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October 5, 2009 By Leslie 4 Comment

Most women have some type of planner or calendar system that they use to keep track of their lives. It is a common and fairly simple way of keeping track of life. Some women use a multiple calendar system, while others use a one calendar system.

Whatever system you use, you can use this visual tool to determine how you can bring the most simplicity in the easiest way.

Open your calendar to a typical month; perhaps starting with September. Photocopy the entire month on one or two pages. If you are like me, you may write most appointments and tasks in pencil, so they can be changed if needed without too much chaos on the calendar page itself. Your copier may have trouble picking up the marked appointments. If this happens simply pencil them in again on the photocopy.

Now, grab a sheet of white scrap paper and a pair of scissors.

Next, put your copied calendar month in front of you. Are you overwhelmed by all of the activities you have going on? Then simplicity is on the way! Now cut some rectangular piece of the white scrap paper that is large enough to cover an activity on a calendar line or block. Once you have about 10-20 of those (depending on how packed your calendar is) pick an activity that is low on your priority list. If you don’t have one you consider low, ask yourself, “If I had to discontinue one activity, which would I choose?” Cover each calendar line or block that contains that activity with a white paper block. Look at your calendar. Would eliminating this activity free up enough time for you to accomplish a bit more simplicity? No? Then repeat this process. You can either leave the original potentially eliminated activity covered or start from scratch. Play with this a bit until you achieve a calendar that looks like the right balance for your family.

Test your new schedule out this week. Take time to have your husband look at your calendar and the revised covered calendar. Ask his opinion on what you have done. Ask him to pray about the best way for your family to simplify. Pray about the activities that you may want to discontinue. Ask God for guidance on what is best for your family. Normally, I do this and put the covered calendar aside for a day or two. Then I come back and look again. Do I still have the feeling of being able to breathe? Do I want to uncover an activity and cover a different one? Does the current configuration reflect God’s will for your family? Once you come to a peace about this there may be some sticky areas on how to actually accomplish your goal.

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The next step is to determine your method of eliminating the activities.

First, you can contact administrators of the activities you will be discontinuing and explain that upon review your husband and you have determined you cannot continue the activity. If they ask for an explanation, be honest. Explain that you are simplifying your lives and have been praying through a process of the best way to accomplish this for your family. Unfortunately, this activity is one you are going to need to discontinue. Although the administrator may not be pleased, or even try to talk you in to sticking with the activity, he/she will respect you for your honesty and resolve.

Secondly, you can do a phased out approach. Form an out strategy, which is a plan to phase out an activity. You may have committed to an activity that you now are ready to discontinue, but have made commitment which would leave the group in a negative state if you pull out completely. Determine what you can do and the time frame you will need to accomplish the tasks needed to fulfill your commitment to the best of your ability. Once you have an out strategy, you can contact the activity administrator and tell them you will be discontinuing the activity but will be staying on for X period of time to fulfill your commitments.

Whichever strategy you choose (and you may choose both depending on your commitment level for the activities you are choosing to eliminate) you will feel a peace about obeying God’s desire. When you feel like you may falter and fall back (and likely your guilt emotions will kick in) you can rest assured that not only are you following God’s desire for your life, but that you have the support of your husband. Keep in mind that guilt is not a Godly emotion, but it is in our lives more frequently than we would like. To combat the feelings of guilt, remind yourself of why you are making these changes. Think about your original calendar and what your new calendar look like side by side (this is always the clincher for me).

You are to follow God’s will for your life, no one else’s…not even your own. Obeying God’s desires for your life and living by His principles, He will abundantly bless you!

Leslie Valeska is the wife of Thomas and homeschooling mother of four children who reside in SW Florida. Her family operates Fresh Gear Solutions, LLC and enjoys RVing. She is the founder and director of Simple Journey Ministries which was established to encourage, inspire, and support women on their journey to Godly womanhood. Leslie is also employed as a vintage seamstress by Vintage Vixen.

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May 31, 2009 By Christine 3 Comment

Listening with Purpose, Part I

A lot of us…allow music to be a background to what we do and because of that we forget that listening is an active challenge to the brain. There’s so much auditory material in the background of our lives and it has made us lazy.

Graham Sheffield, chairman, Royal Philharmonic Society

Classical music is everywhere. Not just in elevators as the phrase suggests, but in restaurants, buses, supermarkets, and commercials. We are taught, by the sheer fact that our everyday life is saturated with it to ignore it. We are conditioned to let music in general and classical music especially, take the role of background noise. What then are we missing in the process?

Helping our children listen with purpose requires our own ears to first be opened. Chances are that it has been a long time since you have listened to a piece of classical music with a critical and focused ear. How many instruments can you pick out? What’s the main melody and who has it first? How does the tempo (speed of the beat) affect you? What mood is being conveyed? Is the piece primarily legato (smooth) or marcato (marked and accented)? Lots of questions? Yes, there’s a lot to learn!

Even the youngest of children can attain aural discrimination with little effort and time. Of course, this means that classical music must be in their environment. The car is a perfect place to play listening games. Everyone is in the same place by necessity, and usually everyone can hear equally well. A bit of prep work will go a long way to making car trips fun and educational. After all, what homeschool mom or dad doesn’t appreciate logging in some school hours on the way to and from their many activities?

Some important areas to focus on while teaching your children (and yourselves!) to listen to classical music are instrumentation, pitch and rhythm, style and mood, and form. In this article I will focus on the first two topics.

Instrumentation:

When you have a bit of time to explore, visit the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s instrument page and choose one or two instruments from each family. Listen to each example and come up with adjectives to describe the sound. Flutes might sound smooth and “hooty”; harpsichords sound sharp and bouncy; cellos sound mellow and flexible. Don’t make value judgments on your children’s choice of adjective, just get them thinking. Very few words are meant to just describe sound, so music borrows terms from visual (bright and dark) or physical properties (light and heavy, big and small). Allow them to use whatever analogies fit for them.
Once you have explored a number of instruments, find music that isolates different families of instruments. Giovanni Gabrieli wrote wonderful brass music in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Mendelssohn’s Octet for strings is an accessible and fun piece for all ages and has a lovely melody that is easy to remember. Chanticleer is an excellent choral group that has dozens of CDs to their credit. African music often has isolated percussion sections.
After listening to music for each family, listen to symphonic works with all of the instruments playing simultaneously (Some good ones to start with are Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture or Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and you can easily find some history to go with both of these pieces to round out their lesson). Make up bingo cards with pictures of all of the instruments you’ve studied and see who can identify all of them first. Have them pantomime the way to play each instrument in a game of Musical Charades. Before long, your children will surprise you in the grocery store by shouting out, “Mom! I hear an oboe!”

Pitch and Rhythm:

Pitch refers to the frequency of vibration of the sounds you hear, the relative high or low of the notes, and rhythm refers to the orderly (or sometimes disorderly) structure and organization of the sounds in relation to time. These concepts are a bit more intimidating, but with some time can prove to be rewarding ones to study.
The best way to begin pitch experimentation with your children is by getting them to sing themselves. Young children (up to 2nd grade or so) have very limited ranges, especially on the lower end of the spectrum. Visit this online piano and after clicking on the word “scales” at the top right side, click the play button for the C scale. (Just in case you’re wondering what a scale is, watch this.) The C scale, beginning with middle C on a piano, is the main range for a young child. There are exceptions, but you will find that most children will not be able to match pitch much below or above those pitches. Adults have much lower ranges so what’s comfortable for you probably will not be comfortable for your children. Try out some recordings of children’s choirs to get an idea of the range your children can use.
Purposeful listening for pitch can include the high and low of the music, the concept that smaller instruments make higher sounds (tie in some science and acoustics while you’re at it!) and larger instruments make lower sounds, the contour/shape of the melody (I like to have my children “paint” the line in the air with a paintbrush, or even their finger- up when the notes go up and down when they fall), and the consonance or dissonance of a piece (whether the notes sound like they blend well, or grate on each other).
The best way to begin teaching rhythm is to find the beat. Whenever you hear music anywhere, tap the beat on your children, or have them tap it themselves if they are older. I used to tap when I held the babies in the snugli, or bounce with them and dance around the room. March with them to the beat, have them jump, give them pencils to use as drumsticks. Does it get faster or slower, or stay the same? Kids naturally feel the structure in music and you’d be hard pressed to have them not respond physically. As long as they’re not in danger of wrecking your furniture (or harming a sibling!), let them!
To further work on rhythm, have them divide the beat. Tap the main beat of any piece that you hear, then break that in half and tap double the speed. Can you triple it? Quadruple it? The key is to help focus your children to stay even and steady with their beat. Give them a pencil and ask them to conduct. (Have them watch this to see what a conductor does.) With concentration, they can learn to feel it rather than hear it. That is when the music really gets into their gut.
Some classical selections that are wonderful for the study of pitch are Mozart or Rossini arias from their operas. The melody lines are beautiful and have interesting contour. For easier pitch matching, choose more women singers than men but be sure to use a variety overall. Mozart’s Requiem also has a wonderful piece called the “Confutatis” that has juxtaposed sections of rhythmic, low parts sung by men against high, legato (smooth) lines sung by women. Copland’s Appalachian Spring has wonderful melodies and solo lines for different instruments. Any music can be analyzed for pitch study and you will be surprised by what your children notice when you ask them to really listen.
Likewise, any piece can be used for finding the beat, or talking about rhythm. Try Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain or Pictures at an Exhibition. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is rhythmically exciting, while Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring is rhythmically simple and fluid.

Once you begin practicing focused listening, you won’t be able to stop. Every piece of music you hear will have nuggets of beauty that stand out and those jewels you find will go with you throughout your life. Sharing this gift with your children will give them lifelong appreciation for The Finer Things.

Christine is a homeschooling mom of four, three boys and a girl ranging in age from infant to 7 years. A musician by trade, she desires to help other homeschoolers find the beauty and simplicity in teaching the arts to their children. Visit her blog at Fruit in Season.

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September 20, 2008 By Amy Bayliss Leave a Comment

There are so many reasons why children could or should learn Spanish. First and foremost on my list is for ministry. We have already made one trip to Latin America and would love to return on a mission trip someday. Also, we have many Spanish speaking neighbors and although they speak some English it is still difficult to fully communicate with them. Spanish is the second most widely used language in America and it is the primary language spoken at home by over 34 million people aged 5 or older.

I have wanted to teach my children Spanish for quite a while now but hesitated because I was unsure I would be able to teach it effectively. I looked up many reviews and the only programs that impressed me cost more than all of our other curriculum put together. Then, I was directed to the website at Classical Academic Press and was quite impressed with what they had to offer. I saw the Spanish for Children Primer A and the catchy little phrase, “learn more than how to order a taco” and I was hooked!

When it came in the mail I immediately poured through the pages and started going over the basics with my nine-year-old. He knew how to pronounce and read several Spanish words in less than an hour. We went ahead with the lessons the following day and I was completely surprised at the simplicity of the lessons and how much we (yes, we) were learning together. Did I mention prep time was non-existent? The CD was a wonderful addition to the text. It helped us with the sounds we had a little bit of trouble with and solidified what we had learned.

The Spanish for Children Primer A is visually appealing and well made. The illustrations are very upbeat but not distracting. The teaching is done at the student’s level and Primer A has weekly worksheets and quizzes. There are 32 weekly chapters including 5 review chapters. The audio CD is included with Primer A. Your child will also learn grammar concepts such as verb conjugation and tenses; noun gender.

The Answer Key is sold separately but well worth the purchase. There is also a DVD that will be coming out this summer!

SAMPLE CHAPTERS:

Spanish for Children, Primer A (PDF)

Spanish for Children, Primer A Pronunciation CD (MP3)

Spanish for Children, Primer A Answer Key

Amy Bayliss is 3rd year homeschooling mom to three boys. She enjoys writing about the eclectic teachings that bring a glimmer of curiosity to the eyes of her sons. In addition to being the Co-owner and Director of Development for Heart of the Matter, she writes for Internet Cafe Devotions. Be sure to visit her blog, In Pursuit of Proverbs 31 and her family’s homeschool blog: Integrity Academy.

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March 9, 2008 By Christine 1 Comment

Art Museum Scavenger Hunt

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

Last month we focused on listening to music, the first part of a two-part series which will conclude in April. But this month we move to visual art. There is something magical about a child’s first up-close-and-personal experience with fine art. The richness of the subject matter, the variety of styles, genres and time periods, the range of emotions and colors, all combine to make lasting memories and mental pictures that will influence our children’s perception of art for their entire lives.

I myself remember each time I have been to a new art museum – from the Rijksmuseum in Holland, to the Children’s Book Illustrator exhibit on our trip to Maine – and each experience has filled me with a sense of beauty that can’t be replaced. No child is too young to take part in the expressions of beauty displayed in your local art museum.

Of course, without proper focus and direction, children can become overwhelmed and come away with nothing specific for their memory to retain. That is why, as with anything else in our homeschooling adventure, it is our job to prepare them for the journey with a well-planned “prelude” of expectations, questions and guidelines for looking at, and seeing, what is before them. Some museums have children’s activities and exhibits to start them off, but don’t be afraid to bring them to see the regular exhibits as well. Giving them specific concepts, subjects, and styles to look for will make for an exciting hour or two lost in the world of art! The anticipation is killing me, so let’s get started!

Here is a list of just a handful of ideas for the search:

a portrait of a child
a traditional still life (like this one or this one)
a cubist still life such as this one
a painting made only with dots (pointillism)
a painting primarily in warm colors
a painting primarily in cool colors
a painting primarily in black and white
a sculpture made of metal
a painting with lots of shadows (such as this one. The term for this kind of painting is chiaroscuro meaning “bright-dark”)
a painting of a celebration
a sculpture of an animal
a painting using mostly geometric shapes
an impressionist painting (in the style of Monet)
a painting using thick globs of paint
a painting with a feeling of sadness
a painting of a battle
a painting or sculture using symbols (such as an olive branch, dove, etc.)
a sculpture that is broken
a landscape with people only included in the background, or not at all
a portrait that looks almost like a photograph
a portrait that is completely unrealistic
a piece of art that doesn’t seem to you like a piece of art
a painting of a specific place (Paris, London, George Washington crossing the Delaware, etc.)
a painting with a lot of your favorite color in it
a painting of a snow scene
a painting of Mary and Jesus (there are so many styles to find with the Holy Family as subject that a lot of discussion can take place about what is different and the same- expressions, use of light, shape of face, colors, etc.)

Download this list to print and use on your next scavenger hunt.

I could go on forever! Use this list as a jumping off point for your scavenger hunt and adjust it according to the ages of your children. Have the older ones choose two to compare and contrast, or choose a style that they particularly like and write a report. Younger ones can simply find a picture in an art book and recreate it with art supplies. If you are not near an art museum have the children search in a large coffee table book on art from your local library.

The sky is the limit and the possibilities for discovery are endless! I hope you enjoy taking your family on this search-and-find mission!

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February 8, 2008 By Christine 3 Comment

Listening with Purpose, Part I

A lot of us…allow music to be a background to what we do and because of that we forget that listening is an active challenge to the brain. There’s so much auditory material in the background of our lives and it has made us lazy.

Graham Sheffield, chairman,
Royal Philharmonic Society

Helping our children listen with purpose requires our own ears to first be opened. Chances are that it has been a long time since you have listened to a piece of classical music with a critical and focused ear. How many instruments can you pick out? What’s the main melody and who has it first? How does the tempo (speed of the beat) affect you? What mood is being conveyed? Is the piece primarily legato (smooth) or marcato (marked and accented)? Lots of questions? Yes, there’s a lot to learn!

Even the youngest of children can attain aural discrimination with little effort and time. Of course, this means that classical music must be in their environment. The car is a perfect place to play listening games. Everyone is in the same place by necessity, and usually everyone can hear equally well. A bit of prep work will go a long way to making car trips fun and educational. After all, what homeschool mom or dad doesn’t appreciate logging in some school hours on the way to and from their many activities?

Instrumentation:

When you have a bit of time to explore, visit the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s instrument page and choose one or two instruments from each family. Listen to each example and come up with adjectives to describe the sound. Flutes might sound smooth and “hooty”; harpsichords sound sharp and bouncy; cellos sound mellow and flexible. Don’t make value judgments on your children’s choice of adjective, just get them thinking. Very few words are meant to just describe sound, so music borrows terms from visual (bright and dark) or physical properties (light and heavy, big and small). Allow them to use whatever analogies fit for them.
Once you have explored a number of instruments, find music that isolates different families of instruments. Giovanni Gabrieli wrote wonderful brass music in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Mendelssohn’s Octet for strings is an accessible and fun piece for all ages and has a lovely melody that is easy to remember. Chanticleer is an excellent choral group that has dozens of CDs to their credit. African music often has isolated percussion sections.
After listening to music for each family, listen to symphonic works with all of the instruments playing simultaneously (Some good ones to start with are Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture or Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and you can easily find some history to go with both of these pieces to round out their lesson). Make up bingo cards with pictures of all of the instruments you’ve studied and see who can identify all of them first. Have them pantomime the way to play each instrument in a game of Musical Charades. Before long, your children will surprise you in the grocery store by shouting out, “Mom! I hear an oboe!”

Pitch and Rhythm:

Pitch refers to the frequency of vibration of the sounds you hear, the relative high or low of the notes, and rhythm refers to the orderly (or sometimes disorderly) structure and organization of the sounds in relation to time. These concepts are a bit more intimidating, but with some time can prove to be rewarding ones to study.
The best way to begin pitch experimentation with your children is by getting them to sing themselves. Young children (up to 2nd grade or so) have very limited ranges, especially on the lower end of the spectrum. Visit this online piano and after clicking on the word “scales” at the top right side, click the play button for the C scale. (Just in case you’re wondering what a scale is, watch this.) The C scale, beginning with middle C on a piano, is the main range for a young child. There are exceptions, but you will find that most children will not be able to match pitch much below or above those pitches. Adults have much lower ranges so what’s comfortable for you probably will not be comfortable for your children. Try out some recordings of children’s choirs to get an idea of the range your children can use.
Purposeful listening for pitch can include the high and low of the music, the concept that smaller instruments make higher sounds (tie in some science and acoustics while you’re at it!) and larger instruments make lower sounds, the contour/shape of the melody (I like to have my children “paint” the line in the air with a paintbrush, or even their finger- up when the notes go up and down when they fall), and the consonance or dissonance of a piece (whether the notes sound like they blend well, or grate on each other).
The best way to begin teaching rhythm is to find the beat. Whenever you hear music anywhere, tap the beat on your children, or have them tap it themselves if they are older. I used to tap when I held the babies in the snugli, or bounce with them and dance around the room. March with them to the beat, have them jump, give them pencils to use as drumsticks. Does it get faster or slower, or stay the same? Kids naturally feel the structure in music and you’d be hard pressed to have them not respond physically. As long as they’re not in danger of wrecking your furniture (or harming a sibling!), let them!
To further work on rhythm, have them divide the beat. Tap the main beat of any piece that you hear, then break that in half and tap double the speed. Can you triple it? Quadruple it? The key is to help focus your children to stay even and steady with their beat. Give them a pencil and ask them to conduct. (Have them watch this to see what a conductor does.) With concentration, they can learn to feel it rather than hear it. That is when the music really gets into their gut.
Some classical selections that are wonderful for the study of pitch are Mozart or Rossini arias from their operas. The melody lines are beautiful and have interesting contour. For easier pitch matching, choose more women singers than men but be sure to use a variety overall. Mozart’s Requiem also has a wonderful piece called the “Confutatis” that has juxtaposed sections of rhythmic, low parts sung by men against high, legato (smooth) lines sung by women. Copland’s Appalachian Spring has wonderful melodies and solo lines for different instruments. Any music can be analyzed for pitch study and you will be surprised by what your children notice when you ask them to really listen.
Likewise, any piece can be used for finding the beat, or talking about rhythm. Try Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain or Pictures at an Exhibition. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is rhythmically exciting, while Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring is rhythmically simple and fluid.

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January 8, 2008 By Christine 1 Comment

Why Bother?

“The pursuit of truth and beauty
is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted
to remain children all our lives.”
-Albert Einstein

As all parents do, my husband and I have milestones that we mark for our children. We note their first tooth, their first step and their first word. But one milestone that may be unique for us, and may in addition prove us to be music nerds, is matching pitch. It is a banner day in our home when one of our children first matches a coo with an exact pitch, and it usually happens between the ages of one year and 18 months, though the jury’s still out on our 8-month-old!

I am fully aware that classical music, and the other fine arts (dance and higher forms of visual art, specifically), are a bit intimidating for some. However, homeschoolers, as a group, seem to have a much more honed appreciation for the fine arts, even if they have no training, and are always seeking ways to include them in their children’s lives. Children are innocent of the societal stigmas attached to things such as opera and ballet and simply grasp on to the joy inherent in these creative expressions of human emotion. We took our 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter to a shortened ballet recently and were delighted when they spent the next few days practicing pirouettes and leaps across the living room. They are pure in their appreciation, and in their purity have a sense of refined taste, unblemished and free.

So how do we as parents harness this enthusiasm for things we ourselves often don’t understand, or even appreciate? How do we get past our own distastes and misunderstandings and allow our children to see the beauty before them? The easy answer is to simply bring it to them- a smorgasbord of flavors, open, available and honestly presented. Find a local university with a music program that offers free concerts and recitals. Play easy-listening opera and orchestral music to start and go from there. Visit local art museums and shows. Display art and photography books prominently in your home. Get your child a CD player and an array of CDs from the library- not just Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, but Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Palestrina; Tchaikovsky, Holst and Delius. Ask them to create their own dances to these pieces, dress up and perform them for you. The possibilities for increasing their appetites for “The Finer Things” are endless.

Then again, why bother? I read a book recently proclaiming the woes of the homeschooler’s schedule. Few things are really necessary, it said. All of the academics, field trips, housekeeping, and other things that demand our time don’t leave much room for the things that enrich our time. If music and art are “extras”, why do we need them at all? I could spend an entire article explaining the ways that the arts enhance academic achievement (they do); I could make the case for how using the arts helps children find a constructive niche to keep them focused and out of trouble (statistics prove this is true); I could even express my strong personal opinion that the fine arts simply, but profoundly, capture the human condition in its purest and most intimate form. But instead, I will leave you with the most basic reason for deliberately incorporating the arts into your homeschool.

God, as the origin of creativity, thought it fitting to make us in His own image.

He instilled in each of us the potential for, and the ability to enjoy, the process of creating. Feeding that divine spark in our children proves to be one of the most rewarding and far-reaching activities we can experience in our homeschool journey.

As the months pass, I hope to give you encouragement, ideas, inspiration, resources and knowledge about how best to approach the arts with your children. In the meantime, feel free to email me with your questions, or drop by my little place in cyberspace.

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