2014 summer reading, narration, and copy-work

I have used year-round home-schooling for several years.  There are some awesome reasons for doing it-one of them being continuous learning.  Summer education can be light, but very useful.

This summer I am having the boys continue with math, but dropping all other formal curriculum.  They will still be doing language arts and learning an assortment of themes, but it will be accomplished differently.  

They have joined the summer reading program at our local public library, and are reading books from a reading list that I created.  I require them to read 45 minutes per day, and  I am also having each one of them complete a form I prepared, summarizing what they have read. 

Just a few goodies from the summer reading program.  There was also a beanbag ball; it's around here somewhere.  They love doing this.  It gives the boys and me a lot of opportunities for some free/cheap dates together.

Justin and Jonathan are reading the same books and completing the same forms.  

Justin's summary: 

Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand

Jonathan's summary: 

The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli

Ryan is completing a different book list and form.  He narrates what he has read to me, and then I create a cursive writing practice sheet using his narration. 

Ryan's narration below -handwriting part not completed yet- from Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John: 

 I  used this site to create the cursive writing practice sheet:

  http://www.worksheetworks.com/english/writing/handwriting/handwriting-cursive-copy-old.html )

Here are Justin and Jonathan's first batch of library books from my list.  I was so thankful that the library carried these titles:

Ryan finished his first copybook!

Ryan finished his first copybook today. He was so excited, that he did over 2 pages today to get it done. Here is one of the last pages he completed:

Ryan's first copybook

Ryan started his first official copybook today. It is All Thing Bright and Beautiful: Copying the Hymns - Christian Devotional Copywork by the Bogart Family. It starts with the key verse: Genesis 1:1 and then goes into the song. (and yes, it was a freebie download that I printed!)

He has traced letters in Pre-K workbooks, but he feels like a big boy now because he is actually copying sentences. He said "I am glad I get to do copywork now!"

I am glad as well. :-)

Justin: Language Arts samples

For Spelling & Vocabulary, Justin gets his list of words from Noah Webster's American Spelling book. He then looks each one of them up in his dictionary (with my help) and writes the definitions. Later, he will make the words into sentences and stories. You can click the pictures to see them more clearly.
For Language, I read him a list of sentences and phrases (from A Beka Language 3). He must determine the difference between them orally. Then he copies the sentences and changes the phrases into sentences.

Update: Hobbies, Scripture memory, & copywork

We have been in-doors on the colder days, and on the warmer days the boys have been able to spend some time outside playing.

Something fun for Justin to do on cold days is to take old, broken appliances apart and look inside. Here he is taking apart an old radio alarm clock.

He loves to use his daddy's tools

For Christmas last year, our family was given some money. I used the opportunity to purchase a nice book to use for morning & family devotions. It is a very nice hardback book of Proverbs arranged topically. It is formatted in the King James version, so it is perfect for Scripture memory. Currently, we are in the section entitled "Reverence". We are learning Proverbs 2:1-5 right now, and the boys are just about ready to recite it without looking.I also purchased a paperback copy of the original 1911 Boyscout manual for the boys. There are all kinds of fun things to learn in this manual, and I imagine it will take a very long time to finish it. We do not read it every day...just some days. Basically it is just for fun. The boys will learn anything from chivalry to animal tracking. Of course Daddy will have a lot more to do with that type of thing than me. He is the "master" of anything outdoors!

Last but not least, both of the boys have finished their Italic writing books. They are ready for the next level; how exciting! Here is a scanned copy of Justin's "copywork". I think he did a great job!

Copywork

Something that I think is a really good idea is "copy-work". It is old-fashioned, and most of our fore-fathers did it.

This is a supplement I am using to go with the boys' Italic writing workbooks.

From the Donna Young website. I love this:
The handwriting lessons on this page have content from George Washington's Rules of Decent Behavior (rules of civility for short). I read a long time ago that George did not make up these rules, but as a youth, he was required to copy them in a notebook. I do not know if that is true or not; it is a good idea, and copywork is a good way to learn something!

Here is lesson one from George Washington's rules of civility:
Click the box below to see it:



Here is an example of Italic verse copywork: Click the box below: