Our schedule has morphed over the years as we’ve made allowances for music lessons and instrument practice, which take up a good chunk of time at our place, part-time work for the older ones, and other practicalities. Ideally, I would like to do this part of our day in the morning but I’ve just had to be flexible so what happens is that I decide in the morning when we’ll all get together for the day and then give everyone notice. This seems to work quite well.

 

Some of what we do is daily (Bible, memory work, poetry), others weekly (read alouds, Shakespeare, Plutarch). Some other things get done monthly and others intermittently. And then there’s the occasional day when we don’t do any of it!

This is what we’re doing together at this point:

 

Bible

Bible Memory Work – you can see here how we do this.

Greenleaf Guide to the Old Testament. Every few years I go through this so the younger children get a historical sweep of the O.T. It’s simple to use and good if you have children of various ages. This time through I’m thinking of also using parts of the Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt when we get to the book of Exodus.
We’re also using these books.

 

 

 

 

 Poetry 

William Blake; review of previous poems. I have a post here of poetry we’ve memorized or just enjoyed and some ideas for sharing poetry with children plus some books we’ve used here.

Read Aloud

Pilgrim’s Progress: Christiana’s Journey by John Bunyan. My copy is a lovely old hardback with gold embossing but it’s a little hard to read aloud as there’s no quotation marks or helpful quotes such as, ‘Christiana replied, “….. ” so I have to add those bits as I go.

 

Herodutus and the Road to History by Jeanne Bendick

 

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason. I started reading this aloud about two years ago. It is very rich and I’m taking it slowly.

 

Plutarch

 

Fabius. We’re continuing this from last year and then I’d like to do Cicero which is a relatively new addition to the Ambleside Online Plutarch studies. http://www.amblesideonline.org/PlCicero.shtml

 

Shakespeare

 

We have audio recordings for The Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night so we’ll do those unless I find a production of another play that we can see live.
The Arkangel CDs are difficult to find in Australia. I used to always try to borrow them from the library but they had a limited selection. I found mine via Ebay but now Audible have them. 
Some of the Naxos Shakespeare audios are good also but I don’t know if they are as consistent across the board as the Arkangel productions.

 

 

Composer

Mozart – even though we’d listened to his works about two years ago. One of the boys is learning this piece for his music exams which we were able to find sheet music for at the wonderful free online site at the Petrucci Music Library. They also have audio files.

 

Artist 

Johannes Vermeer. I’ve put together some of his work on Pinterest.

 

Nature Study

Every month I read from A Bush Calendar by Amy Mack.

Manners

I haven’t used this book for a number of years but thought I needed to bring it out again…

 

 

Folksong: I’ve Been Everywhere Man (Aussie version)

 

Hymn: Oh the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus