Memorization is one of the foundations of our homeschool education. We memorize scripture, poetry, lists of information like states and capitals, multiplication tables, grammar jingles, the books of the Bible. So much has been written proving that memorization is effective as a style of learning, especially in elementary years. It is the season of development when little ones’ minds are specially suited to memorizing. Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise have written about it extensively in their book The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide To Classical Education at Home. And more specifically, Andrew Pudewa of the Institute for Excellence in Writing has written much on why children should learn good poetry.

I give you those references as the “why” we memorize so that I can now give you the “what” we memorize. We have read lots of good poetry in the last two years of homeschooling. I have truly been blown away at children’s ability to store material in their little brains. It far surpasses what I believed was possible. And keep in mind that you don’t have to homeschool to teach your child good poetry. Anybody can spend time reading and memorizing poetry.

Here are some of our favorites. We started with some that were only a few lines:

Whole Duty of Children by Robert Louis Stevenson

At the Seaside by Robert Louis Stevenson

Happy Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson

Our Brother Is Born by Harry and Eleanor Farjeon (We memorized the first verse only.)

The Caterpillar by Christina G. Rosetti

When the ability to memorize poetry expands, you can move on to more difficult passages like these:

Mr. Nobody (Anonymous)

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

TopsyTurvey World by William Brighty Rands

The Lamb by William Blake

Little Things by Julia A. Carney

The Little Doll by Charles Kingsley

All Things Bright and Beautiful by Cecil Frances Alexander

If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking by Emily Dickinson

Birthday Of A King by William Neidlinger

BandAids by Shel Silverstein

Merry Sunshine (Anonymous)

Who Has Seen The Wind by Christina G. Rosetti

Poetry memorization can be fun. Okay, so it might not be fun the first time children read over a poem, but as they build a mental library, it’s fun to see them recognize poetry in a book that they have committed to memory. It gives my little one such a charge to be able to recite to me what is written in a book. I hope this post encourages you to give it a try. I think you will like the results.

For those of you who are homeschoolers, and who use Story of the World for your history curriculum, I have found several resources that I wanted to pass along. We LOVE this curriculum and have been very happy with it for the two years we have used it. However, we occasionally need some extra resources to supplement the reading material, just for a change of pace. Schlessinger Media has a DVD series called Explorers of the World that we have used and found to be a great compliment. We have watched The Vikings and Marco Polo this year, which goes along with SOTW Volume 2. The DVD cover says that they are for grades 5-8, but my second grader has watched them and loved them. They didn’t seem to be over her head at all, especially after having read the SOTW text beforehand.

all of these resources gave us a different spin on our history text. They brought it to life for my student. And best of all, we got all of these resources FREE at our local library. Hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

Last year when we were in SOTW Volume 1, we used a set of DVDs, also by Schlessinger Media, called Ancient Civilizations for Children. They have Ancient Greece, Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Rome, Ancient Africa, Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, and several others. The only thing I would warn about on these is that my little one was a little frightened by the segment on mummies in the Ancient Egypt DVD. Other than that, we found these to be an excellent resource as well.

For additional reading material (with fantastic pictures and easy-to-understand diagrams) the Usborne Beginners series is excellent. Their titles that correspond with SOTW include Castles, Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Celts, Knights, Romans, and Vikings. Kingfisher has an equally good series in their history section. Their books are the Best Book of Mummies, Best Book of Ancient Rome, Best Book of Ancient Greece, and Best Book of Knights and Castles. Scholastic has a series that has been a lot of fun. Titles include You Wouldn’t Want To Work on the Great Wall of China!, You Wouldn’t Want to be a Crusader, You Wouldn’t Want to be in a Medieval Dungeon, You Wouldn’t Want to be in the Forbidden City, You Wouldn’t Want to be a Greek Athlete, and You Wouldn’t Want to be a Roman Soldier!

So after my poor, pitifulness last week, I feel the need to tell the happier side of the story today. I must have sounded more pitiful than I intended to or even realized, because after that post, I had several emails, calls, and offers of help. It’s good to have friends.

I am happy to report that in all its frustration, last week did end on a good note. The field trip to the coffee roasting plant was FABULOUS, and SissyGirl was very sweet and uncharacteristically quiet for the hour and a half that it lasted. She found some coffee beans to play with, and they entertained her until we were done. Mary Anneliese and I learned SO MUCH about the coffee-making process. Did you know that coffee grows on trees? Or that by law, coffee must be only 60% coffee bean, and can contain up to 40% fillers like ground up sticks and leaves? Have you ever noticed that you can use less high quality coffee in your coffee maker to get the same richness of flavor of cheaper coffee? That’s because the cheaper coffee usually contains fillers which have no flavor. Who knew?!?

Anyhoo, I didn’t want to leave you with the impression that every week is like the one we had last week. We did eventually pull ourselves out of the ditch and get back on the right road. This week has more than compensated for last week’s pity party. We have been able to focus and stay motivated. We have finished school early and had plenty of play time. The weather has been nothing short of GORGEOUS, and we have spent many hours outside. Hallelujah!! And perhaps the biggest accomplishment has been the adjustment in my own attitude. I am indeed grateful for the life I have. I LOVE the privilege of educating my kiddos at home. I do not take it for granted. My husband works extremely hard, burning the candle at both ends, for us to be able to do what we do, and I am grateful. The view from here is definitely good…

There are days when homeschooling is hard. Really hard. There are days when it isn’t necessarily fun. There are days when every step of the way you feel like you have weights tied to your feet and you struggle to take even the slightest step forward. Distractions are everywhere. EVERYWHERE! And you feel like your focus has been kicked to the curb with this week’s trash.

This week has been like that. I had grand plans for this week. My lesson plan book was so nice and filled up with the things we were going to accomplish. Math drills, art projects, history tests, piano practicing, science labs, Bible memorization. We started off with a bang. Monday went like clockwork, and we checked everything off our list. But by Tuesday, the wheels were slowly coming off the wagon. We slept late. We needed to go to the grocery during school time. Patterson was in a whiny mood and wanted me to hold her all day. The housekeeping fell behind. Wednesday we had to miss Patterson’s music class because she had gotten sick the night before. The girls were playing so sweetly that I let them play instead of starting school on time, only to pay for it by being behind all afternoon and having school run into the evening. It led to whining and bad attitudes from everybody. Including me.

I wish I could say that things were better yesterday. That we had somehow managed to get back on track and turn the week around. We have not. I skipped out on lunch with my girlfriends because we needed to catch up on schoolwork. Jonathan was supposed to get home in time to see the girls before bedtime, but he ran late and they were both in the bed when he got home. I missed out on seeing a friend who recently moved away, but was back in town tonight because I needed to stay home and oversee homework. The house is a mess. We have a field trip today that will be fun, but will probably keep us from getting anything else done. And we have to take Patterson with us on said field trip and keep her entertained the whole time.

Homeschooling is not always easy. It can be isolating – most of my time is spent with my girls, and I have very little time for friends. It requires constant, and I mean CONSTANT effort to keep everything going in the direction it should. Some days, when God is smiling on you, it is easy peasy lemon squeazy. Other days, it is a struggle from the minute you get out of bed. And it doesn’t let up until you try-going-to-bed-at-a-decent-hour-but-you-can’t-sleep-so-you-get-up-and-blog-about-it-at-1:30am. Sigh.

Why do I keep doing it? Wouldn’t “regular” school be so much easier? These are the things I think about at this hour. And then I am reminded that I do it because God has called me to do it. He has made it abundantly clear to Jonathan and me that this is the course He has for our girls, at least at this point in our lives. And He reminds me that while, yes, “regular” school might look easier (at least to one who does not “do” school), He has not called me to do what is easier for my children, but rather what is best for them. And right now, this is what is best for them. (This is not to say that traditional school isn’t best for some people. It’s just not what God has called US to right now 🙂 And so, in a few hours we will start it all over again. We will do our best to remember that many people would love to have the opportunity to homeschool, and we are blessed to be able to do it. We will look forward to the fun times that homeschooling brings us. We will be grateful for the blessing that homeschooling is to our family.

Last week was almost entirely devoted to one of my favorite things: FIELD TRIPS!! I love homeschooling my daughter. The ability and freedom to get out of the classroom and into the world is one of the biggest advantages of homeschooling, and we took full advantage of it last week. CC came to stay with Pitter Patter, which always makes life so much easier for me.

On Wednesday, our public library had a terrific theater production called “Brave Little Tin Soldier”. It was a really cute little story. Our public library hosts really terrific programs for children, and we are big fans of the library. I’m amazed that many of our friends never take their children to the library. As much as our lives revolve around books, I don’t think we could make it without the library. We are fortunate to have one of the best children’s libraries in the state.

On Thursday, I took Bitty to see “Scrooge:The Musical” at the Birmingham Children’s Theater. The BCT is one of our favorite theaters because of the quality of the shows. They are professional actors and the costumes are incredible. This particular show was excellent because it combined three of our favorite things: Christmas, classic literature, and music.

That night I took Mary Anneliese and a friend to see the live nativity at Briarwood Presbyterian Church. I love this idea for a fun family Christmas tradition. This is the second year we have gone, and it’s a beautiful way to tell the Christmas story.

On Friday, we went to the planetarium at Samford University to hear a lecture on the Star of Bethlehem. Let me preface this by saying that I did not know it was going to be a lecture or I might not have considered it for my second grader. We have been before to the planetarium at Birmingham-Southern College, and we saw a video by the same name. We thought we were going to see something along the same lines as that one. The Samford planetarium is gorgeous and new. It is comfortable and dark and cozy. The lecture was on a high school level. It wasn’t long before both Mary Anneliese and I were asleep. Oh, well!

On Saturday, we had another Upward game. We were supposed to be celebrating our nephew Jon David’s birthday party that afternoon. However, my brother-in-law’s dad passed away that morning, and so they went to be with his mom instead of having the party. Please keep the Lowe’s in your prayers, as they have had a year filled with loss and sickness and will have a difficult Christmas this year.

Hope you had a great weekend! Slow down long enough to enjoy the Christmas season with your family.

The most common response I get when I tell people that I homeschool is total shock. I mean, people are polite enough, but there is that awkward pause right after the words come out of my mouth, where they stand there with their mouth open. They are usually quick to recover, stating something along the lines of, “Wow! I could never do that! I don’t have enough patience with my kids.” Or maybe it’s, “I’m not organized enough to homeschool.” Or maybe even, “Do you not live in a good school district?”

I have found that the discussion is my blog is no different. The topic that I get the most comments on is homeschooling. Usually when I write a post about homeschooling, the traffic on my blog goes up for several days.

In response to these things, I decided to do a series of posts that answers every question you might have about homeschooling (well, almost all of them anyway). We will cover our decision to homeschool, how we choose curriculum, what about socialization, what we do all day, and the benefits and challenges we have seen. Do you have other questions you’d like to ask? If you’ll leave a question in the comments, I’ll be happy to answer it. Just curious about something? I’ll be happy to address it. We’ll start the series this week, so ask away!

Last week I took Mary Anneliese on several field trips. CC came to Birmingham to stay with Patterson, so we took full advantage of our time. One of our favorite trips was to see the Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness exhibit at the Museum of Art. It was FABULOUS! There were hundreds of items from the Yale University museum on loan to the Birmingham museum. They featured paintings, lithographs, silver, furniture, coins, and lots of other interesting items.

This Trumbull painting was one of the highlights of the show. You might recognize it from the back of a $2 bill.

This Trumbull painting of General Washington was another favorite. It is HUGE! Well over life-sized!

And this Albert Bierstadt of Yosemite Valley was incredible. Again, it was huge! Probably 6′ x 8′ -ish.

If you want to see the show, it’s not too late. It runs until January. It is well worth your time and money!