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After a year of dazzling costumes from yesteryore, we come to the end of our "Portraits of American Girlhood" study. It was a truly fun experience. My sewing skills are much improved after re-creating dresses that could have been worn by Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, and Addy. We didn't make a costume for Samantha and Kit - it seems their costumes could be easily thought up from a modern wardrobe anyway. The "Portraits of American Girlhood" is a unit study that utilizes the American Girl books to study American history. We studied one girl and her time period over six weeks and then took one week off before starting a new study. In this way, we were able to cover one book a week (each time period has six books), as well as literature about real people in that time. I highly recommend the study as we both enjoyed it immensly. What brought in even more fun was meeting with another Mom and her daughter each Thursday morning to do "school" together. The girls loved the interaction and the Mom's did too! We didn't make it to the "Molly" study before we had finished our required 180 days - but we may do now - just for fun! We incorporated our other curriuculum choices in to the mix and ended up with a school year that pleased my daughter and afforded her the chance to move ahead in the areas that she expressed an interest. Her year in curriculum looked like this: Spelling Workouts A and B Miquon Math and presently part way through Saxon 3 Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind - the 1st grade section Calvert Schools Melody Lane music program Piano lessons Gymnastics lessons Explode the Code 4 Portraits of American Girlhood unit study (includes your Science, History, etc.) It was a challenging and satisfying experience to travel this road with her this year. She has a lot to be proud of! Before we choose curriculum for our children, I sit down with them and have a meeting. We discuss what she would like to learn and any ideas she has for learning it. She has also been to curriculum fairs with me to look at resources. I used to be a strictly "no workbook" sort of educator, then along came my daughter who likes them a lot! It is important to give children a say in their education - to let them "own" their own experience. It may not look like we envisioned it, but it is offering them a beautiful freedom and opportunity. Children, given a chance to choose their own study, will often choose an even more vigorous path than the one you would have chosen. My daughter often speaks of how she "loves a challenge". I hope that she can look back on this year with wonderful memories of challenges met! |
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