2017-18 End of Year Evaluations
Three more weeks left in our school year! Things are beginning to dwindle as some subjects are finished and more are dropping off each week. It's that time of the year where we start feeling a bit more free! I've come to love the end of the school year, not because I'm exhausted and so ready to be done, but because it is so satisfying to reflect on the past year and all that was studied, experienced, read, discussed, made, and enjoyed. Focusing on filling our souls with truth goodness and beauty has resulted in full hearts and minds at the end of the year. Of course we're all ready for a break, but we're not exhausted, burned-out, and dreading the start of "school" again...
This past year, my 5th/6th grade kids had the following subjects:
-Math: Art of Problem Solving PreAlgebra and Math-U-See Zeta
-Latin for Children Primer C
-French for Children Primer A
-Writing & Rhetoric Books 6-7 (Commonplace, Encomium & Vituperation)
-Grammar Voyage by Michael Clay Thompson
-Building Poems by Michael Clay Thompson
-Reasoning & Reading Level 1
-Lyrical Life Science Anatomy
-Tapestry of Grace 19th Century history
-Hand-picked literature titles
Much of this is just carrying on in the paths we've been walking for the past few years. I had planned to also work through Memoria Press Geography 3, but it proved to be too far above their level for this year. We'll try again next year. :)
Math: We did our best with The Art of Problem Solving. We both really liked it. It was super challenging, but it required a lot of time, and incurred a lot of frustration. The results were what we enjoyed though, as the math concepts were coming to life for both me and Luke. But, after one semester, we were only a third of the way through the book. :( He chose at semester to switch back to Math-U-See Prealgebra. He started at the beginning of the book, and found it so easy after The Art of Problem Solving that he's going to finish the whole book by the end of this semester! So, I'd call that a win. I'm going to have Kiryn work in it a little bit next year too for fun.
Language: We all still love Latin! It is the kid's favorite subject, with French now a close second. We are translating harder and harder sentences and it's a lot of fun. They both really enjoyed French this year, and we'll continue into the second book next year. Writing & Rhetoric is going so well. They are really turning into wonderful writers, and best of all, they enjoy it! I have been so pleased with their encomium essays this semester!
Again, we love love love Michael Clay Thompson grammar and poetics. We made it through both books this year and I'm so impressed with the depth of understanding they have of poetical devices, complicated sentence structures, and their ability to use different phrases and clauses in their writing appropriately.
We began the year with Sassafrass Science as our main text for our human body study. But somewhere in the middle of the first semester, they got bored with the reader and we weren't getting to the experiments. They really preferred the Lyrical Life Science book, and so I let them focus more on that. They did great with the songs, and with the workbook. I also had them do some sketches in their nature book of the body systems they were studying. This was a really interesting study, and kept things simple for science this year. We finished it with six weeks to spare, so we're moving on to birds using Memoria Press's What's That Bird? set. They both are LOVING that since high now we have lots of different kinds of birds in our yard building next. We have European Starlings, blue jays, robins, cardinals, and several small sparrows or finches... Great time for a bird study!
Tapestry went really well this year. I really just use it as a guide. I did my Big-Picture planning over the summer where I planned out the books we'd read and how long we'd give each one, what projects we might do, maps, and what literature titles we'd read. I kept it fairly restrained and set reasonable expectations that were just about right. I wanted them to be reading 45-60 minutes per day. I'm so very pleased with their finished book stacks this year! They've written some great narrations on their history, done some beautiful projects, and thanks to the Accountability and Thinking Questions in the Tapestry student pages, we've had some really good discussions together as well. I plan to keep doing Tapestry my own way for the foreseeable future.
In addition to this, we studied Rembrandt and Botticelli paintings all year, got to know Vivaldi and Beethoven's works, read two Shakespeare plays in their original entirety (Twelfth Knight and Romeo and Juliet), read two lives of Plutarch (Theseus and Romulus), learned six hymns, and memorized I Corinthians 13, Psalm 100, and the Gettysburg Address.
My younger two had a great year with Veritas Readers, All About Spelling 1-2, Explode the Code, Cottage Press Primer 1, Song School Latin 1, MUS Alpha and Beta, and lots of wonderful books from Tapestry of Grace, Ambleside, and My Bookhouse.
And now for Mom. I have somehow managed to complete the following ClassicalU classes:
-Essentials of Effective Teaching by Robyn Burlew
-Teaching the Great Books by Joshua Gibbs
-Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing by Andrew Pudewa
-Principles of Classical Pedagogy by Dr. Christopher Perrin
-Essential Latin by Karen Moore
-Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator by Dr. David Diener
-Teaching Math Classically by Andrew Elizalde
-How to Teach History by Wes Callahan
Over the summer, I plan to take:
-Reading and Teaching the Odyssey
-Assessing Students Classically
-Essential Logic: The Logical Fallacies
-Teaching the Classics by Center for Lit with Adam Andrews
I've also read:
-Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator
-Villette by Charlotte Bronte
-Treasure Island
-Robinson Crusoe
-Life Under Compulsion by Anhony Esolen
-The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse
-Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition by Karen Glass
-Little Women
-Uncle Tom's Cabin
-The Iliad
-You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith
-Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
-Norms & Nobility by David Hicks
-A Thomas Jefferson Education
-The Black Moon and Angry Tide (Poldark novels) by Winston Graham
I'm currently reading or will read over the summer:
-How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler
-Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott
-The Aeneid by Virgil
-A Beginnner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider
-The Vicar of Wakefield
This is one of those things like when you look back at your budget and you cannot figure out how you paid all your bills. I look back at this list of books read and classes taken and cannot account for how I did this. :) It does not seem like it should have been possible. But, there it is! I did it! It's been a tremendous year of growth for me personally, and I'm so thankful for the time I had investing in myself as a person, mother, and teacher before we step into the middle school and high school years. I feel equipped and prepared. I have a plan and I'm sticking to it. Well, not really. I'm sure it will be drastically changed! Maybe I should say, I have principles and a philosophy, and I'm sticking to them. :)
Here's to a great year next year!
This past year, my 5th/6th grade kids had the following subjects:
-Math: Art of Problem Solving PreAlgebra and Math-U-See Zeta
-Latin for Children Primer C
-French for Children Primer A
-Writing & Rhetoric Books 6-7 (Commonplace, Encomium & Vituperation)
-Grammar Voyage by Michael Clay Thompson
-Building Poems by Michael Clay Thompson
-Reasoning & Reading Level 1
-Lyrical Life Science Anatomy
-Tapestry of Grace 19th Century history
-Hand-picked literature titles
Much of this is just carrying on in the paths we've been walking for the past few years. I had planned to also work through Memoria Press Geography 3, but it proved to be too far above their level for this year. We'll try again next year. :)
Math: We did our best with The Art of Problem Solving. We both really liked it. It was super challenging, but it required a lot of time, and incurred a lot of frustration. The results were what we enjoyed though, as the math concepts were coming to life for both me and Luke. But, after one semester, we were only a third of the way through the book. :( He chose at semester to switch back to Math-U-See Prealgebra. He started at the beginning of the book, and found it so easy after The Art of Problem Solving that he's going to finish the whole book by the end of this semester! So, I'd call that a win. I'm going to have Kiryn work in it a little bit next year too for fun.
Language: We all still love Latin! It is the kid's favorite subject, with French now a close second. We are translating harder and harder sentences and it's a lot of fun. They both really enjoyed French this year, and we'll continue into the second book next year. Writing & Rhetoric is going so well. They are really turning into wonderful writers, and best of all, they enjoy it! I have been so pleased with their encomium essays this semester!
Again, we love love love Michael Clay Thompson grammar and poetics. We made it through both books this year and I'm so impressed with the depth of understanding they have of poetical devices, complicated sentence structures, and their ability to use different phrases and clauses in their writing appropriately.
We began the year with Sassafrass Science as our main text for our human body study. But somewhere in the middle of the first semester, they got bored with the reader and we weren't getting to the experiments. They really preferred the Lyrical Life Science book, and so I let them focus more on that. They did great with the songs, and with the workbook. I also had them do some sketches in their nature book of the body systems they were studying. This was a really interesting study, and kept things simple for science this year. We finished it with six weeks to spare, so we're moving on to birds using Memoria Press's What's That Bird? set. They both are LOVING that since high now we have lots of different kinds of birds in our yard building next. We have European Starlings, blue jays, robins, cardinals, and several small sparrows or finches... Great time for a bird study!
Tapestry went really well this year. I really just use it as a guide. I did my Big-Picture planning over the summer where I planned out the books we'd read and how long we'd give each one, what projects we might do, maps, and what literature titles we'd read. I kept it fairly restrained and set reasonable expectations that were just about right. I wanted them to be reading 45-60 minutes per day. I'm so very pleased with their finished book stacks this year! They've written some great narrations on their history, done some beautiful projects, and thanks to the Accountability and Thinking Questions in the Tapestry student pages, we've had some really good discussions together as well. I plan to keep doing Tapestry my own way for the foreseeable future.
In addition to this, we studied Rembrandt and Botticelli paintings all year, got to know Vivaldi and Beethoven's works, read two Shakespeare plays in their original entirety (Twelfth Knight and Romeo and Juliet), read two lives of Plutarch (Theseus and Romulus), learned six hymns, and memorized I Corinthians 13, Psalm 100, and the Gettysburg Address.
My younger two had a great year with Veritas Readers, All About Spelling 1-2, Explode the Code, Cottage Press Primer 1, Song School Latin 1, MUS Alpha and Beta, and lots of wonderful books from Tapestry of Grace, Ambleside, and My Bookhouse.
And now for Mom. I have somehow managed to complete the following ClassicalU classes:
-Essentials of Effective Teaching by Robyn Burlew
-Teaching the Great Books by Joshua Gibbs
-Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing by Andrew Pudewa
-Principles of Classical Pedagogy by Dr. Christopher Perrin
-Essential Latin by Karen Moore
-Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator by Dr. David Diener
-Teaching Math Classically by Andrew Elizalde
-How to Teach History by Wes Callahan
Over the summer, I plan to take:
-Reading and Teaching the Odyssey
-Assessing Students Classically
-Essential Logic: The Logical Fallacies
-Teaching the Classics by Center for Lit with Adam Andrews
I've also read:
-Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator
-Villette by Charlotte Bronte
-Treasure Island
-Robinson Crusoe
-Life Under Compulsion by Anhony Esolen
-The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse
-Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition by Karen Glass
-Little Women
-Uncle Tom's Cabin
-The Iliad
-You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith
-Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
-Norms & Nobility by David Hicks
-A Thomas Jefferson Education
-The Black Moon and Angry Tide (Poldark novels) by Winston Graham
I'm currently reading or will read over the summer:
-How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler
-Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott
-The Aeneid by Virgil
-A Beginnner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider
-The Vicar of Wakefield
This is one of those things like when you look back at your budget and you cannot figure out how you paid all your bills. I look back at this list of books read and classes taken and cannot account for how I did this. :) It does not seem like it should have been possible. But, there it is! I did it! It's been a tremendous year of growth for me personally, and I'm so thankful for the time I had investing in myself as a person, mother, and teacher before we step into the middle school and high school years. I feel equipped and prepared. I have a plan and I'm sticking to it. Well, not really. I'm sure it will be drastically changed! Maybe I should say, I have principles and a philosophy, and I'm sticking to them. :)
Here's to a great year next year!
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