May 31, 2008
It seems that our school year has started early here at the Salve Regina Homeschool Academy...as in it started the day after the last school year ended! My client homeschoolers went on to wherever there next steps take them, but my children dragged me away from my news and coffee the very next school day begging me to do school. I had always suspected that we would not "do" summer vacation here at SRHSA, and it seems that, for now at least, I am right. I think that we finished out Old Testament History and American History just fine, but T still has 20 lessons to go in Saxon Math 3, so we need to finish those up before we begin Saxon 5/4. I get confused as to whether to describe her as a 2nd grader (what she'd be if she was in "real school", or as a 4th grader (what she'll be in a matter of weeks, according to her math and english curricula). I guess it doesn't really matter. It's too freakish to have a 6 year old 4th grader anyway - even for me. The 4 year old kindergartener is a tad unusual, but not nearly as much. I have been wanting for some time to lay out their entire curricula for the coming year (which we actually began last week!), so here we go. I have provided links where I have them. I really think that it is the best classical curriculum that I could have compiled, and I am quite pleased with it. As is characteristic with me, if there were two options, and one was easier, that was the one that I eschewed. I have had multiple people tell me that SOW (Story of the World) is difficult to manage with multiple children at different stages, but we're going for it. Even more people have told me that you just can't do WTM (Well Trained Mind) science the way that Wise and Bauer lay it out, but, again, I believe that we can. I dislike the text book approach to science. It pretty much killed my interest in science from a young age, and I didn't notice it lighting my third graders on fire at CN (the school at which I taught that ignominously closed midyear), nor did I notice it doing much for my first graders that I client homeschooled. It is far too rote, and requires far too little of them at the grammar stage of their development. T (6 yodd, the 2nd/4th grader) could do the textbook assignments while asleep at the beginning of first grade at CN, and was begging for something resembling a nature study or notebooking. Further, it is certainly true that as soon as they become truly interested in a subject, they are turning the page to start a new chapter, and leaving that subject behind until the next year. To that end, we are going the WTM route, and immersing ourselves in one scientific discipline each year of the grammar years. Knowing my kids as I do, though, they will dabble in other subjects, both in what they watch on the History and Discovery Channels, and in what they read. I suspect that they will come out ahead in the end. I think that the actual curricula outlines will have to wait, as real life calls. I always knew that I wanted to wallow in the halls of academia forever...