Category Archives: Classical Education

>Giuseppe Arcimboldo – Adam and Eve-

Posted on by
4

>My little one and I are truly enjoying this year our studies on Botany; we are currently studying about fruits and I wanted to introduce her to the paintings of this quite exotic and imaginative Italian painter from the XVI century, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who loved to make portrait heads using objects like fruits, vegetables, flowers and others.

Well, while looking at his work, two paintings stood out, (none related to our fruits’ study, though) The Portrait of Eve and the  Portrait of Adam.

Source
Source

These are definitely not my favorite representations of Adam and Eve, but one thing I do like and find quite interesting is that the artist portrayed each one of us, all human kind, in Adam and Eve.

What are your thoughts?

>Spanish For Children -a Review-

Posted on by
4

>

I am thankful to the folks at Classical Academic Press for giving me the opportunity to review their Spanish for Children program.

As a teacher of Spanish 1 and 2 at Veritas Scholars Academy, I was intrigued about the Spanish for Children program. How good it is? How well prepared will the grammar students using this program be for high school Spanish?  I am a Spanish native speaker, and as you can probably imagine, I love to teach my students beautiful pronunciation; so I also wondered about the DVD’s and CD; is the pronunciation clear and accurate?  Let me now tell you what I found.

Spanish for Children is a program recommended for upper grammar students (4th grade and up); their basic bundle includes the Student’s Primer, the Teacher’s Primer (answer key), four DVD and one CD, and a Spanish Language Reader, Tin Bot.

Spanish for Children 1 covers 37 weekly chapters which follow a very good and logic sequence. Starting from the -ar, -er and -ir verbs it covers about 142 verbs; about 150 nouns with gender and number,  adjectives and prepositions; starting to build on a new language in upper grammar stage with this great foundation is just an incredible way to start with the right foot!

Spanish for Children is Classically and Creatively taught, with lots of reviews, exercises and fun phrases that will put Spanish in context. It is a thorough program that will certainly prepare students in an incredible way for Spanish in high school, because it not only teaches isolated vocabulary but grammar structure, which is essential to be able to speak a new language; something that we want our Spanish students to be able to do.

I would say that if  Mom or Dad do not speak Spanish, they would definitely need to get the DVD set.  Believe me (I don’t make money if you buy it), it is important to have the children’s ear trained into listening good Spanish and Mrs. Julia Kraut does a great job; her pronunciation is clear and beautiful. The DVDs do more than teaching good pronunciation, they are a great help into understanding the lessons in-depth.  Mrs. Kraut explains every lesson in a very engaging way, and it is fun to listen to her class; it is not boring or tiresome. She starts each lesson chanting the weekly grammar chart, followed by an introduction to the new lesson, there are images accompanying the new list of verbs and vocabulary and then she goes on to explain the grammar concepts, always encouraging the students to practice what they have learned “even with their Teddy Bear”. I really appreciated that she continually shares her experience with the Spanish language and different cultural aspects surrounding it, because as I always tell my students, learning a new foreign language is not only about learning the language but understanding the culture. If you don’t get the DVDs you will certainly miss this part which I consider very important.

If students are diligent in studying the lessons every day and watching the  DVDs, I would dare to say that they would excel in learning Spanish even before reaching high school!

Classical Academic Press also offers many free on line resources to help students practice what they are learning, such as virtual flashcards, games, and readers. There is also a sample schedule ready for Mom to download and start planing the course. Mrs. Kraut has a blog where you can post your questions and read some more fun facts about Spanish and some teaching tips that the author likes to share.

In all, I highly recommend this program to all those families interested in introducing their children to the beautiful world of Spanish.

Giving your children the opportunity to learn a new language from an early age is a gift that not every one is willing to give because of the difficulties of teaching it, but this program definitely makes the task easier and really fun.

For more information visit Classical Academic Press

You can also find them on Facebook, where they have an active conversation with their followers.

Related posts from here and my former blog:

Classical Education and Memorization
More than Copy Work
Why Classical Languages Matter
Teaching the Word of God to our Children

*************************************************

>From My Homeschool to Yours -Your Home Aroma-

Posted on by
5

>@font-face { font-family: “Calibri”;}@font-face { font-family: “Georgia”;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }

My dear friends, as some of you know, I am privileged to teach in the best on line Classical school, Veritas Press Scholars Academy; and I am blessed to count among my friends beautiful ladies such as Julie Etter, who also teaches in this school. She is a great friend of mine, and has agreed to come and be my guest blogger today. 

Thank you, Julie!





This school year is quite a busy one for me. In addition to homeschooling my children, I have picked up teaching 4 classes of a History Survey and Transition class for Veritas Press Scholars Academy. The class is going so well and I am enjoying all of studying that I am getting to do. In the past I have only had 1 class. With the increase in students, I have noticed an alarming pattern. After my friend, Becky, noticed the same pattern in her classes, she asked that I write a post about it. We are seeing the disturbing trend of laziness in the student’s work ethic.  Even more disturbing than that, I am also seeing it in some parents. I think we all know of the stereo-type of homeschoolers being unable to meet a deadline or having a lazy attitude about school work in general. I have always defended this. But, friends, it is something I can no longer ignore. Now, let me say, I have many hard working students. But, I have seen the inability to keep deadlines and complete quality work in enough students to become concerned.
I truly believe that our work ethic is tied to the condition of our hearts. God speaks of laziness many times in His Word. It is never in a positive light.  I believe that training our children that it is acceptable to not meet deadlines, or to turn in substandard work is training them that laziness is acceptable.
I plan to spend some time posting some tips that I have found helpful in helping to train a child who is not quite motivated to get the school work done.  However, in the mean time, please enjoy this blog post which I wrote a while back.
Homeschooling is a way of life. I really believe this is true, because if you try to separate it from every other part of your life, you are going to fail somewhere. It is just not possible to live two separate lives and be perfect at both. Actually, you are not going to be perfect anyway, and you will fail at times. Maybe I should say I believe it is difficult to function and be productive if you try to separate it. When someone spends time with us they will detect a certain aroma. It may be stinky or lovely. It does not take very long for others to decide what this aroma is. The aroma could be anything from chaos to stringency, or productivity to laziness. As believers, first we must produce an aroma which shows that Christ lives within us. This will be very evident to anyone who spends time in your home. Sometimes you can even just step in the door and tell. This aroma really envelops everything you do as a family. 
What does this have to do with homeschooling? 
 
You can not develop this lovely aroma by having family devotions, praying, loving one another, and then being completely lazy about your home-schooling. I am afraid it all comes as a package. Have you ever had this really good smell going in your home and then there is this nasty diaper or something else awful? It does not matter at that point how many candles you have been burning or pies you have been baking all day. It just really stinks now. Now you have to revamp and work a little to eliminate the awful smell. It is the same thing with your schooling. You cannot fool everyone by having this great aroma of Christ in your home, but completely nasty one in your schooling. The bad smell always wins over the good one. And it takes a little work to change things around. We all have different ways to achieve a wonderful smell in our homes. I love to burn candles and am pretty much a candle snob. I have one or two that I love and really do not use any others. There are others who use spray. Others love to just open their windows and air the place out. That does not work here in the midst of all of the farm land. Anyway, there are so many different ways to achieve a good aroma. We may all have different strategies to help us pull off a great homeschooling aroma. The point is, all areas of our lives are intertwined. Do not think you can take this one area and separate from all the others. It just does not work. Your home will have an aroma. Is it pleasant or not?

Julie. 

 ***********************************

Related posts :

More than Copy Work
Greek Myths and Homemaking
Classical Education and Memorization

>Classical Education and Memorization

Posted on by
3

>

A very good book for you to read if you are a homeschool mom who follows the Classical model is, Wisdom and Eloquence. A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning, by Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans.

I read it few years ago and even though it is written for Classical schools, I think it is important for us to read it and understand more about the Classical education, and then bring into our homeschool those things that we (husband and wife) know that can be a blessing to our children.

Some of the tools we use to memorize.

I like these particular paragraphs in which the authors talk about the importance of memorization:

“…We do believe, as did the ancients medievalists, that the first essential component of learning is “remembering” and that the essence of effective teaching is helping students, at the very level of cognitive development, to remember critical content and skills and how to apply them.” (p.162)

“But we need to say it again for our times: memory is indispensable to learning, and there is no practical definition of learning that does not presuppose that students must remember things. In an educational environment in which this position is not to be taken for granted we have to work to perfect this aspect of our instruction” (p.165)

Memorizing is a habit that I want to teach my children… and myself.

And you may ask, what do you want them to memorize?

Most of all, God’s Word, then the rest!

Have you read these?

Where to Start
Why Classical Languages Matter
Books and Bikes
More Than Copy Work 
 

***********************************************

More Than Copy Work

Posted on by
3

She is almost seven, and she is learning how to trace cursive letters. Sometimes, she has to go back and trace few more that were not as beautiful as the model, but she compares her last trace with the one she did before.

It is then when I insist, “Look at the model, do not look at the last letter you have traced. Keep looking at the model”

And as I hear my words, I find a gem, an opprtunity to teach an eternal lesson hidden in them, and I keep up saying,

“It is just like our lives, we should always follow the God given model for our lives, the Bible. We should always compare what are we doing, how are we doing things, and why are we doing things (or not doing things) with the Word of God.”

Lord, help me always compare myself against your Word. Help me to keep my eyes focused on you, and on the perfect model you have given me, Jesus.

Happy copy work!

Greek Myths and Homemaking

Posted on by
2

A repost from the archives- with a little makeup-

We have been having so much fun, it is just She and I, the older ones are still up north.

We have had a wonderful time reading, cooking, coloring, doing math, visiting the fire station, going to the post office and even searching for a book that was “hiding” in a different shelf. (Raggedy Ann)

I have been reading to her for the first time many myths of the Greeks and it has been great to see her beautiful, dark eyes glow as she hears these stories…but she keeps asking me, “mama, but this, this didn’t happen, right?”

I am so grateful to be there to assure her that even though they seem so realistic on the way they have been told, these are just stories, they did not happen. (And I am grateful to homeschool, I can’t even imagine how in a non-Christian school she would be taught that the stories from the Bible are Myths also)

At the same time reading all these myths has given me a great opportunity to see how well she knows the doctrines, the teachings of the Bible that we have taught her. Little girls must be trained to discern even from right since they are young and tender if we want to raise women who will be  godly homemakers.

When we read how Apollo drove his chariot, every day to give sunlight to the earth, I asked her, “What does the Bible say about this?”, “How do we know that this can’t be true?” 

When we encountered Pandora’s jar, I asked her, “What does the Bible teaches us about the evil? Where does the evil comes from?” She knew well that the devil is the origin of all evil, and it came into the world when Adam and Eve sinned, she also recalled that the solution to sin was not a simplistic hope, but Jesus.

When I teach my daughters how to cook and bake I am teaching them skills to help them grow into godly homeakers.

When I teach them to be modest and discreet, I am teaching them to purspue their Biblical calling.

When I teach to discern good from evil in our daily reading routine, I am teaching them about both, homemaking and their Biblical calling.

Isn’t is wonderful to be there, to teach, to guide our little ones in the way they should go?

I love being here, I am grateful for this great opportunity.

I am linking this post to this beautiful blog….