I’ve been doing some thinking about what I want to do with Emma next school year and I’m beginning to feel like I’m getting a handle on it.  I’m no longer certain that I want to stop doing school stuff altogether over the summer because I’m not really sure that’s going to be in our best interest.  Emma and I (generally!) enjoy doing our “homeschool block” together, and I’m not sure that stopping it for the summer is the right way to go.  I think that perhaps instead we’ll back off and do a little less, but still continue doing the parts we like the most.  That way we can continue to spend this time together, we can keep the material fresh in her mind, we can keep some of our current patterns intact after we move, and we can have a little more time to be able to do stuff on the property.  It sounds like a good solution all the way around, I think!

So for this summer I think we’ll do the following:

  • 15 minutes or so of Emma reading outloud every day
  • A lesson with a little review from Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading (TOPGTTR)*
  • Math of some sort - either “practical math” like money and time review, or worksheets/natural manipulatives to review basic math concepts taught in Math-U-See’s Primer book (which we are one lesson away from finishing!)
  • Bible stories from Egermeier’s Bible Story Book

In the fall, I’m thinking we’ll do the following:

  • 15 minutes or so of Emma reading outloud
  • A lesson (w/ review) from TOPGTTR (topgetter?  hmm…)
  • A lesson from First Language Lessons from the Well-Trained Mind (maybe MWF at first?)
  • A page or two from Math-U-See’s Alpha book
  • A page or two from MCP’s Spelling Workout A (maybe TR at first?)
  • Bible stories with formal narration (meaning I’ll write it down) with illustrations
  • Saint Story
  • I’d also like to continue to do some informal art and music appreciation, but considering what our living circumstances are likely to be, I’m not sure how practical that is.  Perhaps we’ll do Child-sized Masterpieces together, that might be more practical.

If you’re familiar with The Well-Trained Mind, you’ll notice that I’m starting some first grade work with Emma this fall.  I think she’s ready for it, even though this technically would be her kindegarten year.  (She turned five in Feb) She’s quite comfortable reading and doing basic math, so I think she will be well served by continuing to develop these skills and adding to them by expanding into grammar and spelling.  Her handwriting is quite good for her age, so I think the additional written work will not be a problem for her.  For example, she easily wrote “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” today as her copywork assignment.

I am intentionally not starting a full first grade schedule for her though.  I don’t think her attention span is quite ready for that yet, and I think that we’ll be happier if we wait another year before we start doing things like history, latin, and literature.  Granted, these subjects will be at least somewhat combined, but I think that waiting another year will be beneficial.  I’m also being perhaps a little selfish here - I don’t think I’m going to have the mental space or time to prepare for these subjects in an appropriate manner!  Also, the point for us in homeschooling isn’t to try to race Emma through the material so that she can “finish early” (whatever that means) but to make sure that she is challenged and is using and developing all of her abilities as best she can.

* As I think I mentioned before, we finished Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons a few weeks ago.  I feel like we need something else to work with because I’ve found that I have almost no knowledge of phonics (yes, I am a product of whole language instruction, lucky me. )  I felt like 100 Easy Lessons ended too soon.  I checked out The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading from the library in order to evaluate it and I really like it.  I wish I had known about it before I started with 100 Easy Lessons, I think it is a better text in many ways.  The lessons are shorter, which I think is a good thing.  The authors suggest that as you work through the book you review two lessons then do one new lesson, a practice I think would be very useful. I like that the authors do not use any sort of notation to show short or long letters, and I like how they introduce all the sounds at the beginning before getting into reading.   It is much like I ended up doing with Emma on my own, but I like the rhyme that they present to help remember the sounds.  The text is also far more complete than 100 Easy Lessons.  I’m not sure what reading grade level it ends at, but the last lesson uses words like impracticality, invisibility, extraterrestrial, and uninhabitable.  I think by the end of this book a child would be reading better than many adults!  We’ve done a few lessons so far this week and we both like the presentation and the practice text.

And as a further aside, I’ve noticed that now that I’ve been doing phonics with Emma for the past year, my spelling and my ability to sound things out have really improved!  Homeschooling educates both child and parent, apparently.  :-)