After jumping through various forms of classical education, the Well Trained Mind, Ambleside, and brief time with the Thomas Jefferson ideas we are back where God originally planted a mixture of curriculum from recommendations of friends along the way in this journey, I will learn one day..I will...
My three children work well together and we combine History, Bible, Literature and Science at least for the next year..then i may have decisions.
My nearly 11 yr old is at 6th grade next year, my 9 and 7 yr olds are will both be at 4th grade level - although I am trying to sidetrack the younger, keeping him busy is difficult.
We tend to run a loose schedule, each Child has a tick-list on which they are meant to cover at least 10 of a possible 13 things - some are more flexible that others. It gives them a chance to choose what they are up to each day, but also gives me some control that we cover what we need to in a week.. A full complete tick-list though gains a mini chocolate bar at the end of the week.
Language Arts,
Classical Writing, Aesop for the younger two, Homer and Beginning poetry for Dancing Butterfly and myself.
Commonplace book as we find things outside of this.
Classical writing has been the one thing couldn't give up when we tried Ambleside.
I loved the idea when it was born, struggled to pace it for my daughter before the workbooks were written, and now love the package. We 've had to work at finding the balance between being overwhelmed and having it rule our lives but it is worth it. I love all the things it teaches in terms of reading, writiing and understanding a piece of prose or poetry.
Now we pace ourselves, enjoy the challenges and watch our writing improve each month.
Maths
We will be continuing with Singapore's off the shelf local edition of "My Pal's are Here". It's slightly lighter than the Primary maths, has 'real money' and metric measurements.
Beside this we use Miquon and Key's to both programs give me scope to move side wise when my children get overwhelmed, or bored. We get either depending on the children. Dancing Butterfly is at grade 5 going on 6 and Einstein and happy Feet are both on Grade 3.
Latin
Latin stays with Latina Christian, and our first venture into Henle. Us girls are taking the plunge to the big book - which would be scary except that the first lesson looks like review so I'm hoping we are fine. The boys are working on LC I with Einstein back at the beginning and Happy Feet going full steam ahead. Can i put him into LC II in the middle of next year?
Greek
Yes I now realize we shouldn't have started two languages together, but it's fun and my challenge for a stay at home mum. Were using Elementary Greek and heading for level 2. Well all except Einstein - who doesn't really like languages and is reviewing from the beginning. Hopefully this time without reading the answers first.
That's our morning subjects .. the ones where I'm slowly chilling into the idea of just do the next part each day and ignore how long it is or isn't taking us.. I'm getting there slowly, and the kids are dong well. Actually I'm a pretty happy mum when I look at how they are getting on.
Our afternoons are when we get to be a little more creative, sit back and read, narrate, and do activities around Bible, history, literature and Science. Its also our art time.
Bible
This year we have been working our way through the last Third of the Old Testament. - roughly Chronicles to Malachi.
For Bible I've been using the Veritas press cards and activities. Veritas has become more of a spine than a total program, but since i like the way the activities start the kids into solid bible reading and interpretation I like having it in the background. I also like the way I get challenged and discover new insights - and that's after a three year bible college degree.
We take turns around the table reading the passage 5-10 verses each and stopping to discuss as we need to. The discussions are fun and make our bible study times.
We normally turn the worksheet questions into a narration, but I am trying to move to a more creative - narration or similar based summary for their notebooks.
History
I've gotten lost in the Middle Ages - we were meant to cover the Reformation as well, but will be re-scheduling that to next year. There has been so much to explore - yes I love church history, the Vikings, the whole castles and English history thing that I may have gotten stuck, and we will leave the rest for next year.
Our history time is much like Bible, we use the cards as a jumping of place, add in literature, a narration, and the activities that fit. Normally we do one to two activities a lesson so we cover most of them. We don';' do the tests, and we don;t do chronological memorization. My aim is to get a glimpse of how other cultures have lived, and an overview of human (especially Western Christian) thought has developed.
Literature
Literature is the fun, crash on the couch read and discuss time that we aim to have every afternoon, an sneaks into the family read-aloud time that we have most evenings before we head to bed.
This year, Alice and Wonderland, Beowulf, and now King Arthur by Plye have made it into the official literature time. With Alice and Beowulf we used the Veritas press guides, the latter being included on the history CD. They were fun, but lot's of writing in Alice that has since made us more cautious in how much writing about a book we do.
In the evenings we read either Historical Fiction with Dad, or something fun and light. Currently it has been Augustine goes to Kent.
Science
Officially we use the Apologia Elementary books, this year Astronomy. We narrate them and any demonstration or activity that adds to what we are learning. But I don't do all or even most of them. Some we leave out because the same activities get used in other subjects.
Science though also pops up at our family discussions, which would be more than enough if my trio didn't want science in school time as well. Dad is a Science teacher, and Einstein breathes electronics, lego, engineering and physics. So a lot of science work just happens along the way.
Art
I love Artistic Pursuits as an all round drawing, art & craft, art history program. it has to be one of the favorite parts of our days, My boys are currently doing variations of sculpture in the third book of the K-3 series, and my daughter is working between the two books of the grade 4-6 program. Just doing drawing got a little heavy for her, but alternating every 2-3 units seems to be fine.
Nature Study
Nature study and our family reading -aloud and night must be the two main things that homeschooling has embedded in our family culture. I am sure no new bird species gets to wander through our garden without being noticed and watched. My husband and i always loved to walk in the New Zealand bush as a means of relaxing from our busy careers but no nature has a far greater role in our lives, and I love the opportunities if brings to reflect on our work, God and the beauty he has created.
Nature study also adds in read-aloud books to our afternoons - so many good books so little time. We're reading through Burgess Bird Book - because Happy Feet loves birds. We also squeezed in "Pagoo", and "My Side of the Mountain" this year .
That covers the main parts of our learning time. We also attempt to learn the keyboard, mum alongside the kids with only the books. It kinda works but very slowly. The Ambleside composer, artist and poetry rotations also make their mark on our days, so life is very probably way to full - but I wouldn't really want it any other way.
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