Al and Michele have been reading a book called The Well Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. It talks about “Classical Educaton” which divides educational development into three stages; grammar, logic, and rhetoric. I really like most of the concept, particularily those dealing with reading, writing, and history during the grammar and logical stages. I am still agnostic as to the relative benefits of learning Latin and will consider that a lot more before I decide to jump into it.
Both Kelly and Christian are quite good readers. Also, both of them wrote neatly before they started school this year. They continue to read well, but their handwriting has gotten a lot sloppier and they regularly bring home poorly written, uncorrected work from school. I like what I have read so far in The Well Trained Mind about reading writing, grammar, dictation, narration, etc. The recommendation is that, as soon as the child can handle it starting in the second grade, they should write in cursive. I am going to have to do a systematic investigation of the materials and methods to find something that will be appropriate for both Kelly and Christian to get to that point.
I am making curriculum choices on the subjects with which I am most comfortable. I have pretty much decided to go with Saxon Math for both of the kids and have downloaded the middle grades placement test from their website so that I can test Kelly toward the end of this school year to see which package would be most appropriate for her. We have Saxon Math 3 at home and I have a pretty good sense of how I can use that for the rest of this year with Christian as his government school is not challenging him at all. I will test him with the same placement test as Kelly, but my gut feel is that he will need to continue in the Saxon Math 3 material at least for the first part of next year.
One of the really high points in The Well Trained Mind is the idea that history should be taught starting from the very beginning and working through history up to the modern era. There did not appear to be any books that would allow me to do that with both Kelly and Christian as we are starting with Christian half way through the grammar stage and Kelly at the beginning of the logic stage. I was delighted to find books for grades 1-4 at The Well Trained Mind‘s sister website Peace Hill Press. While that will not be wholly adequate for Kelly, at least it will provide me with some framework by which I can teach Kelly and Christian together, supplementing Kelly\’s history studies with different materials.
After Gospel Meeting last night, I spoke with Louise Doolittle. Mike and Louise are homeschooling their daughter Malia (age 12). Louise and Malia are active in the local homeschool groups in the town where we live. I was amazed at how much stuff is going on. There are etiquitte classes for girls taught by a local beauty pageant winner, a chess club, a great art club, many physical education oriented opportunities, lots of music, a drama club, field trips, Spanish classes, and a lot more. We are going to have to look at these closely, both to see how we can be a help, and to find opportunities for the kids to participate and learn with other kids. It looks like it might be very easy to get over-committed with some of this so we will try to choose wisely between all the available opportunites.