Restoration Place

Book Pile: AO/HEO Year 7

 Earlier this spring I began to plan for Ambleside Online/House of Education Year 7 for Maggie. I needed to know if she would be ready by September to tackle the reading and maturity level of the books, and as they began to trickle in from the library and my local Barnes & Noble Bookstore, I read ahead. (I'm still homesick for all the great used/out-of-print book shops where I used to live).

Then Karl surprised me with a trip to Baldwin's Book Barn in the Brandywine Valley in Pennsylvania. I was so ecstatic about all those fantastic books, I put the camera away and enjoyed myself. Karl took the children outside and they picnicked and play on the huge, grassy lawn while I browsed.

 

 

 

After exploring all five floors of Baldwin's Book Barn, I focused on finding some Ambleside Online/House of Education Online Year 7 books. I found two: The Brendan Voyage: Across the Atlantic in a Leather Boat by Time Severin and The Lay of the Land by Dallas Lore Sharp. Karl greatly indulged me by buying The Lay of the Land.

It's a very special edition, signed by the author himself:

 

 

I had wanted just such a copy of The Lay of the Land for several years, but never found one locally that I could hold and look at before investing in it. And here it was! If you love good, old books like I do, and want to both treasure and enjoy them, you know how I feel about this book. ~smile~

Well, I've read about half of the books in the above stack, and that's not all that is scheduled/suggested. I might have Maggie follow Ambleside Online Year 7 Lite or simply pare down the original Year 7 book list. In the meantime, I've got some reading to do.

Nature Journaling ~ Wood Thrush

I don't remember ever hearing a Wood Thrush before moving to our current wooded location. The bird is is plain in appearance, but its song--oh, you must hear it! Be sure to click on the link above, then click on "typical voice" and listen. It's so very unique and beautiful. I always stop what I'm doing when I hear it, and listen for a few moments.

There is a male wood thrush in our woods right now, singing all day long, though I've read they often sing only in the evening. He doesn't hide from us in the deeper woods, either, as some identification guides suggest. He perches about half-way up on our tall beech trees near the house and grazes on the ground like an American Robin. 

We decided to learn more about the Wood Thrush this morning while he was singing loudly in our back yard.

I read from several of our bird identification guides to the children as they drew, asked questions, and listened to our Wood Thrush.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm really enjoy a new bird identification resource (new to me--thanks Mom!), The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (Peterson Field Guides). It's the orange book, second from the top, in the stack of bird books in the first photo above. I have lots of bird guides, but really like this one for its accessibility for children. We use it almost daily and always take it with us on bird watching nature walks.

This was a great 30 minutes of drawing, chatting, looking at our bird books, and listening to the Wood Thrush just above our heads. What wasn't visible in this post was all the thick, yellow pollen all over the table and chairs which had to cleaned before we could sit down and spread out our supplies; Katie scraped her ankle on the foot of one of the chairs somehow, and screamed; then the boys lost interest the moment they completed their drawings, and ran off to the play set where Ben rammed into Jacob in the tube slide, and Jacob yelled in pain so loudly that the Wood Thrush left and flew away to a different part of the woods. I was self-conscious about neighbors overhearing the yelling (as if they haven't heard it all before). Then, when Maggie was helping to carry supplies back into the house, she tripped on the concrete steps and hurt her leg. Just at that moment, everyone reminded me I had skipped Tuesday Tea yesterday, and expressed how very much they longed for chocolate cake, tea, and reading. It really is a good day. ~smile~.

Taking the Books Outside

Maggie is making her way through the final stretch of Ambleside Year 6 Term 2. Here she's reading The Story of the Greeks (large print edition, which I ordered by mistake). Also in her morning stack for that day: Age of Fable, Augustus Caesar's World, Plutarch's life of Coriolanus, and Secrets of the Universe.

She was to have read another chapter of Animal Farm but I somehow lost the book several weeks ago because I had taken it to read ahead of her (does anyone else do that? I mean, lose an important book ~grin~). Now I'm at the point of borrowing or buying another copy...if I could only remember to do it!

Maggie is completely taken with this time spent in the ancients, which was such a surprise to me. You might remember that we made the switch from Sonlight Core 5 back to Ambleside mid-year (I won't go into the reasons again right now). These books--and who Maggie is right now--are meshing perfectly. And that, to me, is a huge part of what it's all about.

It's Good to be Back!

My self-imposed and much needed blog vacation is over. What I needed to do during that time has been done, and I feel like a new person! It's interesting, though, how much this blog was ever-present in my mind while I was away from it.

There were so many things I wanted to preserve in this space for my own family and for you, the readers, that I began to realize how much I came to perceive moments, activities, and events in terms of creating a new post. Not that I felt compelled, but that I simply wanted to both preserve and share those things.

So here I am again, with so many things to share but so little time in which to do it. ~ grin~.

Karl brought me the beautiful lilacs when he returned from a weekend of turkey hunting in a different part of the state. They have always been one of my favorite flowers. Their scent fills the kitchen, even when I'm cooking.