Composer Corner

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Introducing this

term's

NEW composer!!!

Biography from Classics for Kids

Frédéric Chopin was one of the greatest pianists of his day. Chopin was born in a town just outside of Warsaw, Poland. His mother introduced him to the piano; by the time he was six, Chopin played extremely well and was starting to compose. He gave his first concert at the age of eight.

When Chopin was 20, he left Poland to seek fame and fortune in other European cities. When Chopin got to Paris, he decided to stay.

There's a story that when Chopin left his native country, his friends gave him some Polish soil, which he carried around with him for the rest of his life. That's probably not true, but Chopin did continue to be passionatly patriotic about Poland, even though he never went back there.

Chopin was never healthy, and he was only thirty-nine when he died of tuberculosis. When he was buried -- in France -- a special box of earth was brought from Poland to sprinkle on his grave. But Chopin's heart is in Poland -- literally. His heart was put in an urn and taken to the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.

STUDY RESOURCES:

"The Best of Chopin" Compact Disc

The Story of Chopin In Words and Music
(Vox Music Masters)

Frederic Chopin by Mike Venezia

Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Men
of Music by Harriet Brower
Chapter 12 - "Frederic Chopin"

Antiques Digest's Masters of Music:
Frederic Chopin

Stories of the Great Composers Unit 6: "Chopin"

Classics For Kids Website

Free Chopin Sheet Music

Term 2 Hymns

• Take My Life
• How Great Thou Art
• What a Friend We Have in Jesus

Week 13 Week in Review

The big hit of the week wasn't a curriculum or a class. It was the BREAKFAST menu! Miss M loved the new menu. It was Miss M's Favorite Thing this week. I liked that she stayed fuller longer -- probably since she had a protein each morning. We will definitely continue the breakfast menu!


In Math, Miss M is working on adding fractions, finding common factors, simplifying fractions. This week was a smooth math week, complete with a couple error-free lessons! Woo hoo!

In our Eastern Hemisphere studies we continued reading Young Fu of the Upper Yangte and Enchantment of the World: China. For movie time, we watched "The Inn of Sixth Happiness," a film about the missionary Gladys Aylward's ministry in China. We didn't do any craft projects this week, but Miss M did do lots of drawing in her free time. As a writing/history project, Miss M made a flip up accordion book of the 12 Chinese Dynasties. Each page pops up to reveal important events and inventions of the Dynasty - and she did the project entirely on her own. They Dynasty Timeline was definitely my Favorite Thing this week. It was hard to get the whole project in a picture -- there are 12 sections.




This week's science topic was Simple Machines - Inclined Plane, Screw, and Wedge. In our science co-op class, we did several experiments with simple machines at experiment stations, watched a Power Point presentation, and had a whole class discussion. It was a fun co-op class!

In other subjects, Miss M started The Wheel on the School for literature. She continues to read a poem-a-day from Favorite Poems Old and New, and improves her typing daily with our Disney Typing software. We finished up our term's composer, Schubert, this week, along with the folk songs and hymns of the term. I have to get busy and make a new music cd for Term 2. Making a custom cd is the only way that music consistently gets done - so it's worth it to make one.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a peek into our homeschool.

Breakfast Menu Planner

Cereal, cereal, cereal. We are eating WAY too much of it, and am ready for a change in our breakfast menu. Breakfast needs to be simple, nutritious and quick! After looking at various breakfast planners online, I reluctantly decided to take a stab at making my own. Most of the menus I saw were loaded with both sugar and white flour and were lacking in protein. We have been working really hard to improve our diet over the past couple of years and we want to continue to move forward!

Here is my breakfast menu (View as PDF):

Menu A

Monday
Whole grain fruit muffins or fruit bread (I substitute wheat flour for 1/2 of the white flour called for and also add a little wheat germ or flax)
Cheese
Fresh fruit

Tuesday
Fruit Smoothie
Hard-boiled eggs
Wheat toast or bread

Wednesday
Oatmeal with a touch of natural maple syrup
Protein shake
Fresh fruit

Thursday
Self-serve (choose bagels, cold cereal, instant oatmeal, toast, or whatever)
Fresh fruit, cheese or nuts

Friday
Cheesy spinach egg scramble or fried eggs
Wheat toast or bread
Fresh fruit

Sunday night prep
Make whole grain muffins or fruit bread
Boil eggs and refrigerate

Grocery shopping
muffin or sweet bread ingredients
favorite cheeses
lots of various fresh fruits, including bananas and berries
yogurt – plain or whatever you like
eggs
oatmeal
flavored protein powder
almonds, cashews or other favorite nuts
wheat bread
spinach (optional)



Menu B

Monday
Breakfast casserole or bacon and eggs
Fresh fruit

Tuesday
Fresh fruit salad
Wheat toast
Protein shake

Wednesday
Broiled Tomato and Cheese English Muffin

(top a whole-grain English muffin with 2 ounces Cheddar cheese and 2 tomato slices. Broil until cheese melts)

Fruit yogurt

Thursday
Self-serve (choose bagels, cold cereal, instant oatmeal or toast)
Fruit, cheese, or nuts

Friday
Omelete
English Muffin
Fresh fruit

Sunday night prep
Make breakfast casserole and refrigerate until morning

Grocery shopping
Ingredients for breakfast casserole (bread, breakfast meat, cheese, favorite fillings such as green onion or red peppers)
lots of varied fresh fruit
tomatoes
English muffins
flavored protein powder
almonds, cashews or other favorite nuts
fruit flavored yogurt
omelet toppings

It's Operation Christmas Child time again - National Collection Week is November 12-19. Have you made plans to get your shoe box packed and dropped off? This year, Miss M took the responsibility for doing much of the shopping and packing. She chose a girl in her age range, aged 10-14, to send our gift to. We pray that our little package will reach just the right little girl and make her smile. : )

Links:

How to pack a shoebox

Find a drop off site near you

Week 12 - A Time of Reflection

November 10th, 2007. Here are some highlights from the end of the 1st term at Ambleside Classical!


Reading: Eyewitness Books: Ancient China, finished God's Adventurer: Hudson Taylor began and finished Flight of the Fugitives (Trailblazer Books)


Videos: "China: From Past to Present: The Silk Road, the Great Wall, Changes in Government" (United Streaming), Kung Fu: Season 2: Disc 1 (Netflix), First Emperor of China: IMAX (Netflix)


Writing: Mini-report on Chinese paper making. Here is what the original mini-report looks like:


Here is the same report with a few minutes with Creating Keepsakes software and the "Always Asia" digital kit from Raspberry Road:

Science: attended "Animal Communications" class at Nature Center and presented November homework assignment. Learned about Chinese inventions.

Nature Class Slide Show

Productive Free time: Crafted a pony puppet, Christmas play practice, Operation Christmas Child shopping and packing, book basket reading, Time4Learning.com, typing practice, imitative drawings from our Asian Art book

All in all, a pretty typical week here at Ambleside Classical. I can't believe we are 1/3 of the way through our school year! Our family is assessing our goals for character and academics. What goals have we met and what goals need lots more work? We are mapping out new goals and action plans for the next 6-12 weeks. Each end-of-term is my time to reflect on where we are and where we want to be. I have much to be thankful for and also many things to work on.

Thanks for visiting!

Week 11 In Review

This week was a celebration of fall and God's Providence at harvest time! Our church puts on a Harvest Party and Miss M went as Hannah Montana. She is such a girlie girl, and loved the make-up, wig, sparkly shirt and high heels. I can't believe I let her wear high heels -- but hey--she really DID look like Hannah Montana! Now several members at church greet her simply with a "Hi, Hannah!" : )

Created with digital mini-kit "Happy" by SweetMade.Net -- a FREEBIE -- and Creating Keepsakes Scrapbook Designer software and fonts.

Continuing our Sonlight 5 study, we began our study of China. We went to the library and brought home a boat load of books on China - our Book Basket overflow-eth. This week we concentrated on the Great Wall. Miss M read Book Basket books and Netflix videos, and also read the first chapter of Enchantment of the World: China. Beginning this week, our read-aloud is Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. The first chapters were a hit -- I think it is going to be a very engaging book for our whole family.

Here are some fun Book Basket and Netfliix titles Miss M chose this week:



In her free time, Miss M cut out and painted models of Ancient Chinese coins...

made some Chinese calligraphy character flashcards...

and colored several Chinese Fashion coloring book pages.

In Geography, Miss M learned the Important Cities of China , and we watched an excellent video showing the land of China, "Globe Trekker: China" from Netflix.

This week Miss M did a very quick page on the Great Wall. Her handwriting is very sloppy and she will need some extra practice on her handwriting next week.
It was a rich week. Next week, we continue our China study and will attempt some Chinese recipes. Thanks for visiting, and have a great week of learning!