Planning the School Year

As I sit here, organizing the coming year for my 2nd grader and the Kindergartener to be, I thought I'd kind of write down the thought process that helps me pull everything together, and maybe attach a document here and there over the next few weeks.

So because we did 2 years of Kindergarten, having started Ian a bit early, we are now entering our fourth year of homeschooling. We initially started out using My Father's World (MFW) Kindergarten, which I very much enjoyed. Then we went on to Sonlight Kindergarten, which I thought was more advanced than MFW, but also more expensive.

Some things worked better than others, so I began to look for other things to supplement or replace what didn't work for us. That led me to begin using some materials from Susan Wise Bauer such as The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, First Language Lessons, The Complete Writer: Writing With Ease and The Story of the World. Most of these things we borrowed from the library or from friends, and we liked them so much we bought them for ourselves just to have in our hot little hands. :)

So now as we approach the second grade year, I find myself once again tweaking the system, which kind of puts me into strange territory. For the first year ever I am starting out on my own, without someone having done the lesson planning for me. It's tempting to go out and purchase a Sonlight Instructor's Guide, but I already know what I want to do. I just need to organize the HOW of it.

So here's the process I've been going through for the last few weeks, in case you're interested.

1. Since I really love Sonlight's selection of books. I go to their website, and see what books they are using for their 2nd graders (Level C). Once you are on the core curriculum page, you can click on the "Included Items" tab and see all the books you get if you purchase the core package. I copy the list and create a Word document listing of the books for my reference. I can get most of these books from the local library or request an inter-library loan if I decide to use them. The exception to this is usually the "Christian" books like "Missionary Stories with the Millers". These are books that I am willing to order either from Sonlight, Amazon or Christianbook.com if the library doesn't have them.
   
2. I also like My Father's World's selection of books, so I add some of their book recommendations to my book list. This year, I discovered the art program "I Can Do All Things" by Barry Stebbing. I want it so bad, and I want the DVD that I found out about too, but I'm trying to find it on eBay, because it's a bit pricey at this point.
3. Finally, I check out the core curriculum at Timberdoodle, which I just discovered this year. I like their website, but I LOVVVVE their catalog!! They have some great resources, from toys to manipulatives to books. I pretty much want everything they have. :)

Now, of course, this is just the jumping off point for me, as I begin to weed through what I think we can reasonably accomplish in a year.

Research Report

We here at Homeschool Digression have been taking a well-deserved break from the homeschooling endeavor this summer. Following our mid-winter move it became more and more clear to me that we needed to take the summer, and get our house in order, literally. :) So along with decorating and organizing our household, I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching homeschool "stuff"... books, philosophies, publishers and programs. Cuz that's what I do: ridiculous amounts of research.... in everything.

Earlier this Spring, I had settled on continuing with Sonlight. The plan was to continue with the History/Geography, Readers, and Read Alouds that I had from last year, continue using The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and Horizons Math, and add in Math-U-See and All About Spelling. But I finally got around to reading The Well-Trained Mind and The Read-Aloud Handbook which both really impacted me.

The Read-Aloud Handbook was such a pleasant surprise. I fully expected it to be a listing of books to read to the boys. That was included, but the majority of the book really focused on the many benefits of reading aloud. It really reinforced my commitment to reading to the boys, and my decision to stick with Sonlight, since they place a heavy emphasis on reading as an educational tool.

The Well-Trained Mind impacted me a bit differently in that it details more of a philosophical approach to teaching, called Classical Education. Classical Education gears teaching methods to the child's developmental stages. For instance in the early grades, kids are constantly recording all sorts of new information: facts, dates, languages, rules. This becomes a basis later on for logic and later for articulating or debating positions on different subjects. According to this teaching method, I am encouraged to fill my son's mind with all manner of facts, exposing him to Ancient History via chronological history stories, books and then have him tell me the stories back and then illustrate them.

I'm probably not going to follow this to the extent that they outline in the book, but what I liked was the idea of teaching History chronologically, and starting with Ancient History in the first grade. I was never very big into History in school myself. In fact it was the one subject that I really struggled with, but after I became a Christian, I began to see History as God's story through the ages. I just can't get enough of it. So last week I borrowed The Story of the World from our local library to see how I liked it, and I LOVE it! It's not terribly deep and there are things that I don't like about it, but I really love the way that it puts the stories in order, and I think it's a good starting point for teaching History to little ones. I'm thinking that I can still use the Sonlight History books in conjunction with The Story of the World.