An Update on School
Things are going well with our school. Since mid-February we've been doing 4 school days per week. Which is good because from about early December until mid-February we did next to NOTHING. Most of our school days our kindergartner spends playing.
But we also do a Bible story. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I really like our Child's Bible Story Book, by Catherine Vos. We also do some Bible memorization. We accomplish this by simply reading what we want to memorize several times, and within a week it is usually memorized. We recite what we have previously memorized at least once a week. Right now we're memorizing the books of the Old Testament.
After Bible, we have a calendar time, which our 4-year-old is learning a lot from without even having to be taught! I figure this will be a great time-saver in the future. Calendar time leads into math.
By the time we are done doing some math, we've spent around one hour of solid school time, and we're pretty much done. Sometimes I read out loud to them in the afternoons, but I have been dreadfully neglectful about this. It's one area that I really need to improve in. Usually our kindergartner reads for a while on his own in the afternoons, and I ask him to read at least 3 books during quiet time. I don't really assign him particular books to read, but considering that the books allowed in our home are (generally) high quality to begin with, this isn't a problem in my opinion. He'll have enough time later to read something because he HAS to. Right now he just reads what he enjoys.
But first grade is a-comin', and I am excited (to say the least) about studying history with my son. That's one of the reasons I like the classical education model - because almost everything is tied in with history. We're going to use Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World. We'll (sing along!) start at the very beginning, a very good place to start... One of the activities suggested in the activity guide tells how you can embalm a chicken, Egyptian-fashion. I'll let you know if we try it. Check back next fall. :-)
But we also do a Bible story. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I really like our Child's Bible Story Book, by Catherine Vos. We also do some Bible memorization. We accomplish this by simply reading what we want to memorize several times, and within a week it is usually memorized. We recite what we have previously memorized at least once a week. Right now we're memorizing the books of the Old Testament.
After Bible, we have a calendar time, which our 4-year-old is learning a lot from without even having to be taught! I figure this will be a great time-saver in the future. Calendar time leads into math.
By the time we are done doing some math, we've spent around one hour of solid school time, and we're pretty much done. Sometimes I read out loud to them in the afternoons, but I have been dreadfully neglectful about this. It's one area that I really need to improve in. Usually our kindergartner reads for a while on his own in the afternoons, and I ask him to read at least 3 books during quiet time. I don't really assign him particular books to read, but considering that the books allowed in our home are (generally) high quality to begin with, this isn't a problem in my opinion. He'll have enough time later to read something because he HAS to. Right now he just reads what he enjoys.
But first grade is a-comin', and I am excited (to say the least) about studying history with my son. That's one of the reasons I like the classical education model - because almost everything is tied in with history. We're going to use Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World. We'll (sing along!) start at the very beginning, a very good place to start... One of the activities suggested in the activity guide tells how you can embalm a chicken, Egyptian-fashion. I'll let you know if we try it. Check back next fall. :-)
4 Comments:
Let me know how you like the history book. I've just started looking at some of their stuff and it sounds really interesting to me. Alas, I still have a few years to wait before we can begin "real" school. ;-)
Sure will! I like the history in narrative form, and I appreciate the author's writing style. Some parents have complained about the relative lack of Bible history in this book, but we have plenty of supplemental material should we come across any glaring omission.
For us, it has been a very gradual process - starting "real" school. It's kind of hard say exactly when we started. A lot of the time school just "happens" (especially at this age), whether we plan it or not. :-)
From Lynette
I really like the book and the activity book, I ordered the Vol 2 for next year. We did quite a few of the projects (By that I mean maybe 1/2) and colored the pics and mapwork. Our soon to be first grader did all with us and retained almost as much as the 2nd graders. They all see to like it.
Another thought about school,
Have you considered doing science this summer? We did plants last summer and I found it so easy to go outside and find what we were reading about. We did the science notebook ("Well Trained Mind") and I used "Seeds and Plants" from School Zone and "More Mudpies to Magnets". You can borrow the Seeds and Plants book and use if you want. Was very easy and fun. It fit well with what God was doing outside at the time.
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