our dozen beautiful feet

I'm a planner. I like to have a plan. I'm slightly obsessed with curriculum research. Lucky for me I'm really also obsessed with a classical education for my kids (and me), which narrows down my potential curricula to research.  The past five years, I've looked at almost everything out there to find just what will provide us with the most richly restful, and diligently delightful education.  My oldest child is officially starting high school in just four weeks. I have worked the past two years to come up with a solid plan that leaves as little room for discontent, guessing, and changes as possible.  Dr. Perrin outlines some problems with the frenetic pace of high school for a lot of students in this article and urges us to a measured approach instead.  In conference talks over the past two years, I've heard him prescribe his solution (though he's never written another article outlining it), and here it is.   He suggests that to give our high school students a f...

I'm beginning my 11th year homeschooling in about two weeks. Last year, I experimented with planning for high school credits before it *really* mattered, and I'm glad I did.  I came up with some best practices for myself for simple and flexible planning to help me facilitate and stay on top of assignments, assessment and schedules for doing four students at once! I wanted to share my planning steps over the summer that allow flexibility and simplicity and make the school year as restful for me as possible. I typically use this process only for my upper grade kids for whom I'm going to be assigning grades and credits. My elementary kids do not need such thorough planning. We just work faithfully and build skills without worrying about grades.  So here's my planning process for flexibility!  Step One: Source any pre-made lesson plans and weekly rhythms available.   Several of the curricula I have chosen for the year either come with pre-made weekly lesson plans from th...

As we're only two weeks from our start to school year, it's time for my Spero Academy Curriculum Picks post for 2020-2021!  I really, really love planning for our studies! :)  Upper School: Luke and Kiryn are 13 and 15.  They are doing the exact same courses this year, which will count for full high school credits for Luke as a freshman, and maybe also for Kiryn. I don't know that I want her graduating a year early, but it might be an option depending on what her immediate plans are.  I've tried really hard to reach for multum, non multa: much, not many. I want us to go deep and read rich things. I want there to be time to live fully too. So for the next four years through high school credits, we are focusing on the liberal arts. So our categories of studies are:  -Mathematics -Natural Sciences -Great Books -Latin -Logic-->Rhetoric -Music So here's our picks!  -Mathematics: VideoText Complete Algebra I wrote in my reviews for last year all about the majo...

It's time for my year-in-review.  These post have come to mark a sense of accomplishment for me. They're milestones in our school-as-life journey. I can easily see my own growth and change as I look back on this set of posts from the past six, seven, eight years.  My 2019-20 plans post goes over how and why I chose these things. So this year went almost to plan. I tried a few new things, and had some hits and misses.  Here's how it shaped up. Meryn: 3rd grade:  Language :  -All About Spelling Level 3 -McGuffey Reader Book 1 & 2 -Writing Through Ancient History by Brookdale House -Song School Latin 2 Math:  -Math-U-see Gamma We accomplished all of this. I saw Meryn take big strides this year in her reading, reading comprehension, math skills, and slower, but steady gains in spelling.  I've learned to adapt the spelling for her.  She needs smaller bits and more hands on, less dictation.  So we've moved more to ...