When we took our break a Thanksgiving, it was abundantly clear we needed to make some serious changes. This time I decided to get the boys input. I took them each aside and had them rank everything we were doing from 1-5 and tell me what they liked most and least. To be honest, I thought I knew what they would say but I was quite surprised in a number of cases. I took their input and began to re-plan the rest of our school year.
In December, I spent the six hour drive to Tennessee reading the Ambleside FAQ, blogs on how to make Charlotte Mason work, along with trying to read her actual teachings. In the end, I felt too overwhelmed (life was still crazy because of the move) to jump right in. So when we got back from vacation, I bought a curricula that claimed to follow her philosophy and hold your hand.
We started in January and made it four weeks into that curricula before we scrapped it too. I say "we" because there was no doubt in any of us that it needed to be dumped. Unfortunately, that meant I was starting over for the third time in a year. Thankfully, by finding what didn't work I was finally able to focus in on what would work for us. By the end of February, we had found a new rhythm that worked. We were doing everything my way and not following anyone's planned curricula. Go figure, I really did know what was better for my family. Amazingly, despite all the changes during the year we still managed to finish my main objective for the year; which was to finish our study of the Ancient History: New Testament Civilizations.
We are continuing on the same basic pattern this year and its still working. I say basic because I have tweaked a few things (I'm sure I always will) but how we're doing it is still working; the kids are learning, we're not fighting and we are even having fun.
We slowed things down a bit during July and August because we decided to do the Bible Bee Challenge over the summer. (Which by the way is an awesome program, easily encompassing a reading and writing curricula in one.) As of this week, we are finally up to full speed and this is what we're doing:
How Our Week Looks
Monday to Wednesday is when we get through the bulk of our school work.
Thursday is SEEK Co-op and daily work
Friday has a varied schedule, incl. some daily work, science, logic, Ray's Math and time to catch-up or take Field Trips.
Additionally:
Monday is Piano Lessons in the Afternoon.
Wednesday is Golf Lessons in the Afternoon.
Any day can be baseball games/practice.
Monday to Wednesday we try for a four hour day, from 9am to 1pm. However, it frequently takes a little longer due to distractions. I have a rough draft of the semester in an Excel Sheet. Then I fill in their Student planners one week at a time. I put the items they can do on their own on the right and things they need me for on the left. For Titus, I take a slightly different approach I'll cover in another post.
Here's what we are using this year: (I have put Lance and Jared together with slashes for slight variations in what they do.)
History and Reading. These subjects have always gone hand-in-hand in our house. Our focus this year is the Middle Ages. For our core/back-bone History book we will continue the M.B. Synge Story of the World Series (not Bauers). These are available online for Free but I prefer reading from a hard copy. We will finish Vol. 2 the first half of the year and then hopefully read through Vol. 3 the second half. To do this we'll need to read-aloud about three chapters a week. Much of our Read/Aloud and Independent reading will focus on the Middle Ages but not all. I have already tweaked my list of read aloud and independent read books for the year, so I won't list them here today. Instead, I will continue to list them in my Monthly Book Reviews as we progress through the year.
CLE Math 7/ CLE Math 5 This has been the one constant in our curricula for years. I've covered why I don't use anything else in other posts. How we use it has varied a bit. For instance, I have dropped the quizzes because of our shortened week, and they boys see it as a reward. To allow them to begin first thing in the morning, I try to go over the new section with each of them the night before. This minor tweak has really helped them finish their math efficiently each day. I have also dropped the daily drills since they continue to do XtraMath each day instead. Jared asked to do more word problems so I got him this Daily Word Problems 4 book.
Additionally, on Friday's we do oral math, specifically Ray's Arithmetic Intellectual/Primary. This program is available on numerous sites for free; I think I got mine off Google Book. In theory, I see how you could use this alone but it would require a lot of my time. The time they spend doing math is the main time I work with Titus M-W. So I limit this to Friday's, to stretch them a bit. We only do one lesson at a time, frequently with the student flopping all over my bed while I call out the questions from my rocking chair.
Perplexors C/ Perplcxors A for Logic. Since Mind Benders Book 3 is part of Lance's Writing program I chose I different logic program to challenge them, and frankly this one was free shipping on Amazon. I think learning logic is very important, the lack of an ability to think logically is riddled in our society. The boys can do one problem any day of the week, and it varies when they choose. The important thing is they always choose because this is a subject they have always enjoyed. Level C is getting a bit challenging for Lance but he still likes it, Level A appears just right for Jared.
Daily Language Review 6/ Daily Language Review 4 These are no frill short daily drills that will prepare them for what will be on the standardized test at year end. They do these independently five days a week. The teaching comes when I go over their answers or if they encounter a topic we've never discussed before. Additionally for Lance, I have him learn one word a day, using Vocabulary Cartoons - Elementary Edition. This unique program uses humor and mnemonics to make the words stick in his memory. Each day, I have him write out the word and definition, then use it in a unique sentence to make sure he understands the meaning. I periodically test him on the words he's learned and I'm amazed the retention is complete every time. Don't let the "Elementary" in the title fool you, I doubt most High School kids know all these words.
Visual Latin We have used Latin to teach English grammar for the past two years. However, the classical approach to learning Latin was getting dry for all by the end of last year. I am very glad they have the classical foundation but I believe this program is going to work better from here out. The first five lessons of Visual Latin are free. We just finished lesson five yesterday so I'll be buying the rest this weekend. Each lesson is nicely broken up into three video and three worksheets. Therefore, each day we watch one video twice (under 10 min.) then we do the worksheet together; either orally or with our Boogie Boards*. We do this M-W, and I was amazed how easy it was to fit in our schedule. The boys really like the videos because of the instructor's humor. They also like that each lessons includes some translation, which gives them a sense of accomplishment.
Write Foundation Sentences to Paragraph/Write Foundation Creating Sentences
This had come on my radar many years back, but at the time it was geared to upper middle to high school. When it came back on my radar this summer I was pleased that they now have these two new programs. The boys both took a placement test to determine which level to use and Rebecca (the creator) was quick to answer my questions. The program is very adaptable. She provides outlines for doing each lesson over one or two weeks. I have modified it a bit more to do each lesson over six days, so that we can complete each lesson in two weeks only M-W. So far, so good, four weeks in; which is more than I can say over the last writing program we tried.
Spelling has been a bit of a struggle in our house for many years. I'm not willing to accept the "some kids just can't spell" excuse so I continue to search for the right method. We did "All About Spelling" for the last few years and this taught them the rules of spelling but they seemed to be having trouble remembering to apply them when they wrote independently. This year we are trying a three prong approach. For Lance we're trying Apples. This program is designed for the older child that still struggles a bit with spelling. It's designed to be a simple one year program, where the child does one worksheet a day. We are about 40 lessons in and so far Lance doesn't mind and I think it may be helping to improve his spelling. For Jared I'm using Building Spelling Skills: Level 4. The words in this curricula are appropriate to advanced. When he follows the program, he has mastery of the words each week. They complete these curricula independently five days a week.
In addition, we do Sequential Spelling for Adults together four days a week. I'm hoping if I hit spelling from enough different directions it will stick. I'm using the adult program for efficiency and to avoid it being tedious. The adult version is a condensed version of the Seven Children's books in the Sequential Spelling Series. This takes us only a short time to do each day. We all take out our boogie boards*, then I say a word. Next, we all write it. Finally, we hold up our boards, check their spelling and we move on to the next word. It's quick, its easy, it's done.
Typing Instructor for Kids After much searching this was the only program I could find that was affordable and customized itself to the child. The audio is a bit annoying but the boys just turn it down or off. I have them both set to achieve 20 wpm. They do one lesson independently M-W. Additionally, for memorizing scripture and typing practice they use a free program called Scripture Typer.
Geography - Seterra This is a free tool we've been using for a while. The boys enjoyed learning about the countries last year using Memoria Press's Geography I but it didn't work to reinforce their location, this is where Seterra came in. They have both completed European Countries and Capitals and are now working on European Rivers. The bonus is that its free, to use online or in our case we downloaded a copy years ago. This they do independently, the same time they do XtraMath and Scripture Typer.
Science We are launching this subject slowly. We will speed up when baseball season ends and Chris will have time to lead the experiments. We are starting using a curricula that is an introduction to Physics Science and heavy on the biblical application. We are reading this curricula four days a week. Next we will begin Tiner and Apoligia. For the first semester, I will read one chapter a week from Exploring the World of Chemistry by Tiner. For the second semester, we will read one chapter a week from Exploring the World of Physics by Tiner. We used two other books in this series last year and I liked how it added a bit of history and living science to our days; all from a Christian perspective. From Apologia we are going to use the recently released Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics. We will be using this book the entire year, splitting the two sciences between our two semesters. However, I think we are going to forgo buying the experiment kit package or the notebooks this year.
That's about it for my two oldest, I'll be posting on the menagerie I'm using with Titus in another post.
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