October 11, 2012

• Back to School!

  Whew, we made it thru all of the feasts!  What a long month and a half of stuff, eh?  I’m pretty glad to be back in our bed (and have my living room put back together), truth be told.  But having put away the shofar, willow branches, sukkot, and streamers, we find ourselves at a different point in our year: it’s now time for… Back to School!

  For the record, I purposely do NOT start on the public school timeline.  First, because I don’t want ANY affiliation to the gov’t educational practices.  Second, because September/October is our holy season, and I think that’s a terrible time to start our schooling – in the middle of our festivities?  It’d be like starting school on Christmas to you christians.  No. Way.  And third, I school almost year-round, so it matters little about when we start – we have no ending deadline, like people who take summers off, so starting in October doesn’t mean a rush for us in the spring… we just carry it thru, anyhow.  It’s great, IMHO, of course!

  This year, I have a girl starting Year 7, and boys starting Years 4, 2, and K… and of course Baby O, who’s not schooling with us, at this point.  Which equates to… Year 2012 for me, because… heck if I know.  We combine most of the subjects, anyhow.  ((Don’t laugh.)) 

  And as always, we are using the free AmbleSide Online curriculum that works off the Charlotte Mason principles of schooling – quite Classical in nature, but with a lot more outdoors and experience-driven learning.  I’ve used this for the past eight years of my homeschooling, and have had extraordinary success with it.  We just started very, very basic and added stuff each year, as I got more and more comfortable with what we were doing.  Because frankly, when I started teaching, I was terrified of doing something ‘wrong’ and messing them up, so I started basic and broke in my ‘shoes’, so to speak, using AO as my goal/guidelines.

  But I do need to qualify this statement about our curriculum choice – I do not strictly adhere to the resources that AmbleSide On-line recommends.  The truth of the matter is that:

  a) Charlotte Mason lived in the 1700s.  A lot of literature has happened since then.  A lot of music, a lot of art, a lot of history!  There are things in science/math/health that are SO FAR beyond Ms. Mason’s scope… so I add and adjust accordingly.  And yes, the advisory board of AO tries to address this, but I don’t KNOW them.  I may not LIKE them.  And goodness knows, I don’t TRUST them.  I don’t like people, in general.  That includes the AO board.  I’ll skim their opinions and then do what’s right for us.

  b) AO skips around a lot, doing various points of history at the same time.  I understand why (there’s a LOT to cover!), but not THAT many.  They’ve got too many irons in the fire at the same time – no child should have to read Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War at the same time as Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Canute, Plutarch and Beethoven.  Talk about overload of eras!  I’d rather them understand instead of skip around so very much.  Personal choice, of course.  I’d rather paint an accurate picture of an era than have my kids thinking Ghengis wore a toga and Beethoven met King Arthur.  Let’s not make things harder than they need to be, kthxbye.

  c) Some of their recommendations are dry and uninteresting and… I hate them (frankly).  If I like something better, why shouldn’t I use it?  We did ‘Science with Doris & Billy’… it’s not on the AO list, but too bad – we really enjoyed it.  For example.  We do the ‘Discover & Do’ DVDs because my kids love the goofy boy hosting it and we have a ball doing the experiments.  It’s not AO, but we’re learning, and enjoying it.

  d) There are SO MANY required readings in AO, no sane person could EVER keep up, and no child could possibly retain them.  It’s a mad-cram curriculum for these women who think their children are ‘gifted’ or ‘accelerated’, and I’m just not into that whole scene.  I’ve decided I’d rather slow it down and REALLY learn it, rather than race thru everything and call my children ‘educated’.  If that means dropping half a dozen books, so be it.
  
  

  NoTe:  On every FB group, e-Group, and homeschool network I’m a part of, it is STUNNING how many people declare their home-schooled children as ‘gifted’.  I’m sorry, but they’re not.  In a world where everyone has to be above everyone else, it’s just… tedious and stupid.  You tell me your child is 2% off MENSA, and you can’t even use correct grammar in the statement?  Riiiiight.  I’ll tell you right now – I think they’re all liars, and steer clear.  And as for our family – my kids aren’t geniuses.  They’re kids.  My job is to help them understand the world around them in every area I possibly can, and teach them to enjoy and create within it.  Without hurting themselves or anyone else in the process.  We need less super-genius and more focused people of integrity, IMHO.
  

  Now that the feasts are over, I have THREE DAYS of intense prepping for our new school year.  I started off by making a list of areas to address:  Music, Art, Literature, History, Math, English, Science, Religion, and Electives.  Then I plugged in the things I already do in our schooling – like MEP math, Scott-Foresman Grammar, Discover&Do, etc.  Then I added the things I want to do with the kids… for example, while last year we did chalk and the year before was watercolor, this year is going to be charcoal (with a focus on drawing/light/dimension).  I want to do fairy tales, as my kids just don’t know the stories all that well, and haven’t seen half the Disney animation versions (in years, if at all.  There’s a LOT of other stuff to see, too, y’know.).  Lydia is going to start typing this year.  That kind of thing.

  There are things we’re holding off on.  AO says to do Plutarch… I feel it’s more of a HS level study.  I considered health/anatomy and economics, but we’re going to hold off on them, too.  Physics… it can wait a few years.  I made this incredible study book (literally a hundred pages!) on Biomes that has to be put off to next year.  And that’s okay.  As long as I have categories and fill them with age-appropriate learning, we’re good.  It all falls into place, seriously.

  And there are things I always add that we haven’t actually hit.  Guitar and recorder, for example.  We have them, but… I’m happy if they just do their piano lesson.  We haven’t done lessons in the other two, although I have them.  I figured if something didn’t get to fit, that’d be two good ones to hold off on.  Well see if they fit this year!

  Then I plugged the categories of learning into our new log sheet (it says ‘Teacher’, just because it was originally just mine, but now I let the kids check off what they do on copies of it, to).  Here’s a gander at it:

   
  

  
  Now, MOST of this stuff we’ve done for years.  This new schedule is different from last year’s because I put the subjects in groups of five, according to their category, at the bottom.  That means we end up doing one of each group, everyday.  Before, I just had a long list and whatever we ticked off, we got to.  This should be better for us.  (Every year I tweak the schedule a little more, and every year it goes a little better, so I have high hopes for a great year!)  Do I care which thing we do which day?  No.  Just SOMETHING from each category, and we’re golden.  Flexibility is key, but structure in which the flexibility resides is paramount.

  And of course, this gets even MORE specific on our ‘matrix’ – which is the check sheet Brian’s in charge of during our reading times.  I’ve had one every year, for years, but actually never put any of them here before, so this is a treat for you:

  
  There’s a page two – as our school year is 36 weeks, give or take.
  But you get the idea, looking at this.
  

  
  All of this, of course, has to be fitted to a schedule, so that we know we can manage it, in practice.  It’s one thing to draw up a schedule, another thing to implement it.  And of course we ALL know I never stick to my schedules, but having something to base your day off and then go lax from is better than having no structure and going lax from… whatever.  That’s disastrous.  So I always over-plan.  Here’s this year’s plan:

  

  And please let me repeat – I never have EVER followed any schedule I have made.  My kids RARELY go to bed at 9pm, truth be told.  We hang until we get what we’re doing done.  ((shrugs))  I just like to have something to aim towards, and as long as we check off the stuff on the log sheet, I don’t care WHAT half-hour increment we do it in.  But in trying to form habits and get into a routine, this schedule stuff is indispensable.

  So there’s the plan.  We start on Monday, and I’ve got all of our sheets/books ready to go… so we’re pretty much ready!  I’m pretty excited, myself!!  ((grins!))

  • 8:09 am
  • 9 Comments