Here I intend to write primarily about all things London, England and Britain as far as the Great Commission, but there may be digressions here and there. I'm interested in Education, Culture, The Family, and The Household, Masculinity, Femininity etc. Click to read Ad Fontes 2.0, by Dolapo Ajayi, a Substack publication. Launched a year ago.

These listening lessons are a creative and engaging way to get your students thinking about classic pieces of music. Students listen to a mystery song and draw a picture of the image they think they are hearing. At the end of the presentation they are surprised to discover it the actual title of the piece! The presentation easily guides you through this great listening lesson. First students read a brief history of the composer. Then they do a cold listen to the piece while taking notes on a listening worksheet, included in this product. After that they do a longer listen while students creatively draw the musical picture they feel the song is creating. In the end they are surprised to find out the real title of the song! They will read a brief description of the piece and then take home a coloring worksheet with review information about the composer and the piece. Each lesson is designed to last 25-40 minutes and is great as a stand alone lesson. It also works to introduce a unit on a particular genre or piece, or can easily be used with a sub. It is easily adaptable for all elementary grades. Mystery Songs: *Sleigh Ride, Leroy Anderson *The Snow is Dancing, Claude Debussy *Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Included in the lesson: *PowerPoint presentation with EDITABLE TEXT *PDF copy of PowerPoint *Printable listening worksheets (includes a variety of difficulties) *Printable send-home review sheet *Teacher's Guide *Sound clip IS NOT included, however the PowerPoint contains a YouTube link. Happy listening! More Mystery Song Bundles: Mystery Song Music Listening Bundle #1 Mystery Song Music Listening Bundle #3 Mystery Song Music Listening Bundle #4

I made a picture book list to correspond to Volume 4 of Story of the World for my 1st and 2nd graders who will be joining us for history time. However, I also have a 4th grader to think about.

Share Wildflower Ramblings! From ancient days until today, children began their education at home, where training in literacy walked hand in hand, as we have seen, with the inculcation of cultural ideals and habits of upright character… Children were not to be brought out of their shells; they were to be shown the consequential, the...

Only AFOL's beyond this point! ...just kidding. ;-D Behold, mighty Beowulf, the wrath of Grendel! This rendition of the mead-hall after one of Grendel's attacks from the classic medieval and Scandinavian tale of Beowulf just blows my mind. Despite being a wild Beowulf buff and a Lego fan, the techniques and everything in this MOC are just fascinating. The hall itself is great; Grendel is not too shabby himself. The gore and death is fantastic in a morbid sort of way; I mean, have you ever seen more ABS violence depicted in a more beautiful way? Using the opaque red for blood instead of the usual choice of trans. red reminds me of the days when I did that (see here). I eventually changed it because, one, everyone else used trans. (stupid reason, I know) and I thought that the trans. looked better anyways. The combination of the two here is fine, as well as the snakes, horn pieces and feathers used as gore. These I find truly inspiring! The 2D scene behind Beowulf and beyond the door is just plain fantastic. And while I'm on the subject of Lego, CC-er and fellow believer in Christ Chris Wunz has done a fantastic job of retelling the posting of Martin Luther's 95 Theses in ABS plastic. The piece used for the "95 Theses" is interesting; not to toot my own horn, but I once used the piece for the very same thing! From TBB Dr. Paleo Ph.D.

A classical Christian school provides their complete reading list for every grade (with links to Amazon).

This Cycle 1 Video and Reading Match Up is perfect to use alongside your Classical Conversations curriculum. New things to use every week!

We started The Story of the World Volume 2: Medieval Times this past January. We are 6 months off, due to my pulling the kids out in Dec 2011, so we've already read through SOW Ancients and are now partway through Medieval. As we were going through our first CC year (this past year), I loved that the kids were connecting the dots between the CC History Timeline cards ( they are technically called Acts & Facts History Cards) and our History lessons. That got me to thinking....wouldn't it be nice if I could cross reference our CC cards when we were going through a Chapter of The Story of the World? And vice verse? Some searching on the internet for a cross referenced list of the two found nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Surely I can't be the only one? Maybe the only one crazy enough to go back through the book and match the two up? :) Well....here it is! Please, download it and reference it! I hope it helps your kiddos connect the dots too! {Link to PDF} So Volume 1: Ancient Times is done. Check! (If you see anything I missed, or any errors, please holler so I can fix them.) I've already started working on Volume 2: Medieval Times so that will be coming along soon....

As I've been blogging, we are in the middle of our final Common Core Unit on Fables. In the past, we've taught this unit from Thanksgiving to

Biblioplan, Sonlight, Tapestry of Grace, and Story of the World are all fantastic options. This really is a personal choice. However, knowin...

Do you need some great book ideas for studying early modern history? Well, you've come to the right place. Here you'll find a wonderful literature list for early American history and early modern…

Illustrated by World Book Day 2022 Illustrator Allen Fatimaharan! Step back in time to Ancient Egypt and meet some of the many people who lived, worked, and played during that time. From a necropolis builder to a tomb robber, a brewer to an embalmer, and a slave girl to the Pharaoh himself - each one will share with you the story of their own daily life. Together, they are the Ancient Egyptians. Featuring 19 different characters from Ancient Egyptian times, as well as an introduction to the Ancient Egyptian world, a key to decoding hieroglyphics and a timeline of key events, this book provides a new angle on a classic subject, bringing the ancient world to life. clr illus

Previous posts in this series: Introduction Math Grammar . “[S]ome artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in music, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian.” [Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water] . The art, the cosmos, of writing—this is where language (the 2018 Classical Conversations Practicum theme), rhetoric (the third art of the trivium), and community (the third “C” of “Classical Christian Community”) all come together. Rhetoric (speaking, writing, creating, communicating) is incarnational, an embodied idea. “[T]o paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity.” [Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water] “What’s the point of ideas if those ideas are never made flesh?” [N.D. Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion] “Rhetoric is a productive art, the principled process of making a product.” [Scott Crider] Rhetoric is an art of the trivium. Grammar, Dialectic, RHETORIC Memory, Thought, SPEECH Naming, Contemplating, CREATING Finding, Collecting, COMMUNICATING Knowledge, Understanding, WISDOM What, Why, WHETHER We participate in the Imago Dei through these human activities. Rhetoric is an art we practice in community with others. “Rhetoric is “the care of words and things”; that care is associative, a practice one learns—and never stops learning—in the presence of others, the ones you lead and are led by.” [Scott Crider] . How does the art of rhetoric apply to the writing component (IEW) of Essentials? And how does it create a bridge to the Challenge program? The Art of Rhetoric Invention (What) Arrangement (In What Order) Elocution (How) Memory Delivery Institute for Excellence in Writing “IEW” (Essentials) Source Texts/KWO (What) ‘Structure’ (In What Order) ‘Style’ (How) _______ Reading Papers Aloud Lost Tools of Writing “LTW” (Challenge) 5 Common Topics (What) Persuasive Essay (In What Order) Schemes and Tropes (How) _______ Presenting Papers ** IEW prepares students for Challenge by introducing them to structure and style. Challenge students move on to LTW, but they will use their IEW research essay skills for their many science papers in Challenge A and B as well as the story sequence skills for their short story in Challenge B. Essentials Writing (IEW) Order: PARAGRAPH Essay/Report Intro Topics Conclusion Story Setting, Characters Conflict, Plot Climax, Resolution (Grammar concerns itself with the form of sentences, and we put those sentences together in writing to create the form of paragraphs, which then form essays and stories.) Beauty: Vocabulary Dress-Ups Decorations Order + Beauty = COSMOS! Writing Quotes “In art, the Trinity is expressed in the Creative Idea, the Creative Energy, and the Creative Power—the first imagining of the work, then the making incarnate of the work, and third the meaning of the work…” [Madeleine L’Engle in the Introduction to Dorothy Sayer’s The Mind of the Maker, which compares the making of art (particularly writing) to the Trinity in metaphorical terms. The Trinity being Book-as-Thought (Father), Book-as-Written (Incarnate Son), and Book-as-Read (Holy Spirit). Dorothy Sayers is the author of the essay ‘The Lost Tools of Learning.’] “The pen indeed is mightier than the sword, for it is in written word that we do most powerfully preserve that which is noble and expose that which is evil. And so in great part, the very future of society rests with those who can write, and write well.” [Andrew Pudewa of IEW] “The discovered matter has to be shaped, given form. Organization gives form to the argumentative matter, providing a beginning, a middle, and an end to the small universe of the essay. The ordered substance must them be communicated through the medium of style, the words and sentences that carry the reader through that small universe.” [Scott Crider, The Office of Assertion] [Invention, Arrangement (structure), Elocution (style). Form! Order and Beauty! Universe = Cosmos] “The study of rhetoric educates one in a particular liberty, the “liberty to handle the world, to remake it, if only a little, and to hand it to others in a shape which may influence their actions.” Through this “office of assertion,” the writer is a leader of souls… Rhetoric is “the art of soul-leading by means of words.” …Rhetoric is “the care of words and things”; that care is associative, a practice one learns—and never stops learning—in the presence of others, the ones you lead and are led by. Such soul-leading is a liberal power, one which in its finest and fullest manifestation is a form of love: the finest rhetorician not only loves wisdom, but also loves others who do so. The finest rhetor, then is a friend… The purpose… is to teach… how to live within such a community with words so full of care that they release the light of brilliance.” [Scott Crider] [Rhetoric! Words! Community! Loving thy neighbor!] “Variety pleases. And a pleased reader is more attentive to an argument than a bored one, more likely convinced that the time spent inside the cosmos of your essay will be worth the time… A writer who fulfills his or her obligation to please the reader with variety persuades the reader that the reading is time well spend making the sun run.” [Scott Crider] [Beauty! Loving thy neighbor!] “Play with words. Juggle them. Write them down. Roll in them. Bake them into cookies. Quote them. Remember them. And such richness in the vocabulary of discourse does accumulate.” [Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion] Why Liberal Arts? “All liberal arts, in both the sciences and the humanities, are animated by the fundamental human desire to know, the fulfillment of which is a good, even if it provides no economic or political benefit whatsoever. An education for economic productivity and political utility alone is an education for slaves, but an education for finding, collecting, and communicating reality is an education for free people, people free to know what is so.” [Scott Crider] [The Trivium is for people who are free to know truth!]

Students will read an adaptation of the classic story "The Princess and the Pea" by Hans Christian Andersen. Then they'll seek to determine the author’s purpose and explain their reasoning.

Have you ever thought about the idea that morality is a function of the imagination, or that greatness is made possible by good stories?

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Newbery Award winners and chapter books that should have be recognized, this book list has something for everyone for 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade.

Welcome to the Hip Homeschool Moms #backtohomeschool Giveaway! Make sure you check back each day to enter in all of the giveaways: Monday -- math and science products Tuesday -- language arts, logic, and rhetoric

Stories stay and haunt us after we're done ingesting them. Stories build culture. Stories are way more powerful than we think.

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These are great tips for teaching the Story of the World history curriculum in your Classical or Charlotte Mason homeschool.

CC Cycle 1 Booklist with book selections correlating with Classical Conversations, all subjects and weeks of CC Cycle 1.

Who was Dorothy Sayers, and how might what she teaches bring about a revolution in work? Sayers has much to teach us about a biblical view of faith & work.

As I've been blogging, we are in the middle of our final Common Core Unit on Fables. In the past, we've taught this unit from Thanksgiving to

Get your own 92 page printable notebooking pages to accompany Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient times

Will the farmer be able to save his sheep lost in the winter storm? Find out in this week's Homeschool Story Time.

Because culture is built upon the written word.

In this super engaging Middle Ages Unit, you receive 16 highly-engaging resources and activities for Charlemagne, the Fall of Rome, the rise of Feudalism, the Catholic Church, the Crusades, Magna Carta, and much more! Each resource is Google 1:1 compatible and these Middle Ages resources will excite...