Monday, August 30, 2010

Week One

We're a week into our homeschooling for this academic year, and while so far, the children have raved about our choice of curricula, it's become painfully apparent that something will have to give.  This is probably one of my greatest challenges.  Everything looks so good, and it all seems so enriching, and at times, even necessary, especially when considering the big picture.  But just looking over at our schedule, it all seems super language heavy, and already I'm thinking that we'll be having a bit of overlap.  I'll be following the WTM writing suggestions for frequent persuasive essays for my 9th grader.  I think the recommendation is about two per week.  I'm considering cutting it down to one short persuasive essay per week as we're also using IEW this year (SWI-C), and doing any more may very quickly turn into too much.

Generally, I think I'm most stressed out when it comes to teaching writing, and I tend to over-compensate in that area.  Language arts came easily for me as a student, but it has always been the most challenging for me to teach to my own children.  What seemed to come naturally for me, was daunting for at least one child, so I found myself having to reassess and adjust our methods.  I'm feeling a bit more comfortable about it all right now, but as mentioned before, I do see some overlap.

Here's what's on our school shelves for this year (some of which I'll have to tweak):

dd14 - Grade 9


Algebra
Foerster's Algebra I - Big hit!  I'm so glad I decided to go ahead and purchase the Math Without Borders CD to go with this.  The Solutions Manual from Pearson was a great addition as well.  My dd is able to do this independently, freeing up some time for me.  Granted, she hasn't gotten very far in the book yet, but the CD lessons are thorough and clear, so I don't anticipate a problem when she gets further into the book.


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Language Arts - Our one multi-pronged subject...


Literature - Still not fully planned out yet, but here are some of our definite selections:
Animal Farm + Portals to Literature Companion
Of Mice and Men + Portals to Literature Companion
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of the Flies
Pride and Prejudice

Literature for Classical Studies -
The Iliad (Prose translation by Martin Hammond)

Essays, Short Stories, & Poetry - 
Wide selection from several anthologies, primarily American

History-related -
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Diary of Anne Frank

Writing -
IEW - Student Writing Intensive - C
Interdisciplinary persuasive papers/essays

Grammar -
Seton Grammar - 9

Vocabulary -
Vocabulary from Classical Roots - A

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American History I - We're using American Vision along with Oak Meadow's syllabus.

Logic-Critical Thinking-Rhetoric -
Critical Thinking: Problem Solving, Reasoning, Logic, Arguments - Book 1
A Rulebook for Arguments

Latin -
First Form Latin
Ecce Romani

Chemistry -
Conceptual Chemistry
High School Chemistry DVD Course from The Teaching Company
MicroChem Kit

Religion -
My Catholic Faith
The How-To Book of the Bible
Ignatius Bible

Computer Skills - with Dad



dd11 - Grade 6 & ds 10 - Grade 5

Math:  Singapore
Language Arts:
Grammar - Rod & Staff (through grade 5 book only)
Writing - Writing with Ease 2 (requiring a bit more from both) & Writing Skills workbooks (plus written narrations for history)
Spelling - Spelling Power
Literature, including Classical Studies related - Father Brown Reader, 50 Famous Stories Retold, The Trojan War by Coolidge, and more yet to be determined

Science - Complete Book of Science along with Animal and Science Encyclopedias

History - Story of the World

Latin - First Form Latin

Classical Studies - Famous Men of Rome along with Memoria Press Guide

Religion -
My Catholic Faith
Concise Bible History

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In addition to the above, the children will also be doing/taking part in the following, some things together:


Runkle Geography (hoping to get to it!)
Art - possibly an outside class
Kung Fu and Tai Chi
Piano lessons
CCD classes and youth group, with dd14 acting as teacher's aid for me during my 2nd grade CCD classes

The girls are taking a break from dance for this year, Deo gratias, so that frees up an extra night of the week.  Joy!

Saturday, August 28, 2010

So I've finally done it...

After years of loyally reading other people's blogs, with more than a twang of desire to start one up myself, I finally decided to give it a shot.  Ultimately, it was the misfortune of losing my job to offshoring that finally provided the means to do so.  In other words, I suddenly had a lot of free time.  Well, that's not exactly true.  In reality, losing my job gave me less of an excuse to avoid blogging.  I'm busy enough as a homeschooling mom with three children--children I've been schooling for over a decade (has it really been that long?).

As for the choice of a blog name?  Well, we are classical homeschoolers, and follow a somewhat Latin-centered model.  Yes, just somewhat.  Our educational philosophy is too broad and varying to subscribe 100% to any one method...but at its core, our homeschooling is unequivocally Classical.  In that sense, we really are old schooling.  But I felt the title fit in other ways as well.  For starters, I'm the only thirty-something I know without a texting plan, not that I'd know what to do if I had one.  I've met six year olds that are more technologically savvy.  [Feeling sort of guilty now for giving my Mom a hard time about not knowing how to work the VCR or the microwave.]

So what can you expect from this blog?  Possibly a lot of my thinking out loud about any number of things (e.g. parenting, news items, my good and bad days, pop culture, food, Catholicism, music, etc.), but primarily about our educational journey.  The way I see it, all of the above is often relevant to our educational pursuits anyway.