Last Week's Home School Activities

Whew...so much for keeping this updated in a timely manner. My goal is to recap each week of home school with at least one post so that I can remember what we did! So here is the recap for last week that I had intended to post over the weekend.

Our theme for the week was music. What a great module this is! We loved it so much that we're extending it to this week as well. There were just so many good books, non-Sonlight books that were recommended by the lady who put the Sonlight theme schedule together. The kids loved ALL of the books that we got from the library. One of my favorites is Ah, Music! by Aliki. Other titles are The Orchestra by Mark Rubin, Berlioz the Bear by Jan Brett, Meet the Orchestra by Ann Hayes, Rap A Tap Tap by Leo and Diane Dillon (about Bill "Bojangles" Robinson), and My Family Plays Music by Judy Cox. All are GREAT books.


Another activity involved creating our own "orchestra." The children were wild about this! We made shakers by putting rice in paper towel tubes (after the kids decorated the tubes) and covering the ends with paper and rubber bands. Unfortunately, my rubber bands are literally about 2 decades old, and they kept snapping, so the shakers didn't last too long, but while they did they were fun! An empty oatmeal can and an empty protein powder can made an excellent set of drums, with wooden spoons for drumsticks, and two pot lids were the perfect cymbals. Tobin added his recorder, and we had a bona fide "band!"


Charis decided I needed to play the piano amidst the uproar, so I added my musical efforts to the fray and we had a grand, LOUD time together! This led to Charis' interest in the piano, and so we semi-officially began piano lessons. I had purchased a couple of beginner books at the beginning of last school year only to decide after seeing them that she just wasn't ready. We're going to try this year and see how it goes. I'm not sure I'm the best one to teach her to play, BUT, I'm willing to give it a shot, and I'm sure we'll all learn a lot in the process--Charis will learn music and theory, and I will learn patience!

Another fun activity was going through Disney's Fantasia that I have on video. The intro allowed the children to see bits of the orchestra, and I helped them identify the sounds of various instruments. I thought perhaps they would be bored, since it's not really a "movie," but to my surprise they were utterly fascinated and begged and begged for more! We ended up going through the whole two hours' worth of music and animation over the course of the week.

Aside from our music theme, Tobin added a few more stickers to his reading lesson chart; Charis completed the next math lesson but had difficulties with the test, causing me to decide to spend this coming week reviewing; Charis finished her first fancy handwriting lesson (a Scripture verse on a border page of her choosing, and she got to color and decorate the border); and Tobin showed drastic improvement in writing numerals. Both children learned the week's memory verse, Mark 12:30: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength," which I chose to go along with Rule #1 from the Original 21 Rules of This House by Greg and Joshua Harris, which states, "We obey our Lord Jesus Christ." Each week we will learn a new rule and a Bible verse to emphasize it. The kids get to do a coloring page about the rule on Mondays, so they of course enjoy that.

Whew! That was our week about music! We'll continue the theme this week. I'll write another post later about our field trip with the B family to Mount Charleston last Friday. It had nothing to do with music (unless the wind through the trees counts!), but it was great fun and rather educational if we do say so ourselves. :-)