Charlottes Web

We finished reading Charlottes Web this past weekend. Elizabeth found a copy of the book on my shelf and asked if we could read it. Of course! We tried to read it with Josiah as well ... that didn't go over to well. He just wouldn't sit still long enough! So we read most of it after he would go down for his nap. It was great for her and I to have some mommy/daughter time.

After each chapter Elizabeth summarized what was read back to me as I wrote it down in her journal (as suggested by Carol Joy Seid). It was interesting to hear what she took from each chapter. More interesting to me was being able to see that she needed the pictures (few, though they were) to jog her memory of what had happened in the story. Only hearing the story was too abstract for her little mind! Below I will share a couple of the journal entries as dictated by her to myself ...

Chapter 1

About the pig. Her father tried to kill him. Her father gave her the pig that he was trying to kill. And then her brother, Avery, came down and then the little girl fed the pig.

Chapter 3

Wilbur ran away and escaped and he saw some people and he said to himself, "what should I do?". Then a man came with a bucket full of food for the pig and then he went back into the barn and then the duck followed the man into the barn. The duck said to the man, "he has to run out and do his tricks." Then the duck ran out of the barn.

Chapter 11

The little boy sometimes tries to kill spiders and his mom puts him to bed without any breakfast. (Did Charlotte do anything, I asked?). She made a web and the web had words on it.

Chapter 13

It was about making terrific words on the spider web. The pig woke up. the rat took a piece of paper and it had silly words on it with uppercase letters. The pig twisted and misted and turned and did a flip and blasted on the ground and went to sleep with a thump.* Then the spider told the pig a story about her cousin who caught a fish in her web and then ate it. then his favorite friend (Fern) tucked in herself and went to bed.

Chapter 19

The spider made an egg sac for her eggs. Then the rat had a big fat tummy. Everybody gave hugs because the pig was a famous pig!

Chapter 21

The spider - the big one - was going to die - but not the little ones. The rat was going to get the web that had eggs in it that was all covered, covered with strings from her web.

Chapter 22

The rat ate some of the pigs food and he grew fatter. The the spiders grew balloons and floated up into the air. One talked to the pig. Then 3 of them went on the door.

*That was my favorite sentence out of her whole narrative!

Carol Joy Seid Seminar

Since my last post I did one more full lesson with Elizabeth and then went to a seminar by Carol Joy Seid. From that seminar my outlook changed and we have taken a break for the past 2 months from doing anything structured. The following (in no particular order) are the few valuable things I took away:

1. Late is not bad (I plan on reading a book called, "Later is better than early" by Dr. Moore)
2. They will be judged by how articulate they are ... not at what age they learned to read.
3. Train your children's palatte for quality ... read, read, read - in front of them, to them, alongside them!
4. History is the logical core of our curriculum - teach it by using Classical History, of which she gives a list of books one can read for study.

- this can be (and has been) done with a library card, the Bible and a Good Math book

There was SO much more that she spoke about . . . much more than I can effectively articulate in the short time I have in front of this computer screen. I really must get back to cleaning my kitchen and getting ready to take care of the kids again once they are finished with their quiet times/naps!

All in all I would say that because of Seid's seminar I have decided not to be so focused with structured learning ... at least for right now. Ellie is only almost 4 and she just needs to be loved, played with and read to A LOT. I plan on continuing in that and giving her more "formal" teaching when she asks for it! Which just in the last week she has - I've decided that we will do that on my days "off" from watching Jonathan - in the morning ... a field trip here and there, library visits once a week and projects pertaining to something she is interested in as it comes up!