7.26.2008 - School Planning 08-09, part 1
Planning is well underway here at Springvale Academy. Springvale is the name of our little township, and, well, I think it makes a nice name. We've got a 'fight song', ("I'm a Soldier", #406 in our "Great Hymns of the Faith" hymnal...) and we're working on deciding our school colors. Then, since we have no less than 3 graphic designers in our family, we'll come up with a logo, get some fun t-shirts made, and have some official looking letterhead printed for any and all correspondence with the school district and any and all official type things, like transcripts and such.
This fall we will pretty 'officially' have a 9th grader, a 4th grader, a 2nd grader, a Kindergartener, and a preschooler. There will also be an almost 2 year old and a newborn, so this could get interesting. Not like it hasn't been interesting so far, eh?
For our 9th grader, we have decided to model our high school course curriculum after the Curriculum used at Hillsdale Academy, the K-12 academy associated with Hillsdale College in Michigan. We've never formally studied American History because we haven't needed anything formal in that area yet- our family has always just included such history 'study' in our lifestyle. We listen to political talk radio & we discuss the historical issues brought up. Our youngsters enjoy watching "Liberty's Kids", and can quote Patrick Henry at 3 and 4 year of age, when I imagine many of their peers remain blissfully unaware of who he even is/was. Our boys read history books, not because they've been assigned reading, but for the fun of it, because they find them fascinating. So when our sons were lamenting one day that is was too bad there weren't any real patriots like there were in Revolutionary times, I told them that there were indeed, just not enough of them on Capitol Hill. There are some good patriots scattered aound this country, and one of the finest colleges I can think of for a conservative & patriotic kid to head off to is Hillsdale College. Some reading of the web site was enough to light a wee bit of a fire under our almost 15 yr old, who up until recently has been rather hard to motivate. He has always been a boy who would rather play a video game or play with army guys or watch a war movie... Anyway- I was very excited to find Hillsdale Academy posts their curriculum free on-line (their course outlines anyway, we still have to buy all the books and come up with assignments, etc... Tapestry of Grace will help a bunch with that.)
The youngers will be following along with Tapestry of Grace's Year 1 for ancient History, and also following much of Ambleside Online's plans for good literature, nature study, composer study, artist study, etc... Our 4th grader will be working on Ambleside's Year 3 and the 2 grader and Kindergartener will be working together on Year 1. I have made up some handy checklists and record keeping forms for our Ambleside stuff and will hopefully figure out a nice way to make them available here to anyone who would like some copies.
My days are flying by, time to get back to the list making...
Enjoying them,
because of Him,
ali
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