Narnia Lit List Revised

This is a revised version of my original list that focuses on fewer titles overall. It assumes a basic familiarity with Greek and Roman mythology, and perhaps a little Norse mythology as well.

King Lear (children's version)
Questing Knights of the Faerie Queene
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe 
William Shakespeare's Macbeth (children's version)
William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (children's version)
The Arabian Nights 
Prince Caspian 
Rip Van Winkle (reminds me of the sleeping Lords in Voyage) 
The Wanderings of Odysseus  
King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (children's version)
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aenid
Gulliver's Travels   
The Silver Chair
The Seven Wise Princesses: A Medieval Persian Epic
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (children's version)
The Prince and the Pauper
The Horse and His Boy
Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories
The Story of the Treasure Seekers
The Magician's Nephew
At The Back of the North Wind 
Paradise Lost for Children
Stories From Dante
Animal Farm
The Last Battle

I also think that Our Island Story would make a nice addition to this study, perhaps ead at the rate of three (very short) chapters each week.

Narnia Lit Study - Original

NARNIA LIT STUDY
Helpful Books that I Used in Planning
The Way Into Narnia: A Reader's Guide
A Field Guide to Narnia

To Be Read Beforehand (Spring 2013):
A Wonder Book for Boys & Girls and Tanglewood Tales (Greek mythology)
Asgard Stories: Tales from Norse Mythology
Roman Myths (also called The Orchard Book of Roman Myths)
The Aunt and Amabel, E. Nesbit (you can find it in this free-to-download collection)
The Snow Queen
And possibly When The Siren Wailed, to get the feeling of wartime London/England

Here are the main books, and supplemental reading in the approximate order in which I intend to go through them. Those with a * are to be read concurrently with the Narnia book at hand. SS=short story, CB=chapter book. Books in {these brackets} are optional for us...

King Lear (SS)
Questing Knights of the Faerie Queene (children's version of Spenser's Faerie Queen)
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe 
William Shakespeare's Macbeth* (SS)
William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream* (SS)
Prince Caspian 
Mermaid Tales from Around the World* (Book of short stories)
The Arabian Nights* (Book of short stories)
Rip Van Winkle (reminds me of the sleeping Lords in Voyage) 
The Wanderings of Odysseus (CB) 
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
{The Book of Dragons* (CB)}
{King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table  (may read this later? Or before VDT?)}
William Shakespeare's Hamlet* (SS)
In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aenid (CB)
Gulliver's Travels (CB)
A modern translation of Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls (poem) 
The Silver Chair
{The Ancient Celtic Festivals* (SS)}
The Seven Wise Princesses: A Medieval Persian Epic (SS)
A children's version of As You Like It (SS)?
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (SS)
The Prince and the Pauper (CB)
The Horse and His Boy
{Turkish Folk Tales* (SS)}
Tales from Ancient Persia* (Book of short stories)
Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories  (Book of short stories)
The Story of the Treasure Seekers  (CB)
{The Mystery of Atlantis or Looking for Atlantis (both SS)}
The Magician's Nephew
Daedalus and Icarus* (SS)
At The Back of the North Wind (CB)
Paradise Lost for Children
{The Narnian Suite from Poems by C.S. Lewis}
Stories From Dante (Book of short stories) 
Animal Farm (CB)
The Last Battle

Other Narnia-Related Books
The Narnia Academy
The Narnia Cookbook or The Unofficial Narnia Cookbook
Art Adventures in Narnia
Chronicles of Narnia Pop-Up Book
Childhood Chronicles Before Narnia: Boxen


Other Books That Could Go Well With This Study
The Princess and the Goblin; The Princess and the Curdie
Riddle-Master
Five Children and It; The Phoenix and the Carpet; The Story of the Amulet
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Wind in the Willows
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
Tatterhood Tales
Stories from Ireland
Stories from England
The King of Ireland's Son

A Little Late to the Game...

But better late than never, right? So I am joining in on

From Pam's blog, "Over the next two weeks we will be laying out some of our biggest trouble areas, attempting to make some changes, and reporting back on how things are going."

Here goes nothing!

My area to change first is consistency. We're inconsistent with homeschooling (and housework). So, my goal is to sit down and hit the books at least 4 days each week, and spend part of my afternoon time on housework, with the kids pitching in each day, starting today, and staying on target for at least the next two weeks.

Normally today would be about prepping for the week ahead. Instead, today I am focused on writing my rhetorical précis for class, and then the above. Nice to occasionally have a three day weekend!

I also have olives to brine/cure, since we picked many of the ripe ones yesterday. This batch will be done with a traditional liquid cure, while the next batch will be a more experimental dry salt cure. This picture represents maybe a third of the olives on our tree... there are a lot of still unripe ones to be picked soon!



On today's agenda:
~ Work on my paper
~ Homeschooling: Math; spelling/phonics; Primary/Intermediate Language Lessons; geography; science; a history documentary; and reading: The Wall, and The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.
~ Get the olives curing
~ Dishes and laundry!!!
~ Cooking dinner--tonight we're having roast beef with carrots, parsnips, onion, and brussels sprouts... yum!
~ Watching Shrek the Third! We watched the first one Friday night, and the second one last night. It's fun to re-watch movies we haven't seen in a while. Next on the agenda, Shrek Forever After.

I do have a little accomplishment to sort of brag about... I had written that I wanted to reorganize my BFSU flow charts, and figure out how to implement it in our homeschooling. Instead, I looked at the flow charts I had already developed, and researched higher level supplemental reading to go with it. And I lined up some videos, mostly Bill Nye and How Things Work, along with the Disney Imagineering series. It'll be another week before we can actually use my new plans, since I have to wait on some library books, but I am really very excited about this! I adore BFSU, all three books, and if we actually use them, I think my kids will be very well prepared for higher level science.

I'll finish this up with a photo that I think is appropriate for today...

Week 7... Back in the Saddle...

As far as homeschooling, etc., it has turned out to be a pretty good week! Week 6 was really a basic week, and last week we took a mini-vacation (btw: that's a nice big trout The Girl caught--The Boy caught the first one, The Girl caught the biggest, and then we ended up bringing home 15 trout altogether!), but now we're back in the saddle, and going strong!

Language Arts

This week, in addition to spelling work and some word roots, The Boy started Writing Skills (EPS). I am having him use this as a way to build up his writing skills a little - sentence structure, paragraph work, etc. He's done several pages already, focusing on complete sentences versus fragments, and proper capitalization and punctuation, all things that I am seeing as issues in the [remedial] college level essays I grade.

The Girl worked on phonics, of course. She's sailing right through Explode the Code at the moment, doing all the sentence reading herself, and then having me check her answers. She also read aloud from Little Bear's Friend, and did some work in Reading Pathways. I think it is finally getting through her thick little skull (and I mean that affectionately!)... she can read. She was thrilled to be reading a "real book" this week instead of readers, and seemed very proud of herself!

Math

This has been largely a Math Mammoth week, although The Girl and I went through a couple of lessons in her Life of Fred book. She worked on addition, subtraction, with whole hundreds and tens, as well as a review of commutative properties.

The Boy worked on multi-digit multiplication and division, as well as the order of operations. I am getting a copy of Zaccaro's Challenge Math for him as a fun-looking (and challenging) addition to his math studies. He'll do more in Life of Fred next week.

History

We found our history book at last! We read four chapters -- the one we started with was actually chapter 10, to support a reading from K12's Human Odyssey, but then we were enjoying it so much that we backtracked and read the first three chapters, learning about some of the earliest hominids and tools. We chose a few projects to work on from this book, and we'll be adding fairly extensively to our Books of Centuries next week.

Science

Science has been all about exploring nature the last couple of weeks while I reassessed our approach. Then I found How Nature Works, and we all love it! We read about cells and osmosis, and will be doing a project later today that shows osmosis using nothing more than potato halves, sugar, and water. I am also determined that we will read ALL of The Magic of Reality, since we've only read the first two chapters.

Literature

We very much enjoyed The Snow Queen (Amy Ehrlich's version), and the kids instantly saw the connections between the Snow Queen herself and the Witch in The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe, which we will start reading next week. I also got a hold of The Questing Knights of the Fairie Queen --a children's version of Spenser's Faerie Queene--and it is a truly gorgeous book... I am looking forward to reading it aloud! We read more of The Graveyard Book, and Pippi Longstocking, along with a few short books, including Will's Quill (about William Shakespeare and a goose), Edgar Allen Poe's Telltale Heart (which I read aloud quite dramatically, and the kids loved), and so forth.

Other

The Girl helped me make mini pumpkin muffins for today's park day. The Boy, with a little help from The Girl, my mom, M, and myself, built a crash test dummy out of old clothes, newspaper and duct tape, according to a kid's tutorial he found on you tube -- yes, I will be posting pictures of it as soon as we get the head done! We finished getting our Halloween costumes ready, and will be picking up jack o' lantern pumpkins this weekend. We have a Halloween party to attend tomorrow evening, and we're looking forward to trick-or-treating, pizza and movie night on the day itself! The rain has stopped for now, and we're crossing our fingers that Halloween will be clear, or at least dry. I've lost 2 of the 5 pounds I had gained back (thank you Bob Harper!), and M is finally getting unemployment money, although why they have only paid us, at least so far, for one of the past four weeks is beyond me... but some money is better than no money!

Overall a good week, and I am looking forward to the next one as well! Hope your week was good too!

Monday Musings... I Need to Simplify...

We are just using, or I should say attempting to use, far too many resources. I have too much going on. M and I spent part of the weekend taking a critical look at all that I have on my Plans Page, and we agree... there is just too much there! We looked at all the resources individually, talked about what's working, and what just isn't happening, scheduling, and more. So soon, there will be a much-trimmed down version of that page!

Scheduling isn't working well either, and for that, I really blame myself. I have failed to really set aside a specific time just for homeschooling each day... instead it is more of a hit or miss approach. Most days we do homeschool, but I feel rushed and disorganized. I realized too that in trying to "follow their interests" we end up chasing whims and fancies every which direction. So, back to a Charlotte Mason approach for scheduling, etc., meaning I decide what we cover and when; we do short but solid lessons; and keep up with the good literature. Then, they have plenty of free time to explore all the whims and fancies, which I will support them in, but not necessarily make a formal part of schooling--I also read the book Project Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners, and discussed a lot of it with M. We have decided that the best way we can approach this is to offer the supplies, tools, and support to our kids to follow their interests, but not center all learning around it. Make sense? Maybe they can choose more of their own path by high school...

Other than that, we took the kids out for a day of fishing yesterday with our good friend W (honorary uncle as well). W set up poles for the kids, taught The Girl how to cast (The Boy already knew), and how to get the fish in a net once they caught it. Within the first 30 minutes, both kids had landed fish! We ended up catching the limit of trout we could for the day, and W gave us part of his catch as well, so we have lots of trout to clean and freeze or smoke. I got to sit back and relax much of the day, catching up on some fun reading (as opposed to my college reading). It was lovely--warm out, sunny, and gorgeous scenery! (pictures to come)

On the agenda for the week:

~ Clean up my Plans Page and reassess our schedule

~ Music and art!

~ Life of Fred and Math Mammoth for both kids, now that we have gotten a new copy of an LOF book for The Girl (I'm running her through the entire elementary series over the next couple of years)

~ Some exploration of prehistory: we're going to finish watching Becoming Human while we wait for my "new" copy of K12's Human Odyssey to arrive

~ Officially relaunch my Narnia lit study

~ I'm considering having The Boy do some work this year in Igniting Your Writing. As much as I love the Brave Writer Lifestyle, The Writer's Jungle, etc., I am finding it harder to implement at the moment as a writing plan, and think that The Boy could use some good, basic instruction. Either that, or I need to get serious about having him do written narrations for history and science OR just plain more diligent about using the Brave Writer Lifestyle, The Writer's Jungle, etc.

~ Read from The World in a Drop of Water, and have M follow up on our science reading with some hands-on microscope work with the kids. Start reading The Magic of Reality aloud (1 chapter/week), since we never got very far with it, despite my best intentions. Assess The Father of Anatomy: Galen and His Dissections for future use.

~ Decluttering part... ummm... well, ongoing decluttering

~ Getting ready for camping!!!! We're taking off for a weekend of camping fun on Friday, right on the heels of a Friday morning field trip.

Hope you all have a good week! What are some of your plans?

Tuesday Tidbits...

We are now in our sixth week of homeschooling for the year. There have been, and continue to be, some adjustments as always. Some things are working very well, others need some work.

What IS Working...

We have definitely found a way of doing history that makes it work for us. Our two spine books - one on world history and one on American - are lovely read alouds, and the kids are really enjoying putting together their Books of Centuries. In fact, every time they add to them, they rush off to proudly show their dad what they learned about this time! After all the stress I had about history, I am so glad this is going well!

For The Girl the combination of Explode the Code and Reading Pathways (Dolores Hiskes) is marvelous. These two resources work very well together, and she is gaining confidence daily. I no longer have to lead her through each page of Explode the Code... instead she does it on her own and then shows it to me for any corrections, of which there has only been one recently, on the word "glass", which she spelled originally with only one "s", certainly an easy mistake to make.

The Boy loves a couple of his language arts resources: Soaring with Spelling & Vocabulary because it has fun activities, and Unjournaling (writing prompts) because they (the prompts) are both hilarious and challenging. I do need to work with him on drilling the spelling words, but that is a simple adjustment. I also really want to get him working on a Writing Project each month.

There are other parts of language arts that are working well - i.e. Grammar Land - and then things we need to get to, like poetry. I think what we'll start doing is alternating Mondays on grammar and poetry.

Math is both working and not working, or rather I should say parts of it work better than others. Once again, as was the case last year, while Teaching Textbooks is nice in many ways, The Boy and I miss that time together. I have next to no involvement in his math with Teaching Textbooks. So working through Life of Fred and some complimentary Math Mammoth has been refreshing this week. Of course, The Girl instantly wanted to know why she isn't doing any Life of Fred, which subsequently resulted in my ordering another copy of LOF Apples so that she and I can work through the elementary series together, alternating it with Math Mammoth! I firmly believe that after the prealgebra stage, LOF is very complete, especially with the Home Companion books, so if my kids enjoy and learn from Life of Fred now, they may be able to use it all the way through their homeschooling journey!

We're actually getting in a lot more nature walks this year! Instead of scheduling them for "school time", we're approaching them as a family late afternoon/early evening treat a couple of times a week, and then sometimes as a special trip on the weekend. I'm really enjoying this family time together, and we are all benefiting from the fresh air and exercise.

What is NOT Working and/or I Would Like to Adjust...

Our Afternoon Basket: While I love and am determined to use this idea, I need to adjust it. We're just not making the most of it! I have decided to add back in some books from the 12 month guideline in A Picture Perfect Childhood, and I may add in our Narnia study books after all. I like the cohesiveness of the lit plan I came up with, and there are many books on that list I would love my children to have some exposure to. Right now we're just kind of going here, there, and everywhere with books, which can be fun, but doesn't seem enough.

Science is very definitely a work in progress. Much as I love and adore Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, I'm struggling with implementation. I think for the remainder of this month at least, I will revert to my old plan: a documentary of their choice once a week; work from a living book once or twice a week; and something nature related the other day(s). Throw in a few experiments from books like The Irresponsible Book of Science, and reading from books like The Magic of Reality, The Story of Science, etc.,  and I think we'll be good to go!

Art and music need work as well, since we just are not getting to them. I did get a copy of a fantastic book called The National Gallery of Art: Activity Book, and I think this will really help! It has pictures to investigate, with a list of questions and prompts to work from, as well as hands-on activities. I have looked through it several times since getting it a few days ago, and am very happy with it. As for music, I think we may start utilizing the Composer of the Month again, with additional music from my own collection and the library. Nice and simple! We could read about the composer at the beginning of each month, and then listen to their music while working on art.

And finally, implementation of everything! I need to actually set aside "school time" as sacred each day, and keep the TV and computers OFF.

So now that we are getting well into the new academic year, what is working and not working in your homeschool?

Week Two... We're Getting There...

This week, I worked on making some adjustments. Even though we had a great week one, I felt overwhelmed by some of my own choices for the year, and so I decided to readjust a bit.

What Worked This Week

Math

Math is still going well. The Boy is moving right along in Teaching Textbooks, and The Girl loves her MCP Math, as do I. I think I found the perfect math workbook for a girl who really wanted a math workbook this year! The Boy worked on estimating, rounding, adding, and subtracting with three digit numbers this week, while The Girl finished a review of addition and subtraction, finishing up with two pages of word problems, which she seemed to enjoy!

Language Arts

A definite highlight was reading Ruth Heller's beautiful book Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns. We did not get to Latin this week (not that I am hugely worried about that), but The Boy did work on spelling, and started a unit in Word Roots regarding suffixes. The Girl made great progress this week! I've noticed that she is writing a lot more too... she's constantly asking me how to spell this or that, and she's proud that her handwriting is improving. I think for now we will continue with our mix of Explode the Code and Reading Pathways.

Science and History

In science this week, we studied a bit about energy (BFSU) - how it transfers from one thing to another, how it is created/where it comes from. We smashed one Hot Wheels car into another to show the transfer of energy. We discussed solar power, wind turbines, and so forth. We played around with both microscopes some more. We read a bit in Moon of the Deer, and spent time examining bug, rocks, and more in our backyard.

In history, we continued reading through The Wright Brothers. We learned about the construction of a printing press by Wilbur and Orville, which got the kids interested in the history of printing. I have a book for us to read today called Breaking Into Print: Before and After the Printing Press. This is what I am trying to encourage... following the rabbit trails that pop up from somewhere else! We also read a section in Builders of the Old World after watching Night at the Museum. We may or may not continue with Builders next week, since The Girl still wants to follow the Wright Brothers with Sacajawea!

I still find myself trying to cram us into a box a bit with history. I know, I know... I said I would let the kids follow their interests this year, and am really trying to do that! I will learn to let go a bit!

And finally, Literature

We dropped a lot of the books from A Picture Perfect Childhood this week. While I love the idea, the practicality of it for me just isn't there. Instead, we moved forward with our Narnia literature study! We read The Aunt and Amabel, a short story by E. Nesbit in which a girl,  sent to "Coventry" in the Spare Room finds a magical world inside a big Wardrobe. Sound familiar? It was from this story that C.S. Lewis drew his inspiration for the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. We also started reading The Snow Queen.

We read about Claude Monet, and discussed his art, using the Artchive to look up a few pieces.

Other books for the week included continued reading from In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World, a few short stories from Grandmothers' Tales, and more of The Lightning Thief in the car. The Girl and I enjoyed beautiful versions of The Tale of the Firebird and King Midas after her reading lessons. I think I ill continue to read a short story/fairy tale to her after each lesson. I found this book that looks like it will work well for this, and am waiting for it to arrive at the library. Until then, we have a stack of other, gorgeously illustrated fairy tale books on hand.

We also finished up The Marvelous Land of Oz as a bedtime book. Next up: we decided to go with Pippi Longstocking since I think both kids will enjoy it!

What I'd Like To Work On Next Week

With The Boy: I'd like to start reading through Breakthroughs in Science with him. I'd like him to do a little more writing next week as well - we didn't really get around to it this week.

With The Girl: I can't think of anything we need to change right now, except making sure that I read her a story after her reading work!

With both: Art project(s) definitely. Finish The Wright Brothers. Start some poetry work with Pizza, Pigs & Poetry. Continue the Narnia study. Listen to some beautiful music. Bring in Greek myths (to replace creation myths), and some Celtic fairy tales to replace Grandmothers' Stories.

Hope everyone else had a good week! Next week I'll get some pictures in my recap as well!