Sunday, April 15, 2007

Wrapping up the year

Faith at Dumb Ox Academy is talking about planning for next year. She writes:

“I guess I have swung way to the diametrically opposed side of unschooling lately. I always seem to move in and out. But I have been obsessively planning for next year.”

This is what I do too, but my last planning immersion was back in January. The effects of it took us through March, which is pretty good. It means that even though we didn’t get to everything, what we actually DID was in line with how we do things.

I think that now, I will have to sit down and do some more planning to get us through spring. Like Faith though, I hear “next year” calling me.

Spring is “wrapping up time” — looking at our books, deciding what is important to finish, what we can telescope or drop, what ought to be continued next year. Off the top of my head:

  • Sean is finished with his Key to Algebra for the year. I’m honestly undecided where to go next with him. Intuition tells me he ought not go straight into Jacob’s Algebra. However, I don’t think he really needs any more basic math practice. I am thinking a bit of Ray’s Arithmetic, but it is pretty steep and if the approach is unfamiliar for him, it might shake his confidence. Perhaps I will just pull a few worksheets off the internet for him based on the concepts covered in Saxon Algebra 1/2, since that contains a lot of arithmetic review.
  • Kieron is going to use the Math Breakthrough, as I mentioned before, though we haven’t been doing it because recently I’ve been on the unschooling end of my continuum.
  • Latin — Sean will start Henle. Starting this spring will give him time to get his footing in the book. Kieron –? maybe now that I am separating the two, he can work from the Latina Christiana book proper instead of just using the Quia quizzes?
  • Greek — they can continue with Hey Andrew through the summer. Sean was expressing that he’d rather switch back to Basic Greek in 30 minutes a Day so maybe we will do that next fall.
  • Faith and Life — I would like them both to finish these books and they both have about 10 lessons to go so I think perhaps we will move to twice a week for those.
  • Drawing — continue.
  • Legends of Chivalry (Sean) — finish.
  • Ways of the Wood Folk (Sean) — finish.
  • Story of the Church (sean)– he won’t finish unless I have him read through the summer. I would like him to get up to early Modern times at least and then we’ll see.
  • Kieron — I would like him to finish Seabird.
  • He can continue Archimedes next year.
  • I think we will increase the frequency of Stories of the Romans so we can get closer to finishing, and perhaps go through the summer.
  • Bible History can be picked up next year so we can continue at the same pace.