August 5th is the day I had scheduled to start school with my boys, but unfortunately, I have been under the weather this week! However, with the extreme heat going on, and the desire to have a fall break later in the year, and needing to get through the days not feeling well, I pushed forward and have completed 3 days of school!
When we started school, I started using the brand new Orthodox Christian Morning Time Curriculum that I made available at (stirenepress.etsy.com). I have to say, that I am quite pleased with it! It is exactly what I wanted for my boys! I will be happy if anyone else is blessed by it, but ultimately, I made it for my own children - after 8 years of homeschooling, it is the near the ideal morning time for our family's culture!
While the lyrics to the hymns are included in the curriculum, I am having to source the actual sheet music to actually sing them. I found the sheet music for the hymns for St. Basil (for Week 1) on the OCA website. Being in the choir myself, I can glance at the music and know how to sing it, but I do require the music to do that. I will start a page on my website for links to the music for the hymns. If there is enough interest at some point, I can add audio files.
Since I just typed this up in an email, I wanted to share from the email how I explain the order in which we use this curriculum in case it is helpful to anyone:
It is kind of like an Orthodox Christian Classical Conversations. After morning prayers, and reading a portion of the Saint's Life, I write the Bible Verse, Catechism Sentence and Poetry Stanza on the white board and we try to memorize it. (Technically, I should do this the night before.) For the Memory Sentence about the Saint, I just have them read it aloud and then I quiz them on some facts about the Saint. (i.e. What heresy did Saint Basil fight? What city did he set up for the poor?) Then we sing the hymn of the Saint a few times. Then we do the copy-work for the day from the memory work. Then the enrichment activity scheduled for the day, and then we start the academic part of school.
The picture included below is of my almost 7 year old son quizzing me on the memory work and taking away lots of words to see if I could do it. He has the poem down better than I do at this point!
I will soon do several review posts (or at least one) of the curriculums we are using this year. So far I am extremely pleased with Bob Jones English 2 for my youngest son. CLE Language Arts was not a good fit for him, as it is for my oldest son, but the BJU English is working well.
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