End of Year 2018-19 Review
This year has been so full, so busy, and I'm really ready for it to be wrapped up. :) I taught four classes. I took a class. I started a part-time job in January from home. My autoimmune health has been all over the place.
I've loved our studies, but I way over-planned. (What's new?!?) We ended up totally dropping both Memoria Press programs, as well as the Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe. My older two kids started doing two hours a day at the local middle school which left them with less time at home each day. We had to pull back and focus on the main things. And I learned a lot from this. Like:
-orchestra, drama, choir are REALLY worth our time and not getting in the way of the curriculum, they are a majorly important part of the curriculum
-more books and academics is not necessary for a quality education or a happy life
-it's okay to do some of a program and not all of it, to scale things to what we need
-it's ok to leave plenty of white space for the kids to just have time, even if that means not doing everything I feel like is important as far as books go. More is not always better.
That said, here is what our year *actually* looked like.
Meryn: (2nd grade)
-Veritas Press readers and other leveled readers
-All About Spelling 2 with copy work and dictation
-Grammar Island as a read aloud
-Song School Latin 1
-Math-U-See Beta
-20th Century History: Landmark History of the American People, selected biographies
-Literature: My Bookhouse vol. 4-5, Andersen's and Grimm's Fairy Tales, read-alouds below
-Science: Burgess Book of Nature Lore, The Tree Book, Physics: A World of Marvels, Childcraft vol. 4: The Green Kingdom
Levi: (3rd grade)
-McGuffey Second Reader
-All About Spelling Level 3
-Grammar Island with notebook, Practice Island
-Song School Latin 2
-Cottage Press Primer 2, Fall book only
-Math-U-see Gamma
History, Literature and Science with Meryn
Read Aloud list:
Peter Pan
The Railway Children
Where Poppies Grow
Home Run
A History of US: Age of Extremes
Understood Betsy
Bridge to Terabithia
Betsy-Tacy
The Hundred Dresses
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Homer Price
Pippi Longstocking
100 Cupboards
A History of US: All the People
Kiryn and Luke (12 and 13 years old)
-Math-U-See Algebra 1/PreAglebra
-Novare Earth Science
-Latin for Children Primer C, second half
-French for Children B
-A World of Poetry
-Writing & Rhetoric books 7-8, Encomium & Vituperation, Comparison
-The Art of Argument: informal fallacies
-Intro to Close Reads: 20th Century literature (with Teaching the Classics and CiRCE Reading Guide)
-20th Century History: U.S. History Detective book 2 and The Century videos and discussion guide with Peter Jennings
I don't have any negative reviews to give here. We have loved every single thing we've done. I think it's been a really rich and vigorous year.
I loved the Novare Earth Science book. The text is readable, not overwhelming, but also challenging. The pictures are beautiful. I love that it requires the students to write out answers to questions at the end of every section. This was our first year with a real science curriculum, and the resource CD that Novare sells as an accompaniment to the text is wonderful. It is also totally necessary to teach this course well. It provided a lesson schedule for the whole year with the book broken down into daily segments, review days and experiment days scheduled in, quizzes scheduled, everything. I pretty much just followed that schedule as written this year. We do plan to stay with Novare and do Physical science next year, and I've learned that it's really okay to back off from that suggested schedule. It was really more geared toward a school setting, and it wasn't quite necessary for us to do as much as it was suggesting. We did make it through the book, though! (My daughter does not understand why she had to read so much about the composition of soil). :) If you've got a science minded kid or just want a challenging, deep, God-glorifying curriculum that also deals really responsibly with the science, Novare is something to consider.
One helpful tidbit I learned at GHC this spring is that Novare has ebooks they license for a month or for a year. You can license one of their books for one month for $5 to try it out, and for only $30 for 12 months. This can potentially make it a lot more affordable. The ebook also has a "read-aloud" function for kids that need to listen to learn. It is a very electronic, unnatural voice, but the function is there. You can find the licensing option on their website under each book on the purchase page.
The Art of Argument may have been one of the highlights of the year. This was just a really fun path to walk. I taught this in a class setting with ten kids, and hearing them debate back and forth whether a fallacy was being committed in an argument and trying to figure out which one was just a lot of fun for us all. I say it every year, but each new resource we try from Classical Academic Press just gets better and brings real delight to the subject it's presenting. This book is written to the student and is really accessible to them on their own, but is definitely best if studied at least alongside mom or a friend to foster conversation and debate on the fallacies presented. We spread it out over the whole school year, doing one fallacy a week and I'm glad we did. We finished the year last week with a Fallacy Escape Room that was tons of fun. Kids loved the challenge and I as a teacher loved seeing the depth of knowledge they'd gained and how able they were to apply it under pressure!
The Close Reads class was a part of the live class I taught. We met for two hours every other week and spent an hour on logic and an hour on literature discussions. I used Teaching the Classics to discuss the books, and I taught the kids the tools in the CiRCE Reading Guide to help them begin to do some close reading and common placing. This was a beautiful pairing, and I saw such growth in their reading skills as well as their understanding of literary themes. We read:
The Call of the Wild
Wind in the Willows
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Lion, the Witch, and the Windows
Farmer Giles of Ham
Number the Stars
Homeless Bird
100 Cupboards
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
I think Farmer Giles was my favorite discussion all year. The students came in all grumbling about how much they disliked this story! I was so surprised. I thought they'd all love it. I started asking them questions from the TTC list, and the discussion got really rolling. It was the first time I'd seen them so animated and engaged, everyone had an opinion, things they didn't understand, things they liked or made them laugh. An hour and a half later, I said, "So you guys really didn't like this story then, did you?" And the all laughed and admitted it was pretty great after all.
This year I also treated myself to the pleasure to being a real student again. I enrolled in an online class through the CiRCE Institute called The Atrium. The topic this year was the seven liberal arts. (For those of you not familiar with these, they are grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics/music). We took a close look at the development of these seven as the chosen arts as the liberating arts, and then at the major thinkers and writings on each one individually and what they mean today. This class was so formative for me, and has really helped me understand these arts and the integral role they still ought to be playing in our education today. I'll be writing more about this over the summer as I process what I've learned and hopefully sharing it here. :)
Next year looks much like this year, just taking the next steps in the paths we're on. I have gotten some wonderful ideas from my class in how to teach the liberal arts here at home to my kids in fun and creative ways. More on that in my Plans for Next Year post!
I've loved our studies, but I way over-planned. (What's new?!?) We ended up totally dropping both Memoria Press programs, as well as the Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe. My older two kids started doing two hours a day at the local middle school which left them with less time at home each day. We had to pull back and focus on the main things. And I learned a lot from this. Like:
-orchestra, drama, choir are REALLY worth our time and not getting in the way of the curriculum, they are a majorly important part of the curriculum
-more books and academics is not necessary for a quality education or a happy life
-it's okay to do some of a program and not all of it, to scale things to what we need
-it's ok to leave plenty of white space for the kids to just have time, even if that means not doing everything I feel like is important as far as books go. More is not always better.
That said, here is what our year *actually* looked like.
Meryn: (2nd grade)
-Veritas Press readers and other leveled readers
-All About Spelling 2 with copy work and dictation
-Grammar Island as a read aloud
-Song School Latin 1
-Math-U-See Beta
-20th Century History: Landmark History of the American People, selected biographies
-Literature: My Bookhouse vol. 4-5, Andersen's and Grimm's Fairy Tales, read-alouds below
-Science: Burgess Book of Nature Lore, The Tree Book, Physics: A World of Marvels, Childcraft vol. 4: The Green Kingdom
Levi: (3rd grade)
-McGuffey Second Reader
-All About Spelling Level 3
-Grammar Island with notebook, Practice Island
-Song School Latin 2
-Cottage Press Primer 2, Fall book only
-Math-U-see Gamma
History, Literature and Science with Meryn
Read Aloud list:
Peter Pan
The Railway Children
Where Poppies Grow
Home Run
A History of US: Age of Extremes
Understood Betsy
Bridge to Terabithia
Betsy-Tacy
The Hundred Dresses
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Homer Price
Pippi Longstocking
100 Cupboards
A History of US: All the People
Kiryn and Luke (12 and 13 years old)
-Math-U-See Algebra 1/PreAglebra
-Novare Earth Science
-Latin for Children Primer C, second half
-French for Children B
-A World of Poetry
-Writing & Rhetoric books 7-8, Encomium & Vituperation, Comparison
-The Art of Argument: informal fallacies
-Intro to Close Reads: 20th Century literature (with Teaching the Classics and CiRCE Reading Guide)
-20th Century History: U.S. History Detective book 2 and The Century videos and discussion guide with Peter Jennings
I don't have any negative reviews to give here. We have loved every single thing we've done. I think it's been a really rich and vigorous year.
I loved the Novare Earth Science book. The text is readable, not overwhelming, but also challenging. The pictures are beautiful. I love that it requires the students to write out answers to questions at the end of every section. This was our first year with a real science curriculum, and the resource CD that Novare sells as an accompaniment to the text is wonderful. It is also totally necessary to teach this course well. It provided a lesson schedule for the whole year with the book broken down into daily segments, review days and experiment days scheduled in, quizzes scheduled, everything. I pretty much just followed that schedule as written this year. We do plan to stay with Novare and do Physical science next year, and I've learned that it's really okay to back off from that suggested schedule. It was really more geared toward a school setting, and it wasn't quite necessary for us to do as much as it was suggesting. We did make it through the book, though! (My daughter does not understand why she had to read so much about the composition of soil). :) If you've got a science minded kid or just want a challenging, deep, God-glorifying curriculum that also deals really responsibly with the science, Novare is something to consider.
One helpful tidbit I learned at GHC this spring is that Novare has ebooks they license for a month or for a year. You can license one of their books for one month for $5 to try it out, and for only $30 for 12 months. This can potentially make it a lot more affordable. The ebook also has a "read-aloud" function for kids that need to listen to learn. It is a very electronic, unnatural voice, but the function is there. You can find the licensing option on their website under each book on the purchase page.
The Art of Argument may have been one of the highlights of the year. This was just a really fun path to walk. I taught this in a class setting with ten kids, and hearing them debate back and forth whether a fallacy was being committed in an argument and trying to figure out which one was just a lot of fun for us all. I say it every year, but each new resource we try from Classical Academic Press just gets better and brings real delight to the subject it's presenting. This book is written to the student and is really accessible to them on their own, but is definitely best if studied at least alongside mom or a friend to foster conversation and debate on the fallacies presented. We spread it out over the whole school year, doing one fallacy a week and I'm glad we did. We finished the year last week with a Fallacy Escape Room that was tons of fun. Kids loved the challenge and I as a teacher loved seeing the depth of knowledge they'd gained and how able they were to apply it under pressure!
The Close Reads class was a part of the live class I taught. We met for two hours every other week and spent an hour on logic and an hour on literature discussions. I used Teaching the Classics to discuss the books, and I taught the kids the tools in the CiRCE Reading Guide to help them begin to do some close reading and common placing. This was a beautiful pairing, and I saw such growth in their reading skills as well as their understanding of literary themes. We read:
The Call of the Wild
Wind in the Willows
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Lion, the Witch, and the Windows
Farmer Giles of Ham
Number the Stars
Homeless Bird
100 Cupboards
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
I think Farmer Giles was my favorite discussion all year. The students came in all grumbling about how much they disliked this story! I was so surprised. I thought they'd all love it. I started asking them questions from the TTC list, and the discussion got really rolling. It was the first time I'd seen them so animated and engaged, everyone had an opinion, things they didn't understand, things they liked or made them laugh. An hour and a half later, I said, "So you guys really didn't like this story then, did you?" And the all laughed and admitted it was pretty great after all.
This year I also treated myself to the pleasure to being a real student again. I enrolled in an online class through the CiRCE Institute called The Atrium. The topic this year was the seven liberal arts. (For those of you not familiar with these, they are grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics/music). We took a close look at the development of these seven as the chosen arts as the liberating arts, and then at the major thinkers and writings on each one individually and what they mean today. This class was so formative for me, and has really helped me understand these arts and the integral role they still ought to be playing in our education today. I'll be writing more about this over the summer as I process what I've learned and hopefully sharing it here. :)
Next year looks much like this year, just taking the next steps in the paths we're on. I have gotten some wonderful ideas from my class in how to teach the liberal arts here at home to my kids in fun and creative ways. More on that in my Plans for Next Year post!
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