New School Year

As we enter our third year of homeschooling I have come to really look forward to our late summer planning sessions. Around the middle of each August Barb and I sit down to try to figure out exactly how our homeschooling year will take shape; what it will look like and how it will be structured.

One of the things I've come to expect is that we will plan more structure than will actually happen. By nature I am a planner and an organizer. I enjoy trying to figure out optimum strategies. I also enjoy feeling like I can accurately predict the future, even if reality always proves me wrong. I'm perfectly happy with the illusion of control, even if I have to admit that it is only an illusion.

The truth is that we have a very rigorous daily schedule. In order to live comfortably we both have to work. But, in order to homeschool our children one of us has to be with our kids at all times. So far we've been able to manage it all, but not without some sacrifice. Barb gets up ungodly early and works until around 2pm. She comes home and I go off to work at one job where I am a therapist for troubled teens from 3-6pm and then to another job where I write case histories and treatment plans for a local community mental health agency. Then I come home around 9pm and we enjoy some sort of family time until we all pass out from exhaustion.

And that's the biggest sacrifice we've made in our determination to both live comfortably and homeschool: we're very tired. That's what always interrupts our careful homeschool planning. We plan for a certain level of educational structure, but we're always too tired to maintain it exactly as planned. But that doesn't really bother me anymore. I've come to terms with it because, even if we don't follow through with all my plans for a given year, I have yet to be disappointed with the progress the kids are making.

That being said, this year I've tried to find a balance with the planning. I keep trying to find the sweet spot that satisfies my need to plan and predict the future while being realistic enough to complete on a daily basis.

So, with that in mind I thought I'd outline our plans for this current homeschooling year in which Simon is entering "2nd grade" and Gwen is in her last year of preschool before "Kindergarten" (they are 7 and 4 years old respectively). This year Barb wanted to be more involved so she gets her own afternoon time slot dedicated to the subjects she excels at. Note that these formal lessons are designed for Simon. Gwen definitely likes to get involved with school time, but she does more age appropriate activities while Simon is tackling his assignments.

It looks like this:

Morning lessons with Daddy:
3 Lessons:

1. Spelling
2. English / Grammar
3. Writing

Afternoon lessons with Mommy:
Each day choose 2 of these 3:

1. Math
2. Science
3. Arts & Crafts
   

Bedtime lessons:
Daddy reads history stories

This may seem like a lot, but most lessons only take 10-15 minutes at most so we're talking about a half hour to 45 minutes in the morning, about the same amount of time in the afternoon and then just reading to them before bedtime. I've found that short, concise lessons each day (just long enough for a 7 year old's attention span) are perfect. Any more time than that and everyone loses patience.

I'm very pleased that Barb is taking over a big chunk of the homeschooling. Math and science are areas that she excels at (she has a graduate degree in mathematics after all) and this frees me up to focus on the areas I have the greatest passion for which are language skills, literature, history, rhetoric, etc.

It has taken a couple years of research to pick the curriculum material that works best for us in the subject areas we've chosen. Here's how it breaks down:

Spelling
Spelling Workout series. I like these books because Simon works on it autonomously with very little input from me. This frees me up to work on phonics with Gwen while Simon works on this.

English
First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. This is part of Susan Bauer's Classical Education curriculum and was written by her mother. It contains lessons in grammar, memorizing and reciting poetry, narration, writing, etc.

Writing
This year I'm adding Susan Bauer's Writing with Ease program. I will probably stop including the writing requirements from the English lessons above and just use these instead. Her primary focus is to practice the twin arts of putting ideas into words and putting words on paper with the intent of leading a student toward a later study of rhetoric and persuasive writing in the high school years.

Math
Singapore Math. Simon is starting the level 3 books this year. We tried Saxon math a couple of years ago, but they were too expensive and just didn't work for us as well as the Singapore program does.

Science
We've have several different books for a couple of years now and haven't used them as much as we'd hoped. They are: Sandbox Scientist, Backyard Scientist, Mudpies to Magnets: A Preschool Science Curriculum and The Everything Kids Science Experiment Book. I think part of the reason these fell by the wayside is that, as I said before, my main interests are in language arts. Now that Barb is taking this over she'll probably get a lot more done than I did.

Arts & Crafts
This will be pretty ad hoc, I suppose. Whatever Barb can think of, she'll do with the kids.

History
I'm going to start with the Usborne World History Encyclopedia and then work in the Ancient History volume of Susan Bauer's classical history series for kids (aka The Story of the World, Volume 1). After that I plan to use both books together. Simon listened to the audio CD version of this book a couple of years ago, but that fell out vogue with him and I wanted to start over with both kids.

Next year I will probably add a Latin program. I'm waiting for Gwen to get just a little older so that she and Simon can learn it with me together. The same company that makes the Latin curriculum (Memoriapress.com) also makes a formal logic program that I'm considering also, but that probably won't be needed until Simon hits about 7th grade or so.)

That's about it. Hopefully we can keep up with everything, but if we have to sacrifice parts of it to maintain our sanity, so be it.