First, does anyone have a better source for blogger layouts? This one drives me absolutely crazy because everything is in one straight column. I'd like it to take up more of the page width. Its just I'm kind of obsessive about symmetry and my page is anything but symmetrical.
Well, I was talking to my friend Tanya last night and she mentioned homeschooling and our cousin, Faith, and her blog. I realized that I've mentioned we're homeschooling but haven't really shared what we're doing aside from our part-time co-op program. So for fellow home-schoolers, future home-schoolers or people who are just curious over whether my kids are going to learn anything, here is what we're doing.
We're using Spell to Write and Read by Wanda Sanseri as our spelling program. This is so far an amazing program but very in depth. The teacher manual itself is a read and a half. For penmanship we're using Cursive First. Ava can already print most of her letters but we're taking a cursive approach which I believe will really help her with her fluidity. She struggles a bit with the stop and start of printing so I think cursive will provide an ease of directionality and a soft fluidity which should really help. Lastly, we are using Math U See Primer for her math work. This is the program I needed. Everything is so visual and we are basically starting out with teaching her that the numbers are 0-9, not 1-10. My engineer husband said, "Yeah. Of course!" and I looked at him and said, "Well *I* was never taught that way!" So we are learning as we go that we both bring very different experiences to the educational table in our home.
Everything else is a bit of a hodge-podge. We're taking a classical approach with some Charlotte Mason influences (how's that for home education speak?) which basically means our kids will be geniuses. Ha! Really, I've read some great books and really feel that this combination provides the kids a fabulous educational foundation and hopefully will establish in these early years a love for learning.
15 years ago
3 comments:
Hey Sara, thanks for sharing! Nathan had the same response to Math-u-see. Made perfect sense to him, but I feel like I'm understanding the principles for the first time. In the kindergarten book. :)
So what are you thinking on the Latin/Hebrew/Greek aspect of classical? I like alot of the classical approach and can see maybe doing a little Latin in later years, but not real sure on the other two languages. Thinking maybe something more like, um, Spanish.
So glad you guys are homeschooling too - it's fun to bounce ideas off each other!
I love the concept but also think a more practical language needs to come into play. If we stay at the school then she will receive Latin instruction starting around 3rd grade and then can add optional Greek or Hebrew in during high school. Right now I wish I had some understanding of Hebrew as I'm in the middle of studying some subjects!
As a side note, Latin and Greek roots are part of language arts instruction in the middle school years in public school. They just don't know how to teach it! I remember I was given a packet of random words and no instructions. So I would throw the word up on the overhead and hte kids would "memorize" it out of context and then we would move on. So crazy.
Math is not my strong subject so I am anxious to teach it to myself all over again. I have a feeling I didn't get it because everyone taught it differently. If there had been consistent instruction and solid foundations laid then I think the results would've looked different.
Sara,
I'm interested to hear how many hours you work with Ava on the days she's at home, and how it's going with two other kids? Send me a note sometime.
Star
Post a Comment