Reflection about Term 1

It's hard to believe but we are half-way through our second year at Harvest Community School. We started last year with eighteen students in first through seventh grades, and now we have FORTY-THREE from Kindergarten to eleventh grade. That's not including a handful of preschoolers who join us for lunch and an hour of Harvest time after Montessori. I wish I could tell you all their stories because Harvest has been a place for children to know God, to discover God's plans for them, and to find joy.

Pamela and I go there every day. Because the junior high was overflowing, Pamela and I are working together again. She and I join the entire school for morning meeting where we listen to a devotion, recite the pledge of allegiance, sing a patriotic song or hymn, and learn Spanish (which I teach). She and I are working through a variation of AO Year 7 adapted to a private school, modified to scaffold students who have never learned through Charlotte Mason principles.

It is a challenging transition! She and I worked very hard during the first term in between trips to Indiana and Canada. In Ohio, we watched a jousting tournament! And we met Hildegard and other friends in Ontario.



You may think Charlotte Mason is all about reading tons of great books. While we do read great books, we also study things up close and personal. God has sent all kinds of creatures to us. We studied a dead bat, a baby opossum that found itself in our trashcan one morning, and a mud turtle.







We explored two Carolina bays: one at Woods Bay State Park and another at Santee National Wildlife Refuge. Their staff invited us to go on their autumn audit of snakes and salamanders. We saw how they capture and count these critters. Don't worry! This snake is venomous unlike the cotton mouth that stayed in the cage.





The staff of SNWR also gave us a tour of the bird migration fields and told us all the things they do to keep traveling birds well-fed. We learned a lot about the different habitats along our beloved trail and how to apply terms like producer, consumer, and decomposer.



Finally, we ended the term and our study of Hildegard von Bingen with a visit from the author of the book we had been reading. Megan Hoyt shared things about Hildegard that went beyond the book. We passed around herbs, and the children enjoyed grinding spelt. She passed around scrolls with sayings by Hildegard plus something they might be when they grow up. The Kindergartners was so impressed because they knew the book inside and out. When our headmaster told them that the author of the book is here, their eyes grew wide and one little boy exclaimed in surprise, "She's HERE?"



To read more posts like this, check out the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival!

Our First Exam Week: Spotlight on Recitation and Music

In an effort to be authentic and transparent, I'm going to reveal the shocking truth about exam week in the Glaser homeschool. We never did it. You thought all Charlotte Mason homeschoolers did them. Well, I never got the hang of it. At least, I never lied to you and said I did. That would be hypocrisy.

Because I always felt like we were behind (behind what, I wonder), I hated to lose even more time doing exams. It didn't kill David who ironically just exempted all of his exams for first semester of his senior year at high school (does God have a sense of humor, or what?). It was extremely difficult to assess Pamela because of her major stumbling block: aphasia! Five years ago, the oral language she is doing today didn't exist. I was still suffering from Enlightenment Thinking, so I would have either felt defeated when my children didn't seem to know what I thought they should know and I would have made the next term miserable for all of us.

Now that I am a recovering Enlightenment Thinker, I think it is safe to try exam week with Pamela. What is Enlightenment Thinking?

• Viewing Pamela as a performer.
• Having a list of things she ought to know.
• Correcting her mistakes and adding them to the list of things to fix.
• Viewing her efforts as purely solo.
• Trying to measure and collect data to prove to the world homeschooling is working.
• Feeling bad about things that she missed because she did it correctly last week.
• Measuring her against other people with autism who are her age.

I am doing several things to inoculate myself from this destructive form of thinking. I am trying to view exams with an eye toward Pamela, the person, and her relationships by considering the following questions:

• Is Pamela's world larger because of this book or activity?
• Do I see her recalling or exploring ideas outside of our formal day?
• Is her known in this area expanding?
• Is this book or activity worth her time?
• If not, is she ready for this level of thinking? Could I find a better resource?
• Is she reaching any new developmental milestones?
• Were there times when her face filled with joy?
• Did she share any knew connections she made?

Spanish

Pamela's narration of Ricitos de Oro in Spanish stunned me, and Steve couldn't get over it. We have come a long way in Spanish since August. She has this story, the nursery songs, and all the audio stories Steve narrated loaded up on her i-Pod Touch. She loves listening to them in her free time. The other day, I caught her watching I even catch her watching The Fox and the Hound in Spanish. Pamela sometimes speaks Spanish in context such as saying "Tengo mucha hambre" before lunch or "No hay más!" after finishing a bowl of food. Once I sang, "Food, glorious, food" while David was feeding the fish and Pamela said, "La comida" (the food in Spanish). Pamela spoke what Spanish she could on our trip to El Salvador and even communicated with Rosa, who spoke no English, through Spanish and gestures. Starting to acquire a second language spoken by half of her family is a major developmental milestone.

I plan to keep using all our resources although the songs are in a challenging key for us. Pamela and I keep switching octaves to sing with the singer on our recordings who must be a baritone. We will press on. I might try a free two-week trial of Speekee, an online program recommended by friends Penny and Queen Mum. It is geared for younger children and might suit her well. If she likes it, we might subscribe and have her work through the ten programs instead of the homemade stories when my schedule gets too full.

Recitation

Pamela loves recitation. She enjoys reciting what she learned last term. Sometimes, she will recite "The Lord's Prayer" and Tennyson's "The Eagle" for fun. She smiles during "The Lord's Prayer" at church. On two different occasions, Pamela spoke Tennyson's lines: while looking at live eagles in Awendaw and at a stuffed eagle at a wildlife refuge visitor's center. It reminded me of a Jane Austen novel when a character quotes a beloved poet. I can tell by her unusually crisp annunciations of the hard c sounds in the first two lines of the poem that Pamela can hear the alliteration and finds it pleasant. I can tell in the pace of her delivery that she feels the poem's rhythm.

Were her recitations absolutely perfect? No! But I loved how Pamela put her own twist on "The Lord's Prayer" by blending the two different versions:

And - our - forgive our debts.
And we forgive our debtors.
And we forgive those who trespass against us.

She got stuck on the fifth line of "The Eagle" and turned to me, "What? What?" She knew it was on the tip of her tongue. She even tried to give me her only clue, "Thunder," because she knew it was in the closing line. Rather than look at it as a failure, I took the opportunity to show her two strategies. First, I repeated the fourth line. I was stuck, too! Then, I started the whole thing over and, as soon as I said, "He watches from," Pamela echoed from and flew solo until the end. It reminded me of what happened to Elizabeth Hughes at the Norfolk Admirals Game--how forgotten lyrics can quickly blossom into a beautiful moment when surrounded by people filled with heart.

Music
Music is going well. Pamela loved our folk song selections. I picked two songs from South Carolina ("I Got a Letter This Morning" and "When the Train Comes Along") and one familiar one ("Skip to My Lou").


While Pamela may not be a candidate for American Idol, she captured that slightly off-key twang of the songs, which melted my heart. She nailed the lyrics of the first verse perfectly in only one song. In another, she artfully wove lines from several verses to make her own version, which is how these songs were created in the first place. In the final song, she used her own unique words. Her inventiveness captured the essence of what folk music really is when you think about it.

Pamela loved the hymns I chose. She needed help finding a good key with Rejoice the Lord Is King and stayed right with me once she got going. Her version of Open Our Eyes, Lord is absolutely precious because she sings with her heart in that one.


Pamela loves classical music. She has it on her i-Pod Touch and alternates between listening to Bach and Beethoven CDs in the car. She can accurately name composers of familiar music if we hear it piped in the store or on the soundtrack of a movie. Last term, we enjoyed exploring Vivaldi. She was already familiar with The Four Seasons and his mandolin concertos. We added the Magnificat and Gloria to her repertoire. Her favorite piece was Spring from "Four Seasons" and Pamela even hummed a few bars for me!

Debut in the Adult Choir

Today, Pamela and David sang with the adult choir here at our little church in South Carolina. At first, Pamela did not want to go to church and sing in the choir. Rather than direct her and demand it of her, I applied an RDI way of doing things and focused on the relationship. I pouted dramatically and said, "Oh, Pamela. Poor Cindy the director will be so sad. I know she's going to ask me, 'Where's Pamela? I miss Pamela. She has such a pretty voice.'" She smiled and decided not to let down poor Cindy.

Pamela did beautifully, but I did have my secret weapon (I allowed her to write in her journal, which has now grown to twenty-seven pages, to help her keep quiet). She stood up for almost everything, except at one part when I did not give her enough notice. Fortunately, many members of the choir warmly welcomed Pamela and Cindy made a special effort to thank Pamela for coming.

David is no stranger to adult choirs. He joined the adult choir in Minnesota as a soprano before his voice changed (he was thirteen at the time). In fact, he was the only boy to sing Stabat Mater during Lent that year. When we moved here, they had an age limit for the adult choir: eleventh grade and above. However, they grudgingly accepted him in the men's choir until it disbanded. Then, we were so desperate for voices that they lowered the bar to fifteen years of age, and David just turned fifteen.

I despise age segregation! Personally, I agree with my choir director in Minnesota, a fabulous singer, former member of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers (Eileen Farrell). She accepted younger voices into the choir based upon maturity and ability. If a young person could not cause distractions and could learn the music, age was not a barrier.