What's Left -- Year 7

• 8 lessons of MEP Year 7.
• 61 pages of the Boy Scientist.
• 70 pages of Robinson Crusoe.
• 100 pages of George Washington's World
• about 100 pages of Ways of the Wood Folk
• 10 more chapters of The Reb and the Redcoats.

I estimate this will take 2-3 weeks for the math and about 6 weeks for everything else, though obviously we could zip through faster if we wanted to go at hyperspeed. But I don't think we do. This "slow read" pace is working for us.

We finished the relevant part of This Country of Ours, and we're putting Bulfinch's Mythology on hold because Kieron is spending lots of time reading old Junior Classics and My Book House anthologies, which cover the same ground.

Everything else is basically on inert status till next fall..... Shakespeare, Plutarch, grammar, Latin, art and music study. I will probably have some sort of summer curriculum -- not sure of the details yet. The Year 1 students will continue through the summer because their curriculum is so close to what I want them to do in their regular lives, anyway.

Paddy listens to all of the Year 7 readings except The Boy Scientist. He calls Robinson Crusoe "the savage".

I am really enjoying The Boy Scientist. I have a lot of summer readings for ME planned out. Liam gave me Einstein's "Relativity" to read, I have a bio about Michael Faraday, and an Asimov book about physics. Liam also gave me a book about Aquinas's division of the sciences, which is a commentary on a writing by Boethius. So many books, so little brain power and time ;-).

Planning to Plan

Brandy at Afterthoughts has a post up about planning for Summer Term. I was just starting to do that a bit in my head, too... but hadn't gotten my thoughts into any kind of order yet, so it was helpful to read her post.

I talked to Kieron today about the things on our weekly schedule (see sidebar) that we haven't been getting to consistently. He is pretty good about getting the "checking-off" things done -- Latin, math, language arts. He's been letting some of the independent readings slide, though, and I have to take the blame for the fall-throughs on the things like Art Study, drawing, piano. When you can't just go on to the next page, I tend to get lost in the details.

Kieron suggested that maybe we should address the more arty-musicy things during the summer. We'll have more time. It won't seem so much like slogging through to get everything done. I thought maybe that was a good idea. I'm hoping that once we build up a habit, it will seem more like a part of normal life and not so much one more thing on the school checklist.

I'll do this with the younger ones, too. By fall it will feel to them like they've always done picture study and music. That's the nice thing about little kids.

I do intend to start informal nature study this spring though -- ie as soon as the snow finishes melting. That's a tradition of ours so it will come easily.

What else? I'd like to get Kieron more off the ground with handwriting. I've written before about his dysgraphia. I have seen progress just since Christmas, though. His older brother was almost exactly that age when he started improving with his writing.

Again, a similar goal with the younger ones. We'll keep working on the handwriting.

One more thing I'd like to start off is a Memory Time.

This summer I'd like to have a loose routine of some sort. This isn't so much for the children as for ME. I drift way too much off into my own world if I don't have temporal anchors. And they suffer from the lack of mom-focus. Today was a bit like that, in fact.

I am not stopping Aidan's reading practice -- we'll keep up with that. And I'll try to find time to make him some more Montessori type games since he enjoys that so much. Recently I have been hands-off and he's been still cycling through the various activities, but I ought to be more involved in the whole thing than I am at present.

That's all I can think of for now. If we start getting ready to move, I vow to try to get them involved. Once again, this is a discipline for ME -- I tend to prefer doing things on my own, but I know they would rather be involved if I would draw them in.

Summer Time Table

A Summer Schedule by Teri Maxwell (and another one)
A High and Noble Calling: Scheduling in the Summer

I wrote these ones quite a while ago (PDF)

Planning for Summer
Summer Days


Also, Elizabeth's daily rhythm (for fall, but I like the format).

I don't really like that word "schedule". Looking up the etymology, I found it is basically a modern word (at least in its modern usage-- it originally meant something like "piece of paper". It is pretty much associated with the industrial world in its present usage, which probably explains why it seems to me like something you impose on top of things, not something that develops out of something.

So I looked up synonyms and found this:

agenda, agendum, appointments, curriculum, inventory, list, menu, plan, program, programme, prospectus, regime, tariff, timetable.

Charlotte Mason used the word timetable; the Ignatians use the word "agenda" which is basically derived from Latin "agere" and traditionally meant "things needing to be done". In deliberative meetings, the agenda may also be called "the order of the day".

And then there is the monastic "Horarium". Here is an example. I love the word, but wonder if it sounds pretentious to use it in the context of the domestic church. Hmm.

Now, is it just me who has to research etymology and collect all sorts of samples before doing anything as simple as planning a schedule?

I put this together and am going to try to work it for the next week or so, figuring out what I forgot or what doesn't work.

See "basic planning" here.

Friday -- summer

No formal academics, though we have been talking about it and planning a bit.

We went to homeschool Stations of the Cross. The kids had fun playing together.....ages 4 up to 11, and all got along pretty well, which is usual there. Clare and LIam came too -- Clare played the piano there for a while.

Sean had football practice. After this week it cuts back to 3 days a week. He is still out of action because of his torn muscle and told me as he went in to soak it in warm water "It's incredibly stressful and draining to feel this bad all the time" (!).

Aidan and Paddy playing with play dough and Duplos, but not getting along quite as wonderfully as they did during the first days last week.

Kieron was reading the electricity Usborne book, and "Secret Spaces and Hideaway Places" and tried to make a homemade compass and has plans to make a fishing pole.