Our pace has slowed a little as we near the end of the year and yet, as I look back, our year has been a rich one. We’ve gone on more outings but we’ve also listened to and watched more things to help us with our learning.
In the past couple of months, we’ve been listening to Jonathan Park audios. This boy and his family have many discoveries and adventures. It is unashamedly from a Creation Science perspective and the boys have learned a lot about fossils, dinosaurs, bats, weather, hurricanes, woodpeckers, horses and even UFOs!! So many scientific facts are just woven into the narrative and they recall them at seemingly random moments.
Recently, we’ve been looking at the Spanish Armada. Someone (waving!!) kindly reminded me that I had "Queen’s Pirate" by Jim Weiss. We’d listened to it a year or so ago when I first bought it. Now was the perfect time to revisit that and the re-telling brought this era to life! Jim Weiss has this way of telling a story that captures the adventure and inspires the listener.
We’re reading "Along Came Galileo" by Jeanne Bendick at the moment and when we’re done, we’ll re-listen to "Galileo and the Stargazers". I originally bought this CD when we were studying Archimedes three years ago. It’s one of my favourites.
I realised, after rummaging through the shelf to find these discs, that we had actually listened to a lot of audios this year. The children have listened to all of the Lord of the Rings series. It is unabridged and each book has about 14-16 discs with it. We’ve listened to several Narnia chronicles, Redwall books, Jim Weiss CDs and almost 3 volumes of Jonathan Park. I also got this great CD from Jim Hodges on World History:
It’s a collection of old radio shows and it’s done as if a reporter is on the spot, interviewing people as events unfold. We found it was great when we were looking at the Magna Carta last year and there’s ones on the Siege at Leyden and the Armada that I still want to fit in with the boys in the next couple of weeks.
That’s what I love about audios – you can just put them on wherever – at home, on short trips around town or long car trips and they learn something as well as it being an interesting story!
Added to that, we’ve watched some Moody Science DVDs, some iMax ones on Wonders of the World, the Eruption of Mt St Helens and freak weather. We didn’t get through all of "Seven Wonders of the Industrial Age" as we borrowed it from the library, so I’ll have to get that out another time.
I know if I look through my notes from earlier in the year, I’ll find more – this is the list off the top of my head. We’ve certainly benefited from the richness of material that’s out there!
I heartily recommend these resources to you if you are looking for something to inspire your children. Check out their websites yourself, listen to audio samples if you are able to do so and then you can judge whether you will like listening to "that" voice for hours on end. If there’s a full cast doing the dramatisation, all the better!
Who said learning had to be dry and boring?
No comments:
Post a Comment