I've been wanting to post our curriculum choices for this year. I suppose I'd better start now, before the year's through.
Literature. We're continuing our literature selections that I read aloud while Holly and Trevor eat breakfast. So far this year, we've read Wind in the Willows, and Sun Horse, Moon Horse, a Rosemary Sutcliff book which ties into our history time period. We loosely apply Teaching the Classics to our reading. Teaching the Classics has been my favorite curriculum for a year or so; I watched the DVDs with a group of hs moms in 2006 and really would like to get my own copy to watch again. I choose the books based on what I think will be interesting, classical books, old favorites, etc., and I try to balance what might appeal to each of them.
Memorization. In the past, I've chosen Bible verses, silly poems, things with historical significance such as 13 Colonies, and the Preamble. One selection last year was Twas the Night Before Christmas (in its entirety, yay!). We have a great system to continue to review pieces that are learned, and we'll continue that. I don't have anything big planned for this year--yet. They're working instead on Latin conjugations and prayers, and I'll see what comes up in history.
Bible. Over the last several years, we've tried a variety of workbooks, lesson plans, devotionals. They never seem to last for long, and we always come back to just reading straight from the Bible and discussing. So I won't be attempting anything new this year--Holly and Trevor prefer this, and I do too. Currently we're reading Proverbs, but we may bounce around.
Math. Both kids used Singapore last year and have picked up where they left off. Holly did one of the Intensive Practice workbooks last year too, which worked well, so they'll use those after each book when it might be of benefit. I plan to use Challenge Math for a bit of a break. For several years, we've used MCP Maps, Graphs and Charts workbooks. We're not too into workbooks, but Holly and Trevor seem to like these fine, and I like the skills that are taught.
My goal is rarely to "get through" a year's worth, or one specific level, of a book/curriculum within a year. We just move through at the right pace, sometimes more slowly; sometimes faster. I never want to feel like we are "getting through" anything, yuck.
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This is the beginning of our morning schedule before taking a break, so it's a good place for me to break too.
4 comments:
This all looks great, Kristine. I would be very interested in how you do your memorization. Bessie and I used to do this a lot, but didn't have a method, we just did it. I'm trying to come up with something for the youngers.
Look forward to seeing what else you use.
Debbie, it's been so easy! We didn't use it the first year, and everything was quickly forgotten . . .
Each of the kids has a memorization notebook with the tabs, "Daily," "Weekly," "Monthly."
Any new pieces are put in the Daily section and practiced daily until they are known (depending on length, maybe a few days to two weeks). It then moves into the Weekly section, where it usually stays for 9-12 months.
Obviously, the "Daily" piece is recited daily; they recite the "Weekly" pieces on Mondays; they recite the "Monthly" pieces on the first school day of the month.
There's room for flexibility. We did none at all over the summer, so anything they remembered all summer from the weekly section automatically moved to the monthly section--and a few things got moved back to daily until they were familiar again.
I think I got the original idea from someone who used an index card system, but the notebooks work best for us.
Kristine,
THanks for the reminder on how you do this! I wondered if it was one continuous thing or not and now I know!
Kristine, this looks great! I'm going to start this.
I love the idea of the kids memorizing scripture and poetry. Bessie used to do a lot and has a good memory for things, but a more methodical approach would work so much better.
Thanks so much! :-)
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