Finishing Up the Hound

When we started looking into the Sherlock Holmes series, I used the related Boomerang back issue of The Hound of the Baskervilles to get a little more out of the story than just reading it for fun.

It took us more than the scheduled four weeks to complete the study.  The reason for the delay is partly due to our going out a lot, and partly due to the dictation passages being very long and rather difficult.  And since I think the dictation passages are difficult, I decided to do it in a buddy system with Tiger, in that we will take turns to do the dictation passage so that he would not feel as though he had to suffer through a difficult task alone.

The way we did it for the first three weeks' dictation was to have Tiger read the passage out loud to me twice before I recite it back to him.  The rule is that I could not start writing until I could recite the entire passage without any error.  This proved to be much harder than I had originally anticipated it to be.  It took me several attempts before I could start writing the passage down.  Even so, I still managed to get a few errors in my dictation, which Tiger was only too glad to point out.

By arrangement, I always did the dictation first.  This was to give Tiger the time to listen to and memorise the dictation passages while I struggled through mine, so that by the time it was his turn to write the passages down, he was able to memorise entire paragraphs with very little problem.  Given the length and difficulty of the passages, I think this is a fair way to encourage a child to complete a task that would otherwise seem insurmountable.

When we came to Week Four's passage, I decided that it was just too long to even try to do a successful dictation of it at this stage, so we used the passage for copywork instead.  Tiger does all his dictation and copywork in the handwriting exercise books where he can practise his penmanship at the same time.

While the passage in Week Four concentrates on the description of the hound in the story, we did a little research to establish what kind of hound it was and came to the conclusion that it would have a cross between a bloodhound and a mastiff, which can be a rather frightfully vicious dog, especially when it was painted with luminous paint, as in the story.

To spare us from having nightmares about being chased by luminous-coated mastiff-crossed hounds, Tiger decided to end the study by making his own stop motion animation version of the scene that we had just studied, using paper cutouts as his back drop for the moors, plasticine for the hound, and an unfortunate LEGO man for the victim.

I won't mind running into Tiger's colourful version of the hound.  It seems harmless enough and does not even have teeth, and it reminds me of a soppy St. Bernard which, incidentally, is from the mastiff family!

Half Way Through Our Summer

How has your summer been?  I hope it has been a very good one.  I know that most of our American friends have started their new academic year.  In Britain, summer holidays last until the end of August or early September, so we are just in the middle of our summer break.

Our summer break has been a good one so far.  We've managed to do all that I said we would do for the summer, so that's great.  This must be the first time we have kept to our summer plan, and I rather like the sense of achievement that comes with ticking off the boxes (in my head) even if that applies to summer activities.  I might try to replicate this stick-to-the-plan approach when we start the new academic year, some time in September, and see how we fare.

Anyhow, here's a quick round up of what we've been up to in the past few weeks:

1.  Classical singing school

This went spectaculary well for us.  During the week-long course, Tiger was exposed to much singing techniques, musical games, and music history.  The repetoire of songs was quite wide -- the children were taught Latin songs, Swahili folk songs, a medieval choral, and a few contemporary (not pop, or anything to be heard on popular radio stations) songs set to poetry.

Before the course started, I wasn't sure how Tiger would respond to it, as he was rather shy about singing out loud and in front of other people.  At the end of the first day, he told me that he enjoyed it very much and he was very receptive to all the games and musical history that were taught to the group.  Although he still won't sing out loud in public, he says he wants to attend future sessions of this course, so at the very least the course has achieved the purpose that I wanted for Tiger, i.e. to be able to enjoy singing as a form of self-expression.  We are not aiming for Tiger to become a choir boy or to aspire toward a singing scholarship.  My goal is very simple: to ensure that Tiger doesn't have any self-inhibitions about singing as a natural human activity.

2.  Photography and 2D animation course

This course was held at one of the leading university's School of Creative Arts.  Tiger was very impressed with the university's professional photography studio (he came home after the photography class and asked whether we could have a similar set up at home) and the animation labs.  In that week, Tiger was taught some cool tricks on Photoshop and Adobe Flash.

3.  Plays at Shakespeare's Globe

This season's plays at the Globe seem to be mostly tragedies or historical plays, which are heavier going compared to previous years' shows.  Titus Andronicus was particularly difficult to watch due to the amount of gore and violence written into the script.  I had to brief Tiger beforehand about a few scenes and put them in context for him.  Even so, I had to censor a few scenes during the play whereby I asked Tiger to cover his ears and look down at his shoes until I told him that it was ok to resume watching.

It is, by far, the most gripping and disturbing play I've watched.  I was on the edge of my seat through most of the play, and had probably forgotten to breathe on several occasions that afternoon.

4.  In the woods

We spent some time in the woods before the weather turned, but not as much as we did in the previous years.  We miss our long walks and adventures in the forest!

5.  Closer to home

While we were not running around outside, Tiger spent his time inventing adventures for himself in the garden, or we would hang out in bookshops to read.  On a few of the short walks we would make time to stop and chat to the friendly animals we met on the way.

One day, Tiger spent an hour in his room making a necklace for me.

There was a lot of banging and knocking sounds coming from his room that morning.  If I didn't know otherwise, I would have thought a blacksmith lived upstairs!

When the noise finally stopped, Tiger presented the necklace to me.  I think it's beautiful, and exceptionally well designed with the twists and turns on the pendant reminding me of Celtic jewellery.

 

I don't know whether Tiger was inspired to make the necklace after learning about the Qixi festival a few weeks ago.  Sometimes it is appropriate to just accept a gift without asking too many questions.  Tiger has always presented me with small handmade items since he was very little, so this might just be another one of his loving gestures.  He is a very affectionate boy -- much like his father -- and this warms my heart more than the summer sun does.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/19/14   
2. Finishing Strong - Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years #25  
3. Virtual Refrigerator Blog Hop 
4. Collage Friday
5. Weekly Wrap Up: The one with all the cell division
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (8/23/14)

An Arty, Sporty Kind of Summer

My original plan for the summer looked pretty much like this: plenty of summer reading and just chilling out in the sunshine.

Perfect for the summer: the entire Swallows and Amazons series

Yes, that was my plan.  Notice the past tense.

Tiger has other ideas about what he wants to do with his summer.

First of all, he now considers watching Shakespearean plays at Shakespeare's Globe to be his annual, unmissable summer experience. 

 

It has got to be a good thing, hasn't it?  A child who loves Shakespeare's work and who reminds his mother to book tickets to each season's performances when it opens.  Hence, it looks like the two of us will be hanging out by the south bank quite a bit this summer.  Most of the plays this season are tragedies where the characters are much more complex than those of the comedies, so it will be interesting to see what Tiger makes of them.

As if to make up for lost time in the past year due to his ill health, Tiger has also decided to attend a few summer camps:

• sports (football, trampolining, swimming)
• film-making (photography, 2D animation)
• singing

The most surprising part of the above is that Tiger actually agrees to take part in the one-week classical singing camp where the repetoire will include:
1) songs by Bob Chilcott,

2) Ave Verum Corpus by Mozart,

3) Laudate Dominum by Mozart

We shall see how the singing camp works out.  I'm feeling slightly jittery about it because the repetoire is a far cry from the boy's preference of electronic music.  He's either going to see the irony/funny side of my putting him in a classical singing camp (it's my attempt to keep him in the civilised world), or he's going to absolutely despise the stuffiness of certain classical music circles (that can happen when the workshop is run by stiff, old-school types).  I pray for the former.

Our first sunflower this year.  It marks the start of our summer holiday!

Meanwhile, I plan to reread The Well-Trained Mind while sitting on the benches (as you can see from the activities listed above, I shall have many opportunities to do that this summer) as I feel we are being drawn once again back to the Classical Education approach.  I will also be going through all of John Taylor Gatto's articles to see whether I can figure out a way to incorporate his points (he had a classical education) with those of The Well-Trained Mind into our plans for the next academic year.  Specifically, I will be spending time to think through whether I am preparing my son to be a truly educated man.

Please note that I am not suggesting that John Taylor Gatto's definition of what constitutes a true education is to be applied universally to every child.  I just happen to have a lot of respect for the man so I make a point of reading his writing every summer as part of my planning process.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 7/22/14
2. Weekly Wrap-up: The one where Charlotte returns
3. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (7/26/14)

First snow this winter

We woke up to snow this morning.

The first snow of winter never fails to cause chaos in transportation.  We tried to go out this morning, but the roads were iced over so we had to stay at home.  However, that did not stop Tiger from having fun in the back garden for most part of the morning.

We didn't get enough snow to make a snowman, but the first snow nonetheless inspired me to introduce Tiger to an English modern Christmas classic, The Snowman.  It's an interesting book in that it has no words.

The story is told in a frame-by-frame illustration style which lends itself very suitably to film animation.

We watched the animation of the story after Tiger has looked through the book, so that he can relate better to how 2D illustrations can be transformed into animations -- something that is being taught at the weekly film animation class that he attends.

This year a shop in England has come up with a snowman-themed Christmas advertisement:

This post is linked up to:
1) Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop #40
2) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Winter

Inner learning and synthesis

"Creativity is nurtured by freedom and stifled by the continuous monitoring, evaluation, adult-direction, and pressure to conform that restrict children’s lives today. "

-- Peter Gray, article here.

I'm been relatively quiet on this blog lately, not because life hasn't still continued for us but because I'm still learning to understand the changes that are taking place in our homeschooling approach.

You see, once I've let go of my lesson plans, I am not entirely sure how to make sense of the spontaneous and unplanned learning that is taking place in front of me.  This is all very new to me, so I am very much a new learner in this sense.

Another new learning for me is to have patience.  As there is now no specific objective boxes to tick, I no longer have means to report that Tiger has learnt such-and-such knowledge in say, two days, or that he has completed five pages of certain workbooks.  What has changed is that Tiger's learning now appears to me to be more like pieces of puzzles - somewhat disjointed but all belonging to the same big picture nonetheless, even though where each piece belongs is not very obvious at the moment.  Therefore, now it takes much longer for me to piece together the seemingly random activities that he does with his time to get a sense of where he is taking them.  His learning process is a bit of a mystery to this very systematic, squential Mum, but it all makes perfect sense to him.

One example that I can discuss here with some clarity, after two weeks of observation, is this whole theme/idea/project of war (or what I currently group under "Classical Civilisations" for the benefit of my own understanding).

The following are the activities that I have observed Tiger doing on his own accord over a period of two weeks:

1) playing with the camera to make videos;
2) watching more documentaries on Greek and Roman battles;

• The Barbarian West
• The Battle of Gaugamela
• The Battle of Thermopylae

3) clay modeling;
4) playing with toy soldiers and building blocks;
5) playing ches;
6) making armour and weapons out of cardboard; and
7) reading books.

Seem pretty random, don't you think?  However, then a few other things happened that gave me a glimpse into how Tiger is connecting the different dots together.  One of those activities is him making his own short film of the battle scene reenactments using his toy soldiers:

When Tiger realised that he did not have any modern toy soldiers to make a more modern battle scene (after watching The Battle of Waterloo 1815), he decided to make some out of modeling clay.  He declined all my suggestions and help, and figured out by himself how to mould the clay into the soldiers in different positions.  If he hasn't been watching so many documentaries and reading so many books on this topic, he probably would have some difficulty to fashion the various positions without any references.

Another activity that reveals to me that learning is continuously taking place within Tiger is through our informal discussions, which can go from talking about the hows and whys of battle successes due to strategy and positioning, to the more philosophy questions such as whether wars could ever be justified.  It would have been easier for me to record that Tiger has completed two dozen pages of history questionnaires, or that he has sat through three history lectures, but that clearly is not how he learns best.  We sat through the first lecture of The Greek and Persian Wars from The Great Courses but Tiger does not like the feeling of having someone talk at him all the time, so that has gone onto the back burner for now.

Of course, in the past two weeks Tiger has been engaged in many other activities besides the ones I've listed here.  This is only a snapshot of the activities that I have been able to make sense of within my mind after two weeks of observation.  Other observations will follow once I am able to see how they fit into a bigger picture.

This blog post is linked up to:
1) History and Geography Meme #42
2) Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop #32
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: September 21, 2012
4) Collage Friday
5) Favourite Resources: September 21, 2012
6) TGIF Linky Party #48
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Party