Field Trip to Texas Ballet Theater's Swan Lake

https://texasballettheater.org/#

An amazing field trip.  

If you get a chance to see a professional ballet performance, it's incredible.  

My college kids have been to Texas Ballet Theater about fifteen times (can't remember the exact number).  They have even seen the Bolshoi Ballet.  The 5th grader has been twice to Texas Ballet Theater.  He described his first trip to see a professional ballet at Texas Ballet Theater as "the best day of his life."

All three of my younger kids have spent years taking ballet classes and all three have performed in the same ballet company, which focuses on bringing ballet to people who otherwise are unable to see ballet - like a nursing home/memory care facility or community festivals.  I count this as volunteer work for them as well.

Two of our girls have taken ballet and other dance classes at the college level also.

I highly recommend a professional ballet performance, opera or even a symphony performance as an excellent homeschool field trip.  

Here is a link explaining what to expect when you attend a professional ballet: https://texasballettheater.org/the-ballet-experience/

Review of Ambleside Online's Composer and Artist Studies

 This is what we did this year for art and music appreciation: Ambleside Online's artist and composer studies.  These are free Charlotte Mason artist and composer studies online, grouped by school year and term.  

Artist Studies

Composer Studies

Ambleside Online has a rotation schedule for both artist and composer studies.  Each school year is divided into three terms, with one artist and one composer studied in each term.  For this school year, we studied the art of Duerer, Caravaggio and Delacroix.  For composers, we listened to the music of Beethoven, Vivaldi and Chopin.

What we did...

For composer study, I would just find the week and composer on Ambleside Online's website and click on the next song in the list.  If we were supposed to listen to Chopin's Nocturne in E-Flat, I would click the link (which leads to Youtube) and play the music for my student while he sketched or colored with markers.  We listened to one piece of music each week.  

For artist study, I did the same thing.  I went onto Ambleside's website, found the term and artist and clicked on the next painting.  I would usually magnify each painting and we would look at details like brushstrokes, how well the artist painted hands, how accurate the animals looked, etc.  My son decided that Caravaggio wasn't very good at painting horses, so we discussed that and other things he noticed.  We did an artist study maybe once a week.

Did we like AO's artist and composer studies?

YES!!  My son particularly enjoyed the artist studies.  Listening to Chopin and Vivaldi as he was sketching/drawing was also a very pleasant way to do art.  

Ambleside Online's artist and composer studies are simple, free and an enjoyable way to cover art and music appreciation. 

Homeschool Day 10/3

 2nd Grader - we did school outside today

Math

• Life of Fred Butterflies

Reading/Language Arts

• All About Reading 
• All About Spelling - he wrote his spelling words on the driveway outside with chalk

Sonlight B World History 1 (history, Bible and literature)

• Usborne World History
• Year of Miss Agnes (read-aloud)
• National Geographic poetry book

STEM 

• DASH robotics - we did more programming and he made it play the xylophone attachment
• Here are a couple of videos of him playing with DASH

10th Grader

Math

• Mathusee Geometry

Bible

• Daily Bible reading (2 Kings)

Grammar

• 10th Grade Easy Grammar Ultimate workbook

Bookshark J History of Science (literature and history)

• Newton at the Center
• The Clockwork Universe
• We watched the TED video of Tycho Brahe on You Tube
• We also watched the Crash Course Science video of Newton and Leibnitz (founders of Calculus)

Fine Arts

• Classical Guitar - we bought a classical guitar over the weekend and she's beginning to learn how to play it
• Ballet class (outsourced)

Homeschool Day 8/31

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred - finished Apples, looked at Butterflies (the next book).  We are switching off between Mathusee and Life of Fred for now

Reading/Language Arts

• All About Reading
• All About Spelling - adding this has really helped his reading
• Funschooling's Storyteller Book
• He told me a story and I dictated the story into his notebook
• Funschooling's Curious Creatures Journal

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy Music Appreciation
• More ancient Roman instruments - the bagpipe isn't Scottish???

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, history and literature)

• Usual reading - Usborne Time Traveler and Owls in the Family
• Bedtime read-aloud: Henry and Beezus (Beverly Cleary)

Wednesday night church activities (Youth Group)

10th Grader

Mathusee Geometry

Bible

• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)
• Daily Bible reading (2 Kings)

Astronomy

• Smithsonian's The Planets

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy High School Music Appreciation
• Gustav Mahler
• We spent a loooooong time listening to what Spanish guitars/classical guitars sound like.  I think I am going to try to buy her one for Christmas.  We also listened to steel lap guitars, 12 string guitars, etc.  Apparently, we need to take a field trip to Guitar Center.
• She practiced Ukulele (because that ukulele has become an extension of her body)

Bookshark J History of Science (history and literature)

• The usual Bookshark reading
• Archimedes
• Zero and ancient number systems
• We watched some videos about Vedic math and she was fascinated by it
• Going Solo (Roald Dahl)

Wednesday night church activities (Youth Group)

Homeschool Day: 4/20

 We watched a live chamber music performance at the college last night.  Piano, violin and cello.  They played Bach.  It was incredible.  We were able to sit about six feet away from the performance and even the 7 year-old loved it. So, we can check music off for the week.  It was such a great experience.  The violinist was from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

1st Grader

• Math
• Mathusee Alpha
• Reading
• He read a book to me for quite awhile.  He did great!
• Sonlight B (Bible, literature and history)
• Science
• Brick Building 101: 20 Lego Activities to Teach Kids About STEAM
• He made a Sail Car out of legos and a plastic bag and used a hair dryer to move it around
• We did the Geoboard activity with a baseplate and rubber bands
• This was a wonderful book - we checked it out from the library.  Definitely worth getting.
• Wednesday night church activities

9th Grader

• Mathusee Geometry
• English
• Sonlight 230 (poetry, The Screwtape Letters and Till We Have Faces)
• Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook
• Bible reading
• German (together)
• German Demystified
• Biology
• Ellen McHenry's Protozoans - she did the activity sheets at the end of chapter 2 (ciliates)
• Wednesday night church activities

The Graduate (who won't stop learning)

• Norton's Anthology of British Literature (medieval)
• Life of Fred Statistics
• Bible reading
• Shakespearean Theater (outsourced) 
• Wednesday night church activities