Retrospective of Year 7

Looking at last year, I see I was on Week 28 this time last year, too. ... and just starting to plan.

Did I do ANYTHING that I had tentatively planned for Year 7 back then? I don't think so. We did follow a US History chronology and we have worked a bit with KISS Grammar, but that's about all.

Did we still have a good year? Yep, I don't think it went too badly.

Logic We only finished half of Introductory Logic, but if he does the next half next year we will be in good shape to tackle Traditional Logic I and II in high school.

Math He was horribly burned out on math, and so we went to MEP Year 7. This is a year behind where he should be, but because he could use the review and it also extended some things into high school concepts, I think it was appropriate. Math isn't his favorite subject, but he did engage a lot more this year than previously. I think we'll probably go on to Year 8.

Latin -- we did a lateral. We didn't touch Latina Christiana -- instead went to Latin is Fun, which is actually my oldest Latin resource -- I used it with Liam when we were enrolled with Kolbe. I didn't know enough Latin then to use it well and we fizzled out after a few chapters. This year we actually made it through the whole first section -- OK, at that rate we'd take six years to make it through the book but I am still pretty happy since we stuck at it faithfully. Here is a vocabulary database where you can do vocab quizzes related to the book. I don't think there's a homeschooler in the world besides me who uses Latin is Fun which probably means it has something wrong with it -- probably the more inductive approach or perhaps that as I mentioned it seems to require a bit of background knowledge. But he's actually learned more grammar than he learned last year using Latina Christiana 1.

Grammar -- basically once a week he takes one of the KISS worksheets and analyzes. Very lowkey. We talk about it. My goal is for him to work from his own understanding towards the analytic knowledge.

Religion -- Creed in Slow Motion was our core. I think it was very helpful, and am wondering what we will do to replace this next year. He also read pretty much all the Vision Saints books we had in the house -- 20 or more. I think maybe he's ready for some of our apologetic-focused books and for some CS Lewis.

History and Literature. We progressed over the course of the year from the Renaissance to American Revolution. It would make this post too bulky to list all the resources we used, so maybe a separate post. This was probably the core of the year and I think we met expectations at least. Next year is modern history -- Civil War through -- and Story of the World IV will probably be the spine.

Science -- A history of science approach integrated with history and literature, with some nature study readings. Right now he is reading The Boy Scientist and Ways of Wood Folk. I promised my kids I'd never use Apologia Science again, so I'm looking for a replacement. Main resource will probably be MacBeth's High School Science. Kieron votes for some of those cool Discovery Channel science programs that Kevin watches at night. Those could be starters for further research. Also, we never got to Chemical History of a Candle and I loved that book, so it might be a good resource for next year.

Geography -- worked on this during the first term, but have let it drop since.

Things to work on informally during the summer:

• Art
• Music
• Nature Study
• Composition (story writing)

Dragons in the Flower Bed linked to these TAKS standards tests so maybe I will have him do a bit of that during the last part of the year to see if there are any areas that needed shoring up.

Thinking about Second Half of Year

Trying to think about the homeschooling for the second part of the year ..... I don't have to REALLY think until after New Years' Day but I wanted to get started now.

With my Christmas $$$ I finally bought this book which has been on my wish list for a long time.

For some reason, multiple intelligences have been on my mind recently. Here they are in picture form:


They seem like they could be the framework for a curriculum....

Two possibilities for streamlining that were mentioned on the LCC list were:

Once a week scheduling -- math, Latin, and Progym daily, then other subjects by day -- Christian Studies, Classical studies, Literature Studies, and American Studies (also Science and Nature Study, I suppose).

Another idea is to move through these subjects in blocks or units. ....focus on Literature for a few weeks, then move onto History, etc. This seems to work if there is a specific outcome or product, like a notebook or lapbook, to be worked on. Hmmm.

Anyway, as usual, I'll probably start week 18 after this break as a skeleton.... that is, Morning Time and basic Math, Latin and language.... then work back up to a fuller schedule.

Core Knowledge Overview

Though I don't agree with everything about Core Knowledge (check out this preschool sequence for an example of something I don't think is helpful) I like these Core Knowledge "At a Glance" sequences. Very helpful if you use CK at all.

Liturgical Year -- September

Liturgical Overview for September (taken from Catholic Culture)

finishing up basic planning

I think I have almost finished this planning thing. Over on the left is a gif of this PNEU Programme I found over at Ambleside (you can click on the gif to make it more readable). I can use it alongside this categorized Formidable List of Attainments for Age 6.

The next things I have to do involve planning some methods and habits and how to approach the detailed planning that inevitably takes place during the year.

That takes a different part of the brain.

I also have to think about the "meta-organization" -- meaning how I actually work with this mass of information. That's usually rather a weak point of mine. In the past, I've made all these methodical plans and then found myself without a clue how to actually access them day by day. I've gotten better at this in the past few years, realizing that I have to pay conscious attention to processing the information. I usually have to write out a master list something like this:

1. Look at basic weekly plans
2. List materials and books used
3. Make notes for presentation or method

etc.

I plan to script out the "first week" very thoroughly. NOW, I've learned from studying St Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises that a week doesn't always have to be exactly five school days, nor does a script have to be followed exactly. It's a starting point. In fact, I usually start the academic year rather slowly, giving myself and the kids a chance to transition, so basically allow myself TWO weeks to finish the "first week".

Oh, and one more thing I have to do is plan a summer routine. I am not one of those who does formal schooling in the summer. Yikes, I hardly do that in the fall or winter or spring. But I do hope to get a routine planned for ME -- to remind me to interact with the kids, go outside, play games, science investigations, etc. I have realized that I'm a natural workaholic who can sit and study and plan for hours forgetting to eat or pay attention to my headache, basically growing roots to my chair.

So I want to get back to a bit more "intentionality" in the way the days go. This is our "Core"---but the details of how I actually manage it seem to vary from season to season and year to year. But that's the essence of what I'm going to set up a routine for.

From Elizabeth Foss's post On Being Intentional, though it is about housekeeping, I extracted a sort of examen for working on the environment, discipline and life elements in the home. Where I used her exact words, I put quotation marks and italics. Basically, the rest is just a paraphrase of what she wrote, applied to the daily rhythm as opposed to housekeeping in particular.

1. "Claim a quiet moment" and think about what you want for your daily life for this season
2. Think about the priorities -- the most important elements of life.
3. Think about the problems ... say, too much time on the screen. How can that change? Visualize bedtime, mornings, different parts of the day. What are problems? What are good things that could be developed in light of your priorities and those of your children?
4. As you engage your imagination, jot down those things which come to mind. It's all fair game right now. Don't let the things that pop into your head be distractions; all of them to shape the picture.
5. Now, what stands in the way?
6. Make a list -- a simple list (no need to bother with a system yet)
7. What would you like to do every day? Occasionally? What do you need to get done daily, weekly, monthly? Try to include the urgent (need-to's) AND the important but likely to be pushed aside (like playing games, talking)
8. What would help make the daily environment richer, more peaceful, more imaginative and intellectual?
9. "The list needs to make sense within the context of your family. No one can make the list for you. "
10. "Which days are you home all day? Which ones call you out into the world? Which days precede days with special needs? "
11. "Think about the individual children." How can they help? What is the balance between solitary time and active together time? What habits can be started that bear fruit in the long run?
12. "It's not a perfect list. PRINT IT OUT. Hang it on your refrigerator. Live it for a week. Make notes on it. Tweak it. Think, think, think about it. But do it.
13. "At the end of the week, look at your notes and adjust.Then do it again.
14. "Give yourself three weeks before you really will have nailed your routine."

So I'm going to spend some time journaling on these questions and then trying to set up a foundation that can be built on when we add formal work in the fall.

basic curriculum for year 1

This is the basic materials form for Year 1 (docpdf).

Over on the left you can see the gif version.

I don't think I will write out specific course charts because I want to follow their lead and not tire them out with too much book work.

I have already written out some "method" notes and will probably continue doing that but with little kids it's difficult to predict what will be needed for very far ahead.

There's a nice Observation Form (pdf) over at Montessori Materials.

There are Montessori Albums here which I use loosely for my delayed child's OT.

Topic List for Year 1 -- part II

I made another topic list, this one based on What Your First Grader Needs to Know.

Once again, it is condensed.

A lot of the topics between Core Knowledge K and 1 overlap. But CK1 goes into more depth, particularly in math and science. So I wanted to have them both in order to cross-reference, and to know where I'm going later in the year.

I've started writing out some resources to go along with the topics but it's a work in process.

Next, I want to think up some sort of monthly routine to deal with the seasons and liturgical year with these children.

Topic List for Year 1

It's so funny to go from a transcript form to a "themes for primaries" form. Definitely, that's life around here. The age span in our family is 17 years. ... almost a generation in time lapse.

This form is based on Hirsch's What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know.
There are Core Knowledge Lesson Plans online, including some unit studies. I look at them occasionally but usually find them too schooly and standards-based for our purposes.

I thought that if I took the book as an outline I could pull out my own resources throughout the course of the year. I notice that I like to do things my own way, so I don't much care for teacher's manuals or lesson plan resources, but I do usually like to have some overview that I can start with.

In this topic list (here is the pdf version), I didn't list out the specific stories and biographies and that kind of thing. I just wanted a basic overview.

You notice that science and history, for example, has categories of content, like "magnetism" and "Columbus". The Literature is based on categories, though, like "Fables" and "Sayings". Rather than having a "fable unit" per se at this age I would probably just weave fables throughout the year.

I do not think my 2 young students are ready for a full-blown Ambleside Year 1. I'm going to start planning it a bit since I really did want to try to use it, but right now I want to focus on the "preparatory" stage a bit more, and various habits so that when they get to that point some of the groundwork will be laid already. Details to follow, probably. It's something I've been thinking about.

Transcripts and High School Outline

Since I have just finished helping my daughter pull together a transcript for college applications, I thought I'd share a sample. General Transcript (doc)

This one is sort of a mix of the three transcripts we've produced so far for the two older boys and my daughter. They had variations depending upon particular gifts and strengths -- for example, my oldest son had a computer programming elective and apprenticeship, while my daughter learned several musical instruments during this time period, and my second son embarked on an extensive dendrology (tree) study that included all sort of research and field observations (since we live only 20 minutes from a Giant Sequoia grove). He also studied much extra history and wrote a 400 page novel. I would try to write their transcripts in a way that showed their particular focus but still looked fairly conventional and easy to figure out for the admissions officer.

The basic outline of our high school course (based on Kolbe Academy's) is over here at the Classical Co-op. I made that wiki page several years ago when my oldest was a senior, and now I have 3 high school grads. Time moves fast!

Term by Topic 2008

I uploaded a topic chart for Year 7 (part 1 and part 2, both PDF) It isn't quite complete yet because I didn't have topics yet for things like local nature study, life skills and art projects.

This is part of the first page (left). I have six "terms" because we are operating in the trimester system and it makes it easier for me to get my brain around smaller units -- so I divided each trimester in half. Only the first 3 terms show up in the gif.

I think I am going to use this topic chart as a sort of springboard for casual "themes" for the Year 1 children. Not that they will be reading Spenser or trying to deal with decimals, but some of the religion topics and history topics (shown in the doc file but not in the gif) can be adapted to younger ones.


I have What Your First Grader Needs to Know and it might be a good thing to use as an occasional resource because it covers the earlier days of US History.

Year 1 Weekly

A first try at a simple Year 1 weekly timetable (PDF)-- based on Mater Amabilis Prep Level schedule.

The gif turned out horrible, but is here just so you can see it:


I am going to revise it a bit in August after we test-drive a bit. And then I'll change the heading from Kindergarten to Year 1 or Primary -- that slipped by! : )

one last little bit.

A more detailed outline of the first block of Year 7.
Also, a form where I can keep track of weekly progress -- or write a short plan by page number (PDF).

So I'm pretty much done on the Year 7 overview. This is more complex than it strictly needs to be, but like I said, I'm experimenting with preparing more extensively. We'll see how it goes! ... what parts of the prep pay off and what is just redundant and silly.

This is the Progress Chart gif.

This is another chart from the outline I linked to above.

Progress on Year 7 -- basic course breakdown beta

I finished the basic outline of Year 7. It is in PDF form. Some of the classes are outlined more specifically than others. Partly that is because of the difference between the "skill" lessons and the more "exploratory" ones. I will probably keep tinkering with it and will eventually upload a doc version -- I converted this one to PDF because I wasn't sure if the Word 2007 format would transfer easily to the older Word format.

I have almost finished writing more specific lesson plans for the first Term (I have divided the year into 6 Blocks so I can follow the trimester system of the local schools (since Sean is going to school this year, that is more of a consideration than it was in past years). In order to have some kind of unity, I wanted to be able to think in terms of six Blocks (I wish I could think of a better word).

Each Block will have a list of Sub-Topics and then I can decide which subjects have priority, dependent on what we've emphasized in past blocks, interest, life circumstances and that sort of thing.

Does that make sense?

For example, right now the first Block out of the six has this outline:

• Religion -- first part of creed.... Creation and early salvation history.
• Bible History -- Early Salvation History.
• History -- exploration and early discovery, focus on Americas. Geography related to history; same with literature and readers, poetry and arts.
  
• Science -- Galileo, astronomy
• Math -- Advanced Multiplicaton and Division (work a bit on algebraic terminology)
• Latin & Classical History -- Romulus & Theseus, review of 1st and 2nd conjugations and declensions, etc.
  
• Greek & NT -- Gospel of Mark, reading Greek letters (review) and prepositions
• Logic. .... Statements. Grammar -- prepositional phrases, review of modifiers.
  
• Composition -- Narrative

You get the picture. By having this laid out, I can "hyperfocus" on these topics and fill them out in detail. So I want to get together materials and ideas for these specific subjects and since there is quite a bit there, decide what we should dwell on more thoroughly and what can take second place. Also figure out connections between the different subjects -- not so much for Kieron, since I want him to make his own connections, but for ME.

Now that I have this laid out, I can also figure out composition topics, poetry and Scripture memorization choices, dictation and copywork selections, research topics and that kind of thing. That's where I always end up unprepared during the school year -- so my goal for this year was to prepare it ahead of time, hopefully gathering way more than I can actually use.

Final note -- I'd liked to get each block summarized like the one above, and have a little packet for each one, but I don't want to micro-plan too far ahead.

Also, a day by day schedule -- to help me figure out what we are doing each day. Here is the first page, in gif.

Course Outline for Year 7, and more

Here is the semi-detailed Course Overview for Kieron, Year 7 (it's a doc). It's a more detailed version of this.

I am looking at it and thinking -- no way. It is way too much. On the other hand, there's no time frame yet -- and I'm not even sure I'm going to PUT a time frame on the content. My syllabus this year may be something more like a time-period-spent checklist plus tables of contents, so I can keep the accountability of this year without a feeling of having to speed up or slow down to meet the requirements of the syllabus.

I still have determined to go slowly..... and look for connections, and time to ponder.

By the way, this seems like a good occasion to talk about something that I was very happy to hear Angela at Three Plus Two mention -- hyperfocus.

From this article:

ADD suffererers will sometimes hyperfocus on a desired subject in order to accomplish a task. This is very similar to "paying attention" as non-ADD people will do. With so many distractions, we have to narrow our field of attention to a specific task, blocking out distractions like a person might block out the cold weather by pulling a blanket closer around them....

My routine day is filled with hyperfocus. With a few exceptions, if I do not hyperfocus on a task, it will not get done. Those exceptions are usually _very_ routine things that I do each day without fail (brush teeth, shave, go to work, etc).

As an example, I know that flossing my teeth is a beneficial task because my dentist tells me so. So I should do it each day without fail. However, I have fallen out of that habit. Getting started back again is a major undertaking for me. Its not that I need to be reminded, its that I have to hyperfocus on the task so that I can prioritize it correctly and get the task done. A reminder note or to do list will not sufficiently help me to pay attention to this detail. ..

Once I am hyperfocusing on a task, .. that task gets all my attention. Attempts to communicate with me during that time are seen as distractions and are irritating. It is physically hard to break the hyperfocus, then concentrate on another task, and then to resume the hyperfocus. Frequently, after I read a book for hours, I am literally a zombie afterwards because I cannot easily break the hyperfocus.

My day is a regular pattern of moving from hyperfocused task to hyperfocused task.

I am not sure if I am ADD -- never diagnosed anyway -- but I know I totally do this. Indeed, this description explains a LOT to me. And the coping mechanisms mentioned were extremely helpful.

Goals for Year 0

From AO Year 0

"A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six"

A reprint of a curriculum outline from a CM school in the 1890's. from Summer 93 Parents Review pub by Karen Andreola

1. To recite, beautifully, 6 easy poems and hymns
2. to recite, perfectly and beautifully, a parable and a psalm
3. to add and subtract numbers up to 10, with dominoes or counters
4. to read--what and how much, will depend on what we are told of the child
5. to copy in print-hand from a book
6. to know the points of the compass with relation to their own home, where the sun rises and sets, and the way the wind blows
7. to describe the boundries of their own home
8. to describe any lake, river, pond, island etc. within easy reach
9. to tell quite accurately (however shortly) 3 stories from Bible history, 3 from early English, and 3 from early Roman history (my note here, we may want to substitute early American for early English!)
10. to be able to describe 3 walks and 3 views
11. to mount in a scrap book a dozen common wildflowers, with leaves (one every week); to name these, describe them in their own words, and say where they found them.
12. to do the same with leaves and flowers of 6 forest trees
13. to know 6 birds by song, colour and shape
14. to send in certain Kindergarten or other handiwork, as directed
15. to tell three stories about their own "pets"--rabbit, dog or cat.
16. to name 20 common objects in French, and say a dozen little sentences
17. to sing one hymn, one French song, and one English song
18. to keep a caterpillar and tell the life-story of a butterfly from his own observations.

Kindergarten Schedule from Higher Up and Further In
Teaching Diligently Kindergarten Curriculum
One Day At A Time

Also, see The Rosetta Project

And An Old-Fashioned Education

Year 7 Course Outline (beta)

This is a second draft. It lists the books I am going to use and a few instructions, but I want to have a more detailed version eventually. The first-draft Middle School Scope and Sequence is here. When I get this finalized I'm going to upload it as a doc.

After that, the next thing I am going to do is make a comprehensive outline listing all the resources together.

I used this 12 year old curriculum from CM's School Education as a basic model (in these appendices is also a list of things a child should know by age 12 -- interesting). I've decided to try to have a CM year but a slow one. I'm going to focus on thoroughness rather than trying to zip through all this in a cursory way. Still thinking this through but I notice that Charlotte Mason would often only assign a few pages a term rather than trying to race through a whole book.


Religion 5 x a week

• Bible History
  
• Gospel of Mark. Teacher to prepare lesson beforehand, and to use the Bible passages in teaching.
  
• Faith and Life -- The Life of Grace. (start discussing reasons for belief type issues)
  

Recitations. -- daily Repetition

• Learn 2 Bible passages and 3 poems.

German. -- 1 x a week

• Essential German
  

Latin. -- 2x a week, plus review

• Latina Christiana 2.
  
• Epitome Historiae Sacrae
• Latin is Fun.
  

Greek -- 2 x a week

• Basic Greek
  
• Build a dictionary
  

US History. 2 x a week

• Makers of the Americas
• And Modern History Sourcebook

World History. -- 2 x a week

• Story of Mankind (Renaissance and following) OR Famous Men of Modern Times
• Keep a century book
  

Roman History. 1 x a week

• Plutarch

Geography. -- 4 x a week

• Selections from All Ye Lands and Book of Discovery (perhaps some unit studies)
• special reference to recent events; map questions to be answered from map and then from memory, and then in filling up blank map from memory before each
• Know something about foreign places coming into notice in the current newspapers. T
• Ten minutes' exercise on the map of the world every week.
• An Atlas
  

English Grammar. -- 3 x a week

• KISS
• Daily Grammar
  

Music -- 2 x a week

• Folk Songs, Catholic traditional music.
• Classical music and musicals
• Piano Instruction
  

Writing. -- 2 x a week

• Choose and transcribe ten poems or passages
  
• Latin and Greek Copybook
• Handwriting -- go slowly
  

Drill. -- daily activity

• Daily Activities
• Seasonal Sports.
  

Dictation. -- 2 x a week

• four or five pages a week of a subject from History to be prepared, a passage dictated, or, occasionally, written from memory. (perhaps using a Catechism of Church History)
  

Drawing. -- 1 -2 x a week

• Twelve wild fruits on their branches, with background, in brushwork;
• illustrations in brush-drawing from The Lady of the Lake.
  
• Study and be able to describe the pictures from Faith and Life
  

Natural History. -- 2 x a week

• Keep a Nature Note-Book.
  
• Geology(mountains), with questions (use Core Knowledge? do a unit?).
  
• Study animals and draw.

Botany. -- 1 x a week (or unit)

• Local field guides
  
• Record the finding of and describe twenty wild fruits. Specimens must be used in all botanical work. Observe all you can about the structure of various fruits (not edible), and about the dispersion of seeds.
  
• Plant Life unit.
  

Physiology. 1 x a week (or unit)

• ?? A few pages of an anatomy resource -- the human anatomy coloring book?? overlaps with health -- the Joyful Mysteries of Life.
  

Physical Science

• The Boy Scientist
• History of Inventions

Arithmetic. -- 5 x a week

• Mental Arithmetic -- There are a whole lot here.
• Ray's Higher Arithmetic
  
• Vol 3 pg 307

Euclid. & Logic -- 2 x a week

• Key to Geometry
• First Geometry (here's one I haven't looked at much yet)
• Introduction to Logic
  

Literature & Reading

• History of English LIterature & list of readings based on that
• Poetry should be read daily.
• Catholic National Reader or Seton Reading Comprehension
  
• (Comprehension Skills worked into Narration?)
• Shakespeare, booklist of biographies and historical fiction etc (see below)
  

Composition. -- 2 x a week

• Read on Thursdays and write from memory on Tuesdays (do this with Classical Writing; Aesop)
• Composition Classical Tradition (resource book for teaching skills)
  

Work 2x a week, both on "open" day
(make up my own list including cooking, knitting etc -- these below in italics are examples from CM's School Education)

• Attend to garden. Bent Iron Work, Make six models. SeIf-Teaching Needlework Manual
• Make a baby's crochet petticoat with body part. Make a linen book cover, with design drawn and worked by yourself.
• For illustrations for History, Geography -- look in DK type pictorial encyclopedias
  

Civics & Habit Formation 1 x a week, plus work into daily life (I am putting together a list of topics to work on)

• Ourselves
• Joyful Mysteries of Life
• Current Events

-------------------------------------------------
Minimal Booklist:

Knights of Art -- read 3 times a week for first quarter
George Washington -- 2nd quarter
Westward Ho
Tales from Shakespeare

Free Reading List to follow (things for fun and context)

Starting to Plan Year 1 -- some lesson plan models

I have been looking for Charlotte Mason lesson plans and have come up with a few things that I want to list -- just a few odds and ends for planning for the little ones for next year:

• First, I really like this Tanglewood Curriculum. It is a Classical/CM blend and there is a free reading schedule. I have their corebook and it is really charming -- it is now available as a download so you can make your own planbook.
• I also found this Camrose Classical Academy with sample lesson plans for the various grades.
• HEre at Lakeway Learning there are some lesson plans for first and second grade. Also quite a few articles about CM topics like habits.
• Carol Hepburn has CM-inspired lesson plans and other resources at Little Red Schoolhouse.
• Mainly, I am not looking for specific lesson plans since I already have resources that I like, but just ideas of what to do to prepare ahead of time.
• I like the way Elizabeth and Katharine plan lessons at the Waldorf-inspired blog Serendipity.
• Also, I have several times looked over Oak Meadow's sample lesson plans.
• And here are samples of the Christopherus first grade curriculum.
  
• I like the format that Kolbe uses.
  

Personally, I generally have trouble using lesson plans that other people have written. In fact, I think I can say that in 15 years I have NEVER used a lesson plan successfully. Wow, that's pretty amazing. Some of my high schoolers have been able to follow a syllabus independently, and sometimes I get some method ideas from a lesson plan, but I just can't seem to make myself do this.

Lindafay at Higher Up and Further In talks about Charlotte Mason and lesson planning. The basic idea is that Charlotte Mason believed in teacher preparation but not in teacher spoon-feeding. All the lesson plans above seem conducive to preparation as opposed to spoon -feeding. In other words, they provide a valuable resource for people that like a literature-based approach and need a bit of guidance.

I was browsing through the Ambleside site once and found a clip from a post by Wendi Capehart. She said that no matter how well something is laid out for her, she still has to write it out herself. So even with all the Ambleside resources -- forms, plans, etc -- she will look at them and be informed by them but she still has to rewrite it all for herself.

I found that very freeing. I am the same way -- once I acknowledge it I can move on. I get more out of the "how's" of a given lesson plan than the actual content.

Links for Year 0/1

I'm starting to think about planning for the two little ones. They will be starting off with a more "intentional" focus on Year 0 accomplishments, and then phase into a Year 1, probably around the time Paddy turns 6 in December, but maybe later than that depending on how it goes.

SCM: Early Years (CM)

Ambleside -- Year O
Piney Woods Homeschool
List of Attainments for a Child Age 6 and 12

Ambleside Year 0
AO Year 1

Mater Amabilis Prep
MA Level 1

Another Thought....

I wanted to write down before it goes out of my mind again.

I am realizing that where I often come up short during the school year is in METHOD, not so much material. Habits, not so much assignments.

I could take the amount of books I have now for Kieron and make 2 or 3 years work out of it -- with a few books and art supplies thrown in. So really, we're pretty much set for that, if I really stop to think about it.

Where we seem to falter and lose stride is with variety. I've tried different ways of dealing with it through the years -- last year I even had a deck of index cards and shuffled through every week and pulled out a pile of activity ideas. It worked pretty well!

But those were provisional solutions.

Maybe preparing more intentionally for the times when the normal routine isn't working would help me more than planning out book lists and chapters.

I would like more richness, not just more clutter of "to-dos". More learning seeds planted and more rhythms established, not just more assignments and work-lists.

Another balance to keep in mind!

MiddleSchool Scope and Sequence -- Catholic Classical

• Middle School S&S
• Scope and Sequence PDF
• Catholic Classical Model

What's below looks complicated and like too much -- but I'll list about 3-5 topics per month in addition to the core classes -- Catechism, Math, Latin, Greek, Logic -- and then go from there.

Reading, working with hands, art, and oral/writtten composition are the other components.

It's helpful to have this laid out for the future. Anyone reading this can ignore it, though, since it's extremely rough right now.

Plans for Middle School (Seventh and Eighth Grade)

Religion

• Faith and Life 7-8
• Bible History (Schuster)
• Gospel of Mark, Luke
• saints' bios (list to follow)
• Apologetics (list to follow)

Math

• Ray's Higher Arithmetic
• Key to Algebra

Latin

• Latina Christiana, Henle

Greek

• Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day

Logic

• Introductory Logic,
• Traditional Logic 1

Literature

• Kolbe Junior High Literature
• Shakespeare
• Poetry, Short Story Courses (1 quarter each)

History -- US History & Modern World

• Makers of America (focus on different time periods)
• This Country of Ours and various Baldwin readers as supplements
  
• Story of the World Volume 4 (last 2 terms of eighth grade)
  
• List of supplementary readers to follow
• a research paper each term

Geography

• Physical
• Historical

Civics

• Plutarch (history of political life)
• Growing in the Virtues of Jesus
• Ourselves (maybe)
• Joyful Mysteries of Life
• Whatever Happened to Penny Candy (maybe) -- OR
• Land of Fair Play (for economics -- 1 quarter)

Science

• Nature Study
• Design a Study -- Science, keep notebook of projects and reading -- I think I will alternate Life Science with Physical Science
  
• Periodic Table, Chemical History of a Candle (others -- list to follow)
  

Composition

• Composition in the Classical Tradition (spine)
• List of topics to follow
• Scope and sequence to follow

Art

• Knights of Art
  
• Correlated with US History study -- American Artists
  
• list of artists to follow

Music

• various composers and genres -- list to follow
• start piano

Other

• Arts and Crafts
• Life Skills
• Vocational
• PE
  
• (lists to follow)