February Update

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted anything. I keep forgetting that I have this blog. Anyways, here's a little update on our lives these past few months:

We switched last month to the classical approach to homeschooling. With the classical approach, school-age education is divided up into three stages: the first stage being 1st-4th grades, second stage being 5th-8th grades, and the third stage being 9th-12th grades. The 1st-4th grade years are the grammar years. These are the years when children absorb tons of information, so the focus is on the foundational aspects of education. Emphasis is on phonics, grammar and math.

The biggest difference I see between the classical approach and traditional public school approach can be found in the way history is taught. In public schools, children start out learning about their communities, then the knowledge expands outward to their state, country, continent and, finally, the world. There is seemingly no chronological order in this way of teaching history. So children have a very hard time relating previously taught information to any new information taught. In contrast, the classical approach to history is strictly chronological. In each four-year stage, we study history from beginning of time to now, but it is studied very simply in this first stage of 1st-4th grade. So, we have already learned about creation, Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, dinosaurs, and some early civilizations like the Minoans and Egyptians. We will continue history with this approach until we end with current history sometime in the 4th grade. Then in 5th grade we will start all over again from creation, but this time we will go a little more in-depth. Then in 9th grade we will start again at the beginning, but will go really in-depth. So far we are loving this approach.

Sammy has been doing some school work these days. Periodically, he does a math lesson, and he is almost always within earshot when I am reading to Cameron from his history book. It's amazing to see how much Sammy has picked up just from being around while Cameron does his school work. In the fall, he will begin homeschool kindergarten and will have more of a schedule with regard to school work.

We have decided to go completely independent next year. This means that we will no longer be registered with Horizon Charter School and will instead have to file the private school affidavit. This also means that I get to name our school. Any ideas? How about the Reed Academy of Learning? Sounds so funny to say that.

Time to do some cleaning, then school work.

Pictures of My Cuties

Sammy

I know I don't seem to post anything about Sammy, but only because he's three and we have chosen up until now to have no structured school time for him. He has his own "school work" that he chooses to get out and play with sometimes, but I never make him do it. Well, I have noticed lately that he loves to play with the manipulatives that came with Cameron's Right Start Math Level B program. This made me think about the Level A kit (kindergarten level) that I am loaning to a friend and I realized that he is totally ready to start that, and I think he would love to do it. So we are planning to start Level A in January. I will let you know how he likes it after we start.

Flexibility

One of the greatest things about homeschooling is the flexibility. Here's an example: Cameron has a tendency to grumble at me when it's time to do school work. Our current schedule has us doing his work after lunch when any little I am watching are napping. The other day I got especially frustrated with him because he was not being cooperative and was complaining about how unfair it is that he has to do school work while his 5-year-old friend (who I watch periodically) gets to do whatever she wants. I explained to him that she does not have to do school work when she is here because she comes from her kindergarten class where she has spent 3 1/2 hours doing school work. Anyway, I realized that we needed a little change in our schedule if I was to maintain my sanity, so I made Cameron a deal. I told him that from now on I would wake him up at 7:00 am to eat a little breakfast and immediately work on Math and Language Arts. Those 2 subjects seem to be his least favorite, so I figured if we could get those out of the way then we can do the fun subjects at naptime. We just started this 2 days ago and it seems to be working.

I realized that something like this wouldn't happen if he was in school. Our schedule would be dictated by his school, not by what works for us. Maybe lots of people would be OK with that, but I am definitely not a rigid schedule keeper and absolutely love the idea that we can be flexible and change our schedule to fit our needs at the time. Another confirmation that we were meant to homeschool.

Starting School

Tomorrow is our official first day of school! We'll see how everything goes. It might be a slightly crazy day, as I have many kiddos to watch and my mom and grandma are coming at some point to get Sammy and take him back home with them for a few days. Also, I don't have our math and Spanish curriculum yet that Horizons ordered. So, we'll make do without that until it comes.

So Excited to Start School This Year

Well, my planning for this upcoming school year is almost done and I am excited to start. I've pretty much decided that every year we will take six weeks off of school during the summer (for planning) and another six weeks off during the Christmas season. Otherwise, we will be doing school year-round.

We are sticking with Horizon Charter School this year, but am thinking we will go totally independent next year. The reason? Too lengthy to discuss in this post, but call and ask if you really want to know.

Sammy has been really progressing without us doing much work with him, so I am thinking this year I might start doing some official "schoolwork" with him. I've noticed that he is very deliberate and focused when he tries to write or draw. So maybe we will work on writing and also learning the 70 phonograms for our Spell to Write and Read program for Language Arts.

For Cameron, we're sticking with the same math program we used last school year (Right Start Mathematics), but moving up one level. Language Arts will also be the same (Spell to Write and Read), but I am incorporating some other fun curriculum I have acquired that should help him with sentence structure and writing. He wants to learn Spanish and, after a terrific ordeal trying to choose a foreign language curriculum that Horizon will approve and purchase, I settled on Power-Glide Spanish and am hoping that he likes it and learns from it. I'm still not sure what we will be doing for science. I have a few science kits we will probably go through and I know we want to do a mini unit study on winter animals, but other than that I am stumped. One thing I am really looking forward to is our Lego unit study. I know Cameron will love it. It will take us 5 weeks and each week has a building challenge, along with information to look up on Legos and how they got their beginning. There are also activity pages to complete. Such a good unit study for a boy!

For now, we are loving summer and enjoying all that it has to offer. The boys are having a blast swimming at the community center pool about 3-4 days a week. We took them to the drive-in for the first time, visited family and friends in Oregon, went to a live concert-in-the-park at Cameron Park Lake, saw 2 movies at the free movie showing in El Dorado Hills, and still have planned a 2-night camping trip and week-long vacation in park City, UT. Good stuff to look forward to!