Artist Study: John Singer Sargent

This term's artist is...

John Singer Sargent

A painting depicting nature study...

...living books

(image courtesy of picturing america)

...and MORE nature study :)

(Click the images to see them larger)

I've already posted about how we do Artist Study... so this is not a how-to post.  This is just me getting excited as we are looking at a new term's artist!  :)  I've listed some activities we plan to enjoy over the next term.  Please refer to this post if you are looking for an Artist Study Tutorial, or for links to grab your own copies of this term's selections.

Can you believe we JUST missed his birthday?  It was January 12, 1856!

Activity: Which is the imposter?! 

Compare two versions of the same painting... Look at one print for 3 min. Try to memorize it. When the 3 minutes are up, look at the other print and point out as many differences as you can.  Look at the two pictures side by side.  Why do you think there are differences?  Read here to find out the real reason why there are two different paintings.

1. First look at this one:

• Oyster Gatherers of Cancale - John Singer Sargent's Virtual Gallery

2. Compare it to this version:

• Fishing for Oysters at Cancale - CGFA

Look up the artist in the index of A Child's History of Art, and read the corresponding chapter, which is usually pretty brief.  This case is no exception, there are all of three paragraphs... but we found out some details about Sargent which led to an interesting activity:

"When the Boston Public Library was built, Sargent was asked to decorate the walls on the third floor.  He painted religious pictures for these walls."  - VM Hillyer, A Child's History of Art, chapter 30

Activity:  Take a tour of Sargent's paintings at the Boston Public Library -

Take the tour by following this link, then right click the different links along the left side bar to open in new tabs or windows.

Activity: Look at this painting by Sargent, while listening to a short commentary on it HERE

Activity: Print this pdf file from picturingamerica.neh.gov and do the activities on Sargent's The Portrait of a Boy

Activity: Drive to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - oh, this is on my list of someday must-see places!  They have lots of exhibits that perhaps you could double up on (Ancient Egypt, Albrecht Dürer, Harry Callahan).  They also have a cool family activity program, see details here.

Hands-on Activities - Since John Singer Sargent was famous for his portrait pictures, several of the following links are along that line:

Coloring Page - Portrait of Madame X

Imitating the Masters

Cut paper portraits
Portrait Pictures - Use John Singer Sargent's painting of Theodore Roosevelt instead of suggested art.

A list of a whole bunch of portrait activities on Primary School

Links:

Squidoo on the man - John Singer Sargent

Here's an Online Gallery (I only saw one thumbnail picture with the back of a lady in the buff... please be careful!)  Here's a link to his complete works... parents will want to select specific paintings only.

*(please don't let your kids alone with any of these links, I didn't preview every single thing on these pages!)

General art study links:

Online games at the J. Paul Getty Museum website

More Online games at National Gallery of Art kids site - Interactive art that you can make online

How do you FEEL about it?! - Use the term artist's prints on this activity.

Resources for the Classroom also at Getty Museum website.

Step One and Step Two for advanced art study, by Dr. Robert Belton in Art History, A Preliminary Handbook (this would be GREAT for HEO level)

Art Speak - Eyes on Art Activity

Habits - the good, the bad and the ugly

When I started thinking of habit training in some semblance of seriousness, the first thing I became aware of were my own habits and how they teach my children without my even knowing it.  Unfortunately by nature, children absorb and imitate it all. The good, the bad AND the ugly.  This is a scary thought.  

"Curious things, habits.  People themselves never know they had them." 

~Agatha Christie

A few habits we can teach or fail to teach pretty much solely by example:

Cheerfulness

Self discipline

Attention

Praise

Prayer

Self control

Thoroughness

Use of time

Reverence

These are just a few that I'm either currently working on, or have worked on recently.  My friend Jeanne brought up one area of weakness in her painfully transparent post that I am sure many of us resonate with.  She made me think about my own habits anew.  This whole area can seem overwhelming... or challenging at best.  I think the study of habits, is a lifelong study that requires acknowledgment of and dependence on the Holy Spirit's role.  For practical purposes, it is in essence the study of a life of holiness.  

When thinking about habit training, I really like the book by Sonya Shafer, Laying Down the Rails.  She consolidates quotes from all 6 of CM's Original Homeschool Series into one book, organized by topic, along with practical illustrations and quotes from other sources including Scripture.  It is available in print or as an e-book, HERE.  It is an excellent resource to continually refer back to.

I like to concentrate on only a few habits at a time, but I still sometimes get overwhelmed by having myself to deal with as well as five children to keep up with. How about you?

What are your thoughts about habit training?  


Are you currently working on any specific habits; your own or your children's?

Some of my other posts on habits...

Habits and the Sinful Nature

Notes on Habit Training

How we met Mozart and Carroll

H a P p y  B i R t h D A y ! !

Today is Mozart's birthday (1756-1791). I just happen to have learned somewhat recently to truly appreciate classical kinds of music... (thank you Charlotte Mason and Ambleside Online for teaching us a love for great music!  I'm just sorry that I haven't always listened to this music since early in childhood)

Mozart is on the AO rotation for Composer Study coming up in 2011, and I can't wait!         Here are the selections: (the following information is taken from this page, click here for more links)

2011-2012 TERM 1 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (early classical)
Listening selections for this term:
Eine Kleine Nacht Musik
Requiem [A Vocal work]
Symphony no. 41 in C major (Jupiter)
Sinfonia Concertante
Piano Concerto no. 21 in C major (K.467) Mozart-Archiv has free mp3 downloads of all Mozart's works; the main page is in German and offers eight identical servers, but I can only get 4 and 5 to work.

It's Lewis Carroll's birthday too! He lived from 1832-1898. Our favorite books by him are Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (AOy3). Reading the book was WAY better than watching the Disney film, which is all the exposure I had had previous to AO ;)  This one in particular, Hammy read aloud to the boys a couple of years back.  We had a lot of laughs!  Like at this part:

Which road do I take?"

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know," Alice answered.

"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter.”

If it hadn't been for homeschooling, we may never have had an intimate acquaintance with either of these two men. I'm so glad that we have. I'm very much loving learning right alongside my kiddos!  Yay, for lifelong learners!

Other Helpful Links:

Composer Study - Our Method

The Mozart Project

Poets.org - Lewis Carroll page

Image borrowed from fromoldbooks.org

Then and now

photo by: bjearwicke
 

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Public domain.

I totally remember loving this poem as a little girl in school. I loved it then. I love it now.

We're going to read it today, that's for sure! Yay.  Take a moment and read it with your kids!  What is your favorite poem?

Homeschool Planning - part two

3 ways to plan for order in YOUR homeschool:
a 3-part series :) 
{part two}

photo by typofi

For our family, and for me as their teacher planning ahead makes all the difference in how smoothly our school days go.  When we all know what is happening and what is about to happen, everything goes MUCH better.

In the last post I wrote about how having a regular HPD (Homeschool Planning Day) throughout the year seriously eases the amount of brain strain on mom.  The yearly planning days are like getting your plates up and spinning.  The weekly preview planning is what you do to keep those plates spinning!

For me, the whole weekly planning is really just a preview.  To have a preview, I have to have a plan already worked out to view!  So, this is very dependent on having my schedule and all the assignments already worked out during my regular HPDs.  Many however, don't have really detailed plans, that's okay too!  A weekly plan ahead time can still avail much! It will just involve more time each week to plan out assignments and gather materials.  (See notes below)

After you've had your homeschool planning day:
In order to have a really productive WPD, you'll need to have the following:

1. A plan of some sort of what you're kids will be learning the coming week.  (AO has all the readings for each year broken up into weekly reading assignments - HERE is the schedule for Year 5.  This is what I base my plans on.)  I print off a weekly sheet that has all the kids' assignments for the week plotted out. See a sample of this here.

Once you have a plan broken up into weekly segments, WPD is a breeze: only 15-30 minutes a week.

1. Look over the subjects that need some extra help, or supplies to be used...  For me this includes:

• MEP math (make sure I have all the pages printed and manipulatives gathered)... in this case when one of my kids is struggling, it really helps to look over the lesson ahead and figure out how I'm going to explain something.
  
• Astronomy (check to make sure I have all the project materials within easy reach)
• Backyard Scientist (gather this week's experiment stuff)
• Book of Centuries (make sure all the timeline figures are printed off and ready)

2. Gather up the materials (or make a list to be bought the next day).
3. Pray about the coming week (this is an excellent moment to put this on your schedule)  Pray for character issues, academic struggle areas and for your own attitude.

If you haven't had an opportunity to have a homeschool planning day, but you still want to have a weekly plan, here are a few suggestions that might help you:

1. Make a list of all the subjects you'd like to have your kids cover in a week.  Include everything you can think of, starting with the main subjects.
   
2. Determine how much time each thing should take & then break each subject into daily bite-size chunks keeping in mind the age of your kids.  
3. OR determine first how much time each day you will spend on a subject and THEN plot out how much you expect you can cover...
4. Print off a checklist so your kids can check off their daily assignments.

Now, as is normal, we have days when things do NOT go according to plan or schedule no matter how much we'd like them to.  That's OKAY!  There are actually weeks that we are off schedule sometimes.  If we get all down or stressed about it, we'll never get back to an orderly state.  The schedule is there to serve us.  Not for us to serve the schedule.  For helter-skelter days (or weeks), I've put together a daily list of things that I want to accomplish each day.  See the sample HERE.  That way, I can see which things I most want to accomplish in the time available quite apart from the disrupted schedule.

So, did any of this strike a chord with you?  How do you plan?  Did you learn anything helpful?  Do you have any tips I ought to add in here?  Please leave a comment!


Posts in this series:

1. Yearly Homeschool Planning Day(s) - part one
2. Weekly Planning - part two... You are here :)
3. Yearly Book Ordering - last post

(photo of spinning plates courtesy of thecolor.com, online coloring sheet site)

The writing begins

A 7 year old non-writer turns writer in a matter of moments.

This is how it happened...

She was inspired as she watched Daddy, Javen and Cullen putting down on paper their still fresh memories experiences of last week's river trip.  They were journaling.

Previously she would sound out and write her own name plus other three word combinations like, mat, cat, sat, rat, dad, mom. Well, that and she copied words from everywhere... from Christmas cards to picture Bibles.  Her language study has consisted of being read aloud to and over the last several months we've been working on reading practice using Blend Phonics materials.  For some time we've been working on Spell to Write and Read's phonograms, of which she now knows all the basic phonograms and has a good grasp of many of the multi-lettered phonograms as well as many of the spelling rules.

But she didn't write until yesterday :)

Oh, girls are different than boys! She would attempt her first journal entry with a word like 'electricity'.  She sounded it out and then asked, is there a K after ele, or a /K-S/ (c),  and then again, /K-S/ (c) or just /s/ here at the end?  She had it all except the tricky /k/ and /s/ sounds.  Wow!

So, yesterday she decided to write her own journal.
So, yesterday we began to be writers :)

I use these word cards for reading practice found at donpotter.net: Download your own pdf copy of the Blend Phonics Decoding Cards. One of these days I'll write a post on our early reading practice... :)

Free e-books of interest

As for that Weekly Planning post that is pending, I have it all written up, I promise, but it's pretty late now tonight, and my beloved awaits, so I'm off to bed.  I'll get it up here in the next few days.  I've really been enjoying blogging daily at my personal blog A Pilgrim's Project.  This weekend I put together a whopper of a post about the kids' trip with Micah up the river.  It was a nature study enthusiast's dream.  Pop over there to see some of the pictures.  I'll be posting some of the pictures of things they found in the next weeks.

But for today, I've found a couple of AWESOME links today for freebies that I just have to share...

HomeschoolFreebieOfTheDay.com is offering the following e-book divided up over the next week (you have to go there each day in order to get the whole book):

THE GIANT HANDBOOK OF NATURE STUDY

This is Anna Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study - THE book for Nature study!

This is a HUGE (940 pages) and absolutely wonderful
teaching guide full of hundreds of nature study lessons, 
activities and discussion questions. It is a complete
multi-year nature study curriculum that you can use
for years to come. It is so big (over 100 megs in size)
we had to divide it into six manageable ebooks for you.

And I found through a link my friend Jimmie had put up, these cool web books FREE ONLINE!  There is a whole series of these "You Wouldn't Want to be a..." books by David Salariya.  I saw this series of books in a bookstore here in Peru in Spanish and ALMOST bought the one called, You Wouldn't Want to Be an Inca Mummy!: A One-Way Journey You'd Rather Not Make because it looked like so much fun.  I may have to go back and see if they're still there when we get back to civilization in March.  Until then, I'm thinking we're going to explore the FREE ones online!  I'm excited. I don't even care if they are TWADDLE!  So there.  :)

Here's the one I found in Spanish. I thought would make a fun one to have around the house here for guests and such.

Oh and just for fun, I found an article that is great support of homeschooling and socialization...

Despite what many might believe, a vast majority of home-schooled children say they have plenty of opportunities for socialization with other children and, as adults, come to excel in all measured areas of adult life, according to a new study.

READ MORE

I wholeheartedly agree...

"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and
supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil
long enough to draw on the ceiling."

--G.K. Chesterton

I found this quote on Dewey's Treehouse 
Image courtesy of Dragon Art.

Homeschool Planning - Part one

3 ways to plan for order in YOUR homeschool:
a 3-part series :) 

original photo by typofi

1. Yearly Homeschool Planning Day(s) - part one... You are here :)

2. Weekly Planning - next post

3. Yearly Book Ordering - last post

Peace and order are some of my key words for 2010! In that mindset let's talk about planning for peace and order in the homeschool. Making time to schedule the above occasions to plan, has made planning not only a breeze but a real JOY instead of a constant sense of worry or guilt.  Surely you know what I mean by worry and guilt?  The worry that I'm not doing enough and the guilt of knowing that I haven't done things as well as I could have?

Taking at least one day a year to really plan has totally revolutionized my feeling about homeschool (If I can, I'll gladly use 3 days! 1 HPD per term*).  It helps SO much to get the majority of things worked out ahead of time so that I don't have a huge list of unfinished and undefined tasks hanging over my head.  Separate time a couple of weeks before the new school year will begin (or whenever it happens to be best for you) to complete the following steps or obviously adjust them to fit your personal needs.

Step One:  Brainstorm a list of all the homeschooling areas that need attention.

1. Subjects I'd like to introduce into our homeschool that we've never done before
   
2. Areas that I want to improve
   
3. Curriculum that has got to go and will need a replacement.
4. Behavior issues
5. Plan for Preschoolers
6. Scheduling issues
7. Etc, etc.
   

Step Two: The hard part.

Figure out how to make a homeschool planning day a reality.  Things do not run well without you, but you can let things slide for a day or two while you get things oiled and primed for the year.  When can you get away and who can help?  A weekend when dad's home?  A babysitter?  Grandma?  Plan for a WHOLE day out.  Either that, or 2-3 mornings in a row... You'll need it!  Whether it's the coffee or the actual planning time... :)

Step Three: Gather your materials.
For instance one HPD, I needed to hash out my home schedule, so I needed my brainstorm sheets and my laptop.  This last HPD, I actually needed to plot out the weekly readings from the books on the booklist and for a couple substitutions I'd made, so I took the actual books with me (it was a big and heavy bag!).  I also needed to work out this term's composer study so I took a couple CDs to browse through... but, you get the point.

Step Four: Go
Decide ahead of time to be ultra-efficient.  Don't get distracted!  Do the things on your list in order of priority.  Don't call home, and if you have to sneak back for something, do NOT get caught! (I recommend eating out even though it costs more... it is more efficient use of time and in future years you can budget this meal into the yearly homeschool budget.)  Don't go home unless absolutely necessary!

photo by lusi

Some planning forms: These help me immensely, and are just to give you an idea of perhaps where you'd like to begin

Teacher Planning (pdf) - This is basically an outline of planning steps I take for each school year.
Daily List (pdf) - This list outlines what subjects are covered each day.  This is vital for those days that we are totally running helter-skelter and can't get back to the schedule.  This helps me reorientate in order to get everything done.
Week 15 (pdf) - This is last week's schedule/list of individual assignments for each day.  Each boy now gets a copy of this as they are becoming more responsible for their own studies.  This is my big task on my homeschool planning days to get this detailed schedule worked out.  One day a term of planning and it's pretty much ALL done for 3 months.  This is my homeschool brain... I've finally gotten it down to a fine science**.

*Ambleside Online is a FREE online curriculum guide, based on Charlotte Mason's methods and philosophy as outlined in her Original Homeschooling Series.  Learning is based on a balanced view of education, using hands-on life experience and observation, living books when a real-life experience can't be provided and including such enriching subjects as nature study, artist & composer studies, foreign language (learned to actually be spoken). Download an informational brochure here.

The AO schoolyear is separated into 3 terms, Term 1: Sept-Nov, Term 2: Jan-March, Term 3 April-June.  However, this information is to be taken as a loose guide as many have differing starting dates or as in our case, school year round.  However, the Artist & Composer, Nature, Folksong, and Hymn studies are all scheduled according to the terms, for those of us who enjoy the camaraderie of learning along with other AOers and sharing resources.  Also, handy-dandy schedules are available that split up the booklist readings into terms of 12 weeks, for a grand total of 36 weeks/school year.  This is what I refer to as 'Term' in my blog, materials, etc.

**If a post on how to schedule would be helpful, please let me know.  I'm assuming anyone who reads this blog (anyone?) already would have some idea of scheduling.  But, I didn't know anything before I knew it... so you never know ;)

Some helpful links:

Basic Intro to AO

An AO Start-up Guide

Charlotte Mason's List of Attainments for a child of 6 and of 12 years old

Posts in this series:

1. Yearly Homeschool Planning Day(s) - part one... You are here :)
2. Weekly Planning - next post
3. Yearly Book Ordering - last post

Isaac Newton's day

H a P p y  B i R t h D A y ! !

Isaac Newton was born today!

4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727

What a guy!  He was a serious mathematician inventing calculus, discovered that light could be split into different colors, and explained gravity!  The Lord definitely made him for a purpose, and he fulfilled that by not only using his God-given intelligence to pretty well close to his full potential, but he honored God acknowledging Him with his adoration and reverence.  I did not know that Isaac Newton was a Christian until very recently when we read this book for AOy5:

We read this book aloud with all my children.  It was understandable for my y1 girl yet not overly simplified for the y5 boys. This book did not have the "I can't put you down" factor going for it, and is very clearly written for a younger audience; identifies the young reader with Isaac's childhood, has simple vocabulary, short chapters, etc.  I really appreciated how it pointed out Isaac's spiritual growth alongside of his scientific advances.  I wouldn't mind reading another biography on his life written with an adult audience in mind.  This book definitely whetted my appetite to know more. This man accomplished a LOT!  The problem is, he was so smart, his discoveries so technical, that it might be difficult for a biographer to write about him in an engaging way without bogging the reader down in the details of his scientific development... but the main point is, this book did a good job of that because:

My kids enjoyed it.

Here are some impressive quotes from the book:

"We know [God] by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion."    ~Isaac Newton

"We must believe that he is the father of whom are all things, and that he loves his people as his children that they may mutually love him and obey him as their father."                             ~Isaac Newton

Happy New Year: Peruvian style!

Peru: Holidays: New Year's Eve

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Would you believe me if I told you that the 201_ just accidentally got cut 
out of the picture?!  hahah, jk.

Happy New Year!  Here we are another year come, another one gone. Well, I hope that you all had a delightful, restful holiday. I'm telling you, we had enough excitement to share! This year, as I mentioned on my other blog, we celebrated the passing of the old year outside with our neighbors. It was interesting as well as educational, so here we have a little lesson in Peruvian culture!  Enjoy!

On New Year's Eve, I'm pretty sure that everyone and their brother head out to the streets. At 8pm, the streets were quite FULL of people doing last minute shopping, or perhaps more likely, just out to be out.  There were tons of vendors in the street with (illegal) fireworks, and more vendors selling ready made muñecos... I'll explain those in a minute :)  But by ten o'clock the majority of people were on their way home, or rushing to wherever they were going to spend the rest of the night (too many young people pass the night drinking and dancing in the New Year at the discotecas/night clubs). The aforementioned stores stay open until midnight (can you imagine, ringing in the New Year at your local 7-eleven for example? weird.) However,we didn't have any shopping to do at that hour, so we headed home from our weekly date night to spend the late (or early) hours - Micah at church and me with our two big boys. Unfortunately, Micah had been feeling pretty bad all day, so he skipped church and went to bed.  I woke him up for the excitement 2 hours later... Oh, come on!  How could I let him miss all the fun?!  Obviously!

Midnight is when all the real fun begins. The muñeco is lit, the kids light their hands on fire set off fireworks and all the neighbors young and old, come out to hug and kiss each other welcoming the new year, wishing each other prosperity and good fortune in the coming year. But that's definitely not the end!  The women have worked for hours cleaning out the house for muñeco stuffing (explained below), preparing the meal that is then eaten (turkey, chicken, 12 grapes - or raisins in the case of our neighbors, and other grains. Paneton and hot chocolate are dessert.), the young people start up their LOUD music and dancing (our neighbors were still going on strong at 4am! We were able to witness this from our bed since the music was loud enough it vibrated our bedroom wall). And the kids keep on lighting fireworks until they run out of money, or can beg no more (remember the stores are still open in case they run out!).

As you'll notice in the pictures, there were several neighbors wearing the traditional yellow, in particular underwear worn inside out (we did NOT see anybody's underwear for goodness sakes!), this is all for good luck.  And, they'll throw rice under the door frame if they're hoping for a wedding in the coming year. 

At half past midnight, WE went in and watched a movie!  (This was the first time we shared this part of the American holiday tradition of staying up late with any of our kids... such FUN!  Plus, it would have been difficult to attempt sleep with all the fireworks and music stilling thumping and popping outside)

Thus ends our Peruvian nochevieja/año nuevo experience.  I hope you all enjoy!  It really merits video for all the sights and sounds combined for quite a stimulating experience... but video doesn't come out well in the dark!

Important traditions / vocabulary & definitions

[Tradiciones importantes y vocabulario]:

Nochevieja [no-chay-bee-AY-hah]: New Year's Eve

Año Nuevo [AN-yo noo-AY-bo]: New Year's

media noche [MAY-dee-ah NO-chay]: midnight

muñeco, pilato [moon-YAY-co, pee-LAH-to]: The doll is life-size, made of old clothes and shoes stuffed with rags and other refuse (found and collected during that day's cleaning).  It is lit on fire at midnight, illustrative of getting rid of the old to usher in the new.  Not a bad symbol in my opinion!

fuegos artificiales [uh... when are you actually EVER going to say this...?!], cohetes [co-AY-tays], chispitas mariposas [...or this?!]: Fireworks, fireworks, sparklers

12 uvas, pasas [DO-say OO-bahs, PAH-sahs]: 12 grapes, raisins - Pop one in your mouth for each of the twelve strikings of the clock ringing in the New Year - will definitely bring to fruition all the aspirations and dreams in the New Year!  How easy is that?!

huevos duros: boiled eggs, if you put it under the bed, sleep on it, some prediction is made from the shape of the yolk... seriously, I'm not joking.

espigas de trigo [es-PEE-gahs day TREE-go]: grains of uncooked wheat - Chewed and believed to bring abundance in the New Year.

Paneton [pan-ay-TONE]: Like a blown out fruitcake!  Okay, not really, but it is sweet bread embedded with dried fruits.  It is more like bread though than fruit cake. We actually all like it now, and would even eat it not at Christmas time (with butter, it's AWESOME), but it was a little hard to get used to.

Chocolate [cho-co-LAH-tay]: hot choclate made with evaporated milk, baker's chocolate, cinnamon and cloves.  Different, but good. Recipe below:

Chocolate Peruano - by Amy Tuttle Enjoy at Christmas time and on New Years Eve with your paneton!
100g baker's chocolate 3 can evaporated milk 2.5 liters of boiling agua	2 sticks of cinnamon 1 TB whole cloves sugar to taste (a LOT :)
Melt the chocolate the boiling water. Add cinnamon and cloves. Boil for 10 min. Mix in milk and sugar to taste. Strain out the cinnamon and cloves before serving! Accompany with paneton to celebrate truly Peruvian style! **Tuttle tips: Stir with a candy cane! Lather your toasted paneton with butter! Delicious!

Here's a Peruvian website (in Spanish) that I used as a reference for the significance of the grain and rice.