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Showing posts from August, 2009

Pimsleur Spanish

This year I wanted to move forward with Spanish more aggressively, and I wanted a program with a strong audio component.  In fact, since I already had a couple of books with which I was very happy, I really wanted a strictly audio program.  The first one we tried was Pimsleur ; after listening to the free sample lesson I bought the eight-lesson mini-package so we could try it out.  My third grader has been using this set for about five weeks now, on her own.  She does ten minutes of a lesson three nights a week, listening to the CD and speaking when prompted.  The lessons move slowly with lots of repetition and using few verb forms.  The speakers pronounce the words clearly and new words are pronounced one syllable at a time, starting from the final syllable and moving backwards through the word.  I would very much like to have access to a transcript of the lessons so that I could know what words and phrases have been covered without liste...

Our School Verse

I have never come up with a name for our homeschool because nothing has ever seemed suitable and the need hasn’t really been pressing.  I have never made an effort toward creating a motto or vision statement or anything like that either.  And I’ve never been good at coming up with a "theme scripture".  Last night, though, as I was deciding on verses for my oldest to work on memorizing, I was out at the SimplyCharlotteMason website and saw Ephesians 2:8-10 listed as a verse to go along with the "I am" portion of Charlotte Mason’s school motto:  "I am, I can, I ought, I will."  Part of that passage, verse 10, is a verse that forms the basis for my training of my children and has for a long time.   (I think I actually originally began using that verse with the kids after finding a reference to it in a book called Parenting with Scripture .) "For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared ...