Home education free Advent lesson set

Pop over to Kalei’s blog That Resource Site and pick up the first half of my Advent freebie.

I am working away on the second half which I hope will take you through Christmas.

I have designed this for back to back printing so the blank pages are for the lapbooking, copywork and lesson pages.

The main text has note boxes for your own thoughts as you go through this, or might be useful for an older child doing independent study.

I advise you to read this with a Bible at hand.

Enjoy.

Free lesson: a brief history of the priesthood.

I spent quite a bit of time writing this free lesson plan, but I am afraid the subject is way way too big for a little lesson. Still, hopefully, some of you will find it a good starting point.

There is huge ignorance and confusion about the nature of the pesitshood. But then there is huge confusion about spiritual matters over all.

It is a real shame that we have given up our understanding and embraced a terribly narrow view that all reality is material. For people my age, the confusion was taught to us, and I think, it is largely thanks to the internet that people like me have had access to authentic teaching. Anyway, have a look and see what you think.

Don’t forget to have a look at the other stuff Kalei puts up and leave her a message of encouragement.

Freebies and a Home Educated Heroine. [Greek letters, music rhythmns & Grace Darling]

Kalei has kindly posted my latest freebies. I’ve made a straight forward set of cards of the Greek alphabet, lover case, upper case and letter names.  I recommend using them to learn the alphabet and to separate consanants and vowels. If you print up more than one copy you can spell some basic Greek words as well, or use the sounds to make English words with Greek letters such as delta, omicron, gamma for dog. Here’s a good alphabet lesson

We are using these cards alongside Songschool Greek. I am quite taken with the amount of  free stuff Classical Academic Press offer to help with the childre’s learning. We have only just started the Songschool Greek, but it’s good so far. I hope to make some follow on cards for making Greek words to spell out.

On Music. I have been teaching the children music in various ways for some time. We have been using Classicsforkids for some time. It’s an extremely good quality free resource. Alongside that Ronan was learning basic recorder tunes with the Usborne Very Easy Recorder Tune book. After that I signed up for a year of Kinderbach which was really good for the girls and reasonable for Ronan, although he was finding he was a little too old for a lot of it. Still, it was a good basic start to music, notes, paino/keyboard and rythmn, and I do recommend it. I found the lack of classical music in the lessons a bit sad, but we made up for that with ClassicsforKids.

By the time the year’s subscription was up with Kinderbach we had worked through every lesson in the six levels presently available and I was a bit stuck for what to do next. I noticed that Seton Homeschool had started to carry Adventus Musical Adventures and I decided to check them out. We loved the two weeks free trial which allowed us to have a look around all the programs. So I signed up for the months sub for the online.

Each lesson has a rythmn practice session (in the vid, Ronan is helping Heleyna with hers) which is very important in getting music right. It’s something I always found horribly difficult as an O’level Music student; so much so in fact, I remember my teacher rather pointedly asking me if I couldn’t count to 4! LOL poor man! All three of the younger ones are their mother’s children – where counting and clapping rythmns are quite a challenge. So, I made the music cards to help them practice. You can make up sentences of your own to make a 4/4 clapping game.

The other freebie on offer, thanks to Kalei’s blog,  is my lesson of the redoubable heroine of Bamburgh, Grace Darling. I chose to write a lesson on her for a number of reasons. First, we have visited the little museum to her memory, and her grave in the church yard of St. Aidan’s CofE opposite.  Bamburgh has a rich history, and I hope I will find time to write about more of it’s saints and heroes.

The other reason to write about Grace is that she was home educated. She received her excellent education from her parents at a time before compulsory education acts had been brought in throughtout Britain. I have been reading some books about the 19th century (Grace’s era) and came across the same figures for literacy pre-compulsory education, that Gatto quotes; it was over 90% in Britain (having risen exponentially from around 1830 for some reason)  and had dropped by nearly 60% by the First World War.  Shcoking figures.

Anyway, I digress. The story of Grace Darling and her rescue and care for the survivors of a steamship wreckage just off the Farne Islands, is well worth knowing. Enjoy

Also look at the amazing amount of resources Kalei herself has produced. She works very hard to make all these free resources available to the rest of us.

Frugal Friday; free Easter lesson pack for home education

 As Lent moves on towards Easter, I have finished a new lesson pack which is YOURS FREE – and you can’t get more frugal than that.

The Via Guade continues from the Via Dolorosa which is also free. The Via Guade is all about the Resurrection of Jesus and His quiet time over 40 days with His apostles and some other disciples.  I have added the usual amount of fine art for picture study and of course the lapbooking pieces, which I hope will suit a mixed age and ability group of children.