Thursday, August 30, 2012

Hymn Study - For All the Saints

One of the beautiful "extras" that our family loves about a Charlotte Mason education is the music studies. The girls and I enjoy classical composers, hymns, and folk songs. This year, we have chosen to replace folk songs with patriotic songs, and all the kids love their Wee Sing America CD.

The first hymn that we are learning this year is For All the Saints Who From Their Labors Rest. Like the rest, this hymn is new to me. I didn't grow up in a church, and our current church isn't big on traditional hymns!

Hymn "study" at our house is pretty low key. The kids and I found a YouTube performance of the song that we like. I copied the lyrics from HymnTime and created a song sheet to help us learn the lyrics. I will laminate this and put it on the wall so we can look at it during our song time (and whenever else we choose to). Like most hymns, the performance we are listening to includes only a few verses. To help us keep the lyrics straight, I put the verses that are included in the YouTube video in bold type. You are welcome to download this song sheet for personal use.


We will listen to the song a few times a week, and the kids can join in if they choose (typically they don't). My littlest pumpkin likes me to sing to her before bed, so I often sing the hymn we are learning. We sing one hymn a month, and also listen to the others we have previously learned. Eventually I plan on creating a YouTube playlist that I can play in the background, but that has not happened yet.

That's about all there is to it! The idea is to expose them to beautiful ideas, language, and music. When a picture, song or idea speaks to their heart they will take it and make it their own.

Happy listening!

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

So many books, so few bookmarks!

One drawback of a literature-based education is that we never seem to have enough bookmarks. I stumbled on these images from Karen's beautiful website, Karen's Whimsy. They turned out to be the perfect ratio for small bookmarks.


You can download these bookmarks here. Print the page out on heavyweight card stock, and you will have some lovely, durable (and colorable!) bookmarks.

Happy Reading!