School

I suppose you could say we officially dove into school this week. Brandon and I like the Charlotte Mason and Classical approaches. I don't know how we will combine them in the end. Time will tell. We will be following the Oz school year. Which means there are four terms in a year. After the first three terms we get a two week break. After the fourth term comes summer holidays which is 8-10 weeks long.

So what does our school week look like? We do most of it when Gids takes his morning nap and then a little more in the afternoon if we have time. On average we are working for about an 1.5 - 2 hours.

Everyday :
Morning devotions - Verse memorization, devotional, Bible story. We do the verse review every day and the others once or twice a week.

Mon, Wed, Fri :
1. Copywork - Write a short sentence or paragraph.
2. Reading
A) Veritas Press workbook
B) Reading out loud
C) Listening and then narration - Basically I just read a chapter of something (Little House series, Nature Readers, etc.) and then ask them to tell me what they remember.

Tues & Thurs:
1. Maths (Plural in Oz land) We are using Math-U-See. Jolene loves it. So we are doing as much as we can. MUS is just a basic program that uses cuisenaire rods.
2. Spanish - I just add a few new vocab words in each day. A couple phrases as well. We decided to go with Spanish for a couple of reasons.
A) It's an easy language to start with - keeps the kids from getting too frustrated
B) I took it in highschool and uni
C) The second language for the US

After Gids wakes up we take a walk, go to the backyard, or another activity until lunch time. I try to get them outside for at least 2-3 hours a day. When winter comes that will change. I don't want to be outside when it is rainy and 12 C.

I have a couple of books on nature studies. I try to work those in after we have come in from being outside. For example, while outside the other day we saw a bee gathering pollen from a flower. Once inside I read them nature study on bees and how they make honey from pollen. I have found reading during lunch to be fun. They are all sitting still for at least fifteen minutes. Before they get up we have a little discussion about what we just read. We are going through the Little House books and a Raggedy Ann one too. Adele grows tired of Farmer Boy quickly. I am hoping the next one will be more interesting for her.

I am trying to work in a few books on ancient Egypt during our reading times as well. In the classical curriculum you go through the ancient period first, then medieval - early Renaissance, late-Renaissance-early modern, and finally modern. You repeat each period of history four times throughout the child's schooling, increasing in detail each time you revisit that period.

The book on classical education that I found to be very helpful is called The Well-Trained Mind, by Susan Wise Brown and Jessie Wise.

Two websites on the Charlotte Mason method that I have found helpful are:
1. simplycharlottemason.com
2. amblesideonline.org

We will see how it goes, the novelty wears off pretty quickly. Next Monday we might just skip school all together and have a "field trip" to the beach :-) I do like the beach and it will only be this warm for so much longer.