We need another Eclectic thread! - Page 2

[Epona]

subbing

[ms.shell]

We are here. This will be our first year of homeschool (2nd grade) and we will definitely be using an eclectic approach to start. Its very tentative now that we are doing this and he may have to go back to school, so I will be using more structure than I would if I knew we could homeschool for the duration, in which case we would be much more unschooly. For the time being however, I am designing a curriculum based on my state's scope and sequence for second grade. I am borrowing from Charlotte Mason: we will keep nature journals and start a book of centuries, and I am learning more about this philosophy, which resonates with me. I am also interested in aspects of classical education, and investigating Thomas Jefferson Education. I plan to try different approaches and see what works best for my son. I have not bought any curriculum thus far, have been making my own lesson plans from library books and internet sources. SO far, I have finished planning the science lessons to go with the state standards for the entire 1st quarter (mostly forces and simple machines)...we will be investigating much more than i imagine the schools would, but this is still "lite," and I feel quite sure we will unschool quite a bit more science. I have also planned character studies for language arts: we will begin with the children's book of virtues, for which I have quite a lot of lessons to go with, and also I have printed George Washington's rules for civility and decent behavior which I plan to use for handwriting practice, among other things. I need to get a little more organized on the history. I have a unit on inventors which I have supplemented and am thinking to kick off with that, adding inventors and inventions in our book of centuries, but then moving backwards and starting with ancient man and then early civilizations. I really wanted to start US History, but ds thinks it would be better to "start at the beginning." Maybe we will just begin with prehistory and call the inventors unit science, although we will enter them in the book of centuries. I am considering purchasing Singapore Math, or possibly some other math program, but am unsure yet which program looks right. I have a lot of field trips planned for geography; we will be studying our area, which includes the 2nd largest river delta in the states as well as the gulf of mexico. I also have a computer science unplugged course I downloaded for free that looks really interesting and right up my son's alley, and also plan to have him start learning typing and wp skills. There will be music and art as well- dh will begin teaching him guitar and also we have a recorder that he wants to learn to play. For art, I have picked up some neat books to mess with, and we plan to try some animation, maybe clay animation if we can. I also have the lending catalog from the Natl Gallery of Art, and if I can obtain a slide projector will check out some stuff for appreciation as well- otherwise, to the library we will go.

[AngelBee]

[konamama]

aloha

[Callimom]

We belong here too.

We're classically inspired unschooling-ish with some waldorf-CM, montessori and Reggio thrown in for good measure.

We do a regular table time for math and language activities and do tonnes of field trips and lots of hand on learning. My oldest (11) is fairly advanced academically and is starting some high school level studies. This fall we are taking advantage of a Math Circles program at a nearby university to add some oopf to his math. We are wrapping up Challenge Math and I think we are going to try some calculus and the Mathmatical Mystery Tour for fun. I have the gr 7, 8 and 9 Singapore/new Elements program but think we will use that as a fallback at this point. Other than that he pretty much unschools as that suits him best and I just keep putting interesting things in front of him. I'm waffling about implementing more structure for him as it feels like high school is coming up so fast but then I realize he's still young and we have plenty of time. I find this a hard balance.

My younger 3 (8 y/o twins and 6 y/o) are working through Miquon and Explode the Code. I have one who is dyslexic and she is working with a tutor and going through 100 easy lessons with me. We do more schoolish stuff together - notebooking our way through Canadian history and doing science journals which are mostly nature based at the moment.

We've been having a busy summer. I am always amazed at the things that we get to do. Last week our museum had a puppet workshop for kids with a professional puppet troup. The week before was a medieval fair with some real knights who could do battle with the kids and put on a jousting tutorial. We've got a few great nature centers around us which have been running free or cheap ($2 a person) programming. And we live in a very musical city so we have been to a few interesting concerts/performances.
We have a trip to Cleveland coming up which we are really excited about and then some camping and possibly at trip to Ottawa.

Summer feels more relaxed schoolwise mostly because co-ops, classes etc are done for the summer. And in the winter we do more indoor activities.

Thanks so much for starting this thread.

[Needle in the Hay]

Yay, I love the eclectic threads so I'm glad to see a new one! So many great ideas and resources to be found in these threads...

[William's Mom]

Subbing! I'm glad to be here.

We start Kindy at home this fall, and we definitely fit in with the more eclectic groups! Right now we're very nature-based, but plan to incorporate several different aspects over the coming years.

[LionTigerBear]

We are here.

I like the Thomas Jefferson Education philosophy, and we will be using the Ambleside Online literature list (with some modifications, of course!) with some, but not all, of the Charlotte Mason ideas. We lean more towards the relaxed and unschool-y side of things, as in, I don't make them DO anything. Right now, having a 2yo and a just-turning-5yo, we just play with stuff together.

I plan to use Singapore math, and we will be learning Spanish with some sort of early-child curriculum, too.

I plan to introduce Latin in a few years. I just LOVED Latin when I was a kid, so I think we will really enjoy playing with languages together.

As far as writing goes, I think we will entirely skip any formal study of grammar and composition until they are more like, maybe 10 or older. I picked up all of my grammar and composition just from reading, and I feel like it worked well for me. Oh, except for School House Rock. That's just fun. Lol.

I also just signed DS1 up for the local 5yo soccer team. He's going to be SO excited! He LOVES soccer!!! : Eeek, his little brother (2.5) is going to be really disappointed that he can't play on the team, though . . . not sure how I'm going to navigate THAT yet . . .

[MyLittleWonders]

LTB - We've had the issue with older brother(s) playing soccer and now baseball with our city's program and having at least one little one who wasn't old enough. The easiest solution for us was bringing our own of whatever sport, and playing with the non-team-member child on the sidelines. Usually that means dh playing on the sidelines. It seems to work well enough so we aren't dealing with much upsetness. I think it's harder on ds#3 now because both of his big brothers get to play on teams, but he's done really well this summer with out city's baseball/t-ball program as a bystander.

We are hoping to learn Latin starting this year. I bought the Minimus book and CD. I'm wondering if I should have bought the teacher's guide/book too. I do not have any formal education in Latin, only what I have learned along the way. Any other suggestions on how to go about it as a family? The boys want to learn it because they see it as fun figuring out the origin of our words. I don't want it to be drudgery for any of us, but want to actually get something out of the learning, too, if that makes sense.

[mommy2abigail]

We belong here as well! I have found WAY too much good stuff in many styles to stick to just one, so we pick and choose the best of all of them!

CM-short lessons, quality literature, somewhat delayed, nature study
Classical-knowing that kids are little sponges, 4 year history cycle, Latin roots
Unschooling-nurture their love of learning interesting (to them!) things, let them set the pace, learning happens all the time, not just at 'school time'
Workbox-helps me organize and set out things that are relative to what we are learning
Unit Study-tying all subjects together, everything flowing together
Lapbooks-fun for record keeping! and we are crafty folk, so this is appealing!
Immersion-studying something of interest to death, really picking things apart and gaining a true knowledge of a subject/area of interest


What we are planning on doing is having a lot of 'spines' on the different subjects, and then as we go through the spine, looking up more books, projects, experiments, methods, activities we can do together.

Our spines are:

Math-Rays Arithmetic
Grammar-Serls Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons
Reading/Phonics-McGuffys Readers
Science-Kingfisher Encyclopedia of Science and Handbook of Nature Study
History-Kingfisher Encyclopedia of History and Mystery of History


Other than those, we will use lots of living books, field trips (science center, aquarium, museums) real life people and situations, games, internet, library, ect.

[marimara]

Where did all the eclectics go?

I was enjoying reading all your posts : DD is 3 so we're not really homeschooling yet but I really liked learning from you guys. I'm almost positive we are going to be eclectics because I love so much of the differing curriculums and approaches.

I like the unschooly, let your children learn to learn themselves and having an enriching environment.

The simplicity of Montessori, esp for the preschooler set.

The nature and rhythm of Waldorf, with the emphasis on nature and storytales.

CM for her love of literature and reading.


Ah....I am going to be so lost when it comes time to make a decision!

[LionTigerBear]

I've been worrying that maybe I have way too much planned for this coming school year. I think we'll just see how it goes as we go along . . . in the meantime, though, I really need some money to buy supplies! I can't wait!

[AngelBee]

Originally Posted by LionTigerBear

I've been worrying that maybe I have way too much planned for this coming school year. I think we'll just see how it goes as we go along . . . in the meantime, though, I really need some money to buy supplies! I can't wait!

What are you planning?

[LionTigerBear]

Originally Posted by AngelBee

What are you planning?

Well, we are doing Kindergarten for my 5yo, and DS2 is 2 and will be turning 3.

Math: New Singapore Math (for 5yo.)

Reading/Phonics: We're doing Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons and we'll keep up with that until DS1 is ready to move on to early readers

Literature: We'll be working through our reading list-- DH has been reading them things like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Hobbit.

Circle Time: several days a week, we'll have circle time and work on songs, talk about the calendar and weather, and do some reinforcement of what they're learning in Sunday School.

Social Studies and Science: I was planning to follow some lesson plans from the Baltimore Curriculum Project

Arts and Crafts: I will arrange some projects that go with the season and what we're reading/studying

Spanish: I'm considering ordering Sonrisas Spanish curriculum

PE: DS1 is doing soccer for now.

[LionTigerBear]

It just kind of sounds exhausting right now, when I have the baby and the two-year-old. I know it'll be more fun in a couple years when I'm not so baby-tired.

[justmandy]

I've got plans for our first week but they are not very "schooly"!

We're going to decide on school colors and a mascot (maybe?) so I can get some printed stuff free from Vista Print with our school name on it. It will likely only be used for our yearly letter of intent but the kids will have fun with it!

Then we'll tiedye shirts in our school colors to wear on feild trips.

If our mascot is easy enough, maybe we'll make one out of paper mache ("hey kids, let's be the 'Sticks...Gooooo Sticks!!'...no...really..?")

Then we'll...do our normal reading and activities while I continue to try and make some sence out of all the bits an d pieces of curriculum I've bought over the years. I've learned that if I think I'll use it in the future, I won't adn I'm sick of hoding on to all that stuff.

Good thing my co-op is having a curric sale! Time to purge!

[AngelBee]

Originally Posted by LionTigerBear

It just kind of sounds exhausting right now, when I have the baby and the two-year-old. I know it'll be more fun in a couple years when I'm not so baby-tired.

I feel ya on the exhaustion part. I have a 9 yr, 7 yr, 4yr, 2yr, 3 month old and am hsing a 17 yr too :

Looks fun!

[LionTigerBear]

Originally Posted by AngelBee

I feel ya on the exhaustion part. I have a 9 yr, 7 yr, 4yr, 2yr, 3 month old and am hsing a 17 yr too :

Looks fun!

Thanks! It's the baby stage that is the hardest part for me. I actually like the "terrible twos", but it's hard having a two-year-old and a baby at the same time. They sure do make it worth it in sheer cuteness, though.

[AngelBee]

Originally Posted by LionTigerBear

Thanks! It's the baby stage that is the hardest part for me. I actually like the "terrible twos", but it's hard having a two-year-old and a baby at the same time. They sure do make it worth it in sheer cuteness, though.

[mangopassion]

Originally Posted by LionTigerBear

They sure do make it worth it in sheer cuteness, though.

They certainly do!

Man oh man! The past couple of weeks have been so crazy around my house.

Last week we decided to switch all of our rooms around. Before this, my son had his own room, my daughter her own room, we had the master bedroom and it's big enough where I could have my craft room in there too. Well I was getting really frustrated with all our homeschooling supplies in the dining room and craft stuff in the hall closet and was running different ideas by my hubby. Somehow we decided to put the kiddos together in the master bedroom, we would move into the bigger of the kid's old rooms, and we would turn the other room into a craft/school room.

In 5 days we painted the craft/school room, painted the master bedroom, moved all three rooms around ... which turned out to be a TON of work! But it's working out fabulously!

The kids happened to be going to grandma's house for those 5 days, so it ended up being a complete surprise for them when they got home (we did ask what they thought about sharing a room first because we didn't want that part to be a surprise). We bought colorful crates to hang on their wall and painted all of their wooden furniture in so many fun colors to tie everything in together.

I think the busiest part of this project (besides all of my craft supplies was switching the closets. I didn't realize how much stuff I had crammed into the master bedroom closet!

And this week I wanted to make sure I got my big order in for the majority of our school supplies that we want for the first part of this school year. I ended up ordering a LOT of books! : Can't wait to get them! I finally placed my orders this morning for everything except our art supplies as I'm still compiling that list. Whew!

Even though I haven't been able to be around here much, this thread has been in the back of my mind and I'm so glad that it isn't too long yet ... otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to read the whole thing!

We are definitely an eclectic family and I've always thought of us as such. We pull from so many different philosophies that we just wouldn't be able to fit anywhere exclusively... so here we are! And we love it here.