Math and Science

I'm in love with Singapore Math! I knew just from reading the description in WTM that I would like it.  I was a math person in school, and this seems to teach like I think.  Sometimes it may not teach in the most "traditional" way, but when you really think about what they are doing it is usually training them to think about math like an adult. Singapore Math is more about learning math Concepts instead of memorizing facts.  (Although, they do remind the parents that the children need to be practicing enough that they will end up memorizing the facts.)

I'm not an expert on Common Core, that was way after my time, and not having kids in public school, I'm really out of the loop on this.  But from the little I've seen on facebook and such it seems that the math that is being used in schools to align with the Common Core standards seems to teach similarly to Singapore Math. Which if I understand correctly is just an Americanized version of the curriculum taught in schools in Singapore, hence the name.  Actually, Singapore was one of the countries they studied to come up with the math standards for Common Core.

So I give that disclaimer to say, if you are homeschooling your child because you don't like the way math is being taught in public schools, this may not be the curriculum for you.  However, if that's you I would encourage you to at least look through a book, because I think that a lot of parents don't like this "new math" because they don't understand what their child is doing.  But you are the teacher now, so you are going to be the one with the teacher's guide (and the answers).  Singapore has some of the best test scores in math in the world, and it's not because they are studying to take the test (like a lot of other countries including our own).  So, they might be on to something here.

A lot of people use Saxon Math.  It's probably the most common among homeschoolers.  I had to teach from Saxon Math in an elementary placement when I was in college, and it left a really bad taste in my mouth.  If it is still the same, if you want a very structured, traditional math book that tells you exactly what to say, go with Saxon. Hey, different strokes

Here was a real activity we did last week.  They showed a picture of a penguin family of five.  Some were big, some were small. Some were lying down, some were not.  I think one was maybe outside of the nest or whatever the rest were in.  Anyway, they gave him the picture and said how many number bonds can you create with this picture.  So aloud we would say "There are five penguins. Two are adults and three are babies."  Then he would record this answer numerically.

Sound confusing?  It isn't really and the teacher guide is super helpful.

Science
Science this year is biology.  We are learning about animals, the human body, and in the spring, plants.

Here are our main books.  Science to me, the way it's laid out in WTM is the least structured.  We are learning about animals right now we do about two animal groups a week.  We've talked about what a mammal is and have started to learn about some mammals.  I haven't ironed out exactly how we are going to do work with science.  Sterling really needs handwriting practice and narrations are not only good for handwriting but writing skills.  (Narrations are just the kids retelling what they've learned in writing form.)  At the same time he wants to recall so many more facts than he has the patience to copy.  I have a binder for science right now and we have been letting him copy a sentence to put in his binder and then draw a picture.  However, I think I may start recording all that he says by my own hand and including that as well.

These are some extra books I've picked up for when we get to the body.  In Classical Conversations this year Sterling will be making a life size body with all the bones and inside parts.  I loved that we were going to do that this year, because I was planing to do something like that with him at home and now I don't have to.  Much of our CC memory work is about the body and body systems this year, too.  I'll talk about on the Classical Conversations post how we line up and don't line up our work with CC.

History and Art

If I can look back at one point in my life where I realized that school subjects made more sense together than they did apart it was in my art history class in college.  It was the only art class I ever took, but my teacher was amazing!  She wasn't concerned with dates and names and slides as much as she was actually teaching us the history behind the art, go figure, right.  Art is a direct reflection of the culture in which it comes.  And it was so fun learning a new aspect of history that I had never thought about.

As a future educator I guess I was starting to think like a teacher.  I had never understood history in the context of what I learned in that class. At the same time I had never really had a real appreciation for art.  So maybe that class was both an art journey as well as a homeschooling journey.  But I think that class was certainly the moment when I felt like the way I had been taught so many things didn't really make sense. Seriously, how much more fun would lit class have been if we were learning about the same things in history?

Subjects just make more sense when studied with the other subjects.  So we are starting at the very beginning. I hear it's a very good place to start.

History

We use The Story of the World as our main history spine.  We started with the hunter gatherers of the fertile crescent and we will be ending somewhere in the Roman Empire, Constantine maybe??, I can't really remember. We will go through all of history in four years, then we will start back at the beginning.

This book is a more narrative approach to telling history.  It reads like a story book, but there are very few pictures and they are all in black and white.  If you purchase this book for history the teacher book/student workbook is a must.  The book comes together, which I didn't like.  Although, I guess it made the book cheaper.

The student workbook pages tear out with perforated sheets.  Since I didn't want half of my teacher book missing as the year went along, I went ahead and pulled out all of the student sheets, hole punched them and put them in a 3 ring binder.  This way we can add narration pages and pictures as we wish.  I may even add his art work or pictures of his artwork.  Then I tore the rest of the pages out and cut them cleanly (they probably could have done the cutting at Office Max) and had it re-bound using a spiral binding.  It was a little an hour or so of cutting, but it costs all of three or four dollars and now a half empty book won't drive me crazy all year. Time and money well spent in my mind. I like the spiral binding better anyway, because I like bending books back.

The teacher book has lots of ideas about comprehension questions, extra read-aloud suggestions to check out from the library, narration sentence examples, and how to do the map work.  On the mapwork, Sterling l.o.v.e.s. the mapwork! The student workbook now in a binder includes a few projects, map work for every week (aka geography), and a coloring sheet. Because Sterling is really into doing the maps (he's always been a map nerd) I even bought some tracing paper so after he does the coloring on the actual map page, he can practice drawing the map.

He told me this week he was going to take the map he traced of Egypt to the fertile crescent when he's grown and moves there, because that's really close to Egypt and he may want to take a trip.

We use these encyclopedias as supplements they are full of information and have lots of great pictures.  Even if we don't get to the library that week they provide plenty of extra information and visual learning.  The Kingfisher book is also recommended by The Well-Trained Mind for the next classical stage starting in fifth grade, so we have it already, and it also has lots of lists we can use for memory work in the back.

I made these timeline books for the kids.  I just made a cover and printed a whole bunch of pages with this line across.  I printed them on cardstock to make it a bit more substantial.  Technically timelines probably don't fit in the stage of learning we are in.  I think it's more of a skill for our second round of history but I printed them anyway.  We haven't done them yet, but I think Sterling will like it.  I haven't decided what pictures to put in it either.  There are some really great printable pictures that you can color to go in timelines but they are all pretty pricey.  So, I'm sure eventually I'll bite the bullet and purchase.  I'm thinking the timeline might be more of a review every so many weeks.  Plus we can connect it to the timeline in Classical Conversations.  A class he is taking that I'll talk about later.

Art
I'm not sure what I think about our art book yet.  I like that it mixes art history along with art instruction.  It seems that it will follow the classical model by using the masters to teach and model the lessons.  It seems that we will do a lot of recreating/reinterpreting great works of art.  This I like.

In the art history section it does begin with cave paintings and a third of the book is lessons devoted to a sequential historical approach, although it goes beyond the dates that we will cover, while the other two thirds use the other works to teach the lessons.  So, we are not going straight through the book.  We are going to match the art history section when possible and on weeks that there is no match we will work our way through the book learning to think and see like an artist.  I love that the curriculum has the children using art supplies, this seems kind of obvious but what makes art more fun to a five-year-old than oil and soft pastels and watercolor crayons?!  The kids have loved it so far, art is certainly something they look forward to!

How We Homeschool

I have so many friends asking me how we homeschool.  It still cracks me up when people ask me, I'm certainly no homeschooling expert.  At the same time I understand, you just want to ask everyone you know so that you can wrap your head around it. This will really be our first official year of homeschooling.  At the same time, we have been homeschooling our child since birth, so have you. So please if you are interested in how our year will work, please know that I write the following series of posts humbly.

You may believe some myths as you read through this, and I want to address those from the start.

1. I am super organized. 
Um...anyone who has stepped into my house can see that this is not true.  I love the IDEA of being organized, but have a very hard time keeping things that way.  I'm one of those weird people who loves math and turned out loving art.  That's how I feel when it comes to being organized.  I want to be methodical and super well planned, but then that artsy side of my brain takes over and my brain gets foggy and I just don't know what's going on.  However, I am a pretty good parrot.  If I find something that works for someone else, I can usually tweek it a little and make it work for me.  Pinterest is my bestie.  That is why I am sharing this.  I think I'm going to do a post on just our planners. Why?  because they make me happy, they make me stick to the schedule and document, and because I've used it now for a year and love it. So, if you want to steal you won't have to start from square one.

2. I am patient.
Does it take patients to homeschool? Yes.  Am I patient? NO!  My poor kids.  I am not super patient with them.  But it is a learning process for all of us.  I am being sanctified right along with my kids.

3. I am Supermom.
I'm homeschooling, trying to run a very small art thing on the side, and soon I'll be taking on a couple of foster kids.  It seems like a lot, and it is; it overwhelms me at times.  But here's the thing, my kids still nap, or at least go in their rooms and leave me alone for a few hours.  I just had to get onto Sterling a minute ago because he won't rest, and he is over tired.  Some days that's a fight, but it is worth it!  They also go to bed at 8pm and don't get out of bed until 8am.  They may wake up before that and they may not go straight to sleep, but they have to stay in their rooms until.  Mommy's got things to do, or sleep to be had; whatever, it keeps me sane!  We also try to keep extra-curricular activities within reason.  Unless they find something that they are superSUPER talented at, we just can't be running a taxi service all of the time.  I mean if we have a prodigy on our hands then we will do everything we can do to build upon their talent, but there is no way that one child will be excellent at soccer, baseball, golf, tennis, football, cross-country skiing, figure skating, and Irish dancing so we won't be doing all of those.

4. I love having my kids at home all of the time.
Nope these kids, they drive me crazy sometimes a lot of the time.  But to me it's worth it.  I can see the goal of what I want to accomplish through their education, and as it stands, they won't get what I want for them from anywhere else.  My son cops an attitude when he has to copy a sentence.  I have to teach math while fielding questions about where Ann Elizabeth's doll's shoes are.  It's a wonderful hard though, a wonderful, beautiful hard.

So pretty much all of you unorganized, impatient moms whose kids drive them crazy but are thinking about homeschooling.  You can do it!!

Our Method
After looking and researching so many other options, we came upon classical schooling.  I read this book and fell in love with this model.

I just got a new camera and I'm in love, in love I tell you.  It's been a long time coming, I've been wanting it for about two or three years, I finally bit the bullet!

Anyway... back to school.  I love that the classical model works with a child's natural ability.  You've heard children have a natural ability to memorize right?  Well think about all of those things in high school you had to memorize, do you remember them now? Not likely.  This is because a teenagers brain is really past the stage of being able to memorize lots of information.  Instead teenagers are built to explore more complex issues.  They begin thinking about the bigger picture.  Teenagers love to solve problems, make a difference, debate.  Teenagers have a desire to argue?  That is new information, right?

The Classical method of learning is nothing new.  Educators have educated pupils this way for centuries, in so many areas of study, even beyond the regular "school" subjects.  Ballet and instruments are usually taught in this way.  First you must learn the language and mechanics before you begin practicing a skill.  So my five-year-old may will be exploring and memorizing many complex sciences long before he has the reasoning to understand the why.

Another thing I love about Classical education is the attempt to integrate the subjects.  History is not separated from the other subjects.  The books and stories we read and the art we do directly ties into the history.  Even math and science are integrated into the other subjects as much as possible.

Curriculum
The biggest question I get is, "What curriculum are you using."  The Well-Trained Mind gives loads of suggestions for curriculum.  We are starting with her suggestions for first-grade.  I in no way would ever consider the Sterling a first-grader. However, academically I think he is ready to begin study of all of the subjects, and his reading skills are at the point that we really need to do a more formal approach to schooling.  (I'll talk about preschooling some more later.)  I have selected what I feel to be the best or most suited for our family this year.  At Christmas and the end of the year I will re-evaluate and make selections for next year.  If we don't like something we will change it.  In the next few posts I'll clue you in as to what we are using and let you know my thoughts after using them for a few weeks.

History and Art 
Math and Science