Wind-in-my-hair Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 We are not doing very much in the way of formal academics, but I have noticed some seriously positive maturity changes in my almost 7 year old son, and now I would like to un-unschool and try some new curricula at the same time. We will be working toward 2nd grade-- not yet there, so what I am about to list is looking ahead: 1st Grade (first step in un-unschooling): Start Spalding method- learn phonograms and handwriting strokes until words and sentences come fluently. Have him reading non-basal books recommended in the 4th edition of WRTR for first grade. AO Y0 and some Y1 read-alouds. Copy model sentences when writing strokes are mastered. Improve narrations. (Should I do Writing Strands 1 oral exercises in addition to narration exercises?) 2nd Grade: Spalding method using 4th edition. AO Y1 for read-alouds and narration exercises. English for the Thoughtful Child 1 - only the exercises he can handle. Writing Strands 2 - to add some variety to our writing practice. 3rd Grade: Spalding - intermediate phase of the spelling notebook. AO Y2 for read-alouds and oral composition. Do a commonplace book together as we enjoy literature. English for the Thoughtful Child 1- finish it and possibly begin 2. Writing Strands 3 4th Grade: Do Spalding to mastery. AO Y3... possibly having caught up to Y4. He is supposed to begin writing his narrations when he is able to, and keeping a few other notebooks, too. ... maybe pick up Story Starters? Latin - Any ideas? English for the Thoughtful Child 2 - complete it if possible. Pick up Simply Grammar... maybe. Writing Strands 4 - if extra practice is needed or desired. 5th Grade: If we do not need another year of Spalding I will be moving on to something like Sequential Spelling, or... I dunno. lol. I guess that's as far as I can go without feeling like a fortune teller. I mainly want to know if you can spot any glaring failures within this language arts line-up. Or, can you recommend anything else that might sub for any of these or add to it? Is there anything so redundant that I could drop it? I have obviously excluded math, as well as history and science which would call on us to write. If its of any value to you, we will be doing Developmental Math, Math Mammoth, and Right Start in some combination that we find works, and BSFU as our science springboard. AO has enough history, but we also own SOTW and will read from that since we won't be doing all of the AO suggestions. Also, I would like to do an oral language program for the first few years, something that we can just listen to for fun, at our leisure. A bilingual audio book, Muzzy, etc. Do you have any ideas for fun, non-reading or writing, foreign language for grades 1-4? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Looks good to me but Ellie is the Spalding guru. Hopefully, she will see your thread and respond. If not, try pm-ing her. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wind-in-my-hair Posted January 22, 2015 Author Share Posted January 22, 2015 Looks good to me but Ellie is the Spalding guru. Hopefully, she will see your thread and respond. If not, try pm-ing her. I like the 4th edition of WRTR because its got everything I need to get a basic start. I can tell that Ms Spalding wants grammar taught during the writing process, which is why I thought EFTTC might come in handy. And WS would be for fun assignments that we could, you know, submit to the newspaper's kid's section if we wanted. TWRTR requires sentence composition as soon as spelling words can be written from dictation. I am just wondering what direction I should ultimately take with grammar. I guess I am in the camp of teaching grammar through writing. I have some ideas in mind of how I will go about it. I do not like the formulaic approach because I think it produces writers who only seem to know how to think and write: They think, instead of "What do I want to say, and what are the best words to say it in?" ... "Hmm, so I need to start this sentence with an article. Got one. Okay, now for a noun or something. Right, my character's name. Good..." and if this habit continues you have a student who is at risk of inventing thoughts through writing instead of thinking them and writing them. (Big tangent. So sorry.) I think a program that contains Latin in the middle years and a sentence diagramming component somewhere, and lots of writing, would be enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwik Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 It sounds like a lot of planning and structure for unschooling. Are you sure your lednings aren't towards a more structured approach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wind-in-my-hair Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 It sounds like a lot of planning and structure for unschooling. Are you sure your lednings aren't towards a more structured approach. Spalding is a highly structured program, and I am trying to bring more structure into the picture. Yet even unschoolers need to use curricula to supply content and get ideas. Every child needs to learn to read; unschooled children all the more since they will be working independently. But we will be doing more structure, for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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