I've been really remiss on homeschooling posts this year. All posts, actually. But blogging is fun and I hope to begin anew in the near future.
One thing I have been meaning to post is what the kids are doing this year. Mainly as a reminder to me, when I am wondering what they actually did two, three or four years from now.
In general, we are following The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. I say in general, because I love her theories and concepts, but we do not have time for everything. We are following the path for Ancient History. I really wish we had done ancient history last year, rather then modern with a focus on American history, mainly because I think we would have better understood many things about American history with such a background. But, then of course our trip to the East Coast would not have been as exciting, so I guess it all works in the end. When following ancient history, according to Susan Wise Bauer, one should also study the science most interesting to the ancients - biology. One should also read Great Books, and historical fiction related to the time period. So that is mainly what we are doing, in addition to math and foreign language.
Here are the details:
Rachel
Math - Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra / Algebra 1
Science - Johns Hopkins University Life Science
History - History Odyssey level 2 - Ancients
Spanish - Rosetta Stone Level 2, Spanish for Children, and private tutoring
Grammar - Painless Grammar
Writing - Excellence in Writing "All Things Fun and Fascinating" (taught at the homeschool coop)
Rachel is also taking an earth science class and a folkart class at the coop.
Alex
Math - Saxon Algebra 2
Science - Northwestern CTD Honors Biology
History - History Odyssey Level 3 - Ancients
Spanish - Rosetta Stone Level 2, Spanish for Children, and private tutoring
French - Rosetta Stone Level 2 , First Start French
International Conflicts - Northwestern CTD
Alex is also taking American Government, Debate and Photography at the homeschool coop. He says these are so easy, he spends very little time on them.
In addition to all this academic stuff, we watch documentaries and historically set movies on dvd. We also watch Teaching Company courses, which I especially love. (As does Bill Gates...)
And the fun never ends around here with extracurricular activities: piano lessons, jazz ensemble, swim lessons, soccer, choir, theater, rabbit 4H, girl scouts - I'm sure I'm missing something. It's busy. Sometimes too busy. That's why I love vacation...
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Thanks for posting this!! It looks great!
ReplyDeleteI do have one question: Why TT math for Rachel and Saxon for Alex? How do you & they like each of these curricula? Are you planning to stick w/them?
Signed,
"Confused by Math Choices" :)
We started R with TT because it had a great computer "teacher" in the form of a cartoon cat. When she started homeschooling she was kind of math-adverse. I back tracked and we spent months doing nothing but memorizing times tables and doing math puzzles. Once she was ready for a book, but still opposed to Mom "teaching", I figured Saxon would be too difficult to go it alone. 2 years later, the cat teacher is no longer on her TT book, but we just stuck with the program. She will probably move to Saxon after this though, since we already own the books.
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