I had bought it for a keep-skills-fresh sort of scenario when we were not doing mama-taught school because of transitioning from city apartment to a working homestead, but when I saw my kids' end-of-year test results (required by our state), I decided to switch. They'd always scored in the 70% percentile in math before. After completing TT (three different levels, three different kids), they did better in math than anything else, getting above the 95% percentile. Maybe it was the fresh country air?

It's my practical skills year, following on a sudden love for sheep to shawl processes I discovered last year. I vowed in January to acquire more hands-on skills. So far this year I've learned to use a pottery wheel to make mugs, bowls and plates, as well as how to glaze, use a kiln, build an open-air kiln, and dig up and process my own clay. I also since January have learned to knit a very simple scarf. Knitting is so much harder than pottery! Socks are my end goal there and I have sworn I will not give up until I am confident that I can knit a sock, even if it's a simple sock. Making soap (from scratch, or more literally from ash, in true homesteading fashion, without storebought stuff) is next, if I ever master the sock. As this progresses for me, I am also assisting my littlest guy with learning to grow herbs and make extracts, tinctures and syrups (and essential oils if we can dig up the time/bravery/money to make our own still). Meanwhile, to keep my vocabulary from rotting while I rejuvenate my finger-smarts, I am thinking of reading through the required reading list published by my church for entry into Unitarian Universalist ministry. With all the hands-on learning going on, though, I feel like it'd be more practical to tackle a booklist that is mostly available on MP3. This year needs a book theme, for sure -- and NOT one related to the homesteady business.

This is pretty much what I've begun doing. We did prehistory in one unit, finished that up and did Mesopotamia all the way from prehistory to Alexander, then began China. We'll take China all the way to modern times before going back to do pre-contact Americas, then Greece, then India. I find it easier to tell the story of history the way a people themselves would tell it -- as their own tale, following their nation. Other nations get occasional brief descriptions as part of the setting, but the nation we're in is the protagonist. Also, this makes it so much easier for me to connect visual arts and literature and religion to our history studies, which is important for the salon-style "discussion group" atmosphere I am trying to create around history at home. We did the Epic of Gilgamesh during Mesopotamia, Monkey during China, and will do Plato during Greece and the Ramayana during India. When we get out of ancients, though, I don't know if I'll be able to do it that way. Since the Renaissance history has been a politically complex tangle of people and nations. I don't know if it'd be a disservice to kids to reinforce the idea that the Christian empire, then the British empire and then the United States ruled and defined the entire world's history... I think in the past six hundred years individuals have had the power of empires to change things so maybe I will switch to a more Genevieve Foster approach once we get out of ancients.