Category Archives: Literature

Read Them to Sleep- Giveaway!

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Recent trip to my grandparent’s farm this is how Jax and Vay fell asleep when I was reading to them.

We use to have a hard time at bedtime.  The boys would talk and keep each other up or get out of bed to play, they’d use the bathroom several times, complain that they were hungry, anything they could not to sleep.  My daughter won’t go to sleep by herself even though she sleeps in the same room as her brothers(for now).  We use to get frustrated and bedtime was a stressful time.  Then we decided to implement a bedtime routine.  When it’s bedtime we have them brush their teeth and get jammies on and then we ask four basic questions:

  • Are you hungry?
  • Do you need to go pee?
  • Do you need to go poo?
  • Do you have your water bottle?

Hp7Then we head up to their room.  We read our science and any school literature, then we do our Bible story readings(we have 3 different age levels we read too for Bible), then we say our prayers.  We finish the routine by reading a novel.  We started with The Magic Tree House Series, read some My Book House, and Grimm’s Tales, then the first few Harry Potter books, followed that with the complete Little House on the Prairie series, and now we are about to get back to finish the Harry Potter series.  My boys love for me to read to them, and my daughter gently drifts off to sleep listening to her mama’s voice.  It’s a very calm way to end the day.  We all enjoy the reading and it winds things down nicely.  Plus it’s enriching my children and giving them a love of literature.

The Giveaway!

In honor of the upcoming Summer Reading programs at our local libraries I want to share the reading love! I will be giving away a Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows to 1 lucky winner!  We were gifted some extra copies and we want to share! I’ll be mailing the book so you can live anywhere in the continental US to participate!

 

Subscribe to Win: Amber Teething Necklace

Post Comment Below to Win:
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows

Share with us in a comment below: the age of your child/children, and what literature you have been reading to your child to enter to win: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows! 1 winner will be picked at random and announced on my blog and facebook page. Thank you for participating and sharing with us!

Literature Curriculum for Classical Education

My son and I LOVE our literature curriculum.  I go online to my local library website and I place holds on the books on the book list for our history lessons and corresponding literature lessons.  The library calls my cell when the books are in and we swing by to pick them up.  Then we cuddle on the sofa for story time and get whisked away to far off places and learn the history, culture, religions, and myths of ancient times.  After I read to my son he tells me his favorite part of the story in complete sentences and I write it down for him.  Then he draws a wonderful picture about it and when he’s finished he tells me all about his drawing.  He has this book filled with his words and his drawings and it is truly a treasure to us both.

  

Not only is the book list, and correlation with our history curriculum, top notch, but this program is also FREE!  I downloaded it, printed it at home, and took it to Kinkos to have it bound with a cover.  I’m giddy with this and it’s the favorite part of our day!  Thank you Classical House of Learning(CHOL) for such a great program!  You have blessed our homeschool days!

Classical Education

We classically educate our children as outlined in the book The Well Trained Mind.  “Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.”  The early years are categorized as the Grammar stage, the middle grades are the Logic stage, and in high school it’s the Rhetoric stage.

With classical education you do a four year cycle following the course of history.  The first year is Ancient times, next the Middle Ages, followed by Early Modern, and ending in Modern times.  So for my son in 1st grade I downloaded the Grammar stage for Ancient history from CHOL.  And for 2nd grade I downloaded the Grammar stage for Middle Ages from CHOL.  Our literature lessons from CHOL correspond with our history lessons from Story of the World.  So if our history lessons are about Ancient China, then our literature lessons are as well.  It really helps my son to absorb and retain the information about the different cultures and events.