Here is a sneak preview of a work in progress by Zoe
(harmonies by Eva Markham)
this is a rough draft, a sketch if you will. Clean recording a full music video to follow!
Category Archives: Geography
Checking in…..So much for weekly write ups!
Not even one post! and it is half way through the school year, SO it is only fair to summarize our experience so far. It has been hard, really hard. There are days when I think that we are falling so far behind that she will never catch up, ever and be so far behind, and it is all my fault, and then there are days when i flip through her binders and take a deep breath realizing that we are squeaking by!
My girl has changed so much this year! Last years crazy foot growth was the beginning, growing a foot size a month for almost 3 months!. She is no longer a little happy go lucky country girl! but a tall, strong preteen, experiencing life to its fullest! What a ride!
Her love of music has also grown deep. Picking up her guitar several times a day to sing a song, practice her bar chords, or unwind. or sometimes a quick break downstairs to bang out a new rhythmn on the drums, or create a rhythm when memorizing a poem or speech. And in her spare time she mixes music on her expanding Dj set up. Yes the little girl who I tried to keep of electronics and pop media away as long as I could! Now she has fully immersed in the pop music scene! and I embrace it as i see her grow…in the past few months her musical taste has expanded (as has her physical taste she eats salami now!) Recently she developed an interest in playing cello and has started taking weekly lessons. Lucky for us out here in the boonies there is no shortage of really talented cello teachers.
We are both totally smitten with the cellist Zoe Keating, her CD “into the trees” is hauntingly gorgeous! We hope she makes it back to NY soon as we missed her this time around.
As well as her usual summer plans at the IMA PreTeen Rock and Roll Camp she has decided to try out the Village Harmony Program a teenage chorus/choir camp, in preparation for this she joined a weekly chorus in Northampton.
I have taken advantage of her love of music and used it as a jump off point for History of Music. We are presently doing a short unit on the History of Hip Hop, and The Roaring 20’s and Harlem Rennaissance as part of music and Black History Month. We have also tied in some Poetry specifically that of Langston Hughes. (I would like to keep going through the depression as some of my fav music styles came from that period but I know as soon as I mention Woody Guthrie I have lost her- unless i get creative! (wink wink)
Before this unit is over she will write a rap song, complete a unit on Song Writing with GarageBand too. The book she is presently reading for fun is The Young Musician’s Guide to Songwriting: How to Create Music & Lyrics which in my opinion is written well for this age group.
In terms of Visual Arts we began the year studying Chuck Close the artist who has overcome such adversity. We recently saw The Theory of Everything about the life of Stephen Hawking and compared his life with that of Chuck Close. By the end of the year we will also study the Art and Life of Frida Kahlo another artist who overcame physical adversity.
So far we have also studies Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement. Zoe made her own pop art version of Taylor Swift! Presently we are studying Georgia O Keefe and she is working on a cow skull piece.
We are linking our somewhat abstract topics together by creating a master timeline! I hope to introduce a few photographers to her before the end of the year namely Vivian Maier, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Steve McCurry and a new to me but instant fav. Imogen Cunningham (which we will tie in back to Friday Kahlo)
The other big area we have focussed on so far and almost completed is Ancient Egypt, as planned we mostly followed Pandia Press Ancient History Odyssey- but I must admit to have hated the History Pockets book it recommended exactly what kills me about school all busy work no substance. I guess, if you have a detail oriented child it may work but it’s not for mine! We watched several Smithsian and National Geographic, History Channel Documentaries , the one on finding the mummy of King Queen Hatshepsut was definitely a fav! as was the research project on her! Zoe has read The Golden Goblet by , The Egypt Game byby Zilpha Keatley Snyder (def her least favorite) and Tales of Ancient Egypt by by
She looks like she is reading but this fuzzy little trouble maker keeps her from focussing time and time again. Don’t let either of them fool you!
In math we have been moving slowly along with kumon workbooks, and more recently some of the Math Mammouth Make it Real series, it seems to be working well for her. I still would like to return to some compass art and History of math. We will see!
English has been less inspiring that I had hoped and other than some creative writing (642 Things to Write About: Young Writer’s Edition, songwriting (more on this in another post) and book reports and biographies) we are relying on the workbook MegaWords. She seems comfortable with it as it is what they used in school last year. She is reading ” The Hobbit; or, There and Back Again ” by J. R. R. Tolkien (book report and author bio) and listening to the “Lord Of The Flies” by William Golding on Audible (book report and author bio as well as a short paper on Dystopian Fiction as she has read “The Giver “and the “Hunger Games Trilogy” and “Divergent”, for fun)
We are way behind on the Geography mapping program I was so excited about! She finds it quite dull 😦 We will plod along and through Geography lessons in whenever I can. We also have abandoned Latin and Spanish
For current affairs/science she has been reading Going Blue: A Teen Guide to Saving Our Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, & Wetlands Kaye M.A., Cathryn Berger and The Down-to-Earth Guide To Global Warming – by
Here are two of her photographs that she is pretty proud of
Also for current affairs she has chosen to memorize the Emma Watson HeForShe Speech at the United Nations | UN Women 2014.
In terms of physical eduction she took a modern dance class this Fall with a local hero Christina Gabriel who volunteer teaches fabulous dance classes in order to raise money for the Community Hall in town (and she is juliard trained!) It was her first dance class in years! and looks forward to it again in the Spring. In the meantime she plays on the local 4-6 grade basketball team and an indoor soccer league which she also really enjoys.
Looking ahead, to next year while I feel like we are starting to find our groove, it’s not always graceful though! Zoe is eager to go back to school we have our fingers crossed that she will get into a regional local performing arts charter middle/high school- it seems like a good fit for this alternative young woman. And while I am up for the challenge on continuing on this path, I will be happy to have my days back again!
Maps, Mapping the World
It is better to see something once, than to hear about it a thousand times. – Asian Proverb
::Wanderlust:: Noun; Strong desire or urge to wander or travel and explore the world
I have always loved maps and globes. Vintage or new. Imaginary or real. To me they represent open space, hope, adventure, freedom, art and education at its best. They feed my gypsy loving soul! In my 20’s I honored that wanderlust deep within and got to experience world travel (including an expedition to Southern Chile where we helped the park and rec department map an unexplored territory!) I’m so grateful that I chose the path of life long learner (that is another story for another day). Travel has shaped me as a human, seeing first hand how people live around the world, what people eat, how food is grown, how people learn, how people sit in council has taught be a lot, top of that list gratitude and compassion. Seeing how absolutely beautiful the world is, and seeing people all over the world smile has given me hope, deep down hope. Hope that we’ll (the greater we) will find our way again, that we will remember what it is like to treat our fellow citizens with love and respect , that we will rediscover what it means to be human. I believe that Travel is a vital part of education led me to experience travel.
I am always up for an adventure! Up until fairly recently this was 100% truth. In many ways I still am though recently I feel like I’n not being completely honest as I seem to have settled into home routine more than ever. That scares me, it seems I have let some of my day to day responsibilities, stresses and feelings of exhaustion take over. I have been observing this over the past year or so, is not good for me or Zoe so I repeat and will own it “I am always up for an adventure!”
Zoe has inherited this love of adventure, travel and globes (not so much maps, yet!). As we navigate these middle years where apathy seems so prevalent one of my parenting goals is to travel as much as we can, see pockets of the world, meet people. She has always been a great little traveler, and this past Winter in Ecuador she proved that she is not so much a little traveler, as a traveler now!
“Once a year go someplace you have NEVER BEEN BEFORE” Dalai Lama
My favorite subject in school was always geography, cultural geography. Whether at Channing School in Highgate England or at Campion in Athens Greece , I was in awe of those Geography teachers who knew so much about the world. I thank them for inspiring me. Its been such a disappointment seeing how little Geography is taught in the early grades, here in the US (it was so obvious when some British friends of mine visited with two young girls age 5-7 they looked at our world map and had so much to say!) so when picking a curriculum for our 6th Grade homeschool year, geography was a priority for me! My secret homeschool agenda (i know, I know agendas when homeschooling a 6th grader are a set up for disappointment- still can a girl have a fantasy!) was that Zoe will have a good understanding of the countries of the world and know where to located them on a map globe and know general facts about them like language spoken, major geographic features, cities and major world events. I looked hard for a curriculum we could follow to help me meet this goal (you’ll see what I chose in the previous post where I outline our 2014/15 academic plan) They’ll be plenty of cartology and map art. If any of you have old globes or maps you are not using please send them our way….They’ll be put to good use.
As I perused and previewed our resources I came across, this book, which I promptly got from our local library. I have been enjoying it for days, boy it will be hard to return. It is a map lovers delight! A visual feast! It is artsy take on Geography, so much info here…I recommend it to any map loving family.
Maps
It’s all illustrated, every page is filled with images of people, plants, buildings, geographical features you’ll find in a given country/region. Many games can be invented and played on each page depending on the ages of your little one(s).
If you are looking for books on world Geography/Travel, I have done several book posts previously here and here .
And just because it is thursday here is a #TBT photo!
Dreaming in Green 