chooseing a Classical Curr - Page 2

[ReadyMom]

Originally Posted by Momma Aimee

i like it for teh WHY but did not get a real feel of it giving me "anything to follow" on a pratical day to day level.

It doesn't give you a day-to-day schedule of exactly what you will be doing in each subject, as that is curriculum-specific and she recommends and variety of curricula for each subject. However, each subject's chapter contains detailed instructions for what to accomplish each year and how to go about it.

I'd say that we have a fairly rigorous schedule (I'm currently schooling my 3rd grader and 1st grader) and planning takes me about 1 hour each week. I spent about 20 hours over three months planning the "overall picture" for the year. I have a planning sheet that I update every week. It gets easier every year to plan things out because I have a much better idea of what I am looking for and what I want to accomplish. I think too many people get scared away from TWTM because they feel like there isn't a lot of hand-holding, but what I have found is that implementing TWTM teaches you that you don't NEED hand-holding.

Btw, my nephew, who is in high school, lives with us. He frequently comments that my kids are getting a FAR better education than he did in school. I don't take that as a personal compliment; it's not because I am so great but because TWTM is so great. I only take credit for finding it.

[Ravin]

What we're doing is closer to The Latin-Centered Curriculum style classical than WTM style.

Here's our first grade:

Phonics: Word Mastery
Math: Miquon, with extra drill/review worksheets from various sources
Latin: Song School Latin
English Studies: Grimm's Fairy Tales
History (my own idea, not anything I got out of a recommendation book): How Children Lived: A first Book of History, plus a clothesline timeline
Geography (also my own idea): Children Just Like Me, with sticker workbook, maps, and a globe
Heathen Studies (again, came up with it myself): The Kinder Edda, The Kids' Book of the Norse Gods by Mike Smith, and a unit study on The Nine Noble Virtues
Classical Studies: Usborne Greek Myths for Young Children
Science (again, my own idea): Building a Tree of Life broadly showing evolutionary connections, tied into animal study using mostly Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia
Handwriting: The Complete Book of Handwriting from American Education Publishing (aka inexpensive workbook from Wal-Mart).
In the spring, we'll be doing a unit study on our home state incorporating science, geography, English Studies (local and native folk tales) and history, instead of what we're doing now. We were doing memory work, but I've dropped it.

For second grade we have planned:

Math: Miquon with various supplements
Language Arts: Classical Writing Primer, Webster's Spelling (pdf on Don Potter's site where I found Word Mastery)
English Studies: American Folktales
Classical Studies: Bible myths
Heathen Studies: Kinder Edda, D'Aulaire's Norse Myths, The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland, for comparisons
Science: R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey Earth and Space
History: U.S. History, spine to be determined
Geography: Evan Moore Beginning Geography
Latin: Lively Latin

eta: we do language arts, math, and latin daily, and content subjects weekly.

[craft_media_hero]

Originally Posted by Ravin

What we're doing is closer to The Latin-Centered Curriculum style classical than WTM style.

Here's our first grade:

Phonics: Word Mastery
Math: Miquon, with extra drill/review worksheets from various sources
Latin: Song School Latin
English Studies: Grimm's Fairy Tales
History (my own idea, not anything I got out of a recommendation book): How Children Lived: A first Book of History, plus a clothesline timeline
Geography (also my own idea): Children Just Like Me, with sticker workbook, maps, and a globe
Heathen Studies (again, came up with it myself): The Kinder Edda, The Kids' Book of the Norse Gods by Mike Smith, and a unit study on The Nine Noble Virtues
Classical Studies: Usborne Greek Myths for Young Children
Science (again, my own idea): Building a Tree of Life broadly showing evolutionary connections, tied into animal study using mostly Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia
Handwriting: The Complete Book of Handwriting from American Education Publishing (aka inexpensive workbook from Wal-Mart).
In the spring, we'll be doing a unit study on our home state incorporating science, geography, English Studies (local and native folk tales) and history, instead of what we're doing now. We were doing memory work, but I've dropped it.

For second grade we have planned:

Math: Miquon with various supplements
Language Arts: Classical Writing Primer, Webster's Spelling (pdf on Don Potter's site where I found Word Mastery)
English Studies: American Folktales
Classical Studies: Bible myths
Heathen Studies: Kinder Edda, D'Aulaire's Norse Myths, The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland, for comparisons
Science: R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey Earth and Space
History: U.S. History, spine to be determined
Geography: Evan Moore Beginning Geography
Latin: Lively Latin

eta: we do language arts, math, and latin daily, and content subjects weekly.

Ravin, I like your plan!

I am ordering the Latin-Centered Curriculum for next year, and we'll be doing more of a "real" classical curriculum based out of that.

I took Greek this year, and I think that next year (for 2nd grade), I'll introduce a Greek letter (upper and lower case) and it's sound, along with a short Greek phrase in it's entirety (I'm thinking like a two word phrase or something).

I'm also planning on introducing Song School Latin for next year, as a very soft approach to starting Latin. I was going to take a college Latin course, but now we're expecting a new babe! So that means I probably won't be taking any electives and will just be learning Latin along with my dd. I do have my Latin book from high school, but honestly, I didn't retain any of it.

[Momma Aimee]

thanks everyone

i LOOOOVE reading all about all the various things people peice together --- i could sit and do this all day.

Well Theo is young, and i am more eyeing the future with the Classical Curr ideas ....

so what i have decided to do is .....starting in Jan 2010 We will be doing Peak With Books as a foundation. I will add in math (not so much *math* as pre math concepts, number identification, counting, sorting, patterens, relationships) likely 3 days a week and of course art. I will add in phonics too (we already do that for speech) maybe letteroftheweek.com so we work on Identification of written letter by sight and sound. We may keep our nusery rhymes of the week as memeory work -- some he leanrs in a day or two and some take a lot longer -- but i want him to keep up the memory work now that his speech is getting so much better -- even if we don't do as many art and activities based on the rhymes as we have been doing (when momma isn't lazy) because we pulling more art and activities out of Peak With Books. We will make our morning devoptinal a little more formal as time goes on, and i hope to be memorizing verses by the time he is kindy age ......I will run that "plan" for 3 semesters -- adding in a bit more as we go and he can.

I have pulled the AO list and a couple of other CM or Classical Book List and we will pull hard from them for our lib trips and our DEAR time ....

by fall of 2011 when he is kindy age .... i will add in (I hope he will be ready) a handwritting program. If he is not, he is young, he is a boy and so far is he immature for his age and lagging in fine motor ... well we will step up our pre-writting and fine motot work.

I will plan in summer of 2011 -- to think more carefully about kindy -- but since we want to stick to Classical and CM ........i lust after a nice boxed curr, but alas -- i see it just is not very likly at all............. i think more or less we'll keep the same plan, maybe with a bit more challangeing materials / new material ....by then we will have been though Peak with Books twice and ready to start something else ....

Thoughts? Feedback??

Aimee

[craft_media_hero]

Ravin, I have to ask, how do you fit all of that in? Do you mind sharing your weekly schedule with us?

We were doing pretty good til I got pg, and now I'm only fitting in the three Rs most days, and a fairy tale/house tale, plus our readaloud at bedtime (which is always quality literature). I've totally abandoned social studies, science, and foreign languages, and feel really bad about it!

I'm starting to feel better physically and need to get back on track!

[Ravin]

As requested, I'll give you an idea of how I fit things in.

We do math, phonics/reading, and Latin daily. Currently we're doing handwriting 3 days/week. DD goes to an enrichment program on Monday, so we don't do anything then. Here's about how one day this week went:

We started with science, because the lesson was left over from last week. I read to her about different fish in her Animal Encyclopedia, we talked about how fish and people were different and similar, and put them on our Tree of Life poster.
Phonics (DD read about half the words on a page from Word Mastery); along the way we had a discussion about the Black Death and parasite ecology, spurred by her reading the word "flea"; rabbit trails happen a lot around here!
took a break
I read to her from Harry Potter
Math: we discussed making math sentences using the dry erase board and guidelines from a page in Miquon Annotations book; I made some problems, DD made some problems--she did extra inequality statements "for fun" (her words). Then we played a game of Big Fish, Little Fish

another short break, and we did Latin. This was saved for last because it's really rather fun. We did an oral review exercise and sang the songs to reinforce the words she didn't remember.

Yesterday was much the same, except we did a lab sheet in math, her weekly subject activities were to work on her poster for Heathen studies, and after another break, I read to her for her History and Geography lessons--each was an illustrated 2 page spread in the respective book. Another day we'll do reinforcing activities. She finished off the Word Mastery page and (with a bit of tantruming and resistance) got halfway through a BOB book reader. Because I worked last night and thus needed a nap, she had a handwriting page as "homework" to do on her own, along with a chore (putting away her laundry) before she could watch TV.

Today I was tired, so all we did was get through the second half of that BOB book, I read to her from a picture book, and in the afternoon I got up so she could spend some time outside playing (she went skating, which she also Wednesday morning for a while).

Tomorrow we'll endeavor to get another full day of school work done, plus we're having a tea party inspired by Fancy Nancy Tea Parties, which I read to her today. She worked on some art projects related to that today while I slept. I'm off tomorrow, so it's likely to be more productive.

In other words, we don't always get everything done the way I schedule ahead, but we do get it done. The six-day week I planned in my planner this year has proven to be more a week and a half to two weeks in reality, which I will adjust for when I plan for the Spring semester.

[Momma Aimee]

really stupid question:

Word Mastery page

what is word mastery???