Our Journey Westward » charlotte mason

Duke Ellington Resources

Cindy — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:12:50 +0000

We enjoyed Duke Ellington a lot! It was refreshing to hear a different style of music than we’ve been listening to so far this semester.

Duke Ellington Composer Study Resources

Making Music Fun – Biography and You Tube Performances

PBS Kids Biography

Books We Read

CD’s We Listened To

Charlotte Mason Carnival – Autumn Beauty Edition

Cindy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:00:33 +0000

What a glorious time of year! In my part of the world, God’s creation is singing in brilliant colors and crisp notes. In honor of His magnificent show, I thought I’d center the theme around bits and pieces of Autumn Beauty. Enjoy the wonderful articles!

Nature Study

Julee from Abundant Harvest shares her family’s awesome nature study that came from an injured monarch in Nature Study – Butterfly.

Alicia from La Famille gives a great tutorial for making a dye from black walnut shells in Nuts About Dye!

Ritsumei from Baby Steps shares about her family’s recent trip to their local nature preserve in Critters and Moss.

Kris from At Home Science provides a nice list of living books and such for anyone planning to study rocks, soil or the earth in Geology Study Resources.

Barb at Handbook of Nature Study shares about one of her nature challenges in Outdoor Hour Challenge Autumn Series – Seasonal Weather.

Yours truly is sharing an article from Shining Dawn Books about Nature Study with a Toddler or Preschooler.

Art/Picture Study

Dana from Epi Kardia takes us on a how-to journey through picture study in Charlotte Mason Mondays – Picture Study.

I’d like to share a recent picture study resource review I wrote at The Curriculum Choice about Dover Art Cards as well as our latest artist study activities in The Thinker and Other Rodin Fun.

Living Literature

Keri from Sunny Scholars helps unmuddy the waters when it comes to finding good literature that’s also friendly to beginning readers in Readers.

Amber from The Mommy Earth shares how she and her children enjoyed a cozy reading time together in Book Review: Five Little Peppers.

Kris from Science of Relations provides a set of living literature for our reading enjoyment that focuses on history in Westward Expansion: Santa Fe Trail.

Jimmie from Jimmie’s Collage reminds us that even older children enjoy picture books, and she’s found several goodies in Picture Books for Middle School.

Science/History

Heather from Maple Hill Academy shares how she has implemented a family time line in Book of Years.

Barb from Harmony Art Mom shows us how she uses a traditional teaching text with CM flair in Apologia Physical Science with a CM Style.

Super Odds and Ends

Penny from Our Crazy Adventures in Autismland! gives us a glimpse into habit training in Bedtime Routine into Habit.

Richele from Under the Golden Apple Tree reminds us of the importance of leisure time in Masterly Inactivity.

Johnna from Living Charlotte Mason in California is the perfect ending to a cool weather carnival as she shares about her family’s adventure making Autumn Butternut Soup.

Thank you so much for visiting the Charlotte Mason Carnival today! Richele from Under the Golden Apple Tree will be hosting next time on November 17th. I hope you’ll consider submitting an article! Until next time, I hope your autumn days are spent in thankfulness to our Creator for His bounty!

George Gershwin Composer Study

Cindy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:48:14 +0000

I hope these resources come in handy as you plan a study of George Gershwin!

George Gershwin

Classics for Kids

Books We’ll Read

CD’s We’ll Listen To

Rousseau Resources

Cindy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:20:06 +0000

We have LOVED our time spent with Rousseau!

Henri Rousseau Artist Study Resources

Olga’s Gallery

Landscape with Cattle

View of Bridge Sevres

The Football Players

Monkeys in a Jungle

Lesson Ideas

Princeton Online – Several Ideas

KinderArt – Fantasy Jungle

Lesson Plan Page – Stained Glass

Books We Read

Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway that takes place bright and early Thursday, October 1st!

Vivaldi Resources

Cindy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:17:40 +0000

Antonio Vivaldi Composer Study Resources

Classics for Kids

Book We Read

CD’s We Listened To

Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway that takes place bright and early Thursday, October 1st!

Rousseau’s Jungle Paintings

Cindy — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:17:38 +0000

I am loving Henri Rousseau’s style. It’s somewhat of a folk style with lots of bright colors. Combine that with whimsical scenes and it makes me smile. So many of the artists we’ve studied have been too serious for me, but the lighter side of Rousseau has revived my artist’s eye!

Rousseau spent many days studying, sketching and painting exotic plants while visiting huge greenhouses that housed plants and trees from all over the world. These plants inspired him to paint jungle scenes. In most of his jungle scenes, you’ll find animals or people hiding in the midst of the plants. Rousseau would get his inspiration and models for many of those additions as he looked at photographs from magazines. To look at his paintings, you’d think he spent a lot of time in jungles, but not so!

Surprise

Fight Between a Tiger and a Lion

Two Monkeys in a Jungle

The Waterfall

Here are Mahayla and Caleb’s attempts at a Rousseau jungle painting…

We actually tried to pick leaves that looked jungle-like and roll over them with painted brayers to make prints, but it didn’t work very well. Instead, the kiddos just decided to paint with brushes.

Frederic Chopin

Cindy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:58:57 +0000

Frederic Chopin Composer Study Resources

Classics for Kids

Listen

Book We’ll Read

Van Gogh Resources

Cindy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:43:38 +0000

Van Gogh Artist Study Resources

Vincent Van Gogh

Lesson Ideas

Sunflowers

Starry Night

Sunflowers

Starry Night

Apricot Trees in Blossom

Almond Tree in Blossom

Blossoming Almond Tree

I chose the three paintings above for the purpose of learning to draw trees this spring as they begin to blossom.

Books We Read

Here’s the last art/nature project of the Van Gogh month. After doing picture studies of the spring trees above, we went outside to find trees and bushes in bloom and the kiddos completed their own spring artwork.

Mozart Resources

Cindy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:32:17 +0000

We’ve just finished learning about and listening to Mozart (one of my favorites.) Below are the resources we used.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Classics For Kids Radio Shows

Click and Play Biography

Kid’s Bio and Music

Listen to Mozart

Books We Read

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

Cindy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:57:16 +0000

After reading Camille and the Sunflowers, I had the kids try their hand at recreating Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” using an idea from Art Projects For Children. They turned out GREAT!!

The directions in a nutshell:

Use a pencil to draw a vase, table line and the flowers.

Go over all or most pencil lines with a black marker.

Use oil pastels to finish the masterpiece!