Aussie Kim recently wrote about the classical approach to education as a homeschooling option. I thought you might like to know a little bit about how this works in our homeschool.
I roughly follow the curriculum outlined in The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, Revised and Updated Edition
The Classical Education described in The Well-Trained Mind divides the twelve grades into three stages. It just so happens that this year, for one year only, I have a child in each stage. How about that? Since the this whole high school thing is starting to wear me down (just kidding, I love this stuff!), I thought I would start with my oldest and show you what a typical day looks like for us. Being a something of a geek, I have color coded it for you. If you can't read it - click on it and get the full picture.
I know this looks very regimented, and for some of you it may be a little to structured. Believe me, there are days when we chuck it all and go to the zoo. However, for the record, my children have requested the structure. They like the structure. I've tried to be less structured with them, and all I've gotten are complaints. (Their Father's DNA was highly dominant.) I am not by nature a structured creature, but I am a reed - I can bend.
Now, about the schedule...Sal is in what's termed the Rhetoric Stage of his education. During this year, according to the authors, "the student learns to express herself with fluency, grace, elegance, and persuasiveness." (Like, uh, right. Um, what they said.) The focus is on developing the student's ability to express his or herself both verbally or through written work. This is new territory for us. I'll let you know how it goes.
As in earlier stages, reading and history are combined through the study of Great Books (classical literature) in sequential order. In other words, you don't chop history and literature up into segments (such as British Lit., American Lit., American History), but rather you study them in order that they occurred or were written. Got it? Therefore, World War II would never be studied before the Crusades, nor would Thomas Paine's Common Sense be read before The Odyssey. History happened in order, and should be studied likewise.
The study of Koine Greek (biblical Greek) is not necessarily recommended, but hey, free lessons! Enough said.
Korean Cultural Studies won't be found in the book, either. However, Sal will be traveling with my parents to South Korea in the fall, and I didn't think we should waste this opportunity to learn everything we can about the country beforehand. He is also studying Hangul (the Korean alphabet). When he returns from his trip, it's back to studying Japanese.
The rest of the schedule is pretty typical of an American high school education, although the science courses are not taught with typical textbooks, but rather through memorization of important facts and through scientific exploration (i.e. blowing up the kitchen - still kidding!).
What else can I tell you? It's all in the book. Don't be intimidated by the copious amount of information in it. Take in bite size pieces, beginning with your child's level.
Next time, I'll show you my middle schoolers schedule. She's in the Logic Stage.
An eleven-year-old female in the Logic Stage. A mother can hope.
We love reading…………….
All you homeschoolers know there is a plethora (I love that word) of curriculum and non curriculum choices out there. The best you can do is keep looking until you find something that fits your goals and your children's learning styles. Louisiana Sue and I both have a love of reading, this appears to be the case for our children now, and this is one of the reasons both of us have ended up with curriculums that are a Charlotte Mason - Classical education style for our geography/history/English.
So what is this style? In a nutshell, it rolls reading (great literature), history and geography into one experience. You read stories to your kids, and they read stories themselves, about a specific time in history. From this reading, you ask them reflective questions. This improves their listening skills, their comprehension, their vocabulary, their geography and their understanding of history. Indirectly it also gives a good grounding in grammar and composition.
They mark these specific historical times on a time line. This puts the historical period in perspective and gives them an idea of the flow of events through time which saves them having to memorize dates. You mark the location of specific events on a world map to give them a geographical knowledge that underpins the history. The older you get the more original literature from those time periods that you study. What better way to convey the urgent need for relief troops during the Civil War, than reading a letter from a General to his Commander in Chief?
The curriculum guide I used for teaching kindergarten and grade 1 (learning to read and beginning math) was mainly the Montessori Method. Along with this from grades 1 to 5, I used The Sonlight Curriculum. I have thoroughly enjoyed using it. I am now switching to The Well Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer, which is what Susan has used up to grade 9 so far.
The difference? Not much! Except that with Sonlight you get a box that contains ALL the books you and your kids will read, and you get a day by day guide for a 4 day week or 5 day week school schedule for the whole year.
With the Well Trained Mind method, you need to be at one with your public library or with ebay to source the books needed. Also, with the Well Trained Mind method, you specifically study logic and Latin - and if you can, (lucky us!) Greek. And there is a slightly different reading list. Sonlight Curriculum actually uses The Story of the World (by the Well Trained Mind authors) for its history text for grades 6 and 7.
The Charlotte Mason method has been interpreted by many. She promoted a literature rich tapestry with reflective questioning as the best way of learning.
Want more information on some of these curriculums? Here are some useful website links on these methods, and a couple of other related sites:
The Well Trained Mind - they sell "The Story of the World" (child friendly recap of history) in 4 time periods (Ancients, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern), with matching student pages (maps, questions on readings). Their website has a summary of the curriculum for each grade level grouping, and the reading lists.
The Sonlight Curriculum - they have a great catalog, with a brief synopsis of each book they use for each year. They are the ideal option if you do NOT want to plan anything. The literature includes original writings and all the related Newberry and Caldecott etc winners related to each time period. It is a well rounded curriculum, which is particularly good for anyone just starting homeschooling. They have a great option of a 4 day a week school year, a little less reading, but they go over the same material.
The Robinson Curriculum - this curriculum recommends 5 hours a day, 6 days a week all year (about 10 months/year). Every day is the same: 30 minutes of math problems, 1 1/2 hours of (Saxon) math, the child then writes a one page essay, and the remainder of time (about 2 hours) is spent reading Science and History texts. The emphasis here is on independent learning. Dr Robinson runs a household with no television (or handheld electronics) and no sugar. The schooling is done first thing in the morning (after chores). He sells a computer CD which contains a great majority of the literature and some reference books and his curriculum for $195. You can see his book list here. He's just a little bit too rigid for me, but you can't beat the simplicity of the system!
The Charlotte Mason Method has been interpreted by many, a book by Karen Andreola is a quite good explanation of this method. She promotes extensive reading and reflective questioning as the road to a good education. The Bluedorns have created The Trivium also based on the Charlotte Mason approach. They have some interesting articles on their site. Here are some more book links for this method: Charlotte Mason
If you know of any other curriculums along this line feel free to add them in the comments section with your views on if it works for you or not.
Girl Scouts is a great activity for homeschoolers, particularly unschoolers. They address many age appropriate topics for girls, educating them in a non-sexist way, on a whole range of topics with a whole range of activities. The badges they earn are leading them towards a good understanding of themselves, the world they live in, and the many things they can do independantly, both now and in their future.
A well run girl scout troop is a joy to behold, and depends on the troop leader, assistants, helping parents and the girls themselves of course! Louisiana Sue is our Junior Girl Scout leader, and she does a superb job, mixing humor into everything along the way. This friday night we had a lock-in, this is where the girls get to sleep overnight locked in somewhere. What goes on? Karioke, board games, nail polish, pillow fights, balloon games, scavenger hunts, pizza, brownies and a couple of good movies. 
To take advantage of the leader and her parent assistants all being in one place LOCKED IN for the evening, we planned the year to come. We are sharing our planning work, to give some insight into the types of things a girl scout will learn in a year. Here is the summary of the Junior girl scout badge names and how we have planned it for our troop which spans girls in their first, second and third year.
Now I tell you, is that a pretty good curriculum or what?
Since Susan and I will be joining forces with a couple of other homeschooling mums to test our clutch of little darlings with a Standardized Test soon (cost $50), AND since Susan posted about her views on this adventure, here is another take from me the situation. We posted earlier about preparing for the American College Test (ACT) from grade 5. This was a well thought out article (modest aren't I!) that explains how to enroll to become a tester, how to administer the test, and what you can take advantage of if your kid gets above the 90 percentile.
If your kids want to get into college then most of them will need to take a test. When they get to college, they will have to take many many tests. When they get into the real world, this sort of requirment is generally not necessary anymore.
You can reject the system, and take a stand against getting your kids to take a standardized test. What will this do? It will put "the test" out into that group of scary things they have not done yet. In my humble opinion I say let them practice taking these tests when nothing rests on the results except the idle curiosity of the parents.
Of course, nothing but a mild curious interest is sometimes difficult to fake, particularly if you were raised with parents who took a magnifing glass to your quarterly report cards! But most test nervousness is LEARNED behaviour. If you are stressed about it, I guarantee they will be too. Pretend it is a non-event. Test in the morning at a civilized hour for half a day, then let them play for the rest of the day, or make a fun excursion or play date with the other kids who are taking the tests. To take the Stanford Achievement Test this way for most grades takes 4 hours for 3 days, or 6 hours for 2 days - I suggest spreading it over 3 days (especially younger kids).
The Stanford Achievement Test costs $50. In my mind that's not a bad investment once a year.
If they get in the 90 percentile of the US, there are valuable academic scholarships around - one example - you can apply for a scholarship to the Huntsville Alabama NASA space camp (worth around $1000). As mentioned in the earlier article, those scoring over the 90 percentile in anything can enroll in their local Univeristy Talent Identification program which will then give them a chance to take the ACT version for grade 8(called Explore), grade 10(called Plan) or senior (called ACT) much earlier than normal. Starting from grade 5, this means your child would have taken the grade 8 test 4 times at the point that most other 8th graders were taking it for the first time. Who do you think will have the advantage then?
These activities take up 3 days for the Standardized testing, and one Saturday morning for the ACT grade 8 test. Not much if you look at it only as an annual activity.
Also remember, there is no reason to show your kids the results. Simply a "you did really well" or "we need to learn a bit more grammar for this type of test" will do. I promise, they will not be waiting for the results, unless they are groomed by you to look for the results!!
As I see it there is nothing to loose except a few days each year, $50 per kid and some preparation time by the parents. They practice their musical instruments, they practice for dance recitals, they practice for baseball, soccer, football, etc etc. Why not let them practice for test taking?
Aussie Kim
The real title of this post could possibly use the "streakers defence" or "it seemed like a good idea at the time". Encouraging your kid to play in the mud. So here's the down side in full visual force for you. Here's the other downside I discovered today. The normally unused screen door lock had to be used today, but it was jammed up with mud from above mentioned learning experience (muddy hands turning the knob to get in). Consequently we stood for 5 minutes in the VERY cold wind attempting to jam the key into the lock, past the mud, now turned to a powder very simliar to cement....
There's something very enticing about writing on white boards with dry erase pens. If you write out a math problem on a piece of paper, the kids will NEVER try to take the pencil out of your hand to show you they know the answer. HOWEVER, if you have written the problem on a white board, and showed the enjoyment of wiping out an error with your finger (in tantalizing slow motion), they will literally BEG to have a go.
The downside is, they are not going to have 100% of their mind on the equations, but I suspect this is true much of the time, without the distraction of dry erase marker magic. You can make math with a white board even more fun (oh, boy!) by having two dry erase pens and racing them with on the math problems (remember mum or dad - you have already graduated, give the kid a break of 30-60 seconds headstart!)
We used white boards to learn cursive writing (see teaching handwriting the Montessori way) and it captured their imagination then too. If you go to Home Depot or Lowes or equivalent hardware stores you can buy white board in 8 foot by 6 foot size and get them to cut it up. You can take this home and attach it to your walls - buy sufficient dry erase pens, and watch and laugh as your young children boast to their friends "We can draw on our walls...". Note: Occasional dagger looks from other parents as they visualize their little babies taking home the writing on wall concept to their own unprotected walls.............
Aussie Kim
Those who are homeschooling know the value of TIME OFF. This is not necessarily time off like an vacation to the snow, but time off from thinking about the children and the curriculums!
Some of us (me!) are incredibly lucky in having friends or a spouse who will keep children while we take the much needed TIME OFF. 
I have been blessed in the last week to get a whopping two TIME OFF's in the last seven days.
I thought I would share photos from my first time off (a sunday afternoon horse ride).
TIME OFF for me simply constitutes not having to chaperone the children, and not having housework or schoolwork in my face. 
An hour or two a week can keep me charged up for a good year (ok, week). So if you have the opportunity grab it, RUN AWAY, and later, thank your benefactors!
Mum to her little Bambies: See, I told you those extra phys ed classes and camoflage 101 would pay off!
Aussie Kim
Recent Comments