"The Plan" - Part 1: History

The novelty of having a blog has distracted me from disclosing the details of my "Plan".

Like blogging, I'm not sure where to start so I thought I'd start with what I've been spending most of my time on lately.  Planning for History.

Generally, I try to link up our home history study with the current cycle of Classical Conversations (official link) a.k.a CC (This link is from a mom's perspective). I'll talk more about CC in a later post.  All that to say, this coming year is Cycle 3 and the history focus is American History.  

The curriculum we are going to use this year I bought over TWO years ago.  Now you are either thinking, "Wow, what a planner!" or "Why in the world did she do that?" or "What's wrong with it that she's not used it yet?".  All very valid thoughts.  Though I'd love to say its the first, that would be a lie.  Two years ago, I went to our state homeschooling conference looking for the perfect history curriculum for my then 6 & 4 year old.  I came home with this curriculum and after much pushing from God a decision to join our local CC group.  I planned to complete the history curriculum over the summer before we started CC in the fall.  (Stop laughing... okay laugh).  However, that was Cycle 1:  Ancient History and did I mention my oldest was only just six and I had a new baby.  I think we made it through the first three chapters that summer, before scrapping that plan.  But that was not the curriculum's fault.

All that to say we WILL be using "The Mighty Works of God: Self Government  A Child's History of the United States of America"  by Ruth Smith, this school year (starting next week).

I chose this curriculum for a number of reasons.  1)  It's not a textbook.  It reads more like a living book, reasoning and linking the events in history to create a true story of history.  2) It teaches history from a Biblical perspective, stressing God's providence.  The only issue is that it does require prep work on my part, something I have tried to avoid in the past.  The curriculum is designed to be used K-8 and you have to pick and choose from the suggestions for each chapter and make a plan all your own.  To be honest, this intimidated me a bit and my lazy streak kicked in a bit.  After deciding not to use another curriculum and convincing myself this really is the best history for my family this year, I kicked myself into gear this week and started working on my history plan.  Over the past three days I have managed to put together a plan that will take us through the first seven chapters and the month of May for both my 3rd grader and 1st grader.  Now I just need to print out the appropriate Student Activities from the CD (they give lots of choices) and prepare their history binders.  Then I'll need to plan the rest, but for now at least I'm ahead of the game and I'm on task to finish in October.  I'll update you later to let you know how we are doing.

This will not be all we'll be doing for History this year.  I have started to choose books to read that will correspond with the CC History sentences this year (I'll post the list once I finish). One easy source I'm going to use comes from William Bennett's "The Children's Book of America".  It conveniently has 24 stories, so I can read one each week of CC and follow pretty close to the history sentences.

The final tool in my arsenal will be the "Drive Thru History" DVD series "American History" and "Foundations in Character".  My boys absolutely adore these DVDs, we've used the "Ancient History" in the past.  They are technically made for the middle school crowd.  However, my boys will choose to watch them over other "fun" DVDs to watch.  They think Dave Stotts is hysterical and they actually retain information from the DVDs.  I'm amazed at all my husband and I have learned from them.  They do a lot of neat linking of historical facts and its all shot on location all over the world, which is really great.

So that sums up my history plan.  I have always had a fascination with history.  My dad was a huge history buff, he had me memorize the Gettysburg Address just for fun.  In high school I took and passed all the AP History courses.  I know the "whats", "whens" and "whos" of history but what I never learned was the "whys" i.e. the connection of events, how one event served as the domino/catalyst for other events, what was the character of the "whos", what motivated these icons of history to do what they did, whom did they look up to and learn from, etc.  I don't want my boys to miss out on this part of history and I'm enjoying learning it right along side them. 

Get the Wiggles Out

My boys lead very active lives, they need to.  This school year they have been involved in formal karate, soccer, running, swimming and baseball lessons; in addition to riding their bikes with dad and running around in general.

So needless to say, they really were not designed to sit for eight straight hours and I don't expect it of them.  I try to keep lessons in small chunks (Charlotte Mason esq) which lets them take little breaks throughout the day to play and get the wiggles out.

One of their favorite ways to get rid of the wiggles is a program called "Move to the Grove" and its FREE!  We watched an episode of "Extreme Makeover" a while back where a school teacher's passion was to stamp out childhood obesity.  On his facebook page he has conveniently posted a bunch of 2-3 min. videos perfect for getting the wiggles out.

Check it out:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/MoveToTheGroove?sk=app_2392950137

My boys will do each video at least once during a break, by choice.  Best part is it's not a novelty.  The video below is them grooving back in February and they just asked to grove again between reading and math. 

So get those wiggles out and "Move to the Grove"!  Warning it is a 2 min. video :-)

 

BTW you'll notice they appear to be watching the videos on TV.  Since we don't have broadcast television at our house, my husband hooked up our TV to work as a computer monitor.  Believe it or not if you've bought a TV in the last seven years (That's how old ours is. When old tube died and we found out they no longer sold tube TVs) its as simple as buying a cable at Best Buy for under $30 and boy is it useful for school too!

Grow Box Drop-out

As the boys and I were eating lunch out back I was reminded that my green thumb does not extend to grow boxes.

Grow boxes are these neat boxes, that are suppose to let you have a huge luscious garden in a small area.  (See the promotional picture above)

I'd like to say this is my first year trying them but I'm embarrassed to say how many years I have tried them and never achieved anything close to the above.  I thought this year I would simplify and only grow tomatoes and cucumbers.  Maybe this would produce better results.  I've tried using their fertilizer and following their directions in the past (didn't work).  This year I tried going organic and using actual tomato fertilizer.  Well this is what I currently have...

Once again not quite the same as the promotional.  And what's with the cucumber dragging all over the ground?  I thought when I bought a "Bush Cucumber" it would grow in a bush, now I'm starting to think its a "name" not a growing habit, i.e. a "Smith Cucumber".  Bother, very misleading.  However, despite their pathetic appearance, they are serving their main purpose...

He picks...

He eats...

He picks... (notice evidence of previous picks on his belly)

and he eats some more :-)

....to provide Titus a nutritious snack in the backyard.  As you can see he likes them, and is not turned off by their sorry appearance.  He even knows to pick "only red" ones.  (The captions remind me Disney flick, but I guess I should have typed "he comes, he eats, he leaves")

I'm sure my success is not proportional to the amount of time I spend on them....hmmm.  Well they'll just have to join the rest of the plants in my backyard in the survival of fittest category.

If anyone has some tips to make these work for a lazy gardener, please let me know.

In the beginning.....

I've been humming and haaing (is that a real word?) about how to start this process and decided to just begin with today.  This week we are wrapping up our school work for the year.  We homeschool year round, usually from June to May, and we vacation in May.  However, this year we have a new edition arriving early November, so our plans have changed. I've decided to be crazier than usual and use the next six months (May to October) to get in the majority of their school work done. (Translation: I figured adding a fourth child to the mix would be work enough, without stressing if boys didn't complete ALL their school work each day :-)) Thankfully we live in Florida, and summer here is what I call "Winter" because the weather is too harsh to be outside much past 10am.  Therefore, since we are inside we might as well be productive.

Over the next few days I'll start posting my plan. I like plans, they make me happy, sort-of like Excel.  However, Excel almost always does what I want, my plans.... not so much.  (Stay tuned to see if it works)