Fitting it all in

Things can get little hectic around here due to the fact that I have five children in four grades. Making sure that I am touching on all subjects can be a challenge at times. I am a very electic teacher. I love the methods of Charlotte Mason and her living book ways. I love the structure that the classical approach affords us. But I also love how unschooling lets the students drive their learning from their passions. Today I want to share how we mix a bit of the living books with classical. So in our house here is one way we get it all in.

Two to three days per week, when we have finished our 3 R's, I read from our current read aloud. Right now it's a book about a missionary named Jim Elliott. He went to Ecuador (yes Dad I finally remember you went there, ha!) to minister to the native people there. We have a dozen books on other countries and knowing we were reading about Jim in Ecuador, I pulled that book out. We talked about all the seven continents as well as continental drift, practiced our cardinal and intermediate directions and traced Jim's route on the ship from Oregon to South America. Also, on this page it has a picture of the Ecuadorian flag.

As I read from our story, all five children made their own Ecuador flags.

This was a great way to throw some art into the mix. Before I began to read, I showed them how they should make the outside shape of the flag but then start from the center and work our way out to get the dimensions correct.

Each of the five flags were very different depending on the skill level of each of the kids.

However, they all had the main elements, such as color and placement, making them all look like a flag from Ecuador. I love doing the extras this way. It ties in several subjects and helps what we have learned to "stick".