Please NOTE: this entry is put together just for me to quickly organise things in my head and keep a record of our home-schooling for sentimental reasons. It is also a draft to be edited on needs' bases for LEA, should they knock on our Homeschooling door, out of a blue. So, this is NOT an edited copy, and all kinds of typos, missing articles and grammatical / stylistic flaws is a given. If you are reading this because Google catapulted you here for his own googley reasons, welcome to my blog, I'm hoping that you will find it useful but not expecting a perfect flow of written word.
So. The Curriculum for the forthcoming year. We decided to follow the principles of Classical Education route, though the more light-hearted and customised version of it, replacing or simply removing some materials and sections of the curriculum to fit around boys learning styles, interests and needs, but sticking to the main idea of learning by accumulating knowledge in early age by plentiful reading and subsequent independent and with help learning through books and printed word ( as opposed to screen enabled learning ).
In as far as our chosen curriculum principle is going, some customisations are quite possible to plan. For example as a family of secular mindset so we will not be following bible studies in any shape or form this year, and will touch on it as part of History and Philosophy studies later in the day, but instead we will dedicate this time to different elements of Computer Science , the very simple elements of it, as this stage, for which of course, we'll require the screen. Also, although Oliver does not read well enough to 'read up' on math principles, he has taken to Math very well and we will just follow Math printable in his level, which is overall Year / Grade 1 but a bit beyond that in Maths so we'll work around that.
As to the unplanned changes, we have a series of books / workbooks we plan to implement through out this year, which I will list below. With some of them, I can see Oliver getting on very easily, but some other may not work at all, just like Classical guide to teaching reading last year did not work for him at all, but Phonics did beautifully.
Just like last year , we are planning to do Core subjects of Maths, Language and Reading. To these we will add some modular activity, such as introduction to History and Computer. Finally some very basic intro to Science and Technology in interesting bite-size facts.
We will continue to do 'just for fun' 'science' experiments occasionally as well las participate in educational organised HE groups and trips.
Socially, we will continue with regular playdates with HE and non HE friends and will renew our efforts with HE groups, which didn't quite spark much interest in boys last year.
Joe has started pre-school, twice a week in hope to make his own friends there, like Oliver did. So far he hates it but it's only been two days.
MATHS
These bite chunks of Maths I find brilliant , because although they are easy , they should fill out the gaps in our Maths explorations so far. We might compliment these with our own practice following on from last year, but less as these worksheets now came into play. I imagine we will miss or go very quickly some of the elements and will probably obtain the next book up sometime half way through the year. This book seems an excellent tool for independent study, too, so I'm very pleased with it. This should be plenty for Oliver's Maths academic year '17
LANGUAGE
The language this year will be broken into several parts. The first one will be the theory of language, e.g. grammar fundamentals broken down into segments. For this we will be using the book below, 2-3 times a week in conjunction with practice e.g. story writing, spelling or dictation.
The next element of Language will be easy language practice in worksheets, which, I hope will be fun and will also stop us from overlooking some language basics. This book is coined as 'daily activities', so we are going to follow it quite a bit , at least 3-4 days a week. I anticipate for this, also , to be a good ground for an independent work, which, hopefully will set the tone for the next academic year, when Joey will begin to be home schooled, as well, formally.
Or third Language section will be SPELLING, STORY WRITING , DICTATION and perhaps some other makeshift practice elements ( e.g. calligraphy ) I will have to play it by ear , how often each will be done. But, hopefully, things like spelling, perhaps a shorter, list of 10 spellings, can be done at least 4 days a week.
Finally, language-wise , I'm wold like to explore this book below, the practical work guide from classical education viewpoint and see if it fits in better than EP workbook or if we can incorporate a bit of both without creating an overwork. This book is on order
READING
Our reading will consist of 3 parts.
FIRSTLY, I would try to see how Oliver will get on with Chapter books, where the chapters are not very long but run in one solid page with less pictures. This is inline with Classical Education Principles and I would like for him not to get used to relying on images to largely supplement his imagination. This is what happened to Jazzlyn , now 14 , and I suspect , it was partially the reason she has not developed the love for reading. Even if I'm wrong, I am still keen to get Oliver used to reading books for the sake of text, not pictures. We will try reading simple or simplified classics , which are slightly but not overwhelmingly challenging. If he really doesn't bond with the chapter book we started on I will try replacing them with a different variety in the same genre / style of presentation ( limited in pictures and with a lot of writing though in larger letters ). Here's the example. The first book we will try.
This, below is Chapter 1, about 2/3rds of it. Im planning to take turns with Oliver and read alternate sections of it, for as long as it's necessary. I'm hoping to strike the balance between him knowing that some types of reading can be challenging in a way that you feel an achievement when you finished it and it's thought provoking, but it's not something you'd read 'for fun' necessarily. Yet I don't want to make him scared of books, so we'll have to tread carefully with this one, as at his moment Oliver is very keen or reading, loves to pick up all kinds of books and attempting to read them. I want to encourage it , but not put him off. The other side of this coin is that, hopefully, once he'd used to reading chapters, he will not be scared of 'bigger books' and will just learn , over time, how to seek knowledge out of them.
I'm planning to ask easy questions on content of the book, though at this stage I expect I'll be answering most of it. He only just started to gather the content of his Phonics series consistently when asked, so I don't think it's much rush with it, but I want to keep thinking of the content on his radar, all the same.
The SECOND part of Oliver's reading will be easy fun books with loads of pictures like the book below. He can read it to himself or his brother and swap it for 'TV' credits. I can also use these as 'independent reading' at this stage.
The THIRD part of our Reading schedule is for me to start reading boys children's classics. I have a few handy and, I expect, I will probably try out a few before I find one that strikes accord with Oliver. He is not a great listener of books and I will try to do my best to make it an easy activity. Below is the sample of the book list, there are many books that don't seem to be in the library, but there are many lists, at the same time, so I think we'll have our hands full with it anyway!
NON-CORE SUBJETCTS
Our first module in non- core subjects will be HISTORY. We will be exploring history of Ancient World by Classical Education. The delivery gone missing in post , so I can't offer much feedback on it, other than hope boys will like it and it will fire up their imagination. I'm in two minds weather it's actually going to work, but will give it at least a month of couple of lessons per week, if it is what I hope it is. The book has gathered great reviews by other home schoolers.
Our other non-core subject will be COMPUTING
Like most kids our boys are very computer savvy, too much so for my liking. So with this occasional lesson, perhaps fortnightly, we'll touch on functional non-internet heavy things like, how to save , what's presentation power point, what's a 'file' what's an 'email', how to type an email. I will encourage some assignments to be done on Computer eventually, like a project on Power point , or how to organise his own 'corner' on gmail storage space. We will take it at a slow pace as one of the organising options at this stage. Just to bring it on Oliver's radar, as opposed to introducing it as a main medium for , say year 2.
OTHER LEARNING STUFF
We will continue with the activities we got to call SCIENCE. Initially they were loosely science related experiments with carbonated soda, vinegar corn flour and food paints. It since gained a bit of a generic meaning of doing a structured activity that is meant to introduce something new and is fun, and lasts more or less for as long as it's fun. So we'll try sowing , drawing with watercolour pencils , cooking making edible cola bottles and whatever else. I will try not to let this fun and much loved by kids activity to trail out.
SOCIAL STUFF , HOLIDAYS AND EDUCATIONAL DAYS
We are going to continue with 5 week days, where only the occasional whole day one off educational activity ( this month it's visit to the Zoo and Science museum ) will count as 'no other study' day and we will stick with national holidays except for those times when we are on holidays ourselves, in which case we will make up for it doing national holidays.
We will continue with some of what we did over the summer, which was weekly to trice-weekly playdates with Oliver's pre-school days friends and add HE friends activities ( this week it was gymnastics and another sports activity followed by soft play)
I remain to be very keen to find a suitable HE group for Oliver to go and play as a part of, so we will re-visit 3 existing ones, and will try out two more.
PE
Oliver is doing weekly gymnastics and I'm pondering over the idea of swimming lessons or just a regular swimming pool visit, seeing that both him and his brother love water. Over the summer they'd spent load of time playing outside, though I think it's now going to be less so. Hopefully soon Oliver will finish learning how to ride his bike without stabilisers , because we can then buy him a new bike and him and Jo can have regular bike rides after school.
And this is the end of my curriculum run down. Today is the last day of our reading week, we have finished with phonics which Oliver is very proud of, and I tried reading them 'Little house in Prairies' which seemed to bore both of them to tears, so we''ll leave it 'till they are older and try 'Charlie in the chocolate factory' next.
WHAT ABOUT JOE?
Joe is keen to get stuck into learning things, and very easily picked up counting to 20 and all the colours so far. ( the fact that he's a very accomplished speaker really helped, I think ). However, I want to get Oliver in a bit of a swing of working independently and have no desire to do any formal learning with J until he's 4. We'll see how he gets on in his play school. I really hope he warms up to it and makes some friends and start being home schooled, pretty much following Ollie's study route this time next year, by when , hopefully, Ollie will be able to do a portion of his work independently. I will try to combine some of the non-core studies for both of them, which is why I'm planning to take it easy with non-core subjects with Oliver this year.
Roll on MONDAY, and our first lesson back to full time HE school.
