The Underground Railroad

We had a great week studying the Underground Railroad. Among the books we read were:

  
Wanted Dead or Alive: The True Story of Harriet Tubman
  
Follow the Drinking Gourd (with great FIAR lessons!)

  
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt

  
The Drinking Gourd


That last one isn't the kind of book I would normally choose to read to my kids. In it, the child lies and his father, a deacon in the church(!) tells him that he's done a good job. I decided to go ahead and read it to see if they could spot "the end justifies the means" thinking and I was thankful that they could and that we could discuss it, since that thinking is so prevalent in our society today.


We listened to Follow the Drinking Gourd performed and explained.
We also listened to some great negro spirituals:
Go Down Moses, sung by Louis Armstrong, and
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, belted out by Etta James


And, of course, we looked up at the night sky to find the Big Dipper (the drinking gourd) and the North Star!


At the end of our week, we made the trek to Auburn, NY. It was well worth the drive! 

We visited the Harriet Tubman home and visitor center and received a great personal tour. Our tour guide was wonderfully knowledgeable and so passionate about her subject. Her enthusiasm was contagious.

We were also able to visit the Seward House, which was fascinating. Oh my. This family saved everything. I can't begin to tell you. They even saved the blood-stained, knife-slashed sheet from the assassination attempt on William Seward on the same night that Abraham Lincoln was shot. I SO wish I had been allowed to take pictures inside. The library was amazing! And the paintings! I'm so glad we went.

We crammed a lot into our day in Auburn but this post is getting quite long so I will wait to tell you about the Chapel completely decorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany but, rest assured, it was stunning!

This is my Father's world

We've added something to our plans for this year that is working out wonderfully so far! We are attempting to learn a hymn each week. We've found some beautiful videos on YouTube for the hymns we've done so far:

All things bright and beautiful

This is my Father's world

For the beauty of the earth

You can see we've got a theme going here.

We start our "morning service" watching our hymn on YouTube and attempting to sing along. Some of the videos have the words on the screen which is very helpful. Z-Man will also get a printed copy of the lyrics to put in his notebook.

Here's a particularly nice one for your enjoyment:

Finding the humor in artist and composer study

As I was going over the artists and composers plans, I saw that last time I posted about our art and music plans, I left out a few really great resources we're planning to use. I did link to the Classics for Kids site, which is wonderful, but I would be terribly remiss if I didn't mention some CD's we've all enjoyed in the car for over a year now:

There are now four volumes (I just this minute found out about number four - that's going on my wish list!) We have the first three and they are really funny. Check out the lyrics to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony here. No, really, do. I'll wait.

Funny, huh? Now if that doesn't get a reluctant kid interested in classical music, what will?

Maybe these - author Mike Venezia has written a whole slew of books covering artists, composers and presidents in his own amusing style.

And as I looked up pictures of these for you, I just discovered they've added inventors and scientists to this series! How grand to live in the information age!

While we're on the subject of humorous books about artists and composers, be sure to check these out:

Now these are just plain quirky and no one loves quirky more than I, but you may need to edit a little if you don't want to explain cirrhosis of the liver and, ahem...worse. For that reason, they'll be read-alouds here. But you can't beat this for getting a kid's attention:

"As a young music teacher, Bach was out walking one night when six of his own students attacked him. They wanted an apology. Bach had called one of them a 'nanny-goat bassoonist' - someone who makes a bassoon sound like a goat. But Bach wouldn't take it back; he drew a knife in self-defense. Luckily, the fight was broken up before anyone was really hurt."

Who knew?

At the other end of the spectrum is this book, which uses primary sources to shed light on each composer's relationship with God. These are wonderful, inspiring stories that you will definitely not hear in public school.

And last, but definitely not least, a wonderful blog I've been following for quite some time: Harmony Art Mom. Love it! Scroll way down on the right hand side bar for lists of artists and composers. She keeps everything very simple - Charlotte Mason style. Lots of great stuff!

Around the world resources

Because we have an extremely limited homeschool budget AND because we are so very blessed to live directly in back of our town's library, we plan to use the library extensively during our world studies this year. I have actually gone so far as to make "books to order" lists on i-Cal for the entire year. I told you I was a planner. Nevertheless, there are quite a few resources that I've purchased because they are a) not in our library system, b) some are consumable and/or c) we'll use them for all or most of the countries we visit.

ART: We plan to study the famous artists of the countries we visit and also use Global Art by MaryAnn Kohl. Have you seen her books? She has many and they are full of good, do-able ideas.

MUSIC: we have Wee Sing Around the World. It comes with a CD (or cassette, in our case) and very simple sheet music. Since a wonderful friend (thank you Lorie!) gave us a piano keyboard, I'm thinking of attempting to teach Z-Man to play some of the songs. This may or may not happen, you understand. We may just listen to the song from each country and I'll be fine with that.

As we study famous composers from some (not all) of the countries we visit, we'll try to find a broadcast on Classics for Kids, a great radio show with a large archive that you can listen to online. Here, you can click on a country to see who lived there. There are also printable activity sheets and games. Very cool!

BIBLE: In addition to our regular Bible reading program (right now we're using the Bible Study Guide for all Ages and we love it,) we'll also read a little bit about some of the missionaries that have served in the countries or regions that we're studying. Since we loved Wisdom and The Millers, I bought Missionary Stories with the Millers at our Homeschool Conference. I also borrowed Hero Tales (thank you Sharon!) and found Hero Tales volume 2. Since Z-Man is a pretty sensitive kid, these will be read-alouds so that I can edit on the fly if need be. 

  

Another book my kind friend loaned me is Window on the World. This is a fascinating book with great photos that lists people groups from A-Z, tells what they primarily believe, how they live, all kinds of facts about them and how to pray for them. We also have From Arapesh to Zuni: A Book of Bibleless Peoples. I'm sorry to say that there are many people groups in these books that I have never even heard of. So we'll all be learning a lot this year!

   

GENERAL: Atlases and lots of them! Mostly children's picture atlases. Oh, and this well-illustrated DK book about children, which I really like, and a fun coloring book:

  

Here are a few I'm still planning to get:

    

And finally, since I went a touch overboard on science this year, I think I'll save that for another post.