For ease of teaching, in many cases I have my two oldest children doing the same or similar material, I just expect more from my older son. Not only is this easier for me its seems to sit better with them, I get less of the "but he's...." both from envy (they'd rather do that) or resentment (why doesn't he have to do that). Sometimes the answer simply has to be because your older or younger but I like to avoid conflict when I can.
HISTORY: This curricula I have created myself for this year, and have posted previously my intent, process and now have a separate page for tracking out progress above. I'm excited about all the living books I continue to find. Many more than were on my original "Ancient Books" post. We do this as a family, if Titus is awake I make sure to have extra sheets for him to cut, glue and color as he sees fit.
Our history curricula will also double as Readings, Geography, Bible, along with Art and Music History study. However, I do plan to go a little deeper in each subject.
BIBLE: Our plan is to read through the Hulburt Study Bible this year. I try to read this to them at breakfast. It is a nice way to start the day that we all seem to enjoy. This Bible has 168 chapters that are designed to encompass the main points of the bible in one continuous story.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
- Writing: I plan to continue having them write regularly in their journals. However, this year I'm going to take it a little farther on alternating weeks. One week will just be journal entries. Then the next week we will use the writing methods taught in "On Teaching Writing" by Jennifer Crider to edit and expand on one of their entries from the previous week to create finished work.
- Grammar: We have chosen to use KISS GRAMMAR this year. It is a free online curricula created my a University of Pennsylvia professor. It had rave reviews, takes a living books approach and its free (the second grade books are free online too). We have been simply doing a lesson a day, two/three days a week for now with Jared. Lance I'm still working on what to use.
- Latin: After much debating I have chosen "Prima Latina" for their Latin program. I chose it for a number of reasons; the DVD to help teach, the emphasis on teaching English grammar along side and the claim that I need not know any Latin myself. I have the materials and have reviewed them, they suggest just two days a week so that sounds reasonable. However, I think I'll wait till our friends are back in school in August to start.
- Copy Work: For this I plan to use the Bible and the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson. The 1930's version of "A Child's Garden of Verses" illustrated by EulAlie was suggested as one of the best, so that's the one I'm using.
- Narration: It seems only appropriate to use Aesop's fables for this task this year. That said I am still debating over which version to use. I may use a couple different version, I'll share them as I go. I do not know if I will formally try to type their narrations for documentation purposes or use something else to document comprehension.
- Reading: We are doing so much reading with our History curricula and the bags full of books the boys pick up each week from the library I haven't decided if I'm going to do a formal Reading curricula or not. If I do it will CLE Reading, since I already have, I really like the stories and the boys have not minded the workbooks in the past. The workbook aspect goes against my push for CM focused home school but I worry about tracking their comprehension as I stated above.
- Spelling: We will continue to use "All About Spelling"; Level 2 & 4 to begin.
MATH: This is an easy choice; CLE Math Grade 5 and 3. I have researched this subject ad-nausea and have found no better curricula for content or the boys enjoyment. We will also work to complete XTRA Math and Life of Fred (for my older son) this year.
SCIENCE: Since they would be learning the Latin names of constellations in "Prima Latina" and we are studying the Ancients I decided to study Astronomy this year. I chose Apologia's "Exploring Creation with Astronomy" for a couple of reasons. It appears to follow a CM Approach, and it comes in complete packages for ease of use. You can buy the box with everything you need to do all the experiments (which I did) and they have introduced "Junior Notebooking Journals" that have all you need to complete a great Astronomy notebook by year end that's geared for the elementary years. They suggest doing this two days a week to finish by year end, so I am hoping that we can make the time for Chris to do this with the boys at night or on the weekends.
ART & MUSIC: The boys continue their piano lessons and I hope to really follow through with Mona Brooks book this year. However, the majority of the year will be projects linked to our history curricula. I have chosen to follow the "study a picture and an artist" for a while approach. I'm trying to link them in some way to what we are studying in history but the links may be loose some weeks. The important part is the boys really enjoy this approach.
As of this week we are only doing History, Kiss Grammar, Journals and Math. Next week our friends go on vacation so I might start easing in another subject each week. I hope to be at full speed about mid-August when public school starts again in the part of the world.
If you are looking for something to directly complement Classical Conversations or just some alternative choices my friend Brandy has a large variety to choose from on her blog.
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