Rosh Hashana 5772

Tomorrow night we'll celebrate the start of a new Jewish year, the year 5772.



May the new year bring you love, peace and good health to enjoy all the gifts the Creator gives to us freely, day by day.

May the year 5772 be a good and sweet year, and may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Shana Tova!

Music History: Renaissance

When I ordered "Meet the Great Composers" I already knew I would want to supplement it. Although supposedly suitable for Grade 9 music education, the method does not entirely meet my standards. Not only does it seem to be a bit too easy for high school students, but there's no mention of any composers before the Baroque. Whatever happened to medieval music? And the music of the Renaissance? Surely, I want my daughter to learn about and appreciate music of those eras too.

I really wanted to start Fran's musical education this year with a few lessons on Medieval music, but since her Art History method starts with a few lessons on Renaissance artists, I decided it might be a better idea to skip the Middle Ages for now, and maybe come back to them next year.

So far, we've done music history lessons on:

Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina
My worksheet on Palestrina may be shared for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons License.

Worksheet: Palestrina by Leah Witmond is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

William Byrd
Renaissance Worksheet (With not just William Byrd, but also Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni Palestrina, and some general information about the Renaissance Era.) available at ClassNet.



Carlo Gesualdo
A biography of the troubled composer-prince can be found on About.com, Music Education.



Fran loved the music of these three composers, and I think we'll be both almost sorry when we'll move on to the music of the Baroque Era next week.

New Homeschool Year

We started our new homeschooling year two weeks ago, this year with just one child left to home educate. As of this year, Lizzy is studying Stories and Desing at ArtEz Institute of Arts, so it's just Fran now.


Fran working on a math problem with her Dad

I planned Fran's course of study for the first term of this school year way back in June, and so far Fran's been pretty good about keeping up with her work.

Having said that, I might just want to tweak the schedule a little to allow for some more time off on Thursdays, since Thursday is Lizzy's day off, and it would be nice to be able to do some fun things together on the days when she's home.

New books

We didn't need any more books. We honestly didn't. But then we went into town, and entered the bookshop. Fran and I, just the two of us - and she never even used to like books.

She somehow managed to convince me I needed to buy her these books:

Het menselijk lichaam - a Dutch translation of The Human Body, by Steve Parker, because "Look, Mum! A pop-up model of the brain!" and "Just look at this! Eyes!"

And it was only €10, so how could I possibly resist?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1, Poster Annual 2011, or actually the Dutch version, with those ridiculous Dutch names, but even so... I mean, Harry Potter.

Page upon page of movie pictures. How could I possibly say no?

Gebouwd in Verbeelding: Het Nederlands Stripmuseum. With works from not only Dutch comic artists, but also international artists like Lorenzo Mattotti - one of Lizzy's favourites.

How could I refuse?

Then there was this book on How to be a Viking, by Ari Berk, with beautiful illustrations, pop-ups and lots of little extras.

How could I deny her this little treasure?

And then...

Then there was this:

An antique copy of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

"Printed from the edition that was carefully corrected by the Author in 1867 and 1868."

With the original illustrations. The book smells of old books. When I turn the pages – not all of them of equal size – I'm not in my own living room anymore, but in the library of some ancient castle, sitting in front of a blazing hearth fire, while torrents of rain are whipping against the windows.

At only €10, I was sold.

Fran's New Blog

She had a pink blog. Very pink, and very girly, and she didn't like that anymore. So we gave the blog a makeover today.

And of course I couldn't resist creating a motivational poster to show off on Fran's revamped blog.

Fran likes her new blog, and that's a good thing, as I want her to start updating it regularly from now on. After all, what's the use of having a blog when you never post anything to it, eh?

Create The Perfect Homeschool Portfolio

Last week I created "The Perfect Homeschool Portfolio" for Fran - if such a thing as a perfect portfolio even exists. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it, and I'm quite pleased with the result.

It wasn't even all that difficult once I figured out what to put into it, and created the templates for the pages I'll want to include every year.

What goes in the Perfect Homeschool Portfolio? I guess the answer to that question is different for every family, depending on what kind of homeschoolers they are, and the purpose of their portfolio. This means I can't possibly tell you how to create The Perfect Homeschool Portfolio. I can only share what I did.

Fran's portfolio isn't perfect, but it is perfect for our purposes. We created the portfolio for several reasons.

• To document Fran's learning
• To have tangible proof of her progress if for some reason proof would be needed
• To show family and friends what we've been doing
• As a keepsake

Since I wanted Fran's portfolio to be both comprehensive and a document that she'd love to take out and look through from time to time, I included the following items:

• a title page - with a picture of Fran, of course
• a printout of Fran's schedule
• two pages listing the materials we used
• two pages of course descriptions
• a reading log
• a field trips and activities log
• samples of Fran's work (worksheets, art-work, photo's of field trips and activities)
• forms, flyers and brochures from field trips and events
• awards, certificates and diplomas
• legal documents

When I was done sorting and printing, I used the coil binding machine to punch holes in the seventy-plus pages and assemble the book.

Now, if you don't have a coil binding machine, there are many other ways to assemble your child's portfolio. The easiest, perhaps, would be to simply punch two holes in the pages and put them in a binder. But why not get creative and sew the pages together, preferably with some fancy thread?

Summer Holidays

Finally! The Summer Holidays have begun. Seven whole weeks to do as we please. I can think of quite a few things we'll want to do. But first I've got to wrap up some loose ends.

This afternoon I got out the coil binding machine and converted all Fran's worksheets into neat workbooks.

Now, they're ready for storage in one of our bookcases. Next on my list is Fran's Portfolio, which is mostly done now. I just need to print out some photos, a few colour copies of her artwork, and that's about it.

I wrote about our plans for the holidays in a previous post, but that was before we adopted Thalia into our family.

I guess Thalia's arrival means we've got slightly different priorities now.