Hymn Study

I didn't have any exposure to hymns as I was growing up but as an adult I've appreciated the 

theology & the richness of the words and want my children to grow up with an appreciation

for them. I'm always on the lookout for contemporary music set to the old words and these 

versions by All Sons & Daughters are lovely. It's also easier to start older children listening 

to hymns if they have a modern feel to them.

 Nothing but the Blood

Give me Jesus

It Is Well With My Soul (Kutlass)

Only three out of the six verses are included in this version.

Be Thou my Vision

An 8th Century Irish hymn performed by Irishman, Robin Mark.

Ambleside Folksongs

We've been concentrating on Australian folksongs recently, and will continue to do so, but I decided to also include three Year 8 suggestions from Ambleside Online (AO) for my two older boys who are studying Renaissance & Reformation history using the AO curriculum.

Barbara Allen:



The Death of Queen Jane - lovely scenes on the video:



This information was included with the video on youtube:

'The Death of Queen Jane' discusses the death of Jane Seymour, wife to Henry VIII, (but never actually crowned as Queen) who gave birth to Edward VI of England on October 12th, 1537. Jane Seymour died twelve days later. Edward died aged 15. It is possible that Seymour was the only one of his wives whom Henry seriously loved and his delight at being given a male heir was destroyed by the death of Jane. The mysterious verse concerning building a castle seems to have no part of the rest of the narrative; nonetheless, it does appear in at least one other version of the song. The video was filmed at Dun Guaire Castle,Kinvara, Co. Galway, Ireland. The castle is open for visitors.

Sylvia Crawford: musical arrangement, keyboards, fiddles, wire-strung mediaeval harp, finger cymbals
Fred Johnston: vocals, guitar, bowed psaltery.

Three Mariners



This is the website for The One-Man Renaissance Band. He has other songs from the same time period that you may find useful.

And last, but certainly not least, a version of Click Go the Shears, the Aussie folksong suggested at AO for June 2012.



I must have had a fetish for the ukele - if you check over in my music post you'll see this instrument used in a classical music piece.

Music

The composer we've been listening to recently has been Franz Schubert.

A good book for younger children on his life is Franz Schubert and his Merry Friends by Opal Wheeler & Sybil Deucher. 
The Gift of Music by Smith & Carlson has short chapters on great composers and their influence but is more suited to older children.

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'I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.' 
Maurice Ravel (French composer 1875-1937)

This video concentrates on the dramatic Romanian conductor, Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996). The piece is 'Bolero' by Ravel and I think the second part of the quote above could be applied to this man on the video!

 This is a creative variation on Ravel's Bolero - love it!

A Week of Nature Study

We'd just had a week of pouring rain and the only nature study we'd done for a while was on our cat, watching him jumping at shadows and pulling on the ironed shirts I'd just hung up. Then at the beginning of the next week our daughter rang (from the driveway) and said, "Dad, I think there's a snake at the front door. Could you come and have a look?” It was only a very young (dead) snake. Being the first week of winter we were surprised to see a snake, especially when we'd had such cool weather.

 This beautiful male king parrot (Alisterus scapularis) came and sat in the tree outside our kitchen window. We have a bird bath nearby and lots of small to medium bushes and trees which attract the birds and give them a refuge if they're disturbed. This is one of our favourite birds, so gentle and beautifully coloured. The female was nearby, less showy with mostly green plumage. 

A very useful website for identifying Australian birds: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/finder

Photographic Field Guide Birds of Australia by Jim Flegg is a book we refer to regularly also.

 We'd kept our chickens cooped up during the deluge so they made the most of their liberty and probably got some good pickings with the rain forcing the earthworms to the surface.

We had a nature walk this week on our suburban block which backs onto a bush reserve. Our chooks started digging up the garden and eating my pot plants so we moved them on and then decided we might as well get some kindling while the sun was out which led to the discovery of some interesting mushrooms……… 

 

  

Autumn and early winter is the best time to observe fungi in Australia. 

We had a bit of a hunt to find this Bracket Fungi.

  

Some good fungi photos  here:  http://www.elfram.com/fungi/fungipics_o.html

And some Fun Facts About Fungi 

And if you really want to get serious try the Australian Fungi Website which is part of the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

And then we had a look at some mosses and lichen.

Did you know?

That lichens are used as pollution monitors.

They are very sensitive to pollution in the atmosphere so they're not often found in cities or industrial areas.

They are called the 'termites of the plant world.'

They were a source of purple dye in Mediaevel times.

They are not separate organisms but are a partnership between an alga and a fungus.

Litmus dye comes from lichen.

Some lichen have antibiotic attributes. 
The grey/white splotches on this sandstone rock are lichens:

 The cat decided to join us.

 

The obligatory leeches. We've got a dedicated packet of salt kept in readiness for getting rid of these as someone is sure to carry some home if we've had rain.

 

As I'm writing this the rain has started again and the forecast is for rain all week. We'll go back to looking at the cat's antics (indoors) for awhile I think.

Homeschooling

We were first introduced to the idea of home education when my husband and I were engaged to be married. It was something we thought about and discussed briefly from time to time but by the time our first child was about 2 years old we began to think seriously about it. By the time she was 4 we had made a definite decision to teach her at home.

She was beginning to read, loved books, had an incredible vocabulary, memory, and attention span, and wanted to learn to play the piano. As her parents we wanted the best for her and we knew we would be 'qualified' to teach her because we loved her and knew her so well.

The idea of sending her into an institutional setting for several hours a day, five days a week, to be taught by someone we didn't really know, someone who also had to care for twenty or thirty other children at the same time, and at the end of the day, no matter how good a teacher, someone who could go home and forget about her, just didn't make sense to us.
 

I'd  had what I would call a mediocre education for most of the time I'd attended school, except for one year in 4th Grade when I had a teacher who had really cared about me. I think she did more for me in one year than all the other teachers I'd had put together. I figured if one teacher in one year had encouraged and motivated me as she had done, how much more I could do with my own children over a number of years!

I regularly get asked if I have a teaching background when people know that I'm teaching my own children. I never finished my own schooling but our three eldest have each gone through to university despite my lack of qualifications. I reckon if you can read and write and you care, you are competent to teach.

 So 19 years of homeschooling later I'm writing this post. I still feel the same way. Our children are all quite different in personality and ability. Our first could read fluently at 4 years of age, four of them were about 5 or 6 years of age, one was 7 years old and one was barely reading at 10 and didn't really read well until his early teens. I've had my convictions tested and tried. I've had to learn to adjust, pray for wisdom along the way and call on the grace of God.

" Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth and fit them forusefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners,arts and science is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties."

Noah Webster, 1828.