Month: April 2004

Progress

Christian and I did lesson 60 in Saxon Math 3 and I think we may be a little ahead of ourselves. I read a little further in the materials and I think it would be best if we went all the way back to the beginning with lesson 1 and start working our way forward. It is the multiplication that gets him more than anything else and I really believe we need to give him a stronger base there before pushing forward. Based on what I know now, I believe he will be just fine for next year if we work our way from the beginning. Actually, I am thinking I will put off purchasing a math program for Christian until this one is complete. He is learning stuff and it is fun.

Planning

After looking at how much work it would be to put a program together from scratch and further discussion with Al and Michele Rizos, we have decided to look at the Sonlight program and Singapore Math before going a whole lot further. The day to day administration of a program of study that is not already well laid out might be more than we can effectively handle. On Al and Michele’s recommendation, I am going to investigate these new programs a little more carefully and if they appear to meet the same goals as they are set out by The Well Trained Mind then I will probably go with them.

When I got to work, a guy named Bruce Smith with whom I work talked a little about he and his wife’s homeschooling program for their children. He told me that they had looked at going from scratch with The Well Trained Mind, but after investigating a little further they thought it would be a better investment of their time to spend it teaching their children instead of planning the teaching of their children. They had looked at a lot of plans and had settled on Sonlight because it provided a great plan that reduced the prepartion time greatly. They have been using it for three or four months and just love it. It sounds like they had just about the same experience as Al and Michele’s friends Paul and Heidi Renteria are having with their children.

Bruce told me that it is a reading intensive program. There is no television in their home and they read to their children regularly. This has turned their children into avid readers. His wife does most of the teaching and he said she feels the great reading materials provided as part of the Sonlight program are perfect for their family. That kind of environment is very similar to the environment in our home (no television – avid readers) as well as that of Al and Michele. I am looking forward to looking more closely at the Sonlight program over the next few days.

Infrastructure

We were initially planning to do our homeschooling upstairs in the bonus room. If we do that, the kids will be up there by themselves whenever Lorena is working in the kitchen or doing laundry. We have decided to convert the lighted closet under the stairway to a “homeschool materials” closet and set up our homeschool on the breakfast nook table and in the familyroom beside the kitchen. That will serve a couple of purposes. The kids can get into the habit of cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast so they can do their homeschool and Lorena can cook, sew, or do laundry downstairs while being only a couple of steps from the kids.

This Saturday, we are planning to run down to Lowes in Salem (we like it much better than Home Depot) and get the shelving that we need to hold all of the homeschool materials. I will keep records here on our actual costs for all of this. I am going to start making additional lists here of the things we think we need to buy to get started and then add a webpage to the site that has a table of our expenses with timing and descriptions.
||After looking at how much work it would be to put a program together from scratch and further discussion with Al and Michele Rizos, we have decided to look at the Sonlight program and Singapore Math before going a whole lot further.

Until the school year starts this fall, I will break these posts up into several sections. The way I see it, I don’t currently have enough information about how well my kids perform in the different areas to start assigning the work we will be performing each day. For now I will post mostly to a section on what I am doing academically with the kids to prepare them for next year (Progress) and to a section what I am doing write now to gather information to prepare the plan (Planning). I will also throw in a little about what is going on in daily life (Life).

Progress

We have Saxon Math 2 and 3. I looked through Saxon Math 2 first and saw that Christian was beyond that. I looked at Saxon Math 3 and believe that the main things he is missing there is multiplication and division. I think he is at the stage where he does not need to do everything in that curricula, but I need to pick and chose what he does very carefully so that we can fill in the holes that he is missing. For the first time, we sat down and went through a whole lesson (59 of Saxon Math 3) and he did great.

Both of us enjoyed it very much because we got to sit together and work on something that was challenging to him. He struggled a little bit on the multiplication part so I am going to move back to the beginning and find those lessons that emphasize multiplication with the idea that I can skip some stuff that he already has. That being said, I think it will be quite good in laying a foundation for future work if we go through most of it.

For math, I am going to leave Kelly working through here normal government school program. Toward the end of the year, I will give her the Saxon Middle Grades Placement Test and then place her where she belongs as I mentioned in an earlier post.

The Well Trained Mind book I am reading now calls for a lot of memorization. Kelly, Christian, and I have been memorizing things together for a long time now. This year, Kelly is working on memorizing Matthew 5 and Christian is memorizing Psalms 8 and 9 from the King James Version of the bible. We like to read from the New International Version, but believe the KJV and the Reina Valera version (Spanish) are a lot prettier for memorization. The way we have done it in the past is by me reading them the verse on which we are working after which they repeat it back to me seven time. Then they repeat all the verses they have learned together a couple of times at the end.

The Well Trained Mind recommends that the student record whatever they are memorizing and then repeat the verses in unison with the recording until they have it down. I think what I am going to do is set up a system that combines the two approaches. I will start making the children responsible for their own memorization using a tape recorder, then every night before they go to bed, I will have them repeat all that they have learned to me a couple of times. Tonight, we will start doing the first recording.

Planning

I think I have a pretty good teaching plan now for mathematics because I have settled on Saxon Math and they have everything well structured for the whole year. The next thing I will try to tackle is history. The basic premise for the study of history is that the students start from the beginning. I had mentioned earlier that, as I foundation from which to work, we would use The Story of the World Volume 1. The Well Trained Mind recommends The Usborne Book of World History for students in the grammar stage and Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World for students in the logic stage. Unfortunately, Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World is out of print and costs over $200.00 from many used book stores. After some investigation, I found that The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia has replaced Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World and will work just fine. I am sure I will get all of those books.

The next thing I will investigate is the supporting books Kelly and Christian will need to to go along with the above mentioned survey books. In addition, we are planning to by a set of The World Book Encyclopedia.

Main books from which to base the program:

The Story of the World Volume 1

The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia

The Usborne Book of World History

List of books for supplementing Christian’s third grade and Kelly’s fifth grade History/Geography programs:

Christian Only

Living in Roman Times by Jane Chisholm – Usborne from Greenleaf Press

Who Built the Pyramids Usborne from Greenleaf Press

Who Were the Romans? Usborne from Greenleaf Press

Journey Through History: Prehistory to Egypt by Gloria Verges

Kelly and some Christian

Rome and Romans by Heather Amery from Greenleaf Press

Early Times Series

Early Times: The Story of Ancient Egypt by Suzanne Strauss Art – Wayside Publishing

Early Times: The Story of Ancient Greece by Suzanne Strauss Art – Wayside Publishing

West Meets East: The Travels of Alexander by Suzanne Strauss Art – Wayside Publishing

Early Times: The Story of Ancient Rome by Suzanne Strauss Art – Wayside Publishing

The Classical Companion by Charles F. Baker III and Rosalie F. Baker – Greenleaf Press

Roman World: The Legionary by Peter Connolly – American Home-School Publishing

Roman World: The Calvaryman by Peter Connolly – American Home-School Publishing

Roman World: The Roman Fort by Peter Connolly – American Home-School Publishing

Roman World: Pompeii by Peter Connolly – American Home-School Publishing

What Do We Know about Prehistoric People? by Mike Corbishley – Peter Bedrick Books

Eywitness Books designed by Dorling Kindersley

Eyewitness Books: Ancient Africa by Yvonne Ayo, et al. – Amazon.com

Eyewitness Books: Ancient China by Arthur Cotterell, et al. – Amazon.com

Eyewitness Books: Ancient Egypt by George Hart, et al. – Amazon.com

Eyewitness Books: Ancient Rome by Simon James, et al. – Amazon.com

Eyewitness Books: Ancient Greece by Anne Pearson, et al. – Amazon.com

Eyewitness Books: Pyramid by James Putnam, et al. – Amazon.com

Eyewitness Books: Bible Lands by Jonathon N. Tubb, et al. – Amazon.com

BBC Fact Finders

The World of Odysseus by Neil Grant – American Homeschool Publishing

Ancient Greece by Steve Harrison and Patricia Harrison – American Homeschool Publishing

Egypt Parkwest Publications – American Homeschool Publishing

How Would You Survive…? Series

How Would You Survive as an Ancient Roman? by Anita Ganeri, et al. – Rainbow Resource Center

How Would You Survive as an Ancient Greek? by Fiona Macdonald, et al. – Rainbow Resource Center

How Would You Survive as an Ancient Egyptian? by Jacqueline, et al. – Rainbow Resource Center

The Roman News by Andrew Langley, et al. – Greenleaf Press

A Story of Roman Planning and Construction by David Macauley – Greenleaf Press

Pyramid Houghton Mifflin – American Home-School Publishing

The Pharohs of Ancient Egypt by Elizabeth Payne – Greenleaf Press

The Greek News by Anton Powell and Philip Steele – Greenleaf Press

The Egyptian News by Scott Steedman, ed. – Greenleaf Press
||List of books for supplementation of Christian’s third grade and Kelly’s fifth grade History/Geography Programs

Lorena and I have decided to homeschool Kelly (age ten) and Christian (age eight) next year. The purpose of this blog is to describe our ideas and efforts in doing that properly. Our friends, Al and Michele Rizos called on Saturday night and talked about their plan to Homeschool their children, Anthony (third grade) and Nathan (first grade) next year. Their daughter Olivia is only three, so they plan to leave her in preschool while Michele and the other kids adjust to homeschool.

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.