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thescrappyhomeschooler

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Posts posted by thescrappyhomeschooler

  1. I only have two and they are close in age, so I didn't send them to preschool to get them out of the house while I was trying to school or anything, but I did send them to a wonderful preschool.  It was entirely play based, and they loved it.  They made some little friends, got to explore new toys and books, played on a cool playground, got to bring a special snack for their birthday.  I made a bunch of great friends of the fellow moms, too.  Our kids are 10 & 11 now, and the moms still get together every few months for girls night out.  One of the best things I've ever done was pick that preschool for my kids.

  2. Do you have a good local library?  If I were you, I'd pick some themes in American history, and go to the library to find books and videos for those topics.  Have the older ones write summaries, and have the younger ones do narrations.  Have them draw or paint the stories.  Get autobiographies of famous people of the time period, and have them do book reports.

     

     

    You can add some geography of North America in for added measure.  I'd have them work on labeling blank maps.

     

     

  3. We've use MCT for years and love it.  You can keep going back to Grammar Island throughout the year if you want, but it is meant to go through thoroughly once, and then spend the rest of the year practicing the concepts that you've learned.  We do use the practice book, but honestly, you can use the method on any sentence.  I've had the boys take a sentence from a history book or a read aloud and do the four level analysis on it, too.  He does demonstrate diagramming a little bit in Grammar Voyage, but he doesn't really get into diagramming. If your child understands the four level analysis, they should be able to understand diagramming, too, if you want to introduce it later.

  4. I only have two kids who are very close in age and work on the same level, so my planning is fairly simple.

     

    We school at home 4 days a week.  We have a full day co-op on the 5th day.  

     

    On the home days, we have something called Opening Ceremonies, where we talk about plans, review memory work, etc.  That's what we do first.  Then we talk about the order in which we want to accomplish the days plans. We do LA and Math every day, and science and history most days, too.  We do Latin, French, and other add ons 1-3 times per week, depending on the week and what we are studying.  We do chores and other outside activities before or after schooling, depending on the time of the activity.

  5. Both my kids were reading by 5, but my really early reader was reading picture books/early readers by age 3.  He could recognize numbers and letters before 18 months.  His younger brother needed to be taught more and while he could read, he wasn't truly fluent until almost 6.  Now that they are 10 and 11?  They both still like reading, but the younger one out reads the older one by far.  Not in comprehension, but in volume.

  6. Yes, why invite someone to a party if you expect them to bring food? I don't get that.  Unless it's specifically a potluck.

     

    That said, I usually end up bringing food to many gatherings, because I live with the three pickiest eaters on the planet, and I am gluten free.  So, instead of putting those burdens on the hosts, I just bring something with us.

  7. I've always wondered about those lap pools.  I think I'd rather have a regular pool.  Well, I do have a regular, inground pool, and we love it.  I think I'd probably not buy the one with the lap pool, unless everything else about the house was absolutely perfect.

  8. We may have the possibility in the not too distant future to tear down our current home that has too many problems to fix and build a new home on our lot.  I was wondering, before I try to google it, if anyone has ever used any online program that lets you make a basic layout for a home design.  I'm not too technically savvy, so it would have to be pretty easy to use.  I just want to have something to present an architect so that the vision in my head is comprehensible.

     

    Any ideas?  I've drawn sketches, but I'd like to make them to scale and line up staircases and bathrooms and stuff.

     

    Thanks.

  9. My mother stayed with my father, back in the olden days of the 60's and 70's, also because she thought she had no way of supporting us 5 kids.  But, frankly, I would have preferred extreme poverty to the chaos that was the turbulent and sometimes violent atmosphere that was our household.  

  10. I only read up to the part where you explained the mom's reaction.  She's a nut ball.  You have nothing to apologize for.  She overreacted in an extreme and really odd way.  Benji is not just a dog's name.  I used to babysit a little boy named Benjamin, and his parents call him Ben, Benny, and Benji.  

  11. I had a stroke on May 9th. Before that in November my daughter had surgery to remove her feeding tube. We spent Thanksgiving in ER because her surgical site opened but she is fine now. My mother had a massive heart attack in January and had a triple bypass in February. We went down to Florida to help my father. My daughter had a severe UTI and we were worried it would move into her kidney, she only has one. We found out her tethered spinal cord is back and she wil need surgery eventually to release it. Our last semester of fourth grade was a disaster, we slogged through it best we could.

     

    I am walking now, I have problems with strength and balance in my right leg. I can write coherently but still have problems with strength and coordination in my right arm. I can drive short distances and luckily my husband's job is now local. He used to travel extensively out of state through the week, so now he can oversee our work daily as I continue to heal.

     

    I am depending on my husband a good bit as far as household chores and cooking but my doctor expects a full recovery and I see him next in December.

     

    Hopefully we can all work on building each other up to stay the course. :)

     

     

    Holy Smokes! That's a lot to deal with!  Hang in there!  I'll keep you in my prayers.

  12. The bolded would also apply to classical education as it was taught in Europe, and then in North America, from the early Middle Ages right up to the late 19th century (when the tradition went into a rapid decline).   The methods and texts originated in ancient Greece and Rome, but the curriculum was nearly always taught by Christians, to other Christians, in a way that had been adapted to fit with their beliefs and values.    These schools were often run by religious groups, whose goal would be to prepare young men as potential leaders in the Church (although most of the students would typically end up in politics, law, commerce, etc.).

     

    I can understand why people who identify more with the beliefs and values of the pagan world would prefer to go straight to ancient sources, but this brings its own challenges, as they're going to find themselves almost 2000 years removed from anything resembling a living tradition.   

     

    Something else to note is that the modern idea of "Trivium stages" is based on the Scholastic curriculum that was followed at certain medieval universities, around the 12th century.   People have taken to calling this sequence "classical," but Dorothy Sayers herself actually called it "neo-mediaeval."   It's quite different from the way the liberal arts were taught in the ancient world, and then later in the Renaissance and early Modern times.   So, if anything, it seems that it's the families who are trying to do a secular version of WTM (or other Sayers-inspired methods) who are "co-opting" a historically Christian model of education.  

     

    This was the case because the Christian church was pretty much the only institution preserving any form of education and writing in Europe after the fall of Rome.  Christianity enjoyed a near monopoly in Europe by keeping the masses ignorant during the Middle Ages, so the only participants in the political life were the wealthy who could afford tutors for their children and the clergy.  Whereas, in ancient Rome, the liberal arts were pursued by free born citizens.

     

    The "classical" education I want for my kids is more based on the liberal arts concept.  Neither Greece nor Rome were secular societies. They had a very active religious community, worshipping multiple gods. My point was that one particular religion does not have a claim on teaching children to become critical thinkers and active participants in their societies.

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