It is that time of year when parents and educators are looking toward next school year. Next school year we will have 5 children schooling full time. My primary goal has been to find a plan that is as easy on me as possible, while meeting some unique interests and needs of each child. This means having children work as independently as possible, or in as few groups as possible. While there will probably be some changes, this is our plan for next school year:
Everyone uses Math-U-See. This mastery based curriculum spans pre-K through Calculus. They have added to the curriculum this year to fill in some gaps, include more critical thinking and application and have made available guides so, if desired, it can be aligned to Common Core Standards. Our oldest will be supplementing with Life of Fred to include more review, practice and practical application.
The younger 4 of our school will be following the Modern History schedule from Easy Classical. Easy Classical has planned out a daily schedule for a classical education, following recommendations from Veritas Press and The Well Trained Mind. The Early Modern and Modern History schedules use The Story of the World and The History of US series as spines and include literature suggestions. We will also be using their Modern History Writing schedule, which uses The Institute for Excellence in Writing's structure and style tied into each week's history readings. Instead of using Easy Classical's geography, we will use Geography Matter's Trail Guide to World Geography.
Included in the changes to our curriculum this year is Growing With Grammar. The hope is that it will be more student directed, interesting and have clearer text that what we are currently using. Spelling Zoo, from IEW, has done wonders for my 2 struggling spellers, so we are sticking with that. I expect child #4 will move into it once he has completed All About Spelling Level 2. I will be putting together handwriting/copywork books for each child based on our history, science and Bible readings. Our little Lady Bug will continue with IEW's Primary Arts of Language (PAL) as she masters the fundamentals of reading and writing. PAL was new to us this year and we have greatly enjoyed the fun, multi-sensory approach to the language arts.
For the second year we will be using Noeo Science. Also a classical approach, 4 out of the 5 children will be able to experiment with Physics, while learning about some of important scientists of the modern era.
All 4 younger students will continue with Classical Academic Press's Latin for Children and Song School Latin. Daughters 2 and 3 will use Building Thinking Skills (cd-rom) from Critical Thinking for Logic.
As a family we began a study through the Bible last school year. The curriculum wasn't finished yet and we felt the need to tackle some other issues this year, so we took a break from it. Next year we will continue working our way through each book of the Bible with Grapevine Studies, adding in the dvd series What's In The Bible? with Buck Denver.
So far I have left out our oldest, who is entering high school level work. She loves learning on her own, discovering, researching and being creative. We want to use this year to really begin preparing her for more in-depth analysis and critical thinking. She will be taking a Great Books approach to history, by reading and analyzing some of the great literature of the Modern Era, researching the authors and time periods of each piece using the library, internet and Spielvogel's "Western Civilization". Her literature list is coming from The Well Trained Mind (Susan Wise Bauer; Peace Hill Press), with some additions we made to accommodate her love of biology. To help her begin to learn how to analyze literature and understand literary techniques she will use IEW's new "Grammar of Poetry". We also plan to have her complete a Christian world-view study, but haven't settled on one yet. Science for High School will be her guide in learning biology. A student based curriculum, it gives her several questions at the beginning of each week that she must research to find the answers. At the end of the week she and I will discuss her answers followed by laboratory and microscope experiments. Rounding out her schedule will be Latin Alive! from Classical Academic Press and Vocabulary from Classical Roots.
The hope and prayer is this line up will help everyone become more independent and self-motivated while building essential skill as we discover this amazing world and life God has given us.
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