Oct. 23, 2006 Inching toward Charlotte Mason
Today we started on The Story of the World, Vol III. and began incorporating greater literature, dictation, and started on a poem memorization. The poem is a limerick as follows, and is introduced in the introduction of SOTW3:
The Pacific is largest of all,
The Indian starts at Bengal,
The Atlantic Ocean
Is always in motion,
The Arctic and Southern are small!
He has already learned most of it. It was our dictation exercise today, as well - just the first two lines. We started the year out doing dictation, but we didn't do it very consistently and it fell by the wayside in recent weeks. So again we got out his little black composition notebook and he wrote in that, and he really did very good work - it was some of his best handwriting to date. Not one mistake!
I really liked the way I was able to incorporate an art project (coloring in a picture) and literature and memorization (the poem) and history all in one. The history and geography was what I was most excited about. The first step was to set up shop. You see, in PJ's room is a large map, I'd say 4' wide and 3' tall, of the United States. It was a two-map set that came with a world map, with the flags of the world printed below it (the US map has the flags of all 50 states). Unfortunately, we have no space on PJ's walls to hang the world map in our tiny one-bedroom apartment, so it's been sitting rolled up in a corner for about a year or so.
Well, now that we're studying world history, I decided it was just time to hang it up in the hallway. It's already got two clothes lines where we hang up art projects so it's not like I'm too proper to have a giant map of the world in the dang hallway. LOL PJ loooooves geography, so he was excited about the world map and the prospect of re-adding geography to his school day, since it has been wholly absent with 3rd grade Switched on Schoolhouse history. It was also helpful in a tactile sense, because we traced a path in order of the poem from one ocean to another on the map.
The first time we tried The Story of the World three years ago, I think he was a bit too immature and his auditory deficits too great because we found it very tedious. I loved the book FOR MYSELF, but my kid haaaaaaaaated it. I just feel like the average six-year-old child wouldn't find stories about Ur or Mesopotamia or anything like that. Asking 1st grade children to care aboug Sargon the Emperor or the inception of Egyptian irrigation and the development of the Phoenicians' cuneform, etc is a waste of everyone's time for most children I know. My kid thought it was just all one big super-boring and irrelevant fairy tale.
This is the one big backdraw to the traditionally recommended classical four-year cycle of history. IMHO I think it is a good idea to go through it in 5th through 8th and then again in 9th through 12th because it DOES make sense that it's most intuitive to go through history chronologically. But starting ancient history with a 6 year old? I just don't get why they recommend doing things this way as it seems anathema to their other ideas. The authors of The Well Trained Mind elsewhere in all other parts of the book are such huge advocates of "starting from the concrete and moving gradually into the abstract." Well, for a Miami 6yo there's not much more that's abstract than the history of Mesopotamia, you know? At that age, I think they get more out of learning about their community, their cultural traditions, why we celebrate the holidays we do, where they came from, etc. And then perhaps a survey of American history in 2nd or 3rd grade and then possibly a brief introduction to world history in 4th. It's just more child-friendly IMHO. I know there are people for whom this has not at all been the case, though, so whatever works for your kids, I guess!
Anyway, this time around, since we have already independently studied the renaissance and medeival history (he is very big into knights, dragons and castles) and we had a huge quarterly-long unit study on the greeks and romans last year, AND the fact that he's become obsessed with Liberty's Kids which is all about the American Revolution, we dove directly into Vol 3 of the series which covers it. We are doing a Book of Centuries that I downloaded a template for at http://www.simplycharlottemason.com. After we took turns reading the pages of the first section, we did the activity book's review questions orally and I was very pleasantly surprised at how much he had retained. He was also able to do an oral narration of the first chapter with a medium amount of prompting. I'm sure he'll be an old pro. He was very happy about doing real hands-on mapwork again and he loved being able to color the portrait of the king they talked about in the chapter. This time around, I think the history is finally making sense. Today we read about Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and Phillip II of Spain; tomorrow is about Mary Boleyn, Queen of Scots. Cool!
After the narration, PJ got inspired and drew what he thought the two flags of the two empires looked like just based on their description in text. He was pretty close! I of course was pleased as punch that he was so into it.
Once a week, we are going to start working on correspondence skills. Today, he wrote out a postcard to his great-grandparents in Massachusetts. I addressed it, but he wrote them a cute little note that I'm sure they'll enjoy.
We still did Switched On Schoolhouse for math, grammar and Bible study as we'll likely contintue to do all this year. As I mentioned a couple of entries ago, I took out all the quizzes and tests in Bible Study, took out some of the review exercises and excessive quizzing in the math, and took out all the reading comprehension assignments in Language Arts. I don't imagine I'm going to be using the History curriculum at all - off to eBay it goes! - but the science curriculum does cover some of the topics I picked out for his survey of age-appropriate chemistry. So I may still use that.
Tomorrow is his PE class for homeschoolers, and then academics, then Cub Scouts. I have heard of people who devise an entire year's worth of unit studies based on that year's scouting manual. A neat idea, but a little too esoteric and ambitious for me, I think!! We are 1/4 down with the requirements for Bear cubs, so far, and there are other homeschoolers in his den, so that's been cool. Also allows me one more social outlet cause I get to sit around gabbing with the moms, too :) And I secretly love the great outdoors, and can't wait to go camping this year. Lord help us all. LOL
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Oct. 21, 2006 I'm Still Here!
Thank you Genevieve for checking in on us :D I'm still here! I've just been crazy busy this past month. I know that goes without saying and that everyone reading this will be all, "AREN'T WE ALL!" when they read that. But for about six weeks I had been dealing with some serious regression of my son's autism. I was too stressed out to do much with the blog, to be honest. Praise the Lord that his behavior has returned more or less to what it was a couple of months ago, and he hasn't had a severe tantrum/rage in several weeks. I am convinced it was diet-related. He just does so much better when I reduce his gluten intake, make him take chewable probiotics and digestive enzyme capsules, and eliminate dairy altogether.
This month I have also:
- Sought out and attained some excellent behavioral, occupational and speech therapy for my son
- Gotten emergency orthodontic surgery :( But it needed to be done.
- Gotten a CAR!
This last one is an AMAZING story. A woman at my church was just giving her car away. Seriously! It is very old and not too pretty and has a lot of miles. I do not expect to have it more than a year or so, if that. Still, it is a huge blessing to our family. And it's an SUV and in PJ's favorite color. =) It really is an answered prayer. Now I just have to get back into the practice of driving!
On the homeschooling front, I am increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the Switched On Schoolhouse curriculum. Perhaps it's because I'm just so in love with the ideas put forth in The Well Trained Mind, which focuses so much on history and literature. We are 11 weeks into the school year and I am considering changing out at least one, and possibly two, of the subjects. I really like the record-keeping aspect of the program, but I can't help but wonder if I am sacrificing too much depth and if the content isn't challenging enough. Grade level is not the problem - while much of it is a bit elementary for PJ, the next grade up doesn't look that much less cursory. Here is where we are at so far.
MATH
I very much like the content, scope and sequence of the math program. PJ is doing really well with that. Since he is dysgraphic, he enjoys the fact that he can type instead of write out the answers to the math questions. He is advancing at what I think is a very good pace and it does require that the student occasionally write things down by hand on "scratch paper." He is a bit careless when it comes to math and benefits from the immediate feedback of the program since he gets so many wrong due to carelessness. Last year when we did a traditional math program and I was always correcting him, he started getting irritated with me and started dreading math, but now he is really enjoying it and really getting a lot out of it. I will probably use SOS Math from here on out until at least high school.
BIBLE STUDIES
I like the Bible Studies program a whole lot. It teaches research and reference skills as well as presenting the topics in a personalized, accessible way. PJ enjoys it a lot. I wish there were more actual scripture reading required, but SOS is not big on making the child read real books (more on this complaint later). I dislike the fact that it is taught as just another school subject and graded accordingly. I am considering taking out the tests and quizzes for the remainder of the year, and just doing them as family devotionals together. As it stands right now, I would also like to continue using SOS for Bible studies next year in this manner.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Here's where it starts to get tricky. SOS does not have a literature component at all; about every four or five lessons it has a brief "reading comprehension" lesson that is neither related to anything else in the curriculum nor does it include any actual literature. It's usually just a paragraph-long story and PJ is asked to parrot back facts from it.
As a study in the fundamentals and mechanics of grammar, it is very good. I am pretty happy with that. However, it's not just a study on grammar. It is intended to be a complete approach to language arts. As such, they cram creative writing, reading comprehension, phonics, grammar and spelling lessons into the curriculum. I strongly dislike the way that they present the material in a really disconnected, non-sequential fashion. I am considering taking out all the reading comprehension exercises, and hacking the program a bit to make spelling and grammar two separate subjects, but that still wouldn't be much help. There is very little creative writing (though there has been some "write a paragraph story about this picture" style exercises and they were fun and well-structured. There is no penmanship at all, obviously, since it's done on a computer. But the most serious shortcoming is its total lack of a literature and reading program. They do not address poetry in any way, shape or form. They don't even offer suggestions.
As a result, I had to compile my own literature list for this year. PJ has read, on his own so far, My Teacher is An Alien (which, much to my surprise, he could not put down!) and The Story of King Arthur, the "illustrated adaptation" version (which he thought was interesting, but irrelevant). He has also gotten way into historical biographies and has so far read them about Albert Einstein ("Mom! He was HOMESCHOOLED!"), Thomas Edison, and Sacagawea. These were not on my list, but he's so into the biographies that I don't want to discourage him. Those were things he read of his own initiative! Read-aloud, we have read And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? and part of Farmer Boy. I say "part of" because, well, to be honest? We BOTH found that pretty dull. Later this year I'm going to give Little House in the Big Woods another shot, since that one is a bit livelier. We are now reading A Cricket in Times Square together (he reads some of it to me, I read some of it to him) and we are loving it so far.
For handwriting, we are using the teacher- and child-friendly program A Reason for Handwriting. This year we transition into cursive. We made it through halfway through the transition workbook last year because we progress very slowly because of PJ's fine motor skill delays. His handwriting has improved tenfold with the program and we both enjoy the fact that each week's exercise is based on a scripture verse. I'm going to continue with the Reason for... series next year for penmanship, which I only intend to do for two more years. After that, he can do everything on the computer and work on penmanship via correspondence to relatives, which I want to start incorporating too.
I will NOT be using SOS for Language Arts next year. Per The Well Trained Mind's recommendations, I will instead switch to the Rod and Staff 5th grade program instead. Sunday night I plan to heavily modify the SOS program and begin to incorporate dictation, poetry memorization and more reading/read-aloud, because, really, the content of the SOS program is pretty darn flimsy.
SCIENCE
This is where, IMHO, the SOS curriculum really starts to go belly-up. Much like a traditional school's approach, they just present a variety of subjects in no logical order, with no connection to one another, and to no great depth. The experiments are fun, I guess, and PJ did pick up a lot about the human body, but - well, last year I bought in advance all the resources I would need to teach PJ the Well Trained Mind's recommended scope and sequence for third grade chemistry, and I'm just giving up on the SOS science altogether. It's awful. Additionally, I am a Christian and welcome curriculum that incorporates mention of God's hand in creation, but I do not think that theology should comprise the majority of a science curriculum, and it does. Seriously. I think I'm going to eBay it.
HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY
This is the absolute WORST part of this curriculum. Calling it a history and geography course is, in my opinion, totally misleading and a complete misnomer. The third grade SOS program is really a United States social studies overview. Its mention of geography is incidental, such as the unit we just completed about specialized farms: the section on corn farming made brief mention of where corn is grown, and then spent four lessons talking about the process of corn farming. They might've mentioned that it used to be called "maize" by the Native Americans. Also, there are "suggested web sites" which are far above the average 8yo's ability and interest level which are suggested for "further history reading." I guess that's the "history" part. You can see the scope and sequence for the third grade program here. You can also see that the 4th and 5th grades aren't that much more comprehensive.
According to the schedule, we would be studying farms well past Thanksgiving. After we get done with specialized farms, we'll move on to animal farms. While interesting just for its own sake, I guess, it could not be more irrelevant to my goals of teaching my child about the story of human events and achievement, not to mention irrelevant to my family altogether. I live in Miami! We do not need to spend a month on soybean farms! My child has learned absolutely no history whatsoever in the last 3 months. I am very disappointed. It is a social studies overview and nothing more. That's going to eBay, too.
As for the rest of the year, I have The Story of the World, Vol 3 activity and text book just sitting there collecting dust on my bookshelf. I am dusting it off and starting that program on Monday. Ideally, I would like to make it through that book by the end of this school year, if not sooner. I have divided it up into 20 weeks, and there are 25 weeks left to the school year. Then I'd like to simply read through Vol 4 the last month of school and over the summer as a read-aloud thing. We won't be doing any math, science or anything else over the summer, so we'll just do The Story of the World, Vol 4 with some outside reading and some arts and crafts.
For next year, fifth grade, I would like to go completely Well Trained Mind
and start on the Ancients and do their four-year cycle twice, with an
emphasis on the Far East and taking a literature/ read-aloud list from
Sonlight.
IN GENERAL
My response to Switched on Schoolhouse ranges from satisfactory contentedness to outright contempt. The math program is the only one I would wholeheartedly recommend. Everything else, there are better and usually cheaper alternatives. The thing I dislike the most about the whole program is that, far from inspiring a love of satisfying one's curiosity, it really puts the child in the "get it done for the sake of finishing" frame of mind toward academics. I dislike having to sit next to PJ and do nothing while he works, but he is not yet able to work independently, so I can't leave him there while I attend to other things. Far from freeing my time up, it actually just serves to make me feel removed from my child's educational process. I need to get back to my Charlotte Mason/ Classical roots here and think about making some changes immediately before learning becomes a total and thoughtless chore.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
This year, we didn't incorporate a foreign language, nor did we buy SOS's Spanish curriculum because money was so tight. I'm not sure what use it would've been, really. We all already read, speak and write fluent Spanish, which we speak exclusively whenever possible, and when he wants some extra input on that, we just check out kids' books in Spanish from the library. So, since next year we will be focusing somewhat on the Far East with both history and literature, and we just learned that we are of Chinese heritage, my entire family has decided to learn Mandarin Chinese as a group project. My mother has agreed to purchase the (very expensive) complete homeschool set of Rosetta Stone's Mandarin program, which is apparently good enough for four to five years of study. All three of us will be learning Chinese together as a family. =) Neat, right? We are all soooo excited about that.
I am also considering starting him off very, very slowly on Latin. Haven't decided yet.
THE ARTS
PJ is progressing really well with his Kids' Guitar Course Vol 1. He has only had a few lessons and can already play a few chords and a couple of songs. We plan to finish it and go on to Vol. 2 and 3, which should take us through next year. Past that, and I'll start teaching him formal notation and scales and modalities and things like that. Now that we are starting The Story of the World, I am considering incorporating some relevant music appreciation from the three billion or so classical CDs I have. For art, we're just doing a weekly craft. Next year, I want to look into signing him up for some formal classes if I can afford it.
Anyway, that's where we are right now. Has anyone out there ever done this, just thrown out a curriculum in the middle of the year? Could you let me know how you managed it and if you thought it was worthwhile? I would really appreciate it.
Hope everyone is having a happy and blessed October so far!
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Aug. 19, 2006 Levels, etc.
Monday begins our fourth week of homeschooling. We more or less follow the Dade County Public School calendar, except that we take the entire week of Thanksgiving off, and we take a few days off for PacJunior's birthday in February and a couple other holidays here and there. We will still be done with the year on May 25th.
This year we're using Switched on Schoolhouse for the first time. I was going to wait until August 14 to start school, but he was so excited about doing his academic work on the computer that he wanted to start right away when the CD's arrived on July 31 :)
Here is the conundrum: PJ is doing the third grade SOS curriculum. We bought the entire thing all in one big package all at the third grade level. His reading level is way ahead of 3rd grade - he tested at early fifth grade level in reading and mid-fourth in math - but he wasn't able to answer one or two questions in the test about what I thought was basic knowledge in math and reading, and there wasn't a qualitative difference in the third and fourth grade science and history curriculum, so we went with the third grade package, despite the fact that we say he is in fourth grade.
So I am not sure what "grade" he is in now. He skipped most of kindergarten. When I pulled him out of public school three months into kindergarten, I started him on a first grade curriculum, and he did second grade when he was first-grade-level, and last year we used those Complete Book of Reading/ Math books for grades 3-4 and he got through most of them, but since SOS is a more formal curriculum than we were used to doing, I wanted to make sure he had mastered the basic mechanics and decided to start him at age-level. I am still not sure that was a good idea. 
Don't get me wrong; we LOVE Switched On Schoolhouse, and I would rather he be really solid in the basic skills than to have a mediocre grasp and push ahead because of his reading level, but the third grade spelling is way WAY too easy for him and is not challenging him at all. As a result, I am thinking of omitting the 3rd grade spelling lessons from here on out (if I can just figure out how...) and possibly doing a written 4th grade level spelling curriculum as a supplement. He has said he enjoys SOS but misses having a written curriculum, too, so I'm going to add a little of that starting this week. I already have most of the Reason for Handwriting cursive curriculum just sitting there since we bought a two-year curriculum last year, so I may as well use it.
So the current tentative plan is that he will get through 3rd grade language arts in SOS very quickly and we will just do the 4th grade curriculum (minus the spelling, too) for the second half of the year, with spelling being a separate, hand-written subject. It may mean doubling up on the language arts on some days. I'm not sure what we're going to do about the math since while what he's currently doing seems like a lot of review too, but it will definitely become more challenging as the year goes along and I don't think the review is hurting him any - like I said, I thught we rushed through a lot last year.
The third grade science and social studies are definitely beneath his skill level, though he is enjoying them because they are age-interest-appropriate. But I think he could've handled 4th grade science and social studies just fine.
So it is that I think we will get through 3rd and 4th SOS Language arts this year and simply skip right to the SOS 5th grade package next year. If anything, I will either do a 4th grade math workbook over the summer, or just order 4th grade math instead of 5th next year. It all more or less evens out eventually. It's just that after three years of being a year ahead, I don't think PJ will handle being "held back" very well, even though he'd be held back to the grade he'd be in according to his age.
We really like Switched on Schoolhouse,even if it's not as customizable as designing your own curriculum. I think it will help him fill in some knowledge gaps that our more informal previous curriculum left (unfortunately) and in a year or two he will be fully a year ahead at least.
I don't really care what "grade" he's in; I'm not being a type A personality and trying to push my kid ahed here. In Sunday school and the Cub Scouts and other things like that, he is with the other third graders because of social and maturity issues. But academically, the reality is that he has a very high IQ and is really bright, and reads the newspaper easily and is reading very advanced books, so I know his reading and comprehension level are way, way above grade level, and I want him to challenge himself, not just coast by. SOS has a few little quirks here and there, but it's a very child-friendly format so it's no longer a chore to homeschool, it's on the computer which my child loves, it keeps great records for me, and the curriculum seems comprehensive and rigorous. I also love the fact that they have an accredited "academy" for high school that uses SOS and gives out accredited transcripts and things like that. High school is a mere 5 years away, so it's something to consider and it'll be nice to have a familiar format to transition to.
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