny was to discover the Americas.
As you read his journals, after landing on the first island, you will see that the natives to the island were fascinated with the simplest things from Europe. They were willing to trade yarn, parrots, darts etc. for them. Christopher found many fruits growing on the island, fruits he hadn’t seen before. What fruits can you find to share with one another that you haven’t tasted before?
There are many opportunities to discuss different kinds of birds that were seen on the island and close to the island. Do you have children who are interested in birds? A great book about John Audubon is “The Boy Who Drew Birds.” This short video is great to raise further interest in Audubon’s talents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gozLgMAq38
Bring books to class about all kinds of relevant topics: birds, boats, navigation, stars, maps, globes etc. Let the kids trace the travels of Christopher Columbus. Why didn’t he land in India? Where exactly did he land? See if it is possible to take your students on a boat ride. How would it feel to be on a ship for weeks, not knowing exactly when or if you would find land?
Week Three
Getting perspectives from various authors is always a good idea. Here is another writing about Christopher Columbus from M.B. Synge along with the link to read the full chapter. (Courtesy of Gateway to the Classics)
“Every event in the eventful life of Christopher Columbus is of supreme interest. We linger over all that leads up to the momentous start westwards: we recall his birth and early life at Genoa towards the middle of the fifteenth century, his apprenticeship to his father as a weaver of cloth, his devotion to the sea, his love of the little sailing ships that passed in and out of the busy Genoese harbour from all pats of the known world. At the age of fourteen the little Christoforo went to sea – a red-haired, sunburned boy with bright blue eyes. he learned the art of navigation, he saw foreign countries, he learned to chart the seas, to draw maps and possibly worked with some of the noted, Italian draughtsmen.”
Christoforo was his first given name and comes from Greek meaning “Bearing Christ.” How interesting that his very name recognized that he would bring Christianity to the new world and that he had a deeply spiritual understanding of Jesus Christ. It is what led him to do much of what he did. This ties into the parable of the talents that is being studied in September. How did Christopher use his talents? What example did that set for each of us?
Christopher’s father was a weaver and taught his son to weave. Do you have children who would like to learn the art of weaving? This is a fun site to help you give it a try!
This week you could also bring some interesting math into your discussion regarding the size of the ships that Columbus brought with him on his first voyage to America. Compared to the ships of today, they were quite small. Using square footage, see if you can measure out the top deck of the Santa Maria and re-create it on a lawn nearby. There are a few different opinions so we’ll average them out and say the Santa Maria was approximately 70′ x 40′ Work with square footage for various rooms, boxes, cars etc. Show what square footage looks like in written form and solve some more math problems.
Columbus counted on wind to drive his ship through the waters. Without it, the ships would just sit in the middle of the ocean. Science experiments using wind can be fun for kids who are curious about propulsion, wind power, and sailboats in general. There a many experiments on the internet but I love Steve Spangler and here is a fun one based on Bernoulli’s principles.
This one helps explain it in more detail:
Have a great week!
Week Four
We hear a Beatles song, smell cinnamon rolls baking, or see an old photograph, and immediately a past memory washes over us. Our senses, especially the sense of smell and sound, help tie experiences and emotion together…So if we want our children to have beautiful experiences with learning, ENGAGE THEIR SENSES!
This means when we’re talking about Christopher Columbus this month we can bring the smell of spices: cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon then bake something together using these pungent smells. Sample the tartness of grapefruit, limes, and lemons – citrus fruit the sailors needed to prevent scurvy. Go on a boat ride and feel the motion of the waves. Listen to the beautiful Italian language or watch a panoramic view of Genoa where Christopher lived in his childhood. The more you connect learning to several of a child’s senses, the greater the mind makes emotional connections and remembers. Take some time to reflect on ways you can incorporate smell, taste, touch, sight and sound into your learning. Remember to connect to their Spirit as well. I believe this is our most important sense. The heart and the Spirit teach us truth and that is the gift we are seeking.
Love, love, love these thoughts from Jeffrey R. Holland:
“So let’s talk about learning. As a teacher at heart, I love the word and the idea, though I do think we should define it a little better than we usually do. For gospel purposes I don’t just mean the accumulation of knowledge, though that is part of it. I also don’t just mean passively listening to a lecture or memorizing facts. I mean learning in the sense of growth and change, of insight leading to improvement, of knowing the truth, which in turn leads us closer to the God of all truth.
President Russell M. Nelson tied together learning and this converting change of heart when he taught that as “the Holy Ghost gives conviction to the earnest seeker of truth,” it fosters faith, which “promotes repentance and obedience to God’s commandments.” These essential ingredients of conversion turn us “from the ways of the world to … the ways of the Lord,” which “brings a mighty change of heart.”3
This isn’t about knowing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel or diagramming the allegory of the olives trees, as useful as such exercises may be. This kind of learning is about changing ourselves, about being different (better) because we know more of what God knows.
You can see that the kind of learning I’m talking about is far too big to fit into a classroom or to be wrapped up in a 50-minute lesson. Scriptures, prophets, parents, sunshine, rainy days, spiritual promptings, and the everyday curriculum of life itself all provide opportunities for us to learn about God and His plan, for surely “all things bear record” of Him (Moses 6:63). Eventually we all discover that He is willing to teach us not only at church but anywhere and anytime—in informal moments with our children and our friends, our neighbor or our workmates, the man or woman we see on the bus or the employee who helps us at the market—wherever and whenever we are willing to learn.”