[Plans for fall?]

Do I dare say that I've changed my plans (again)? :lol: After my thought and some prayer, as well as spending countless time on the Catholic Heritage Curriculum website, I decided to get the grade level lesson plans for each boy and use a good amount of their resources. It's the first year that the boys will be doing separate science and history; I'm still a little scared about how that will work. But, for ds11 (7th next year), much of the reading will be done independently and then we'll get together to discuss what he's learning and do some work together. I'm not sure if I'm going to read out loud to ds9 (5th next year) or what. But, I needed something to help me find a balance between me-involved and me-not-involved and this might be it.

 

I'm still sticking with Singapore math for the younger two and ds11 will continue with Lial's PreAlgebra and LoF PreAlgebra. I'm also sticking with Primary Language Lessons for ds6 and Intermediate Language Lessons for the older two. I am so very pleased with both programs. But, they will also do CHC's Language of God (though not the composition part at the end) while I continue to reinforce grammar through Latin. We also are sticking with our rich selections of literature, but both older boys will read a few things on their own as well as scheduled with CHC. I'm excited but kind of nervous about how it will all work.

 

I think I need to come up with a better schedule for us all so they know when we'll work together (math lessons, writing lessons, literature, religion) and when they will have independent time to work mostly on their own but using me if they have questions, etc. I'm also hoping this way to have more time dedicated to dd to work with her. So, I think I'll write "lesson plans" for her in my plan book as well - I like checking off things as we go through our day. ;)

 

And, thanks Random for the link to Our Island Story; the boys love listening to book on the iPod, so I'm going to have to download the files if that's possible for them. Otherwise, I guess we could just listen during lunch (we tend to have at least one audio book going at breakfast and lunch apart from what I read during literature time).

 

I'm assuming based on what a few of you have said that Our Island Story doesn't contain anything that wouldn't work with in a Catholic framework?

[How to Dive Deeper]

What are the ages of your children? I'm using a catechism written to the 9-12 year old crowd that basically covers everything, and has a reference in the beginning of each chapter to the CCC. It's called Totally Catholic and is both bound or on Kindle. We also have read through quite a few of Marigold Hunt's books, which are fantastic (again, probably best for those over 8 or so as they are pretty meaty, though my six year old listens in on all of it. And, there is the Great Adventure, which has adult, high school, middle school, and elementary school geared DVDs/lessons/study aids. The full adult course is quite costly, but the "quick" version plus the children/teen versions seem much better priced. I'm planning on doing the middle school one with my older two this next school year and might buy a couple of the elementary-aged products for ds6 (though we have the timeline already).

[How to Dive Deeper]

Catholicism (the DVD series and the book) by Fr. Barron is fantastic! I would highly recommend either, but if you can spring for it, get the DVD series. It's beautifully done.

 

I would also recommend Matthew Kelly. I'm reading his book The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic and it has really been helping me put my faith into action. He also has a book called Rediscovering Catholicism. Those two books, plus others are part of his "free for shipping" program - basically it's $5.95 for shipping for each title you order.

 

Peter Kreeft is another good one (and Matthew Kelly has one of his books on the "free for shipping" page of Dynamic Catholic - I have not read that title but it's there for $5.95). He also has some talks on iTunes (and sometimes you can find videos of talks he gave online). I love to listen to him.

 

How the Catholic Church Build Western Civilization is a good book too - it's not as much on Church teachings as on Church history.

 

There's also the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. You can register for free and then access a bunch of wonderful lectures/talks.

 

And honestly, the Catechism is a great read. I haven't been reading it daily (there was back in October a "read the CCC over the year of faith" campaign that has since changed slightly), but it is much more accessible than I ever thought it would be.

 

I'm a new convert (just over a year), so I feel like I'm trying to figure this all out while trying to teach my kids. But all the above have been helping to strengthen my faith and help me explain the Church a bit better.

[Scheduling?]

We are the same way here, which is one reason why I hold onto at least math and read-aloud during the summer, if nothing else. Plus, they frankly forget way too quickly; two weeks is about how long we can go without math becoming a foreign language. ;)

[Procrastinating!]

So far, I have not put any of the books I've made with the Proclick on the shelf, so I'm not sure how they stand-up versus normally spiral bound ones. The biggest spine available is 5/8"; though I learned that you can buy 3:1 pitch spirals (MyBinding has them - that is who I used to buy the 5/8" Proclick spines as I couldn't find them anywhere else) for larger books. There is a vertical "spine" that runs the length of the spines, which might give a little bit of rigidity to the book on a whole, but most of my are pretty thing (5/16" spines for the most part, and a couple at 1/2").

 

I have the hardback copies of ILL and PLL too. So far, I have only seen a few places where the assignment might have been "updated" a bit, but otherwise, they seem to line up. All three boys work directly out of their workbooks I made them (I had to do only a semester at a time for ds6 and basically a quarter at a time for ILL as there are many assignments based on my hope of doing writing four days a week, even though that doesn't always mean four unique assignments ever week).

 

I use the hardback copies for my reference; there are a few things, especially from PLL that we read aloud or use as oral conversation, and then I'll give ds6 something for copywork (I like that the PDF files had blank pages at the end; I inserted those into their workbooks where I knew we would just need a blank page instead of the already-done assignment). As an aside, there are a few assignments from the book/PDF file that we are not doing for one reason or another, but overall, I either printed out the actual assignment from the PDF file or I printed a blank lined page from the end of the file for copywork purposes.

 

What is Milestone's homeschool quickstart/bootcamp? That sounds like something we need over here (as well as some major attitude help :rolleyes: ).

[All Things Fun and Fascinating (IEW) vs. Serl's ILL]

We used ATFF when ds11 was 9, if I remember correctly. Ds7 (at the time he was 7), joined in. They enjoyed it, and it was pretty easy to implement (though we didn't use the rubrics/checklists). This year they are both using Serl's ILL (now ds11 and ds9). We are only about 8 lessons in to it (I don't like waiting to start something new until the new year begins :lol: ). I am really liking it. I've read through almost the whole book (I bought the hardback on Amazon but then bought the PDF workbooks). So far they have done a written narration based on a story about the baby Moses (I changed that lesson ever so slightly), made up a couple of their own stories based on a prompt, written statements, questions, and commands, and worked a bit with the dictionary (I realized they have never learned that Ä is "long a"). I introduce the lesson, we've talked about outlining (planning their stories), we've discussed the use of time words (first, next, after that, etc.), and I've introduced the idea of transitioning between paragraphs (in their stories). It is definitely a well-rounded program that includes grammar/syntax and dictionary skills as well as a variety of writing exercises (copywork/dictation, narration, original stories, etc.) There are also some lessons coming up where I'm going to have them do a little research with the encyclopedia before doing their writing (for instance comparing an animal from a list of the cat family with the household/domesticated cat). For your 10 y.o., if you are looking for a solid writing program, I'd recommend ILL. It's gentle but very thorough (again, based on my going through the book/PDF workbooks).

[Assuming that you really wanted to do it, would you commit to a weekly 7 AM appointment?]

With the current ages of my children (four kids between 2 and 11), no I would not do it, even if it was something I really wanted to do. It just wouldn't be feasible for us. That said, if my youngest was 7 or 8, making my older two teens and (hopefully!) capable of holding down the fort presumably while everyone else was still sleeping, then yes.

[Scheduling?]

I posted a comment to your blog, but will also answer here for discussion. :) We used to have a pretty strong year-round schedule: approximately 6 weeks on, one week off. It gave me a lot of flexibility during the school year, and when the boys were little, schooling was much faster. But as they got older, our full-schedule in the summer started to really interfere with dh being home (he teaches in a tradition-schedule school). So, we have slowly been cutting back on our summer schedule (this summer will just be math, which will be mostly independent for ds11 and ds6 where ds9 will need short lessons based on curriculum; writing, which will mostly be copywork; and read aloud, which will include Bible/saints stories, audio books, and bedtime literature selections).

 

When I make our calendar, I first mark off all the days dh has off, and then count what is left (for the whole 12 months - July through the next June). Then, I look at any summer plans (vacation, field trips, etc.) and decide what other days need to be blocked off versus which ones can be schooling-light, and then I decide when we'll start our "official" year. That now is the third week or so of August, right around the time dh decides he needs to get into his classroom to prep it for the new year. We end up with about 36-37 "full" weeks of school between the end of August and the very beginning of June, plus another 8 of so weeks of "school-light." Add in unexpected illnesses and needed days off, and it all works out in the end. ;)

 

Now, if dh had a year-round type of job, I'd have stuck with our six or so weeks on, one week off. I liked knowing we'd have a break for cleaning, field trips, and just plain relaxing. The boys do have neighborhood friends from the public schools, which makes summer harder, but I'd just use that as encouragement to wake early and get started so they could play by noon (or we'd be free to do something by noon). But, with dh's teaching schedule, having a modified traditional schedule allows us the most family time possible while still maximizing learning time.

[Dolciani pre-A: Do you work out the answers for the even #'s since they only give them for odd]

:iagree: We are actually using Lial now (started with Dolciani) but I only assigned/assign odds. There are more than enough problems (in either book) for my 11 year old that sometimes I don't even assign all the odds.

[Procrastinating!]

Hot damn.

 

 

Now I want a proclick.

 

 

:lol: It wasn't until I saw Jen's photos on 4Real that I really got it. (Looking at pictures of the machine on Amazon didn't do anything for me; but showing me neatly bound workbooks? :svengo: :lol: )

[What's on your summer reading list?]

Thinking a bit more about my list, I think this is the direction I plan on taking:

 

Finish the following:

 

Shadowplay (on Shakespeare)

How the Catholic Church Saved Civilization

The Philosophy of Tolkien (Kreeft)

The Abolition of Man (probably should just start at the beginning; it's a short book and I think I've trained my mind better this year to better understand it)

 

Begin/Read:

The Screwtape Letters

 

Family Read (probably audio):

The Hobbit

and probably something else but I'm not sure yet

 

Plus, I have a couple books I want to read to help me form our daily activities with dd.

 

And, I might be really, really "bad" and reread some Sophie Kinsella as a "reward" for finishing some of the heftier tomes above. (Like dessert after eating all your vegetables!) :lol:

[Procrastinating!]

 

 

 

[Procrastinating!]

I was wanting a new binding machine; I have a very old (20 years or so) comb-binding machine that my mom passed down to me. It works okay, but I can tell the "blades" on the hole punchers were dulling and frankly, comb-binding drives me batty (I want my stuff to open 360°). Spiral binding at Kinkos was getting too expensive. But, I wasn't sold on the Proclick until I read a thread at 4Real forums. Jen (MacFam) ended up buying one and posted quite a bit about it, including pictures. After that I needed one yesterday. ;)

[Procrastinating!]

I'll take pictures today. :)

[What's on your summer reading list?]

I feel I always have multiple books going, so this summer I plan on finishing one at a time. I have Shadowplay, a couple Catholic books including How the Catholic Curch Saved (or Build, can't remember and it's in the other room) Weatern Civilization, and a couple books for dd (on a neurodevelopmental approach to Down syndrome). I want to add a few novels in there but I'm not sure yet what those would be. I'm beginning to move for the reading about classical education to reading the classics, history, etc.

[Procrastinating!]

I was actually a bit productive this weekend. ;) I have the first 82 lessons of PLL "planned" - I wrote under each lesson in the book whether it was a strictly oral/conversation lesson, a lesson for narration/copywork, or whether I have a printed version of that lesson from the PLL workbook PDF. Then, I printed half-lined-half-blank pages from the Appendix of the PLL PDF, put all the print-outs in order, and am now waiting to bind them (it gets here tomorrow - a day early!!). I know we'll finish PLL before he finishes third grade (ds6), but I think I'll fill the end of that year with WWE/FLL and wait on ILL until 4th grade (only because I have a tentative progression in my head and don't want him to finish ILL too early).

 

Now I need to work on ILL - if I can even just do enough lessons for the rest of this year tonight and then I can keep working on them during the week, that'll be good. I think I printed all the ones I want for "part 1" (first 100 lessons) from the ILL workbook PDF. But, I need to go through the hardback book and decided what to do about the lessons I didn't print and go from there.

 

Oh, and I also made five-week overviews for science (RSO chem plus we are reading the Sassafras Adventures book from ES for fun) and history (wanted to make sure to hit ancient China and India, plus the Hebrew/Canaanite/Philistines. We'll end the year there and pick up with the Greeks in the late summer.

 

I've been putting off PreAlgebra. It's kind of mind-numbing going through each chapter section and writing down the assignment. But I really need to do it so I can have ds11's planner ready for him (the goal is to help him develop the habit of doing his independent math work first thing in the morning (Life of Fred, plus any definitions/formulas from Lial's).

 

I also want to make copywork books for the boys, but that sounds absolutely daunting! I'm thinking passages from the literature we read/are reading/will read, history and science stuff, Scripture that we are memorizing, and catechism. I should just buy Classical Catholic Memory just to use it for copywork. Not that I need to buy anything else. :lol:

 

So, anyone else fighting the urge to procrastinate? :D

[Scheduling]

Oh my! I think I'll take night-owls over bright-eyed, bushy tailed at 6 or 6:30am! :svengo: :lol:

[Latin vs. Spanish]

I agree with Tara - Latin, to me, gives you much more bang for your buck. We are doing GSwL right now and then will go onto LfC A (there's DVDs that teach each lesson and my kids like Chris Perrin, who does the videos). (We did LfC A just over a year ago, but it was too much too fast for their ages, so we stepped back with GSwL.) Another option, if you do want to keep with Latin would be Lively Latin; I have not used it but have read many good things about it.

 

Is there a way you can keep Latin studies for him to do independently/semi-independently (especially via a program like LfC A or Lively Latin) and start teaching him Spanish as well? I just feel strongly that learning the Latin will help so much with not only your ds picking up Spanish, but the other Romance languages should he wish to learn more than one. (Plus we have learned so much more about the English language and grammar through our Latin studies than we did with English grammar programs). With Latin we can actually "see" the grammar because it is inflected.

[What to do with completed workbooks?]

In years past, when we'd have loose-leaf things, I'd take them to Kinkos either each semester (if there was a lot) or at the end of the year and have them spiral bound. Workbooks are put under their beds in bin. They can keep or throw away (so far they are all keepers).

[Are vintage history books really worthwhile, or not so much?]

I love vintage books and have a couple "vintage" Catholic history books (by vintage I mean written in the '30s). I don't know if I would use them entirely on their own, but they are really wonderful books and I think using them alongside an up-to-date book would be fine. I've never read a Hakim book but I have looked at them at the library and they just didn't seem to fit me. I love K12's books - they are beautiful to look at (if a little heavy!) and I really appreciate the narratives that we are reading in the ancient times chapters. The two vintage books I have don't really have much in them until we get to Egypt (probably because when they were written, they didn't have the knowledge on Sumer and such that we do today). But once we catch up to them, I plan on reading from them as well. (And actually, right now I have ds11 and ds9, for the most part, reading K12 on their own and then we discuss/they narrate what they've read, which frees me up to read something else to them.) Too bad K12 isn't on audio! That would be awesome.

 

But back to your question ... I would maybe do two strands - one vintage and one modern (I vote K12), but try to keep them interwoven a bit if you can. Yes, all of them would be a LOT of history. :lol: Then again, my ds11 would love that as long as I read them to him. :rolleyes:

[Procrastinating!]

I have to say I've been sitting here selecting and printing pages from the ILL PDF book (I own the hardback book too). I'm not copying every page, but quite a bit of them. I am impressed thus far (I only bought part 1; having gone through it right now, reading the assignments and choosing which ones to print, as opposed to which we'll do orally, I can say that I want to buy the other two parts). There's assignments in there where I'm going to make them do research with an encyclopedia (say on squirrels, for instance). There are many writing prompts. There's grammar/word usage work and review. There's letter writing and envelope addressing, which granted, we could just do, but having an assignment for it means it'll get done! I think I'm going to bind the print-outs into semester books (can't wait until my ProClick gets here! :lol: ) because there's a lot of pages. Then, I'll take their 3-ring binder "writing notebooks" and rework them to hold copywork and dictation for the most part, and use their composition books for narrations/writing across the curriculum (they have a composition book for each subject).

[Procrastinating!]

So, I'm sitting here procrastinating what I need to do - planning, filing, and basically becoming organized. I know one reason this school year was harder was due to me not being prepared. I have learned a lot about myself as a teacher, though, which is good. I like having someone else's plans as a springboard, I like having things filed/bound/whatever and ready to go. And, I like having an overview of each subject (a "cheat sheet" that either gives materials needed like for science, or order of events for history). And for the sanity of all of us, I need a fairly firm daily routine that can work no matter when we wake. Plus, I need to see dd ( 2 1/2) as a full-time student as her "PreK" is very intentional and fairly me-intensive (neurodevelopmental approach).

 

So, I need to clean out my school file drawer. Salvage the file folders by renaming them again. ;) I need to make a routine that keeps the boys and me accountable (no more playing in the morning!). I need to make cheat sheets for every subject. I need to go through the PDFs for Primary Language Lessons and Intermediate Language Lessons, print the pages I want for them (not all as narrations and such I want on lined paper), and file those in my newly-cleaned-out file drawer. I need to continue planning Lial's PreAlgebra with assignments for each section so I can type up a syllabus for ds11 (that way he knows exactly what is expected of him).

 

Basically, I need to put on some Peter Kreeft or Andrew Pudewa or Chris Perrin and get started. :) Oh, and to reward myself, I have a ProClick coming from Amazon on Tuesday! And just in time as I ordered the sacrament preparation curriculum from CHC (Preparing Hearts or something like that) as well as the 7th grade plans (for the Virtue Tree), so I can ProClick those into books.

 

Ok ... I'm off to do something productive. Wish me luck! I keep telling myself if I do this now, I'll be able to relax and *read* during the summer. :lol:

[Plans for fall?]

What if you pulled a few key pieces of literature from your Narnia study (some of the mythology collections and/or fairy tales, for instance) and intersperse them with novels from your want-to-read list? So, maybe spend a month on a good novel, then a month reading Greek & Norse mythology, then another novel, another month of fairy tales ... I don't know, just an idea (I think it might be what we do next year, but just one or two weeks between novels as it's too hard to find time to fit in fairy tales among the novels we are reading, but the kids love them).

[Scheduling]

I need to fix the night-owl-ing around here. ;) Right now the toddler is the biggest culprit; she wants to "sleep" and "nurse" almost continually between the hours of 6am and 9am. Dh told me to wake and shower at 5:30am while he is still home. I just don't see *that* happening! :lol: I'm hoping I can start to change her schedule as the boys are in favor of being up earlier so they can have more time in the afternoon.

[Plans for fall?]

I'm not sure about a Narnia study, but if you haven't read the series, I highly, highly, highly recommend it (but start with the Wardrobe ;) ). We did Narnia on audio as a family starting last summer and we reference it, quote it, and discuss it still. We didn't do any prep work nor read anything related or such, but just let ourselves be swept away. Is there a way you could listen to Narnia and then read aloud either from the other books in your Narnia study? Or read aloud from our giant list? (Basically two separate reading/listening times?) Your two are a perfect age for Narnia, and then you could follow that with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (we plan on listening to The Hobbit this summer (we just finish A Wrinkle in Time but dh wants to be done with his school year so he can really focus on The Hobbit before we begin).