I spent the first few days of this year working on a list of learning objectives for 2008. Nothing too regimented, since we’re still sort of un-schooling in our own semi-organized way, but it’s nice to have an idea of the types of things we should be bringing in to focus as life happens.

So, I got out the quarter million homeschooling books I picked up over the years, and went through them to see if I could find more ideas and concepts that might fit in our year. And I realized I have way too many of these books and it’s actually making things harder instead of easier.

So to winnow out some that don’t work for me, and to make some room in my bookcases, I thought I might eBay some books. But then I found BookMooch, and thought that might be more fun. I must have some good books, because people are mooching them almost as soon as I list them, though I’ve only found a few books that I really want available.

I’ll be adding more homeschool resource books, and preschool workbooks we never got around to using, in the next few days (I don’t want to add them too fast, since I could bankrupt myself with shipping!), so if you’re looking for some freebies, sign up for Bookmooch, set your settings to ship internationally or at least to ‘ask first’ (if you’re in the US) and add me as a friend.

It would be really great to see lots more homeschoolers using Bookmooch to get rid of previous year’s curriculum and resources, and pick up next year’s at the same time.

Pirates of the Caribbean!

Reading:
Pirates are popular around my house, and stuff about pirates litter every imaginable surface. We’ve got pirate pop-ups, pirate costumes, pirate puzzles, pirate swords, pirate ships and who knows what else. I do have a few favorite books about pirates that I prefer over all the others.

• What If You Met A Pirate? by Jan Adkins is a good place to start. The book begins by describing the popular stereotype of a pirate, then proceeds to show how a peg-legged, one-eyed pirate bogged down by cutlasses, swords, guns, jewelery and a parrot isn’t likely to be a very successful pirate at all. In the rest of the book Adkins explains what pirates were really like, what they wore, and what they did all day.
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I didn’t buy a copy of the latest Harry Potter book this weekend, but more than 8.3 million people did, breaking records set by the last Potter book.

I don’t actually own any of the books (yet), but I did the first two several years ago.

Right now, David is too young to start on the books, and my own “To Be Read” pile is too big to realistically add seven books to it and expect I’ll get to them in the next few years, so I may as well wait.

But I was wondering, as I look at the books on David’s bookshelf, whether Harry Potter will become a children’s must-read classic of the future, like Alice in Wonderland, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island or Baum’s Oz books.

Will it become part of every well-read person’s childhood? Or is it fated to become a very, very big fad that fades over time?

David went through a short time when he was fanatical about knights. I think it started with Scooby-Doo. He loved the episode with the black knight. It did, however, confuse him when we later read a version of Ivanhoe where the Black Knight was King Richard the Lionheart. And then, we discovered that nearly every book about knights included some knight dressed all in black. It sort of made me wish that authors would get more creative with medieval colors… how about a chartreuse knight for a change?

Knights, Castles and Medieval Times

Reading:
There are sooo many great books about knights and castles out there for kids, there’s no way I could list them all. I can’t even list all the ones David has in his library. But, I can list a few of my favorites:

• Knight: A Noble Guide for Young Squires (Genuine & Moste Authentic Gdes) — In a letter to his son Hector, Sir Geoffrey de Lance explains that he is being held captive by a French knight and is writing this book to instruct the boy in the ways of knighthood in hopes that he will someday come to his rescue. A fun ‘authentic’ looking book with lots of flaps, envelopes and doo-dads to keep kids engaged.
• Castle: Medieval Days and Knights (A Sabuda & Reinhart Pop-up Book) — I’m a huge fan of pop-up books, and this one (though not as awe-inspiring as the Dinosaurs popup I linked to for the Dinosaurs before Dark book) is still awesome to pop open and explore.
• Knights And Castles (Magic Tree House Research Guide, paper) — This is the research book companion to the Magic Treehouse book, and it’s written in the same engaging, kid-friendly way as the chapter book. The illustrations are great, and it’s fun to read.

Printables:

• The Knight at Dawn Word Search from the Magic Treehouse official website.
• The Parts of Armor from About.com Homeschooling site.
• Skipton Castle – Coloring pages of castle interiors, knights and more
• Great-Castles.com — Color pictures of real castles
• Knights and Castles Crossword (PDF Format)

Games and Online Activities:

• Destroy the Castle — The trebuchet was one of the most devastating weapons of the Middle Ages. During medieval sieges, this destruction machine crushed castle walls. Using trial and error, medieval engineers adjusted the trebuchet to make sure its missile hit the castle wall—and destroyed it.
• Castle Conquest – Man the battlements! Crush the enemy castle and become lord of the land.
• Castle Wars is an online card game where your goal is to be the first to build a 100 storey castle, you also win by destroying your opponents castle.
• Create a castle/medieval city — from City Creator. Careful moms and dads. This one can hoover your time quickly if you get into it.

Other Stuff

• Book Unit - Vocabulary, Questions and Activities for each chapter of The Knight at Dawn

I just found a great site called Wowio that offers free ebooks supported by advertising. Not just a bunch of public domain rehashes, there are some AMAZING books there for homeschoolers — a good number from Nomad Press, my favorite history activity book publishers.

You can download five books per day, as long as you’re coming from a US based IP address. They’re hoping to expand the service to include a world wide audience as much as possible, but it’s limited to US users at this point.

I do love iTunes. I don’t buy, or even listen to, a lot of music, but the iTunes podcast directory is simply awesome. My computer is filled with over 25 gigs of podcast material, about half of which I haven’t had time to listen to yet.

Today I upgraded my software, and the first thing I noticed was a new link to something called iTunesU , which contains links to podcasts of courses and lectures from a wide variety of universities.

I’ve been a huge fan of the podcasts from UC Berkeley for quite a while now, but there are some really fascinating looking course podcasts in iTunesU that I missed completely from other institutions. I’ve started subscribing to all of them… though I have no idea when I’ll have time to listen to them all.

If you’re looking for a fun and interesting course to listen to, my favorites from UC Berkeley are:

• European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present — a nice, well presented overview. Good for audio only listening.
• Introduction to General Astronomy — the lecturer in this course is worth watching in the video version.
• Earthquakes in your backyard - This is a totally fascinating course, and not too hard to follow. It’s in audio only, but be sure to check out the course website to download the supplementary materials, which make it understandable.
• Man, God and Society in Western Literature — some of the audio in this one is really bad and/or missing, which sucks because this is a really great series of lectures, especially if you follow along with the readings.

I can’t let the first day of National Poetry Month pass by without at least a cursory attempt at poetry, even though, with the exception of Dennis Lee, David hasn’t shown an appreciation for any poetry at all… but here goes one he thought was at least worth memorizing:

The Fabulous Table

A Wizard once lived on Cape Sable

Who owned a most wonderful table.

It had wings, if you please,

And could fly with great ease

Could this excellent bird of a table.

When it stood in a corner demurely,

You’d have thought it was commonplace surely.

But a man who was there

Saw it flying in air

With the Wizard atop quite securely.

It seems like the bookstore (in this case, Chapters) is now as much of a toy store as a book store.

In any case, since David still had some gift cards left from Christmas, he and his Dad went to Chapters to find some books (and toys).

He chose a pirate ‘book’ that also included a bit of a costume — earrings, an eye patch and a bandana — and boy does he make a cute pirate; an easter activity book with stickers and math puzzles and coloring pages; and a science toy called “My First Dino Kit” which lets you “dig out a dinosaur skeleton” which I’ll likely review in a later post.

This post mostly exists because I wanted to show off my little pirate.

I’ve been reading a great many books about homeschooling, and some of the ones that resonate with me speak of a classical education. In particular, Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise suggest in their book “The Well-Trained Mind” that a twelve year education be split into three repetitions of the same four-year pattern based on historical periods:

• The Ancients
• Medieval through early Renaissance
• Late renaissance through early Modern

I like the idea, but I also find sympathy with the “unschoolers” who suggest that children be allowed to explore what interests them when their interest is peaked.

Now, given that what my son is most interested in right now is Scooby Doo, how can I channel that passion into something a little more timeless?

I’m not opposed to feeding his Scooby Doo habit with books. In fact, I spent about $50 on Scooby Doo books this week alone.

But what I’ve decided is to expand one theme from each TV episode (and maybe from each book too) to see if I can add literature beyond the cartoonish.

For example, for the first episode from the first season (What a Night for a Knight), I found a few other books that included a black knight.

The first book I chose was one of The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne, “The Knight at Dawn.” I realize this isn’t exactly classic literature, but it is a very easy and simplistic introduction to medieval life.

Once we’d read that a few times, I told him a few of the tales from Canterbury Tales, including the Knight’s Tale… since I couldn’t find an age -appropriate version, I made one myself.

Then we set to work making a cardboard replica of a castle. We followed a pattern from a recent issue of Make Magazine, but this Build a Medieval Castle software looks great too, and we’ll probably give it a try in the near future.

Finally, we took on the beautifully illustrated kids version of Ivanhoe adapted by Marianna Mayer with paintings by John Rush. It is a little skimpy on plot, but what remains is all the action and adventure parts of the story, so David enjoyed it, even though it’s meant for kids a few years older than he. The first time I read it I ‘translated’ some of the larger words so he could grasp the plot better. Once he knew the story, I read the vocabulary in with few problems.

Now, in Ivanhoe, the Black Knight is King Richard, and Robin Hood makes an appearance as well, so that too could lead to further exploration… at least a book or movie or two.

It’s not exactly the trivium, but it’s getting David interested in all sorts of new things without taking him away from the things he really loves.

Headsprout Early Reading is an online series of phonics-based reading lessons for kids from Kindergarten to grade 2.

David just finished the first 40 episodes, which makes him able to read about 500 words.

The episodes are just the right length — most of them last about 15 minutes — and are fun and engaging enough that David didn’t lose interest half way through.

There’s enough repetition that after a new sound or word is learned, it sticks.

The map and books add additional incentives. After each episode David LOVES adding a new sticker to his map. On the down-side, the stickers were horrid, and by episode 30 we were using glue stick to put them on the map.

David was also thrilled that he could read his very first book after just five episodes. Not only did we read the book, but he printed the coloring pages, pasted them on his wall, and wrote the words out over and over. He was totally proud of the first book he could read all by himself.

After about 28 episodes, we needed a little more motivation than just a sticker, so I added a prize after each new “book” episode he finished. That got him moving incredibly quickly through the next 12 episodes.

My main complaints are that you can’t go back to earlier episodes for review, and those darn stickers didn’t stick.

Despite those two minor problems, I would highly recommend Headsprout Early Reading for kids who are too eager to read to wait for school, or for kids in school who are having difficulty mastering the early stages of reading.

The program is not inexpensive. For $99 you can purchase the first or second set of 40 episodes. $179 will get you all 80 episodes in one shot.

You can see the site and view some sample episodes at http://www.headsprout.com